http://www.polygon.com/2016/3/1/11121666/xbox-one-hardware-upgrades-phil-spencer-microsoft

Depending on how this is implemented, can see this being either a great idea or a horrible idea. The article makes it seem like people would be replacing or adding on hardware to their current box, like they do with a PC or maybe a Sega 32x or N64 ram upgrade. This would be a terrible idea.

What would be a good idea is to be more like the mobile market and release an upgraded box maybe every 3 or 4 years. The new box has new and better hardware but runs the same software and OS. The new box would be natively backwards compatible with all previous generation games. In addition MS would mandate that all current generation games would be forwards compatible with at least one generation ahead at lower settings.

So for example, let's call the current XB1 the Xbox 2013
This holiday season they release the Xbox 2016
Then 3 years from now they release the Xbox 2019

The 2016 will run all 2013 games (perhaps even upscaled to 60 fps and 1080p, but that would be up to the publisher to patch that in), and the 2013 would run all 2016 games only at lower settings. When the 2019 came out it would play all games released since 2013, and the 2016 would play 2019 games, but the 2013 wouldn't be guaranteed to play 2019 games. However developers would have incentive to make games compatible with the 2013 if possible because of a bigger install base.

People who want the best graphics could upgrade every cycle, the cost offset by their old systems still having value so they could be sold for more than old consoles generally are.

Average people could do the same thing most people do with cell phones and skip a generation.

And people who don't care that much about graphics could buy the previous generation every time and still play all the new games, just at lower settings.

3/3/2016 11:29:19 AM

your idea is worse because it leads to the production of more xboxes. Going to a modular upgradeable system uses the least amount of resources in the long run.

3/3/2016 11:54:56 AM

So... objectively, nothing is changing? Got it

3/3/2016 12:01:26 PM

shrug. i like it better than the current cycle. his suggestion just turns xbox into a no hassle pc replacement. for lazy folks or ones with shitty pc's, it works fairly well.

a bigreason i got out of console gaming was lack of backwards compatibility. i also hate having to buy multiple controllers with each hardware release. local party? hope you want to spend another $100+ each cycle on controllers...

i still probably won't buy one, but i'm definitely close to the target market. all the free games on pc, however, have made me EVEN CHEAPER than before.

3/3/2016 12:03:52 PM

Yeah but they re-release like every game that doesn't suck ass

3/3/2016 12:06:04 PM

doesn't that almost mean re-buying it? im pretty opposed to re-releases in general (for myself).

3/3/2016 12:09:01 PM

So essentially what Nintendo has been doing with their handheld systems for a while now?

DS
DS Lite
DSi

3DS
2DS
3DS XL
New 3DS XL

3/3/2016 1:56:00 PM

^^Have you actually tried to play a playstation 2 game on a 57" TV (or whatever the fuck is popular now...)? Yeah I'll play the re-release...

[Edited on March 3, 2016 at 2:48 PM. Reason : ]

3/3/2016 2:47:43 PM

i hate playstation controllers so they've been dead to me for a long time, but no. to be fair, im not dying to play most of my older games, but i'll bust them out every so often. im more thinking along the lines of ps3 or xbox 360 games which look a helluva lot better than super old games. it sucks to buy a game in 2013 and then have a new system come out in 2014 that can't play it (years are of no importance here).

this is a joy the pc has benefited from for quite a while. i like that i can still play tf2, l4d, warcraft 3, or any number of other games so many years later at a LAN and enjoy them.

is this the primary thing console developers should be worrying about? of course not, but it is at least a minor annoyance that i'd welcome changing.

3/3/2016 4:54:04 PM

you guys are missing the point. this is akin to steamOS. ms will start by releasing upgraded xbones, like xbone 1.1, xbone 2, etc. but ms has no interest in being in the hardware business, so they'll likely partner with OEMs like google does with the nexus to release the other xboxen more regularly, that all use the same kernel and can play the same games, some better than others. Over time I could easily see them selling xbox OS for cheap, like they did with windows home server, to people with macs or people who just want to game and not use the rest of the windows stack.

[Edited on March 4, 2016 at 7:38 AM. Reason : .]

3/4/2016 7:37:26 AM

Microsoft has to be in the hardware business, Windows Mobile and Windows 8 is what happens when you try to rely on partners

3/4/2016 9:33:35 AM

those are wholly ms, while the surface line is designed by ms and built by partners.

3/4/2016 9:40:42 AM