Michael Corvin

Wasn't it $400 this time last year? I know the Halo console was $500 last Fall. I know the price has plummeted like no one's business, but shooting for $150 seems out of reach.

Jay G.

The 500GB model had dropped to $349 permanently last June, and the 1TB model launched at $399:
http://screenrant.com/xbox-one-1tb-price-drop/

The Halo 5 1TB LE console was priced at $500 when pre-orders went up last August. So you were paying $100 premium for the Halo 5 download, the Halo design on the console, and the physical bonuse in the box:
https://www.vg247.com/2015/08/04/hal...gamescom-2015/

It's basic supply and demand. Used consoles are selling for what people are willing to pay for them, and currently that's around $200.

Michael Corvin

My bad, I missed the 'used' part. With new ones at $200, $150 used seems possible.

Dan

Great. Now my Xbox One S doesn't recognize my external HDD, which has all my downloaded games on it, except Lego Dimensions.

I've tried practically everything. Console just doesn't see it.

Fuck.

Nesbit

Ended up breaking down and getting one on ebay for $185 and Fallout 4 for $20. Happy to be able to get WWE 2K16 as well as my first free game. Will probably get GTA 5 at some point in the next few months, maybe wait until Black Friday.

Any fun games to play with my 12 year old that aren't Lego related? Nothing against the Lego games but they're already on my radar. Haven't paid much attention to xbox one games unless they were part of a franchise I already knew.

Krayzie

Most kids love everything Minecraft related.

Diablo 3
Overcooked is a great game co-op game for up to 4 players.
Terraria

Sonny Corinthos

The next-generation Xbox could be even more different than we thought.

Microsoft is planning a new, mega-upgraded Xbox console for the 2017 holiday season, code-named "Project Scorpio," with the promise that it'll play all of the existing Xbox One games on the market.

But fulfilling that promise may be more complicated than we thought, judging from a new job posting originally spotted by perennial Microsoft tipster WalkingCat on Twitter. And it gives us a big hint into just how different this Project Scorpio will be.

That posting, for a Senior Software Engineer on the Microsoft Xbox Compatibility team, starts off with the following description:

"We are the Xbox Compatibility team. Our mission is to bring the 360 game catalog to the Xbox One, and Xbox One catalog to Project Scorpio."

The reference to the Xbox 360 makes sense here: Select games from the last-generation Xbox 360 video game console are playable on the current Xbox One, thanks to special software called an "emulator." The emulator essentially "tricks" the Xbox One into thinking it's an Xbox 360, making it possible to play those games.

This job posting hints that it'll take some similar trickery to get Project Scorpio to play the current generation of Xbox One games. This indicates that whatever else Project Scorpio offers, it has the potential to be radically different than the existing Xbox One, at least in terms of the hardware it sports under the hood.

Assuming Microsoft holds to its promise that all Xbox One games will be playable on Project Scorpio, you as the player won't notice much of a difference. But emulation adds a layer of technical complexity that makes it difficult to get old games running on new hardware - that's why not every Xbox 360 game can run, or run smoothly, on the Xbox One.

Microsoft is pitching Project Scorpio as a "monster" of a game console, bringing a lot more graphical power to the table that promises to far outstrip the Sony PlayStation 4, while simultaneously bringing the Xbox One games library into the future. It's just looking like it could be a difficult balancing act for Microsoft. Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

http://www.businessinsider.in/The-ne...ent_Patnership

Dan

From another forum:

"You guys know that the 3DS has a "DS mode" to run DS games right? It disables the extra ram, cores, etc, and downclocks to DS speeds, and everything runs fine since it's the same architecture and that stuff. This will be the same.

Yet, for some people, "the 3DS emulates the DS". No, it does not. But people love to talk."

In other words: More bullshit from a news outlet that has no idea what they're talking about.

Jay G.

I doubt it's going to be an emulator, but more like a compatibility layer. The CPU is still going to be x86-64, and the GPU still AMD, but there's going to be differences that they're going to have to address and basically "fool" earlier games into thinking they're running on the original hardware.

Windows has had compatibility layers since forever. Its not surprising that they're going to have to do it with Scorpio.

What'll be interesting is if newer games, even if they don't take advantage of Scorpio, will at least need to be "Scorpio aware," so they can play natively on the console instead of going through the compatibility layer. If that's a requirement MS makes, it may push developers to make a "Scorpio enhanced" mode, since if they have to program for the console anyway, they may as well bump the game performance a bit.

Jay G.

This article got a response from Microsoft:
http://www.windowscentral.com/projec...-one-emulation

RichC2

Xbox One games already run within VMs, scaling the specs shouldn't be an issue.

That structure (which was incredibly smart) is also why the Xbox 360 is so well emulated. When everything is emulated, nothing is! Oh wait no.

Jay G.

VMs aren't emulators, and the 360 emulation only benefits from the VM in the sense that it dedicates part of the hardware to it (just like any game), and the XB1 OS can treat the emulator just like any other game in terms of screenrecording/snapping, etc.

If games hadn't been loaded in a VM on the XB1, they might've had to go with a dual-boot option like the "Wii Mode" in the WiiU.

IMO, what really helped the Backwards Compatibility on the XB1 is that 360 games made DirectX calls for graphics, instead of directly addressing the GPU. If the XB1 had to emulate the 360 GPU as well as CPU, instead of just translating DirectX calls, I don't think 360 emulation would've been possible on it.

RichC2

Yeah, I'm aware. I was joking on the "Everything is emulated" part. But it will be very useful in the re-allocation of resources, since everything is using DirectX they should be able to move forward pretty seamlessly unless they end up dropping AMD down the line (and even then they'd probably still have a way to transition forward), alas that is big part of why AMDs stock more than tripled this year.

Dan

Good news: Xbox One S now sees my external HDD.

Bad news: It somehow wiped everything from it. So now I have to re-download all the games I intend to play.

Wonderful.

davidh777

Jay G.

Before you go to far, plug that external HDD into a PC and run a diagnostic on it. You shouldn't need to reformat to run a diagnostic, and it'll tell you if the HDD is failing or not. a failing HDD could have caused the issues you had.

I typically run the diagnostic tool for the specific brand drive, like Seagate Seatools or WD Data Lifeguard.

Decker

Microsoft has revealed the four titles that will be available as part of September's Games With Gold lineup.

The full list and periods of availability to download these games for free are:

Earthlock: Festival of Magic — September 1-30, Xbox One
Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China — September 16- October 15, Xbox One
Forza Horizon — September 1-15, Xbox 360 and Xbox One
Mirror’s Edge — September 16-30, Xbox 360 and Xbox One

The classic-styled RPG Earthlock, which draws inspiration from games like Final Fantasy and Secret of Mana, was revealed last week as one of next month's Games With Gold titles. It will also launch on Steam the same day for $29.99.

mattysemo247

Damn, for a second there, I thought that was Mirror’s Edge 2 and started to get a little excited. I should have known better

Decker

Yeah, just so you know, it's not Forza Horizon 3 either.

mattysemo247

They could at least have done FH2, I wouldn't mind having a digital copy of that. It would also free up my disc drive since I haven't removed FH2 in months.

I wonder if that would actually build hype for the next one or if that would satisfy the needs for most people and cut into the sales for FH3.

mattysemo247

Call of Duty 2 is now backwards compatible. I would be curious to see if it ran or looked any better since it was a launch 360 game.

Grrrr...and the damn Wiki page is still broken on desktop. Why the fuck is it working with mobile though? Don't we have any IT admin guys here

Kenshiro

It runs better, keeps a consistent 60fps, still 720p though...

RichC2

That's cool, I remember playing CoD2 as one of my first X360 games and being disappointed I couldn't spin around at a constant framerate

PerryD

Amazon dropped the price of the new Xbox One S bundles by 10%, $269 for Halo 5 500GB model, and $315 for the new 1TB Maddon version. I was going to wait until Black Friday but these prices are tempting for a 4K player.

Da Punisher 611

Picked up a 2tb console today at target for $354 after tax