Microsoft Relaxing Xbox One Kinect Requirements, Giving GPU Power a Boost?

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Microsoft Relaxing Xbox One Kinect Requirements, Giving GPU Power a Boost?

Posted by timothy on Sunday January 26, 2014 @10:00PM from the full-speed-ahead-damn-the-torpedos dept.

MojoKid writes "News from gaming insider Pete Doss is that Microsoft is mulling significant changes to the restrictions it places on developers regarding the Xbox One's GPU. Reportedly, some 10% of total GPU horsepower is reserved for the Kinect — 8% for video and 2% for voice processing. Microsoft is apparently planning changes that would free up that 8% video entirely, leaving just 2% of the system's GPU dedicated to voice input. If Microsoft makes this change, it could have a significant uplift on system frame rates — and it's not clear that developers would necessarily need to patch the architecture to take advantage of the difference."

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Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-26 22:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

Is a 10% boost going to take 720p to 1080p? Or 1080p 30 fps to 60 fps? Not likely. Fact remains that even moderate PCs today outperform both the PS4 and Xbox One at a similar price point. Toying with 8-10% GPU consumption is insignificant in the big picture.
1. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-01-26 22:24 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  " Toying with 8-10% GPU consumption is insignificant in the big picture."
  
  I suspect that MS (and Sony) have no expectation of pulling a miracle out of their hat, or doing anything about the fact that consoles always become increasingly unimpressive vs. PCs as their release period drags on. However, given that MS is currently facing a modest; but somewhat embarrassing, graphical prettiness gap vs. Sony, they have a certain incentive to free up what they can to ensure that any comparisons are as flattering as hardware choices far too late to change will allow them to be.
2. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-26 22:25 · Score: 1
  
  But maybe they could sell it as a DLC. That's pretty damn innovative if you ask me.
3. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Kartu · 2014-01-26 22:31 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Fact remains that even moderate PCs today outperform both the PS4 and Xbox One at a similar price point.
  
  I'm not quite sure about that.
  PS4 has a GPU that is between AMD 7850 / 7870, when building your PC you'd pay 150+ Euro for the GPU alone.
  Despite "common knowledge" that "PCs are faster", at least if we can trust Valve's statistics (about a third of their PC users run games on an integrated GPU!), no it isn't.
  7870 is a good mid range GPU these days even in PC world.
  One could argue about underwhelming CPU part , but 8Gb GDDR5 and software written to use most of it's 8 cores makes up for it.
4. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-01-26 22:43 · Score: 1
  
  Wasn't that IBM's "Golden Screwdriver" upgrade model, in the before times when big iron ruled the earth?
5. Re: Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-26 22:50 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  My 7850 plays games quit well at 1080p at settings higher than condoles. Are there actually any standardized benchmarks showing that it's real world performance is in between a 7850 and 7870?
6. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-26 22:50 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Bear in mind that prices for AMD GPUs are a little inflated at the moment because of the crypto mining craze.
  All the same, $150 sounds about right for the GPU in a mid-range gaming machine. Machines at that level are often built 'unbalanced' - a weaker CPU mated with a more expensive GPU, on the assumption that most games don't fully utilise the CPU. You only see serious investment on the CPU for higher end gaming machines or workstations.
7. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Firethorn · 2014-01-26 23:08 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Despite "common knowledge" that "PCs are faster", at least if we can trust Valve's statistics (about a third of their PC users run games on an integrated GPU!), no it isn't.
  Consider how many laptops are out there... My laptops have both integrated and dedicated GPUs, depending on when Steam's survey comes up they can get quite different results. For that matter I've been playing quite a few 'casual' games that shouldn't stress ANY CPU on my laptop.
  Also, to echo the AC - Source on the 7850/7870 thing? I know that all of my cards from the last 5 years handles 1080P rendering just fine.
  
  --
  I don't read AC A human right
8. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Kartu · 2014-01-26 23:31 · Score: 1
  
  If AMD GPU prices are inflated there sure must be a card from competitors, that is faster yet costs less.
  Care to name it?
9. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Lumpy · 2014-01-26 23:45 · Score: 1
  
  Which is why I am considering a PS4....
  I HATE Sony, and Microsoft's steaming turd is making me consider one.
  
  --
  Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
10. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by wonkey_monkey · 2014-01-26 23:53 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Or 1080p 30 fps to 60 fps?
  What really annoys me about this one is that plenty of games could happily run at 60fps for 80-90% of the time, but the developers don't want you thinking their game is slowing the system down when the action starts. So they just cap it to 30fps all the time for consistently crappy gameplay. I'd sooner do without a few effects.
  Bioshock on the PS3 springs to mind, only because they included an option to turn off the framerate cap.
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
11. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Gabest · 2014-01-27 00:06 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  The funny part is, even after 8 years the release of xbox 360, we still can't run all our games in 1080p.
12. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-27 00:13 · Score: 1
  
  I normally hate Sony as well which is why I let my old roommate buy the PS3 but open your mind for the PS4 but don't be gullible. The guy that is now heading the PS4 department is no longer a snobby CEO that knows nothing about games but a game developer that goes back, way back and knows how to make the PS4 successful. I'm mostly a PC gamer myself but I think keeping an eye on the PS4 would be a good idea :)
13. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Xest · 2014-01-27 00:56 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I have all new gen consoles (Wii U, PS4, and Xbox One) and frankly think it's silly to get pissy about one or the other. The Xbox One isn't a pile of turd because even if it doesn't give you 1080p 60fps on everything it still has great games like Dead Rising 3 which gives you many tens of hours of some of the best gameplay going that you just can't get anywhere else. Similarly the Wii U seems all but dead, but Pikmin 3 was my favourite game of last year, and the likes of Lego City Undercover and Super Mario 3D World were excellent so I really couldn't give a shit about how crap the hardware supposedly is.
  Just figure out what games you like and buy whichever console has them. Most of the rest of what you read is just FUD, all the stuff about Kinect not being unpluggable and so forth was bollocks, you can, turn it off, unplug it, and throw it out the window if you feel like it and everything is fine. Both the PS4 and X1 have their quirks right now, the X1 is missing some UI functionality that the 360 had which is stupid and annoying, whilst the PS4's support for parties and online gaming is still worse than that of the 360s which is embarassing given it was the biggest criticism of the PS3 and they should've sorted that shit out by now. Despite these sorts of things it's stupid to say one is better than the other, sure BF4 runs at a slightly higher resolution, but it's also got less good exclusives - there are pros and cons to either system. If you're only getting one you just have to figure out which has the best ratio of pros to cons, but to me the biggest deciding factor would probably be the exclusives. I'm not into The Order, whilst Ryse and Dead Rising 3 were exactly my type of thing, but the PS4 is getting a new Uncharted game so it's really what sort of game you prefer, and ignore all the other bullshit, because it's exactly that, bullshit.
  Honestly, the only thing I really hate about the PS4 and X1 is they both seem to have been trying to compete for who can make their console look the most retardedly like a 1980s VHS recorder. I think Microsoft just about won that one, but it was a pretty fucking close call.
14. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Anonymous+Cowled · 2014-01-27 00:59 · Score: 2
  
  Which is why I am considering a PS4....
  I HATE Sony, and Microsoft's steaming turd is making me consider one.
  You do realise that you could... you know, just not buy either? It's not like you have to buy one or the other or your dick will fall off.
15. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by ZenMatrix · 2014-01-27 01:04 · Score: 2
  
  This isn't exactly on topic, but the reason I have a console is to play games that everyone is on equal footing. With PCs your generally pay for better performance, its ALOT more easier to cheat, and you have a bigger chance of running into problems due to incompatability. The only advantage you could really have on console is a better internet connection but lately that seems to be more of a handicap. Now choosing between the major consoles, I can't really consider nintendo based on the library of games that I like to play. I've had a xbox 360 for awhile and have been "considering" and xbox one just because its what my gamer friends have. I think thats a big consideration for most people, personally I'd rather have a PS4 because of some of the exclusives they have, but I buy games to play with people I know. In general I'm happy to see them trying to get more out of the system without paying more, unlike Sony in the past took out features that you already paid for.
16. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Wootery · 2014-01-27 01:17 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Sorry. I'm an Nvidia man, and I always will be.
  Apology accepted. Accepting you have a problem is the first step out of fanboyism.
17. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by SQLGuru · 2014-01-27 01:44 · Score: 1
  
  While I agree that a PC that costs the same as a console is generally more performant, one of the benefits of the console world is that the upgrade cycle (in other words frequency of cash outlay) is a lot longer. In PC gaming, you are likely spending on average $500/year to keep up. In the console world, you spend once every 6 years or so. For those of us on a tighter budget, knowing that if I buy a console near the beginning of the cycle, I will still be getting similar performance near the end of the cycle. Game developers can target a known platform and optimize accordingly.
18. Re: Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by AvitarX · 2014-01-27 01:44 · Score: 1
  
  For me, the PS3s killer feature was the $60/year play station plus membership.
  Lots of decent games for free (a handful of indie games, x-com when it was still $40 and BioShock infinite when $30 come to mind off the top of my head). I have all the games o can play for a very low price.
  
  --
  Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
19. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-27 01:45 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Yes, that's the answer to everything. Don't like our government, just leave the USA. Screw friends and family, vote with your wallet! Teach us how to punish ourselves to make these big corps feel bad, Obi-Wan.
  Yes, thank you for drawing the obvious much-needed parallels between government corruption, family abandonment, corporate greed, and simply not wanting to buy a fucking video game console. I especially liked the part where NOT lunging to play the latestest and greatestest games as soon as possible was somehow interpreted as self-punishment rather than the lack of a socially crippling addiction it really is.
20. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by JDG1980 · 2014-01-27 02:14 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Bear in mind that prices for AMD GPUs are a little inflated at the moment because of the crypto mining craze.
  Price inflation is mostly affecting Tahiti (7950/7970/280X) and Hawaii (290/290X). The Pitcairn-based cards (7850/7870/270/270X) haven't moved much. The deals aren't as good as they were in the run-up to Christmas, but that's true of just about everything else, not just AMD video cards.
  The 7870 always had a street price of a bit under $200; the 2GB 7850 was usually around $150, with the 1GB version somewhat less (but not in much demand). I paid $179.99 for my 7870 and thought it was a pretty good deal.
21. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Iceykitsune · 2014-01-27 02:54 · Score: 1
  
  or get a WiiU
  
  --
  GENERATION 24: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
22. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 02:59 · Score: 1
  
  Are you the dumbass who thought that putting Cell into PS3 was a brilliant idea? You sure sound like him.
23. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 03:00 · Score: 1
  
  Most people do not buy PC for gaming. Those who do however typically do spend money on discreet GPU.
24. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by tepples · 2014-01-27 04:01 · Score: 1
  
  To play all three consoles' exclusives, you have to spend three times that much every 2 years.
25. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by geminidomino · 2014-01-27 04:24 · Score: 1
  
  knows how to make the PS4 successful
  Considering that "how to make [console] successful" seems, these days, to universally include the same moves that made Sony's treatment of PS3 owners so despicable, I'm afraid I'll need to see a binding "What we're going to do differently" list before they get another chance.
26. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by tlhIngan · 2014-01-27 04:47 · Score: 2
  
  I own both the PS4 and the Xbone from launch.
  I have to admit, I don't think graphics are really "it" anymore - 720p on Xbone vs. 900p on PS4? (Yes, on BF4, it doesn't run 1080p either on PS4 - 1600x900).
  Both consoles are doing relatively well - and outselling the Wii U (with a one year head start) in global shipments (I wouldn't be surprised if just a couple of months since launch, both Xbone and PS4 have outsold Wii U in global sales).
  In fact, the big problem with both PS4 and Xbone is the software is extremely immature. They're really just beta products at the moment, and suffering from launch day blues. Heck, the PS4 has a save game corruption bug that no one is sure what the cause is - other than save games get slowly corrupted until you end up with an error.
  (And PS+ cloud saves won't save you here unless you only did manual sync - otherwise the corrupted save may migrate to your cloud saves and thus losing it all. The fix involves reinitializing the console (which loses all data), but even that isn't fixing it for some).
  In the end, it's actually in everyone's interest to just go with the flow, and buy whatever one feels they have the most fun on. Because right now, both Sony and Microsoft have shown a willingness to screw everyone as if they were the only game in town.
  Heck, even some launch features are no more (Sony has delayed Blu-Ray 3D now to "indefinite" from "available at launch" because Microsoft hasn't announced a date on when they'd support it. Then the whole MP3 thing, and both have screwiness in the UI...).
  And no, technical measurebating is not a driving factor. Because the PS3 was supposed to be technically superior to the Xbox360 in many ways in the last generation.
27. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by geminidomino · 2014-01-27 05:05 · Score: 1
  
  In PC gaming, you are likely spending on average $500/year to keep up.
  What the hell are you doing to your kit? If you blow $500 on a video card, you're doing pretty good for probably half a decade. Hell, you can get 3 years out of a sub-$200 last-gen card.
  Yeah, PC gaming does have it's disadvantages vs consoles - some of the most onerous DRM in the industry, for starters (even everyone's darling Steam is worse than anything on a disc-based console game), but that claim was just bull. "PC Gaming" is not, and never has been, synonymous with "bleeding edge."
28. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Lumpy · 2014-01-27 05:31 · Score: 1
  
  No it's a steaming pile of Turd because it is no different than a Xbox360. They had one at best buy playing the same game across both (Battlefield 4) and there was ZERO difference.
  Even the bugfest that is BF4 had the same bugs across both platforms. For it's price it should be "OMFG! THIS IS AMAZING!"
  
  --
  Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
29. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by badboy_tw2002 · 2014-01-27 05:51 · Score: 1
  
  BF4 on Xbox1 has 64 player online gameplay vs. 24 on Xbox 360.
30. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Lumpy · 2014-01-27 07:37 · Score: 1
  
  Oh boy, more screaming 8-13 year olds spewing nothing but profanity and racisim while yelling like complete idiots.
  
  --
  Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
31. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by badboy_tw2002 · 2014-01-27 08:55 · Score: 1
  
  If you have public voice chat on you're doing it wrong.
32. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by exomondo · 2014-01-27 09:36 · Score: 1
  
  Teach us how to punish ourselves to make these big corps feel bad, Obi-Wan.
  Yes punish yourself by not buying a new game console!
33. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by exomondo · 2014-01-27 09:47 · Score: 1
  
  In many cases (as far as gaming systems are concerned) PCs are more powerful than consoles. The issue is that games cannot fully exploit that power because developers have to code to higher level abstractions to deal with the differences between systems, you can't rely on a specific speed of CPU, GPU, RAM, video RAM, bus, etc... and you can't rely on a specific amount of CPU cache, CPU cores, RAM, video RAM, GPU ALUs, etc... you can't rely on a specific architecture (exact supported instruction set) of CPU or GPU or the capabilities of that GPU. Then there is the operating system overhead and the graphics drivers that have to provide schedulers to manage multiple processes accessing GPU at once.
  In a console you know all of this - or at least have a baseline - so it is obviously much easier to optimize software for a system when you know exactly what that system is.
34. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Wootery · 2014-01-27 11:06 · Score: 1
  
  Name-calling and ad-populum don't help you. Anyway:
  
  On the contrary, I don't have a problem.
  Yeah? Then why:
  
  I'm an Nvidia man, and I always will be
  
  Regarding the drivers: I've not had any problems on my Windows 7 64 bit. Haven't tried Linux on that machine though, so I can't comment there.
35. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by SQLGuru · 2014-01-27 12:40 · Score: 1
  
  By average of $500 / year, I mean over the six year period that corresponds to the lifespan of a console. Year one when you buy a machine. Year two when you upgrade the video card. Year three when you upgrade the CPU and RAM. Year four when you upgrade the motherboard. Etc. Over a six year period, you'll easily spend $3,000 on gaming equipment.....probably more.
36. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by geminidomino · 2014-01-27 12:54 · Score: 1
  
  Holy crap, that's not even close. You're still working on the flawed premise that, assuming you even DO those upgrades, which is hardly a given, you're doing them with bleeding edge parts.
37. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by blackraven14250 · 2014-01-27 14:09 · Score: 1
  
  It's really just that card in particular from AMD, and not others, that are affected by the price spike due to Bitcoin mining. That card is already old news to gamers.
38. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by Xest · 2014-01-27 20:57 · Score: 1
  
  What the fuck are you on about? I had BF4 on the 360 and used the Â£10 trade in deal for the One and there's a massive difference both graphically (it runs higher resolution and higher FPS for starters, but also has higher res textures, more particle effects, better lighting etc.) and in terms of the number of players in multiplayer and so forth.
  I think you need your eyes and brain testing if you can't see these things and understand that 64 > 24.
  BF4 has the same bugs across all platforms, it's just badly developed, but that says nothing about the relative merits of the PS4, 360, PS3, PC, X1. By your logic the PC is a shit platform because if you turn the graphics down it looks worse than the 360 and has the same bugs, but that's not exactly a rational argument is it?
39. Re:Still lightyears off of today's PC hardware by DiEx-15 · 2014-01-28 05:59 · Score: 1
  
  Fact remains that even moderate PCs today outperform both the PS4 and Xbox One at a similar price point.
  Yeah. In the same way a Ferrari 458 outperforms a standard run-of-the-mill family car.
  
  However, there are far more family cars out on the roads than Ferrari 458s. Mostly because of the fact nobody buys a 458 for family trips, commutes to work, and pick up/drop off kids from school.
  
  The same is true for PCs vs Consoles. Most people buy PCs for multiple uses (work, business, Failbooking, etc.) and buy consoles for games. PC Game machines is only a niche market that caters to those small number of people that play PC games. Considering that most people don't want to or have the knowledge to upgrade some part inside the machine every week or two to play some game that alleges will "revive PC games" (How many times have we heard this? Enough for me to just shake my head and walk away to be honest) only weeks later for it to come out on PS3/PS4 or XBox 360/ XBox One.
  
  Consoles were never designed to compete with PCs as far as power goes because they are fixed in specs. Even these new consoles are just an upgrade from their predecessor. However, most people buy the consoles strictly for its gaming capacities and couldn't care less about its performance compared to a similar costing PC. People stick with consoles because they know they won't have to buy new hardware parts every time the minimum requirements for a specific game goes up.
Make speech actually work! by whois · 2014-01-26 22:31 · Score: 2

I wish they would devote 8-10% of their resources to making their voice recognizer worth a damn. It was hilariously bad on xbox 360 and then I watched some xbox one launch parties and saw what a travesty it still was.
1. Re:Make speech actually work! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-01-26 22:48 · Score: 1
  
  It makes you wonder how much it would have cost MS to purchase some sort of specialty 'embedded/fixed function' license to, say, Dragon...
  
  A full copy, without academic pricing or anything, (and get your checkbook ready if you need the supplements for a specific jargon set like law or medicine...) is pretty pricey; but you'd think that they'd be willing to license the same core for substantially less so long as they were assured that it would be useful only for providing voice commands to games and such, rather than competing with the rest of their product line. NIH, perhaps.
2. Re:Make speech actually work! by CronoCloud · 2014-01-27 00:41 · Score: 2
  
  There have been games that used "embedded Dragon", the PS2's SOCOM series for example, 12 years ago.
Apples vs Apples by tuppe666 · 2014-01-26 22:43 · Score: 5, Informative

Fact remains that even moderate PCs today outperform both the PS4 and Xbox One at a similar price point.
Not in your or mine wildest dreams
The PS4 from Wikipedia "The CPU consists of two quad-core Jaguar modules totaling 8 x86-64 cores. The GPU consists of 18 compute units to produce a theoretical peak performance of 1.84 TFLOPS. The system's GDDR5 memory is capable of running at a maximum clock frequency of 2.75 GHz (5500 MT/s) and has a maximum memory bandwidth of 176 GB/s. The console contains 8 GB of GDDR5 memory" for US$399.99, €399.99, £349.99
vs
For just the base unit of the PC for the same price http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Ins... Processor: Intel® Pentium® processor G2030 (3M Cache, 3.0 GHz), Memory (RAM): 4GB DDR3 SDRAM, 1600MHz-1X4GB, Storage (hard drive): 500GB Hard Drive, 3.5", 7200rpm, SATA, Optical Drive: DVD+/-RW Tray Load Drive, 16X, SATA Color: Black
I am a bit tired of these comments being modded up in the hope of PC gaming making a comeback.
1. Re:Apples vs Apples by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-26 22:59 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Radeon 7770 (~1.3Tflops) roughly matches XBONE @ $109
  Radeon 7859 (~1.8tflops) roughly matches PS4 @ $169 (139 with MIR)
  The 8 core Jaguar is crap. Any dual or quad core CPU will probably run circles around it, including Core2Quads. Take a 5+ year old PC, toss in a new GPU and your done.
2. Re:Apples vs Apples by Kartu · 2014-01-26 23:18 · Score: 1
  
  AMDs own CPUs would run circles around Jaguar, single core performance is not the point of that CPU.
  Although its cores are weak, it has 8 of them (running on a faster RAM that PCs get) and while PC game developers might not care, console developers suddenly do.
3. Re:Apples vs Apples by Mashiki · 2014-01-26 23:41 · Score: 1
  
  Let's be realistic. The only reason why it gets a boost like that is because of the GDDR5 in the system, you strip that out and it's slower than a PC built 5 years ago. But, your example is rather flawed, being that "buying a name" means you're gutting 20% of your upgrade budget.
  And PC gaming has been killing consoles for the last 5 years, in fact it takes the wii, xbox and PS3 to equal the sales on the PC generally speaking. Not only that but in the last year and half, it's been a case of "the console is dead. Long live the PC." Not that the PC went anywhere, and the doomsayers have been calling that it's dead since the mid-90's.
  
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  Om, nomnomnom...
4. Re:Apples vs Apples by RyuuzakiTetsuya · 2014-01-27 00:00 · Score: 1
  
  PC built five years ago? On what budget?
  That isn't relevant if spent a lot of money then...
  Furthermore, PC gaming hasn't been killing console gaming. What's been killing it has been the flattening of genres. Everything now is some kind of generic 1st or 3rd person shooter. And THAT is thanks to the much lauded PC Gaming Master Race.
  Gross.
  Also I'd like to see some recipts on that figure about sales. VGchartz shows Bioshock infinite sold 5 times as more on ps3 and 360 combined than on Windows. Not just that but with persistent steam sales devaluing gaming, I just don't see 2k doing better in terms of raw revenue either.
  See: http://www.vgchartz.com/game/4...
  
  --
  Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
5. Re:Apples vs Apples by Sockatume · 2014-01-27 01:14 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I'll be impressed if you can add 8GB GDDR5 and the rest of a SFF PC for under $330.
  
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  No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
6. Re:Apples vs Apples by Wootery · 2014-01-27 01:19 · Score: 1
  
  I was with you up until
  
  in the hope of PC gaming making a comeback
  As far as I can tell, PC gaming is doing just fine.
7. Re:Apples vs Apples by hibiki_r · 2014-01-27 01:39 · Score: 1
  
  There's plenty of weird, inventive games out there... They just happen to be mostly indie, so they are released for the PC Master Race.
  Big developers are the ones sitting on their asses, and that has more to do with the fact that modern graphics are expensive as hell than anything else. Hard to sink 50-200 million on a game that you don't expect to have a very broad appeal
8. Re:Apples vs Apples by AmiMoJo · 2014-01-27 01:44 · Score: 1
  
  The 8 core Jaguar is crap. Any dual or quad core CPU will probably run circles around it, including Core2Quads.
  Not really. These days games are heavily threaded. You have a deadline to meet, say 16ms if you want 60fps. Having 8 cores and a modern memory controller that to feed them is going to work much better than having two or four slightly faster cores. And actually for the kinds of processing that games do a Core2 is going to be slower, clock for clock.
  Also keep in mind that consoles will always perform better than an equivalent PC in any well programmed game, since the game can be tailored and optimized specifically for a single hardware platform. A shader can be optimized specifically for the console's GPU, for example, instead of having to be generic and optimized by the driver at run-time on a PC.
  
  --
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  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
9. Re:Apples vs Apples by TWiTfan · 2014-01-27 02:07 · Score: 1
  
  That just gave me the idea for a game: "Euro-Pirates Vs. Space Pirates."
  
  --
  The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
10. Re:Apples vs Apples by JDG1980 · 2014-01-27 02:17 · Score: 1
  
  Furthermore, PC gaming hasn't been killing console gaming. What's been killing it has been the flattening of genres. Everything now is some kind of generic 1st or 3rd person shooter. And THAT is thanks to the much lauded PC Gaming Master Race.
  Agreed. FPS is played out; can we please move on and do something else?
11. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 02:48 · Score: 1
  
  There is no point. CPU part isn't memory bandwidth-constrained. PS4 does GDDR5 as a way of unlocking more memory bandwidth for GPU which sits on the same memory bus as CPU.
  DDR3 hooked to a decent GPU is going to be memory bus constrained in some scenarios. This will likely become a problem for XB1. It's fine for CPUs for a long time to come however - I did some testing and I ran DDR3 at 1ghz and 2.1ghz. No visible difference when paired with my massively overclocked i5 2500k which would absolutely crush this gen's console CPUs.
  PC GPUs have had GDDR5 at higher speeds than PS4 for a long time now, sitting on dedicated memory bus hooked to GPU. Hell, my trusty GTX560Ti has it, and that one is several years old.
12. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 02:48 · Score: 1
  
  Questionable. Nowadays consoles are no longer dedicated gaming machines - they run heavy operating systems that do a lot of stuff on the background, just like PC operating systems do.
13. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 02:57 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, developers appear to have largely stopped focusing on consoles lately and are now spreading their focus pretty evenly between platforms. Most AAA games now get simultaneous releases on PC unlike before when we had to wait months or even years for console games to be ported, many of the older console games that dev said would never be ported got ported, and so on.
14. Re:Apples vs Apples by Guspaz · 2014-01-27 04:24 · Score: 1
  
  I suspect that the PS4/XB1 8-core processor probably has performance on par with a high-end dual core Haswell i3. If memory serves, AMD's Jaguar cores perform something like half what Intel's do clock-for-clock, and they're running them at half the clockspeed.
  The choice to go with AMD likely had more to do with AMD's willingness to design custom solutions rather than any technical superiority on their part. Intel could probably have whipped up a custom solution with more GPU execution units if they wanted to, but they don't seem to have any interest in such things. And the GPU front is definitely one place that AMD has the edge on Intel.
15. Re:Apples vs Apples by KingMotley · 2014-01-27 05:09 · Score: 1
  
  Your GTX 560Ti has 128GB/s worth of memory bandwidth, while the PS4 has 176GB/s. 176GB/s would put it between a GTX 660 and a GTX 670. Sure there is better, but it's still very respectable, and much better than the graphics card in the average PC.
16. Re:Apples vs Apples by KingMotley · 2014-01-27 05:18 · Score: 1
  
  VGChartz is obviously very very inaccurate. The list WoW: Burning Crusades at having sold 4 million copies, when blizzard said there was over 18 million active accounts at the time.
17. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 06:24 · Score: 1
  
  Shared between CPU and PC. Mine is dedicated to the GPU.
  And when it comes to actual GPU rather than just its memory bus, it's just plain subpar.
18. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 06:25 · Score: 1
  
  Meant to type out CPU and GPU obviously...
19. Re:Apples vs Apples by jkflying · 2014-01-27 06:48 · Score: 1
  
  Also, a single Jaguar core only uses something like 3mm^2 of die space. That leaves lots of space for GPU.
  
  --
  Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
20. Re:Apples vs Apples by schlachter · 2014-01-27 06:56 · Score: 1
  
  Don't forget controller, OS, antivirus, etc..
  
  --
  My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
21. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 07:48 · Score: 1
  
  None of these consume significant amount of the most important resource in gaming - GPU. On most systems, GPU will idle at around 1% on desktop use. On mine, openhardwaremonitor actually shows 0% GPU usage - because it's so low, it gets rounded down. On 2D desktop without aero, it may no even initialize GPU for anything other than 2D acceleration.
  Xbox reserves 8% of GPU just for kinect, and another 2% for voice recognition. That's 10% overhead that does not exist on PC. Overhead that hits GPU, the thing that is the main constraint on gaming! It sounds insane to design your gaming centric platform to actually have more overhead for non-gaming related stuff than a general use PC.
  Yet that is what they did. Crazy.
22. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 07:51 · Score: 1
  
  Not really sure if that's the only thing. Games like Warframe, Hawken and MechWarrior online are PC based F2P and they have very good looking graphics. And they certainly do not have those kinds of budgets behind them.
23. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 07:53 · Score: 1
  
  It's pretty close to being correct actually. Of those active accounts, many are in China and Taiwan which don't sell boxed copies, but play hours. It was assessed that only around 4-5 million accounts total out of 13 million or so when WoW peaked around Wrath of the Lich King were in areas where business model included selling boxed copy of expansion + monthly.
24. Re:Apples vs Apples by Darinbob · 2014-01-27 08:43 · Score: 1
  
  It's somewhat irrelevant what is faster or not. PC gamers will never use consoles, console gamers will never use PCs.
25. Re:Apples vs Apples by Mashiki · 2014-01-27 08:43 · Score: 1
  
  PC built five years ago? On what budget?
  Roughly? About $700. So yeah, consoles haven't gone up and anywhere.
  Also, VGchartz is uselss. It doesn't count digital sales, only retail sales.
  
  --
  Om, nomnomnom...
26. Re:Apples vs Apples by mythosaz · 2014-01-27 10:08 · Score: 1
  
  $550. Now all you need is a wireless controller, a Kinect, and free labor
27. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 10:43 · Score: 1
  
  It's the exact opposite. Consoles are making a vastly suboptimal choice in bundling CPU and GPU on the same die to cut costs. It's far more efficient to have a powerful GPU with its own fast dedicated memory than have it share memory and die with a CPU.
28. Re:Apples vs Apples by exomondo · 2014-01-27 10:52 · Score: 1
  
  But he is right that console developers target a GPU where they know its architecture, instruction set, memory amount, memory bandwidth, number of ALUs, ALU clocks, etc... (in addition to knowing that about all the other elements in the system that the GPU is connected to) and knowing this means you can develop much more efficient software and optimize for that hardware. On the PC side you don't know any of those things and even if you set a baseline for one of them you cant guarantee that it isnt offset by something else.
  For example you are going to take a very different approach to developing software for a high-clocked dual core CPU than you are for a low-clocked 8 core CPU and that's before you start to consider the architectural differences between them and all the other system components.
29. Re:Apples vs Apples by Wootery · 2014-01-27 10:59 · Score: 1
  
  Although its cores are weak, it has 8 of them (running on a faster RAM that PCs get) and while PC game developers might not care, console developers suddenly do.
  As I understand it, games still aren't that well parallelised. The lots-of-slow-cores architecture might be cheaper than few-fast-cores, though - maybe it's intended to pay off in the long run when games better utilise multicore.
30. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 12:43 · Score: 1
  
  Show me which games are CPU memory speed constrained.
  You won't be able to for a very simple reason. There aren't any. This is very clear and obvious and pointed out by countless hardware review and testing sites. Modern CPUs do not benefit from memory bandwidth increase because current DDR3 running at fairly low speeds of 1.3 and 1.6GHz are far more than needed. Even upping the speed to over 2.1GHz produces no significant results in games. This is because essentially all of them are constrained by GPU in the first place, and those few that are in fact CPU constrained are not constrained by CPUs memory bandwidth but actual CPU speed (example: WoW).
31. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 12:45 · Score: 1
  
  Which doesn't change the fact that modern PCs in game usage can utilize almost entire GPU, while consoles in fact cannot. The argument of "superior because there is no overhead on consoles but there is on PC" has been turned on its head this generation - it's the consoles that now have a big overhead in performance on the main bottleneck of the system - the GPU. PCs have almost none, and the classic overhead bottleneck of the PC, CPU/RAM does not constrain a significant amount of games any more, as most of them hit the GPU ceiling first.
32. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 12:49 · Score: 1
  
  It is as long as system bus is not the bottleneck. Right now and for foreseeable future, it is not. Raw GPU performance limits most games, and a few exceptions are limited by raw CPU power (such as WoW). There are effectively no notable games on the market as of typing this that are constrained by RAM speed or system bus of any decently modern PC.
  This renders the argument of potential inefficiencies completely void. We are talking about very specific practical applications (games) which have a known usage pattern that has very specific bottlenecks on the system that limit their speed.
33. Re:Apples vs Apples by exomondo · 2014-01-27 13:50 · Score: 1
  
  Which doesn't change the fact that modern PCs in game usage can utilize almost entire GPU, while consoles in fact cannot.
  Why can't they? Sure in this case of the xbox the game can only use 98% (which I would certainly characterize as "almost entire GPU") and that additional 2% is used for voice processing.
  
  PCs have almost none, and the classic overhead bottleneck of the PC, CPU/RAM does not constrain a significant amount of games any more, as most of them hit the GPU ceiling first.
  Of course they hit a GPU ceiling first, an architecture that makes buffer copies between resources so costly naturally results in avoiding buffer copies by overutilizing the GPU and underutilizing the CPU and main memory which is why in PC games the usage of resources is so unbalanced. It is not even worth considering offloading tasks from the GPU to CPU because you have no idea what your latency might be. It is much easier to effectively utilize all of your resources when you know what their capabilities are.
34. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 15:02 · Score: 1
  
  Now you're just being utterly braindead. Take a closer look at the tests. They are starting to see tiny improvements after they go way over 120FPS.
  I will ask again. Show me a game that is CONSTRAINED by memory. As in within FPS range that is actually meaningful to a gamer. Not a "well we have more FPS coming out of this than what expensive 120fps monitors can output, let's see if we can get the game CPU/memory capped at those numbers".
35. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 15:05 · Score: 1
  
  I've seen your examples. I now understand that you have no capability whatsoever to interpret the results. The idea behind the faux tests you see is that they push resolution as low as possible and quality as low as possible to artificially load the CPU and CPU memory bus.
  These have all the application in the real world as checking how a fast a car will go once you strip out everything except drivetrain and controls.
36. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 15:13 · Score: 1
  
  You answered your own question there. The entire article is about the fact that MS effectively coded requirement to reserve a certain amount of GPU into the XB1 OS. This amount is not released to the game running unless MS recodes the OS as it appears to be doing after understanding just how far behind all of the competition except Wii U they are this gen.
  It's also fairly interesting that you're suggesting offloading tasks from GPU to CPU, when in general the offloading goes in the opposite direction, both on consoles and in PC world. Consoles are talked about in the article, and PC games often offload things like physics calculations to GPU as much as possible (PhysX, various CUDA implementations and so on). There's little if any of things happening in opposite direction in both worlds.
37. Re: Apples vs Apples by KingMotley · 2014-01-27 15:23 · Score: 1
  
  Who buys boxed sets of PC games anymore? So by your own admission, VGcharts is very inaccurate for PC games where online sales can outsell boxed sets with a significant margin.
38. Re:Apples vs Apples by exomondo · 2014-01-27 15:58 · Score: 1
  
  The entire article is about the fact that MS effectively coded requirement to reserve a certain amount of GPU into the XB1 OS. This amount is not released to the game running unless MS recodes the OS as it appears to be doing
  Right, so what's this about consoles not being able to utilise the entire GPU? It seems by 'consoles' you meant the xbox one, and even then that - according to the article - won't be the case for long correct?
  
  It's also fairly interesting that you're suggesting offloading tasks from GPU to CPU, when in general the offloading goes in the opposite direction, both on consoles and in PC world.
  Most games these days are GPU bound so why would you offload to a resource that is being so heavily utilised?
  
  Consoles are talked about in the article, and PC games often offload things like physics calculations to GPU as much as possible (PhysX, various CUDA implementations and so on).
  Of course PCs offload to the GPU, because the tasks are often more suited to that architecture but the problem is as far as PCs are concerned you end up with a resource (CPU and main memory) that is under-utilised, you cannot effectively use that to support the GPU calculations because unlike consoles you don't know what the cost is to transfer data back and forth, you don't know what capabilities the CPU has (could be many low-clocked cores, few high-clocked cores, etc...), how fast the RAM is, how much CPU cache you have and how much there is so there are too many variables to work with. Console architecture is constant so you don't have to code to abstractions to support wide hardware variances which obviously results in more efficient implementations.
39. Re:Apples vs Apples by RyuuzakiTetsuya · 2014-01-28 01:37 · Score: 1
  
  so you spent nearly twice what it cost, and you still didn't get a controller out of the deal? Or even HDMI cables?
  Also, can you show me that games sell better on PCs?
  
  --
  Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
40. Re: Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-28 04:37 · Score: 1
  
  I do. I despise steam's complete lack of customer support.
41. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-28 04:42 · Score: 1
  
  Actually not so. Consider the modern consoles of this generation. They have a lot of features that run in the background while you play games.
  The main argument for consoles before was that they did not have any meaningful overhead because they were single-purpose machines, unlike PCs that ran a complex OS that had to take resources doing other things while you played a game.
  This is no longer true.
  As for offloading GPU tasks to CPU, there are several massive problems that make it completely not worth it, ranging from the fact that it's actually impossible to predict the GPU output in many tasks exactly (so if you for example offload a certain portion of the screen rendering to CPU software renderer, it may look distinctly different from the rest of the screen rendered by GPU) to the fact that CPUs are exceptionally terrible at GPU tasks, while GPUs are excellent at highly paralleliseable tasks that are often ran on CPU nowadays for legacy reasons.
  Finally the argument about "constant console architechture" has become fairly redundant this generation, because the base underlying architecture is largely the same as modern PCs. It's intended too, to ensure that consoles can capture more of the currently quickly growing PC market.
42. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-28 04:46 · Score: 1
  
  Ah yes, let's talk theory.
  Or not. I've specifically kept this discussion in the realm of practical applications. Theoretically you can find many problems with current setups. In real world on the other hand, what we have works just fine, and hardware testers have to do some seriously convoluted, completely unapplicable to real life situation simulation to get memory bandwith to constrain the game's fps.
  So yes, I suppose you could call me dense for not agreeing to the utterly braindead argument of "well if we totally remake the entire architecture of the computers and the way we code games, we could maybe get them to get memory speed dependent on current systems".
43. Re: Apples vs Apples by KingMotley · 2014-01-28 06:14 · Score: 1
  
  I hate driving 25 minutes each way, spending $10 in gas, wasting an hour of my life to get to the store to find out they either don't carry it, don't have it in stock yet, or is sold out. Or worse, getting home and then finding the media is bad.
  On the other hand, I love how after a system upgrade, or drive wipe, just check a few checkboxes and wait and all my games are back.
44. Re: Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-28 07:09 · Score: 1
  
  That's okay. I don't live in the US either, so I don't spend money on gasoline to go shopping. I walk or take a bus on my monthly pass.
  Also, boxes look good on my bookshelf.
45. Re:Apples vs Apples by exomondo · 2014-01-28 09:57 · Score: 1
  
  Consider the modern consoles of this generation. They have a lot of features that run in the background while you play games.
  I never said they didn't, that's not the point I'm making at all.
  
  As for offloading GPU tasks to CPU, there are several massive problems that make it completely not worth it, ranging from the fact that it's actually impossible to predict the GPU output in many tasks exactly (so if you for example offload a certain portion of the screen rendering to CPU software renderer
  No, I didn't suggest that. What console developers do is to not just offload as much of the CPU tasks to the GPU like on PCs, the reason for this is that we know what the CPU is capable of and what its limits are so we can effectively utilise it, whereas on PCs we do not know this and as such it is more effective to just say "get the best GPU you can buy and we'll push as much work to that as possible".
  
  Finally the argument about "constant console architechture" has become fairly redundant this generation, because the base underlying architecture is largely the same as modern PCs.
  By 'constant console architecture' I mean that the architecture is constant, obviously. That the hardware in one xbox is the same as that in another xbox, which is unlike PCs. That is where the key difference is between developing for consoles and developing for PCs.
  Just think about it for a minute, when you know exactly what architecture, instruction set, memory amount, memory bandwidth, number of ALUs, ALU clocks, CPU cores, CPU core clocks, etc... you have it is clearly easier to optimise and balance the load across those resources right? or do you disagree with that?
  On a PC developers don't know these things so it is easier to push as much of the load to the GPU and have the one key component to the system. This is also exactly the reason games get better over the lifetime of a console, because they are not just pushing everything onto the GPU, they are balancing the load across all the available resources.
46. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-28 10:17 · Score: 1
  
  I don't disagree with it. I merely point out that on current generation, advantage of these is going to be minimal because we already have unlocked all but the most arcane tricks for x86/amd64+radeon hardware.
  Knowing the specific single set of hardware will help, but not much as architecture in general is mostly well known. Fixing the specs to certain level is not that much of an advantage, especially when you consider that PC to which we're comparing will be far more powerful by the time that devs will need all those arcane tricks to squeeze power out of this generation of consoles.
47. Re:Apples vs Apples by exomondo · 2014-01-28 10:40 · Score: 1
  
  I don't disagree with it. I merely point out that on current generation, advantage of these is going to be minimal because we already have unlocked all but the most arcane tricks for x86/amd64+radeon hardware.
  Optimizations - yes to some degree - but on a PC you have many more abstractions to deal with the differences in hardware and drivers and so many unknowns that you simply cannot make optimizations for, consoles are much more deterministic because their hardware doesn't vary. Take one of the key technical differences between the XBox One and the Playstation 4, the xbox has 8GB of DDR3 main memory with a highspeed 32MB ondie ESRAM module, the playstation has 8GB of GDDR5. Now surely you understand that effective use of this configuration is a very import consideration in architecting games for these platforms right?
  
  Knowing the specific single set of hardware will help, but not much as architecture in general is mostly well known. Fixing the specs to certain level is not that much of an advantage, especially when you consider that PC to which we're comparing will be far more powerful by the time that devs will need all those arcane tricks to squeeze power out of this generation of consoles.
  The PC does become more powerful, but it is a case of throwing more hardware at the problem which is why for the most part the GPU ends up getting thrashed and most of the CPU cores are barely used at all. It is a flexible but inefficient platform because its configuration is inconsistent.
48. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-28 13:04 · Score: 1
  
  First of all, the current console hardware is built on modifications of existing PC design. As a result, they will likely inherit all the benefits, but also all the problems of a modern PC.
  Second, one console featuring a special caching feature to offset memory too slow for GPU is not really going to be popular. AAA games already cost too much, and it's likely that developers will simply ignore ESRAM on XB1 completely as several have already stated to be doing, while indies simply can't afford to produce heavily modified code for one system that would be required to take advantage of it. This has also been talked about to death, so we can scratch that one off the list.
  Lastly, the fact is that while PCs become more powerful, the consoles do not. So even if you go arguing that modern PCs are somehow monstrously more inefficient than modern PCs and happen to be correct, which appears to be extremely unlikely, PCs are already far more powerful than consoles that just came out. That means inefficiencies become irrelevant, as developers are always forced to target the lowest common denominator. So what is going to happen is that PCs will once again get vastly superior graphics, physics and other options that can be easily improved, while consoles will lag behind from the start. And this time, it's not cell or powerpc exotic stuff that have significant untapped potential - it's x86/amd64+radeon. Not very new radeon either, as these radeon chips are already a generation older than current gen at release.
  All in all, in reality outside theoretical bullshitting among us nerds console manufacturers did the only thing they really could - they made consoles so PC-like that cross platform development would become as cheap as possible. But as a result, developers will be both able to tap much more of the system at launch, and progress much less as system ages. Diminishing returns are the name of the game here. And as a result, consoles have largely become modified PCs - hell XB1 apparently runs a subset of direct3d again, and this time it likely shares libraries with windows ones due to same architecture. Which again grants it superior optimization out of the box due to familiar platform with familiar features - and significantly reduces optimization potential in the future.
  So even in a worst case scenario for PCs, consoles are in an awful position performance-wise. Consoles have morphed from exotic hardware based single purpose platform to basically living room PCs. Trying to argue that advantages that consoles of the old enjoyed in performance issues will carry over in spite of this is foolhardy.
49. Re:Apples vs Apples by exomondo · 2014-01-28 14:38 · Score: 1
  
  AAA games already cost too much, and it's likely that developers will simply ignore ESRAM on XB1
  Nope, just as they didn't ignore the 10MB EDRAM buffer on the 360.
  
  Consoles have morphed from exotic hardware based single purpose platform to basically living room PCs.
  Nope, the original XBox was basically PC hardware, the XBox360 was a PowerPC architecture (not much we didn't already know about that) with an AMD radeon-derived GPU.
  
  it's x86/amd64+radeon
  But unlike the PC version you actually know the architecture, instruction set, memory amount, memory bandwidth, number of ALUs, ALU clocks, CPU cores, CPU core clocks, etc... are you actually suggestion you cannot get a significant performance gain and efficient use of resources by knowing this? Really? You don't think a deterministic system is hugely advantageous for extracting performance?
  Explain to me why you think CPU and RAM make stuff all difference to performance on PC games, why do you think they sit mostly unused?
50. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-28 15:40 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think you understand. Several important developers specifically stated that they will not be able to afford to mess around with ESRAM. That was the reason why XB1 suddenly jumped to 8GB of RAM from 4 it was initially slated to go with.
  Also, we are not talking original XBOX. Please do not change the subject. Original XBOX both released and ended its life when console market was something completely different from what it is today, and had a completely different shelf life from its successor and the planned shelf life of current generation. It is completely unfit for any kind of comparison for these reasons.
  The comparable generation had powerpc for xbox and cell for ps line.
  Finally yes, I am suggesting exactly that because we know from all the developer comments that they are working with similar high-level instruction sets as ones that PC has - xbox uses modified direct3d and playstation uses modified opengl. You don't get to code "to the metal" on either system. And just knowing what you're addressing through high level API will not grant you massive advantages for the system where you already have significant experience coding for. So slight advantage, yes. Massive? Not by a long shot. This is the point of diminishing returns.
  Not to mention that PC gets a whole lot more leeway by giving the user control over what kind of quality he wants to display his game in, which also enables a significant shift of responsibility - dev is not directly responsible for crappy FPS if users runs game on low end hardware at too high settings with too many graphical features turned on, and users do not expect it either. Not so on consoles.
  This means that on PC, you just make basic things like resolution, anti-aliasing, filtering quality and various features like SSAO, bloom, motion blur, DoF and so on toggleable and leave it to the user to see what works on their specific setup. This is why even smaller devs can make free to play PC games that look incredible - games like Hawken, Warframe and so on. Notably the latter has been ported to PS4.
  On a final note, CPU and RAM make some difference in some games. A good example is WoW, which is still played actively by millions of players, which is completely CPU-constrained.
  Other games can also be CPU constrained in some cases. The difference is simply not as great as GPU in most cases because most games basically require a certain amount of CPU and beyond that, there's not really much that CPU can be used on beyond certain support tasks for GPU. GPU on the other hand can always be given a task of "render at higher resolution" or "higher level of anistropic filtering" and so on. A good example here is Witcher 2, which actually included and option of "uber rendering" which utterly killed performance on all but highest end machines in exchange for a small improvement in video quality. It's all a matter of choice in PC world.
  And then there's the whole "many of PC games never tax the machine to full potential because they are built for previous generation of consoles, which are downright ancient". Again, the constraint there is the lowest common denominator.
51. Re:Apples vs Apples by exomondo · 2014-01-28 16:00 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think you understand. Several important developers specifically stated that they will not be able to afford to mess around with ESRAM.
  Like who? And what exactly is so fundamentally different between the use of that and the 360 architecture?
  
  Also, we are not talking original XBOX. Please do not change the subject.
  You said they morphed from exotic hardware based single purpose platform which is untrue because the XBox was originally exactly that.
  
  Finally yes, I am suggesting exactly that because we know from all the developer comments that they are working with similar high-level instruction sets as ones that PC has - xbox uses modified direct3d and playstation uses modified opengl.
  Everybody knows it's a modified DX and OGL, but additionally we know what extensions they support. Lets take an example and see if you can answer it: Does the PC for example support zero buffer copies? And if so will use of them be beneficial? If you understand what this means you understand the impact this has on the ability to balance load between the CPU and GPU.
  
  You don't get to code "to the metal" on either system.
  Rubbish, you don't write a game in DirectX or OpenGL, they are just graphics APIs. There is no reason I can't write CPU assembly code or shader assembly code (in fact in production virtually all console shader code is hand optimized assembly).
  
  And just knowing what you're addressing through high level API will not grant you massive advantages for the system where you already have significant experience coding for.
  Where do you get the idea that you are restricted to a high-level API?
  
  And then there's the whole "many of PC games never tax the machine to full potential because they are built for previous generation of consoles, which are downright ancient". Again, the constraint there is the lowest common denominator.
  So ultimately if - as you mentioned - the key idea is porting then a powerful gaming PC is pointless anyway.
52. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-28 18:12 · Score: 1
  
  1. Pretty much every dev that got the dev kit after specs that included 4GB ram xb1 were released. It was a bit of a storm, as many devs were clearly pushing MS to get 8GB by going public with it.
  2. No, I was obviously talking about comparable generations. Cheap attempts at obvious subject change because it wasn't explicitly announced otherwise are indeed cheap.
  3. Which is why we can only rely on the devs who have the dev kits. And they were pretty unanimous in pushing for systems that are as close as possible to current PC for practical ease of developing for multiple platforms. This isn't a secret to anyone who has been following news for the last year or so.
  4. Where do you get the idea that they will let you code to the metal? Several devs stated that they in fact did want to code closer to the metal after announcement of Mantle, which followed explicit statements from both people with dev kits and demo units from sony and MS there will be no mantle backport and that devs will be coding in direct3d and opengl.
  P.S. Directx is not a graphics API. Direct3d is.
  5. Or you can view it as the glass half full - that powerful PC will enable you to run higher resolutions, with better textures, more graphical options with higher quality settings enabled and so on. All while remaining easier to code this generation, for same reasons why it's fairly easy to code the game for minimal requirements PC setup, and then add features for faster machines to use.
53. Re:Apples vs Apples by exomondo · 2014-01-28 18:23 · Score: 1
  
  1. Pretty much every dev that got the dev kit after specs that included 4GB ram xb1 were released. It was a bit of a storm, as many devs were clearly pushing MS to get 8GB by going public with it.
  Citation? Having additional RAM does not diminish the benefit of additional highspeed cache, show me a developer who has said that because clearly if such a person exists he/she is a complete idiot, which is why I'm inclined to believe you are making that up.
  
  2. No, I was obviously talking about comparable generations.
  So how do 2 consoles of comparable generations morph?
  
  3. Which is why we can only rely on the devs who have the dev kits. And they were pretty unanimous in pushing for systems that are as close as possible to current PC for practical ease of developing for multiple platforms.
  Citation?
  
  4. Where do you get the idea that they will let you code to the metal? Several devs stated that they in fact did want to code closer to the metal after announcement of Mantle, which followed explicit statements from both people with dev kits and demo units from sony and MS there will be no mantle backport and that devs will be coding in direct3d and opengl.
  Because we can write shader and native assembly.
  You make these vague claims about devs saying things but provide no evidence to support it. Also you failed to answer this question, it is one of the key points demonstrating how wrong you are which is why you avoided it so I'll ask it again:
  Does the PC for example support zero buffer copies? And if so will use of them be beneficial? If you understand what this means you understand the impact this has on the ability to balance load between the CPU and GPU.
54. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-29 09:20 · Score: 1
  
  I give up. You clearly see yourself as some kind of an expert, while having apparently spent last year living under proverbial rock in terms of gaming news. You grasp at straws like "will this kind of new type of approach be taken and will it change something" when industry specifically pushed for current PC-style system to be implemented as a console.
  We're not going to find common ground.
55. Re:Apples vs Apples by exomondo · 2014-01-29 09:39 · Score: 1
  
  I give up.
  I doubt that. I just know what I'm talking about, evidently you don't, in fact you can't even provide citation for any of your claims because you made them up. But even ignoring that it's very simple, and if you understand the subject matter you will be able to answer this question:
  Does the PC for example support zero buffer copies? And if so will use of them be beneficial? If you understand what this means you understand the impact this has on the ability to balance load between the CPU and GPU.
  Whilst there are many cases like this (bindless graphics is another), this is the first one that springs to mind and should be very simple for you to understand.
56. Re:Apples vs Apples by Luckyo · 2014-01-29 10:24 · Score: 1
  
  The reason why I give up is because you blindly refuse to see the forest for the trees. "Why doesn't it support feature X that would make it so much easier to load balance?" is the question no one is asking. Because that would increase development costs.
  The question everyone was and still is asking is "how can we make development cheaper? How can we make consoles even more like each other and PC?"
  Hence "you are living under proverbial rock".
57. Re:Apples vs Apples by exomondo · 2014-01-29 15:07 · Score: 1
  
  The reason why I give up is because you blindly refuse to see the forest for the trees. "Why doesn't it support feature X that would make it so much easier to load balance?" is the question no one is asking. Because that would increase development costs.
  Wrong! These features were developed exactly for game developers in partnership with AMD.
  
  The question everyone was and still is asking is "how can we make development cheaper? How can we make consoles even more like each other and PC?"
  Rubbish, nobody is asking that as is proven by your lack of citation for every single one of your claims, you're just a liar.
Because mathematically ... by Ihlosi · 2014-01-26 22:46 · Score: 3, Informative

... the algorithms use mostly the same kind of operations, which are are what GPUs specialize in.
Re:Why is a GRAPHICS Process Unit processing VOICE by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2014-01-26 22:50 · Score: 5, Informative

It might have something to do with the ability of GPUs to crank through FFTs like nobody's business...
Too little, too late by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-26 23:17 · Score: 1

Sorry, the computing power difference between PS4 and Xbox One is far higher than 8%:
http://www.extremetech.com/gam...
And most of the recent cross-platform games have visually confirmed that.
Not to mention that this is probably the first time in consoles' history that the most powerful console is even cheaper than its direct rival (!). And why is that? Because of the kinect that NOBODY wants, especially after the NSA scandal.
It's a marketing disaster from MS, no excuse. They basically made any possible mistake that they could have done.
1. Re:Too little, too late by stdarg · 2014-01-27 02:44 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  The vast majority of my time on the Xbone so far has been in the Amazon Instant Video app. It turns out that the Kinect is (or rather, could be) a great tool for occasional user input. The irritating thing about using the controller in this scenario is that it turns off after some period of inactivity (which is still long enough that your battery drains pretty quickly). So if you want to pause, or move on the next episode, you have to turn on the controller and let it sync wirelessly with the console, which takes a good 5 seconds.
  Enter the Kinect.. now you can say "xbox pause" and it pauses. "Xbox play" resumes. "Xbox stop... yes... episode 6" goes to the next episode.
  In theory.
  The problem is, seemingly at random, one of the commands won't work. It opens up the xbox voice control screen which has some generic commands. It might say something like "Play is not available from here" or something. After many minutes of frustrating experimentation, it turns out that sometimes you have to say "select" before giving the same command that may have worked 2 minutes ago. So it's like, "xbox pause" then a few minutes later "xbox play... xbox.. xbox select.. play." That's dumb.
  The other problem is the app needs to be intelligently designed for voice control. Amazon Instant Video is NOT one of these apps. The voice commands map pretty directly to the controller commands, but of course the controller is much faster than the voice recognition. A good example of where that's annoying is rewinding and fast forwarding. "Xbox rewind" starts rewinding.. at 2x speed. So if you want to skip back 30 seconds, it'll take 15 seconds to do so. That's no good. So you can say "faster" which increases the speed. Of course, it takes the xbox a second to recognize the command. If you're rewinding 10 minutes, you end up saying "faster [pause] faster [pause] faster [pause]." It's obscene sounding and it takes forever. Then you let it go for a few more seconds... and "play!" But the voice control just timed out, so it's still rewinding. "Xbox play!" and a second later it starts, but you rewound a few minutes too far. And it's too much of a bother to fast forward.
  But that's mostly the app's fault, not the Kinect's.
2. Re:Too little, too late by DrXym · 2014-01-27 04:08 · Score: 1
  
  I suspect nobody wants the Kinect because it was a useless gimmick that quickly wore out its welcome on the 360 and now its a useless gimmick on the XB1. Once bitten, twice shy. At least it was an optional extra for the 360. It wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft unbundle it from the XB1 so they can sell their console at the same price as the PS4.
3. Re:Too little, too late by KingMotley · 2014-01-27 05:28 · Score: 1
  
  I find the kinect extremely useful on the xbox one. Not sure why you don't like it.
4. Re:Too little, too late by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 07:58 · Score: 1
  
  Because he's not you, and different people have different tastes.
5. Re:Too little, too late by mythosaz · 2014-01-27 10:15 · Score: 1
  
  But that's mostly the app's fault, not the Kinect's.
  I hope that's the take-away that people are getting here.
  Speech recognition isn't perfect on the One, but I do most of what you do, watching my Media Center machine as the "TV" in my One. I spend a fair deal of time saying basic commands, "Xbox Stop/Mute/Play/Turn Off," "Yes" and "No" at it, as it's fairly convenient. Most of the time, it gets it right, and rarely does it do something silly. "Stop" never deletes anything. "Pause" never records anything. The worst thing that happens is it ignores me and I repeat myself.
  I *love* walking into the room and saying, "XBox On," and/or "XBox Watch TV." Sure, it may be a gimmick, but it's a neat gimmick.
6. Re:Too little, too late by Luckyo · 2014-01-27 12:46 · Score: 1
  
  I believe that just because you are a woman, wondering why others don't need tampons is quite stupid.
7. Re:Too little, too late by Sockatume · 2014-01-27 21:14 · Score: 1
  
  The 360 solved the same problem with a $15 IR remote.
  
  --
  No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Probably related to this by Kartu · 2014-01-26 23:28 · Score: 2

http://www.geek.com/games/tomb...
Re:Why is a GRAPHICS Process Unit processing VOICE by RivenAleem · 2014-01-26 23:44 · Score: 2

Probably because it's the right tool for the job.
Price breakdown. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-26 23:46 · Score: 3, Interesting

FX8320: 150 on sale, 170 Retail Pricing (This is the cheapest 8 core AMD offers and thus the closest CPU capacity to the xbone/ps4. Also power management allows underclocking down to at least 800 mhz, so you should be able to find an equivalent clocking to the 1.9 ghz one or both of those consoles uses.)
MSI 970A-G43: 70 dollars on sale Maybe 80-90 Retail
Hard disk: 50-150 for 500 gig to 4 terabyte.
Memory: 8 gigs for under 100 dollars, including ECC (Kingston ram. Look under server memory on Newegg.)
AMD GPU: XFX 7850 2gig 169.99 Retail @ Newegg.
Case: 30-100 dollars depending on your preferences. I haven't bought one over 40 dollars in a good 10 years and most included a PSU.
Grand total: Around 200 bucks more.
This is still missing a kinect, keyboard, mouse, and controller, as well as OS.
It's not quite as cheap as any of the consoles, but it's much faster cpu-wise, should spank the XBOne memory-wise, and should give the PS4 a run for its money when GPU prices drop again (7950's were going for ~250 just before Christmas, which would've added another gig of GDDR5 to help compete with the PS4's GPU/GPGPU processing capacity.) Combine it with SteamOS and you've got a competitive 'console' that will probably outlast the current generation consoles handily while allowing much more diversity in usage (and room for 32-64 gigs of ram and a much more powerful GPU before you are finished with it.)
1. Re:Price breakdown. by Sockatume · 2014-01-27 01:40 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  You managed to match a $500 console using only $700 worth of parts and the assumption that you'll add a new $250 GPU in a year's time. By grabthar's hammer, what a savings.
  
  --
  No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
2. Re:Price breakdown. by synapse7 · 2014-01-27 04:01 · Score: 1
  
  Atleast it won't be locked at 30fps, aside from the games seemingly engineered for a console and still locked at 30fps on a PC, but other games won't be locked at 30fps!
3. Re:Price breakdown. by black3d · 2014-01-27 06:29 · Score: 1
  
  Posting to undo accidental de-moderation. :(
  
  --
  "The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
4. Re:Price breakdown. by Darinbob · 2014-01-27 08:45 · Score: 1
  
  However that PC does more than just games. If you're going to have a nice PC anyway, but want it to also do games, the incremental cost is not that high. The Gfx card is not longer the most expensive part of a good gaming computer.
Kind of ... by Ihlosi · 2014-01-26 23:55 · Score: 1

Probably because it's the right tool for the job.
Kind of. It can do the job well enough that using specialized audio processing hardware is a thing for applications that have additional requirements besides "needs X GFlops for audio stuff", for example where power is a big issue (e.g. hearing aids) or where ultra-low latencies are required.
1. Re:Kind of ... by RivenAleem · 2014-01-27 02:36 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, I completely agree. And really, to defend their decision, it makes much more sense to give over 2% of your GPU to the task than adding a specialized piece of hardware which would likely increase the cost by a disproportionate amount.
I can't be bothered with either by Viol8 · 2014-01-27 00:05 · Score: 5, Interesting

From what I've seen the improvement in graphics from my PS3 to the PS4 or XB1 just isn't enough to justify spending the money on a new console. I think like a lot of people I'll be skipping this generation and seeing what comes around in the next 5-10 years.
1. Re:I can't be bothered with either by Sandman1971 · 2014-01-27 00:51 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  We're talking first gen /release day games here. Take PS3/Xbox 360 release day games and compare them to late PS2/Xbox games. It was exactly the same thing. Heck, just compare first year 360/PS2 games and compare them to new releases for those platforms. They are worlds apart. It takes developers a while to ramp up and get to know the architecture that they are writing for.
  Also, waiting for the next gen console before upgrading is fine and dandy if you don't plan on playing any new console releases. Give it a couple of years and most major developers will no longer be releasing most of their titles for the previous consoles.
  Considering the record sales of the new consoles, I don't think your assumption that a lot of people are going to be skipping this generation is anywhere near the truth. You still can't find Xbox Ones and PS4s on store shelves or online stock, they're selling faster than either company can produce them. There might be a very small pocket of gamers who will, but so far all indications is that most will be upgrading at some point.
  
  --
  It's better to burn out than to fade away
2. Re:I can't be bothered with either by Anonymous Coward · 2014-01-27 01:04 · Score: 1
  
  I cannot imagine why you'd believe there will be a next generation if a lot of people skip this generation.
3. Re:I can't be bothered with either by Viol8 · 2014-01-27 01:37 · Score: 2
  
  "We're talking first gen /release day games here."
  Irrelevant. Even on the first day the PS3 graphics blew the PS2 out of the water and then shot it up some more. Considering the PS4 is effectively just a PC with standard components there's no reason for it not to have blistering graphics on day 1 since game devs should already have been familiar with the hardware when preview hardware was made available (which was not the case with the PS3 and Xbox 360) and PC games libs should essentially Just Work when ported over.
4. Re:I can't be bothered with either by Sockatume · 2014-01-27 02:07 · Score: 1
  
  People have short memories: the big talking point when the 360 launched was that all the games looked like Xbox titles running in HD, or else they looked like a modest PC.
  I mean, Kameo? Perfect Dark Zero? A passable port of Oblivion? These were not the games people lined up for.
  
  --
  No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
5. Re:I can't be bothered with either by bondsbw · 2014-01-27 02:09 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know about you, but I can tell a vast difference between the quality of games that came out earlier vs. later, particularly in the same series (e.g. Halo 3 vs. Halo Reach vs. Halo 4).
  
  --
  All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
6. Re:I can't be bothered with either by MMC+Monster · 2014-01-27 03:17 · Score: 1
  
  [...] I think like a lot of people I'll be skipping this generation and seeing what comes around in the next 5-10 years.
  I would expect that 5-10 years from now we'll have mirroring of our phones onto the TV screen and optional bluetooth gamepads.
  
  --
  Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
7. Re:I can't be bothered with either by RivenAleem · 2014-01-27 03:20 · Score: 1
  
  I was kinda hoping that we'd left behind the desperate need for games to be propped up on their graphics. Can we not hope that actual good games will be released? Of course, we don't need new consoles for that either. I'm tempted to get the PS4, but I'm definitely going to wait until there's a sufficient library of games, and perhaps a version 2.0 with any niggles or bugs ironed out.
  My PC is a higher spec than either console already, so I'm mostly hoping that developers just release games on more platforms, in a hope to get more money ;)
8. Re:I can't be bothered with either by Sockatume · 2014-01-28 21:14 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, that sentence was elided, implicitly it's "These were not the games people lined up [for the console] for."
  
  --
  No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Re:Xbox One Slow by drinkypoo · 2014-01-27 00:47 · Score: 2

The News here is that the Xbox is significantly crippled compared to the cheaper, less abusive opposition Sony!?
Less Abusive? What color is the sky on your planet, and are you accepting immigrants? OtherOS? Lik-Sang? Geohotz? Sony is unique in that they make Microsoft look friendly.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
PC master race by slashmydots · 2014-01-27 02:20 · Score: 1

The idea that a game would drop below 60 FPS on hardware that developers know about ahead of time makes my head want to explode. Yet, I saw a game stutter to about 10 FPS on the new Xbox One at my friend's house. Like I need one more reason to reinforce the fact that PC gaming is the superior type of gaming.
1. Re:PC master race by DrXym · 2014-01-27 03:58 · Score: 1
  
  So you've never seen a PC struggle to output a high frame rate before? Of course a PC platform has the advantage that you can throw $1000 of new hardware at a game to make it perform better, but perhaps then we're not comparing like with like.
2. Re:PC master race by Osgeld · 2014-01-27 07:15 · Score: 1
  
  I have never seen a pc game that was custom made and optimized for my exact hardware, console games on the other hand...
3. Re:PC master race by DrXym · 2014-01-27 09:57 · Score: 1
  
  And that probably accounts for the fact that a $400 console produces an experience that a PC costing considerably more would struggle to match. It doesn't necessarily the game in question is any good or that optimized means framerate is the only consideration when producing the game, e.g. the producers might accept the odd frame rate dip to keep the resolution, draw distance or some other visual effect in place.
4. Re:PC master race by Osgeld · 2014-01-27 12:24 · Score: 1
  
  considering I have about 600$ in my pc, and it has little to no issues runnign modern top end games, I would expect the console to at least match my PC due to the optimizations, but they dont, they upscale resolution, downgrade effects and quality and struggle a lot more than the tiny jitter I might get here and there.
  Which I find boggling cause this is the best and top of the line newest video game systems with optimized software.
5. Re:PC master race by slashmydots · 2014-01-28 02:26 · Score: 1
  
  No, I haven't. All I use are computers built sufficiently for the game I'm playing. If I have to run a more intense game that's dropping to lower framerates, I get a better graphics card. If a game starts dropping frames on a console I...wait, what do I do? Oh yeah, nothing.
Non-Steam games on Steam Machine by tepples · 2014-01-27 03:41 · Score: 1

The solution is to buy a Steam machine
When will those come to Best Buy

Valve will know which games you can play on it
Valve doesn't know much. Valve knows which games I can buy through Steam. But a Steam Machine runs not only games acquired through Steam but also games acquired through unknown sources. It's really just Debian with a real-time kernel and the Steam client, and the user can always exit Steam and drop to GNOME to run non-Steam games.
1. Re:Non-Steam games on Steam Machine by BlueBlade · 2014-01-27 04:10 · Score: 2
  
  and the user can always exit Steam and drop to GNOME to run non-Steam games.
  Indeed. All three of them too!
  
  --
  Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
Steam Sales vs. Greatest Hits by tepples · 2014-01-27 03:51 · Score: 1

Consoles are no different. Some console gamers buy games only once they're cheap used or once they're PlayStation Greatest Hits (or other companies' equivalent). Not everyone has to beat a game in 30 days after launch.
1. Re:Steam Sales vs. Greatest Hits by CronoCloud · 2014-01-28 05:20 · Score: 1
  
  It's the percentage that matters. So if more console gamers do buy their games full price, even if there are some who do the Greatest Hits thing...the developers notice.
Hardly surprising by DrXym · 2014-01-27 03:57 · Score: 1

The PS3 launched with pretty stringent restrictions on the amount of CPU and memory games could use and loosened up over time. Sony wasn't sure what they'd need for future features / firmware updates and so chose to play it safe. As the firmware matured and was optimized, they were able to release some of that surplus power to games to make use of.
I don't see Microsoft doing much different. Maybe they reserved the CPU/GPU for similar reasons and now they've figured they don't need to any more, or can wake the Kinect up when the user hits pause or starts talking. I'm sure the change if it happens has a lot to do with the recent criticism the XB1 received about resolution and GPU performance when compared to the PS4. It's doubtful they'll ever reach parity but perhaps they can boost performance enough that in most instances it is close enough.
Number of players by tepples · 2014-01-27 04:04 · Score: 1

Consoles do outperform PCs in one respect: number of players that can play at once. Because most PCs are stuck at a desk (as opposed to using the living room TV as a monitor), most PC games aren't written to take advantage of multiple USB gamepads. So if you have only one PC in a household, all the players need to take turns, and if you have the luxury of multiple PCs, you need to buy multiple copies of each game. True, not all multiplayer games for consoles include same-screen multiplayer, but I'm pretty sure that far more do than on PCs.
Price by phorm · 2014-01-27 04:10 · Score: 1

You can do a lot more with the PC, however (that said, you can also get infected with a virus and suffer a good deal more frustration).
Still, I can play multiplayer without paying for a subscription, and have plenty of affordable games via Steam/GoG.
1. Re:Price by MrMickS · 2014-01-27 04:32 · Score: 2
  
  You can do a lot more with the PC, however (that said, you can also get infected with a virus and suffer a good deal more frustration).
  Still, I can play multiplayer without paying for a subscription, and have plenty of affordable games via Steam/GoG.
  You can do more, but for more money, than a dedicated games console. Seems that you've missed the point of the games console completely.
  Count on having to upgrade your games PC over the years though to keep games running at a decent level. You need to factor those costs in as well. The console will keep going, and games will probably get better as the toolsets mature. In the PC world the developers can assume that their users will upgrade to maintain relative performance.
  
  --
  You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
2. Re: Price by VTBlue · 2014-01-27 05:41 · Score: 1
  
  The promise a console is that games will be playable and fun throughout the life of the console. Microsoft and Sony have indicated that they are shooting for a decade, if I'm not mistaken. Whether you believe this or not is left to individuals decide. Looking back at my ownership experience with xbox360, I believe game quality will get better over time versus PC gaming, and that I'll have better social & gaming moments from a dedicated console.
  Sure, I will have a PC to game on, but it will unlikely be my primary device because I'm an adult now and my PC is for serious tech work. I don't have time to deal with all the shitty DRM and rootkit issues of the future. Nor am I interested in dealing with poorly optimized games, I just don't have the time I had 10 years ago.
3. Re:Price by webmistressrachel · 2014-01-27 08:20 · Score: 1
  
  Best. Comment. Yet.
  In fact, so good, that I'm only posting this in return for a cid so that *I* can come back here, and do exactly the same thing!!!
  I've been saying it since modems and HDDs first began to grace the consoles, ESPECIALLY the Microsoft ones... after all, critical mass, monetization of the online services, and collection of personal data make it an almost inevitable, and high-value, target right now. Not the mention the possibilities for using all that excess CPU and GPU as a distributed server farm.
  Here's a fascinating chain of thought to leave you with - just how powerful would that server farm be? So powerful that it may even outweigh any of the other benefits of hacking consoles? Would a potential "owner" be more likely to leave personal data and short-term gains (cc info etc.) aside in order to "fly under the radar" whilst captaining the biggest ship (couldn't help it!) / server farm no-one ever knew about?
  Well, if I'm not on the watchlist yet (ha!), I am now! ;-) (dons lead hat)
  
  --
  This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
4. Re:Price by Darinbob · 2014-01-27 08:55 · Score: 1
  
  Count on having to upgrade your gaming console ver the years to keep games running at a decent level too. Or are you honestly still running the consoles from a decade ago (or two decades ago)? Relative performance is slowing down, the top end games no long require significant expense to get a computer capable of running them (ie, sli or other hardcore setups). Meanwhile that same computer that players last year's games will still play last decade's games just fine, and do your taxes on the side, be your development workstation, etc.
5. Re:Price by exomondo · 2014-01-27 10:02 · Score: 1
  
  Count on having to upgrade your gaming console ver the years to keep games running at a decent level too.
  Not over its lifetime though, over its lifetime console games get better as devs get more proficient with optimizations and extracting the most out of hardware. On PCs you can't do that because the hardware range is so large so instead they are coded to hardware abstractions and the solution is just to 'throw more hardware at it'.
  
  Meanwhile that same computer that players last year's games will still play last decade's games just fine, and do your taxes on the side, be your development workstation, etc.
  I could also get a 3G Nexus 7, use Skype or Viber or whatever to make phone calls, connect a PS3 controller (and possibly HDMI-out) to play games and chroot debian to run all my applications with a connected bluetooth keyboard and mouse so I don't need a tablet, phone, console and laptop, I could just have tablet but it would be a penny-pinching kludge. Now while I could do that I prefer to have dedicated devices for that stuff, it means I don't have to compromise but if a few games here and there work better on my PC than my console I'll play them on my PC.
  If what you are interested in is value for money then yes a PC is the way to go because it can do many of the things a console can with a bit of fucking around (connecting it to the TV, messing with keyboard/mouse and then switching to controller or having a dual-boot setup) and much more.
6. Re:Price by Wootery · 2014-01-27 10:54 · Score: 1
  
  You can do more, but for more money, than a dedicated games console.
  Let's not forget that console games generally cost quite a bit more than PC games, so in the long run, your gaming PC might make economic sense even ignoring all the extra stuff it can do. If you don't game very often then you might never reach this break-even point though, of course.
  The other thing to bear in mind is that there's a reasonable chance that you'll have a desktop computer anyway, so the important comparison might not be between the price of a console and the price of a gaming PC (plus games for both), but between the price of a console and the price difference between a work PC and a gaming PC (again, plus games for both).
7. Re:Price by mjwx · 2014-01-27 13:25 · Score: 1
  
  You can do a lot more with the PC, however (that said, you can also get infected with a virus and suffer a good deal more frustration).
  Still, I can play multiplayer without paying for a subscription, and have plenty of affordable games via Steam/GoG.
  You can do more, but for more money, than a dedicated games console. Seems that you've missed the point of the games console completely.
  Count on having to upgrade your games PC over the years though to keep games running at a decent level. You need to factor those costs in as well. The console will keep going, and games will probably get better as the toolsets mature. In the PC world the developers can assume that their users will upgrade to maintain relative performance.
  In 5 years I made two upgrades to my PC, a mid range graphics card and and SSD.
  
  Neither of these were particularly needed either. If I hadn't of upgraded it, I'd still be playing the latest releases with no problems.
  
  Now PC's can easily cost more than consoles at the outset, this is because console manufacturers subsidise their hardware and you get less.
  
  Consider the total cost of ownership, with a PC you will probably have spent more than the PS4, but with the PS4 you'll need to buy another controller, EBGames has one for $99 so you might be able to get one for $70. Then there are the games, games cost $10-20 more expensive than their PC variants (I said MS and Sony subsidise the hardware, this is how they do it). Above this, both Sony and MS have a "premium" online service and it wont be long before you pretty much have to pay for that to get anything useful (like online multilayer) so that's more money you pay after you buy the console.
  
  So if you buy 12 games a year, that's an extra $120 plus about $60 for the online component. So at least $180 per year in extra costs and the more games you buy the more this cost goes up. This assumes that the hardware doesn't have horrible faults like the Xbox 360 did (and we're already hearing rumours of a yellow light of death on the PS4) where you'll pretty much have to buy an entirely new console in the next 3 years.
  
  Beyond this we have the fact that PC games drop in price a lot faster than console games. In 3-6 months down the track PC games usually halve in price and then we have things like steam sales where you pick up games for a fraction of their original price (last year I picked up Saints Row The Third for $4).
  
  Finally, when the PS4/XBone are no more, you'll have to buy a new console where your old games wont work. PC's dont have this issue. Every game I have bought since my first 286 still works on my gaming machine.
  
  TL;DR
  
  PC gaming over the long run is cheaper.
  
  --
  Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
A lot more than three non-Steam Linux games by tepples · 2014-01-27 05:04 · Score: 1

There are a lot more than three. This includes every Loki game, every game that runs in Wine, every Humble Bundle or GOG game ported to Linux, and every NES homebrew game that runs in FCEUX.
1. Re:A lot more than three non-Steam Linux games by Lumpy · 2014-01-27 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  How do you get Loki games to run in a modern linux? I have all the Disks when Loki was around and I bought the games. they all stopped working after they changed the kernel significantly about 3 years after loki closed up shop.
  I would LOVE to play those games again.
  
  --
  Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
2. Re:A lot more than three non-Steam Linux games by drinkypoo · 2014-01-27 05:35 · Score: 1
  
  You use loki_compat. But you're probably better off just installing an old Linux distribution in a virtual machine, because loki_compat is not what you'd call perfect since Linux is a moving target. SMAC is even more CRASHTACULAR with the libraries than it was originally, for example.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
have the money... by schlachter · 2014-01-27 07:00 · Score: 1

I have the money to buy an xbox one without giving it second thought.
But I just don't see a reason yet. No killer games on the xbox one. Little improvement in gameplay/graphics.
The only console I see right now with killer games (Mario 3D) is the wii u.

--
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Re:Xbox One Slow by mordenkhai · 2014-01-27 08:12 · Score: 1

It is more than half (24% vs 34.5%) , in addition PS4 is available in far more countries (PS4 48 vs Xbox 13). Obviously being $100 more will continue to slow Xbox sales.