Xbox General discussion **No Order Chat Here**

hots

hots wrote: »

I've given up on them, can't get a full refund (only store credit for the trade in) so I'm going to try and get one myself in the meantime and sell the gamestop one on whenever it arrives. It's not the waiting that's annoying, it's the lack of any communication whatsoever.

I wouldnt even mind collecting it on dec 2nd but it looks like the consoles were never shipped out to the closed stores, which means my "absolutely guaranteed" available on launch day Nov 10th console was added to the general online pool pushing me down the pecking order and I now have to wait for them to first reopen and then restock.

Blazer

Deleted User wrote: »

I wouldnt even mind collecting it on dec 2nd but it looks like the consoles were never shipped out to the closed stores, which means my "absolutely guaranteed" available on launch day Nov 10th console was added to the general online pool pushing me down the pecking order and I now have to wait for them to first reopen and then restock.

I had ordered from a closed store but all the units were shipped out from Dublin not posted first to the individual stores.
My guess is each store had its allotted slots and if you were in the first batch you got it.
I got mine the date after launch.

Blazer

Blazer wrote: »

I had ordered from a closed store but all the units were shipped out from Dublin not posted first to the individual stores.
My guess is each store had its allotted slots and if you were in the first batch you got it.
I got mine the date after launch.

I ordered a week before preorders opened. Traded in and fully paid and was told there wasn't much take up on the Series X and I was guaranteed to have it launch day. They were more than likely talking sh!te to make me go away.

If its not there when I walk into the store on Dec 2nd I will be none too pleased. I've had ample opportunities to pick it up elsewhere. Problem is they already have my money so are unlikely to give a toss if I kick up a fuss with them.

Blazer

Deleted User wrote: »

I ordered a week before preorders opened. Traded in and fully paid and was told there wasn't much take up on the Series X and I was guaranteed to have it launch day. They were more than likely talking sh!te to make me go away.

If its not there when I walk into the store on Dec 2nd I will be none too pleased. I've had ample opportunities to pick it up elsewhere. Problem is they already have my money so are unlikely to give a toss if I kick up a fuss with them.

damn..guess I got really lucky then.

FedoraTheAura

I’m trying to get Game Pass Ultimate for a friend.

I got 3 years of it for dirt cheap a few weeks ago.

He has started his €1 trial, does anyone know if that would stop him still using the Gold Live subscription upgrade trick?!

Northern Monkey

FedoraTheAura wrote: »

I’m trying to get Game Pass Ultimate for a friend.

I got 3 years of it for dirt cheap a few weeks ago.

He has started his €1 trial, does anyone know if that would stop him still using the Gold Live subscription upgrade trick?!

He needs to let the trial run out and then do it. It will cost him the price of 1 month ultimate rather than €1 though.

Monolake

The Master Chief patch comes in at 1080p on the S, even on a 60Hz console. That's very disappointing.

It doesn't effect me because I've set my S up as a second console on a 1080p TV. But I would have expected more. The game was already running at 55-60fps on the base Xbox One in 2014.

FedoraTheAura

Northern Monkey wrote: »

He needs to let the trial run out and then do it. It will cost him the price of 1 month ultimate rather than €1 though.

Thanks so much! I’ll get him to get the 3 years Live Gold now and wait until the trial expires.

Thanks again!

Nigzcurran

hots wrote: »

Ordered, December 5th delivery, curious to see how that goes.

Littlewoods delivered my series S and shock blue controller the day after launch day

Calhoun

Deleted User wrote: »

I ordered a week before preorders opened. Traded in and fully paid and was told there wasn't much take up on the Series X and I was guaranteed to have it launch day. They were more than likely talking sh!te to make me go away.

If its not there when I walk into the store on Dec 2nd I will be none too pleased. I've had ample opportunities to pick it up elsewhere. Problem is they already have my money so are unlikely to give a toss if I kick up a fuss with them.

The bigger worry is will they be reopening all shops I seen my local looks like it's gutted, I wouldn't be surprised if they contracted a loittle. Hopefully works out for you.

Monolake

Monolake wrote: »

The Master Chief patch comes in at 1080p on the S, even on a 60Hz console. That's very disappointing.

Saying that they are both 1080p is not the whole story, it looks way sharper on the Series S (than XB1). And it's running at 120fps on the Series S (if your TV supports it). That's a reasonable upgrade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkBFFzae90U

[Deleted User]

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Saying that they are both 1080p is not the whole story, it looks way sharper on the Series S (than XB1). And it's running at 120fps on the Series S (if your TV supports it). That's a reasonable upgrade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkBFFzae90U

As digital foundry pointed out in its review, the worry is that this is supposed to be a Series X equivalent running at 1440p but not even their own studios are hitting 1440p.

My young lad is getting a 1440p monitor from Santa to go with his. There is a big target market for this who will gladly drop €300 and the €15 a month for game pass to have this setup.

The series S to me was going to be THE console of the next gen. A €300 console in a beautiful small form factor that can match the X and PS5 powerhouses albeit at 1440p. The perfect desk setup when paired with a 1440p monitor.

1080p just isn't next gen, I'm sorry. If that's all it can do then this console is a failure.

TitianGerm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

As digital foundry pointed out in its review, the worry is that this is supposed to be a Series X equivalent running at 1440p but not even their own studios are hitting 1440p.

My young lad is getting a 1440p monitor from Santa to go with his. There is a big target market for this who will gladly drop €300 and the €15 a month for game pass to have this setup.

The series S to me was going to be THE console of the next gen. A €300 console in a beautiful small form factor that can match the X and PS5 powerhouses albeit at 1440p. The perfect desk setup when paired with a 1440p monitor.

1080p just isn't next gen, I'm sorry. If that's all it can do then this console is a failure.

Have they actually said games will be 1440P or they'll be up to 1440P?

bur

If the S can hit 1080p x 60fps for most titles it's a dream console.

Stone Deaf 4evr

Set up my series X last night, and installed a few games i had on an external drive (Witcher 3, AC: Black Flag) , the load times and the speed of quick resume has impressed me immensely so far I could see myself more inclined to hop on / do a mission or quest. Have set my router to work now, pulling down a heap of other titles for the day while I'm at work (Modern Warfare, R6: Siege, Ori 2, Apex legends, Destiny 2, and the notorously porrly optimised PUBG). Looking forward to trying them out later.

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

As digital foundry pointed out in its review, the worry is that this is supposed to be a Series X equivalent running at 1440p but not even their own studios are hitting 1440p.

1080p just isn't next gen, I'm sorry. If that's all it can do then this console is a failure.

I said all along that it was primarily a 1080p console. 1440p is a red herring.

1080p can be next-gen. It is no different to budget PC gamers building new-generation albeit low-end systems to play the latest games at 1080p. This is what the Series S is, the low-end version of next-gen. You want high resolution, buy a Series X, it's only €200 more.

Homelander

People get so stupidly obsessed over resolution as well.

A game on the Series S running at 1080P equivalent of ultra settings at 60fps or beyond is going to look and feel night-and-day better than the same game running at 1440p-4k and a poor or wobbly framerate on say, the Xbox One X.

Not to mention the massive storage advantages.

The PS4 Pro and Xbox One X are to blame for this obsession with 4K, even though neither console was even a 4K console despite being heavily marketed as same, over half the games were 1080P, some were 1440P, a handful were 4K.....almost all ran at 30fps to boot.

No matter what way you look at it, the Series S is an excellent budget console for the next-gen.

Mickeroo

It's a shame the likes of Valhalla and Watchdogs legion seem to be locked at 30fps on it. 1080/60 would have been much better than 1440/30.

skerry

Stone Deaf 4evr wrote: »

Set up my series X last night, and installed a few games i had on an external drive (Witcher 3, AC: Black Flag) , the load times and the speed of quick resume has impressed me immensely so far I could see myself more inclined to hop on / do a mission or quest. Have set my router to work now, pulling down a heap of other titles for the day while I'm at work (Modern Warfare, R6: Siege, Ori 2, Apex legends, Destiny 2, and the notorously porrly optimised PUBG). Looking forward to trying them out later.

Its a huge improvement. Fast travel times in The Witcher are insane. Same as yourself, Im finding myself hopping into games like that a lot more for quick missions whereas before I wouldnt bother unless I was going to play them for a decent spell. Id purposely been avoiding going back to Divinity Original Sin 2 because of load times. Took 5 minutes to boot up and get playing it on One X and having to reload saves after a fight going wrong was a pain. Will be getting stuck back in now again this week and should be a much smoother experience.

Homelander

Mickeroo wrote: »

It's a shame the likes of Valhalla and Watchdogs legion seem to be locked at 30fps on it. 1080/60 would have been much better than 1440/30.

True, but I do understand why they've done it.

Console gamers are generally used to 30fps, so developers know in some cases they are taking a gamble by prioritizing framerate over resolution.

Unfortunately as I alluded to above, people get obsessed with buzzwords like "4K" and "1440P" as if they were the sole metrics of performance increases.

Can be sure there will be games that will run at 30fps on the Series X as well, purely because some developers will move to 100% max out on graphical fidelity.

Hopefully some games will have a 1440/60 option versus 4k/30. I'd much rather the former.

Monolake

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I said all along that it was primarily a 1080p console. 1440p is a red herring.

1080p can be next-gen. It is no different to budget PC gamers building new-generation albeit low-end systems to play the latest games at 1080p. This is what the Series S is, the low-end version of next-gen. You want high resolution, buy a Series X, it's only €200 more.

And I, for one, am happy with that. I only rose the issue of The MCC because it's disappointing to see that Microsoft's own titles cannot consistently push towards the much marketed 1440p.

My biggest disappointment with the S is in how in back compatibility mode it plays the One S version of games, not the One X version. I realise it wasn't built to target the latter console's native and upscaled 4K but surely it's possible to have the Series S play those games at 1080p. As it stands, games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Outer Worlds are coming in at 900p and look dreadful on a 4K panel, a panel which many people will have for a console being marketed as up to 1440p.

I expect Cyberpunk to be in the same boat next month until the S and X receive their next-gen patch in 2021. It's an odd situation. One of Microsoft's next gen consoles will likely be unable to play the biggest game of the year at 1080p. I understand why given how the eco-system has evolved but it's a very unusual beginning for a new console.

rm212

Monolake wrote: »

And I, for one, am happy with that. I only rose the issue of The MCC because it's disappointing to see that Microsoft's own titles cannot consistently push towards the much marketed 1440p.

My biggest disappointment with the S is in how in back compatibility mode it plays the One S version of games, not the One X version. I realise it wasn't built to target the latter console's native and upscaled 4K but surely it's possible to have the Series S play those games at 1080p. As it stands, games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Outer Worlds are coming in at 900p and look dreadful on a 4K panel, a panel which many people will have for a console being marketed as up to 1440p.

I expect Cyberpunk to be in the same boat next month until the S and X receive their next-gen patch in 2021. It's an odd situation. One of Microsoft's next gen consoles will likely be unable to play the biggest game of the year at 1080p. I understand why given how the eco-system has evolved but it's a very unusual beginning for a new console.

That should have been expected though? The One X version of Xbox One games are expecting to use a machine which has over 6TF of GPU power, the Series S only has around 4TF of GPU power, so it does not have enough GPU power to play the Xbox One X version of games.

Any alternative would mean that every single developer of Xbox One games would have to go back and patch their game to have a special mode for Xbox Series S and at that stage you're basically just making a dedicated next-gen version. The console can't just play the One X version at 1080p because the One X versions are coded to play a certain way within the game itself, the console can't override that and certainly not without testing every single title individually.

Monolake

rm212 wrote: »

That should have been expected though? The One X version of Xbox One games are expecting to use a machine which has over 6TF of GPU power, the Series S only has around 4TF of GPU power, so it does not have enough GPU power to play the Xbox One X version of games.

Any alternative would mean that every single developer of Xbox One games would have to go back and patch their game to have a special mode for Xbox Series S and at that stage you're basically just making a dedicated next-gen version. The console can't just play the One X version at 1080p because the One X versions are coded to play a certain way within the game itself, the console can't override that and certainly not without testing every single title individually.

That's a fair explanation and well argued. If my Series S wasn't an impulse purchase I would have realised that in advance. So while I'm disappointed I accept that it's my own doing.

Thankfully it's not my primary console and as a 1080p man-cave console I absolutely love it.

Enrico Palazzo

There are early indications that Microsoft's claim of the sS being able to run sX games just scaled down to 1440p may not be quite accurate and that it will take additional work from developers to optimise for the smaller console. So the question is whether developers are going to seriously commit to it. And if games look and play worse on sS its sales will take a hit and there will be even less interest on the developers' end to spend time on it. As of now, the 30fps limit on many older games is a dealbreaker for the sS in my opinion. Also, should Microsoft release a more powerful version of sX in a few years, then sX will become the basic version and sS practically EOL.

Homelander

The differences will only come with patches for older games, and the release of newer games.

The Series S needs to be considered a budget "next gen" console, not a replacement for the Xbox One X even though it's technically a better console.

Games need patches to be able to run best on the One S.

EG, the Series S could run, say, Red Read 2 at 1440P 60fps, but not at 4K 30fps as is the One X coded version.

So unfortunately, without a specific patch to enable this, it can only run the default Xbox one 900-1080p 30fps version.

Mucashinto

rm212 wrote: »

That should have been expected though? The One X version of Xbox One games are expecting to use a machine which has over 6TF of GPU power, the Series S only has around 4TF of GPU power, so it does not have enough GPU power to play the Xbox One X version of games.

Any alternative would mean that every single developer of Xbox One games would have to go back and patch their game to have a special mode for Xbox Series S and at that stage you're basically just making a dedicated next-gen version. The console can't just play the One X version at 1080p because the One X versions are coded to play a certain way within the game itself, the console can't override that and certainly not without testing every single title individually.

This is right, and I should have copped this as well (the S was also an impulse purchase for me) but I think it does have the power to run these. The 6tf of the One X may not be as good in practice as the newer 4tf of the S. AMD say RDNA2 is a 50% increase over RDNA (take with a pinch of salt obviously but it does seem to be a big jump, will find out how much today I suppose) and I'm guessing the One X isn't even RDNA?

Had a quick go of the new Ori on the S and it demolishes the One X experience. So the power is there I think for a lot of these games, it just seems to be going unused because of existing limits/caps/design. Bit of a shame and something I didn't expect, even if that was buyer error.

And it is confusing because of the marketing imo. Even in the DF review Leadbetter says to go in 'expecting a cut down Series X experience', which is what I did, but now I think it should be 'expecting an improved One S experience'.

Anyway early days and the sooner they pull the plug on supporting the older gen the better imo. 7 years is more than reasonable surely.

djan

rm212 wrote: »

That should have been expected though? The One X version of Xbox One games are expecting to use a machine which has over 6TF of GPU power, the Series S only has around 4TF of GPU power, so it does not have enough GPU power to play the Xbox One X version of games.

Any alternative would mean that every single developer of Xbox One games would have to go back and patch their game to have a special mode for Xbox Series S and at that stage you're basically just making a dedicated next-gen version. The console can't just play the One X version at 1080p because the One X versions are coded to play a certain way within the game itself, the console can't override that and certainly not without testing every single title individually.

TeraFlops are not a direct measure of performance when comparing differing architectures, the Series S is technically well able to push 1080p 60fps and 1440p at 30-45, given that the vast majority of games are developed for PC where settings are easily changed to meet required FPS the argument that developers have to put in all this effort to make it play well on the S is just laziness.

rm212

djan wrote: »

TeraFlops are not a direct measure of performance when comparing differing architectures, the Series S is technically well able to push 1080p 60fps and 1440p at 30-45, given that the vast majority of games are developed for PC where settings are easily changed to meet required FPS the argument that developers have to put in all this effort to make it play well on the S is just laziness.

It doesn't matter - Xbox One games are running through backwards compatibility mode, so all of the new architectural features of RDNA2 are disabled when playing Xbox One games, which is what we are talking about here. The Series S running in back compat mode does not have enough GPU power to run the One X versions of games - the One X has more compute units and the games would not work.

That's not even to mention the fact the One X has 12GB of RAM but Series S only has 10GB, meaning it does not have enough. Games are coded to expect 12GB, they'll break when it runs out at 10GB but they expect to be able to fit 2 more GB.

rm212

Mucashinto wrote: »

This is right, and I should have copped this as well (the S was also an impulse purchase for me) but I think it does have the power to run these. The 6tf of the One X may not be as good in practice as the newer 4tf of the S. AMD say RDNA2 is a 50% increase over RDNA (take with a pinch of salt obviously but it does seem to be a big jump, will find out how much today I suppose) and I'm guessing the One X isn't even RDNA?

Had a quick go of the new Ori on the S and it demolishes the One X experience. So the power is there I think for a lot of these games, it just seems to be going unused because of existing limits/caps/design. Bit of a shame and something I didn't expect, even if that was buyer error.

And it is confusing because of the marketing imo. Even in the DF review Leadbetter says to go in 'expecting a cut down Series X experience', which is what I did, but now I think it should be 'expecting an improved One S experience'.

Anyway early days and the sooner they pull the plug on supporting the older gen the better imo. 7 years is more than reasonable surely.

I imagine that the One X and Series S are pretty much equal in terms of GPU power in practice, despite the TF difference, but the Series S has a much better CPU. But in running Xbox One games, those new RDNA2 features will be disabled for backwards compatibility and the GPU will essentially be running like it is the same architecture as the One X's GPU, so it can't keep up when the RDNA2 improvements are taken away.

The One X still has a very respectable GPU to this day but it's the CPU which is absolutely atrocious on the last-gen consoles. Series S will blow them away solely from the CPU upgrade, meaning 60fps is now possible in every game with enough graphical compromises to fit in a 4TF GPU envelope.

Mucashinto

How hard is it for devs to go back and patch these games - say to get RDR2 to run at 1440/60 on the S - do you think?

Is it a big job of redoing/retesting the whole game or can they just change some values in an xml/config file somewhere?