Gamer's Outpost Press (archived)

by Navneet Alang via The Week

Technology is inherently unpredictable. But tech analyst Benedict Evans has a good rule when it comes to predicting the future: Whatever people dismiss as just a toy is very often the next big thing.

There are few areas in which that has been truer than in video games. While the gaming industry has been dismissed as merely juvenile — and indeed in terms of its culture, it often is — it has nonetheless prefigured many of the major shifts in tech, from the rise of artificial intelligence to the importance of online community.

And now, with rumors that Microsoft is planning to make the next generation of its Xbox console reliant on cloud streaming, akin to a Netflix for games, that predictive power may be especially potent. What it points to is not just what’s next for video games, but also the general direction of tech. The future is the merging of the cloud, artificial intelligence, and ubiquitous computing.

There is a reason that Microsoft has its eyes fixed on the next few years in gaming. While its Xbox 360, which was released in 2005, was a smash hit, its successor, the Xbox One, has not done nearly as well. It has been outsold nearly two to one by rival Sony’s PlayStation 4, while Nintendo’s Switch console has been a huge success. Although Xbox saw a 39 percent jump in revenue in Microsoft’s most recent quarterly results, clearly a sign of improving fortunes, overall the company is scrambling to catch up.

But Microsoft has committed itself to gaming. In 2017, Xbox chief Phil Spencer was promoted to executive vice president reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella, suggesting that the company sees gaming as core to its mission. The company also sought to correct its initial mistake of releasing an underpowered Xbox One by releasing the Xbox One X last year, still the most powerful console on the market. Additionally, in an effort to kickstart its own exclusive content — an area in which it has been seriously outclassed by Sony over the past few years — Microsoft announced that it’s funding the creation of numerous development studios.

If this is the start of a recommitment, then the next generation of Xbox hardware is likely going to reflect a changing strategy. As Microsoft enthusiast site Thurrott.com reports, at least one of the next Xbox consoles will focus on streaming — that is, an online service in which games are accessed remotely over the internet, rather than being stored on a disc or device as they are now. The upside to such an approach would be to offer gamers hundreds of games to play immediately, rather than forcing them to buy individual titles. It will also likely lower the entry cost versus a traditional standalone console.

The persistent problem in that approach has been the lag as information moves back and forth between the console and server, something that is a particular problem for fast-paced games. But Microsoft will try to get around the issue by processing some tasks with dedicated hardware and others remotely, and combining them with machine learning. It’s a technologically intriguing idea.

But it also represents Microsoft’s broader ambition to turn Xbox into a service, like a Netflix for games. They have already started with their Play Anywhere program, which lets someone buy a game on a PC and also play it on an Xbox One, and vice versa. This next move will then raise the potential revenue stream via monthly subscriptions. Microsoft could even combine both services so that games attained through a subscription could be accessed from a Windows 10 PC. Meanwhile, for those core gamers who might blanche at streaming, the company will still release a high-powered standalone sequel to the Xbox One X.

Whatever Microsoft does release will likely be running on a new version of Windows based on something called Cshell. It is the next phase of Windows, and both siphons off the legacy code that still bogs the operating system down, while also being customizable for different devices, whether a digital whiteboard, a laptop, or a gaming console.

What Microsoft is attempting to do with Cshell, as well as a console that streams games, is to link together its work in hardware, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cloud solutions. The operating system connects those disparate elements to ideally make the end-user experience seamless.

The Windows company is not alone. Google is hard at work on a project called Fuschia, a new operating system that may replace Android and will unify its efforts in mobile, artificial intelligence, and the “internet of things” — those increasingly popular smart devices.

What it all points to is a shift in the nature of computing in general — from being a thing located in individual devices, to something more akin to a service or a layer, accessed not only from many devices, but in many different ways: through a traditional keyboard and mouse, touch, voice, or AI that predicts what you need before you ask for it. It’s about changing the idea of computing from one of gadgets to simply being everywhere, accessible through a variety of different interfaces.

Whether Microsoft can pull together the technical know-how and marketing to make their streaming idea work remains to be seen. Gamers are not only notoriously conservative, they are also highly sensitive to the minutiae of performance. All the same, it represents a significant opportunity for Microsoft.

Rather than merely being a toy, the next Xbox will be a testing ground for the future of computing itself.

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by Paul  Tassi via Forbes

by Dave Smith via Business Insider

The PlayStation 4 is the market leader in terms of game consoles sold this generation, by a long shot. With sales so gargantuan — 79 million PS4s sold, and 80 million monthly active users on the PlayStation Network — you’d think Sony would be confident about the PlayStation 4.

by Dave Thier via Forbes

As far as announcements go, it barely qualified. Microsoft’s head of Xbox Phil Spencer was giving his standard end of E3 press conference talk about the state of gaming and the passion of the Xbox teams. The hardware team, he mentioned, was hard at work on the next Xbox. This is something we all assume, of course, just like we assume that their counterparts at Sony are doing the same thing on the PlayStation 5. And yet it’s still uncommon to make any mention of the next generation outside of a tightly choreographed reveal much closer to launch, mostly because it makes people look forward when you want them buying your hardware now. For Spencer, it made sense to mention it now. Just you wait, he seemed to be saying.

You could see the next Xbox make its appearances elsewhere, as well. Those who don’t work in video games probably didn’t pay much attention to the tech giant’s studio acquisitions, but those in the industry saw them as big moves by a company that’s far from given up on exclusive games. No, those announcements didn’t come with shiny trailers or 2019 release dates, but they were the company’s way of signaling that it doesn’t want to be caught in this exclusive drought ever again.

And when a Microsoft engineer told us about how the company was using machine learning to improve Game Pass performance it felt like a strange, technical detail to include as an announcement on an E3 stage. But the message there felt the same: that Xbox is working on developing backend technologies designed to make games load and play quicker, the sort of thing that likely has lots of applications beyond Game Pass. Again, the spotlight seemed to be shining on a not-so-distant future.

At a certain point, Spencer and co. must have realized that there was no “winning” this console generation, certainly not in terms of sales. Xbox One got off on the wrong foot and never recovered, PlayStation 4 rocketed out of the gate and only accelerated from there. You didn’t need Microsft’s internal analytics to see that. And so Spencer smartly pivoted to building out services like backwards compatibility, cross-play, cross-buy and Game Pass, things that were unlikely to shift the tide in the current generation but could set up the next machine for genuine differentiation from the competition while repairing the company’s tattered reputation with gamers.

The next console generation may well be the last, as Ubisoft’s Yves Guillemot predicted the other day: Spencer made another mention of the sort of streaming services that we’ve been talking about for years but could still render local game computing irrelevant at some point in the distant future. For right now, however, it’s clear that Microsoft is biding its time and gathering its resources to avoid losing the next generation the way it lost this one.

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by Dave Thier via Forbes

You’ve got to feel for Bethesda Game Studios. It’s a big developer that’s only growing, with a clear ambition to make new, interesting experiences both in the genres and worlds that have defined it in the past and outside of them. It’s got plans for the future that we’re going to start seeing more of this year at E3. And yet fans are basically here shouting “Freebird!” from the back of the venue, Freebird in this instance being The Elder Scrolls 6. Such is the way when you’re in the studio that makes Elder Scrolls games. Though I suppose the studio sort of brings it on itself by releasing Skyrim for every platform known to man.

In previous years, Bethesda has gone out of its way to get us to stop asking about The Elder Scrolls 6, and I don’t expect things to be that different at E3 this year. Last year, the line was that Bethesda Game Studios was working on two big AAA scale games to announce before it would even start thinking about The Elder Scrolls 6, and at least one of those games is clearly Fallout 76, currently headlining Bethesda’s E3 this year. I’m not sure if Rage 2 counts because it’s being developed by Id and Avalanche, but there are also rumors about this project Starfield, a Bethesda-style open world RPG in an entirely new setting. Regardless, the message in the past few years has been clear: there are other projects coming up before The Elder Scrolls 6, and we’ll be excited to talk about those.

That being said, The Elder Scrolls 6 is somewhat confirmed, in the sense that Bethesda tends to talk about it as an inevitability, albeit an inevitability that the studio expects to be informed by the work it’s doing on more proximal titles. I still don’t expect it to show up at the show this year.

Is it possible that we’ll see some sort of official confirmation of The Elder Scrolls 6, with maybe with a setting? Sure, it’s possible. We have no clue if Bethesda is far along enough to even have a confirmed location, but again, not impossible. It’s a longshot, however.

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by Dave Thier via Forbes

Microsoft is on the back foot as far as E3 is concerned, or as far as console gaming, in general, is concerned. E3 is all about showing off new games, but the company has struggled with its exclusive library for a few years even as Sony has entered a kind of golden age and as Nintendo has come roaring back onto the scene with the Switch. Microsoft hasn’t had much to show off in recent years, and this year at E3 it’s expecting to bring some of its biggest names in an effort to pull attention and re-assert itself. And Microsoft has no bigger exclusive than Halo. Halo 6 is still unconfirmed, but there are rumors that we may be getting our first glimpse of the game at Microsoft’s showcase on Sunday, June 10.

Spoilers for Halo 5

Halo 6 is expected to be a direct sequel to Halo 5, and so we can expect it to pick up where the older game left off. Cortana has reasserted herself as the new villain of the series, leading an AI rebellion in an attempt to reclaim the galaxy from the clutches of unreliable biological life. Halo 6 can be expected to be the final game in a trilogy that began with Halo 4, so hopefully we’ll get something a little more satisfying then the cliffhanger ending from the last game. If we’re being honest, however, Halo hasn’t been doing great on story recently.

The Halo franchise isn’t in a great spot, overall. Neither Halo 4 nor Halo 5 were universally well-received, and the overall perception is that the series has struggled under 343 industries and it hasn’t commanded primacy in the shooter world for years. The current battle royale trend doesn’t really help that: there was a time when Halo was the game that dominated the online multiplayer conversation, but that was a long time ago. Halo 6 has its work cut out for it, but that doesn’t mean it won’t succeed. Microsoft needs a win on this one.

I wouldn’t expect to see Halo 6 this year, but 2019 isn’t out of the question. When it does arrive it will release on both PC and Game Pass, like all other Xbox exclusives going forward. This will mark the first mainline Halo game on PC since Halo 2. I’d also hope to see the return of split-screen multiplayer, the absence of which was heavily criticized with Halo 5.

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by Paul Tassi via Forbes

Microsoft does not have all that many Xbox One (and now PC) exclusives out in 2018, but so far, two of its most high-profile ones would seem to be failing to impress critics.

Sea of Thieves current sits at a 66 and 69 on Opencritic and Metacritic respectively, which Opencritic notes is in the bottom 30% of all releases on its site, given that games are rarely given below a 6/10 in our current industry climate.

State of Decay 2 is…not faring much better. It’s currently at a 68 and 72 on Open and Meta, the bottom 37.5% of game’s reviewed, though with less reviews in on embargo day here. The game itself will be out May 22^nd, and unlike the $60 Sea of Thieves, is only $30. But it is also included in Microosft’s Game Pass as part of the subscription, as all new Xbox One exclusives are (though so far that hasn’t been terribly appealing).

Like Sea of Thieves, perhaps State of Decay 2 will attract its own share of fans who don’t care at all what critics are saying. But, if you want to look at what critics are saying, here’s a sampling:

Metro (4/10):

The State of Decay concept still holds plenty of promise but this sequel is so broken that laughing at its bugs and glitches becomes its primary source of entertainment.

GamingBolt (6/10):

State of Decay 2 isn’t a bad game but it doubles down on too much of the first game’s failings. For newcomers, the repetitive combat and mission variety, glitches and lack of polish can be a turnoff but the base-building and survivor management manage to shine.

But some are more positive:

PC Gamer (8/10):

A solid survival game vastly improved by putting the focus on people, not zombies.

IGN (7.5/10):

State of Decay 2‘s zombie-infested maps are good places to scavenge, fight, and survive in. Combat is satisfyingly brutal and the special zombies inspire some real fear of permanent death, even though the Blood Plague turns out to be more of a sniffle. But the bugs are just as persistent as the zombies, and after a dozen or so hours the repetition of both eventually take their toll, making the appeal of replaying feel more limited than I’d expected for a sandbox RPG.

And finally, Polygon’s score-less review headline: “State of Decay 2 made me sad, but mostly bored.”

While State of Decay 2 was never meant to be some sort of AAA blockbuster, I’m sure everyone at Microsoft was hoping for a clear win here after mixed reactions to Sea of Thieves, but that just does not seem to be the case.

This is also a tough situation because A) Sony has been drowning in praise for the seemingly inevitable GOTY, God of War, for the past month, its crown jewel exclusive. B) The next biggest Xbox One exclusive that (supposedly) releases this year is Crackdown 3, which has had an exceptionally troubled production and has yet to look terribly good in any previews.

Microsoft understands this problem. It’s been very vocal about the fact that it knows it needs to invest more in its own studios and creating quality exclusives, but the problem is that is going to be a very long process if they’ve just started recently. The first step in that direction could be the upcoming Fable 4 created by the Forza Horizon team, but again, we’ll be lucky if we see that game by what, 2020-2021? So it seems like next gen is where Microsoft has the potetial to start turning this narrative around, even if I and others have been deeply satisfied with their recent hardware (Xbox One X) and program (Game Pass) offerings.

I will probably be skipping State of Decay 2 for now with so much else to play, but if you think it’s your bag, don’t let pesky critics stop you from giving it a shot.

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