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[Drunkensamurai]

Next-gen game upgrades should be free, Xbox tells developers | VGC

Publishing sources reveal a multitude of options for selling Series X games…

www.videogameschronicle.com

That’s according to publishing sources with knowledge of Microsoft‘s next-gen policies, who told VGC that companies working on cross-gen games have been encouraged to offer both current and next-gen versions at no additional cost, either via Smart Delivery or their own schemes such as EA’s Dual Entitlement.

However, developers and publishers who choose not to support Smart Delivery can still offer owners of current-gen games a discount on purchasing a second next-gen version of the game on the Microsoft Store. Theoretically, third-party publishers could also charge for physical game upgrades via their own schemes, such as via retailer promotions.

Cross-gen me if old.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Shouldn’t even be considered an upgrade. Who are these companies trying to fool?

 

[GHG]

Good luck telling that to the likes of Rockstar.

 

[VincentMatts]

Well, if enough people use it, most will too. Although, its just for the beginning of the gen, after that no one cares.

Personally, im not buying any game (that i plan on playing on XSX) that isnt using smart delivery. Period.

 

[nowhat]

Good luck telling that to the likes of Rockstar.

Or 2K.

 

[Kuranghi]

Have they talked about file decompression/patching at all?

The download time isn't really a problem for me, its the actual unpacking and install that take the time. Or if the download does take ages its just because they will only serve it to me at some crap speed, thats on PS4. I understand that not everything has very fast down though so its great for those millions of people. It sometimes takes longer to allocate the files on Steam for me than it does to download them (on a 7200rpm HDD), hopefully the SSD will solve that problem though.

But that still leaves the actual patching/duplication of files. I know they said they could have less redundancy and therefore smaller total game sizes but I thought that was more to do with disk access speed and getting it into RAM and the like.

This question is console agnostic.

 

[onQ123]

When I seen that NBA 2K was $10 more on Xbox SX & PS5 my 1st thought was this goes against what Microsoft is trying to do.

 

[ZywyPL]

Technically, they already have the high-end versions of the games for PC, so there should be little-to-no work in preparing the PS5/XBX ports. Porting a game to Pro/1X takes literally just one person and a day or two, I really cannot see it being any different for porting the games to next-gen systems.

 

[Night.Ninja]

At least Microsoft is against this fuckree

 

[Dolomite]

Well, if enough people use it, most will too. Although, its just for the beginning of the gen, after that no one cares.

Personally, im not buying any game (that i plan on playing on XSX) that isnt using smart delivery. Period.

Exactly. If enough people speak with thier wallet, EA and R* will look foolish.
GTA5 for the 3rd time at full price!?

 

[TheCrimsnFuckr]

Have they talked about file decompression/patching at all?

The download time isn't really a problem for me, its the actual unpacking and install that take the time. Or if the download does take ages its just because they will only serve it to me at some crap speed, thats on PS4. I understand that not everything has very fast down though so its great for those millions of people. It sometimes takes longer to allocate the files on Steam for me than it does to download them (on a 7200rpm HDD), hopefully the SSD will solve that problem though.

But that still leaves the actual patching/duplication of files. I know they said they could have less redundancy and therefore smaller total game sizes but I thought that was more to do with disk access speed and getting it into RAM and the like.

This question is console agnostic.

The Xbox actually does this as the game is downloading, and thus I have never had to wait for a game or update to unpack or anything after downloading. As someone with shitty internet I prefer it this way too even if I have a had a couple of games be corrupted when installing

 

[Kuranghi]

The Xbox actually does this as the game is downloading, and thus I have never had to wait for a game or update to unpack or anything after downloading. As someone with shitty internet I prefer it this way too even if I have a had a couple of games be corrupted when installing

Oh right that sounds much better than the way PS4 does it, hopefully PS5 will be better in that respect. I've played less than 20 games on my PS4 in total so just an annoyance for me, but I can see how that would be awful if you were playing 100s of games on it.

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

Charging to crank the sliders up and hit recompile!

 

[Panajev2001a]

The Xbox actually does this as the game is downloading, and thus I have never had to wait for a game or update to unpack or anything after downloading. As someone with shitty internet I prefer it this way too even if I have a had a couple of games be corrupted when installing

Oh right that sounds much better than the way PS4 does it, hopefully PS5 will be better in that respect. I've played less than 20 games on my PS4 in total so just an annoyance for me, but I can see how that would be awful if you were playing 100s of games on it.

Not sure how the Xbox method helps if you have a slow connection because the unpacking and patching is done after the download has completed and if the other method got you some corrupted games why would it be preferable (assuming PS4’s methods were to lead to less corrupted downloads)?

 

[TheCrimsnFuckr]

Not sure how the Xbox method helps if you have a slow connection because the unpacking and patching is done after the download has completed and if the other method got you some corrupted games why would it be preferable (assuming PS4’s methods were to lead to less corrupted downloads)?

Well, to me it is better simply because the time before starting the download and being able to play the game has always been better on Xbox than it has on PS4 for me. Sure, some downloads definitely take all day and night either way, but I like that when the game finishes downloading from the store it is also done installing from the store. With my PS4 the game downloads which takes awhile, and then afterwards it has to install the game which takes a lot of time too (around 30 minutes is the usual) and I would just prefer it to be the Xbox way. The corrupted games I have had have only ever been smaller games like Bloodstained (13GB I think) so it was only around 8 hours I needed to wait, nothing to bad

 

[M1chl]

Have they talked about file decompression/patching at all?

The download time isn't really a problem for me, its the actual unpacking and install that take the time. Or if the download does take ages its just because they will only serve it to me at some crap speed, thats on PS4. I understand that not everything has very fast down though so its great for those millions of people. It sometimes takes longer to allocate the files on Steam for me than it does to download them (on a 7200rpm HDD), hopefully the SSD will solve that problem though.

But that still leaves the actual patching/duplication of files. I know they said they could have less redundancy and therefore smaller total game sizes but I thought that was more to do with disk access speed and getting it into RAM and the like.

This question is console agnostic.

SSD should solve this without an issue, best of both worlds, smaller downloads like PS4 and instant patch like X1X (fuck you too Gears 5)

 

[Arkam]

Technically, they already have the high-end versions of the games for PC, so there should be little-to-no work in preparing the PS5/XBX ports. Porting a game to Pro/1X takes literally just one person and a day or two, I really cannot see it being any different for porting the games to next-gen systems.

And those "upgrades" should be free as not many will double dip and this will keep them in your ecosystem longer. What people should not expect are games that get a serious update later down the road for free. Of course unless its a massive GaaS like GTA Online. I expect Sony to announce Free Updates to GoT and TLOU2... but they will just be same game with better performance.

 

[Great Hair]

Twitter

Xbox developers who don’t support Smart Delivery have the option of selling two-game ‘cross-gen bundles. A Microsoft spokesperson said that “developers and publishers ultimately decide how they deliver their games."

the title of the thread, article says
Next gen upgrades SHOULD be free, xbox tells developers (but if they´re not, no biggie)

This does not differ at all, what Sony said weeks ago about this topic. "up to the developer and publisher to decide" .. without the clickbait?

 

[ZywyPL]

Well, to me it is better simply because the time before starting the download and being able to play the game has always been better on Xbox than it has on PS4 for me. Sure, some downloads definitely take all day and night either way, but I like that when the game finishes downloading from the store it is also done installing from the store. With my PS4 the game downloads which takes awhile, and then afterwards it has to install the game which takes a lot of time too (around 30 minutes is the usual) and I would just prefer it to be the Xbox way. The corrupted games I have had have only ever been smaller games like Bloodstained (13GB I think) so it was only around 8 hours I needed to wait, nothing to bad

It's strange because Cerny during GDC presentation mentioned the above issues, saying all those mechanism must be there due to how the HDD work, and yet, XB1 with the exact same laptop 5400rpm HDD and exact same Jaguar CPU handles the data management unquestionable better. I wonder if they'll fix this for PS5, or just won't care and it's still gonna be there, except much much faster thanks to SSD and Zen2 CPU.

 

[namekuseijin]

like they are whenever you upgrade the gpu in your pc

I'm not taking that kind of shit again, Sony. though obviously VR ports need more work than just a change in a config file... I can pay for that

 

[Hendrick's]

They can go F themselves with $70 games where they just nudge some sliders, or with multi SKU releases across generations.

I'm not buying any next gen games that aren't respecting me or the capabilities of the platform they are releasing on.