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There has been recently an interesting article about what blast processing actually was: a technique to extend the megadrive color palette.

Eurogamer reports 100ms added input delay in (singleplayer) tests. Then for multiplayer there would be additional added lag by introducing another relay point into the chain, at least for games traditionally played over p2p (for games played on servers I assume google would have to be running the server as well?)

For perspective, serious fighting game players consider it frustrating playing anyone they have triple-digit ping with.

An aspect that this report hasn't mentioned, perhaps as it's an unfortunate and unfair issue in some games, is sadly there can also be code issues at play as well. Many modern games have still suffered from damage dealt or game physics not being frame rate independent which can directly equate to player advantages, Quake 3 for example was well known for having the fastest movement and most useful jumping speed and height on 125 FPS, the issue was fixed many years ago in some mods and subsequently Quake Live by removing the physics system's dependency on frame rate.

A quick search on damage tied to fps brings up quite a few recent results, and I couldn't quickly find evidence that they had all been resolved -

Quake Champions : https://www.reddit.com/r/Quake... (Damage and movement FPS dependencies were fixed early in Early Access)
PUBG : https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/fra... (Quick search found no info on fixes)
Fortnite : https://www.eurogamer.net/arti... (Epic acknowledge the issue and state that they’re working toward a fix.)
Destiny 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (Quick search found no info on fixes)
Warframe: https://forums.warframe.com/to... (Staff posted at the time a fix was being looked into)

Even including such bugs high FPS is not the be all and end all in a multiplayer shooting game as positioning, better weapons, collecting more health and armour are all strategic elements that usually claim the victory beyond simple aim and damage output. Higher frame rates certainly can aid locating your opponents position quickly and accurately in a high speed fire fight though and are certainly a much more pleasant visual experience, https://www.testufo.com/ can give you a quick example of that without having to leave your browser.

Huh, what are you blathering about? For gaming, 1080 means 1080p, because 1080i is only for videos. Shouldn't need to tell you that. And 60 Hz is just a refresh rate, in fact the standard refresh rate for low end monitors. Your "big distinction" is just you being confused.

If you want to know how RX 580 does at 1080 (1080p if you insist on being an anal retard) then this article explains it as well as any. TL;DR "clearly the RX 580 is the better card in more of the games that we've tested, with the AMD card coming on top in seven of our nine tests at 1080p, and every time at 1440p." Not only does the 580 outperform its closest competitor the 1060, it sells for less and has way more VRAM. Frankly, it's hard to believe that Nvidia has the gall to sell a midrange card with 3GB, but they do. Could be just the card for you.

The guy was a bit of a kook. I could imagine he simply didn't trust the patent system.

Then you do it for a percentage. Can bite you in the butt either way I guess. Just ask the author of the witcher.

https://www.eurogamer.net/arti...

https://www.eurogamer.net/arti...

It's funny, but at the same time they are perfectly within their rights to download from a site for their use, and even sue that same site for infringement. They are the copyright holder after all..

Yeah. If only there were somewhere you could buy a tremendous range of AAA, indie and other games at sensible prices.

Somewhere like itch.io, gog.com, Steam or humblebundle.com

Oh. Hang on.

No one cares about most indie shovelware. For most of gog.com's history they were a dumping ground for bad indie games and still are. Whoever is running gog is not serious about AAA. If I were gog I would be buying up old IP's like supreme commander, descent, freespace, etc and fully funding new AAA games. Most drm free games and indie games, let's be honest are low quality shovelware. Even the AA games coming out of kickstarter are little more than retreads of past games. Many developers from fan funded games have learned nothing in 20 years, the combat of infinity engine games are still shit and they are viewing bioware 2D rpg's through rose colored glasses. I enjoyed the original Pillars of eternity but it wasn't anything groundbreaking, it was a very average game and I knew the sequel would be underwhelming due to the first one being very underwhelming itself.

The combat system was slightly improved, but the dungeon crawling and combat in those games needs serious work. I love dungeon crawling and finding loot and those oldschool bioware games have the absolute worst combat and even their designers admit it. I would take legend of grimrock (the first), lands of lore 1 or arcana for the SNES over any bioware infinity engine crap anyday. There needs to be actual goals and objects in the game world that have interesting mathematical characteristics. We are talking video GAMES here, the world doesn't have to be a simulation of our world or try to ape books/tv and movies. Games should be raw imagination they don't have to be real.

Planescape/infinity engine developers talk about the shitty combat:

https://www.eurogamer.net/arti...

There was another quite big leak in 2003 of the Value Half-Life 2 Source Engine Code, the whole engine, that was quite a big thing.

http://www.eurogamer.net/artic...

https://kotaku.com/that-time-a...

Unless something has changed recently, MP3 doesn't support DRM. In fact most of the audio sound formats I've encountered don't support DRM. It's not like the case with movies, where the "video file" format is actually a container containing a video file, audio file, subtitle files, chapter index, etc, and you can insert all sorts of funny ways and conditions to play it. Pretty much all the music audio file formats I've encountered are just straight audio files - compressed, but not encrypted.

The bigger loss is that CDs, being a physical format, carried with them a perpetual license. You could bequeath your CD collection to your children upon your death. The license agreement terms for most online music/movie purchase services grant you a non-transferable license. That is, your "ownership" of the content you've "purchased" expires upon your death. The only way to allow your heirs to inherit your music or movie or ebook or game collection is to break the EULA and share your login and password with them before you expire.

I expect this will be hashed out in court over the next 40 years, as the "loss" of a loved one's or relative's online media collection upon their death becomes more commonplace. People will challenge it, and the courts will have to decide if that's really how we want online "purchases" of copyrighted media to work. In the meantime, you can completely bypass the content industry's attempts to erode our ownership rights of things we've paid money for by purchasing CDs. (Or by pirating stuff - though "pirating" is probably not the right word when it's done to take back rights we should have had from the beginning.)

But yes, essentially a PC: http://www.eurogamer.net/artic...

Here :D: http://www.eurogamer.net/artic...

Well, it doesn't look too good for AMD. Their "super efficient" RX 480 uses much more power than the 1060 and is slower.
On the bright side is the price of the 480 is only $200 (well, eventually it will be ;) ) and also AMD's version of aync compute works far better than Pascal (see: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-gef... and http://www.eurogamer.net/artic... )

Diablo style games work wonderfully with direct character control with gamepads, more immersive and comfortable over long hours of play. Any player of Diablo 1 on the PSone, or those bajillion Diablo clones on the PS2, Sacred on the PS3, or Diablo 3 on the PS3/4 could tell you that.

Even Eurogamer, which is filled with jerkass PCMR Eurogamers (Europeans, especially ones from Eastern Europe tend to be SRSLY console hostile), liked Diablo 3 on console.

http://www.eurogamer.net/artic...

I've mixed feelings over social media in general, but Twitter in the specific makes my blood boil.

It's a medium that seems designed to kill off nuance, civility and sophistication of thought. By forcing people into 140 characters and providing social incentives for them to use those 140 characters to say something that will be shared as widely as possible, it encourages them to make the crassest, most polarizing statements possible. I'd put Twitter as the number one reason that so many online debates these days devolve into bitter mud-slinging between the loudest fringes of two opposing echo-chambers.

The rapid-response culture of twitter just makes things worse. Combined with the anonymity of online interactions, it compels people to speak before they've had a chance to do a sense-check and think through the consequences. There's no shortage of examples of responsible individuals in major corporations who have thrown away careers because they got sucked into the vortex that Twitter creates. One example, former Microsoft director Adam Orth and the "deal with it" furore over the planned always-online functionality for the Xbox One. Now, you could argue that in this case, Twitter did us a service by providing him with a platform to air his (or the company's) "true feeling". I'm not necessarily sure that's the right response, though. I strongly suspect pretty much everybody has "true feelings" which are pretty appalling at times (I know I do) and a huge part of social interaction is toning those things down before they can fly from your mouth (or indeed, stopping them altogether). Twitter, by design, takes the brakes off.

Some people can be incredibly witty and lucid within a single sentence. You see those in the occasional +5 Funny or +5 Insightful post on slashdot. Those people are a minority (and most of them struggle to manage it consistently). Most one-line posts are badly written crap (and usually from ACs). Twitter just institutionalizes that, except with less anonymity.

Just because they have a windows 10 machine and you think they are unworthy of sympathy? Did it ever occur to you that the user may be ignorant of the privacy issues surrounding windows 10? Or that maybe they got duped into the upgrade? How about locked hardware, or hardware that came with windows 10, that does not have drivers for other versions of windows? Most people couldn't fathom how the OS on their system could be used against them, much less know which ones to avoid.

Hell the same issue happened with Nintendo 3DSs and users of the Gateway piracy cart. The Gateway developers pushed out an update that overwrote the 3DS NAND to render it unbootable if the update detected any modifications or use of a competitors cart. (Detection which wasn't 100% error-free.) The response from the community? "Well they used a piracy cart, sucks to be them."

Just because you were not paid does not excuse you intentionally bricking a device. Nor will your breaking of their hardware make the affected users switch to their attackers solution. All it does do is show to the users which companies to avoid if they don't want their equipment broken.

Disclaimer: I don't support piracy. I brought up the 3DS story because I found out about it shortly after the original FTDI story broke on /. and due to the similarities between the two incidents.

I think a good, specific instance of CEO/boardroom dissonance is Square Enix's reaction to initial sales of their (Crystal Dynamics-developed) Tomb Raider reboot. In its first month, the game sold 3.4 million copies, which is a good number of sales by most reckonings. But not Squeenix: they anticipated double that, and even then they thought 5-6 million was a "conservative" number.

The company thought its Lara Croft reboot could sell at least 5-6 million units in four weeks - a huge figure, but a total still designed to be conservative, just "80-90 per cent" of what Square Enix thought was the game's real sales potential.

"We put a considerable amount of effort in polishing and perfecting the game content for these titles, receiving extremely high Metacritic scores," Square Enix said in a new financial statement. "However, we were very disappointed to see that the high scores did not translate to actual sales performance, which is where we see the substantial variance in operation profit/loss against the forecast."

That they expected a reboot of a franchise that had diminished tremendously in popularity could put out such numbers just shows how disconnected they are from reality.

We do know why DX12 is a lot faster. For example here's one of a thousand articles about it. Also please see NVIDIA's SIGGRAPH 2015 presentation on Vulkan (same kind of technology as D3D 12).

http://www.eurogamer.net/artic... UPDATE: Here's Iwata's quote on the NX, translated officially by Nintendo: As proof that Nintendo maintains strong enthusiasm for the dedicated game system business, let me confirm that Nintendo is currently developing a dedicated game platform with a brand-new concept under the development codename "NX". It is too early to elaborate on the details of this project, but we hope to share more information with you next year.

Also, Iwata said Nintendo's new membership service would play a key role in NX.

Nintendo, together with DeNA, will jointly develop a new membership service which encompasses the existing Nintendo 3DS and Wii U systems, the new hardware system with a brand-new concept, NX, and smart devices and PCs, and Nintendo will be the primary party to operate this new membership service. Unlike the Club Nintendo membership service that Nintendo has been operating, the new membership service will include multiple devices and create a connection between Nintendo and each individual consumer regardless of the device the consumer uses. This membership will form one of the core elements of the new Nintendo platform that I just mentioned.

How bad is going to have to get before people wise-up to this unnecessary online-requirement control fetish the game companies have? Do they have to lose entire libraries of games before they get pissed off enough to just say "no"? Because this WILL be happening to people. It's already happened to people on steam where they've been accused of misconduct, with no reasonable recourse to the "guilty till proven innocent" attitude.

You'd think shit like this would open some eyes. Instead, we just see more apologists for steam coming out of the woodwork. Do these people get a free game on steam after 25 shill posts? Stockholm syndrome abounds.

It's like the damn island hasn't heard of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. "Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,"

Mario Balotelli, a black football player with a Jewish mother is suspended a game and fined 25k pounds for posting an anti-racist picture about a multicultural Super Mario.

Luis Suarez was essentially forced out of England for using the word negrito while speaking Spanish because it happened to sound like nigger. (While John Terry was given a sentence of half the time for using the word nigger in English.)

Crazy arse porn rules.

A man is threatened with life in jail for swearing too much.

And what the fuck is an Anti-Social Behavior Order?

How can the nation that brought us Locke also be bringing us this?

WTF is wrong with the UK?

Mario Balotelli, a black football player with a Jewish mother is suspended a game and fined 25k pounds for posting an anti-racist picture about a multicultural Super Mario.

Luis Suarez was essentially forced out of England for using the word negrito while speaking Spanish because it happened to sound like nigger. (While John Terry was given a sentence of half the time for using the word nigger in English.)

Crazy arse porn rules.

A man is threatened with life in jail for swearing too much.

And what the fuck is an Anti-Social Behavior Order?

The problem is GamerGate started with ....

Gamergate started when Eron Gjoni posted a long, rambling post about how his ex-girlfriend was abusive. And it would have ended there too if not for one tiny detail in the huge post which only gamers could spot and see the significance of:

Friggen Nathan Stupid-Red-Pants-Wearing Kotaku-Writing Grayson.

Gjoni's post revealed the truth. One of the foremost proponents of "Gamers == Sexists", writing for one of the largest proponents of "Gamers ==Misogynerds" had -- all the while he was denouncing the gaming community -- felt free to have affairs with indie developers even as he promoted their games. The Game Journalist Emperors had no clothes. Grayson was the journalist who intimidated Blizzard dev Dustin Browder into an apology last year over trumped up charges of sexism, yet this same journalist felt all too at ease having affairs and friendships with young women working in the industry. Hell, his editor at Kotaku, Stephen Totilo, outright stated that there was "no reason to believe any further action need be taken.".

Jesus. There might be mixed opinions on Zoe Quinn, but I pity the actual hard working women trying to make video games in the indie scene. If the FBI aren't investigating the press and indie outlets for gross sexual misconduct now, I guarantee they will be in 20 years time if this is the editorial attitude of the people in charge of these places.

But let's not talk about that. Look, these poor women are being harassed! Bad gamers, bad! Quick, tell them they're "Dead"! Give more terrible games 9/10! Rile 'em up. Call in the mainstream media. Keep souring the bad blood behind all of this to drive up clicks. After 3 months of this, video game retail sales were down 11% in Novemeber, and I know where the blame lies -- sensationalist journalists more willing to attack consumers for profit that care about the industry and community they're supposed to be covering.

If you want to understand why gamers are pissed off, just take a look at the Gamergate Timeline. The journalists who have spent the last two years hazing gamers for being sexists were finally caught with their pants down, and their reaction was to silence, haze, censor, and smear. That the internet was so vulnerable to this is another matter, but the root of the issue is that game journalists have become antagonistic towards gamers and hold all the cards.

Only industry intervention can break this deadlock. Publishers need to step in.

The curators can be bought, like TotalBiscuit.

I think its telling that Sony has decided to not provide this service. If they don't think its good value, then there must be something very wrong.. http://www.eurogamer.net/artic...

The Apple version looked much better than the NES version. The PC-88 & PC-98 version absolutely demolish the NES version.

Citation needed...oh wait, I have a citation for you that proves you wrong:

http://www.hardcoregaming101.n...

Deus Ex on PS2 had crap textures, low quality soundtrack and tiny levels

They're not tiny, they're split in pieces, the port house didn't know the trick of streaming levels. But take a look at the screenshots...

http://steamcommunity.com/shar...

and the comments at the end about the nice soundtrack and how it looks a touch nicer than the PC version. And this is people on Steam saying this, one of the more anti-console forums on the net.

Half-Life on PS2 came out three years after the PC original and still looked worse than the PC version with Blue Shift,

Do you know why I'm laughing. The graphical upgrade Blue Shift brought to the PC version was provided by the never released Dreamcast version. the High Definition pack are the textures the Dreamcast version used. The PS2 version has enhancements beyond that:

http://half-life.wikia.com/wik...

The PlayStation 2 remake of Half-Life saw even further improved models to the game, also created by Gearbox. This included full facial animation and individually-animated fingers.[4] As such, they're considered a continuation of the High Definition Pack. The PlayStation 2 port took advantage of a "Level of Detail" system, allowing these very detailed models up close without sacrificing performance. Health and H.E.V. Chargers have been converted to 3D and have special animations during use. These extra HD features were never officially released for the PC version of the game.

Both had crap controls on console, rendering them unplayable.

Really, you have copies? Played them? Citation needed, because I have both within 10 feet of me and know how they support effective dual shock controls, and also support keyboard and/or mouse. I personally recommend a hybrid control scheme, using the left half of a dual shock for movement...but mouse for aiming.

Sacred 2 looked like shit on PC, but far worse on console.

What? A game that runs at true 1080p with no upscaling tricks? Even digital foundry, notoriously partisan for the PC, said that.

It was also a very mouse heavy game which again renders it virtually unplayable on a gamepad.

That's not what Sacred 2's developers say. That's not even what people on the PC version say either. Some of them actually wanted gamepad support as well.

Diablo I on PSX came out two years after the PC version and runs at such a low resolution that you can't tell what it happening on screen.

Troll. It's one of the PSone games that runs at 240p. Yes it's low but you can easily make everything out. You can easily find video or screenshots.

Diablo III on console looks like shit compared to the PC version.

That's not what notoriously PC partisan Digital Foundry said:

http://www.eurogamer.net/artic...

On the technical scale, both the PS3 and 360 are running at the equivalent to the PC version's high settings for texture assets, physics and effects - with smoothed dynamic shadows almost a match for PC's highest preset. Quibbles with internal resolution and field of view aside, this is a pristinely presented take on a year-old game that targets 60fps on both platforms, and largely succeeds in nailing exactly

Apparently audio decoding power is not quite cheap and plentiful enough:

http://www.eurogamer.net/artic...

You should learn how to read. There was never a "no selling of used games policy"

People in glass houses shouldn't call the kettle black. When Microsoft first spelled out how the One would work, they made it pretty clear (well, as clear as Microsoft legalese can be) that gamers couldn't sell their games to just anyone. Rather, gamers would only be able to sell their games to participating retailers, and even then, only if the game's publisher had opted-in to allowing resales for copies of that game (and then the publisher could optionally tack a fee onto the transaction too, thus decreasing how much money you get to take home).

Similarly, you couldn't sell it to friends or online folks. The only option would be to give it away to them, and, once again, you could only do so if the publisher had opted-in to allowing game trades between individuals. Oh, and an additional restriction was that each game could only ever be given away one time, and even then, only to people who had been on your friends list for at least 30 days. They also outright prohibited renting of games or loaning of physical copies of games to friends.

Given all of those ridiculous terms and conditions, I can see how you might have been confused and failed to realize that the One had those policies in place when it was first announced. Even so, since you read the actual articles, I'd have hoped for better.

As for the always-on requirement, sure, you can play the pedant by pointing out it only needed to phone home once a day rather than constantly, but that's pointless, since it does nothing to address why the requirement was such a source of contention. The reason it was annoying was because it immediately eliminated a number of valid and legitimate use cases in which gamers wouldn't have a regular connection to the Internet. In the armed forces? Too bad. Internet down for a few days? Too bad. Just moved? Too bad. Traveling? Too bad. Out at sea? Too bad. Vacationing in your summer cabin? Too bad. Don't want to connect devices that have no practical need to be online? Too bad. Don't think a company has any business tracking what you're doing with offline, disc-based, single-player games? Too bad.

And the OP was being kind, since he skipped over all of the indie developer controversies that were around early on after the One's announcement, such as requiring that they work with a major publisher. I also noticed that you didn't address his issues with the always-on camera and that they've since flip-flopped on that requirement as well.

The fact that Microsoft managed to make Sony look good, despite the fact that Sony was in the doghouse with virtually every gamer after all of the PSN stuff a few years back, just goes to show you how badly they messed up with the One's launch.

Disclaimer: I own all three consoles of the last gen, and none of the current gen consoles.

It's a weird phenomenon, but it seems that the Japanese don't "get" system software/operating systems AT ALL.

It almost seems to be a cultural thing. They like baroque/quirky interfaces and systems. For video games, that is often a good thing; it makes the game interesting. For applications, it sucks.

You hit nail on the head. For more reference just read about Nintendo Wii/WiiU. They delivered TEN (10) years old development environment for the Wii (straight from GCN days). It only got worse for WiiU.

http://www.eurogamer.net/artic...

The Secret Developers talk about how difficult it was developing a title for the Wii U.

Except the 3DS sales have also had to be revised down from forecasts. Not by as much as the Wii-U's in percentage terms, but still by around a third. Plus 3DS hardware, even though it's now back to a profit on each sale, is bringing in nothing like the margin per unit Nintendo has historically been able to reap. Worse, the 3DS's sales have trended down over Christmas, implying the machine has passed its peak.

Sure, the machine has done fairly well on sales, but it is very much the "new PSP" rather than the "new DS". As in, a machine that sells pretty well all things considered (the PSP sold on a par with some of Nintendo's handhelds, though not the DS), but is very much dependent upon Japan for that success, with the rest of the world moving on from it quite quickly. That's ok (Sony would be delighted if the Vita were doing as well), but it's not giving Nintendo a financial replacement for the old DS's mega-success.

Perhaps more worryingly for them, a number of third party developers targeted at the 3DS have been finding life tough recently (the Rune Factory developer went under not long ago). The platform's wider eco-system is definitely losing out to a mixture of smartphones/tablets, the home consoles and even PC.

>Devs can issue patches for free! (looking at you Microsoft)

You can stop looking. In typical Slashdot fashion, any bad news about MS gets blared and good news buried, and the posters and mods continue propagating ignorance.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-06-26-microsoft-no-longer-charges-developers-to-patch-their-xbox-360-games

The SMART gaming houses have ALREADY FIGURED OUT how to make mad money even WITH the Steam sales..ready to have your mind blown? here it comes....its called DLC!

Oh, DLC, you mean that thing that a good portion of Slashdot thinks is the DRM Devil-in-Disguise and not worth paying for? You've obviously seen the hate for DLC on Slashdot.

But hey you wanna get assraped by consoles that treat you as a combination walking wallet and shoplifter?

Don't be a misogynist and use the term "ass-rape". And how am I getting "ass-raped" Game companies are businesses, they're in the business of making money, they're going to see us as a wallet. You're in favor of DLC and you don't think they see the buyers of DLC as a wallet? That's what some on Slashdot say!

But if the devs weren't making money on Steam sales guess what? They wouldn't HAVE THEM. Its called supply and demand,

Perhaps they only have them because PC gamers are cheapskates? Perhaps that is why they are treating the PC like a stepchild?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-04-12-gog-com-steam-sales-send-wrong-message-to-gamers

I consider steam sales to be a race for the bottom, training PC gamers, who are already notoriously cheap...to pay even less. So enjoy your Steam Sales, but don't go whining when formerly PC only developers focus more attention on consoles when that's where the people are actually willing to spend money are.

Look at Payday:The Heist as a perfect example of how game publishing SHOULD be,

Oh you mean that game published by Sony Online Entertainment for the PS3?

And piracy has gone down 5 years in a row

In the US, perhaps....but citation needed.

Wonder what excuses the publishers are gonna use on the "DRM in a box phone home daily to check if you are a filthy shoplifter" new consoles?

The PS4 and Xbox One don't phone home... I don't know where you got the idea they do, because they don't. SCEfoo never had any such plans and Microsoft changed their plans to match.

Good games make money, shitty games don't, welcome to reality, quit using piracy as an excuse to cover up for your badly overblown budgets on shitty games that care more about HDR and lens flare than they do on a decent gaming experience, how about that?

Oh please, you know that indie titles that supposedly have awesome gameplay also get pirated. Even the Humble Indie Bundles were victims of that, as well as Minecraft. And there's plenty of games with HDR and lens flare that have good gaming experience but faux-gaming-hipster jerks don't want to admit it.

Ryse looks pretty good.

Unfortunately, that's exactly all there seems to be to it.

Gamespot: 4 / 10
http://www.gamespot.com/ryse-son-of-rome/
"You are not entertained. Ryse is all sizzle and no steak, a stunning visage paired with a vapid personality."

EuroGamer: 5 / 10
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-21-ryse-son-of-rome-review
"There's no brains, no muscle, no fibre beneath Ryse's extravagantly engineered good looks - this game rings loud but hollow."

Polygon: 6 / 10
http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/21/5128888/ryse-son-of-rome-xbox-one-review
"Ryse has all the guts of next-gen — often quite literally — but none of the glory."

Destructoid: 5 / 10
http://www.destructoid.com/review-ryse-son-of-rome-265770.phtml
"An exercise in apathy, neither Solid nor Liquid. Not exactly bad, but not very good either. Just a bit 'meh,' really."

SteamOS sounds exactly like Microsoft's strategy of embracing, extending, and then extinguishing open standards.

When almost your entire business model of PC gaming is built on top of an operating system you think is a catastrophe, I don't think it is unreasonable to look for alternatives. Especially if you've been quoted already as saying the opposite.

"We'll come out with our own and we'll sell it to consumers by ourselves," Newell continued. "That'll be a Linux box, [and] if you want to install Windows you can. We're not going to make it hard. This is not some locked box by any stretch of the imagination."

"I think there's a strong temptation to close the platform. If people look at what they can accomplish when they can limit competitors' access to their platform, they say, "Wow, that's really exciting." Even some of the people who have open platforms, like Microsoft, get really excited by the idea that Netflix has to pay them rent in order to be on the Internet.

"I don't think that's a very attractive future," said Newell, adding, "Now we have to start finding ways that we can continue to make sure there are open platforms.

Too slow for games, you know. Better to run Windows 98SE.

Win2k was too slow for games? Got a citation for this? XP was built on the same NT-kernel as W2k and had the same DirectX-support IIRC.

Come to think of it, mainly people didn't use Windows 2000 because it was expensive and PCs came with either Windows 98SE or Windows ME. Also, those were earlier days for DirectX. Windows XP had newer DirectX. I don't think Windows 2000 came with DirectX.

I've never been much of a gamer. Google gives me this reference for benchmarks where 98SE ran better than 2k. Apparently, the main problem was driver support, again.

Nintendo dragged its feet in the move to HD and is paying the price. They underestimated the time and money expense, and now their first-party releases are behind. On top of that, there's barely been any marketing for the Wii U, which has a name that implies it's an accessory for the Wii rather than a new console. The console's tablet controller doesn't offer anything that people's existing smartphones and iPads can't do better. It was likely released in reaction to the iPad (Nintendo stated in 2010 that Apple is their biggest threat). With the lack of hardware power and user base, there's nothing with which to court third-party developers, who are focused instead on the more powerful consoles coming out later this year.

Nintendo's stronghold remains handheld gaming. However, even that is under threat from smartphones. On top of what Android already supports, iOS 7 will ship with native physical controller APIs, and Apple is working with hardware manufacturers to release official attachments and wireless controllers. While the 3DS certainly won't disappear, it will be interesting to watch how well it fares among adult gamers when physical controllers become commonplace in the iPhone accessory aisle.

Down to 7.7 million at the end of the second quarter according to Eurogamer this morning.

well, it have been confirmed that the ps4 will not need internet connectivity at all, so games cannot require key registration.

source

*click* 404..... :o can't tell if Sarcasm or Sony....

Sorry, extra character at the end, there you go, sports ,corrected link

well, it have been confirmed that the ps4 will not need internet connectivity at all, so games cannot require key registration. source

Nice blank page, there.

well, it have been confirmed that the ps4 will not need internet connectivity at all, so games cannot require key registration. source

"1080p is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1080 horizontal lines of vertical resolution[1] and progressive scan, as opposed to interlaced, as is the case with the 1080i display standard. The term usually assumes a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9, implying a resolution of 1920×1080" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080p

So technically its 1080p just for having 1080 vertical lines of resolution (although yes, i can see how 384x1080 would be pretty silly).

For the full version for anyone who stumbles across this convo though: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-gran-turismo-5-tech-analysis

Seriously, do you remember what MS under Bill was like? Launch XP was dreadful. WindowsME. WinCE.

Xbox 360 is a huge success for Microsoft, no matter what the haters say. See this just today:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-12-xbox-360-worldwide-sales-top-76-million

Oh wow...that means anybody with an Athlon triple or better ought to have no problem playing the next gen games since Bobcat was AMD's answer to the Atom and isn't a very powerful chip at all. Hell even the link I found on the PS4 notes that the Jaguar is an "entry level laptop and tablet chip".

Don't get me wrong, I have an E350 based netbook and wouldn't give it up for the world but one does have to accept some limitations when it comes to the bobcat design. Sure it just sips power but on the flipside its meant to have the GPU take a good chunk of the load off, I just don't see how with even 8 of those chips they are gonna be doing the heavy physics that people expect in modern games. Maybe they'll have a dedicated physics chip? In any case i'm glad i built the boys a new quad and hexacore as they should have no problem keeping up with modern games, i'll just have to switch out their HD4850s in a few months for HD7770s and all will be golden.

On the consoles, you end up with the problem Robert Pelloni had when he tried to bring his RPG Bob's Game to the Nintendo DS: only developers with "relevant video game industry experience", "financial stability", and a "dedicated secure office" are allowed onto the consoles.

I can imagine it would be hard for the DS. But the Xbox 360 and PS3 have indie and arcade sections for just these people! I really only pay attention to the 360 ones, but some Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) games have really made it big. From 2D platformers, to puzzle games, to 3D shooters, there are tons of great high quality games there. And they are all made by regular people. Here's the steps to get a game on XBLA.

That does cost tens of thousands though. But there is also an indie section where all it costs is $100 to make your game (plus your time of course). There are similar things for the PS3.
It still costs quite a bit of money, like all business ventures, but Microsoft really hit a success with XBLA.

I don't know if this is the top selling game or anything, but Fez made $2 million dollars back in May on XBLA.

And Mr. Pelloni also ...threatened to get the game released on other distribution platforms including Xbox Live Arcade, Steam, the iPhone, and the PlayStation Network. So there are many ways for an indie developer to break into the market.

Ouya has the strongest GPU that's on the tablet market, so your $80 Chinese tablet doesn't compete with it.

lol
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-how-powerful-is-tegra-3

"HDMI output on demanding titles causes noticeable frame-rate drops compared to running from the tablet screen"

"Grand Theft Auto 3, for example, regularly hits 15 frames per second on HDMI output"

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6112/qualcomms-quadcore-snapdragon-s4-apq8064adreno-320-performance-preview

Mali-400/MP4 is standard in super cheap chinese tablets (Rockchip RK3066)

Tegra SoCs have TERRIBLE GPU (think GeForce3 performance level), only CPU was fast when they were coming out, and that was due to Nvidia cramming 4 NOT designed by them, licensed from ARM, cores in there.

No, you shut the fuck up, since you started with the insults.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ninjagaiden2-faceoff-article

Same game by two teams who wanted to exploit their hardware to the maximum.
The results reflect the hardware differences :
X360 displays more enemies on screen and effects.
PS3 does better lighting.

Choose your favourite, but stop the fanboy rant. We're talking about games, not visual demos.

Eurogamer do some excellent "Digital Foundry" articles comparing PS3 and 360 versions of games (and where appropriate, PC and Wii-U versions as well). Let me find some links for you.

Far Cry 3
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Mass Effect 3
Darksiders 2

There are lots more if you want to look.

tl;dr version - in most cases, the graphical and performance differences between PS3 and 360 "top end" games are so miniscule that you need detailed frame-by-frame comparisons to spot them. Broadly speaking, what differences do exist show the 360 having an advantage on Unreal-tech games (which is a lot of the big shooters). There are a few games which do swing heavily in favour of one platform or another (eg. Skyrim towards the 360, Final Fantasy XIII towards the PS3), but these are the exception rather than the norm and tend to reflect a developer which is much more comfortable with one set of hardware than the other.

Neither console crushes the other in performance terms in the real world. End of.

Eurogamer do some excellent "Digital Foundry" articles comparing PS3 and 360 versions of games (and where appropriate, PC and Wii-U versions as well). Let me find some links for you.

Far Cry 3
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Mass Effect 3
Darksiders 2

There are lots more if you want to look.

tl;dr version - in most cases, the graphical and performance differences between PS3 and 360 "top end" games are so miniscule that you need detailed frame-by-frame comparisons to spot them. Broadly speaking, what differences do exist show the 360 having an advantage on Unreal-tech games (which is a lot of the big shooters). There are a few games which do swing heavily in favour of one platform or another (eg. Skyrim towards the 360, Final Fantasy XIII towards the PS3), but these are the exception rather than the norm and tend to reflect a developer which is much more comfortable with one set of hardware than the other.

Neither console crushes the other in performance terms in the real world. End of.

Eurogamer do some excellent "Digital Foundry" articles comparing PS3 and 360 versions of games (and where appropriate, PC and Wii-U versions as well). Let me find some links for you.

Far Cry 3
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Mass Effect 3
Darksiders 2

There are lots more if you want to look.

tl;dr version - in most cases, the graphical and performance differences between PS3 and 360 "top end" games are so miniscule that you need detailed frame-by-frame comparisons to spot them. Broadly speaking, what differences do exist show the 360 having an advantage on Unreal-tech games (which is a lot of the big shooters). There are a few games which do swing heavily in favour of one platform or another (eg. Skyrim towards the 360, Final Fantasy XIII towards the PS3), but these are the exception rather than the norm and tend to reflect a developer which is much more comfortable with one set of hardware than the other.

Neither console crushes the other in performance terms in the real world. End of.