GDC 2020 will go ahead despite Coronavirus concerns

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As they should. There's little reason to be worried about Covid-19 and sucks Sony backed out. Everybody was expecting PS5 details but guess not anymore.

NeverBackDown said:

As they should. There's little reason to be worried about Covid-19 and sucks Sony backed out. Everybody was expecting PS5 details but guess not anymore.

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Facebook/Oculus is also out. TBH, both Sony and Microsoft are playing the waiting game. There will be talk at GDC, but I'm not expecting pricing announcements or too many other details. Both want to know the other's price before committing to anything.

I just wanted to know launch games and maybe another feature or two. Wasn't expecting much more. Sony being so passive(ie more than MS) to me makes them seem like they are afraid. Which doesn't look so good for future of PS. If they don't have the games at launch or as a robust backwards compatibility selection as MS, they are doomed in the beginning at the very least. They'd have to definitely make it cheap to overcome their initial flaws.

NeverBackDown said:

I just wanted to know launch games and maybe another feature or two. Wasn't expecting much more. Sony being so passive(ie more than MS) to me makes them seem like they are afraid. Which doesn't look so good for future of PS. If they don't have the games at launch or as a robust backwards compatibility selection as MS, they are doomed in the beginning at the very least. They'd have to definitely make it cheap to overcome their initial flaws.

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MS has done a great job preparing for next-gen. The Xbox One X was like a trial run for their backwards compatibility plans. It will be hard for Sony to match that.

Things like the Adaptive Controller and the push for multi-console multiplayer have also cemented Xbox as a very consumer-friendly brand. Combine that with Game Pass, and Xbox is looking great ATM.

Even Microsoft's early work on the DXR API has laid down a lot of the early groundwork for next-gen console features. The same could be true for DirectML (Machine Learning) too. Having support for that integrated into game engines already is great news for Microsoft.

All that said, Microsoft needed to do these things to regain their lost ground with Xbox One. I'm not saying that Xbox One wasn't successful, but PlayStation 4 was far ahead of Xbox this gen.

I think Microsoft has the stronger console this time, but that remains to be seen. We know the rough die size of Microsoft's next console, and that could have Sony worried. That said, Xbox One and PS4 had similar die sizes and PS4 won by a huge margin there. The Xbox One's ESRAM was a bad decision in retrospect. Sony using GDDR5 was a big deal.

Agreed. MS lost so badly that it forced them to be creative with their ecosystem and their strategy. PS was so dominating and their games were so much better that relying on those features as a strategy that while worked in the past isn't enough for the future. They became stagnant. I think they realized that and working on their backward compatibility. But they were way too late.

MS is also in a unique situation as the most dominant software company that their far extending reach only helps them. Sony should have tried to emulate that in their own way and beat them to it, again in their own way. It would be laughable for Sony to try to become equal to MS in software.