Laptop1991
Member
More gamepass subscribers i would of thought, its cheaper than buying plus you get other games, PC gamers will mostly buy like myself i would think as well, mostly due to the mods
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Microsoft expects Xbox to deliver record-breaking revenue during Starfield's release
- Thread starter Bernoulli
- Start date
DaGwaphics
Member
Agreed, people just fail to see that the two brands can have different gameplans and still both be successful.
Personally, I thought that particular interview was one of Spencers biggest gaffes in terms of promoting the Xbox brand. This was never something that needed to be explained to end-users regardless of what the back-end strategy was. Sell the virtues of your platform, ignore the statistical comparisons unless there is something positive there. This particular interview came off as a white flag to me, which was completely absurd just because one game wasn't reviewing well.
But, it was something that was happening live and maybe he just got caught off-guard by the negative reaction to Redfall. MS might never actually beat the PS in console sales, but that doesn't mean that the consoles can't be a successful endeavor for MS. Take the last financial report, you have some crazy people actually suggesting they are on the ropes when the quarter was still one of their best returns from a gaming revenue perspective. Whether or not they hit their 5% growth target in Q1 isn't really that big of a deal. But like you said some users think they can setup some kind of gotcha moment with that. Here's to hoping for 5.1%.
Fredrik
Member
Yeah no kidding Starfield is my most anticipated release in many years, seems like a beautiful mix between Mass Effect, No Man’s Sky and Skyrim, three games I love. Already preordered and ready for the day -5 release on Steam. Will dip my toes on XSX too. Just one more month now!
I Love Rock 'n' Roll
Member
where? In Japan and UE ? Not a chance! XBOX is dead since last gen of those markets. MS had done everything to kill it, even UK does not care…
Who’s going to tell him that Xbox games are also on PC?
Codeblew
Member
Yeah, I will probably play it less than a month. I get bored of those types of games fairly quickly and no sense in paying for a subscription I am not using. If I feel like playing the game 2 years later when they fix most of the inevitable bugs (this is bethesda we are talking about), I can always subscribe for another month or just buy the game cheap by then.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Dr. Wilkinson
Member
The record breaking game pass growth that is likely will eventually decline once people finish the game and peel off. And then buy the game standalone when it inevitably goes to 50% off
Chukhopops
Member
The recommended spec for Starfield isn’t that crazy, a very quick look at the hardware survey shows at least 20% of CGs are at that level or above. Then you need to factor the possibility of reducing settings below console levels to reach 60 fps on PC and even using mods like ULS for Fallout 4.
I’m also willing to bet there will be a mod to remove the console 30 fps lock within a week of launch, but of course that doesn’t mean it will run at 60 fps locked, probably around 40-50 on XSX which is more than enough.
Fredrik
Member
Ah not your genre then I understand, that’s when Gamepass is truly fantastic.
I’m in day -5 on Steam, gonna have fun with the bugs and all and no restrictions on mods.
Will probably try it a bit on XSX too through Gamepass. But no save syncing between Gamepass and Steam, unless they finally sort that out, so it’ll be annoying to juggle multiple saves.
PaintTinJr
Member
You could be right about that, but as I mentioned about the deferred renderer that makes the frame-rate issue harder, because it is next-gen fx they've aimed for with that renderer choice, and the critical path of 33ms is to maximise hardware utilisation with natural latency hiding for deferred buffers and then a gather operation just before the 33ms.
Unpicking the feature set to get the gather operation to successfully hit 40-50 with v-sync off could result in sizeable scale backs on the visuals below series S for that 20% of potential B2P customers IMO, which I believe might drive more PC gamepass short subs in the first 12months than B2P sales on steam for the game.
I could see this being a repeat of Batman: Arkham Knight from a technical perspective on PC because of the 60fps base requirement for many PC gamers.
Hudo
Member
I know we all love to hate on MS and all love to play armchair experts but I find it hard to believe that Microsoft would pull shit like that out of their ass. I am fairly certain they have market analysts and other people who know their shit coming up with stuff like this (as do Nintendo and Sony as well, btw).
DaleinCalgary
Member
It will do well on PC but we will never know how it does on Xbox. That's secret
balls of snow
Member
On steam: no 1 bestseller for weeks.
On xbox: a boost in gamepass numbers but sales wont hit not even fallout 76 numbers.
On xbox: a boost in gamepass numbers but sales wont hit not even fallout 76 numbers.
Hendrick's
If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
Starfield is easily lined up as the biggest game of the year. There really is nothing that has a chance to out-hype it.
Dr.brain64
Member
I'm hoping the game is great. Haven't bought anything on sx in a looooong time.
Wulfer
Member
Not sure why anyone is laughing, a high production ad stating from the makers of Skyrim is a great way to get the word out. What you think the world revolves around a few message boards. Here's a wakeup call, it doesn't. Games are the thing MS needs most and good promotion is key. Need proof just ask the Hollywood flops this year how much good promotion is worth!
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DeaDPo0L84
Member
It's a bit funny seeing Xbox console exclusive players get super excited about Starfield when the best version without question will be on PC. Looking forward to many "I'd rather play Starfield at a mostly stable 30fps with many concessions for the cinematic experience than a fluid 120fps version with superior graphics and infinite mod support" comments.
Bradamante3D
Member
it's not hard to hit "record breaking" numbers when before you haven't sold that many units.
DaGwaphics
Member
Or maybe they'll just be excited to play a great game on the hardware that they already own.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
And why didn't they announce this to investors? Why is this an internal thought only?
Horseganador
Member
If you don't get it with Starfield, it would be better if you stopped manufacturing Xbox by yesterday.
Evil Calvin
Afraid of Boobs
But it's on Gamepass. They won't get as much revenue. Also, the game may suck. We don't know yet.
ByWatterson
Member
I'm gonna throw out a hot take prediction: Most of what Starfield does during endgame will be strikingly similar to No Man's Sky, but not as good, won't feel as free, and therefore lots of us NMS types won't need Starfield for more than a couple months, max.
Prepared to eat this one, but I feel good about it.
#nomanskyrim
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TrueGrime
Member
After 200 hours when I finally start the mainline playthrough in Starfield, there will be enough mods and add-ons to where the fucking game is going to make me start a new playthrough.
After 400 hours of Elite (on console), things sort of died down especially when the devs stopped supporting console. I'm about 60 hours into NMS and have a S-Class-Everything and the loop is starting to get repetitive. The only thing keeping me playing is the base building and doing community missions.
DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
Imagine legit comparing a Bethesda game to no man's sky that was made by like 15 people to begin with....
ByWatterson
Member
Imagine.
I'm of course not saying they're the same game, but you have to be extra dedicated to deny the similarities.
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Vox Machina
Banned
Anyone who has 60fps as their ‘base requirement’ typically has a beefy enough PC to go with that taste.
The minimum requirements are a 1070ti, more powerful than a Series S. A lot of Steam gamers have specs that exceed that. Not sure why you’re so concerned.
UltimaKilo
Gold Member
I believe they're betting on subscription increase, hardware sales and physical.
We will find out either way. I don't know what all the fighting is about. Either they will, or they won't. If you like the industry, it's good for everyone that Starfield shows massive success.
Fredrik
Member
I used to say that Starfield is like a AAA No Man’s Sky RPG. I don’t feel like they’re competing head on to the point that I will do a swap. Starfield has the roleplaying and while other aspects of it could be NMS lite it’s still a completely different game and I’ll keep playing it for different reasons.
MMaRsu
Banned
Except collecting shit is just a very small part of the game, where Starfield is an actual RPG with quests, missions a story etc.
Whereas NMS is just a collecting sim
PaintTinJr
Member
It is not concern, but applying logical constraints to the potential success of B2P for the game(vs gamepass or Xcloud) .
There has been a lot of disappointment at the game not having a 60fps mode on consoles, particularly the XsX, with a GAF response of "looks like I'll be playing this on PC at 60fps" or there abouts.
That 1070ti is 3 GPU price tiers (x60, x70, x70ti) above the Nvidia x50 ti sweet spot budget PC for PS4 games on PC at 60fps. And a quick comparison at techpowerup actually places the XsS pretty close to the 1070 ti because the game uses deferred rendering, and because of that probably exploits the RPM half floats teraflop doubling, meaning that getting 60fps out of the minimum requirements for PC isn't looking totally likely, and that's sort of my point to how sales or gamepass short sub rental might playout for this game.
I'm guessing the percentage of steam users wanting this game that also have the hardware to definitely get 60fps with same or superior visuals to series at 1080p or better is going to be less than 2m, and probably only 3m more that will be getting 60fps with inferior settings to series, potentially making the choice of a short gamepass sub try before buying look more appealing - until mods arrive - than just getting the £60 launch day steam B2P purchase.
Slicker than your average
Banned
Unless they gain 5/10 million new subs, how exactly? People on Xbox will just use their existing subscription.
Depends on pc players mainly.
Depends on pc players mainly.
DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
That is some specially selected videos of collecting minerals etc. Yes that looks similar.
But one is the next installment from Bethesda that has a full story and 100s or thousands of NPCs and an entire galaxy to explore while one is an indie game that did its thing.
You would have to be a complete moron to compare them on anything but that one little section that was shown....I mean...c'mon.
Speaking from experience? Its a multiple trillion dollars company, troll.
LordOfChaos
Member
It's their first huge title in a hot minute. It makes sense.
Probably going to be a lot of new Gamepass users, why pay full price when you can play it in a month or a few
Probably going to be a lot of new Gamepass users, why pay full price when you can play it in a month or a few
Imagine taking what you see here as gospel
You’re guessing that less than 2 million Steam gamers have specs superior to the Xbox Series S?
“Don’t be excited about a game on a device you own because some other people will have a better experience on more expensive hardware”
Lmao. This may well be the weirdest post I’ve seen on GAF in a long while. just incredible.
PaintTinJr
Member
No...read it how it was intended. The game doesn't even run at 60fps on the XsX, so the spec difference to get even the XsS version upto 60fps isn't just adding 8TF/s of RDNA2 or more VRAM. The game is seemingly bound by the type of renderer hiding latency over the full 33.3ms, and will probably need the game's v-sync disabled, a beefy CPU, PCIe4 with rebar enabled and a very good GPU (RTX 3060 12GB) and above to hit 1440p@60fps without going lower native via FSR2.0/DLSS fudge.
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Evil Calvin
Afraid of Boobs
Actually I agree. I was going to just subscribe to GP......then GP and the Premium upgrade to play early.......but then I realized I likely will play for months.....and at $17 a month ($52 with upgrade) I could just buy the game. THEN I realized that if I got the Premium digital edition with the full game, I can play the game, get extra stuff (and get future DLC) and play on Thursday 31st instead of the following 6th. So......they will be getting my $99 very soon.
When did you join digital foundry? when did you get access to Starfield PC code?
This is hardly the first console 30fps game that will show up at 60fps on capable enough PCs.
You’re ultimately still arguing that only around 2 million Steam gamers have specs able to run the game at 60fps. And that’s laughable
PaintTinJr
Member
You do know that DF are just enthusiast gamers, and the type of renderer can reasonably be deduced by target frame-rate and rendering techniques used, yes? We had a whole generation introducing deferred rendering at 720p - to maximise use of the PS3 Cell BE/RSX heterogeneous setup.
If you bothered to comment in good faith you'd see I guessed at 5M (2m + 3M), but 3M of those 5M not at superior visual settings - other than the 60fps vs 30fps - to Series consoles (either X or S where appropriate which you claimed I said XsS).
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Hendrick's
If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
Maybe, but we don't know how this game will perform. It may well be difficult to hit a stable 60 for most PCs.
Games of Today
Member
No one is buying an Xbox to play a 30fps game in 2023 unless it's a kid under 15 or someone like that.
But they will make a shit ton of revenue off of it.
But they will make a shit ton of revenue off of it.
Bumblebeetuna
Member
Man it’s adorable how you guys continue to put personal spin on what Spencer says to fit your own narrative. He never said big releases aren’t important in that interview, or even insinuated as much. He said a stream of them wouldn’t result in a dramatic shift in console share. He didn’t say they weren’t important, he didn’t say they wouldn’t improve Xbox sales, he didn’t say they aren’t trying to make big games.
And since you were upset about someone else being “disingenuous” and not applying context, the context for his comments was the digital ecosystem and how hard it is to get people who are already so invested in one platform to switch. And he’s right.
And again, because apparently some of you months later still don’t understand and need reminders, it doesn’t mean they aren’t trying to make big, great games. It doesn’t mean they think they aren’t important. It doesn’t mean they don’t think great games will help Xbox. It simply means exactly what he said: it wouldn’t result in a dramatic shift in console share.
You’re welcome for the clarification.