Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5

[Rodster]

Supposedly, Blizzard cancelled a Starcraft FPS game but have been working on Diablo IV. And the team behind the Divinity series games is working on Baldur's Gate 3.

[DChaps]

Here are a couple new articles on Stadia that bring up some good points. It will be interesting to see how it all works out.

Xbox One And PS4 Don’t Need To Fear Google Stadia, Which Is Mired In Contradictions
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/ ... b0ac4d5d86

Google Stadia seems unlikely to replace current or next gen consoles. The tech is too unproven and the allure of exclusives and stability and not streaming entire terabytes of data per month is going to be too attractive to the current crowd for them to suddenly abandon their consoles or gaming PCs. And I have to imagine there is only a very tiny crowd of non-gamers or mobile-only players where Stadia will produce some sort of light bulb in their mind that suddenly they want to play all these hardcore games because suddenly there’s no hardware to buy. I don’t think that’s as big of an obstacle as Google thinks it is. It’s a solution in search of a problem. At best, I can see someone like me, the hardest of hardcore gamers, doing this for a living, picking up Stadia to make sure I can keep playing my console games elsewhere when I’m traveling, provided they all have cross save (which isn’t guaranteed).

Google Stadia Will Eat 1TB Bandwidth Caps for Breakfast
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/2927 ... -breakfast

Google revealed more information about its Stadia service this week, including the expected bandwidth required for the service to work properly. If you want to stream games in 4K, you’d better either have a no-cap ISP or do relatively little gaming on a household basis.

According to Google, Stadia will require a 35Mbps connection to maintain a steady 4K service. That’s 1.4x more bandwidth than Netflix, which requires a 25Mbps connection for 4K. In per-MB terms, a 35Mbps connection will eat 15.75GB per hour. If you have a 1TB connection, that’s about 65 hours of gaming per month — if gaming is all you do. Of course, gaming isn’t all most people do, which is where the actual problem lies.

Issues like this are fundamental barriers to projects like Stadia. If you’re a single adult living alone, a 1TB bandwidth cap is probably fine. If you have multiple high-bandwidth users in a household, you can easily start hitting limits with applications like this. If four people watch an average of one hour of 4K Netflix per day (an average of 15 minutes of TV per person), that’s 337.5GB of data consumed per month. The amount of bandwidth available for Stadia shrinks to the equivalent of 1.4 hours of gaming per day across four people, or about 21 minutes per person. Granted, there are plenty of families where not everyone games — but the math illustrates how quickly modern bandwidth slips away if you want to stream at high resolution.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Google announced all the details on Stadia yesterday, coming in November 2019.

Stadia Connect 6.6.2019 - Pricing, Game Reveals, Launch Info & More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-BbW6zAjL0

Stadia Connect 6.6.2019 - Official Sizzle Reel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx21mOYsb2k

Stadia Connect Official Recap In 3 Minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdUshWn8uM0

Everything We Learned Today About Google Stadia
https://kotaku.com/everything-we-learne ... 1835294433

Stadia Founder’s Edition
https://store.google.com/us/product/sta ... ine/stadia

Google Stadia vs. Apple Arcade: Everything we know
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/google-stad ... g-we-know/

Finally -- the Google Stadia details that matter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaRKdxyhnLs

https://www.cnet.com/news/google-stadia ... d-e3-2019/

From CNET:

-There's a Stadia Base tier that's free for any game you purchase via Stadia at up to 1080/60p in stereo (at 10Mb/s). Individual game prices still TBD.

-There's a $9.99 monthly Stadia Pro tier, which delivers 4K/60p HDR quality (at 35Mb/sec) with 5.1 surround sound, free games added to your library and discounts.

-There's a Stadia Founder's Edition limited preorder offer for $129.99, which includes a first access to the service, limited-edition controller, a Chromecast Ultra streaming devices, three months of Stadia

-Pro, Bungie's full Destiny 2 experience, first dibs on a username and a buddy pass that gives a friend 3 months to try Stadia Pro.

-Coming to 14 countries first, including the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and some other places.

-At launch it will work on laptops, desktops and Chromecast Ultra TV streaming sticks, tablets, plus Google Pixel 3 phones. More phones, including the iPhone , and tablets are slated for later.


-The Stadia controller, an optional $70 USD / £60 accessory that will connect wirelessly to the internet in order to play games, will come in three colors: black, clearly white, and wasabi (green).

From Kotaku:

-It’ll be a slow rollout, Google says—you’ll need that Founder’s Edition to play in 2019—the platform won’t open up further until 2020. You won’t be able to subscribe to the standard Stadia Pro subscription until next year, either.

-Google announced Baldur’s Gate 3 and Ghost Recon: Breakout for Stadia, the latter with a new trailer. (Don’t worry—the former is also coming to PC.)

-Other games announced include Gylt, an adventure game from developer Tequila Works, and a multiplayer Overcooked-style game called Get Packed from Moonshine Studios.

-The Division 2 will be there, too. Ubisoft overload!

-Stadia Pro is the official service, at $10/month, which will give you access to the service’s games at 4K resolution/60 frames-per-second. This won’t include all the games, though—newer ones will be purchasable separately.

-The controller is $70 standalone.

-The Stadia Founder’s Edition will launch later this year for $130. It comes with a Chromecast Ultra, a Stadia controller, a copy of Destiny 2 (along with the new Shadowkeep expansion), and a three-month subscription along with a three-month buddy pass.

-Other Stadia games include Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Doom, Doom Eternal, the new Tomb Raider trilogy, Final Fantasy XV, Darksiders Genesis, Metro Exodus, and many others.

-Google says it’ll be one user per Stadia account, tied to your Google ID—you can have a guest account for splitscreen, but other than that, no sharing. (Update (2:43pm): A Google spokesperson reached out to say that family sharing is coming in the future.)

-“At launch, if you’re a Stadia user, you can play Stadia exclusively on Pixel 3 and 3a devices. However, you’ll be able to create your account and make subscription and game purchases from any Android M+ or iOS 11+ device that has access to the Stadia app.”

[Wilk5280]

Supposedly, Blizzard cancelled a Starcraft FPS game but have been working on Diablo IV. And the team behind the Divinity series games is working on Baldur's Gate 3.

I absolutely cannot wait for Diablo IV

[pk500]

Stadia will be a Dreamcast-like flop. Like the Dreamcast, it's ahead of its time. Like the Dreamcast, it doesn't appear to have EA support yet. And like the Dreamcast, the American Internet infrastructure isn't robust enough to handle its tech requirements.

The average American doesn't have Internet with download speeds that will hold up to 4K gaming without latency or buffering while a kid is streaming Netflix, a smart speaker is in use and five or six phones are connected to the same home WiFi connection. No different than trying to play the Dreamcast online on a 56K connection during evening hours when all of your neighbors were "surfing the Web" -- remember that term? .

Google can talk all the sh*t it wants about its proprietary algorithms, etc. All BS.

If Google was so confident in its ability to deliver latency-free gaming over existing American Internet infrastructure, then why is it backing away from its ambitious Google Fiber project? The same company that is giving up on providing super-fast fiber Internet also wants to convince us that existing cable- or phone line-based American ISPs can handle 4K gaming under load?

Yeah, OK. Does Google have oceanfront property in Saskatchewan it's trying to sell, too?

[Rodster]

Project Scarlett scheduled to be released next year for the Holidays, probably November. The new XBOX is 4x more powerful than the X1X, has built in SSD and capable of 8K @ 120FPS.

[Rodster]

Next Gen Xbox will be backwards compatible all the way back to the 1st Xbox. https://www.usgamer.net/articles/projec ... ginal-xbox

[Wilk5280]

Next Gen Xbox will be backwards compatible all the way back to the 1st Xbox. https://www.usgamer.net/articles/projec ... ginal-xbox

The way I understand this, as it's very misleading, is that anything you can currently play on your XBOX One will be playable on Next Gen XBOX. They're trying to make it sound like all games will be BC, but due to licensing, etc that's just not the case.

[Rodster]

Next Gen Xbox will be backwards compatible all the way back to the 1st Xbox. https://www.usgamer.net/articles/projec ... ginal-xbox

The way I understand this, as it's very misleading, is that anything you can currently play on your XBOX One will be playable on Next Gen XBOX. They're trying to make it sound like all games will be BC, but due to licensing, etc that's just not the case.

That's what the article was asking. Microsoft is making it sound like their BC will work on everything, but will it?

[Pete1210]

Next Gen Xbox will be backwards compatible all the way back to the 1st Xbox. https://www.usgamer.net/articles/projec ... ginal-xbox

The way I understand this, as it's very misleading, is that anything you can currently play on your XBOX One will be playable on Next Gen XBOX. They're trying to make it sound like all games will be BC, but due to licensing, etc that's just not the case.

If its existing XB1 BC games, that list is now over 600. Add to that most XB1 games that will play on Scarlett.

Here is the list of the final games being added to XB1, https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/06/10/ ... atibility/ The article also states, "we’re taking our work a step further and announced this week that thousands of games from all four generations will be playable on Project Scarlett."

Also read that XB1 peripherals including controllers will work with Scarlett. So I may not have to buy that Elite controller after all.

[XXXIV]

Next Gen Xbox will be backwards compatible all the way back to the 1st Xbox. https://www.usgamer.net/articles/projec ... ginal-xbox

The way I understand this, as it's very misleading, is that anything you can currently play on your XBOX One will be playable on Next Gen XBOX. They're trying to make it sound like all games will be BC, but due to licensing, etc that's just not the case.

If its existing XB1 BC games, that list is now over 600. Add to that most XB1 games that will play on Scarlett.

Here is the list of the final games being added to XB1, https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/06/10/ ... atibility/ The article also states, "we’re taking our work a step further and announced this week that thousands of games from all four generations will be playable on Project Scarlett."

Also read that XB1 peripherals including controllers will work with Scarlett. So I may not have to buy that Elite controller after all.

Well done Pete. Thank you for clarification.

I do grow tired of "misleading" information.

[Rodster]

Microsoft talks Project Scarlett ID@Xbox plans. Chris Charla discusses consolidation, subscription services and curation.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019 ... osoft-exec

[J_Cauthen]

Microsoft talks Project Scarlett ID@Xbox plans. Chris Charla discusses consolidation, subscription services and curation.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019 ... osoft-exec

If Microsoft were to announce that TOCA 3 would be BC on the Scarlett, that would be all I needed to hear! It is perhaps my all time favority console racing game

[Rodster]

"Xbox Scarlett Is Focused On More Than Just Prettier Graphics" https://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox- ... 0-6468806/

"I think the area that we really want to focus on next generation is frame rate and playability of the games," Spencer said. "Ensuring that the games load incredibly fast, ensuring that the game is running at the highest frame rate possible. We're also the Windows company, so we see the work that goes on [for] PC and the work that developers are doing. People love 60 frames-per-second games, so getting games to run at 4K 60 [FPS] I think will be a real design goal for us.

Microsoft isn't just looking toward the future with Project Scarlett, either; the company also wants to ensure that players still have access to all of their older games as we move into a new generation of consoles. Spencer stresses that Microsoft will maintain this commitment not only to older titles, but also your existing controllers.

Making sure that all four generations of content--so the original Xbox games that run on your Xbox One today, the OG Xbox; the 360 games that run on your Xbox One; your Xbox One games; and the new generation games--all run on the next platform is important to us. We want to respect the games that you've bought from us. We want to make sure that the generations can play with each other, so if you happen to adopt the next generation early and somebody stays back, that if their games are on both platforms, you'll be able to cross-gen play."

^^^This is sounding more like all the existing BC games will carry over.

[JOZ]

That's what it sounds like, which is what I figured it would be. But how many Xbox one games will be BC?

[Rodster]

PS5 confirmed to be released Christmas 2020. So hopefully MS will try and leapfrog Sony.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ps5-d ... 0-6466357/

[Diablo25]

Always glad to see some next gen news.

[10spro]

I have been thinking about getting the elite 2 after passing on the first generation. Literally all of my controllers left stick are loose or half broken (is it the tension that’s mentioned in the video) making games like Fifa and Hockey difficult to maneuver at times. It’s not going to be cheap here north of the border, I hear about $225 or more, just wondering if it’s much better than the current controllers with the ability to customize things or just get a new controller.

[Diablo25]

I am a huge fan of the Elite series 1. The paddles are super. Just like the video says, you never take your fingers off the sticks when you have the paddles set up right.

I like the rechargeable battery (up to 40 hours :O) and the stick tension options. Having an additional profile is cool too. The question is - do you want to pay that kind of money for the controller?

[dbdynsty25]

The Elite 1 is so much better than the regular Xbox controllers, it's not even a discussion. Much better build quality and precision IMO. Can't wait for my 2 to arrive since I pre-ordered. My Elite 1 is on it's last legs in terms of the sticky grips...I keep having to glue them down. Hopefully they've fixed that issue.

[Diablo25]

The Elite 1 is so much better than the regular Xbox controllers, it's not even a discussion. Much better build quality and precision IMO.

Agree totally. I still may ride my Elite 1 for a while. It’s still in good shape.

[AcemanPR]

I love my Elite 1 controller, but it is definitely showing signs of being worn out, so I will be getting an Elite 2. Looking forward to the stick tensioning and having much improved rubber grips.

[MERACE]

I too pre-ordered an Elite 2 controller mostly for the adjustable stick tension feature. There are 3 tension settings with the tightest being the same as the Xbox 360 controller.

I'm hoping this will help my swing in TGC 2019.

Sending out an APB for JCauthen to check out this thread.


-MERACE

[10spro]

I too pre-ordered an Elite 2 controller mostly for the adjustable stick tension feature. There are 3 tension settings with the tightest being the same as the Xbox 360 controller.

I'm hoping this will help my swing in TGC 2019.

Sending out an APB for JCauthen to check out this thread.


-MERACE

I am sure he’s on top of it Mark. See, with golf I just went everything on the RS since the left side is a mess on my controllers, but with other sports games it’s almost impossible to maneuver.

[greggsand]

Pre-ordered as well. I've already seen a number of "unboxing" videos. I'm hoping it ships early.

[Diablo25]

$179 is a lot of CA$H for a controller. Damn this gaming habit.