I would be extremely surprised if at least one upgraded model of the Xbox doesn't ship with a disc drive. It would completely alienate a section of their user-base that want a more powerful box and care about owning physical media. They also made this mistake before with the Xbox One - which Spencer himself has mentioned as a key reason why there's such a gap in sales volume between XBS/X and PS5 - so to make the same mistake again would be doubly confusing.
Edit: just seen this story corroborated by multiple outlets, so this may well be the real deal. And if so, super disappointing and fucking duuuumb. As the Xbox Series X OG console becomes more and more the outlier, what are the chances that publishers will just stop producing discs for retail completely? So basically, really piss off your early adopters. I own a Series S at the moment, but I'm more likely to just switch to PS5 Pro model when it comes round instead of stick with the Xbox Series consoles.
This is the most senseless thing about the RTO movement to me. We have a tiny country and, in software at least, jobs are centralised in a few major cities. There was an opportunity for people from all over to live wherever they choose and spend in their local areas, spread the wealth throughout the country.
But nah, let's go back to the office, the congested and overburdened roads, the noise and air pollution, the hours lost travelling. It's hugely disappointing.
Would have loved to see this for my 4A but glad they're looking to extend the support window moving forward. Many phones now are powerful enough to go years past their obsolescence date and chucking them away is just e-waste.
If you wanted to do both front and backend development TypeScript + JS/Node would make the most sense, no? I say this as someone who works with and enjoys working with Go almost every day, but there's only so much time to learn new stuff.
It is silly. The CMA has tunnel vision around this, and because the streaming issue was essentially the main point of contention this change in the deal puts them in a position where they'd look like hypocrites not to let it through. Microsoft just capitalizing on their ignorance (rightly so).
It's a great base for general desktop use as well as server. Been using it on my PC for years now, and aside from a few 3rd party repositories it has everything I need. It just works and continues to work.
Even if you ignore the time it takes to download for those with low speed connections or data caps, the issue is made worse by a lack of competitively priced storage options for the Xbox Series consoles. PC owners by comparison have it much easier.
It would be to Microsoft's advantage to change that perspective, which would reinforce why they might maintain their hard line of feature equivalence. I agree though, it appears to be the status quo.
But the Steam Deck is a portable console, so the design considerations are different, so it's a bit of an apple to oranges comparison. On pure numbers, though, Series S will perform better. (Steam Deck is still awesome though 👍)
I find it hard to believe BG3 would run that poorly at that low quality but I guess time will tell. It's up to Larian how much they want to release on Xbox
Going back to the article, I think whether it hurts MS more to keep this promise over features or not depends a great deal on what the split is between Series S and Series X consoles. I would suggest it's worse to sacrifice the Series S audience as there's less sunk cost there compared to the Series X audience, who we might assume have more of an investment in the Xbox ecosystem from the previous generation, and therefore it's harder for them to make the switch to PS5.
Honestly, it's kind of on the developer. If they'd taken the Series S as the base line during development, they would have made life a lot easier for themselves. I think Microsoft are right to stick to their guns. It will seriously piss off their consumers if they can't land good quality versions of equivalent games on PS5.
I actually think it could be more beneficial for players across both console platforms to encourage developers to build games which scale reasonably, and at the low end target a 30 FPS minimum frame rate whilst the Series S/PS5 get 60 FPS+ or improved image quality, or both. Instead of it just being a race to the bottom on performance just so we can have a little bit of ray tracing.
Also, as far as I'm aware, Baldurs Gate 3 hasn't released on PS5 and is not due until September. I will be very interested to see how that goes, because I think the conclusion of this article is premature until we see that.
I think they kind of squandered Rocket's origin story - it would have been better served as some kind of mini series in my opinion - given how much it was bigged up.
Tone was all over the place. Same with the music, which felt like it was serving itself rather than fitting in with the film. The cast has very obviously gotten older, which isn't necessarily a problem in itself but reinforces the idea of the series being past its best.
Thing is, I know people liked seeing Rocket's origin story and enjoyed the film. So 🤷♂️
I don't think it's hardware, more brand and exclusives. The casual player bought a PlayStation 4, so they buy a PlayStation 5. The gaming enthusiast knows that there's just more varied and interesting games coming out on Sony's platform. In terms of performance, the Xbox also frequently under performs against the PS5 regularly (not by significant margins usually, but still) when on paper it should be the more powerful console.
Myself, I have an Xbox Series S along with a crappy old 1080p plasma and 3 years of Game Pass, and I'm at a time in my life where I don't have the time I used to to play loads of games all the time. I'm happy with the Series S, but if you're coming fresh to this generation of consoles, I can't see why you wouldn't just buy PS5 as that's where the games are.
I have to lick my fingers to open those bags (unfortunately - it's gross 😅) so my current theory is because I have dry hands maybe that's making it more difficult for the sensor to pick up the prints.
Just to add to this, in the 7A settings menu there is an option to increase sensitivity. Go to Settings > Display > Screen protector mode and toggle the option on.
In my initial tests this has noticeably improved the accuracy of the sensor but I need to give it a bit more time before saying for sure.
I am actually, yes, and to be fair I'd not considered this. 🤔 I guess if it's the difference between having a scratched screen or a working fingerprint reader, I'd go with the former.
If I wanted to use YT Music I'd already be using it. Podcasts and music are not the same thing. Anyway...
There are some good alternatives out there, like Antennapod.