Everybody wants more, but how is what Microsoft doing "more"? Its different? yes, but more? Will it add anything new? No. Gaming hasn't changed from my times in the Arcades in the 80's. Sit down, play game. What "more" do you want?
And I have made no assumptions, I have simply stated facts. To dismiss one console as you don't care for RAM is simply ludicrous. No other way to describe it. Whatever you want more of you are going to need more RAM.
You say the retail model isn't working? Last time I looked both the PS3 and the 360 had sold 70 million+ units each. What number is working?
You made an assumption by calling me a Microsoft fanboy when I was only weighing up the pros and cons. The onus does not have to be on Microsoft to 'switch it up' this generation and do something radical, Sony could have done it. But they didn't. And now with the U-turn, neither of them have really done anything to move us on.
The model works with hardware yes, a vast majority of people will flood to buy new consoles, and will continue to do so but it has been widely documented that the model to make and sell games cannot continue for much longer. Studios that employ hundreds and thousands of people all need to be paid - the days of producing movie-like blockbusters like The Last of Us and selling them in physical disc format at £40 a pop will soon be long gone. Their execution was terrible, but Microsoft were just trying to move people to a different place before they were ready.
I'm only trying to weigh up what is happening and I'm certainly not trying to attack any particular manafacturer over the other. But are either MS or Sony doing anything great here? Arguably no. It's not really eighth generation. It's 7.5.
You made an assumption by calling me a Microsoft fanboy when I was only weighing up the pros and cons. The onus does not have to be on Microsoft to 'switch it up' this generation and do something radical, Sony could have done it. But they didn't. And now with the U-turn, neither of them have really done anything to move us on.
The model works with hardware yes, a vast majority of people will flood to buy new consoles, and will continue to do so but it has been widely documented that the model to make and sell games cannot continue for much longer. Studios that employ hundreds and thousands of people all need to be paid - the days of producing movie-like blockbusters like The Last of Us and selling them in physical disc format at £40 a pop will soon be long gone. Their execution was terrible, but Microsoft were just trying to move people to a different place before they were ready.
I'm only trying to weigh up what is happening and I'm certainly not trying to attack any particular manafacturer over the other. But are either MS or Sony doing anything great here? Arguably no. It's not really eighth generation. It's 7.5.
but no generation is that different that the previous. PS1 and PS2 perfect example.
From what I understand,developers engines will be scaled to each machine accordingly so we should see a difference. Also can't wait to see what Naughty Dog can get out of it now, never mind several years down the line.......
but no generation is that different that the previous. PS1 and PS2 perfect example.
I did say before that perhaps I'd been gaming too long and was expecting too much. I just wanted more than a shinier gun. More than bigger draw distance. More than slightly more vivid explosions. It doesn't seem like we're going to get that this time around, and I'll have to accept that I guess. I'll have to try and find a way to stop being such a grump.
I did say before that perhaps I'd been gaming too long and was expecting too much. I just wanted more than a shinier gun. More than bigger draw distance. More than slightly more vivid explosions. It doesn't seem like we're going to get that this time around, and I'll have to accept that I guess. I'll have to try and find a way to stop being such a grump.
What, like having to dial in to Microsoft every 24 hours and when your internet is down, having to mess about with your phone just to be able to play a game? What, by not being able to lend a game to a friend and get it back so you can play it again? What, by not being able to get games cheaply by second hand because the company want to move things to their way of thinking? Are those the things you wanted because the majority of people certainly didn't. Then you have the things that Microsoft try to dress up like family sharing, which when push come to shove, wasn't what people were wanting was it, as they were just demos.
Makes me laugh the way neither console is out yet, we have no idea what developers will be able to get out of them over the years or what MSFT and Sony have in the pipeline yet some people are already writing them off as basically 'more of the same'.
How about we enjoy what we're given and see how things progress over the next few years instead?
You made an assumption by calling me a Microsoft fanboy when I was only weighing up the pros and cons. The onus does not have to be on Microsoft to 'switch it up' this generation and do something radical, Sony could have done it. But they didn't. And now with the U-turn, neither of them have really done anything to move us on.
Its hard to know exactly what MS will do now as everything seems to have changed but I would argue that PS+, Gaikai, the join peoples games, 60minute trials and day one digital that Sony have talked about are 'switching things up'. As I said earlier in many cases a lot of the system leaps we would normally see during the change of a generation have already been introduced over the course of the PS3/360 generation through firmware updates which make the next generation hardware seem less of a drastic change than previous generations delivered.
the days of producing movie-like blockbusters like The Last of Us and selling them in physical disc format at £40 a pop will soon be long gone.
I think this would be a bad day. Just think I want this new game on my console I would then probably have to pay the full RRP price as I can only download it from there marketplace, and no longer be able to shop around competing retailers.
It would then probably kill off all game shops and possibly some on-line game only retailers as they will not be able to survive by only selling hardware.
the days of producing movie-like blockbusters like The Last of Us and selling them in physical disc format at £40 a pop will soon be long gone. Their execution was terrible, but Microsoft were just trying to move people to a different place before they were ready.
And this is where you're 100% wrong. Of course digital download is the future and we'll get there eventually, but we're not going to see steam like sales on digital any time soon.
EA announced 5 years ago that for digital to take off they need to price digital games at a lower cost. So, did they lead the charge???? NOPE! Instead they opened up orign and charged full price for their games and made it hard for it to integrate with steam etc...
Hardly leading by example or giving people an incentive.
If anyone says MS would have lowered prices with DRM they'd be wrong. It'd still be full retail pricing because retail still exists and because MS would have a monopoly on digital game prices.
And this is where you're 100% wrong. Of course digital download is the future and we'll get there eventually, but we're not going to see steam like sales on digital any time soon.
EA announced 5 years ago that for digital to take off they need to price digital games at a lower cost. So, did they lead the charge???? NOPE! Instead they opened up orign and charged full price for their games and made it hard for it to integrate with steam etc...
Hardly leading by example or giving people an incentive.
If anyone says MS would have lowered prices with DRM they'd be wrong. It'd still be full retail pricing because retail still exists and because MS would have a monopoly on digital game prices.
Yep,retail will force online prices up because otherwise they'd go out of business. Steam gets away with it because PC at retail is more or less dead, retailers bought into the whole "PC gaming is dead" nonsense at the start of this generation and abandoned the platform, Steam were able to fill that gap.
I did think it seemed a little too good to be true. Pubs would not be keen on the idea of 10 people sharing a game when they originally thought game lending and trading in was blocked!
Dunno what to think. Were they going to pay the publishers money for lost sales?
All I know is, I was excited by what Microsoft were attempting to do with game sharing and game roaming and the potential benefits of digital downloads. That felt 'next-gen' to me.
But Microsoft completely failed to get their message across clearly while committing the fatal mistake of denying customers the choice of going all digital or a mixture of physical media/digital. Now, if anything, they've gone back too far the other way.
They should just give us the choice within the console's settings or something to go all digital or stick with physical. Drop back to the physical option automatically if and when your internet connection drops out when the daily check-in is required. At no point would you lose access to your games library, regardless if you were online or not.
Something simple like that would have saved Microsoft a lot of flack.
There is and will be little to no difference between the on screen output of Xbox One and PS4.
I think there will be differences between consoles, but they will be insignificant compared to the difference between that generation and the current one. Both consoles have, what 16 times as much RAM, 20 times as much CPU/GPU processing power? The launch games may not take advantage of that because they are written to a tight deadline, but within 12 months either console of the next generation will blow away either console of this generation in terms of graphics. (And although graphics isn't the only thing that matters, it does matter.)
Go and read any one of several articles freely available from the 'professionals' who say so if you don't believe me.
My impression is that most developers will be generating assets at high resolution (ie at PC resolution or higher), and then auto-down-sampling them for PS4 and XBox One. I would expect the PS4 to permit down-sampling to a higher resolution. Either that or use the same low resolution but a higher frame-rate. If you only have one console you may not notice the difference, but if you switch between two of them you will.
And quality is addictive. There are people who claim not to be able to tell the difference between SD and HD, but I hate watching SD now.
Maybe I've been gaming too long but I was looking for something a little more, something to get excited about. A drastic or significant change in how we do things.
The technology is maturing so there is less scope for big improvements in it. XBox One has a better Kinect. I've always thought that was an interesting idea which essentially failed in its first release. The upgrade seems significantly improved and perhaps maybe now it will achieve some of its potential.
Likewise I am interested in Sony's take on it. Their approach "cheats" - they put a light on the controller to make it easier to track, but if it works I'm fine with that. Having a touch-screen on the controller is also interesting, even just for throwing grenades.
What more did you want? 3D might be nice for gaming, but kinda failed for TV and nobody wants to talk about it. Virtual reality still isn't ready. Innovative licensing? For me the old models worked well, and what Microsoft proposed wasn't acceptable. I still have hopes that they will re-think and find a hybrid scheme that gives without taking away. (I posted early what that might look like.)
In a years time, when the dust have settled, gamers will be much better off than we were a year ago.
Comments
You made an assumption by calling me a Microsoft fanboy when I was only weighing up the pros and cons. The onus does not have to be on Microsoft to 'switch it up' this generation and do something radical, Sony could have done it. But they didn't. And now with the U-turn, neither of them have really done anything to move us on.
The model works with hardware yes, a vast majority of people will flood to buy new consoles, and will continue to do so but it has been widely documented that the model to make and sell games cannot continue for much longer. Studios that employ hundreds and thousands of people all need to be paid - the days of producing movie-like blockbusters like The Last of Us and selling them in physical disc format at £40 a pop will soon be long gone. Their execution was terrible, but Microsoft were just trying to move people to a different place before they were ready.
I'm only trying to weigh up what is happening and I'm certainly not trying to attack any particular manafacturer over the other. But are either MS or Sony doing anything great here? Arguably no. It's not really eighth generation. It's 7.5.
Edit: A nice article on the need to support new games and why the used games market is a bad thing for the industry overall - http://www.edge-online.com/features/the-developers-view-on-preowned-why-game-players-must-support-their-hobby/
but no generation is that different that the previous. PS1 and PS2 perfect example.
I did say before that perhaps I'd been gaming too long and was expecting too much. I just wanted more than a shinier gun. More than bigger draw distance. More than slightly more vivid explosions. It doesn't seem like we're going to get that this time around, and I'll have to accept that I guess. I'll have to try and find a way to stop being such a grump.
What, like having to dial in to Microsoft every 24 hours and when your internet is down, having to mess about with your phone just to be able to play a game? What, by not being able to lend a game to a friend and get it back so you can play it again? What, by not being able to get games cheaply by second hand because the company want to move things to their way of thinking? Are those the things you wanted because the majority of people certainly didn't. Then you have the things that Microsoft try to dress up like family sharing, which when push come to shove, wasn't what people were wanting was it, as they were just demos.
How about we enjoy what we're given and see how things progress over the next few years instead?
Why was it a flop? did it fail to make money?
Its hard to know exactly what MS will do now as everything seems to have changed but I would argue that PS+, Gaikai, the join peoples games, 60minute trials and day one digital that Sony have talked about are 'switching things up'. As I said earlier in many cases a lot of the system leaps we would normally see during the change of a generation have already been introduced over the course of the PS3/360 generation through firmware updates which make the next generation hardware seem less of a drastic change than previous generations delivered.
I think this would be a bad day. Just think I want this new game on my console I would then probably have to pay the full RRP price as I can only download it from there marketplace, and no longer be able to shop around competing retailers.
It would then probably kill off all game shops and possibly some on-line game only retailers as they will not be able to survive by only selling hardware.
And this is where you're 100% wrong. Of course digital download is the future and we'll get there eventually, but we're not going to see steam like sales on digital any time soon.
EA announced 5 years ago that for digital to take off they need to price digital games at a lower cost. So, did they lead the charge???? NOPE! Instead they opened up orign and charged full price for their games and made it hard for it to integrate with steam etc...
Hardly leading by example or giving people an incentive.
If anyone says MS would have lowered prices with DRM they'd be wrong. It'd still be full retail pricing because retail still exists and because MS would have a monopoly on digital game prices.
Yep,retail will force online prices up because otherwise they'd go out of business. Steam gets away with it because PC at retail is more or less dead, retailers bought into the whole "PC gaming is dead" nonsense at the start of this generation and abandoned the platform, Steam were able to fill that gap.
But then there's this:
https://twitter.com/notwen/status/348092374842474497
Dunno what to think. Were they going to pay the publishers money for lost sales?
All I know is, I was excited by what Microsoft were attempting to do with game sharing and game roaming and the potential benefits of digital downloads. That felt 'next-gen' to me.
But Microsoft completely failed to get their message across clearly while committing the fatal mistake of denying customers the choice of going all digital or a mixture of physical media/digital. Now, if anything, they've gone back too far the other way.
They should just give us the choice within the console's settings or something to go all digital or stick with physical. Drop back to the physical option automatically if and when your internet connection drops out when the daily check-in is required. At no point would you lose access to your games library, regardless if you were online or not.
Something simple like that would have saved Microsoft a lot of flack.
My impression is that most developers will be generating assets at high resolution (ie at PC resolution or higher), and then auto-down-sampling them for PS4 and XBox One. I would expect the PS4 to permit down-sampling to a higher resolution. Either that or use the same low resolution but a higher frame-rate. If you only have one console you may not notice the difference, but if you switch between two of them you will.
And quality is addictive. There are people who claim not to be able to tell the difference between SD and HD, but I hate watching SD now.
The technology is maturing so there is less scope for big improvements in it. XBox One has a better Kinect. I've always thought that was an interesting idea which essentially failed in its first release. The upgrade seems significantly improved and perhaps maybe now it will achieve some of its potential.
Likewise I am interested in Sony's take on it. Their approach "cheats" - they put a light on the controller to make it easier to track, but if it works I'm fine with that. Having a touch-screen on the controller is also interesting, even just for throwing grenades.
What more did you want? 3D might be nice for gaming, but kinda failed for TV and nobody wants to talk about it. Virtual reality still isn't ready. Innovative licensing? For me the old models worked well, and what Microsoft proposed wasn't acceptable. I still have hopes that they will re-think and find a hybrid scheme that gives without taking away. (I posted early what that might look like.)
In a years time, when the dust have settled, gamers will be much better off than we were a year ago.