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Larian drops Series S split-screen as "solution" to bring Baldur's Gate 3 to Xbox this year
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this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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I don't care about split screen but more evidence that the Series S was a mistake. At the very least Microsoft is going to have to ease up on the requirements.
Edit: It has come to my attention that I need to improve my reading comprehension. This only affects the S. π€¦ββοΈ
I don't see how I'm a fanboy. The Series X lost a feature because of the Series S. I'm sure the parity requirement had good intentions but I doubt this is the last time this will happen.
As others are pointing out the Series S is selling well but it's the weakest link.
I guess calling it a mistake is about strong...
Read again. Spilt screen has been dropped for the S but not X.
Well, it seems, I can't read. Β―\_(γ)_/Β―
To be fair, I heard a lot of rumours about it not coming to Xbox because Microsoft required parity of features.
So, I can understand your misreading
Please respect the rules of the instance if you choose to comment here.
The only rule at Beehaw is Be(e) Kind. Your comment was needlessly aggressive and abrasive and you could have made your point just as easily in a kind way.
Thanks for keeping this a positive space for everyone.
The most popular Xbox this generation was a mistake?
Most popular Xbox this generation, as opposed to... the second most popular Xbox this generation?
The point being it's hardly a mistake if most are buying it over the X.
Is that because people actually want an S... or because they settled because they couldn't find an X? Everywhere I go there's tons of S's available and almost no X's available. Obviously anecdotal, but maybe it's not so much buying it over the X as buying it because the X just isn't in reach... either because of price (though if you can't afford a hundred dollars extra for a console... you can't really afford the console at all, and you're just justifying it to yourself) or because of lack of availability in general.
Just a note, it's not $100 difference. It's $200 difference ($300 vs $500). Having said that, the only reason I got the SS was because I couldn't get the SX. I tried and failed. I would have preferred a $400 digital version of the SX even. Settled for the SS. Had to get an SSD expansion card, feature parity is apparently not a thing, had to rebuy a couple games digitally.
So, does that mean the X was a mistake since the S has more sales? What is your point
No it means there's clearly more demand for the S. My point is you claiming it was a mistake could not have been any less accurate.
I never said it was a mistake? I'm just saying what you said was meaningless...
The dreamcast is the most popular SEGA console of its generation. A raging success!
I don't think it was a mistake, it brought next gen gaming to people that can't afford, or don't need the highest spec machines. I have a series S so I can play Xbox games with my son, I also have a gaming PC and steam deck. The price of the S allowed me to justify buying this, but I wasn't about to drop the dough on an X just to play a few Xbox games
Itβs less powerful than an Xbox One X. I think the problem is that they didnβt really think through what a console generational leap would actually consist of.
I think they thought through just how important hitting that price point was, because it's done very well for them.
PS5 outsold both versions combined by around 2x. I don't think it was nearly that big of a deal.
And do you think that would have panned out better if the cheaper console option wasn't available? Not to mention it would only leave them with the console that shared a lot of the same components as the PS5 during supply shortages as well.
Microsoft should really ask themselves why they couldn't have procured more components, despite being one of the most profitable companies on Earth.
I mean, unless their goal is to lose even more money on each console sold, I doubt they were interested in that. But that's not their goal. Their goal is to get people subscribed to Game Pass.
Yes, thank you!
Microsoft has historically never been profitably selling consoles, which is certainly part of their shift towards different business models, including Game Pass and a focus on more than just Xbox, but PC and Cloud as well. They don't really have much of a financial incentive to sell consoles for that sake alone, they have to get people to subscribe to Game Pass and/or buy games (possibly digitally whenever possible) and the Series S is their best console for that, as the consumer is very much locked in.
Game Pass includes PC gamers. It's probably not that profitable either.
Game Pass does include PC gamers, which is why they're probably more interested in opening up that service to more people with a cheap console SKU than to sell Xbox consoles, likely because outselling Sony by doing the same thing Sony is doing is a very steep hill to climb.
Then why even bother with a console? Just define the minimally specced PC box needed for Game Pass and call it a day.
One day they might. PC has taken a larger and larger market share as time has gone on. PCs became easier to game on, consoles became less streamlined, and perhaps even the closed-off nature of consoles compared to the open nature of PCs has played a role. But as of 2023, you're still not making a $300 PC that plays games as well as an S. While consoles have become less streamlined, they're still more streamlined than a PC.
We've already established that the $300 box is not viable for much longer. And since it sold around 1/3 the numbers of the PS5, it didn't even work as advertised.
Did we establish that? Most of the biggest games are not the hardest on system requirements. And while Microsoft would obviously prefer that they sold more Xboxes and reached more Game Pass subscribers (the 25M-30M is impressive regardless), I'd be surprised if they expected the majority of those to be Series S; but they probably did recognize that that customer base is still worth reaching. We're just not at a point in the history of consoles where they all have the same business model anymore, like they did 20 years ago.
They compromised their higher end system with their lower end system. It's time to admit they made a mistake here, and they are only now starting to fix it.
I've got a really hard time calling it a mistake when it's been more successful, but you do you.
Lmao, bruh, no one who has played games on both would ever claim that. It has slightly more raw graphical compute power while having a drastically weaker CPU, slower SSD, slower memory, and slower overall throughput.
It has faster memory than the Series S. More importantly, it has more RAM. A few improvements here and there doesn't make the Series S a real next-gen console.
As someone who has a One X, a Series S, and a Series X, I can assure you that you have no idea what you're talking about.
The One X doesn't get used anymore and the Series S gets used ballpark more often than the series X. Pretty much all games play a very comparable experience on it compared to the series X, something that cannot be said about the One X.
It just isn't though.
Yeah, I guess calling it a mistake is a bit much but it's clearly holding the Series X back especially in this case.
Not everyone is able to afford a gaming PC, let alone a current gen gaming console.
Series S offers them a great opportunity. It is far from a mistake.
At this point you can make a 600 dollar PC that is just as strong as a console.
Still twice a much as a series S. $600 is alot of money for many people
Certainly but it will last longer. Although people are instant gratification machines that won't take anything less.
In what world is "It will last longer" an answer to "I can't afford that"? I doesn't matter how long something will last if people don't have the extra money to spend on something more expensive.
Because they will likely buy another thing in that same time. You don't need an entertainment box immediately. You can wait, save, and buy an entertainment box that can do multiple things.
that's highly debatable if we're talking about a $600 PC. I mean, yes you can argue that with games on PC you can always figure something out to get acceptable performance, but people in the market to buy a $300 console likely lack the experience, knowledge or time to do that
You might not be able to play the latest and greatest but you can still play many games and you don't lose access to them. They are shutting down the Xbox 360 store soon, thus they'll lose access to any games they don't have downloaded. I have games on Steam older than time itself that I can still download, even if the publisher has delisted them and stopped them from being sold. I know people who still use laptops from 2005 to play indie games. Essentially pretty soon Xbox 360s are going to turn into disc-only consoles where a 600-dollar computer would never revert to that and people today play on computers from 20 years ago. It's rare but it certainly happens, especially in the Linux crowd.
Lastly, you can always upgrade a computer part by part. Which doesn't require knowledge of how the hardware connects. Just take it to a shop and tell them you want it to run faster for a game and they usually will do some inspections, charge you 100 dollars in labor and then whatever for parts, and get your machine upgraded.
If it was a mistake, how the game now coming to Series S proving that? The only thing it proves is that split screen is a demanding feature and MSFT shouldn't impose parity of that, which they shamelessly accepted after the success of BG3. It's still a good console to play modern games, of course not at best fidelity, but I don't think that matters.
Edit: just realised you're saying that with an incorrect conclusion that split screen wouldn't be coming on Series X. Well, that isn't the case, and probably brings the game to more people with least amount of harm.
The console itself wasn't a mistake. Their promises of feature parity was the mistake.
Not making it have the same amount of RAM was also a mistake, it could have been just a weaker GPU which would have had less issues.
Whoever made that decision obviously never worked in gamedev.