Microsoft makes big Xbox-on-PC push with 4K, 60 fps Forza 6 Apex

SAN FRANCISCO—Xbox’s spring press showcase could have begun in any number of ways, but Xbox chief Phil Spencer just had to get something off his chest. In a bizarre move, the head of Microsoft's gaming efforts devoted a good chunk of the event’s 30-minute state-of-the-union speech to an Internet tiff he got himself into the prior week.

The issue began in early February when Microsoft announced that its big Spring 2016 game, Quantum Break, would launch simultaneously on Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs in April. Some fans cried foul, pointing to prior promises that QB would be an "Xbox One-exclusive" game—never mind that the new PC version didn't impact the Xbox One release at all.

Spencer took to Twitter to respond to someone who said he'd canceled his pre-order over the news, leading to the hilarious fact that Spencer repeatedly addressed someone who goes by the handle @The_CrapGamer. And while Spencer seemed to understand that some Xbox owners were wary of Microsoft "erod[ing] some of the exclusivity that [they] feel like [they] have on Xbox," his immediate response to that was to spell out a future in which Xbox could possibly stop being a hardware line and start being a service.

Spencer's strange intro led into a longer speech that doubled down on what seems like a major Xbox brand realignment going forward, one that will bring the PC and the console sides of Microsoft's gaming business together. "We will continue to unify these two platforms and make the gamer the center of every decision we make," Spencer said.

Yet despite seeing the first-ever Forza game for Windows PCs shown off in stunning 4K, we came away from a recent press event feeling that the company's current PC gaming push is a little uneven.

“New hardware capability during the generation”—like, a 32X-box?

At Wednesday's event, Spencer insisted that the future of Xbox gaming will come in the form of "decoupling our software platform from the hardware platform on which it runs," which he said will require game makers to get on board with the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). He bemoaned the usual console experience of having to dump old games and controllers "at the end of a generation," all while praising "the continuous innovation in hardware" in ecosystems such as smartphones and PCs.

"That's our focus going forward—a complete gaming system for Universal Windows Applications [UWA]," Spencer said. In some respects, that could sound like Xbox as a Netflix-styled service, one that could run on whatever compatible machine you might have handy. But Spencer then went on to spell out what sounds like a vision for Xbox One as an expandable piece of hardware, as well.

"In [this console generation], we believe you will see more hardware innovation in the console space than we’ve ever seen," Spencer said. "You’ll actually see us come out with new hardware capability during the generation in allowing the same games to run backward... compatible. Because we have a UWA running on top of a UWP, that allows us to focus more on hardware innovation without invalidating the games that run on that platform. We can effectively feel more like what we see on PC, where I can still run my old Doom and Quake games I ran so many years ago, but I can see the best 4K games come out and my library comes with me."

As you might imagine, Spencer didn't clarify that point any further, so it might be too early to make 32X-box jokes. At the very least, Spencer appears eager to assure @The_CrapGamer and his friends that they won't have to dump their Xbox One hardware anytime soon.

One only needs to point at the Xbox division's own multiyear plan, leaked in 2012, to see one direction the company may very well go: higher-end gaming via the cloud. This was the leak, by the way, that spelled out what we could expect with this year's impending Hololens, and the leak also predicted an Xbox future in which gamers could use streaming services so that they would "never need to upgrade hardware again." Of course, that was before demands for 4K gaming had really picked up, which requires a lot more bandwidth than 1080p streaming.

Forza 6 Apex: The best-looking, most-hobbled Forza yet

One thing Microsoft was not vague or shy about during the preview event was its interest in good-looking 4K PC games. As a result, the day’s most intriguing offering by far was Forza Motorsport 6 Apex. This is a very weird Forza release, but before I dig into the new racing game's pros and cons, I have to wipe a significant puddle of drool from the edges of my mouth.

That’s because I’ve finally seen a version of Forza that exists in 4K resolution—and at 60 frames a second. Think about that for a second. Barely 16 months ago, Turn 10 Studios had to scale back Xbox One's Forza Horizon 2 to render at 30fps, at a wimpy 1080p resolution, just because they wanted to add weather and other high-performance effects. That same team has since been loosed on the world of high-end PC hardware, and I stared long and hard at the fruits of that labor, rendered on a 60-plus-inch Samsung 4K monitor.

I squinted at the man controlling the demo, making sure his joystick movements matched those on the screen, because again, everything about this Forza 6 Apex demo looked too incredible to be true. 4K gaming with a mix of souped-up settings and maxed-out framerates has proven elusive for many combinations of games and hardware, but Turn 10 appears to have figured it out, in at least some part thanks to DirectX 12 optimizations. Granted, I caught Turn 10 cutting a few corners to lock its game’s framerate, including its usual trick of locking rearview-mirror views at 30fps. There was also with some underwhelming shadow rendering and a rare flash of low-poly cars further ahead on the track. Still, the single race I saw included ridiculous paint reflections, light-ray effects, car-loaded roads, detail-rich ground textures, and luscious foliage.

Turn 10 told Ars that it ran the demo on a machine with an i7-6700k CPU, a GTX 980Ti, 32GB of RAM, and an SSD. Turn 10 insisted that the game will scale down to lower specs for the large number of Windows PC owners who use little more than Intel HD Graphics for 3D acceleration. Players will be able to fine-tune most settings, tilting the balance between higher fidelity and higher framerates.

The game’s devs were more forthcoming about what the heck Apex actually is: a free-to-play “curated” version of Forza 6 launching solely on Windows 10. Meaning, you’re only getting “over 60” racecars and six racecourse environments. One third of those cars are unlocked for all players for free, while the rest must be earned by collecting in-game medals. Players can earn medals by completing both primary and secondary conditions in the game’s events, ranging from completing a number of perfect passes to finishing the event with certain assists disabled to reaching a certain top speed, and so on.

Players can also skip the medal-grind and spend real money to unlock content, of course, but Turn 10 didn’t show off its marketplace or estimate how much gameplay (or cash) would be required to unlock certain cars. In fact, it didn’t say which cars we should expect; all we know is that the cars will all already be in Forza 6 and that no new ones will be added at a later date. Turn 10 didn’t answer pointed questions about whether current Forza 6 players will receive any bonuses or credits based on their progress in that game.

The worst news at this point is that Turn 10 failed to give any concrete answers about steering wheel support: “As a first party developer, we can release games for free with the goal of moving the [PC] platform forward. Wheels are one way to do that.” Racing game fans who pony up for expensive PCs are surely going to wonder why Turn 10 isn’t doling out equal love for expensive steering-wheel rigs.

Ultimately, for all of Turn 10’s talk about inviting new players into the Forza fold, the presentation didn’t talk much about gameplay paths to invite Forza novices into the series’ realistic pedigree. It’s one thing to hand a guidance-filled version of Forza to a seasoned Xbox player; will that same version do much for an utter non-gamer who shows up for free racecars? And on the flipside, what’s a seasoned gamer going to do with such an intensely limited version of Forza?

The whole thing stinks of “let’s test Forza as an ongoing service," and the Turn 10's representative admitted as much: “I’ll say this is an experiment. This is our first step in a large journey for the franchise. We’re going to see what happens. We want to start a conversation with the PC gamer." Spencer clearly has an affinity for growing the userbase, as well, as he devoted a good chunk of his speech to monthly active users (MAU), calling that number a "critical factor" and a "health metric" for judging how well the Xbox platform is doing in general. A sexy-looking free-to-play Forza certainly won't hurt those numbers.