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Holy sh!t. Bethesda is huge! Well I was just thinking the other day that Microsoft really doesn't have any first party studio that are really as good as Sony's
by wpdev_63 6y ago
Holy sh!t. Bethesda is huge!
Well I was just thinking the other day that Microsoft really doesn't have any first party studio that are really as good as Sony's first party. IMO they didn't release a game 'this' gen that makes picking up a xbox one worth it. This could change that with fallout and doom. Also this allows them to bring the ID tech engine under their stewardship....
I just hope that they don't trash the franchises in an attempt to bolster game pass.
- jhasse 6y agoID tech is one of the biggest Vulkan users. I really hope they don't port it to Directx 12 instead :(
- bzb5 6y agoWhen I saw Doom 2016 running on OpenGL I was shocked. I would’ve never thought you could write an AAA game with it. It made me wonder why game developers use DX instead.
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoIf you want to target Xbox, you need to write a D3D renderer anyway (although the Xbox API has some significant differences, if I understand correctly). There's little point writing an OpenGL renderer if your target platforms are Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation (which has its own graphics API). Also, my understanding is that on Windows, OpenGL generally runs into more issues with driver bugs than D3D does.
- gambiting 6y agoI work for a large video games company and we usually write two backends - DirectX for Windows and Xbox, and a special one for PlayStation. That is changing slightly with Stadia, because that forces us to write a Vulkan renderer too. But on the few games that have it, the DX12 performance is better on windows than that of the Vulkan renderer backend - so we haven't released it to the public.
- shrewduser 6y agoyou should release vulkan for proton / linux users i think
- KitDuncan 6y agoPlease do release it to the public! Just for Proton and to experiment/bechmark.
- monsieurbanana 6y agoAs much as I'd like that, I can hear from here the outcries from the gaming community. "Your game is bugged! It doesn't work! I want a refund!" "But the vulkan renderer is only tested on Stadia, it's not officially supported and the game is free." "I. Want. A. Refund."
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoPut another way, then: doing so would mean taking on a considerable support burden.
- jhasse 6y agoMake it a command line flag ;)
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoNot a bad idea, especially if it's something like --experimental-vulkan. Unlikely to get blamed if it goes wrong, that way.
- rawbot 6y agoOr a beta branch in Steam.
- gambiting 6y agoSo.....no, because gamer press is ruthless :P We've had one graphical bug in one of our games(which I'm certain everyone on the internet has seen by this point), and in reality it was only happening if you played on one specific GeForce card, and only when using beta Nvidia drivers. But of course no one cared that the bug only happened when using experimental drivers - it was somehow a proof of how broken our games are. If this(the vulkan backend) lead to any graphical bugs in our games, I can almost guarantee that they would be paraded everywhere, no matter how clearly we mark it as experimental and unfinished.
- smileybarry 6y ago> Also, my understanding is that on Windows, OpenGL generally runs into more issues with driver bugs than D3D does. I'm not sure if that's the case anymore, but it definitely has a bad rep on Windows. Initially (throughout XP and maybe some of Vista) OpenGL support on Windows was done by a OpenGL -> DirectX translation layer, so performance was always worse in OpenGL mode unless a game's Direct3D implementation was especially awful. This stopped being the case when NVIDIA started shipping a full OpenGL driver. (I'm not sure when AMD/ATI started shipping theirs)
- qayxc 6y ago> Initially (throughout XP and maybe some of Vista) OpenGL support on Windows was done by a OpenGL Initially (Windows 95), OpenGL support was provided directly by the OS. Starting with Windows 98, Microsoft stopped updating the OGL version of their reference driver, so users were stuck with OGL 1.1 unless the graphics card driver shipped with a custom OpenGL implementation. So whenever an application uses an OGL version higher than v1.1, it is provided by the graphics card driver and that has nothing to do with DirectX. There is no translation layer in that case (unless of course, that's what the driver does internally, but that's up to the manufacturer). TL;DR Custom OGL drivers shipped with every graphics card that supported OGL in Windows since 1998.
- smileybarry 6y agoThat hasn't been the case, then, because I clearly remember OpenGL being translates to DirectX in XP/Vista days. Whether it was because anything >1.1 called that up or because the driver vendors chose translation over native, I don't know. Original link seems to be dead but Slashdot references Vista layering OpenGL on top of Direct3D: https://slashdot.org/story/05/08/06/177251/windows-vista-may-degrade-opengl https://slashdot.org/story/05/08/06/177251/windows-vista-may...
- qayxc 6y agoThat comment references something else entirely - namely the Aero rendering system of the OS. This didn't affect applications that didn't use the Aero glass scheme (it was an option during window creation), however, or apps running in full-screen mode. The Aero glass scheme was hardware accelerated and only worked with Direct3D, thus any OGL context created for a window using this renderer would have to run via Direct3D. This is a very special case and as noted earlier, easily circumvented by simply not using this feature in your app.
- orclev 6y agoBecause game developers mostly don't pick the backend, game engine developers do. The vast majority of game developers pick a game engine and that drives most of their other technical decisions. There are really only a dozen game engines that have enough market share to matter, and a decent chunk of the biggest ones were built on top of DX for various reasons. OpenGL, while a great concept, was a fairly flawed execution for quite a while (its gotten a lot better in the last 10 years or so), so I can at least partially understand why in the past someone who doesn't care at all about cross-platform support might have steered clear of it.
- MaximumMadness 6y agoThis is right of nose and defines exactly why MSFT pivoted to the Game Pass strategy - there were no console-moving titles (besides Sea of Thieves, that game rocks) What we could see now is these games coming to Game Pass early, or even getting Xbox exclusive content. Theres a low chance they dont drop on other platforms (Skyrim on your Windows phone?) but still a big chip for MSFT to have on hand.
- actuator 6y agoIf I am not mistaken they have some few PS5 exclusives under development. Is there any new IP that Bethesda is working on, which can be potentially a Xbox/PC exclusive?
- iamericfletcher 6y agoSans Socom 2 remake, PS5 is going to be absolute garbage.
- aixi 6y agoDemon Souls remake?
- dkersten 6y agoGiven how many of the PS4 exclusives were absolutely amazing (some of the best games in the last decade in my personal opinion), I have no reason to think that PS5 won’t have some incredible games too. Hell, between Demons Souls and the next Horizon Zero Dawn, there’s enough there to make me want one.
- manojlds 6y agoDeathloop too, which was just shown off in the PS5 event.
- Doches 6y agoReading this the second time, I think it might be one of the best "we're being acquired by X" announcements I've ever read. Excited but restrained, and it acknowledges (somewhat implicitly, but still) that there's going to be _quite a bit_ of trepidation in Bethesda's fanbase over the change. "WHEN THE HELL WILL YOU TELL ME ABOUT STARFIELD?" and the rest of that paragraph actually fills me with a pretty high degree of confidence that this will go well. That, and Nadella-era Microsoft's surprisingly good track record in recent acquisitions.
- IshKebab 6y agoReally? I was immediately unimpressed when they started trying to claim they did it so they can make better games, rather than because Microsoft offered them a boatload of money.
- darknavi 6y agoWhy not both? So far Microsoft has been pretty "hands off" with the development process of a lot of the IPs it has acquired.
- the_hoser 6y agoNo, not at all. They've been pretty hands-off with their most recent acquisition, but one studio does not a trend make.
- SahAssar 6y agoLooking outside of the gaming space their recent acquisitions seem to have gone fine, no? For example Github seems to go well, Linkedin was always pretty shit and unethical, so I'm not sure it's any better or worse. Citus seems to still be going well and still offers on-prem or enterprise versions on other clouds than Azure. Xamarin is more open-sourced since Microsoft took over. IMO, (and if you told me I'd say this 10 years ago I'd say you're crazy) of the big tech companies right now I think MS might be the best steward.
- DominikD 6y agoNo Microsoft game has monetization as bad as Fallout 76. So whatever Bethesda does from now on can't be worse than what it does today. ;)
- Whiteshadow12 6y agoThis should be filed under the "Tell me in 2 years" section.
- iruoy 6y agoWhat would you say is Microsoft's worst game for microtransactions? I've played Forza Horizon 4 for a while and you can buy cars in that game, but you earn enough points that they all become pretty cheap after only a few hours in the game.
- DominikD 6y agoForza Street probably. Anything with microtransactions is bound to be bad for customers but FS is probably the most criticized MS product to date (and yeah, it's a re-skinned, acquired product but I'd still count it against Microsoft since they attach themselves to it).
- gambiting 6y agoThe biggest issue for me was that certain in-game cars were locked behind the spin-the-wheel game, and while(thankfully) there was no way to spend real life money for more spins, it still felt absolutely shit that I could have 100+ in-game hours, hundreds of millions of in-game currency, and yet no, I can't have that Mercedes E63 AMG, because it can only be won through spins. In Horizon 3 you could just buy any car at any point, it was just a matter of getting enough currency.
- liability 6y agoIsn't Minecraft a bigger game than anything Sony makes? It's owned by Microsoft but isn't an xbox exclusive.
- actuator 6y agoMinecraft is just a single game. Sony has a bunch of very good console exclusives under its name.
- liability 6y agoYeah but that single game has sold as much as ten 'The Last of Us'es. Microsoft sells their best games on Sony's platform too.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoAnd that's just the game itself, on top of that there's millions of kids running around in Minecraft merchandise. (source: there's one in my house <_<)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dageshi 6y agoIt was cross platform before the Microsoft acquisition. I think Minecraft is sort of a special case, it's essentially its own genre.
- theandrewbailey 6y ago> Also this allows them to bring the ID tech engine under their stewardship. It doesn't have to be id tech, but can they make Todd Howard use some other engine than whatever Gamebryo monstrosity Bethesda Softworks been using for 20 years?
- phone8675309 6y agoThere's no way they could trash any franchise worse than Bethesda has trashed Fallout.
- macspoofing 6y agoI think that's overstating it. Fallout 4 was well received even if it was a little disappointing. So it really is just Fallout 76. They can recover from that, especially considering that Fallout 76 wasn't even a proper mainline sequel.
- WorldMaker 6y agoA lot of people think that Fallout 76 did recover with the last expansion pack (and cross-play and Game Pass). Microsoft acquiring Bethesda even further insures at the very least it will stay a Game Pass mainstay for some time now. (Also, it is interesting to note that with the Bethesda purchase, Microsoft will now own "all" of Fallout and the "Fallout diaspora" caused by Interplay's death, as Microsoft already owned development studios Oblivion [made FO:Vegas, had developers involved with FO1 and FO2] and inXile [had developers on FO1, FO2, and FO-predecessor Wasteland 1/2/3, and was in a blood feud of sorts with Oblivion].)
- athms 6y ago>Oblivion Obsidian, the company is called Obsidian Entertainment. That said, the folks at Obsidian (especially the creators of the original Fallout and New Vegas) have said they have no interest in doing a Fallout game. Tim Cain specifically mentioned during the Outer Worlds Q&A that the Fallout ship had sailed.
- WorldMaker 6y agoHah, an easy typo/slipup to make when talking about Fallout/Bethesda (due to ES: Oblivion). I think that Obsidian is better off doing non-Fallout things (and personally Outer Worlds is so much "Fallout Alternate Space Timeline" already that I'd much rather see them continue with Outer Worlds as the closest thing they ever again do to Fallout). It's just interesting to point out how many of the "Fallout birds" will come home to roost at Microsoft.
- partiallypro 6y agoMicrosoft doesn't care about exclusives that much, imo. Sure, a few here and there, but overall they just want people to use their software. That's why their new "exclusive" titles are also on Xbox One. Microsoft will make money by selling their Bethesda titles to PlayStation users, etc. They might make a few of their titles exclusive, but Fallout and Doom won't be among them.
- kwanbix 6y agoIsn't XBOX ONE from MS?
- objclxt 6y agoWhat? They absolutely will make them exclusive. Can you play Halo on the PlayStation? No, for the same reason you can’t play Uncharted on the Xbox. Microsoft will happily support Windows gaming, for obvious reasons. But the PlayStation for a franchise like Fallout or Elder Scrolls? I will believe it when I see it. It makes little strategic sense to offer those titles on Sony hardware when Microsoft have their own console.
- WorldMaker 6y agoMicrosoft's Mojang titles are still on PlayStation and with the xCloud partnership with Sony, things are probably going to get weird on what is considered an "Xbox Exclusive" to the point where "Xbox on PlayStation powered by xCloud" sounds almost a reasonable expectation to happen this console generation.
- redisman 6y agoThat hasn't been true for a while now. Xbox Game Studios has acquired Rare, Obsidian, Double Fine, Ninja Theory, Mojang...
- basch 6y ago>Also this allows them to bring the ID tech engine under their stewardship.... I'm surprised that isnt more commented on here. Everyone is focused on creative IP. Owning id Tech 6 is or should be a play against Epic, Unity, Crytek etc. 1-4 were open source, and ZeniMax clamped down 5-6. I can see Microsoft marketing id Tech's long open source history, and transforming it into an Amazon Lumberyard competitor.
- macspoofing 6y ago>Owning id Tech 6 is or should be a play against Epic, Unity, Crytek etc. Does Microsoft even want to compete against their customers/partners in this space? After all, MS may not want to alienate them to the point they won't release their games for the Xbox.
- WorldMaker 6y agoMicrosoft is a developer company and their oldest division is developer tools. They've made several attempts into the game engine / game engine adjacent space over the years, though rarely saw wins outside of low level DirectX. (XNA will be most remembered as an indie dev play, but a key piece of XNA was its content pipeline and Microsoft tried but didn't succeed that well at trying to replace the mostly mish-mash of custom tools that most AAA studios use for content pipelines for something somewhat more standardized; though of course with the easy retrospect failure of being hobbled by focusing on Xbox first/primarily.) So productionizing id Tech 6 isn't an entirely crazy idea for Microsoft in terms of something that makes cultural sense for them. Game Engines can be an important dev tool; especially in the increasing interest in non-game capital-E Enterprise in game engines for visualization tools (including AR/MR/VR). But yes, Microsoft seems to have a good working relationship with Unity at this point and probably wants to try to keep a good relationship with Epic, so I don't envy whatever product strategist would have to figure out if that minefield would be worth disturbing.
- basch 6y agoI honestly don't see it being the kind of competition that ruffles those feathers. Microsoft wants developers developers developers to fill Game Pass and run their Infrastructure on Azure, and Microsoft Hearts Open Source. Microsoft open sourcing id Tech 6, and then saying Azure/XboxStore is the best places to build your game and host it, regardless of which engine you want, is the cold war, mutually assured rising tide raises all boats, kind of competition. What Microsoft doesn't want is Epic or Google getting all the power, becoming the standard, and then being able to strongarm them. Competition, especially open competition, keeps the players more honest. It's just another entry on this page, albeit a strong one. https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/gaming https://dotnet.microsoft.com/apps/gaming
- websap 6y agoYup, I have the same feeling. I've had an Xbox since the Xbox 360 days: Xbox 360 -> Xbox One S -> Xbox One X But, looking at the different showcases. Definitely getting a PS5 this time. I don't do many multi-player games and actually enjoy story based single player games. Looking forward to play God of War, Unchartered, Spider Man, etc. Maybe this will give Microsoft the boost they need to make some fun next gen games.
- rawbot 6y agoThen you might be getting the best deal with the new PS Plus Collection offer. You'll get to play some of the best games of the past generation immediately on release of the PS5.