[JCDNWarrior]

Bah, the Xbox One sure looks unappealing. I have both the first Xbox and Xbox 360, was kinda looking forward to play the few exclusives that the console does have but just by principle alone I don't think I will. I don't really watch TV and the few series and movies I do watch, I stream via my computers or have on DVD.

Microsoft, Nineteen Eighty Four wasn't a manual. Then again you're not the only one using it as such.

I might go for the PS4 instead. Just depends on if their marketing holds up, no first day purchases for me either way.

[Spoon]

I don't know why '30 FPS' is being touted as a console trait either when probably the most popularly recognizable console games on Earth are 60 FPS titles.

Because the vast majority of recent and semi recent console games has been limited to 30fps? Because over the years of this console generation they've been constantly upping the graphical fidelity while the console hardware has remained the same and thus they had to resort to cutting the fps to 30 and limiting the fov to something sickness inducing like 45 degrees?
GTA4, Mass effect, Assassin's creed, Gears of War, Halo, all of these run at 30 fps. AFAIK CoD runs at 60 FPS, but they accomplish this through putting horseblinders on the player's FoV.
So yes, its definitely a console trait of this generation.

[Fury]

I don't know why '30 FPS' is being touted as a console trait either when probably the most popularly recognizable console games on Earth are 60 FPS titles.

Because the vast majority of recent and semi recent console games has been limited to 30fps? Because over the years of this console generation they've been constantly upping the graphical fidelity while the console hardware has remained the same and thus they had to resort to cutting the fps to 30 and limiting the fov to something sickness inducing like 45 degrees?
GTA4, Mass effect, Assassin's creed, Gears of War, Halo, all of these run at 30 fps. AFAIK CoD runs at 60 FPS, but they accomplish this through putting horseblinders on the player's FoV.
So yes, its definitely a console trait of this generation.

Furthermore, this causes serious bugs in PC versions due to developer oversights. One good example being Mass Effect 3 (particularly multiplayer) where many mechanics, such as AI competency and shield regen is tied to framerate. At 30fps they work as they should, anything between 30 and 60 they're wonky at best. At 60 they again behave at some level of normalcy but beyond 60 they get wonky again. And in case of multiplayer, it's the host's fps that dictates level of wonkiness.

[Ghostavo]

Holy sh*t, the kinect reads heartbeats through skin pigmentation.

I wonder if future horror games (or even games in general) will take that into account...

[NGTM-1R]

I am not sure how large the market segment is that would want to do work in that environment, but I am willing to bet that it's not large enough to make such an investment worthwhile.

Let me think about this.

Couch.

Hardwood chair.

Couch.

Hardwood chair.

[The E]

So you'd like to do spreadsheets while sitting two or three meters from your monitor?

[BloodEagle]

I am not sure how large the market segment is that would want to do work in that environment, but I am willing to bet that it's not large enough to make such an investment worthwhile.

Let me think about this.

Couch.

Hardwood chair.

Couch.

Hardwood chair.

Invest in a proper computer chair.

[NGTM-1R]

So you'd like to do spreadsheets while sitting two or three meters from your monitor?

It's a nice big monitor, with the option to project it on the wall instead if I want.

[Scourge of Ages]

So I've been thinking a bit about the XBoxen, and I'm starting to see some logic here.

I believe that MS is acknowledging that console-exclusive games are starting to go away. It only makes sense from a developer point-of-view: more consoles running your game means more money.

So MS have said, "If you're only going to buy one console this generation, make it an XBox. We'll have almost all the games that the PS4 will, but we also have 'features'. And hey, as long as you have a new XBox, might as well buy the games for it (since we'll get the royalties instead of Sony)."

As for the used games, installing to HD, checking in once a day thing, MS is trying to be Steam. It remains to be seen if they can figure out why Steam is popular while Games for Windows Live and Origin are widely despised.

The no-backwards-compatibility thing does seem like a boneheaded move though.

[Lorric]

The no-backwards-compatibility thing does seem like a boneheaded move though.

This should be a priority when you have an unreliable machine. I suppose they know people will have to buy more machines if they want to keep playing.

[The E]

Unfortunately, backwards compatibility is not an option in this case. The system architectures are just too dissimilar, and the gap in processing power not large enough, to make it possible on a software basis. It probably could.have been done using an approach similar to the one Sony used in the PS2 and early PS3s, where they just added chips from the older model to the new one, but that's going to drive the hardware cost upwards, and increase system complexity.

[Fury]

Sony's planning to use cloud computing to run old games on PS4 though, MS could have invested on same. All indicates they didn't however.

[BloodEagle]

Sony's planning to use cloud computing to run old games on PS4 though, MS could have invested on same. All indicates they didn't however.

I would like to point out that similar services have proven enormously successful in the past. [/not really]

[The E]

Yep.

[Klaustrophobia]

i agree that it's a dumb decision to force the kinect on everyone who doesn't want it, but for the privacy concerns.... really?  dude.  black tape.  done.

[The E]

Yeah, it's functionally no different to the webcams you find in every laptop frame these days.

But I suppose that that's no reason to stop some good FUD.

[Klaustrophobia]

i am unfamiliar with that acronym.

[The E]

FUD = "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt", and old (REALLY old) acronym going back to the days of IBM, referring to their marketing strategy of spreading FUD in order to discourage people from buying hardware from other vendors.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

EDIT:

In other news, Microsoft has apparently thought up a "game resell strategy". Unfortunately, preliminary reports about it do not make much sense.

If MS offers a way to deactivate a license in return for some form of credit (I wish Steam would offer such a service, that would be great), that sounds like a good idea to me. But the way this is communicated at the moment is all wrong and uncoordinated, which does not help.

[Klaustrophobia]

yeah that would be nice.  i've got a couple of steam games that turned out to be real piles of ****.

[MP-Ryan]

I've often wished Steam had that feature.  There are a few games in my library that I neither want nor have ever really played.  Some feature that pro-rate's a refund based on play time - if you've never played, you get 75% back, which diminishes to 0% by the time you have 3 hours in or something like that.

Unlikely to ever happen, but we can dream.