Microsoft Has Apparently Dialed Back the Scope of Xbox Play Anywhere
- Thread starter ffronw
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Point stands. I can't take a company seriously that ever flipped the bird to the customer like that.Kibeth41 said:
Funnily enough, they actually DID make it to the system I believe. They just issued a firmware patch on release to remove them. Though, don't quote me on that as it's been years.
Someone explain to me how, if porting Xbox 360 games over to the Xbox One is as simple as recompiling the existing source code for a different architecture, a similar approach won't work between the Xbox One and a Windows 10 PC. I mean, yes, PCs lack the certainty and unified hardware of consoles, but I also would have assumed the process of coding for two completely different consoles amounted to more than translating the CPU's instruction set and clearly I was wrong about that! Universal Apps are more like emulated console games than native PC games anyway, from what I hear, with no graphics options and only "fake" fullscreen (the kind you get to by hitting F11 in Firefox that merely covers what's already on screen).
While using UWA isn't in any way ideal, it's not as bad as you're saying. I got Quantum Break to pretty much see what the fuss was about (and to try Quantum Break, but I fucking hate how it feels to control) and it totally has graphics options for AA, shadows, and all that good stuff. It looked like Remedy was able to port the X1 source to UWA, even including the dynamic resolution scaling that the X1 uses to keep the framerate high. You're able to turn it off to run a pure 1080p at all times, but the framerate takes a complete beating if you disable it. I think that problem was more that Remedy built the game from the ground up to get the most out of the X1 and playing it in always 1080p is a "not intended" option that one could brute force if they had the power.Steve the Pocket said:
As for the fullscreen, its fullscreen but not exclusive. Apparently further updates are coming to Windows 10 to fix this, but the major issue is that Live is the primary overlay and this makes many recording/capture programs as well as ENB/SweetFX impossible to use on a UWA game. Overall, using UWA itself wasn't terrible, if I had tried a game that I enjoyed I would have totally finished it. I did already have a Microsoft account though (which even if you've never used Xbox live, you have an account if your Windows 10 account isn't local or you've used Skype or Hotmail) and to play Scalebound I have no problem at all with getting it through UWA as opposed to buying an X1 just to play it.
On another note, I had no idea that 360 games on X1 was just a matter of changing the instruction set. I was under the impression that they developed an emulator...kind of makes me wonder what's going on that Gamecube emulation on PC is only just now becoming truly mature, PS2 still has some big problems, and 360 emulation on PC is still a long way off.
Steve the Pocket said:
They don't recompile the source code, I doubt the companies are willing to allow Microsoft to do that.DrunkOnEstus said:
The lead programmer for the project explained in a video with Major Nelson how they built a 360 in software and Phil Spencer says the same thing in an interview here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPaIiwekbf8
As much as people may not like to admit it, it is emulation. You run the game which is wrapped in an emulator, which the Xbox One thinks is a game. This is why you get the Xbox 360 OS, mini dash, and if you go back to a actual 360 it thinks you were last playing on a different Xbox 360.
If they were just recompiling the games then multidisc titles would not have taken so long to hit the program.
Plus not really a great surprise that a multi-billion dollar company with a dedicated team for emulation could pull it off before talented people who have to work on it in their spare times without access to the information that Microsoft has.
Also if you've played any of the games, they really don't run all that well. Mass Effect is playable but does stutter a fair bit, Halo Reach was nigh on unplayable when it hit the service and while it has improved it is still not great. The best games are those, like Mass Effect, which use the Unreal Engine 3 but that tends to be light on requirements anyway.
If it's an emulator, then why are they rolling out one game at a time? Back when this started, they said that they need to provide recompiled game code for each game individually.votemarvel said:
Because they have to make sure each game works the best it can with the emulation software.Steve the Pocket said:
Gameboy emulation still isn't perfect, you can still get sound issues with PS1 games etc. An emulator isn't the actual hardware no matter how well it is programmed. That's why not every game works perfectly on every emulator.
I've only ever heard them say that they needed to tinker with the emulation software, which as I mentioned before is why multidisc games have taken so long to hit the service.
Also as I said before, do you really think companies like EA and Ubisoft would be allowing Microsoft to go through their game code?