Surface team already supported on the Series consoles, but why would they overtake? The Xbox hardware has been great, and they are be the experienced team at making the high-end console that’s affordable while the Surface hardware is designed to be sold at premium. Maybe it just means a deep collaboration or a consolidation of the teams, but don’t see why a complete change of the team that already knows and designed great console hardware.
I’d guess they don’t see a need to have two teams responsible for designing PCs
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There are rumors of a Sony handheld coming out around the same time as PS6, but I have a hard time understanding how it would work.
Right now the handhelds from Valve, Asus, Lenovo, etc are around PS4 in terms of power (1.8Tflops), they are nowhere close to, let’s say, an Xbox Series S, and they cost more than a Series S to make dur to all the required parts.
PS5 does above 10Tflops of power while requiring crazy cooling to keep it stable. If Sony comes out with a handheld, even if that were to happen by 2028, how will they make PS5 games work on it as there is no way we get a handheld that hits 10Tflops by then on a budget with appropriate cooling. There is also no way Sony asks all devs to patch games to work on the handheld as it means they’d have to target brand new specs and the games were not initially designed for it.
We have however a hardware maker that has a lower power system that could potentially make it happen. By 2028 Series S would probably be cheap enough to produce and done on a smaller process in order to fit the thermal envelope and be sold at a decent price. If MS were to start next gen with a mandatory support for that system over the generation, I think it could technically work. Release a new home console with all the bells and whistles to retain the power crown, and a dockable handheld to replace the lower end or for people that double dip in order to play on the go or simply want a cheaper system like the Series S. Would probably make more sense to a lot of people than the current Series S/X.
Actually, having a Series S handheld by next year would be a super smart move as GTA6 won’t be available on PC yet but I have a feeling Rockstar won’t make us wait that long for it. GTA6 isn’t coming to Switch 2, so having the only handheld on the market that can play GTA6 would most likely make a killing for MS, even if for only a year or 2.
Maybe there’s different implications for “design”.
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I feel like as the consoles get closer and closer PCs, there is less custom work to be done on Microsoft’s side. They are basically using AMD APUs with some tailoring. The Surface team should know pretty well how to build a box and cool the innards considering the form factors they typically work with.
I’m probably making it simpler than it actually is, but I think an approach with less customization would really bring down R&D costs, allow you to release more hardware, and still be more than good enough.
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Btw Jez reiterated on Xbox Two that multiple Xbox hardware has been greenlit, could be truth to the rumor that there’s two SKUs, one high-end, one hybrid hardware
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Could be aimed at making porting from PC more direct and less costly, and maybe easier up/downscaling
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That would be preferable.
I feel like with all these rumors people are getting behind the ones they support without thinking about them properly. They don’t need the Surface team to make consoles more PC-like, the console hardware team is already capable of doing that on their own.
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I see it as more they don’t need a console hardware team if the consoles are more PC-like. I’m sure the team would have been more than capable.
That said, Jason Ronald is (recently promoted) to VP of Xbox Gaming Devices & Ecosystem so you’d think with consoles being a device it’d still fall under his guidance, even if the Surface team worked the low level details.
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How would they be more PC-like than current consoles? Would you be able to configure the graphical settings like on PC? Would you be able to buy games from other stores from other stores?
I’d personally like to see them run the PC build, would result in a pretty major improvement to the PC store and ideally make it much cheaper to make Xbox versions of games when PC games already exist.
Not directly related, but would also like to see them reduce the effort in ‘porting’ a Steam version to Windows Store. Having not programmed for either (so all pulled out of my @ss), you’d think they could create an abstraction layer for the types of services like achievements and match making.
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Florida is truly wild, lmao.
https://x.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1756748688855117962?s=20
https://x.com/crazyclipsonly/status/1756673691952283752?s=20
Rockstar, you know what to do, lmao.
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I think on the list of unhappy things for devs having multiple hardware profiles is more at the bottom and on top things like layoffs or the state of the AAA industry.
You are paid to build your game for different systems from the Steamdeck to the Series X, why would you be unhappy about being paid for that??
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https://x.com/mauronl3/status/1757024292695388431?s=46&t=O_AGT9SEnlptKOF_2SxtqQ
Generous of Capcom for RE4R.
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Abyss badly needs a remaster. Not sure why they put out that horse shit symphonia remaster that was locked to 30fps and looked like crap
I still want beseria on xbox too
Nice to see games come down in price because I feel it doesn’t happen that often with digital games. I am shocked that RE4R dropped down
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Banishers getting good early reviews. Happy for Don’t Nod, hope this game does well for them.
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