Yeah, leaving the UHD drive out of the Fro was the most egregious bit of corner-cutting since...
...well, I'll go with the dropping of PS2 BC from the PS3, to be diplomatic!
(Although they ended up selling PS3 ports of some PS2 games on PSN. Not gonna bitch, really; that means I have a Blu-ray player that has Gradius V on it and that's cool.)
Back on topic(-ish), the UHD drive in the S, by comparison, was a cool feature addition that the console didn't really need, but was a) a nice bonus, and b) made the thing at the time a really good economic value if you wanted a UHD player for not too much money. A solid bit of the old "Trojan horse" marketing beloved of the Xbox division.
I'm betting they do a 360, where they launch with two models. One with less bells and whistles but hits 500, one with a bigger SSD for around 600. That way they have one that's less scary to approach. No way they get lower than 500. They'll probably drop 1X to 300 and market that as the new S.
I'm wondering about how steep a price drop for the XB1X, but I'm thinking something like this otherwise.
Difference space hard drive SKUs are an effective place to cut corners to bring down costs a little with minimal backlash provided expandable storage is immediate available. A MicroSD card is basically a requirement for owning a Switch, and people live with that. Whether it's between a big mechanical drive model and a solid state drive model, or maybe just a small and large solid state drive model (and the consumer having to get their own storage for the former), there's a lot of wiggle room to maneuver.
You can even shape marketing so that there's only one product (as not to confuse with "Lockhart" or anything else) that just happens to come in a couple different price points. Choice but not too much choice.
If it could be done, I think marketing the X as the new S would be a good move. Especially if it was forward compatible and could play Scarlett games at a reduced level, say 1080p or even 720p at lower "settings" (I'm assuming here that it would be set up such that the S would not be able to at all).
It would cannibalize Scarlett sales, though, that would potentially be the biggest problem. But do we need to move away from discrete console generations?
Unless of course Scarlett ends up doing entirely new additional stuff the Xbones are simply not capable of that I haven't thought of, which is very possible.
I am excited for outer worlds, but I swear I heard from previews they are tempering expectations about the length of the game, like its only a twenty to thirty hour solo experience.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I am excited for outer worlds, but I swear I heard from previews they are tempering expectations about the length of the game, like its only a twenty to thirty hour solo experience.
I'd way rather it were 20-30 as opposed to 80-100, I love a long game and all but it's way easier to find time for a good "short" one.
I'm most interested in the performance boost from a new console. I'll probably care about 4k as soon as I have a 4k tv but for now I would love faster loading and better framerates and so if there's a cheaper model that does that without pumping out the most ultrapixels or whatever I'll be pretty glad.
I am excited for outer worlds, but I swear I heard from previews they are tempering expectations about the length of the game, like its only a twenty to thirty hour solo experience.
That's still Mass Effect 1 sort of scale.
Me 1 is only 20 to 30 hours if you know what you're doing and like power through, no way that's a first play through time.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
On the subject of aliens and killing, a DF Retro look into Blazing Chrome actually convinced me that it was more than garish boxart of ugly Deunan and Briareous from Appleseed after seeing it Game Pass and give it a try: it's pretty good! It's Contra-Metal Slug-Contra, which means it's difficult, at least for me, but it's good.
Ehhhhhhhh. It's too hard for its own good and its odd decision to mimic the Genesis color palette instead of the SNES palette means its looks a little plain.
But Digital Foundry loved it, so what do know.
I wonder about this.
Because it's clearly too hard for me--playing the first mission twice, first on normal, then on easy, I was immediately put-off by how the 99% of the level was generally manageable (or even easy) only to die repeatedly, over and over again, from the first boss in a formula where it is clearly intended to be the training-wheels boss encounter.
But this is almost exactly what I remember the classic Contra series being too, and frankly, people really like those games. Not as much as Richard Leadbetter (I believe?) from DF, but clearly people like it. I want this, and for that matter Cuphead, to have much more forgiving health bars, but these games really aren't aimed at me.
Also, the game is absolutely better for the subtle, almost-grimy color palette. Imitating the SNES palette would've been too much and taken away from the aesthetic (which I'm very impressed by). It's not like the game only has 512 colors, after all.
Regarding the colors, it may come down to which side of the great console wars you ended up on. I was hoping for an homage to Contra III: The Alien Wars and what I got was an homage to Contra: Hard Corps.
Don't get me wrong, I got through to the end, because how often do we get side scrolling platformers, but I am not going to play it a second time.
I mean, they make up like 90% of indie games, so ... every week?
On the subject of aliens and killing, a DF Retro look into Blazing Chrome actually convinced me that it was more than garish boxart of ugly Deunan and Briareous from Appleseed after seeing it Game Pass and give it a try: it's pretty good! It's Contra-Metal Slug-Contra, which means it's difficult, at least for me, but it's good.
Ehhhhhhhh. It's too hard for its own good and its odd decision to mimic the Genesis color palette instead of the SNES palette means its looks a little plain.
But Digital Foundry loved it, so what do know.
I wonder about this.
Because it's clearly too hard for me--playing the first mission twice, first on normal, then on easy, I was immediately put-off by how the 99% of the level was generally manageable (or even easy) only to die repeatedly, over and over again, from the first boss in a formula where it is clearly intended to be the training-wheels boss encounter.
But this is almost exactly what I remember the classic Contra series being too, and frankly, people really like those games. Not as much as Richard Leadbetter (I believe?) from DF, but clearly people like it. I want this, and for that matter Cuphead, to have much more forgiving health bars, but these games really aren't aimed at me.
Also, the game is absolutely better for the subtle, almost-grimy color palette. Imitating the SNES palette would've been too much and taken away from the aesthetic (which I'm very impressed by). It's not like the game only has 512 colors, after all.
Regarding the colors, it may come down to which side of the great console wars you ended up on. I was hoping for an homage to Contra III: The Alien Wars and what I got was an homage to Contra: Hard Corps.
Don't get me wrong, I got through to the end, because how often do we get side scrolling platformers, but I am not going to play it a second time.
I mean, they make up like 90% of indie games, so ... every week?
I am really bad at paying attention to indy anything. Which is bad on my part.
I am excited for outer worlds, but I swear I heard from previews they are tempering expectations about the length of the game, like its only a twenty to thirty hour solo experience.
That's still Mass Effect 1 sort of scale.
Me 1 is only 20 to 30 hours if you know what you're doing and like power through, no way that's a first play through time.
50-60, minimum, if you're not totally dragging ass around the galaxy. I think mine was around 80 and I was grinding available achievements.
I don't know what you people are talking about. I have never once called it "the Fro", because that's absurd. A 'Fro is already a thing (technically more than one thing). Like all English second language speakers, I avoid homonyms wherever possible.
A PSFro, on the other hand, was not a thing before whats-his-name on on Kotaku came up with it, and could not be confused with anything else. And it's certainly more suitable than calling a video game console totally incapable of running productivity software and never aimed at professionals "Pro" anything. Seriously, that's just misleading and silly.
Technically that was called the "Premium Xbox 360" or "Xbox 360 Premium" (super technically, it was just Xbox 360 with the hard drive, and did not get a separate formal designation--the SKU without the drive was the "Arcade" edition, whereas that was just "Xbox 360").
That being said, shame on whoever designed that box. SHAME.
Didnt the arcade come later? Originally it was the "core" or somesuch?
No, you're quite correct--"Core" was the original name, later dubbed "Arcade." Don't know why I got them mixed around.
Given that it was only the core console--and not the 20 GB hard drive--it made sense for naming. Not that it was a good idea to purchase, but then again, during that period where the console was rare, you took what you could get.
Didnt the arcade come later? Originally it was the "core" or somesuch?
Yeah, it was Core for the one that was available at launch, along with the proprietary 64MB memory card. The Core console also had a plain white drive tray trim, not the chrome bit on the full-fat console. Thus stigmatising you for the entire life of the console. Until, as we would later find out, it RRoD'd.
Technically that was called the "Premium Xbox 360" or "Xbox 360 Premium" (super technically, it was just Xbox 360 with the hard drive, and did not get a separate formal designation--the SKU without the drive was the "Arcade" edition, whereas that was just "Xbox 360").
That being said, shame on whoever designed that box. SHAME.
I don't know what you people are talking about. I have never once called it "the Fro", because that's absurd. A 'Fro is already a thing (technically more than one thing). Like all English second language speakers, I avoid homonyms wherever possible.
A PSFro, on the other hand, was not a thing before whats-his-name on on Kotaku came up with it, and could not be confused with anything else. And it's certainly more suitable than calling a video game console totally incapable of running productivity software and never aimed at professionals "Pro" anything. Seriously, that's just misleading and silly.
Don't forget the 360's "zones" - one of them was "Pro" as well. (Spoiler alert: not everyone who chose that one was a professional gamer. Shocking, I know.)
I don't know what you people are talking about. I have never once called it "the Fro", because that's absurd. A 'Fro is already a thing (technically more than one thing). Like all English second language speakers, I avoid homonyms wherever possible.
A PSFro, on the other hand, was not a thing before whats-his-name on on Kotaku came up with it, and could not be confused with anything else. And it's certainly more suitable than calling a video game console totally incapable of running productivity software and never aimed at professionals "Pro" anything. Seriously, that's just misleading and silly.
Don't forget the 360's "zones" - one of them was "Pro" as well. (Spoiler alert: not everyone who chose that one was a professional gamer. Shocking, I know.)
I don't know what you people are talking about. I have never once called it "the Fro", because that's absurd. A 'Fro is already a thing (technically more than one thing). Like all English second language speakers, I avoid homonyms wherever possible.
A PSFro, on the other hand, was not a thing before whats-his-name on on Kotaku came up with it, and could not be confused with anything else. And it's certainly more suitable than calling a video game console totally incapable of running productivity software and never aimed at professionals "Pro" anything. Seriously, that's just misleading and silly.
Don't forget the 360's "zones" - one of them was "Pro" as well. (Spoiler alert: not everyone who chose that one was a professional gamer. Shocking, I know.)
underground 4 lyfe
"Your battle cry: 'Take no prisoners!'"
Yes, Microsoft, because that is how people talked on Xbox Live.
I don't know what you people are talking about. I have never once called it "the Fro", because that's absurd. A 'Fro is already a thing (technically more than one thing). Like all English second language speakers, I avoid homonyms wherever possible.
A PSFro, on the other hand, was not a thing before whats-his-name on on Kotaku came up with it, and could not be confused with anything else. And it's certainly more suitable than calling a video game console totally incapable of running productivity software and never aimed at professionals "Pro" anything. Seriously, that's just misleading and silly.
Don't forget the 360's "zones" - one of them was "Pro" as well. (Spoiler alert: not everyone who chose that one was a professional gamer. Shocking, I know.)
underground 4 lyfe
"Your battle cry: 'Take no prisoners!'"
Yes, Microsoft, because that is how people talked on Xbox Live.
early xbox 360 had a lot of weird assumptions that didn't exist or were really hard to find by the end dash design of that same console
WITH THAT SAID the idea that in your own profile you could select "I play FPS Games inverted" and as part of cert games had to respect those settings and by default every game I ever played had inverted Y axis was so fucking genius. It boggles the mind that this was taken out of the xbone.
I don't know what you people are talking about. I have never once called it "the Fro", because that's absurd. A 'Fro is already a thing (technically more than one thing). Like all English second language speakers, I avoid homonyms wherever possible.
A PSFro, on the other hand, was not a thing before whats-his-name on on Kotaku came up with it, and could not be confused with anything else. And it's certainly more suitable than calling a video game console totally incapable of running productivity software and never aimed at professionals "Pro" anything. Seriously, that's just misleading and silly.
Don't forget the 360's "zones" - one of them was "Pro" as well. (Spoiler alert: not everyone who chose that one was a professional gamer. Shocking, I know.)
underground 4 lyfe
"Your battle cry: 'Take no prisoners!'"
Yes, Microsoft, because that is how people talked on Xbox Live.
early xbox 360 had a lot of weird assumptions that didn't exist or were really hard to find by the end dash design of that same console
WITH THAT SAID the idea that in your own profile you could select "I play FPS Games inverted" and as part of cert games had to respect those settings and by default every game I ever played had inverted Y axis was so fucking genius. It boggles the mind that this was taken out of the xbone.
Agree so hard. Absolutely.
I loved that in the 360. The profile-level preferences were brilliant, and even well thought out. I had to set my Y-axis to inverted once and that was it.
I had a colleague who didn't like rumble in controllers at all. Between showing him he could turn that off (again, once) at a profile level, and also Geometry Wars, I basically sold him on the whole system.
Ridiculous that it didn't make it to the Xbone. Sure, the Xbone eventually grew a whole lot of other controller customisation things to fiddle with, but it never had anything so straightforward and elegant.
I actually played inverted in Halo 1, but when. Halo 2 started and I was going to tournaments, most of them didn't allow you to fudge with settings. I was forced to be a Northpaw.
If your first experience with a joystick was on PC, you probably played some kind of flying game. And thus, you play inverted. I suspect this is true for a lot of cases.
If your first experience with a joystick was on PC, you probably played some kind of flying game. And thus, you play inverted. I suspect this is true for a lot of cases.
Oh, I know, but it is fun to tweak the Y-invert crowd.
If my first experience was PC flight sims I would probably be the same way. I have a good friend who is a Y-inverter and it is always fun when he visits and we try to play something split-screen. Most games DO let you set the controls separately per player but sometimes not so much.
Honestly the first first-person flight game I can remember playing was Star Wars (1983), which probably had inverted controls? I haven’t seen a Star Wars cabinet in ages.
I do use flight-style controls for flying vehicles. I think. I would need to boot Battlefront to check.
If your first experience with a joystick was on PC, you probably played some kind of flying game. And thus, you play inverted. I suspect this is true for a lot of cases.
Related, I have a friend who (he says) only started playing FPS games - at least post-Goldeneye - on the Dreamcast. Which of course only had one thumbstick, on the left, which was invariably what was used for looking around because that's the most important thing to have analog control.
So despite being right-handed, from then on he's played first-person games with a Southpaw stick setup.
Actually I've not spoken to him about it in a while, I'll have to ask him if he still does it. Pretty sure he still does, though.
Just beat Gears 4. That story was so bad it's good. I burst out laughing when they introduce Marcus and his shoulders are like, wider than the chair he's sitting in.
I liked Gears 4, if only for the del interactions. I was super happy that Del was the tutorial character in 5 because someone at the coalition realized what a treat he is.
Preacher on
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Posts
...well, I'll go with the dropping of PS2 BC from the PS3, to be diplomatic!
(Although they ended up selling PS3 ports of some PS2 games on PSN. Not gonna bitch, really; that means I have a Blu-ray player that has Gradius V on it and that's cool.)
Back on topic(-ish), the UHD drive in the S, by comparison, was a cool feature addition that the console didn't really need, but was a) a nice bonus, and b) made the thing at the time a really good economic value if you wanted a UHD player for not too much money. A solid bit of the old "Trojan horse" marketing beloved of the Xbox division.
Steam | XBL
I'm wondering about how steep a price drop for the XB1X, but I'm thinking something like this otherwise.
Difference space hard drive SKUs are an effective place to cut corners to bring down costs a little with minimal backlash provided expandable storage is immediate available. A MicroSD card is basically a requirement for owning a Switch, and people live with that. Whether it's between a big mechanical drive model and a solid state drive model, or maybe just a small and large solid state drive model (and the consumer having to get their own storage for the former), there's a lot of wiggle room to maneuver.
You can even shape marketing so that there's only one product (as not to confuse with "Lockhart" or anything else) that just happens to come in a couple different price points. Choice but not too much choice.
It would cannibalize Scarlett sales, though, that would potentially be the biggest problem. But do we need to move away from discrete console generations?
Unless of course Scarlett ends up doing entirely new additional stuff the Xbones are simply not capable of that I haven't thought of, which is very possible.
Steam | XBL
pleasepaypreacher.net
That's still Mass Effect 1 sort of scale.
Steam | XBL
I'm most interested in the performance boost from a new console. I'll probably care about 4k as soon as I have a 4k tv but for now I would love faster loading and better framerates and so if there's a cheaper model that does that without pumping out the most ultrapixels or whatever I'll be pretty glad.
Me 1 is only 20 to 30 hours if you know what you're doing and like power through, no way that's a first play through time.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I mean, they make up like 90% of indie games, so ... every week?
I am really bad at paying attention to indy anything. Which is bad on my part.
50-60, minimum, if you're not totally dragging ass around the galaxy. I think mine was around 80 and I was grinding available achievements.
oh god don't do this just cause @Synthesis is a dummy. it makes no sense and is bad! DON'T SPREAD IT
*tear*
See how Synthy used a meme pic to respond?
You had a perfect opportunity to drop a "stop trying to make this a thing" gif and you wasted it! Now Fro is going to be a thing.
A PSFro, on the other hand, was not a thing before whats-his-name on on Kotaku came up with it, and could not be confused with anything else. And it's certainly more suitable than calling a video game console totally incapable of running productivity software and never aimed at professionals "Pro" anything. Seriously, that's just misleading and silly.
tl;dr:
I don't know what this means.
guys, did I age out of the forums?
That being said, shame on whoever designed that box. SHAME.
EDIT: Core, not Arcade.
No, you're quite correct--"Core" was the original name, later dubbed "Arcade." Don't know why I got them mixed around.
Given that it was only the core console--and not the 20 GB hard drive--it made sense for naming. Not that it was a good idea to purchase, but then again, during that period where the console was rare, you took what you could get.
:cool:
Yeah, it was Core for the one that was available at launch, along with the proprietary 64MB memory card. The Core console also had a plain white drive tray trim, not the chrome bit on the full-fat console. Thus stigmatising you for the entire life of the console. Until, as we would later find out, it RRoD'd.
Steam | XBL
sounds like somebody needs to go pro
Don't forget the 360's "zones" - one of them was "Pro" as well. (Spoiler alert: not everyone who chose that one was a professional gamer. Shocking, I know.)
Steam | XBL
underground 4 lyfe
"Your battle cry: 'Take no prisoners!'"
Yes, Microsoft, because that is how people talked on Xbox Live.
Steam | XBL
early xbox 360 had a lot of weird assumptions that didn't exist or were really hard to find by the end dash design of that same console
WITH THAT SAID the idea that in your own profile you could select "I play FPS Games inverted" and as part of cert games had to respect those settings and by default every game I ever played had inverted Y axis was so fucking genius. It boggles the mind that this was taken out of the xbone.
Agree so hard. Absolutely.
I loved that in the 360. The profile-level preferences were brilliant, and even well thought out. I had to set my Y-axis to inverted once and that was it.
I had a colleague who didn't like rumble in controllers at all. Between showing him he could turn that off (again, once) at a profile level, and also Geometry Wars, I basically sold him on the whole system.
Ridiculous that it didn't make it to the Xbone. Sure, the Xbone eventually grew a whole lot of other controller customisation things to fiddle with, but it never had anything so straightforward and elegant.
Steam | XBL
my first game was wing commander 1 pretty much. it broke me for life
I grew up on 8- and 16-bit flight sims (I was slightly later to Wing Commander) before FPS games came along. Same result.
Steam | XBL
If your first experience with a joystick was on PC, you probably played some kind of flying game. And thus, you play inverted. I suspect this is true for a lot of cases.
Why old guys? 40 is extremely old in animu years, the official age chart of the internet.
Oh, I know, but it is fun to tweak the Y-invert crowd.
If my first experience was PC flight sims I would probably be the same way. I have a good friend who is a Y-inverter and it is always fun when he visits and we try to play something split-screen. Most games DO let you set the controls separately per player but sometimes not so much.
Honestly the first first-person flight game I can remember playing was Star Wars (1983), which probably had inverted controls? I haven’t seen a Star Wars cabinet in ages.
I do use flight-style controls for flying vehicles. I think. I would need to boot Battlefront to check.
Related, I have a friend who (he says) only started playing FPS games - at least post-Goldeneye - on the Dreamcast. Which of course only had one thumbstick, on the left, which was invariably what was used for looking around because that's the most important thing to have analog control.
So despite being right-handed, from then on he's played first-person games with a Southpaw stick setup.
Actually I've not spoken to him about it in a while, I'll have to ask him if he still does it. Pretty sure he still does, though.
Steam | XBL
pleasepaypreacher.net