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The Xbox One Thread in which we don't discuss Used Games.
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Also, hopefully MS will be more flexible with USB storage this gen. Definately don't want to have to download blue ray games more than once.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I know that have automatic downloads and remote downloads. I think they already do with the PS3, not sure.
Sony have been fairly decent on that backend stuff. Aside from the PSN identity theft scandal, I'd say on a while PSN has been streets ahead of Xbox Live for a few years now. Not just in design but in core functionality.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Yeah. PS+ does background downloading of game patches, system updates, and auto-backups your save files to the cloud. They could easily do pre-loading of games if they did pre-ordering of digital games instead of Day 1 digital.
I'd expect the very least from both Sony and Microsoft next gen.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Whatever system doesn't allow used games is dead in the water in Japan. Now Microsoft does terrible there anyways and might choose to write it off if they think they can make more revenue elsewhere... but it would be a suicide move for Sony. Similarly, anything with always online would be dead in large parts of the world that don't have the internet infrastructure.
Point being, consoles are international. You can't just think in terms of just us.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
No-one will go to a console based on such a measure. It's not for consumer's benefit. It's for publishers. It will only serve to turn away marketshare, even if it is only a small effect (even though it will be a big effect anyway).
The only company that would even dare such a thing is Microsoft, because the Xbox has been from day one a means to an end. They want a unified Windows household to emerge. Games, TV, phones, computers. All seamlessly linked together and unified under their brand. Therefore the Xbox isn't a console to them, it's a tool. Now that they have the marketshare gained from Sony, they might well decide to utilize that tool to transition into their end-game - The Microsoft home.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Microsoft would rather be able to comfortably put a Kinect in every box than stand toe to toe with PS4's specs. It's not like being the weaker system will hurt them much; XBox is too big a brand to be ignored by third parties and with a predicted six times the power of a 360(seven, if the included SOC rumor is true) the next XBox will be indisputably next-gen.
What I do wonder is how noticeable the difference between PS4 and Next XBox third party games will be. Original XBox games regularly spanked PS2 games since the OXBox had more power and was so much like a PC, but because of the PS3's complex architecture, it could only hope to match 360 games at best. Both of the new machines are supposed to be incredibly PC like, so you'd think they would be able to flip on a few graphics settings for PS4 that they would leave off on the Next XBox.
That particular heaven opened a few years ago. Its called a Xim3. Its pretty impressive.
If I'm being honest, the types of games that I really like to play probably don't need cutting edge processors to run. So an extra 30% in that area isn't going to sell me on a system all by itself.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Like you, I'm hoping for much more than just pretty graphics from the next-gen, I was happy with Crysis 3/Rayman Origins/Forza 4, if graphics never got better than those I don't think I'd complain
I just watched the PS4 press conference (with the giant bomb guys commenting over it) and this was indeed mentioned, though I'm not sure if it'll send it to you early enough to be an actual "preload."
Framerate consistency is a thing, and there will always be new rendering methods (shadows and lighting) and physics calculating that will require new hardware eventually (but not necessarily for power). But yeah, in terms of the general look of things it's plateauing.
The biggest frontier now is data storage and read/write speed. We won't see that as the thing that's touted as "WOO" until probably the gen after this one. So that's unfortunate.
Animation and physics still have a long, long way to go in order to catch up to things like poly count and shaders.
When I walk down the street, everything is moving in small ways. Trash blowing in the wind, trees and dead leaves, my clothes and the puddle being displaced by a passing car. These are things that games currently fake, but will eventually simulate.
The density of environments is also leagues behind the detail of individual character models. Games are, when compared to even a semi-realistic simulation, a theme park. A rough sketch of real life.
The biggest leaps forward this coming generation won't be bloom lighting or bump mapping, like previous generations, but things like crowd simulations, cloth physics and water effects. The crucial difference is that these things aren't just visual upgrades, they affect the very core of the game world and can be utilized for gameplay.
Remember when Uncharted 3 was being marketed, and they talked endlessly about how the cruise liner mission had a fully simulated ocean so that the wave sway didn't repeat itself. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Games have already flirted with these kinds of simulation based gameplay, but could never make it a core of the game because only the highest spec PCs would allow it. I think it was Cryostasis that wanted a mission where you detected invisible enemies by the way they displaced volumetric fog and condensation. That's a type of interaction that simply doesn't exist right now in games but will do in the future.
I've been down Lake Street dozens of times before, and while Watch_dogs still isn't photorealistic, or even close, the way they built that environment was massively ahead of anything out right now and it wasn't because of the polygons or the shaders (which are all current gen because the game is also on PS3). The small touches are like compound interest. Small improvements seriously add up.
I think it's a little weak to say games are plateauing, visually. Individual character models might be, heck, even a broader game world might be. But huge improvements are still to be made for games in motion. Screenshots might look the same but when seeing a video, everything will look amazing.
Oh for sure, but I mean how much of that is rooted in just the GPU vs. the rest of the hardware?
Part of this though is effort to add detail. Any environment in a video game is built by hand. We expedite the process by creating 'clip art' type tools, but it's still generally by hand. Automated or procedurally generated environments with keen attention to detail goes beyond GPU power, and even then the parameters are decided on by people.
I should reword my stance I guess. I know the visuals can still improve in many ways, but polycount and raw GPU power isn't the silver bullet.
When Sony announced the 8 gigs of memory (and Microsoft didn't deny they had the same, thus confirming) developers were so pleased not because they wanted to include high-res texture packs or all sorts of repeated prop mechanics in their games, but because it allows them to design wholly new mechanics and new systems from the ground up.
It's kind of amazing how the potentially most important people to how video games look are going to be set designers (in conjunction with level design, which doesn't necessarily mean the decoration of those levels). Though the industry still suffers from a "reinvent the wheel" problem because of engines changing and updating.
Thank god both next gen consoles are x86 architecture. Developers will get to spend more time making games than creating two very different engines on top of their PC work.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
It will cause a new problem that the Red Faction devs talked about, that you'll have to hire architects to stop in-game buildings falling down by themselves.
We're swinging off topic here but I wouldn't mind that at all. You wouldn't necessarily need a team of architects. Plus it creates jobs in the real world.
"I'm an architect."
"Oh really, what city have you done work in?"
"Oh no, I make video games."
"Oh really? Anything I know?"
"Halo. I worked on the Library."
*PUNCH*
"Vandelay...Art Vandelay."
Anyway. Carry on.
I want more, bigger games with more stuff to interact with. That's all upside, for sure. But is that going to require a triple A investment on any game that does that?
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Don't forget the newspapers have to be an object you can interact with and read the contents thereof. You need writers!
I bet lego, Legos and legos makes you crazy.
Who cares
Pfff. Microsoft products for different targets (Xbox, Office, Server, Windows for example) feel to me like they are created by different enterprises altogether. Windows 8 was supposed to have this neat and seamless GFWL and XBox integration. I recently installed Dawn of War 2 and still had to download / install / update the GFWL crap which still looks and feels alien in the Windows environment. Their integration amounts basically to two superfluous Metro apps "Games" and "Smartglasses".
This basically sums up what I think of Microsoft and Multiplatform (Relevant piece at 3:20):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8OIdc7_DqF8#!
The term is brobox
bro
One day there will be a game where the newspapers aren't written by developers, nor modelled by them either. A game where they're manufactured at an in-game simulation of a sawmill, where digital wood is pulped into digital paper, then transported to an in-game printing press where an AI player writes the content itself based upon the things you do while playing.
And as you pick up the newspaper to read it, you'll see an article in the corner of the page, below the simulated stock summary and the procedurally generated sports results. An article that casually mentions how, in the game, some players have developed a new type of in-game video game that is so realistic you won't be able to distinguish it from fake real life. And just like Geometry Wars in the Project Gotham garage, you'll walk your character over to an in-game arcade machine and start playing their polygonal recreation of the game world, which is itself an accurate rendering of the world we live in right now. And your high polycount character will complain to other high polycount characters about how these low polycount characters aren't quite up to scratch. How those scumbag AI journalists fooled you into believing the fake digital hype. And it will make your character's anger meter rise two whole points.
Then you'll step away from the arcade machine, run your character back to your fake digital house, go up your fake digital stairs to a dimly lit recreation of your bedroom. Then you'll make your character log-on to the in-game internet, go to a custom message board populated by other human controlled characters, and you'll type up a post quite similar to the one I'm writing right now, but instead of the game rendering its response based upon an AI subroutine or a pre-baked response coded into the game's LUA script files, you'll just see the face of God, staring back at you with cold dead eyes. Laughing.
Dammit Durandal.
Why I fear the ocean.
Rorus-Raz
So, while I actually do think we've had diminishing graphical returns every since the very first video game systems, what's more interesting about next gen (already began this gen) is that the economic limit on what a developer can do is quite often going to be lower than the computational limit.
PSN ID: fearsomepirate