PS4 / Xbox One console war

[system11]

Good news

Slightly gutted about needing the disc back in the tray again but it's better than the alternative for sure.

Why does this bother people? I have never understood it.

Just buy it on demand then, they also said all games will be downloadable on the release date, therefore no disc.

[Teufel_in_Blau]

WTF!?

I am seriously shocked.

I wish Friendly weren't banned from OT, I would like to read his input on this one. <_<

[Wonderbanana]

Good news

Slightly gutted about needing the disc back in the tray again but it's better than the alternative for sure.

Why does this bother people? I have never understood it.

Just buy it on demand then, they also said all games will be downloadable on the release date, therefore no disc.

Convenient. I don't have to keep messing around with discs on my PC once their installed, I'd like the same 'I'm lazy and don't want to get off the couch' feature on my console.

But yeah I could download but given the choice, I'd rather have a disc.

[system11]

WTF!?

I am seriously shocked.

I wish Friendly weren't banned from OT, I would like to read his input on this one. <_<

He isn't anymore.

[trap15]

I wish Friendly weren't banned from OT, I would like to read his input on this one. <_<

Sorry, but Off Topic hasn't been this civil and pleasant to read in months. I'd rather that not change.

[Ed Oscuro]

Rubbish. To get my old PC games working would require a ton of hassle and in some cases old hardware due to the rapid advances, especially to even read the media their on. A lot of my physical PC games from years back are nothing more than eye candy on a shelf now.

I'd like the same 'I'm lazy and don't want to get off the couch' feature on my console.

Shockingly, giving away user rights is not going to do anything to make publishers or console makers care about your games' compatibility 20 years from now (or even by the next redesign)!

Quite happy with the moves by Microsoft and I *think* it wipes out the DRM issues I was having. We'll see how this actually plays out but I am very happy for them. Frankly, I don't think it's a matter of "look how nice Microsoft is," I think they saw this was going to sink their platform and made the only reasonable decision. Hell, even EA was in agreement with users that some DRM measures (online passes, specifically) were alienating customers.

[ZellSF]

The reactions to Xbone policies are so one sided it's amazing Microsoft didn't see it in their small scale marketing research.

Oh wait, they skipped that because trolling the internet was more fun.

[Alfred]

X1 region free

[ZellSF]

Fun thing to think about: the xbox.com server was basically down while this was announced.

Yeah always online would have worked great.

[CIT]

Too bad, actually. I was looking forward to see the titan fall (see what I did there).

[Wonderbanana]

Rubbish. To get my old PC games working would require a ton of hassle and in some cases old hardware due to the rapid advances, especially to even read the media their on. A lot of my physical PC games from years back are nothing more than eye candy on a shelf now.

I'd like the same 'I'm lazy and don't want to get off the couch' feature on my console.

Shockingly, giving away user rights is not going to do anything to make publishers or console makers care about your games' compatibility 20 years from now (or even by the next redesign)!.

Yeah I know but I can wish

So out of curiosity, does the latest announcement potentially change anything for anyone?

[BIL]

So out of curiosity, does the latest announcement potentially change anything for anyone?

Only in the sense that I hopefully won't be dependent upon the system getting hacked if something I want to play long-term leads to me buying one.

[Ed Oscuro]

Quite happy with the moves by Microsoft and I *think* it wipes out the DRM issues I was having.

To hell with brand loyalty - I'll be loyal as long as companies are loyal to me but the knife goes in when they think you're not watching.

Microsoft still has a lot to prove - they appear to be facing difficulty in performance, price, and perhaps some other areas (what's replacing XNA?)

I feel bad for Lorne Lanning, and the other people trying to self-publish / distribute digitally, but my main beef with digital is essentially the same one I had here. At least with the move to X86 there should be some ability to preserve digital purchases on future platforms better than we've had so far.

[Cuilan]

http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/update

-No 24-hour authentication, no "always-on" requirement
-No DRM restrictions
-Region-Free

No word on the "unsupported regions" BS from about a week ago, may be thrown out, may not be.

in other news, the Xbone startup sound effect also leaked today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdQioFyRNDk

The "game sharing" thing is probably going bye-bye now, sadly. But this is better overall.

Still $100 too expensive for what it currently offers though.

[Necronopticous]

So now we are left with a worse named, more expensive PlayStation 4 with a history of drug use. Day one!

[ZellSF]

Rubbish. To get my old PC games working would require a ton of hassle and in some cases old hardware due to the rapid advances, especially to even read the media their on. A lot of my physical PC games from years back are nothing more than eye candy on a shelf now.

I'd like the same 'I'm lazy and don't want to get off the couch' feature on my console.

Shockingly, giving away user rights is not going to do anything to make publishers or console makers care about your games' compatibility 20 years from now (or even by the next redesign)!.

Yeah I know but I can wish

So out of curiosity, does the latest announcement potentially change anything for anyone?

Yes, I'll definitely (not potentially) get a Xbone much, much earlier than I would if they kept going with their DRM plans. And I will be much more likely to buy games for it once I do.

[Ed Oscuro]

Still $100 too expensive for what it currently offers though.

I'd say it's more like $150 or even $200 too expensive. It's currently asking a $100 premium for Kinect and worse performance...yay? Don Mattick has defended the $499 sticker shock as a "not ridiculous" price. High praise!

Kinect...well, it'll be interesting, but look how well the Wii series has done.

For comparison, my little-used 360 set me back $10...there's still a lot of games I could try out there, and I still need a HD display for 'em anyway.

[Daigohji]

Rubbish. To get my old PC games working would require a ton of hassle and in some cases old hardware due to the rapid advances, especially to even read the media their on. A lot of my physical PC games from years back are nothing more than eye candy on a shelf now.

I'd like the same 'I'm lazy and don't want to get off the couch' feature on my console.

Shockingly, giving away user rights is not going to do anything to make publishers or console makers care about your games' compatibility 20 years from now (or even by the next redesign)!.

Yeah I know but I can wish

So out of curiosity, does the latest announcement potentially change anything for anyone?

Hard to say at this point. It's still launching at £80 more than the PS4, still has the Orwell-cam built-in, still isn't backwards compatible, and is still plugging TV features that won't work in the UK and I don't care about anyway. More importantly, it's too late in the day for significant hardware revisions, so this will be a firmware tweak and the DRM infrastructure will still be lurking behind the scenes. There's nothing to stop them bringing the DRM back in a few years from now once they have a significant install base slaved to the console.

Basically, it's gone from, "No way, not ever" to, "I might think about it a few years from now if it's jam packed with unmissable exclusives, they release a version without Kinect, and the PS4 somehow implodes."

[Ed Oscuro]

oh, and lol again at Major Nelson telling Angry Joe that he didn't know how this works

Major Nelson's charisma alone isn't enough to melt our brains, but apparently it overcame whatever engineering difficulties the Xbox One was having to be modified to lose the 24-hour authentication!

[Cuilan]

I'd say it's more like $150 or even $200 too expensive. It's currently asking a $100 premium for Kinect and worse performance...yay?

At the end of the day, a console is only as good as its exclusives. Tech specs aren't quite as important. For me, the Xbox One currently has more interesting exclusives than the PS4, but still not enough to justify the $500 price tag.

[ZellSF]

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-just-go ... socialflow

Microsoft admitting it's a terrible idea they won't do won't stop people from defending it

[Daigohji]

http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-just-go ... socialflow

Microsoft admitting it's a terrible idea they won't do won't stop people from defending it

I don't know what fairytale land that guy was getting his bullshit ideas from, but it wasn't on this planet.

[BIL]

What a fucktard.

"We are literally standing in stasis"

[BulletMagnet]

Changed the thread title to keep up with the latest events (for the record I didn't come up with the "slogan" but I did like how it sounded when I saw it elsewhere).

[Ed Oscuro]

@ Culian

Yeah, I've written elsewhere about Xbox One's currently less-than-promising lineup of non-European, non-Norteamericano games and developers - before we can even talk exclusives, where's the Japanese game development? Even Poland was, at least until this announcement, looking to be on the outs for a launch, and The Witcher's devs thought it was a "sad situation" and were probably looking to develop on it just for the money.

So yeah, yay.

Tech specs are a perfectly reasonable thing to look at in conjunction with other factors, and exclusives aren't a knockdown blow to the argument either. Resident Evil 4 was, at one time, a GameCube exclusive, but eventually found its way onto other systems (I think it's up to five now, including the HD releases), and you can't ignore that they are trying to game you into buying what might well be an inferior piece of hardware with the promise of exclusives. I don't say that I'd ignore exclusives entirely, but they aren't a hard-and-fast proposition anymore, especially in this environment.

The flip side of exclusives is multiplatform games. If pretty much everything we care about gets released on both systems, one of these systems might be at a relative advantage. I can see the Microsoft system still being a must-have for really dedicated games buyers. Me? I'll have so many things to work through that I don't even care to start worrying about which system I go multiplatform for.

@ BulletMagnet: NICE! I'm sure Friendly would approve, too.

[moh]

Changed the thread title to keep up with the latest events (for the record I didn't come up with the "slogan" but I did like how it sounded when I saw it elsewhere).

awesome

[antron]

I prefer Xbox One80

[GaijinPunch]

I prefer Xbox One80

So punny... so genius.

[BryanM]

Frankly, I don't think it's a matter of "look how nice Microsoft is," I think they saw this was going to sink their platform and made the only reasonable decision.

It's pretty much a given "candid feedback" = "Sony is beating the shit out of us in pre-orders."

Which is the only thing a Microsoft cares about.

Changed the thread title to keep up with the latest events (for the record I didn't come up with the "slogan" but I did like how it sounded when I saw it elsewhere).

Keeping the memory of friendly alive, brah

*sniffle*

I prefer Xbox One80

I would have cured my Xboneitis, but I was too busy being an 80's guy.

[Cuilan]

@ Culian

Yeah, I've written elsewhere about Xbox One's currently less-than-promising lineup of non-European, non-Norteamericano games and developers - before we can even talk exclusives, where's the Japanese game development? Even Poland was, at least until this announcement, looking to be on the outs for a launch, and The Witcher's devs thought it was a "sad situation" and were probably looking to develop on it just for the money.

So yeah, yay.

Tech specs are a perfectly reasonable thing to look at in conjunction with other factors, and exclusives aren't a knockdown blow to the argument either. Resident Evil 4 was, at one time, a GameCube exclusive, but eventually found its way onto other systems (I think it's up to five now, including the HD releases), and you can't ignore that they are trying to game you into buying what might well be an inferior piece of hardware with the promise of exclusives. I don't say that I'd ignore exclusives entirely, but they aren't a hard-and-fast proposition anymore, especially in this environment.

The flip side of exclusives is multiplatform games. If pretty much everything we care about gets released on both systems, one of these systems might be at a relative advantage. I can see the Microsoft system still being a must-have for really dedicated games buyers. Me? I'll have so many things to work through that I don't even care to start worrying about which system I go multiplatform for.

With regards to Japanese development, there is Crimson Dragon and D4 so far, both de-facto exclusives since Microsoft is publishing them. Microsoft has also stated that they will be at TGS and they also have a new game studio in Osaka (Makoto Asada is supposedly going to join the studio soon). Microsoft would have to try 3x harder than they did this past gen if they want to make any meaningful impact in Japan, so I'm not very confident that they'll announce a large number of worth-while Japanese exclusives, but we'll just have to wait and see.

As for multiplatform games, I can definitely see myself getting all of them on the PS4, assuming the hardware specs of both consoles stay as they are now. I also see myself getting a PS4 first due to price.