Video Games

[jarude]

Good lord man. Go buy a gti650 for 150... Heck you could spend 50 and make a decent upgrade.

 

[javyn]

TES Online looks great. Yeah the graphics aren't as good as the Oblivion or Skyrim, but keep in mind this game is going to have to display lots more characters on the screen than a typical TES game.

Haha yah my vid card sucks, but I may as well wait for Evil Within and see what I can get then.

 

[lesamourai]

As good as Oblivion? It's certainly looks better, and I'd expect it to considering that Oblivion is 7 years old now. It would be quite sad if they couldn't make it look better. And the number of players really don't matter, there are plenty of MMOs that look fine regardless of the number of players on the server. What's old and dated is the gameplay. MMOs are still chasing that WoW money, even though WoW ain't even getting that. I mean, hell, I'd probably say the only truly unique MMO out on the market right now is EVE online. This game will probably suffer the same fate as KOTOR, flop, go F2P, who knows. I mean, it's not like the mainline games have good combat either.

 

[Nananine]

All I can say about ESO is that the content is great. Cough.

 

[Reggs]



TES Online looks great. Yeah the graphics aren't as good as the Oblivion or Skyrim.

It's the art that bothers me. The world looks soulless. WoW is how old now? That game is better to look at than TES Online.

 

[grundletaint]

New Xbox is announced and looks pretty awesome. I was planning on a Wii U but now I'm gonna wait and upgrade my Xbox. Hopefully Nintendo will continue imploding and end up developing Zelda and metroid for the other consoles...

 

[lesamourai]

Xbox event was terrible.

Huge, ugly, DVR looking console.
Power brick, again.
Incredibly confusing and anti-consumer used game policy.
****** psuedo-always-online requirement.
Incredibly ambiguous about the specs. 5 billion transistors? What a joke.
It's apparently just a voice controlled remote for your TV subscription.
Hey, you can snap frames just like Windows 8.
Stupid name.
No interesting software.
Conflicting PR damage control everywhere.
No backwards compatibility.
Smartglass integration for all launch titles.
More Kinect ****.

On the bright side CoD now has motion captured dog squad mates and dynamic fish AI. A definite purchase for me on the PS3.

 

[aravenel]

I read they addressed both the used game thing and the always on thing very well--basically saying they support your ability to buy, sell, and play used games, and that single player would not require an internet connection.

I'm a huge critic of DRM, but this seems like a win to me.

Unless I misread, which is entirely possible as I wasn't paying that much attention.

 

[lesamourai]



I read they addressed both the used game thing and the always on thing very well--basically saying they support your ability to buy, sell, and play used games, and that single player would not require an internet connection.

I'm a huge critic of DRM, but this seems like a win to me.

Unless I misread, which is entirely possible as I wasn't paying that much attention.

We know there is some confusion around used games on Xbox One and wanted to provide a bit of clarification on exactly what we’ve confirmed today. While there have been many potential scenarios discussed, today we have only confirmed that we designed Xbox One to enable our customers to trade in and resell games at retail.

Beyond that, we have not confirmed any specific scenarios.

Another piece of clarification around playing games at a friend’s house – should you choose to play your game at your friend’s house, there is no fee to play that game while you are signed in to your profile.

That's a pretty vague statement. It could be similar to how it is now or "Trade in this game and get 400 MSP." But it basically rules out borrowing games or selling them yourself, which is a pretty big issue for me and many others. The console is more or less online only too. You can play single player games offline, but you need to connect to Xbox Live once every 24 hours. It's not known what happens after that, but if it's similar to what Steam does after a few weeks you probably won't be able to play any of the games installed.

 

[Reggs]



I'm a huge critic of DRM, but this seems like a win to me.

How could that even be possible.

You are not a critic of DRM.

 

[SixOhNine]

The new Microsoft approach to game "ownership" is soulless corporatism at its worst. Anyone who thinks this is a reasonable DRM system is either delusional or not paying attention.

 

[Jr Mouse]



Xbox event was terrible.
Incredibly ambiguous about the specs. 5 billion transistors? What a joke.

They are being vague about the specs because they know Sony has the upper hand this time. The PS4 will have a beefier GPU and a large increase in RAM speed/bandwidth. It's also been confirmed that the "three OS" strategy that MS has implemented has a large cost in system RAM. Three gigs are being reserved for these operating systems to run, leaving only five gigs left for gaming. Now, we don't have confirmation on how memory intensive the PS4's OS will be but it's rumored to be closer to one gig.

I saved this quote from another forum, but it does a pretty good job of explaining how this went down.

Sony and Microsoft wanted to spend about the same amount of silicone on the APU (GPU/CPU). Microsoft needed a whole bunch of RAM from the get go to achieve their vision of the XBONE with all it's OS's and multitasking. That meant from the very beginning they had to target 8GB of DDR3. DDR4 is too far away and 8Gb of GDDR5 was too expensive and complicated when they started planning the XBONE.

Because of the slow speed of DDR3, they would need to dedicate some silicone on their APU to some faster eSRAM (something consoles have had for ages). Because they needed to dedicate some silicone to eSRAM, they had to lose some silicone from either the CPU or the GPU, since the CPU is tiny anyway, it was simpler to take it from the GPU.

If the GPU was bigger, then they could probably have used more RAM specifically for it, but it isn't because they had to have some eSRAM. It kind of balances out. More RAM might have been useless without more GPU.

Sony on the other hand wanted a single dedicated pool of very fast RAM and so targeted GDDR5 from the start, they didn't want to do lots of multitasking and other stuff but knew that RAM densities would probably go up over time before launch allowing them to drop more ram in without changing anything else.

But it is expensive, so they were going with 2GB spread across 16 chips, likely 8 on each side of the motherboard in "clamshell" mode, a feature only GDDR5 has, saving room and complexity in motherboard design. Because they don't need any eSRAM to make up for slow main RAM speeds, they now have all that silicone left for more GPU. They spent it.

Since the original target spec, GDDR5 ram densities have doubled and then doubled again. Something that is very beneficial to Sony, but not something Microsoft could have taken a gamble on because they needed 8GB from the get go.

So, Microsoft have been fairly locked in to the plan from the start, because they wanted lots of RAM. Sony were happy to have a smaller chunk, knowing they would probably get to at least 4GB before launch. As it turned out Sony managed to get 8GB of very fast RAM and there was literally nothing Microsoft could do to combat it.

For Microsoft to have then added more RAM or change to GDDR5 and drop the eSRAM would have taken motherboard redesigns, controller redesigns and all sorts of stuff that would take months and months. All Sony had to do to use more RAM was buy the higher density chips.

Unlike the previous generation, both consoles are based on the same core architecture. So it's not unreasonable to believe that the spec advantage of the PS4 will lead to fairly easy gains in multi-platform and exclusive games.

Coupled with the fact that Sony's messaging from day one has been "gamers first," they have a real chance of winning back a lot of the ground in the USA they lost last generation.

In regards to DRM, we know that Sony is taking note of the public's reaction to what MS is doing. If this is a big enough issue for you, then let them know how you feel. http://www.destructoid.com/gamers-make-it-clear-to-sony-they-want-a-drm-free-ps4-254624.phtml

 

[RedLantern]



They are being vague about the specs because they know Sony has the upper hand this time. The PS4 will have a beefier GPU and a large increase in RAM speed/bandwidth. It's also been confirmed that the "three OS" strategy that MS has implemented has a large cost in system RAM. Three gigs are being reserved for these operating systems to run, leaving only five gigs left for gaming. Now, we don't have confirmation on how memory intensive the PS4's OS will be but it's rumored to be closer to one gig.

I saved this quote from another forum, but it does a pretty good job of explaining how this went down.
Unlike the previous generation, both consoles are based on the same core architecture. So it's not unreasonable to believe that the spec advantage of the PS4 will lead to fairly easy gains in multi-platform and exclusive games.

Coupled with the fact that Sony's messaging from day one has been "gamers first," they have a real chance of winning back a lot of the ground in the USA they lost last generation.

In regards to DRM, we know that Sony is taking note of the public's reaction to what MS is doing. If this is a big enough issue for you, then let them know how you feel. http://www.destructoid.com/gamers-make-it-clear-to-sony-they-want-a-drm-free-ps4-254624.phtml

This. It seems like there is a huge second mover advantage in the DRM stuff. If people will bear it, great, you do it too and make moar moniez. If people revolt, you don't to it, get a lot of people to defect, and make moar moniez.

 

[aravenel]



How could that even be possible.

You are not a critic of DRM.

What?

 

[Nananine]

If a system has a single good game on it, it was worth the release. The hardware doesn't matter, the games do.