Another Upscaled Console Game: Battlefield Hardline

jones_supa writes Video game developer Visceral Games has confirmed the actual resolution that the coming Battlefield Hardline will run on when it is launched on the Xbox One and on the PlayStation 4. An official message from the Twitter account of the studio explains that gamers will get a 720p resolution on the Microsoft console and Sony platform gamers will get the game running in 900p. 60 frames per second is promised for both consoles, but many fans are still expressing their disappointment that neither of the two versions will be able to properly deliver the native 1080p resolution of the consoles. When development started, Visceral Games and publisher Electronic Arts said they were aiming to use the power of the modern consoles to push the game engine as far as it would go, but they clearly couldn't fit that target without cutting corners. This is similar to what happened with Titanfall, which renders into an 1408x792 framebuffer on Xbox One.

Comments

Another FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps if they pushed the boundaries in other ways, other than graphics? Like Story? Idea? Gameplay?
Sorry but I'm sick of these endless FPS! And the graphics alone aren't going to hold a jaded player.

Re:Another FPS

[Redbehrend]

I played the BETA and the games pretty fun, I can see my friends that still play counter-strike playing it for a good amount of time. As for the next gen consoles I feel they lack for the cost... but I am kinda bias as I am a PC gamer.

Re:Another FPS

[sonicmerlin]

You mean "biased"?

Re:Another FPS

[Z80a]

You're asking a industry that been pushed into graphics for 20+ years to do something they just can't into anymore.

Re:Another FPS

[DarkTempes]

I really enjoy when the current generation uses "feels" as a plural noun.

They think it's cute. :(

Re:Another FPS

[CaptnZilog]

I really enjoy when the current generation uses "feels" as a plural noun.

They think it's cute. :(

They're spoilt with lots of FPS and it bias them in favor of ignoring things like the use of apostrophes when the games pretty fun.
But, since we provided the technology they grew up on, it's probably all our fault that's all they "learnt".

Re:Another FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

you're asking an industry (software development) that has been taught that bloated code is a-okay. nobody knows how to truly optimize for limited resources anymore. those guys died off with the commodore 64

Re:Another FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

^ Obviously we're also asking AN industry like the education industry to do something they can't DO anymore either.

Re:Another FPS

[gl4ss]

your friends who still play CS?

and you fail to see that there has been 30+ games that could replace CS as their game?

I mean, why this game now? have you played any other game after cs came out? I could understand your comment that they might be playing it for a few years if there wasn't such games coming out by the numbers every year.

Re:Another FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I thought we'd grown past this kind of pathetic story. Are there really people so oblivious to the fact out there that some of the most stellar successes of recent years have had intentionally terrible graphics? Minecraft, Terraria and The Escapists have been stellar successes and their graphics have been low quality. I'll answer my own question, yes, apparently there are people out there who have missed the fact that Minecraft is now one of the single best selling games of all time and it got there with gameplay, not "OMG 1080p 60FPS!!".

When I see people whining about resolution or some other bitchiness about a platform, are they really oblivious to the fact that it's not obvious to many of us what they're actually saying? is jones_supa really not aware of how embarrassed he should be about the summary he wrote? Behind every such story it's incredibly obvious that we've got a tale of jealousy, of friends playing a different system from which he's excluded because of time, money, or his parents wont let him have one or whatever else. The only reason people go on such crusades of fanboyism is jealousy, and it's really quite sad to watch.

I'm really fortunate that I have all current gen consoles, all last gen consoles, and a decent gaming PC. I like all of them, I enjoyed playing through The Order 1886 on my PS4 this weekend, I enjoyed playing Dying Light with my friend on my X1 the other day, and I enjoyed playing Captain Toad on my Wii U a couple of weeks back. I regularly enjoy playing the Wargame games, Diablo and Minecraft on my PC. I recognise that I'm incredibly lucky to be able to afford to do this and it allows me to transcend fanboyism because I don't have any particular allegiance.

The fanboyism shown in the summary is a clear pathetic attempt at self-justification by jones_supa that he's not missing out, that by not getting to play with his friends on the consoles or whatever that it's okay, because they're not 1080p 60fps anyway. It misses the point of course, it misses the real fundamental question - is the game fun? - but to him, it's a way of trying to deal with his jealousy, and that's okay, different people deal with their emotions in different ways.

But the question is, why do we have to hear about it? We don't care what you can and can't do, we don't care how you've justified to yourself the fact you don't have enough disposable income to justify blowing it on one of these consoles without a second thought. These things are expensive and it's fair enough that you can't justify the cost, but there's no need to act so pathetically jealously about it.

Despite the fact I can afford all these gaming systems, there are many things I can't afford. I can't afford the Lamborghini Aventador I'd so love, but I don't go around posting on the internet "Hah, ANOTHER sports car that can't fit my shopping in the boot, how lame lol I'm glad I've got a low end Volkswagen" to try and justify that it's okay I can't have my Lamborghini. Why don't I do that? Because I'm a grown up and can deal with my jealousy towards people who do have them, sometimes seemingly undeservingly in more mature ways, and because fanboyism is a pathetic plague on the internet that needs to die and any exhibitions of it as in the summary should not be bumped onto front pages of sites but their authors instead laughed into oblivion.

So jones_supa, whilst you were trying with your story to justify to yourself how it's okay that you don't have a console because a certain game wont run 1080p 60fps on them, all you've actually done is told us how childish you are. Congratulations. Now the internet knows.

Re:Another FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

nobody knows how to truly optimize for limited resources anymore. those guys died off with the commodore 64

The funny thing is that there were people who said the same thing with the Commodore 64 was introduced. I have an old issue of Your Computer where one of the letters to the editor lamented the death of the VIC-20, saying that "The mega-memories of today's 64K elephants are asking for sloppy and wasteful programming".

The entire letter can be read over at The World of Spectrum, which seems a bit ironic now that I come to think about it.

Re:Another FPS

[gl4ss]

it's really because they have focus groups of old moms who keep telling them that the blurred+film grained + shitted all over with post effects looks better than a sharp 1080p picture.

that's really the gist of things and why they don't do 1080p. it would have been real easy for them to limit things to so that they could have that.

Re: Another FPS

[phishybongwaters]

You might want to read your novel about how you can afford all options and are a better person for it. It comes off as childish and rather pointless.... if 1 version of the have plays at a higher res, the others suffer, it's a basic fact of fps. No we dont give a shit if you dont play them as you clearly care enough to not only read a post about them, but also comment on them. And yes I was playing minecraft in alpha so I'm well aware that graphics don't make a game . But in fps land, they can certainly break one

Re:Another FPS

[captjc]

Then don't play it. It isn't like there aren't thousands of other games in dozens of other genres to play.

Re: Another FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

> You might want to read your novel about how you can afford all options and are a better person for it.

If that's all you took away from the GP's post it sounds like you're one of those jealous folks they're referring to.

> if 1 version of the have plays at a higher res, the others suffer, it's a basic fact of fps

I don't even know what this means as it's not comprehensible English, but after trying to decipher it the closest I can get to is that you seem to be saying that if a game on one console is higher FPS, then everyone on other platforms suffers and that that's a basic fact about FPS? You then also say that graphics can break an FPS game but don't explain why. In short, you're not making any kind of sense and are sounding an awful lot like a child.

If anything, you seem to be living proof of the GP's original idea that the only people who act as fanboys and defend it are jealous kids.

Re:Another FPS

[aliquis]

Lots of people play CS.

http://steamcharts.com/
207,620 people play CS:GO right now (max 463,265, 178 million hours played.)
44,475 plays Team Fortress 2.
19,343 play original Counter Strike.

"could replace"? That's not as replace.
12.55 % of all people who play a game on Steam plays CS:GO right now.

Why not this game? Isn't it the standard for competitive gaming / esport in the FPS area?

I don't know in what way it's superior if anything but I guess people play it because it's the one which matter kinda. Also most media focus, most people who care, maybe good maps, maybe because of investments into customizing ones character, maybe because it's very cheap relative all the money they have put into it and they don't normally purchase games?

Re:Another FPS

[aliquis]

Seem like the max number of CS:GO players may have happened during this last (two?) day(s, yesterday seem higher) since there's a tweet about it:
https://twitter.com/matttwood/...

I don't know but now with 208 000 players is close to this days low, 463 000 players is a peak.

Re:Another FPS

[aliquis]

I haven't "played" Minecraft.

Want to know why? ..

Re:Another FPS

[nine-times]

But... I may be wrong here, but isn't the "Battlefield" series one of those games where they just keep rehashing the same game, churning out sequel after sequel for people with no taste? Like Call of Duty? I thought the main features of those games were (a) fancy graphics; (b) dumb guys get to imagine that they could be dropped into a real war zone, and they'd be total bad-asses who would kill all the bad guys and save the day.

If so, I feel like they are kind of betraying their demographic by not having high resolution graphics with a high frame-per-second count. That's why people want the new systems and the new games. Benchmarks!

Re:Another FPS

[PopeRatzo]

Terraria and The Escapists have been stellar successes and their graphics have been low quality

Battlefield is not that kind of game. It's a AAA that's a crown jewel for EA.

Further, there just isn't a reason to downgrade the experience of PC customers except to tell them their money just isn't important. If the new consoles can only do resolutions from 2003, so be it, but the money EA/Visceral will collect from PC gamers certainly would seem to be enough to make the PC version current-gen resolution.

Re:Another FPS

[stealth_finger]

Lots of people play CS.

http://steamcharts.com/ 207,620 people play CS:GO right now (max 463,265, 178 million hours played.) 44,475 plays Team Fortress 2. 19,343 play original Counter Strike.

"could replace"? That's not as replace. 12.55 % of all people who play a game on Steam plays CS:GO right now.

Why not this game? Isn't it the standard for competitive gaming / esport in the FPS area?

I don't know in what way it's superior if anything but I guess people play it because it's the one which matter kinda. Also most media focus, most people who care, maybe good maps, maybe because of investments into customizing ones character, maybe because it's very cheap relative all the money they have put into it and they don't normally purchase games?

He's asking why they would switch to Hardline instead of any of the other CS potential replacements that have been released since. What is so good about hardline that the others lacked. The short answer is nothing, these 'friends' will likely stick to CS.

Re:Another FPS

[neoritter]

Maybe because they had a bigger selling point. The I don't know highly destructible environments. Gamers who think games need to have the best graphics first and then everything else are just wastes of space.

Re:Another FPS

[nealric]

I'm a long-time BF player (going back to the original 1942 edition). It's true that it's a game that is constantly being rehashed, but game play and team strategy is a traditional strong point for the series. It relies far less on fast twitch response than COD. Many of the eye candy features also have interesting strategic elements (i.e. the destructive environments and suppression effects). I do worry, however, that the race to compete with COD has meant more bugs and less innovation in the series. I do not intend to buy Hardline- it's really a side project to milk more cash out of the Bf4 development project and not really a new game.

Re:Another FPS

[aliquis]

If you let your kid on 8chan, it's like sending him every summer to live with your junkie pedophile Republican third cousin who's on probation for rape and is also in ISIL. The kid's bound to pick up some bad habits.

Not all of us have experience of it.

Re: Another FPS

[phishybongwaters]

Actually thank my phone for the incoherent post. I own the devices I want and don't really give a shit what people play on. Resolution, ie clean detail, makes or breaks a Fps as it's 99% spotting, 1% shooting. If game A has a better resolution and the same frame rate as the port of that on console B, console A is the better choice as you will see more details. If you want an over the top example, find Any game that supports 4k resolution, then do a side by side with a lower resolution. If your game shows me as 1 pixel on console, but shows me as 4 pixels on pc, pc wins. This really only matters for fps, and only if you like winning.

Re: Another FPS

[phishybongwaters]

The bf series it's a poster child for emergent game play, the rehashes are still fps, but there's very little similarity between bf1942 and bf4, the core it's the same, but there's much more to it. Hardline takes it to another level without destruction and more twichty like cod.

Re:Another FPS

[camazotz]

Goddamn I think you just won the internet.

Re:Another FPS

[spire3661]

I still play Quake 3 and UT because nothing can replace them.They are arguably better games than any CoD since COD4.

Re:Another FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The solution is to go out and spend that $500(or whatever you ended up dumping into that console) and just build yourself a nice PC and have all the 1080+ that you want... or buy yourself a steambox.

These newer anemic consoles are pretty well back to being gimped PCs again anyways. At least in this regard M$ is return to their xbox roots with the xbone while sony is just being cheap apparently. Very odd how similar the designs of the two consoles are this time around. I can't help but wonder if they're just getting ready to give up on consoles or probably do what they should've just done this time, share hardware development costs and design just selling and branding the hardware separately. Hell they'd probably be better off sharing the OS and development tool costs as well.

The anemic hardware and all wouldn't be so bad IF they stuck to traditional console games instead of trying to shoehorn every pc game that they can consolejack into them. Which I am kind of thinking is why Nintendo went with even more anemic hardware than everyone else although I see that it too has it's fairshare of PC games trying to be shoehorned into and even less capable system OTOH Nintendo also has a good deal of games that just feel better played on an honest-to-god console, mostly first party though unfortunately.

Bottomline is this time around is that all of this is just underlining how far behind pretty much any modern desktop PC consoles are. Long gone are the days when the consoles had superior graphics capabilities and arguably, CPUs.

Re:Another FPS

[sansprivacy]

AGREE ... This genre is over-saturated. There are way too many games and WAY to few distinguishing features between each. The kids don't care .... it's not their money, and the parents buying them definitely don't care. Does the industry really expect me to buy "Call of Duty", "Battlefield", AND "Destiny" ? Different game physics, maps, and inventory is not enough.

Re:Another FPS

[tlhIngan]

Perhaps if they pushed the boundaries in other ways, other than graphics? Like Story? Idea? Gameplay?
Sorry but I'm sick of these endless FPS! And the graphics alone aren't going to hold a jaded player.

Why? There's a rather large group of players who care nought for crap like that. They just want to get the game, and go frag their friends 27 hours a day. There's a large contingent of players who will do just that, which is why games like that sell billions of dollars on the first day.

And to be honest, it's also one of the few games that justifies having a day-1 PC release. Besides being able to inflate the day-1 sales, it's one of the few games where PC players will literally buy it day 1 rather than wait for any sales, pirate the game, or whatever. That's just the way the market is.

Now, you want games with store and depth? They do make those - the video games industry is big enough that there are plenty of other games that concentrate on that stuff.

Hell, wasn't one of the "concerns" of the whole #gamergate thing the fact that a "game" like Depression Quest was going to wipe out all these Call of Duty/Battlefield/etc style games? Which is plainly ridiculous since the latter pull in way more money, so it doesn't matter how many perfect scores Depression Quest gets, it still won't make billions and billions of dollars. And secondly, history has shown that despite "good" works being produced (be it books, movies, music), there's plenty of "pulp" that's produced to satisfy the masses. I mean, we still have summer blockbusters despite the appeal of the arthouse flick.

Re:Another FPS

[Holi]

I am guessing you are pointing to every comment before yours. I have never seen such poor grammar on Slashdot before. Maybe I should have left the Grammar Nazi's alone.

Re:Another FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps if they pushed the boundaries in other ways, other than graphics? Like Story? Idea? Gameplay?
Sorry but I'm sick of these endless FPS! And the graphics alone aren't going to hold a jaded player.

There are plenty of FPS style games which are innovative. Sanctum 2 for example. Half FPS, half tower defense. Even the FPS portion of Sanctum 2 is 98% strategy and teamwork, and 2% or less of "twitch" or reaction/ping time. There are probably lots of other examples.

Re:Another FPS

[blackomegax]

Yeah, 4chan is much better for children. /I grew up on it. I'm fine.

Re:Another FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

As Socrates said 'kids these days...'

Re:Another FPS

[kanuac]

Interactivity. That's the one thing I miss the most.
Some/many games are like watching at movie.

Re:Another FPS

[BronsCon]

Wait... people on 4chan grow up?

Re:Another FPS

[BronsCon]

Verwendung Grammatik

Re:Another FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

but I am kinda bias as I am a PC gamer.

You mean "biased"?

No, he means "badass". I am kinda badass as I am a PC gamer.

Re:Another FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it hasn't existed long enough. Anyone who says they grew up on/with something like that is just a kid trying to sound like they are older.

Re:Another FPS

[PopeRatzo]

I'm fine.

When someone feels the need to tell you, "I'm fine", you best believe they're a long way from OK.

Re:Another FPS

[aliquis]

Ah. Ok.

Personally I haven't looked at hard-line.

Always thought CS seemed so bloody repetitive.

Re:Another FPS

[demachina]

Iâ(TM)d still play BF2 if there were any servers left for Karkand Infantry that didnâ(TM)t suck. For pure fun to play 64 man infantry only Kirkland was about the pinnacle of PvP, way better than any newer COD or BFn.

Game companies are spending way too much money on graphics and gimmicks and nothing at all on good PvP.

Good PvP requires evenly matched teams and gear in a space big enough for variety and small enough so the teams are compelled to be in contact.

You wanna see an example of a horrible PvP game, try PlanetSide 3. The teams were/are never even, you spend most of your time running around trying to find the other team, when you find them either they are massively outnumbered or you are outnumbered.

Then there are the microtransactions so someone foolish enough to blow the money can advance with no skill whatsoever.

Most COD Iâ(TM)ve played you circle endlessly in a fur ball killing and being killed, there is never any discernible point or strategy.

Seriously if you want a great game that people will want to play forever look at CS and BF2. The graphics kinda suck, BF2 is certainly buggy, but they are still pure fun to play.

Re:Another FPS

[Anonymous Coward]

this 'next-gen' is really the previous gen, except with a 'ignore all the innovative new compression technologies that have surfaced in the past decade' going back to PCM, ADPCM and raw textures because there's a big disc capacity to fill, with artificially high system requirements caching these uncompressed files more than once, inflating things.

Re:Another FPS

[PopeRatzo]

You "grew up" on 4chan? Do you realize 4chan started in 2003?

Re:Another FPS

[JohnStock]

So play other games... whats the problem here?

And console owners feel pc

[Billly Gates]

I guess they think it's 2006 and with pride at work gloat their $389 dollar machine can still kill my $1600 pc. It's starting to piss me off and I have proof now. Even a $399 netbook has more gpu power than a ps4

PC gaming is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the laughs all those years you console-tards. Enjoy your inferior hardware and overpriced spoon-fed BS promised by AAA fizzles riddled with bugs, gated content for $DLC, and half finished titles.

Re: PC gaming is dead

[SilenceBE]

I game on both And I really don't see the point

1> Gameplay > graphics . I have a beefy PC but since I get the most gameplay out of indie games that aren't visual that great, I seriously doubt that graphics are the key in what makes games great.
2> Your ultraresolution / gazillion of shaders doesn't change the fact that games these days are shoddy console ports that sometimes even run great. That isn't the fault of the owners of those machines or the machines them-self but the economic motives behind the reasoning to use them as a primary platform.

The only big thing that PC gaming has over consoles is price and is the reason that play mainly exclusives on consoles. But I get as even much of fun out of a for "PC master race" - which for me tells a lot of somebody mental state - ugly game as The last of us as any other game

When the roles where reversed btw I even had the feeling that gameplay seriously lacked when the focus was mainly graphics. I'm even convinced that it contributed to the uprising of Indie games as a whole.

Granted this is an EA game we are talking about, not the company that creates a grand cru selection of video games.

Re:PC gaming is dead

[Z80a]

The best games you can play on PC run at 240p/480p.

Re: PC gaming is dead

[Ash-Fox]

Tell me more. Can PC do cinematic FPS too?

Re: PC gaming is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again but in English this time?

Re: PC gaming is dead

[Z80a]

Yes, it can run Mad Dog McCree in several different formats.

Re: PC gaming is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again but in English this time?

I say. old chap, while I endeavor to engage in structured frivolity in both arenas, I fail to... oh fuck, it's untranslatable. I give up.

Re: PC gaming is dead

[gl4ss]

"i buy pc and consoles i haz money for everything, consoles have exclusives so need to have those to play exclusives"
"the graphics don't matter, the gameplay matters"

which is a bit strange, when the article is about a game that downgrades resolution because the publisher thinks that graphics matter that much that it's ok to cheat a little bit on fidelity to get an extra graphical effect into the game.

so, gameplay matters? but the resolution affects gameplay directly! the extra effects that made the downgrade to non 1080p necessary don't matter to gameplay!

Re: PC gaming is dead

[neoritter]

Whenever a PC Master Race elitist comes in, I know they're not actually a gamer. Real gamers recognize that the gaming has roots in the arcades and consoles of 70s and 80s.

Re: PC gaming is dead

[spire3661]

Consoles are toys. I say this as someone who OWNED a full size stand up Asteroids game when i was in the 4th grade. (post-crash purchase for $100). Pardon me while i unhook my 144HZ monitor and hook up my triple-head monitor system for some racing immersion using a steering wheel from the Playstation 2 era.. Try that on your console. Consoles are cool, but they are still jsut toys compared to a proper PC.

Re: PC gaming is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you go:

I have two and I do not really see the point of the game,

1> Gameplay> Graphics. PC and loss of fat, but I doubt the son of great graphics main game, this is not the visual, from the Indie Games of the gameplay. 2> shader ultraresolution / gazillion Your games these days, sometimes even a shoddy console ports can change the truth. This car owners or their own, but the original thinking behind the use of them as a platform for economic motive is not to blame.

There is more than a game console PC just a great thing, and the main reason to play console exclusives. I have more than one state of mind as any other game of the last game ugly, but as my "PC master race" for fun, and even more

Role, which way to turn, and even with the lack of serious graphics help when there was a sense of gameplay. I think that contributed to the Indie Games Uprising as a whole, I am sure it is even.

Of course, this is not about the company, we will choose the video game Grand Cru, is an EA game.

Re: PC gaming is dead

[neoritter]

I don't deny that the PC is the more powerful platform. What I'm talking about is the sentiment that PC elitists have that console gamers are not real or can't be hard/core gamers. Trying to associate the console gamer with the casual smartphone gamer. When the fact of the matter is that consoles were a big part of the initial evolution of video games.

Re: PC gaming is dead

[spire3661]

There is a kernel of truth to it. Console players are inherently limited in what they can grow into. I get what you are saying and PCmasterrace takes it WAY too far. Regardless of the history you think supports it, the MODERN console market is VERY different from the Nintendo generation. Nintendo games were hard, its a false comparison to say today's CoD player would be the same kid that played Battletoads or Lion King.

Re: PC gaming is dead

[neoritter]

But that's a whole different debate and not exclusive to the PC Master Race crowd, as console gamers also complain about excessive QTE and overly easy games (Order 1886 is a good recent example). There are dumb downed easy games on PC as well. It's not some phenomenon that's due to consoles. I hear the same bitching and moaning about the dumbing down for MMOs as well. I hear it for the new Diablo from veteran Diablo players who think the loot rates are stupid high compared to the older games. To some degree it's the, "back in my day...something something...fifteen feet of snow...something something...both ways!" argument.

Re: PC gaming is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

The past doesn't matter. At the time consoles were needed cause they were specialized devices. Consoles now a days are just monopolized PCs with proprietary operating systems. Even the original Xbox was just a PC to the point people were loading different Operating Systems on it and using it as a PC.

Re: PC gaming is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Even smartphone gamers are better than console gamers. You can grab any android device on the Planet and develop for it. You can't do the same with a xbox or playstation. It's not free to develop for which is really disturbing and shows the death grip Microsoft and Sony have on their consoles. Even with an iphone you can still openly develop for your device. Consoles are milking machines, there's no competition, Microsoft and Sony own the devices they control everything and take a cut from everything. They tempt you with a lower initial purchase cost just to milk you with everything else that is overpriced. So what if they were a big part of the evolution, there were still PC games in the 1980s. A lot of console games were PC/Mac exclusives before Sony/Microsoft swooped in and bought out the developers. We would probably be in a better position if consoles never existed so they couldn't evolve into the giant blood sucking leeches they are now. The consoles are a plague to the gaming industry as it is right now. I put console gamers down because they are letting the leech suck their blood dry instead of ripping the leech off. I don't own a TV and i dusted off my PS3 to play on my PC monitor. It was impossible to get audio to my headphones. I had a USB sound card that by the grace of god the PS3 could detect. Only to find out that the PS3's operating system did not allow game audio to be used with a headset. The only audio i could put through to my headset was player chat. Cutting so many corners on their consoles, just so they can pull in a fatter profit. If you don't play the way Microsoft and Sony want you to, then you don't play just so they can turn in a bigger profit for themselves by being as minimal as possible.

Re: PC gaming is dead

[Nethemas the Great]

Consoles were perpetuated by the game industry's want of money. They decided that the only way they'd get cash from tweens, teens and twenty-somethings was to lock down the hardware. To bait them, they offered kit that rivaled mid-spec PCs (at least in some metrics) at a price that meant they be taking a loss on each sale. They figured they could play Lexmark's game--cheap kit, absurdly expensive ink--and make up for it selling games. Evidently their plan worked.

Console owners of course are now realizing the true nature of the trap which has been laid for them. The hardware actually isn't all that great--it is just a low-spec PC that happens to have a decent GPU after all. The ink costs a fortune. Hardware refreshes don't happen very that often, and when they do the old titles often won't run on them.

For PC gamers who didn't drink the Kool-aid, we've gotten a mixed bag from it all. The big game houses treat us the wayward step-child. They cater to the consoles, and occasionally throw us a few console ports complete with all the compromises necessitated by its heritage. This however opened a vacuum that indie dev-houses are filling reasonably well. The graphics generally aren't meriting the high-spec card(s) in our rigs, but we get to reclaim notions like novelty, plots, sophisticated play, user-created features and content, and most importantly the price-value proposition.

Re: PC gaming is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Bolloxs - the roots may lie in the arcade mainly but as a gamer always played games on the computers I had access to pdp 8 , pdp -11 , oric's, sinclairs, Pets, etc.

Fix gameplay related issues first

[khchung]

As a BF4 player, I would rather they focus on gameplay related issues (rubberbanding, etc), rather than spending a huge effort on getting the last 180 pixels on the screen.

Sure, it's nice to have 1080p resolution, but it's worthless if the game isn't fun. If the game is fun at 900px, who cares about that last 180px.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[Dutch Gun]

I agree. The focus on resolution seems ridiculously overblown. It doesn't help that the press breathlessly reports on it every time it happens. Faux outrage makes for lots of page views, I guess. It's pretty damn clear the current generation of consoles are far too underpowered to render a complex scene in high resolution, so we shouldn't be surprised at this anymore. The developers probably looked at how much rendering detail would be lost to try to boost it to full resolution, and decided it wasn't worth the tradeoff.

From TFA:

some of the worst fears of the community are becoming reality.

720p is really what they fear most? Not bugs, crappy frame rate, day-one DLC, broken matchmaking, overloaded servers, or cookie-cutter gameplay? Really?

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[wonkey_monkey]

What it should have said was:

some of the worst fears of the developers are becoming reality.

i.e., that they can't market their game as "1080p!" even though most people probably wouldn't notice if they were playing a decent game at 720p instead of 1080p. It's not like it makes your eyes bleed. Sure, 1080p looks sharper, but if I'm after pretty pictures I'll watch a movie. I play games to play a decent game, whether it runs at 1080p, 720p, 480p, or 224p.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[Xest]

Well yeah, but you have to bear in mind that no actual console gamer fears 720p at all. The only people who claim they fear that are people who still haven't gotten over the fact that AAA attention was primarily switched to consoles about 10 years ago now and think that by spreading such falsehoods the AAA world will suddenly jump up and switch their allegiance to PC and only PC making it the one true master race gaming platform.

It wont though of course, because those devs will just go where the money and player base is. The only company that actually seems to get that this is the real problem facing PC gaming and is working to solve it is Valve, hence why they've been expending so much effort on making Steam living room friendly to try and increase the PC gaming playerbase beyond those who are simply happy to game at a desk and onto those who prefer to game in the living room, which like it or not, is the majority of the market nowadays (or, well, it might be mobile now, but either way the market has clearly changed away from desktop gaming).

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[dinfinity]

You should see it more in terms of power. Let me provide you with a car analogy:
1080p is like 1080hp and 200p is like 200hp.

Now do you understand why resolution is so important?! POWERRRR!
An Xbox game with 720hp is obviously inferior to a Playstation game with 900hp!

On a serious note: in an FPS, the difference between 320x200 and 1920x1080 does make for a difference in the ability to play the game (remember going back to Quake in 320x200 after having played GLQuake?). The same can be said for interface-heavy games or games where a high 'depth of field' (overview with details visible) is required, such as an RTS or (MMO)RPG. I agree that a high resolution is not necessary to make a good game, but some good games do require or benefit from a high resolution.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[sg_oneill]

The only time I ever noticed resolution as a factor was back in the old days when I'd take my PC around to a mates house for lan games and he had this ridiculously high res (Like, oh probably 1024, it was the old days) to my shitty 800 , and seemed to be able to get headshots sniping from a distance when I couldn't bloody see him as more than a pixel or two.

Buuut I don't even take my xbox360 online so...

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[drinkypoo]

The focus on resolution seems ridiculously overblown.

We don't buy 1080p consoles and displays to have graphics muddied up by scaling.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to guess if the network will improve, see if you can find any documentation on their maximum allowed bandwidth on the consoles. BF3 (the last one I played) had such shit hitdetection because to play a 64 player map on the 5kbps they are allowed per person, they could have at most something like 10 tick. Which is so shit that even the casual CS:GO servers which have rather bad detection as well have a tick rate which is 6 times higher.

For the non gamers, a tickrate is basically how many times per second the server is updated, the lower the tickrate, the more the server has to interpolate between known positions and the more error is introduced. Low tickrates are often the reason you can get hit for a little while after you got into cover or the enemy kills you before he turned around on your screen.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[Xest]

We don't buy 1080p consoles full stop. We just buy consoles.

The fact they can do 1080p in theory is neither here nor there, last gen could do 1080p in theory but struggled in practice. This gen can do 4k in theory, but will struggle in practice.

There's a lot of things consoles can theoretically do but suck at in practice, it seems silly to get caught up on one more so than another.

I personally prefer gameplay over graphics, and if this game is notably fun then I couldn't care what it looks like. I remember back in the days of Quake 1 when GLQuake came out and graphics cards got better so that we could run it in 640x480, 800x600, and eventually 1024x768 if we were lucky I pretty much always dropped to 320x200 software (no GL) - the speed and smoothness of it was just so much more preferable, the game was way better when it ran smooth and fast, than slow and pretty.

Of course in a perfect world we'd have everything, but we don't live in a perfect world. There are balances and tradeoffs to be had and for most people the tradeoff of being fun is going to be more important than being pretty. Being pretty but not playable is what movies are for.

Assassins Creed Unity was full of bugs, regularly crashed, and ran like shit, but hey at least it was pretty and ran at 1080p right? No, I'd much rather they'd just dropped it to 720p and spent the time making it actually playable rather than fighting to get it to run at 1080p instead. That way I wouldn't have wasted £40 on a turd.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[drinkypoo]

We don't buy 1080p consoles full stop. We just buy consoles.

Disingenuous, since you know what I meant, and proved that full well in the next sentence.

I personally prefer gameplay over graphics,

It's not all about you.

Assassins Creed Unity was full of bugs, regularly crashed, and ran like shit, but hey at least it was pretty and ran at 1080p right? No, I'd much rather they'd just dropped it to 720p

I'd much rather they fixed the bugs and I could play at 1080p. The hardware's capabilities are known before the game hits the street, they decide how to tune it, it's their decision. They increase poly counts too much to hit their resolution targets and then act surprised.

That way I wouldn't have wasted ã40 on a turd.

You could also have just not made your purchasing decision until after it was demonstrated whether it would be a good one. I don't preorder any more because virtually no games are complete when released and I'm not paying for that. I wait until the game is finished now. The last game I even bought when it was new was GTAV for 360 and wow, what a piece of shit that was. It still doesn't work very well, but I'm done with Xbox-land now so that doesn't matter. I could go through it all over again with GTAV for PC but I'm definitely waiting until the end of that product's lifecycle before considering buying it, because only then might Rockstar have worked out the numerous glaring bugs which accompany each new release from them.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[CronoCloud]

The only people who claim they fear that are people who still haven't gotten over the fact that AAA attention was primarily switched to consoles about 10 years ago now and think that by spreading such falsehoods the AAA world will suddenly jump up and switch their allegiance to PC and only PC making it the one true master race gaming platform.

And haven't you noticed that it's the European game sites that run articles like these? Whether Eurogamer and their PC vs console comparisons, or Romania based Softpedia with this one. Europe has always been more PC partisan, partly because of all the @#$@# pirates in eastern Europe. They really don't "understand" "why consoles exist"

I once communicated with a Hungarian online. We talked a bit about gaming. He was a fervent PC Master race sort of guy. He said consoles were for rich kids and said the games cost too much. I couldn't get him to understand how American PC Master Race gamers sometimes call console gamers "welfare gamers" and that games cost the same price on various platforms here in the US. He said the PC was better because piracy was easier and that he pirated games mostly, because he had no money.

And then this fellow told me wanted to be a game developer, but complained that pretty much required a move to the UK or the States, because that was where the money is. To me, that made him a hypocrite. I was thinking "Of course that's where the money is, because Anglophones actually pay for games."

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[Anonymous Coward]

My 2D tv begs to differ

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[Xest]

"Disingenuous, since you know what I meant, and proved that full well in the next sentence."

Not really, my point was that there's no obligation that because a console can do something, that it should do something for every game. I agree that this generation should be more capable of hitting 1080p on more occasions than last gen, but I don't agree that it should be expected as a given. I couldn't give a toss if something like Minecraft is only 720p if it means I get better draw distances and bigger worlds for example because 1080p would add no practical benefit to the game.

"It's not all about you."

No, and that was my point, it's not all about you either, it's about the market, and guess what? my view is representative of the market and that's why they're doing what suits the market (which happens to coincide with what suits me), and not what suits you. They're making a game with more poly based detail and less actual pixels rendered, because it turns out that that's what most of their target customer base wants - no one's going to buy an FPS like BF if they gunned for 1080p, hit 60fps but the world is devoid of detail, or full of detail but only runs at 30fps.

"I'd much rather they fixed the bugs and I could play at 1080p. The hardware's capabilities are known before the game hits the street, they decide how to tune it, it's their decision."

Agreed that it's their decision, so why are you complaining that sometimes devs are deciding other things are more important than 1080p? At the end of the day some games are going to gun for 1080p and look great and play great because it's all about the graphics, but others want to flow smoothly and 1080p just isn't a concern at that point. On the PC I tend to crank up RTS games to max details, because I don't need 60fps, 30fps is plenty for that type of game, but an FPS? I definitely want 60fps. If you agree it's their decision I really don't understand what your complaint is.

"You could also have just not made your purchasing decision until after it was demonstrated whether it would be a good one."

Yes I could have and should have and was an idiot for not doing so - I thought that given that the past 6, 7, 8 or however many ACs there have been have been stable and looked good that this one might be too, more fool me - lesson well and truly learnt. Like you, I've given up on preorders altogether now because it's clear that even track record doesn't mean anything anymore in the games industry.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[tepples]

it's clear that even track record doesn't mean anything anymore in the games industry.

Having a track record at least gives your startup studio the opportunity to become a licensed developer of console games.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[Xest]

Honestly, I'm from the UK myself but I try not to listen to the gaming media. I've been aware for many many years now how the gaming media is effectively a protection racket. I've seen great games get poor reviews because they didn't pay their protection money and vice versa. Mostly where I've encountered this attitude is here in the comments section of Slashdot. I was late to even hear about the whole Gamergate thing for exactly this reason. When it filtered through to me on the media I do pay attention to it reinforced my view that visiting gaming sites is still a waste of time because they're still just fervent pits of rent seeking that provide nothing of actual value to the world of gaming. If I want to get a realistic idea of the quality of a game I just go and look for combined average user ratings across a decent size review set and that's about it.

I've probably been hypocritical myself, I got too caught up in the fanboy wars myself last gen back around 2006 or so as a 360 fanboy, but nowadays I can see how meaningless it was, and how pointless it was. I'm not sure if this is a sign of getting old, or growing personal financial security, but nowadays I just don't see the point, I have an Xbox One and a Wii U, but my PC is really dated now and there's not enough unique to the PS4 that takes my interest yet, if there was I'd just go out and buy one- I think all systems have their pros and cons, but I can't see much point complaining about them. You either like a system enough to buy it or you don't, I don't really see what there is to argue about beyond that, hence why I find articles like this one to be pointless vitriol - it tells us nothing useful, it achieves nothing useful, it's not informative, it's not interesting, it's just childish bickering.

I think there's some truth in what you say though, I've seen the exact argument you cite before too and I couldn't tell if it was sarcasm or seriousness, that someone preferred the PC because pirating games is easier, yet then went on to complain that devs are focussing too much on consoles. I just could not get my head around the sort of mindset that leads to such absurd obliviousness to how stupid an argument that is.

At the end of the day gaming markets are determined entirely by where the money is. I understand it's frustrating if your platform isn't where the money is, god only knows having bought an X1 it's frustrating to hear that Street Fighter has gone PS4 exclusive but I don't see much point getting too wound up about it. All platforms have their exclusives and as I've said before if one has enough to attract you to it, then save up your pennies and buy it, if not then it doesn't seem worth trolling the internet over it - it's almost as if there's an attitude of entitlement whereby some people feel they should have the right to have everything they want, when they want it, in the way they want it. It'd be nice for sure, but it's not the way the world works, and I doubt it's the way the world will ever work.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[aliquis]

There's no definite connection between resolution and fun or buggy.

Simple fact is the screens is running at one resolution and up-scaling a lower one will bring artifacts and less sharpness.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[Xest]

"Simple fact is the screens is running at one resolution and up-scaling a lower one will bring artifacts and less sharpness." ...and better FPS, more polygon detail and greater responsiveness.

It's a trade-off, it's not a one way thing like you're implying. You can't simply up to 1080p native without a cost and that cost isn't always inherently a negative - it's entirely dependent on what you're doing.

Though I don't know why you suggest less sharpness and artifacts are a given of upscaling, the whole point in upscaling is to increase sharpness, and artifacts aren't an inherent flaw of upscaling. What upscaling does is reduce per-pixel detail and whether that even notices depends on the game- you'd never notice it in a game with simple graphics like Minecraft for example.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[Cederic]

Yeah, I used to turn off all the prettiness to get smooth framerates at higher resolutions on Unreal Tournament exactly for those easier headshots.

Sorry, those more precise headshots. You had to move the mouse across more pixels to get to them, it must've been harder. I was crippling myself really.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

Upscaling doesn't increase sharpness. If I'm wrong, please explain how. Sharpness = detail and, as you said:

What upscaling does is reduce per-pixel detail

Upscaling fits a smaller image onto a larger screen. By necessity, it blurs the image slightly, thereby reducing sharpness.

Okay, I'm ready, tell me I'm wrong.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[Dutch Gun]

No, you're right, the scaling produces slightly blurrier images. Quality upscaling algorithms can only reduce the additional artifacts that would otherwise occur. It's just a way to conserve rendering power that has been used elsewhere, probably on additional scene complexity, like higher polygon counts, or improved pixel shaders that improve scene lighting, or realistic shadows. Or, it allows the use of more advanced full-screen post-processing effects. A 720p render target has *less than half* of the number of pixels a 1080p render target has, so you can see how this would be a significant savings.

There are two possibilities I can see. Either the devs:
a) Made a deliberate choice to trade off reduced resolution for higher scene complexity because they felt it actually looked better, or
b) The artists blew past their hardware budgets, and they since reworking all the game assets wasn't feasible, they either had to accept lower frame rates or lower resolution.

Given my past experience when working with game artists, my guess is that 'b' is more likely.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

Indeed, but I was replying to Xest's claim that "the whole point in upscaling is to increase sharpness".

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[Dutch Gun]

Yep, it's the exact opposite, so I'm not sure how he figures that either. It's a reduction in sharpness in order to save computation power for other GPU operations. I was just expounding on how that worked in a bit more detail, based on my experiences as a videogame programmer.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

Ahh, so you're actually qualified to comment? You realize this is Slashdot, right?

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[Xest]

You're thinking of sharpness in terms of photography, where level of bluriness depends on focus, but we don't focus computer graphics, we render them. We're not dealing with capture and representation of real images, we're building them ourselves.

Detail will be lost between a natively rendered 1080p image an an upscaled 720p image, because rather than having the extra pixels filled with actual explicit detail, they're being filled with guesses based on one of many algorithms. Depending on the game some algorithms can get this pretty much exactly right (i.e. in a game with relatively simple graphics like Minecraft).

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

How about you define sharpness for me, then? Or, try this: open your image editor, create a new 1280x720 image, give it a white background, and draw a black, 1px, solid line across it. Look at how sharp that is, a crisp transition from black to white. Now, upscale that to 1920x1080 and look again. Not as sharp.

Of course, I can only explain it to you, I can't understand it for you, so, there's that.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[Xest]

If your knowledge of computer graphics and upscaling is limited to resize in paint programs you really are too dumb to be having this conversation.

Even if we stick to your photography oriented view of out of focus blur which is really what you're talking about when you say sharpness when talking about loss of explicit per-pixel detail it's not as if upscaling algorithms are so dumb that a similar blur is a given. Worse, some blurring is even desirable, that's the whole point of spatial anti-aliasing after all.

Of course yes, having AA on a 1080p precisely rendered scene is always going to look best, but an upscaled 720p image to 1080p is always going to look better than a precisely rendered 720p image with modern upscaling algorithms and also nearly always look better than a 1080p precisely rendered scene without AA even.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

Let's see you reply to the game developer in this conversation. He's more qualified to tear you apart than I am, which, of course, is why you chose me.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

Alternately, why don't you explain how I'm wrong, rather than just calling me dumb? You remember when I asked you to define sharpness? That would be a valid argument. Do you have one of those?

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[Xest]

Um no, I replied to you because you replied to me asking a question which I answered. I've no idea who "the game developer" is but even then what do you mean by game developer? are we talking about an expert in rendering technology? I don't think many if any of those post here anymore, people like Carmack left a long time ago and mostly when people rave on about being a game developer on Slashdot what they really mean is they're a bottom of the rung lacky that implements a few game mechanics- that's a far cry from being one of the handful of developers who actually deal with rendering tech in the industry - there's a reason why most companies just reuse existing engines like Frostbite, Unreal, or id Tech.

You seem to be upset that you asked a question and got an answer you didn't want and are now pushing a classic appeal to authority fallacy. I'm happy to answer questions as I have done, but if you just want to argue for the sake of it by throwing in logical fallacies whilst admitting that you don't really know enough to provide an actual counter-point or correction then I've got better things to do.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

Which question of mine were you answering? I don't see any supposed answers you've given that are relevant to any question I've asked, so of course I'm not satisfied with any of your answers thus far. To recap, here are the questions I've asked you:

How about you define sharpness for me, then?

Not answered.

Alternately, why don't you explain how I'm wrong, rather than just calling me dumb?

Not answered.

You remember when I asked you to define sharpness?

Not answered.

That would be a valid argument. Do you have one of those?

Not answered.

I'm still curious what fucked up definition of "sharp" you're using that isn't the opposite of "blurred". You have an opportunity to be the bigger person here, show how smart you really are, and educate someone (who's asking you to do so) and I can only imaging the only reason you'd pass that up is because you've got nothing. In a way, that disappoints me, because I used to come here with the expectation that I'd occasionally learn something.

Re:Fix gameplay related issues first

[RyoShin]

The focus on resolution seems ridiculously overblown.

I think developers brought this upon themselves. Near the end of last gen, poly-count got with extremely diminishing returns and particle effects hit a roof, so they made up for the lack of graphical improvements by touting 1080p whenever they possibly could. Thus console gamers came to expect it of higher-end titles, especially when the console manufacturers moderately pushed the ability.

This gen can do more in terms of particle generation/poly count (with the Wii U far behind), so the focus has shifted back to those and away from 1080p.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

Oh, what? Looks like I was perfectly qualified to tear you apart. How about you answer some of those questions you claim to be on to of, then? Seriously, if I'm wrong, don't just tell me I'm wrong and call me dumb, explain why I'm wrong, and tell me what's right; my eyes and mind are open, it's part of the reason I'm here. Educate me, oh great one.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[Xest]

When you talk about sharpness in photography as opposed to bluriness, you're talking about a picture that more accurately represents the scene as you see it. When you defocus, you lose detail, the scene is not as you expect, and you call it less sharp.

In computer graphics it's not as straightforward, there is no real scene to capture directly, instead we try and make up something that looks like a real scene with a variety of algorithms.

Your view seems to be that a computer image is more sharp if there is always greater contrast between pixels, and that all upscaling algorithms create a decrease in contrast by using estimates of additional pixels on upscale.

These assumptions are incorrect, because they neither represent how modern upscaling algorithms used in games work, nor do they take into account that greater contrast is sometimes detrimental in creating a more realistic picture. Your view would imply that a non-anti-aliased scene is better than an anti-aliased scene for say, an FPS where you're looking down a straight road. This is nonsense, because without that blur you're actually going to end up with a scene that looks less real - it fits your definition of sharper. Similarly increased pixelation makes a scene less real, even though you seem to be suggesting a more pixelated scene is a sharper scene.

So you've got this differentiation with the computer graphics world where there are additional criteria that reduce the accuracy of a scene to what you might hope it to be that go beyond simple focus. You're using a definition of sharpness that suggests that a less realistic looking scene (i.e. more pixelated, and with nonsense distance rendering) is sharper. You're saying that if we had a simple game like Minecraft running at a low incredibly pixelated resolution, that the image is somehow sharper than that same scene upscaled with an algorithm that can recognise the typically well defined edges in Minecraft's relatively simple graphics and grow them to a resolution that loses visible pixelation whilst not losing any actual practical detail. Fundamentally you're equating sharpness to increased pixelation, and increased contrast between neighbouring pixels. Neither of which are actually really desirable in many parts of scenes in games gunning for photorealism.

Just like being out of focus can kill the sharpness and realism of a scene with a camera, higher pixelation and lack of decent blending can kill the sharpness and realism of a scene in computer graphics. You can't make a scene sharper by simply increasing contrast, and increasing pixelation all you're doing is creating a digital kind of blur that messes up the scene as much as being out of focus with an analog camera would.

Of course there are other factors, if you can have more polygons at 720p upscaled to 1080p than you can afford if you just go for native 1080p then you can make curves look more like curves, rather than a bunch of triangles desperately trying to represent curves. Or you can simply make the scene look more real in general by having more realistic clutter in it like litter on the ground, rather than a pristine swept street in the middle of a ghetto that makes zero sense and gives zero immersion.

Upscaling is done for a reason - when used with specific intention in a planned manner like this it creates a better, more realistic image than not upscaling. Again yes, if you can afford to render the scene natively at 1080p with full AA and so forth it's bound to look better because there's no guesswork going on, but that guesswork is typically good enough that upscaled to 1080p is going to look way sharper than native 720p because the curves are better defined, distance rendering can be more accurately done and so on and so forth.

Saying you want to learn is meaningless, you have to actually want to learn and be willing to learn. Refusing to read what's in front of you and arguing about something you openly admit you don't have a clue about guarantees you a life of ignorance. This is the last time I'm going to try to explain it to you because beyond this it simply means that you don't want to learn, that you're intentionally ignorant- that you're ignorant by choice.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

Mind pointing out where I ever mentioned focus or contrast in this conversation? Flat out, I did not. I asked you to provide me with your definition of "sharpness" and you, still, at this point, have not. I'm asking you to educate me on that specific point so that I can see where you're coming from, and all you can do is tell me my point of view is wrong based on shit you keep incorrectly inferring about my point of view. I want to learn, but you are clearly incapable of teaching; you first have to understand how my understanding is wrong, and thus far everything you've told me is wrong about my understanding is just what you have inferred and not my actual understanding.

Follow?

The "sharpness" setting on most displays does work by attempting to increase the contrast between pixels, and it typically looks like shit. It's mislabeled and should be called "artificial contrast". This is not what I understand as "sharpness", as you have implied here. It also has nothing to do with focus, which is what you've previously (also incorrectly) implied my understanding of sharpness to be. If you are agreeing with me that "sharpness" is the opposite of "blur", which is what I've been trying to drag out of you, then why don't you just come out and say that? Then, your explanation that some upscaling algorithms are better at guessing than others (by your own admission, some are just simple pixel estimation; Lancsoz, for example) would have been readily accepted.

But, the fact remains, even the best algorithms guess at everything and, when they guess wrong, that is incorrect detail, which one may conflate with blur, the opposite of sharpness. Further, if you don't have time to properly render the scene at the correct resolution, you don't have time to use one of the better algorithms, either; you end up with, at best, Lancsoz, and at worst, nearest-neighbor. Where algos like HQnx and nxBRZ shine is pre-rendered rasters, where the resolution has already been determined and does not mach your output resolution; they are not useful in instances where you simple don't have time to render at your native resolution in the first place, as you likely also don't have time to perform the calculations necessary for those algorithms.

Regarding your earlier mention of AA as a type of blur, it is actually quite the opposite. The best method of Antialiasing is downscaling: rendering the image larger, then combining multiple pixels into one. For example, rendering the image at 3840x2160 and blending each 2x2 group of pixels into a single pixel. The analog in photography (since you keep bringing it up) is multiple rays of light hitting individual pixels of the camera's sensor, or hitting the same grain of the film. Yes, there is less detail than the originally-rendered image, so the displayed image will technically be less sharp, but it will be as sharp as the display allows, and much more accurate. I think we're in agreement on that accuracy point, and that AA is always preferred when possible. I'm just intending to point out how it is, in fact, the opposite of blur (which, in computer graphics, comes from interpolation or blending with n pixels with n+x pixels, where x >= 0, where downscaling is the opposite, blending n pixels to create n/x pixels; in one case, you have the same number of pixels, or more, and some blur; in the other, you have fewer, and no added blur).

I don't do this for a living, by any means, but it i something I've been exposed to for my entire life and I have a decent enough understanding of the topic to hold my own in these conversations once I've identified the points everyone in the conversation is trying to make. You need to work on your communication skills given that it took this long for you to spit out anything even closely resembling a point; that's not meant as an attack or an insult, but as friendly advice. I've been there, too.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[Xest]

Saying you want to learn when all question posed have clearly been answered multiple times shows a clear disconnect between what you're saying you want to do, and what you actually want to do.

You're still displaying a fundamental lack of understanding about most things here. You're trying to explain MSAA and using that as an obscure argument that in some cases an estimated pixel is blurring, and in others it's not. This makes no sense - blurring occurs when you have an approximation of a set of pixels, rather than the actual pixels. An approximation of 4 pixels downscaled to 1, is still an approximation, as is 1 pixel upscaled into 4 approximated pixels. Have a look at the font example here:

http://www.geforce.co.uk/whats...

What do you think those intermediate pixels between the black and the white when anti-aliased are if not a literal blurring of the lines to make a jagged edge look smoother?

You're reaching for a single very specific algorithm, and using very arbitrary (and hypocritical) definitions to try and argue your point. This tells me that you've already decided what's what, which again shows what a farce your claim to want to learn is- if you've already decided you know best (whilst admitting you're wholly unqualified on the subject) then why are you pretending you care? why are you even discussing? don't say you're doing so because you want to learn whilst simultaneously proving that you do not.

You're arguing as someone whose taken their knowledge from a "my graphics card is better than your graphics card" type website or forum discussion with maybe a bit of Googling thrown in to try and mask the most embarrassing elements of your lack of knowledge. What you're not showing is an understanding of the visual impact these algorithms and techniques have on a finalised scene and it's that that makes it clear that you're out of your depth.

If you want to lecture on discussion etiquette whilst complaining about not getting detailed answers - consider this, don't enter a discussion posting in a manner where it's clear you're looking for a fight, continue on with "I've no idea about any of this but here's a logical fallacy" and then persist with "I want to learn but I can't be arsed to think so you're wrong". I don't owe you anything, much less am I willing to put any effort into providing more detailed an in depth explanations with examples when you act like an ass from the very outset and persist through the duration.

You strike me as someone that could actually get into this in a bit more detail and could, if you wanted to, learn to write your own rendering engine. But before you do that you need to sort your attitude out and actually want to learn rather than pretend to want to learn but actually just be looking for a fight. You're so nearly there, you recognise that learning is important, and that wanting to learn is important, but you've not quite crossed the line yet where you're willing to put self-pride aside to actually do it.

If you're not going to do that and finally cross that line you may want to consider that there's a reason you're the sort of person that ended up working in a fast food joint as you mentioned in another post. It's your choice, but I think you probably do have the potential to actually get into this stuff properly and actually do it, rather than skirt about on the edges with half-arsed third hand knowledge learnt from the second hand knowledge of some bottom of the rung gaming website faux-journalist.

If you want to do that I can tell you exactly what you need to do to get going, and how to avoid or deal with the inevitable roadblocks that learning this stuff creates because whilst being a game developer is easy, being a graphics developer isn't - anyone can chuck something together with Unity, Unreal Engine and so forth, but far fewer people can write those engines in the first place. Don't look upto game developers as rockstars, they're not. The days where

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

(whilst admitting you're wholly unqualified on the subject)

Admitting someone else, who works in the field, is more qualified is not the same as admitting I'm unqualified. And no, you still have not answered the one fundamental question I asked you: What is your definition of "sharp"? Answer that and we'll be good here. That's what I'm wanting to learn. Really, stopped reading the rest of your wall of text at the part I quoted, so you may well have finally done that, but if I could get just a simple, concise answer to the question you claim to have repeatedly already answered, that would be great. No explanations of how AA is blur, or (misguided) attempts to guess at my definition of blur, or insults, or insinuations that I don't want to hear your answer (when the reality seems to be that you don't want to give it), just your definition of sharp. That would be enough to get us on the same page; step one in those communication skills I mentioned earlier. Clearly, you're not saying what you think you're saying, and that's not my problem.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

Since you originally brought up AA, though:

The only mentions of blur on Wikipedia's AA Page relate to photography (near the top of the page) and an separate operation done before resampling an image (in a comparison against proper AA).

But, Wikipedia is a horrible source, so I won't leave you with just that. So, here's another, along with an explanation of the Nyquist–Shannon Sampling Theorum, and one more not from Wikipedia (PDF warning). I didn't cherry pick these, these were top results for simple searches on the subject (and also all items I've already read and understood at points far preceding this argument).

Clearly, having read and understood any factual materials on the subject, AA is, as it relates to digital signals, not a form of blur. Your link (which is very basic and dumbed-down for the graphics card consumer; a poor choice for an actual technical argument) doesn't disagree with that stance, either.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

I actually ended up saying fuck it and reading the rest of your wall of text... Then, I spent an hour

you're the sort of person that ended up working in a fast food joint

Again with the insults and assumptions! I worked in one for 3 years, yes. I started there, I did not end up there. Today, I run a successful creative and business development firm and remain very hands-on in all aspects of the business.

but either way you sound like your worship the profession and what it does

No, I'm not sure where you're getting that. I have an interest, but it's far from worship. In my teen years, almost 2 decades ago, I dabbled. I even developed a couple of algorithms that I simply didn't have the computing power to reasonably implement (waiting hours for an image to render on the 386 that was handed down to me isn't something I had the discipline to do back then) at the time and, now that I have plentiful resources, the one resource I'm lacking is the time to actually implement them. I have the whitepaper still (around somewhere) from the image format I developed, which natively lends itself to scaling (down without loss of sharpness, up without loss of detail, as well as a draft spec for an audio format based on similar principles. I'd like to implement them some day, when time permits, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

and if so then why aren't you aspiring to it?

Lack of resources when my interest was stronger, lack of time now that I have the resources.

if you're still skeptical of the idea that an upscale can still create a sharper scene than a lower resolution non-upscaled scene

This is why I keep asking you for your definition of "sharp" as it relates to digital imaging. As I understand it, it is the relationship between resolution and detail; if your image contains all the detail it can possibly contain at a given resolution, it is as sharp as it can be. If you have a sharp 1600x900 image and you scale it to 1920x1080, you don't magically regain the detail that was lost when it was sampled or rendered at 1600x900, you decrease the density of the existing details and, thus, the sharpness of the image. See Nyquist-Shannon. If that disagrees with your definition of "sharp", then I need to know what that definition is. Still. Which is why I keep asking.

that blurring is sometimes a good thing

Using the 1600x900 to 1920x1080 example I just gave, yes, even a simple bi-linear filter will look a damn-sight better than nearest-neighbor. Better scaling algorithms will look better still, but they won't recover detail and, therefore, will negatively impact sharpness as I understand it. From the way you talk about it, I could assume that you define "sharp" as "looks better", but I'd rather hear the definition from you directly than risk incorrectly inferring it, which is why I keep asking you to define it. We do seem to be in agreement that "blurry" beats "blocky", though (and I can get behind calling blockiness a type of blur, even; that fits my prior, loose definition of "sharp" as "the opposite of blur", as blocky images a not, as you incorrectly implied I believed, sharp).

rather than telling me I haven't explained something when I have

You've explained your definition of "sharp" quite well, I'm sure. You still haven't simply provided a concise definition, which is what I'm asking for.

and just assuming I'm wrong

If you think you've answered my question, you're very wrong.

or bad at teaching

I asked a simple question: What is your definition of "sharp"? You keep explaining around that question, rather than answering it, and I'm sure you're explained quite well and in much detail, but you still have not given the definition, so I still have no idea what you're explaining. That makes you a bad teacher.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

wow... fail paragraph at the top there... Should read "Then, I spent an hour writing a well-thought-out response, clicked Preview, then closed the window. FML. Here's a quick and dirty summary of what I wrote."

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[Xest]

Oh fuck me, I was wrong, you really are just too dumb to cope with any of this. You're now trying to say that whether something is a blurring effect is defined entirely on whether an article on an AA algorithm explicitly uses the word "blur".

You really didn't think before making even more of a tit of yourself it might be prudent to actually understand what a blur is? You realise the no matter what dictionary you check the term blur and it's synonyms describe the effect of AA exactly?

I can't believe you've reached the point where you're trying to argue a blurring effect isn't in a desperate attempt to save face. You really are a lost cause, a perfect example of someone who just wants to be right even when they're oh so wrong and will jump to extraordinary extremes like arguing that something that is the very definition of a blur isn't. You always know that someone is hopeless when they drop to the point of trying to redefine the dictionary to suit their argument and that's exactly where you're at. It's pathetic.

There's no point in going any further, I can't help you, I've explained multiple times, I've given you everything you need, but you're just beyond it, you're just far too retarded to be able to rationally take part in this topic.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

Really? The Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem, the definitive explanation of aliasing and antialiasing, is pretty clear on what antialiasing is, and it is not blur; it is the removal of signals of higher frequency than your target resolution (in this case, removal of details smaller than a pixel). Averaging, as is used in supersampling (described in your GeForce link), is not blur. Had you not stopped at my first (and self-admittedly horrible) resource, and actually read and understood the material that not only best describes, but actually originated, the idea of aliasing and antialiasing in digital signals, you might realize that I'm not redefining anything at all.

Speaking of redefining, can I get that definition I keep asking for?

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

Actually, I see where the confusion may have come in... I didn't look closely enough at that PDF I linked to and thought it was the actual theorem and not some professor's ramblings about said theorem. Having gone back and looked at it again, I see my error and will attempt to find and link to the correct document.

Have you considered the possibility that it is you who is wrong? You seem unable or unwilling to answer one simple question (instead explaining your way all around the answer), which would be quite simple for your to answer if you were confident that your were correct. I'm not 100% sure I'm right, which is why I'm asking in the first place; your answer will confirm one way or the other; your lack of answer thus far seems to lean in my favor, rather than yours.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

Unfortunately, I can't find the Nyquist paper online anywhere (I originally read it off microfilm a couple decades back) so the Wikipedia article (not the one you quoted, the other one I linked) is the best I can do for references.

I have to ask you though, why is it okay for you to insist that "sharp" has different definitions between digital imaging and photography, but not okay for me to insinuate that the same may be true for "blur"? Not that I was doing so, but you attacked me for it, so I have to ask. Why is that?

For reference, yes a physical AA filter, as used in photography, does blur the image. I thought I had pointed that out, but I may not have; I'm too tired of this to go back and look. Meanwhile, the definition of "blur" seems to agree with my position. I'm not redefining anything to get to this point, I'm using the textbook definition: "make or become unclear or less distinct". In digital imaging, antialiasing makes things more clear; you even said so yourself:

Your view would imply that a non-anti-aliased scene is better than an anti-aliased scene for say, an FPS where you're looking down a straight road. This is nonsense, because without that blur you're actually going to end up with a scene that looks less real - it fits your definition of sharper.

And you did so while at the same time making an incorrect assumption of my definition of "sharp". I've given you my definition, by the way; I'm still waiting on yours.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[Xest]

"Unfortunately, I can't find the Nyquist paper online anywhere (I originally read it off microfilm a couple decades back) so the Wikipedia article (not the one you quoted, the other one I linked) is the best I can do for references."

What you really mean is: "My attempt to try and argue myself out of this massive hole I've dug by using a combination of Google and Wikipedia rather than actually understanding of the topic has failed, but I'm still too insecure to admit I was wrong explicitly.". You can't argue your way out of this hole by simply quoting the names of papers and algorithms you've found on Google and Wikipedia in a desperate attempt to try and sound smart all the whilst showing a complete lack of clue about what any of it actually means in practice.

"I have to ask you though, why is it okay for you to insist that "sharp" has different definitions between digital imaging and photography"

It's not about difference in defintion, it's about difference in factors that can cause loss of sharpness. In photography loss of focus is the key thing that causes loss of detail, but in computer graphics there are other things - pixelation by reduced resolution for example.

If you think having read the defintion of blur that it backs up your position, then you're still just desperately clutching at straws to avoid just admitting you were wrong. Have a look at an aliased vs. an anti-aliased screenshot, zoom in to see what anti-aliasing does. The definition of anti-aliasing you linked states:

"make or become unclear or less distinct."

This is EXACTLY what anti-aliasing does, the whole point in it is to make strikingly pixelated areas look less pixelated, this is why I provided you the simple nVidia link, because it shows with a basic example the effects of anti-aliasing - it reduces jagged pixelated edges by blurring them into surrounding edges - it reduces the distinct pixelation by making it less distinct so that to the human eye in intended viewing conditions the edge looks more like a sharp diagonal line than a jagged pixelated mess.

Oh, and by the way, the way you make multiple posts in reply to me and yourself? It's like a desperation meter, the more desperate your argument gets the more desperately you flood the discussion. It's quite amusing.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

And yet you still haven't answered the one question I've actually asked. What definition of "sharp" are you using? I can admit I'm wrong when someone actually shows me that I am. Look through my post history and you'll see that. But, when someone resorts to insults and troll tactics, as you've done here, i feed them for amusement. So, are you going to answer my actual question, finally? You do realize that the definition of "sharp" is the foundation of our argument and the only way you are going to winis to answer that question. It's the only real supporting proof your case has.

Re: Fix gameplay related issues first

[BronsCon]

It's not desperation, as I'm through arguing, it's an "oh, damn, I should have said this, too". The distinction matters. If you don't want to answer my question, that's fine, you simply are not going to convince me until you do, though. It is the one thing I've actually been trying to get out of you for what, 5 days now and I honestly don't care that much. Maybe I have backward definitions of things, I still understand the principles and can make them work, so this whole argument boils down to definitions and you simply refuse to share yours. How can I admit that your definition is right and mine is wrong when you won't tell me what yours is? Namaste.

i aint into your lizard mumbo jumbo

[Anonymous Coward]

the lizards lick their lips with pride and puff themselves up loving every minute you play your killer simulator games, kill kill kill, kill kill kill, do it in the name of X! Then you have the threads where people are marveling over the amount of occult symbols they find in their lizard made games and think it's cool.

LEWZERZ!

STFU

[Anonymous Coward]

"I am in no way qualified to assess the work of graphics programmers, some of the best paid and highest skilled people in the programming industry. I am a consumer, an end user. But none the less I will be unreasonably angry at the amount of pixels I get and demand they should be higher despite the fact that I am a consumer, and thus am, in the balance of power here, the one paying $60 for having the privelege of playing the game at all."

- Every article as such ad nauseum.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[Anonymous Coward]

Doubtful. Most portables, especially low-end ones, use some Intel Graphics shit. Intel Iris if you're lucky.

That said, you can build a desktop PC that can outperform a console for about the same price. Just be sure to pirate Winblows.

The gap between PC and console

[Anonymous Coward]

...is slowly dwindling. It won't be long before there'll be high/mid/low range options of your <chosen console>, and your graphics quality will reflect that, just like on actual PCs

Maybe not this generation, but it'll happen.

Re:The gap between PC and console

[FlyHelicopters]

Maybe, but the average customer doesn't know or care what resolution the game is running at, only that it runs.

The thing is, some of us would be happy to pay $100 more for a console fast enough to run it at 1080p properly, but is that enough to complicate the market?

Re:The gap between PC and console

[dohzer]

The gap will never truly be closed until they have a mouse on consoles, thereby allowing people to compete against PC gamers.

Re:The gap between PC and console

[ezdiy]

Perhaps grandparent was talking about consoles approaching PCs hardware wise with each gen - with some small amount of junk to keep it obfusated enough for DRM. At the end of that evolution chain you get basically a PC, with hardware DRM. And hopefuly with modular components, otherwise consoles can't really ever compete on manufacture cost vs performance (let's ignore current practice of hardware subsidy).

Re:The gap between PC and console

[Anonymous Coward]

You can put a mouse and keyboard on a console providing the game supports it. Do a quick lookup on this if you don't believe me.

Re:The gap between PC and console

[CronoCloud]

The gap will never truly be closed until they have a mouse on consoles

We've been able to hook up mice to consoles since what was it? 2000? Where have you been that last 14 years?

thereby allowing people to compete against PC gamers.

Not everyone wants to play deathmatch FPS's thank you very much.

so why 1408x792, technically?

[Anonymous Coward]

1920x1080 = 2,073,600 pixels
1408x792 = 1,115,136 pixels = strange, because it's roughly half as many pixels as 1080p, and only 20% more than 720p
1280x720 = 921,600 pixels

factoring:

1920: 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 5
1080: 2 2 2 3 3 3 5

1408: 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 11
792: 2 2 2 3 3 11

1280: 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 5
720: 2 2 2 2 3 3 5

I'm guessing they chose 11/15 because it's close to 1/sqrt(2), but it's better than of 3/4 or 7/10 because it preserves all of 1080's power-of-two alignment?
But if that's the real reason, then why didn't they go for 1280x720? Anyone have any insight into this?

Re:so why 1408x792, technically?

[xororand]

Marketing; so nobody can say it's just "720p".

Re:so why 1408x792, technically?

[jones_supa]

I asked the same question before, check out that too. Although I'm not sure if an undisputable reason was found even back then. The best answers to me seem that they walked across various arbitrary resolutions and that was as far as they could push the Xbox One, or the one that both dimensions have a common denominator of 8 because of some optimization reason.

Re:so why 1408x792, technically?

[Xest]

They probably just started at 720p and walked their way up to 1080p in various stages to see what they could get away with without sacrificing the 60fps "holy grail".

It's probably just that that's as far as they got. At the end of the day, 20% more is 20% more. No point dropping 20% detail to 720p if there's no benefit because they're aiming to sync to 60fps regardless of resolution.

Re:so why 1408x792, technically?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for linking the previous discussion. I definitely noticed that 1408x792 is aligned to 8x8, but that got me wondering if there's some special optimization/advantage to using that alignment over say 4x4 or even 2x2. Sadly it looks like nobody really knows, and as mentioned in your other thread, it's also quite possible that they just walked up the list of all 16:9 combinations until they got one that met their performance limit.

I've heard that the reason opengl fragment shaders are always evaluated in batches of 2x2 so that you can compute an approximate derivative essentially for free.

I've also heard that many video cards remap all textures to use bit interleaving of the Z-order curve to help improving VRAM cache efficiency. The standard x86 PC CPU L1 and L2 cache line sizes are 64 bytes, but apparently almost all GPUs (including all PC add-on cards, ps3/4, and xbox360/one) use 128 byte vram cache lines.

With interleaved access, 128 byte cache line could hold either a 4x8 or 8x4 of 4-byte RGBA values depending on which axis comes first. So I guess it could be very helpful to maintain 8x8 alignment if you don't know the axis bit ordering. But then again, most frame buffers these days are 8-byte HDR (or even fatter g-buffers), so a 4x4 is probably all you could expect fit into a single cache line.

EA? Why would you buy anything from EA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesnt matter what resolution its in... i'll never buy an EA title.

EA is the Michael Bay of video games. It only knows one trick, and its a tired one.

Live by the sword, die by the sword

[Anonymous Coward]

pixel-pumping is all EA's got in its bag of tricks. There is literally no other reason to buy an EA title than to see how many megablip pixel shadows they can blast onto the screen. Theres nothing else in their games.

So yea, when they fall down on the -one- thing theyve been known to get right. People are going to comment on it.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[Xest]

Right, but more people are buying console games, just as more people bought iPhones compared to much more powerful Samsung phones, what does that tell you?

I'll give you a hint: people don't care about power, they care about things like ease of use and polish.

I don't even like Sony or Apple and I can tell you this. It's not rocket science that raw underlying power isn't everything to the consumer. More often they just want something that's quick and easy to use and reliable. As much as I love Android it's not lost on me that all the clutter and tat that Samsung added on top of vanilla Android killed the experience of their devices regardless of the power advantage they have often had over equivalent iPhones.

It shouldn't be surprising that it's the same when it comes to playing games either- no one wants a big buzzing PC in their living room that takes a bit of time to boot up, typically requires navigation with a mouse and keyboard and so forth when they can just chuck a console under the TV, have it fire up almost instantly and jump straight into a game with a controller purpose built for slouching on the sofa than a mouse and keyboard that are typically horrible on anything other than a desk.

Though no one should be gloating about anything, PCs and consoles both have great games that work well for their respective input styles. MMOs tend to be terrible on consoles, but platformers tend to be awful on PCs for example. Ultimately it's going to depend on what type of game you like to play and where you play it, any talk of power is just pointless if you're not having much fun.

Mesures

[Anonymous Coward]

People tend to focus on what they can actually mesure. You can't mesure amusement or gameplay.
I'm working in the German car industry and we have the same problem there. People are measuring how good is a sport car regarding 0 to 60, top speed, or lap time on the fuck*** Nurburgring. This is completely irrelevant since very few of them will actually chase the clock. What matters is how much do I get for the price, and how good it is as a car I will use everyday.
But these considerations are long gone in a world where we absolutely want to compare everything at any cost. We just found some metrics and use them ad nauseum.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but more people are buying console games, just as more people bought iPhones compared to much more powerful Samsung phones, what does that tell you?

I'll give you a hint: people don't care about power, they care about things like ease of use and polish.

If they would care about ease of use, why would they pick an iPhone over an Android-based phone?

Strange choice

[Anonymous Coward]

They could have easily lowered the frame rate slightly without any visible change to the human eye, but a reduction of resolution is clearly visible to most. Why not opt for 1080p with 50 FPS? 50 FPS is already twice the rate of standard television.

Re:Strange choice

[Anonymous Coward]

Stutter is the most likely result as v-sync would still be on.

Disabling it leaves tearing.

If only TV's universally had some sort of tech similar to G-Sync or Freesync then consoles could use a floating frame rate.

Re:Strange choice

[ezdiy]

25 in europe or 30 in US is certain enough for movies, as we're used to it, you get that "cinematic feel". We're so used to it there's usually even an option to enable motion blur (which simulates real world camera) in most games. While rod cells have pretty long cool down time too, it relates only to detail perception. Motion perception is magnitude more demanding - seasoned FPS players can tell difference between 50 and 100FPS (yay CRTs, TFT panels like that are not widely available).

25fps is 40ms reaction on frame alone, which is awfuly slow. Jerky framerate is alright for casual gaming on gamepad, but gets pretty nauseating on fast paced shooters with free mouse look. It also affects gameplay - an U-turn often takes less than 50-100ms - then it's a matter of glimpsing something midway or not.

Re:Strange choice

[Wootery]

As AC says above: because that's not how it works.

50 fps looks awful, because it's mapped onto the 60fps refresh-rate of the monitor.

If G-Sync and/or FreeSync were in widespread use, you'd be right to say that 50fps looks almost as good as 60fps.

Maybe in a few years dynamic-refresh-rate will be a standard feature. Here's hoping.

Re:Strange choice

[Anonymous Coward]

This is about console games; they are not displayed on a monitor, but on a TV. TVs can display 50 FPS just fine. Most of the content they are designed to display is either 25 or 50 FPS.

Re:Strange choice

[aliquis]

Likely much easier to get a 100+ Hz TFT panel today than itÃs to get a 100+ Hz CRT ;D

There's a 34" 21:9 2560x1080 60 Hz IPS FreeSync/Adaptive-Sync monitor out too :)

Obvious disadvantage of 50 fps is of course that some frames will last you 1/60 of a second and others 1/30 of a second ..

Then again Adaptive-Sync would remove that and let the monitor to free to draw something in-between (as delay) too.

Re:Strange choice

[ezdiy]

panel today than it's to get a 100+ Hz CRT

CRTs of the higher end, while specced 75hz can often run at 100-120 with proper modeline (and comparably lower resolution).

But yeah, my info is at least 5 years out of date, you can't exactly buy new CRTs these days, while gaming 100hz TFTs seem to be around.

Does resolution matter?

[RogueyWon]

There was some Nielsen market-research data published recently on why current-generation console owners had published the console they had. For PS4 owners, the answer was "better resolution", for Xbox One owners it was "brand" and for the Wii-U it was "fun-factor". There's been a lot written about this data since it was published.

But what I suspect is that it tells us very little about either the consoles themselves. Rather, it tells us a lot about the self-image of the people who buy them. So the PS4 fans are the ones who want to be able to point at the bigger numbers. The Xbox-One fans are the ones who honestly do care about brand (and given this is US survey data, "buy American" is probably a big part of it). And Wii-U fans have a strange obsession that they have some kind of monopoly on fun. Watch the fanboy-wars on any gaming forum of your choice (and they are more vicious this generation than I've ever seen them before) and you will find that each of those stereotypes holds up remarkably well.

And does resolution actually matter hugely? I'm unconvinced. If I want technical perfection (and sometimes I do), I'm playing on a PC anyway. Some of my favourite console games of the last generation were a technical mess.

I would argue that framerate matters more for certain genres. For anything requiring fast reactions and/or fine control, such as a shooter, high-end driving game or fighting game, a steady 60fps translates into a huge increase in responsiveness.

I think it's generally accepted now that in performance terms, the new console hardware has disappointed; promises of 1080p x 60fps haven't materialised. Given the constraints of a fixed hardware platform, I'd rather developers drop resolution or image quality in return for a higher/steadier framerate.

Re: Does resolution matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would argue brand is more than just saying I own an xbox.

Brand is what people think that name stands for. The xbox brand to me as far as consoles go has always meant thr hardcore gamers console, the better online services, more action games, more hardware innovation, more software on the box meaning it does more things.

Re:Does resolution matter?

[drinkypoo]

And does resolution actually matter hugely? I'm unconvinced. If I want technical perfection (and sometimes I do), I'm playing on a PC anyway.

Yes, and there you can have proper resolution, and see that it does matter a great deal. Native resolution is clearer.

Re:Does resolution matter?

[ezdiy]

Amateur LAN party organiser (>50 players) with anecdotal sample here.

Does resolution matter?

It depends. When the game demands it, ie frantic action shooter, like q3a or cs and even the slower ones like arma/cod/battlefield, most players will sacrifice visual details and/or resolution till they get smooth 45-60 FPS.

Conversely games not that epilepsy-inducing (RTS and anything slower than that up to casual gaming), 30fps is often enough and the rest of GPU power can be spent on finer details.

Re: Does resolution matter?

[RogueyWon]

Whereas in reality, the differences between the PS4 and Xbox-One (and their respective software lineups) are vanishingly small. The PS4 generally offers a marginal performance benefit. The Xbox-One has marginally better multimedia functionality (though still not as good as the old PS3). But you're really down to splitting hairs here and only pedants or perfectionists will ever notice the difference.

And on the games/franchises front? Exclusives are fewer and further between than ever and the PS/Xbox franchises largely parallel each other. Gran Turismo vs Forza. Killzone vs Gears of War. To be honest, I don't think any of the current gen consoles has a "must have" exclusive yet. Bloodborne (released later this month) might manage to become the first - but the nature of the industry these days is that cross-platform games get most of the effort and attention.

There's really very little to choose between the two machines. Rational decision making factors right now might include price, which platform your friends game on and possibly the future promise of a particular must-have exclusive. Everything else comes down to marketing messages.

Re:Does resolution matter?

[aliquis]

epilepsy-inducing

What? Did someone say Beat hazard ultra? http://store.steampowered.com/...
http://youtu.be/kd-61CRXd_w?t=...
http://youtu.be/teA1OfGdgPw?t=...

Re: Does resolution matter?

[aliquis]

Beyond amount of work not much reason to go exclusive either. Optimization?

Guess Windows PC + iOS (I guess. Since it sell better there than Android, but on amount of devices Android would had been better) would had been pretty simple and obvious targets in a world where we got rid of the difference. .. and then switch the PC to Linux too.

Re: Does resolution matter?

[RogueyWon]

Platform-exclusives tend to happen for one of three reasons:

1) The platform owner has funded the development of the game, or paid the publisher a large amount of money for exclusivity.

2) The developer/publisher only expects development for one platform to be profitable and considers that investment in porting would be wasted expenditure.

3) There are particular hardware features of one platform, such as mouse/keyboard on the PC, or the Wiimote on the Wii/Wii-U, which the game has been specifically designed to use and which can't be replicated on another platform.

All three of these reasons are becoming less common over time.

In the case of 1), it's not that the platform owners wouldn't like to fund more exclusives, but that it's become more expensive to do so. Development costs for an AAA game are now are many, many times what they were back in the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation. First-party games often function as loss-leaders (or at least, mediocre investments) anyway - they get the console's installed base up to attract the third parties, whose licensing fees are where the profit really lies for the console manufacturer.

Back in the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation, reason 2) used to be very common. The installed base of the PS2 was completely out of proportion with that of its competition. With all three consoles having quite different architecture, cross-platform development was a pain. For a lot of mid-ranking developers, releasing only for the PS2 would make a lot of sense; even with a multiplatform release, 90% of their sales would come from that platform.

No console since then has matched the PS2's dominance. The Wii got an early lead last time in installed base terms, but its attach rate ended up miserable, particularly for third party games. The 360 and the PS3 tended to level-peg on installed base and attach rare, albeit with some regional variations.

And reason 3)? There are still a handful of PC exclusives - complex strategy games and simulators - which wouldn't work without a mouse and keyboard. But those aren't all that common these days. As for developing around motion-controllers on the consoles - too many developers got burned on the Wii and Kinect for anybody to have any enthusiasm for that any more.

Re:Does resolution matter?

[Daniel Hoffmann]

Yes it matters, Dark Souls 1 on the PC is locked at 1024x720 at 30 FPS upscaled to the resolution you specify at the settings menu, a modder made a patch to configure that. Going from that to 1080p at 60FPS made it COMPLETELY ANOTHER GAME, a much better one in fact.

Re:Does resolution matter?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I bought a PS4 because the next generation of games I want to play are going to start coming out on them. Even if it's multiplatform, I'd rather have the PS4 versions because they do actually look nicer, because eventually there won't be PS3 versions.

So put me down for "higher resolution" but also put a big asterisk there because I know my PS3 is about to become obsolete soon.

Re:Does resolution matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't mind me, I'll just keep playing some great games at 256 x 224. I have yet to find any game on a newer console (ps2 and beyond) that grabs me quite as regularly as the classics from the Super NES era. Super Metroid, Zelda: LTTP, DKC, Contra III, Mega Man X, Super Street Fighter 2... the list goes on.

As someone with a three-monitor PC, I find that I'll find some new game that gets some attention, then once beaten it loses luster. Wolfenstein: The New Order comes to mind.

Re:Does resolution matter?

[RyoShin]

And Wii-U fans have a strange obsession that they have some kind of monopoly on fun.

Not fun in general, but Nintendo fun via Nintendo properties. These will never be multi-platform, so if you want to play Zelda, Star Fox, Mario, or Pokemon you're going to have to buy a Nintendo console. The reason the Wii U's main reason wasn't "brand" like Xbone is because most Nintendo fans (so far as I can tell) are tepid about decisions Nintendo made with the console. Despite this, they still get one because they want access to those games.[1]

Not that you can't get light-hearted affairs and platformers on other systems, but they usually take a far back seat to games rated T/M.

[1]At the very least, that's why I'm planning to get one this year, when a number of large names come out or will come out early 2016.

but the Original will run 1080

[Anonymous Coward]

This will on the other hand run 1080. Reading that the origin of the Heist game surge Payday 2... it'w new release on PS4, xbox1 will run 1080fps, maybe not 60fsp.
http://www.videogamer.com/ps4/payday_2_crimewave_edition/news/payday_2_is_1080p_on_ps4_and_xbox_one_but_it_probably_wont_hit_60fps.html .... and some also would argu that it have the better game play, even if I don't think BF hardline ever really is inteded to be Payday, just a re-skinning of the regular BF killing.

oh who cares...

[SuperDre]

I think all this resolution talk is just nonsense, if nobody told the gamers what the actual resolution was, they wouldn't care...
Just play the freaking game, and care about the gameplay, because the graphics will look good enough (it's still a major improvement over the previous generation consoles)..

Re:oh who cares...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why Nintendo isn't mentioned in these resolution and hardware talks. Could it be Nintendo games are so good they make the hardware irrelevant.

Re:oh who cares...

[drinkypoo]

Could it be Nintendo games are so good they make the hardware irrelevant.

Or it could be that the games are so simple and the graphics so outdated that they can run on any crappy hardware. Many if not most Wii games would have been fine on the cube.

Re:oh who cares...

[gameboyhippo]

Man! (insert AAA Nintendo made Wii U game here) looks awful!

- No gamer ever

Seriously. Pop in Mario Kart 8, Pikmin 3, Super Mario 3D World, Super Smash Bros Wii U, etc... and then tell us all how it looks outdated.

Re:oh who cares...

[tepples]

Pop in Mario Kart 8, Pikmin 3, Super Mario 3D World, Super Smash Bros Wii U, etc... and then tell us all how it looks outdated.

Do these look closer to PS3 or PS4 levels of detail?

Re:oh who cares...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do these look closer to PS3 or PS4 levels of detail?

Who cares, as long as the games are FUN to play with? Where I live you can buy most second hand AAA PS3 game titles for next to nothing. But try to find a cheap Mario for the WII...

Re:oh who cares...

[damnbunni]

Nintendo's WiiU exclusives do tend to run at a solid 60fps at 1080p.

However, in large part that's because of the art design. The models and textures used are simply easier for the hardware to handle.

When you throw something like Bayonetta at it, the WiiU starts to chug in spots.

You can see that at work in other situations, too. World of Warcraft kept its models simple for a long time to keep performance up. But because the models and textures they used suited their art direction, it wasn't glaringly obvious.

(Some older MMOs still give my rig fits, and I pull 80+ FPS in Shadow of Mordor with all the options all the way up. Go to Bree in Lord of the Rings Online? Frames tank. Way too much reflection!)

Re:oh who cares...

[gameboyhippo]

And I think that's a good thing. Back when I was a kid, everyone made fun of me for liking Street Fighter II better than the "realistic" Mortal Kombat III. I would hear how cartoony SFII was and how that somehow made it suck. Fast forward a couple decades and the vast majority of gamers today would say that SFII looks a lot better than MKIII. This, of course, was due to its timeless stylized graphics. Likewise, if you pop in "Jet Set Radio" for the Dreamcast, it still looks nice. But if you pop in a "realistic" original XBox FPS, it looks awful despite being on a more powerful machine.

Just like previous generations, the most memorable games of this generation of gaming hardware is going to be on the Nintendo consoles.

Re:oh who cares...

[gameboyhippo]

PS4. I honestly don't think these fantastic looking games would look even more fantastic on a PS4.

60 frames per second

[Anonymous Coward]

More like 5 FPS in multiplayer, if I'm lucky. I have 100/100 MB fiber but always end up in games hosted in another continent. This has been especially true with the latest COD and made the game unplayable..

Re:And console owners feel pc

[Xest]

Vanilla Android is fine, but frankly Samsung's phones are so full of poorly written clutter that they're not easier to use and that's the problem. The same is true of a number of other Android manufacturers like HTC- the crap they install just ruins the Android experience.

Glorious PC Master Race

[WoodburyMan]

This is why for any game I'm actually into I always prefer to play on PC. I've had every Battlefield series game for PC, 1942, Vietnam, 2, 2142, 3, 4. Including all Exp/DLC's except for 4 when they switched to Season Pass style releases. Likewise, most good RTS's are only released for PC, ala Starcraft II, and most of the Command and Conquer series.

Re:Glorious PC Master Race

[aliquis]

You could had shorted that down based on the traditional controls of the platforms:

Mouse & keyboard: Superior for FPS & RTS, 3rd person adventuring.

Gamepad: Best for fighting game, platforming, shoot 'em up, driving.

And then you've got a bunch of modern day idiots who claim their controller is superior because for the games which exist for their platform designed for their controller the controller they use are better!! TRUE STORY!

Re:Glorious PC Master Race

[Cederic]

This gamepad thing. You mean like the one I have for my PC? Along with the HOTAS and the steering wheel?

Don't use them often, but when I fancy that sort of game, they still work.

You also forgot MMOs, or indeed any game in which text based conversation is a factor. Sure, the kids these days all want Teamspeak because they grew up with ubiquitous voice comms, but you can't beat a proper keyboard for holding seven concurrent conversations.

Re:Glorious PC Master Race

[aliquis]

That was my point. Sorta.

PC gamers state that mouse and keyboard are superior even if someone ask for a gamepad for PC.

It's not superior.

A platform game isn't better played with mouse and keyboard than a gamepad.

My point was that just as the guy I replied too I too kinda has been stuck with FPS and RTS on PC before because that's what PCs did best. Sure FPS, arena style games and RTS is huge on PC and mouse and keyboard is better there and superior but that doesn't mean they always are.

And while console gamers likely don't play RTS like SCII on their console and may mean the controller is better .. well.. not for everything.

MMO could show up in any of the shapes I guess. Nothing stop you from doing a platform or racing MMO =P

Take this shit back to NeoGAF

[AbRASiON]

I'm so fucking sick of it, I'm SO SICK OF IT.

If you want 1080p ALL the time and 60fps ALL the time then buy a goddamned PC.
Consoles are not the be all and end all of power, the new consoles are not ultra beast powerhouses, they are affordable gaming boxes, which are surprisingly powerful for the cost.

I can't believe I once identified as a PC gamer who loved insulting peasant console people. Now that I'm older, I just want to play some games, I really dont' give a damn.
60fps MANDATORY or QQ!!! :( :( Nope! - only 60fps mandatory games, 2D fighting, racing, online fps high intensity twitch shooters.
You wanna demand 60fps minimum in my single player storyline focused games? Nope. Shut up. Stop whining, stop badgering developers. Go to NeoGAF and cry with the rest of them.

Re:Take this shit back to NeoGAF

[Billly Gates]

Tell that to my coworkers who rub it in your face how the ps4 is God?

In 2007 it was a loss leader with advanced technology but today it has an atom like cpu.

I hope the pc is prime for a comeback as this shows

Re:Take this shit back to NeoGAF

[Anonymous Coward]

What does Slashdot care about the level of childishness of your work environment?

Don't stoop to their level, they probably only do it to you because it clearly winds you up like crazy as your need to post about it here demonstrates.

They're only doing it because they get a response from you.

Re:Take this shit back to NeoGAF

[aliquis]

FX-8320: $140 http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
AM3+ motherboard: $55 http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
GTX 750 Ti 2 GB: $146 http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
8 GB DDR 3: $60 http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
Wireless 360 controller: $42 http://www.newegg.com/Product/...

Complete price: $443.

Assumption people have or can get hold of SOME case with PSU, any HDD, keyboard and mouse somewhere.

It won't play 60 fps 1080p all the time I guess. But it's pretty affordable and likely "surprisingly powerful" relative the current gen consoles too.

Re:Take this shit back to NeoGAF

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I find it slightly disappointing that AAA studios couldn't be bothered to get the job done right just so they could meet some arbitrary ship deadline.

Still, I agree. I think anyone who's having a full on rage hardon for this should really rethink their life choices.

Re:Take this shit back to NeoGAF

[camazotz]

I'm so fucking sick of it, I'm SO SICK OF IT.

If you want 1080p ALL the time and 60fps ALL the time then buy a goddamned PC. Consoles are not the be all and end all of power, the new consoles are not ultra beast powerhouses, they are affordable gaming boxes, which are surprisingly powerful for the cost.

I can't believe I once identified as a PC gamer who loved insulting peasant console people. Now that I'm older, I just want to play some games, I really dont' give a damn. 60fps MANDATORY or QQ!!! :( :( Nope! - only 60fps mandatory games, 2D fighting, racing, online fps high intensity twitch shooters. You wanna demand 60fps minimum in my single player storyline focused games? Nope. Shut up. Stop whining, stop badgering developers. Go to NeoGAF and cry with the rest of them.

I'm with you in this boat. My PC rig is fine, and I'll upgrade eventually, but I'm finding that the PS4 and Xbox One are providing plenty for what I need right now as an older gamer without any headache or hassle (well, less of both anyway).

Re:Take this shit back to NeoGAF

[Nyder]

I'm so fucking sick of it, I'm SO SICK OF IT.

If you want 1080p ALL the time and 60fps ALL the time then buy a goddamned PC.
Consoles are not the be all and end all of power, the new consoles are not ultra beast powerhouses, they are affordable gaming boxes, which are surprisingly powerful for the cost.

I can't believe I once identified as a PC gamer who loved insulting peasant console people. Now that I'm older, I just want to play some games, I really dont' give a damn.
60fps MANDATORY or QQ!!! :( :( Nope! - only 60fps mandatory games, 2D fighting, racing, online fps high intensity twitch shooters.
You wanna demand 60fps minimum in my single player storyline focused games? Nope. Shut up. Stop whining, stop badgering developers. Go to NeoGAF and cry with the rest of them.

Look, this isn't reddit, and this isn't the pcmasterrace, so while you are claiming you aren't about that, you use the "peasant" which tells me you actually do believe you are a pcmasterrace. Only peeps in that sub called console users "peasants".

Re:Take this shit back to NeoGAF

[AbRASiON]

I was using their terminology, I haven't been a "PC Master race" dipshit since before the PS3 shipped.
They are a bunch of insecure wankers, desperately trying to justify their expensive purchase.

Not Story or ideas, gameplay.

[Anonymous Coward]

BF1942 - Drive Aircraft Carriers, Submarines, Planes (launching off the aircraft carrier that's going around the map that you're spawning on), driving jeeps and tanks, ALL on the SAME map, on a 64-player server, and able to do it on a dial-up connection (OK, that was sketchy, but you could do a 32-player server on a dial-up ok, 16-player easily).

add in the Desert Combat mod, and you have Helicopters, Jets, APC's, etc.

Battlefield 2 - Let's remove the ability to pilot the aircraft carrier, remove almost ALL the boats (Who wants to drive a battleship, honestly, or a submarine?). We'll add in unlock-able weapons, but it's dependent on the server.

Battlefield 3 - Let's make maps smaller, force the unlock-able weapons and achievements.

Can't go further, because I stopped at 3. Vietnam was horrible so I didn't mention it (Desert Combat mod was great, though).

The point is, the battlefield series stopped going after what made it unique and awesome (Huge maps, drive / pilot anything and everything, hours spend on a single map to try and get position / victory). Battlefield SHOULD have gone more towards a direction of WOW, (MMOFPS?), instead, they removed everything that was good and tried copying COD.

I still played DC / BF2 for a long time, until they shut the servers (I never did set up the mod to allow you to still play). EA ruined a good gaming franchise to play second fiddle to COD. Good job EA, bravo.

Re:Not Story or ideas, gameplay.

[Cederic]

I gave up with BF2. Unlockable weapons kills game balance and they started prioritising graphics above gameplay.

I disagree with you about BF:Vietnam though. One of my all-time favourite games, it had the claustrophobic jungle maps, the open expanses, the city maps, the PBRs, the tunnel mechanic, great balance, a nice mix of weapons and weapon styles, and the 'Ride of the Valkyries' button on the choppers. I liked that game!

What kind of case?

[tepples]

That said, you can build a desktop PC that can outperform a console for about the same price.

Including a living room-friendly case?

Just be sure to pirate Winblows.

How is Steam OS insufficient?

Re:What kind of case?

[damnbunni]

You mean other than 'most of my games won't work on it'?

Re:What kind of case?

[spire3661]

Living room friendly case is about to be moot with Steam Link. I say this as someone who has several living room ready cases right next to him. 2 of the cases I have are being offered as OEM Steam Machines. (Silverstone Raven and Prodigy)

Re:What kind of case?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, including case:
http://www.newegg.com/HTPC-Med...

Do Not Buy Hardline

[koan]

Most of the folks in the Battlefield community are in agreement, they will be skipping Hardline for another game or waiting until a new BF comes out.

The last instant-on console was the Nintendo 64

[tepples]

no one wants a big buzzing PC in their living room

You say this as if the first PS3 and the first Xbox 360 weren't likewise louder than my laptop PC.

that takes a bit of time to boot up

The last instant-on console was the Nintendo 64. Every console since then has included system software that takes longer to start than my laptop takes to come out of suspend and pop up the password box.

typically requires navigation with a mouse and keyboard and so forth

The Steam client in Big Picture mode can be navigated with a USB gamepad. Beyond that, if you can text, you can use a Lenovo N5901 Bluetooth handheld keyboard with trackball.

platformers tend to be awful on PCs

Where does that leave people who want to mod platformers or play indie platformers?

Re:The last instant-on console was the Nintendo 64

[Xest]

I agree things have changed, but the earlier 360 models were really the exception, everything else since has been pretty quiet compared to the cooling required in a decent gaming PC.

"The last instant-on console was the Nintendo 64. Every console since then has included system software that takes longer to start than my laptop takes to come out of suspend and pop up the password box."

Not really true, instant-on mode on the Xbox One is instant-on and the Wii U is quick to boot.

"The Steam client in Big Picture mode can be navigated with a USB gamepad. Beyond that, if you can text, you can use a Lenovo N5901 Bluetooth handheld keyboard with trackball."

Agreed, Valve seems to be the only PC gaming company that really gets what PC gaming needs to grow into the current gaming market place. It's got a way to go but there is definitely movement in that direction. The problem is that even with big picture mode that's just the launcher, most of the games are still very much built around the mouse/keyboard combo which is an ill fit for the sofa in the living room.

"Where does that leave people who want to mod platformers or play indie platformers?"

I don't know. Mario Maker on the Wii U maybe? This sounds like an incredibly small market - effectively you're bringing a statistical outlier into a discussion about general cases. It's not really meaningful. Certainly I'm not saying that outliers don't exist, that people don't like to play platformers on PCs, just like some people are happy to play RTS games and MMOs on consoles (I'm not), but there's not much of a market for this, hence why you don't see much of it - nothings going to change the fact that the PC is typically ill suited to that genre just as consoles are ill suited to other genres.

It's no different to the tablet vs. PC argument. Many pundits argued tablets were going to completely kill off the PC but it didn't take much to realise that that was nonsense - no one's going to do serious software development on a tablet for example, but that doesn't mean that tablets aren't great for things like reading the news. It's not surprising therefore that tablet sales numbers are now along way off from the sales predictions those folks gave whilst PC sales are climbing- the markets are reaching an equilibrium related to the types of task they both serve best.

Different platforms and input methods are better suited to different types of game and application, there's not really much more to it than that, it's just a simple fact and you'll never get a do-everything system and eliminate every other type of system - some might disappear, for example satnavs have been all but superseded by smartphones and tablets now, but convergence can only go so far before you end up with a mess that tries to do too much and ends up doing too much of it poorly.

Re:The last instant-on console was the Nintendo 64

[neoritter]

My XBOne can boot faster than my gaming PC most of the time (PC is booting off SSD). So I don't get the complaint. I don't have a PS4 yet so I can't attest to it's boot time.

Re:The last instant-on console was the Nintendo 64

[neoritter]

If only I had mod points...

Re:The last instant-on console was the Nintendo 64

[wolrahnaes]

I agree things have changed, but the earlier 360 models were really the exception, everything else since has been pretty quiet compared to the cooling required in a decent gaming PC.

I believe you overestimate the noise created by a properly set up PC cooling system. My PC is pretty high up the ladder with an i7-4790K and SLI GTX970s, but it's also incredibly quiet most of the time. It is capable of getting loud if I turn all the fans up to maximum manually, but that never happens in actual use because it's not capable of getting hot enough to need it. Even running a GPU burn-in test and Prime95 simultaneously, pulling 730 watts from the wall, the GPU fans never exceed 1000 RPM and the CPU fan barely beats them with 1200. My case has two 140mm fans which are both on a dumb fan controller set to "low". Under most uses the power supply and GPUs actually turn their fans entirely off.

I don't have them in the same room so it's hard to compare the two directly, but I'm pretty confident in saying my high end gaming PC with a pretty standard cooling system is quieter under all circumstances compared to my Xbox One. It's definitely quieter than any of my 360s (1x Falcon, 1x Jasper, 2x Trinity), the older of which make more noise at idle than this PC does under gaming loads.

It's not like I have an expensive cooling system either. My CPU cooler is a Cooler Master Hyper212 Evo which costs under $30 on which I'm using its included 120mm fan. It's the same HSF I've had for years. My GPUs both have their OEM cooling solution, the "SSC" variant of EVGA's "ACX 2.0" cooler which is apparently actually a bit louder than the nVidia reference design.

obvious

[slashmydots]

So they create a console that is a computer and a year or two in, it's too slow because they didn't travel into the future and grab a GPU fast enough to keep up with PCs. What else is new? Welcome to desktops vs consoles. The next 5 years are going to be a joke for consoles.

Re:obvious

[Nyder]

So they create a console that is a computer and a year or two in, it's too slow because they didn't travel into the future and grab a GPU fast enough to keep up with PCs. What else is new? Welcome to desktops vs consoles. The next 5 years are going to be a joke for consoles.

Or we are going to get another 5 years of lame PC ports and GPU's that never reach there full potential unless you go with 3 4k monitors.

Re:obvious

[slashmydots]

The GTX960 can barely draw some games at 16x AA so not really. To run 4K right now at 60FPS you need multiple cards in most cases. Anyway, I'm extremely sick of console to PC garbage ports. You have $100,000,000+ games that can't even create a menu that uses a mouse. Welcome to the 1999 up down arrow system since they were too lazy to make it actually seem like a PC game.

Taboo

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest draw of GPCMR is the emulation. That is a restricted word when talking about it, though. You can accurately emulate Wii U, PS2 (PS3 is still sketchy) and Xbox games on the PC (And will continue to update to the latest and greatest, just a few years behind). Will you ever be able to play Xbox One games on your PS4? No.

Eventually, you will be able to play any PS4 / Xbox One game on the PC. No one talks about it, though, it's taboo.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[aliquis]

I hear this all the time but the simple fact is that Samsung sell the most phones so obviously not everyone dislike it.

And you yourself used an argument about sales as meaning "better" regardless of other factors and if so why can't you simply accept that obvious Samsung phones "are better" regardless of what you believe/feel?

Or that's just the case when it matches your opinion and argument and not in other cases?

Console market is mostly 60-land

[tepples]

TVs can display 50 FPS just fine.

The console market is mostly North America and Japan if this post is believed. TVs in the United States and Japan have run at 60 Hz for longer than consoles have been around.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly who cares. I know for a fact you're much too old for these kind of internet willy waving contests, maybe grow up?

But I am indeed curious about what $399 netbook has significant GPU power. Would be interested in purchasing.

Probably oversimplifying, but...

[Riddler Sensei]

Where t is the time for a problem size of 1
speed = (t(n^m))/hardware_speedup

A bit of algebra and we get...
((speed*hardware_speedup)/t)^(1/m) = n

That is, for, say, an order n^2 algorithm your speedup from hardware on a similar sized problem gets thrown under a big-ol square root. Such that, if your code sucks, "...aiming to use the power of the modern consoles to push the game engine as far as it would go" won't get you nearly as far as you would hope.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[Xest]

You're being disingenuous now, ignoring the fact that you're probably wrong (Apple looks to have taken the crown again given latest trajectories: http://www.idc.com/prodserv/sm...) we're not talking about all phone sales, we were talking about comparative smartphone sales- i.e. Samsung's high powered models vs. Apple's high powered models, like for like you get more power with Samsung, yet Apple shifts more units.

You can't simply throw some random extra figures in the mix to try and make a point when in fact it just makes no sense. Samsung has a range of phones, but their phones that are more powerful that Apple's never outsell Apple's - the additional power you get with the Samsung phone just isn't a selling point when the phones are riddle with crappy Samsung software that ruins the Android experience and leaves the Apple experience a superior option in terms of ease and pleasantness of use.

So before screaming hypocrisy you might want to try and understand the discussion you're entering. You don't get to just reframe it by muddying the waters with figures irrelevant to the discussion just because you don't like the facts being put forward and want to disagree with the general point just because.

Re: haven't "played" Minecraft

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a guess: because Notch released a free engine demo and a simple crafting demo with a day/night cycle and some creeps; he made millions from pre-orders and decided to run away with the cash instead of developing the RPG he originally promised?

You can hate that the guy sold out, but you have to admire the guy's marketing skills though. Dude became a billionaire by some strategic lies (or maybe he really believed he was going to make a game) and some very clever viral marketing of his Infiniminer clone.

p.s. The thing I dislike most about this is the fact that Minecraft stopped before it became a real game killed a genre with a lot of potential. Now nobody can follow the same business model, because now any block engine tech demo is seen as a Minecraft clone. That means a game has to be significantly better than Minecraft just to get noticed.

Counter-Strike

[tepples]

instant-on mode on the Xbox One is instant-on

Thank you for clarifying that resume time is now comparable. So neither platform "takes a bit of time to boot up" anymore.

[Modding] sounds like an incredibly small market - effectively you're bringing a statistical outlier into a discussion about general cases.

I disagree that only "an incredibly small market" want to mod games. Consider GoldenEye 007 and Half-Life, both ground-breaking first-person shooters of the late 1990s. GoldenEye was for console, and Half-Life was for PC. If Half-Life were a console exclusive when first introduced, well adapted to the console environment the way GoldenEye was, would there have even been a Counter-Strike?

Many pundits argued tablets were going to completely kill off the PC but it didn't take much to realise that that was nonsense

Locked-down tablets did kill off 10 inch laptops, at least until the Transformer Book came out.

no one's going to do serious software development on a tablet for example

I work on hobby coding projects on my 10 inch laptop while riding the city bus to and from my day job. (Outlier yes, liar no.)

Different platforms and input methods are better suited to different types of game and application

The problem here is that some platforms and input methods have historically been associated with cryptographic lockdown to play only games from established publishers and even then only vanilla versions of them. The reasons for this date back to the "crash" of 1983-1984, but many factors that caused the crash have been rendered obsolete by the rise of paid downloads.

Re:Counter-Strike

[Xest]

"I disagree that only "an incredibly small market" want to mod games."

You're changing the discussion now though, there's a difference between modding in general and modding platformers. Modding FPS on the PC works well because FPS games on the PC work well. That doesn't change the fact that platformers on the PC don't typically work well however.

"would there have even been a Counter-Strike?"

Probably yes, because CounterStrike was just an evolution of Action Quake and Special Forces Quake.

"Locked-down tablets did kill off 10 inch laptops, at least until the Transformer Book came out."

So they didn't then? Netbooks were still selling in the many 10s of millions, that's not killing off in anything other than media rhetoric. Mostly though Netbooks have now been rebranded in a few different ways mostly because manufacturers knew they were going to keep selling small laptops but didn't want the stigma of selling something the media was incorrectly saying had been killed off. Certainly tablets cut into the laptop market, because they did some of the things people were buying laptops for better, but they definitely didn't kill it because you can still buy small laptops, just as they didn't kill PCs.

"I work on hobby coding projects on my 10 inch laptop while riding the city bus to and from my day job. (Outlier yes, liar no.)"

That's a laptop with a keyboard, not a tablet. I don't really know what your point is here.

"The problem here is that some platforms and input methods have historically been associated with cryptographic lockdown to play only games from established publishers and even then only vanilla versions of them."

Right, and I'm worried about TPM type affairs as much as anyone - I believe the PC platform must stay open because that it's speciality and that's what makes it thrive, but I'm not RMS style crazy where I think the whole world is going to bend to my notions of freedom. I realise that whilst the PC must be protected, that that doesn't mean we can expected there to not be locked down platforms. For many, the fact consoles are locked down and hence see inherently fewer cheats the lockdown is actually a bonus for that specific platform. I believe locked down and open platforms can coexist, and whilst I'm fully accepting of the fact that DRM does nothing more than stall hackers at best, sometimes that's good enough. If an AAA shooter can be mostly free of cheats on a console for it's first few months of release before the next game comes out then that's good enough for that platform. On the PC I don't care if people cheat, it's a price I'm happy to pay on that platform for that platform to retain it's openness.

Again, it's entirely about the best tool for the job, we can't expect everything to do everything and still be able to do it well. Consoles are different for a reason and whatever you think of that reason, it works for consumers and ultimately if they're happy with that it's not really anyone's place to change it. If they weren't happy with that there'd be no market - something Microsoft learnt when they initially tried to make the Xbox One just a little bit too locked down for people's tastes.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[cheesybagel]

Typical Apple fanboy. When Apple loses in some metric you redefine the metric to be something that Apple can win at. Pathetic.

yes but the gameplay?

[camazotz]

And yet these games still play just fine and I can't honestly say that my Titanfall experience on Xbox One is any different from the PC (other than that I can still find players on Xbox One and I can't generally find them on the PC anymore). Hardline doesn't look that great though, and the gameplay wasn't sufficiently innovative to really provide a sense of competition. I think it'll have a hard time dragging people away from Payday 2 and CSGO, and that's the real problem, not screen resolution/FPS.

AA enabled?

[Daniel Hoffmann]

A lower resolution with AA enable in some respects is better than a higher resolution with no AA, specifically the jagged corners.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[Xest]

Oh god, your post makes me want to utterly facepalm. Please, I implore you, go read my post history since 2007 when the iPhone came out if you think I'm an Apple fanboy. Seriously, I beg you, you'll be so utterly embarrassed by that post when you do. You will find literally years of criticism of Apple and hype for Android, stemming back to a point in which criticising Apple and talking up Android got you regularly modded down here. I'm about as far from an Apple fanboy as you can get without becoming an outright anti-Apple zealot.

I hate Apple, I literally hate it, but just because I dislike something doesn't mean I'm going to pretend that there's no statistical metric by which the iPhone has done well. That's complete nonsense. It's been outshone by Android because Android offers a superior choice and that's ultimately what people want, but just because Android holds 85% of the market compared to Apple's embarrassingly low 11% doesn't change the fact that I'm able to point out that on an individual basis Apple clearly does something right, because it's flagships outsell Samsung's flagships and that something is the fact that Apple's experience is more polished than Samsung's because of Samsung's 3rd party crap thrown on top of Android.

I love Android, I've stood by Android since it's release, but I like vanilla Android, I like Android without the crap- I think vanilla Android is far better than iOS, but I'm not about to pretend that Samsung don't make the experience on their phones shit by sticking buggy unpolished crap on top that ruins the Android experience and gives iOS the edge against Samsung. I'm not criticising Android and I'm not supporting Apple, I'm criticising Samsung and using their shitty software and the resultant drop in sales they've faced in part because of it as an example as to why better specs don't matter if the overall experience is still crap.

If you can't get that into your head, then you're going to need to consider the fact that perhaps it's you that's the fanboy, you just haven't realised it yet. Just because someone is willing to look at something objectively and see areas where their preferred platform can see improvements, and their disliked platform has some advantages doesn't make them a fanboy, quite the opposite.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with your general point... but boot time is really not an area where modern consoles are better than PCs.
If this is anything to go by, then the Xbox One is slower to boot and resume from standby than even average PCs, let alone well optimized ones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ8cyVZ-vyc
Resuming from sleep takes less than 5 seconds even on a generic old PC.

I could also argue about your points regarding input methods (you're not limited to anything on PC) and noise, but whatever.

At the end of the day people choose consoles (over PCs) because:
1. they're easy to use/require no computer knowledge
and, to a lesser extent:
2. some game exclusives
That's it, really. I can't think of any _technical_ reason for why a console would be better. At the end of the day it's just a simplified PC with strict limits of use.

Modding platformers

[tepples]

You're changing the discussion now though, there's a difference between modding in general and modding platformers.

Consider the following statement, derived from the present status quo: "Platformers, fighting games, and platform fighters ought not to be moddable, and startup developers ought not to have the ability to develop original games in these genres." Do you agree? If so, why?

That's a laptop with a keyboard, not a tablet. I don't really know what your point is here.

My point is that I was disappointed that tablets killed the 10 inch size of laptops when 10 inch was my optimal size.

Again, it's entirely about the best tool for the job

In principle, I agree that one ought to use the best tool for the job. In practice, overlapping requirements appear to exclude all tools. PC is "the best tool for the job" for mods and indie games, and consoles are "the best tool for the job" for platformers and fighting games. Where does that leave mods and indie games in the platforming and fighting genres?

Re:Modding platformers

[Xest]

"Consider the following statement, derived from the present status quo: "Platformers, fighting games, and platform fighters ought not to be moddable, and startup developers ought not to have the ability to develop original games in these genres." Do you agree? If so, why?"

Of course I don't agree, but I do agree that they don't necessarily need full unlimited access to all hardware to do it. They only need access to develop on a PC, and end per-system testing can be done with a dev kit, or through a program like Microsoft had with XNA. What you're putting forward is not an argument for complete opening up of every system and every bit of hardware, merely an argument for ensuring we have at least one open platform to develop on - the PC - and that if other platforms are willing to accept indie development that they provide tools to test and debug on that platform.

As I've noted before, Mario Maker gives you freedom to create platformers on the Wii U, and games like Farcry have typically had map editors even on consoles. But consoles aren't designed for modding for the most part, they're designed as a purely entertainment outlet first and foremost, not as a development outlet - that's purely secondary. In contrast, the PC is a wholly generic platform, it doesn't have one single specific focus so you should have the right to develop on it as much as do anything else.

Re:Modding platformers

[tepples]

What you're putting forward is not an argument for complete opening up of every system and every bit of hardware

True.

merely an argument for ensuring we have at least one open platform to develop on - the PC - and that if other platforms are willing to accept indie development that they provide tools to test and debug on that platform.

Thus there are three requirements
1. Continued viability of PCs for open development.
2. The existence of tools to test on all platforms available to a given developer.
3. The existence of at least one well-known platform that is both suitable for platformers and fighting games and open to indie developers.

Some other Slashdot users have told me that requirement 3 is unnecessary for a healthy industry. They claim that the following workarounds are sufficient and desirable:

A. People who want to enter the video game industry ought to change their gaming tastes to become fans of genres for which the PC is the best tool. For example, a platformer fan ought to become a fan of violent first-person shooters, develop one, sell it for PC, use the "verifiable relevant video game industry experience" gained through selling violent first-person shooters to become a licensed developer on some console, and finally develop a platformer game for the public.
B. A fan of platformers ought to develop a platformer for PC but not attempt to sell it to the public. Instead, he ought to work another day job to build up enough money to live on for several months, move to a city that is a hotbed of the mainstream video game industry, show the PC game to employers who are now hiring, become hired, and then work in the industry for several more years to gain "verifiable relevant video game industry experience" before finally remaking this game for the public.

Would you agree with either or both of these?

Re:Modding platformers

[Xest]

I think it's important to separate reality and practice. I think in practice it would be nice if all consoles had indie development support, but that's ultimately a personal preference, most consumers of said consoles are wholly uninterested in that so I think in reality whilst I personally think that should be nice, we should not have an expectation of it from console manufacturers - I do not think it's fair to put that obligation on them, as they cannot be expected to be all things to all people.

I think if there was a market for a viable open console platform then that would come about naturally, or those existing manufacturers would tend towards that themselves, but so far attempts have been weak or failed, XNA didn't do a good job of producing great games, it was almost always crap, and for Microsoft it wasn't really therefore commercially beneficial either - the cost of maintaining the tools, libraries, and publishing platform almost certainly exceeded the profits gained from the program. Similarly platforms like Ouya just haven't worked out.

So that's where I stand on what I'd like to see happen, but why I believe it hasn't in practice and might not. Now on to what one can do if they wish to develop a console oriented game.

I would tend towards having some agreement towards your stated option b), but I would sell the game no matter how poorly it did and I do not see having a day job as a hardship. I say this because I've studied a degree full time whilst working full time, and I've done game development myself whilst working full time. To me time management is not an issue, and I do these things because I want to, not because I'm forced to or have an entitlement attitude that the world owes me a living from game development.

I think you should develop indie games because you want to and because you enjoy it. I think if your idea is good it will stand on it's own two feet just as games like Minecraft did- Notch didn't need a massive marketing machine or large publisher support, he built something unique and interesting, and blogged about it and people came to him, and eventually the publishers come to him.

I think many of the problems you're hinting at stem from those developers who cannot accept that maybe their game is not as good as they think it is and/or believe they deserve a living from their game no matter how unpopular it may be. These are false premises and are guaranteed to result in disappointment.

Consoles are for kids ...

[Anonymous Coward]

no real gamers use consoles ....

Re: Consoles are for kids ...

[Anonymous Coward]

go suck on a fat dick.
what are you 12?

Re:And console owners feel pc

[cheesybagel]

Samsung has more models. Apple has less models. Of course if you account for phone models on an individual basis it is hardly surprising Apple sells more of a given model. So what? What matters is the market segment share. Both companies have different market strategies that is all.

Samsung has like seven Galaxy S5 models alone and that is if you ignore the Galaxy Note and the other smartphone lines they have. They have two Galaxy S6 models so far. The difference is one has a bent edge and the other doesn't have a bent edge.

If people have a choice they will use their choice. So if there are 20 loyal Samsung users and 10 loyal Apple users and Samsung has 3x the models Apple has is it that surprising that more Apple users end up with the same model? Does it matter? Apple's still selling less. I don't give a fuck.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[cheesybagel]

PS: My next phone is probably going to be some Chinese Android phone anyway. If I had to buy a phone now it would probably be the OnePlus One.

Compaq is dead long live ASUS.

Re: And console owners feel pc

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL you roasted his ass.

Forfuxsake

[BronsCon]

We've got 4k TVs now. We had them when the current gen of consoles launched, and yet those consoles, which they want us to believe are high-end machines, only output 1080p; except that they don't even do that because in this, the age of 3840×2160, the best they can give us is 1600x900. I mean, hell, my nearly decade old Xbox 360 and 8 year old PS3 can belt out 1080p@30 for a large number of games. True, many titles on those systems suffer the same "not quite 1080p" issues, but really, did the new generation of consoles simply tack on different hardware with minimal increase in processing power? Were they trying to make as little progress as possible?

Take Advanced Warfare as an example. On the Xbox 360 it runs at (give or take) 1600x900@30 (1.44MP/frame, 43.2MP/sec), while the Xbox One switches between 1360x1080@60 (1.47MP/frame, 88.13MP/sec) and 1920x1080@60 (2.07MP/frame,124.24MP/sec). Are you telling me that, over the course of nearly a decade, and with the ability to offload some processing to the cloud, we haven't seen even a three-fold increase in processing power?

Yes, I understand the difference between CPU and GPU, and it appears that the Xbox One is being hamstrung by its CPU, not its GPU, in this case; Sledgehammer's engine renders at the anamorphic resolution when the data arrives late (because the CPU wasn't keeping up) and it doesn't have time to render the full frame. Of course, a faster GPU would help here, as well, but we all know a faster CPU is often cheaper, especially when we're talking about the difference between processing some data in .014s vs .015s (a 7% increase in performance), compared to pumping out a frame in .002s vs .003s (a 50% increase in performance). It's not like faster CPUs in the same class, with similar power consumption, didn't exist at launch time, and they're commodity desktop CPUs so there's literally no reason they couldn't have developed with the best chips available when development started and shipped with the best chips available when the first production run was set to begin; within the same class and power range, of course. That would have easily netted at least a 10% performance increase for, maybe, another $2 per unit. Which I'm sure most gamers would happily pay, ten-fold, for a machine that actually, and consistently, performs like the back of the box says it can.

The same may or may not have been possible with the GPU since, even within the same product line, typically more than just the clock speed is changed from one GPU model to the next, and we haven't seen a 50% bump in graphics performance in the power range these consoles are aiming for in much longer than it took to develop either of them. That's why I'm focusing on CPU, rather than GPU; and the cloud was supposed to make all of that better, for the Xbox One at least.

For what it's worth, the PS4 spits out Advanced Warfare and a solid 1920x1080@60, so maybe Sony followed my formula.

Actually... I decided to spend 30 seconds googling before posting this and... well, I'm gonna post my rant anyway, for all to see, because, as it turns out, Microsoft actually did follow my formula and increased the CPU clock by about 10% before production, while the PS4 has a (roughly 40% faster) GPU. I'm betting another 10% would've done the trick, though; and reducing the number of cores from 8 to 6 would have kept the power consumption and cost down. After all, studios want to be able to port to PC and they largely haven't figured out how to utilize more than a couple of cores at a time, anyway, so fewer and faster cores would seem to provide better performance, at least for this generation.

Now, please tell me how I'm wrong. Because I know I am, I just don't know how, yet.

Re:Forfuxsake

[BronsCon]

That last line was sincere. Can literally nobody here poke any holes in that post?

Re:And console owners feel pc

[BronsCon]

no one wants a big buzzing PC in their living room that takes a bit of time to boot up, typically requires navigation with a mouse and keyboard and so forth when they can just chuck a console under the TV,

still have the fan noise and spinning-disc buzzing, wait longer for it to boot, and still have to navigate menus, but with an inferior (for that particular task) input device.

A console gamer just fixed that for you.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[BronsCon]

This is true. I've called bullshit on this exact argument *so many times* in the past, having owned phones from pretty much every manufacturer other than Samsung (I did, at least, recognize the pile of shit they smeared all over Android). I picked up a Nexus 6 a couple weeks ago and the experience is just... better. Smoother, cleaner, definitely easier than my wife's iPhone out of the box; though you can customize that ease of use away if you really want to (or, you know, customize it to work better for you, who gives a fuck if that makes it more difficult for someone else; after all, it's your phone). Which, of course, is why I've always liked Android over iOS on my phones; I want to use the phone the way I want to use it, not the way Apple or Google wants me to. Google lets me do that; Apple does not.

For some reason, I don't feel the same way about tablets. I actually really like the iPad and really regret having given my iPad Air to my wife. I have 2 different Android tablets I can pick up at any time (I've had 3 others over time) and I still find myself borrowing the iPad back more frequently than I use either Android tablet.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[BronsCon]

Oops, I did not mean for the entire bottom half of my post to be italicized, just the I.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[aliquis]

It wasn't about Apple.

I was considering writing something more in regard to the claim of sales but I'm well aware that Q4 or whatever Apple actually sold more devices than Samsung (which I don't think is the norm though.)

But it was all about Android.

Apple isn't relevant in the "Oh but Samsung phones are so bloated with Samsungs software" because regardless most people for whatever reason buy the Samsung phones. I guess someone got to like their interface more / it have reached that spot in some way (could of course just being the best hardware, design, advertisement or prices too.)

Some idiot on Swedroid wanted to argue that Samsung was so triumphant over Apple but I argued against that since Apple by far made the most money and that was all running a company was about, either now or in the future.

Just after that I think I also read that Apple had 90% of the profits on smartphones. So it seem to be even more true now.

The problem isn't what I said. The problem is that you think I was comparing with Apple when I wasn't. I was comparing Samsung vs stock Android / Android from someone else. Because people have also complained on the bloat (or maybe they complained more on HTC than Samsung before? I don't remember which was considered worst.)

Went back to GP now, see it was your post and that you brought up HTC too so you already had that covered and maybe from your perspective in your post it was obvious you compared vs Apple and hence the confusion. Maybe I wasn't just not paying attention to what the posts was really about.

Re:And console owners feel pc

[Xest]

But you're launching off into a tirade about company marketshare now and that's wholly irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

My point is simply that if performance was the ultimate metric by which people purchased devices then Samsung's flagship would outsell Apple's flagship, but it does not, because guess what? as you seem to indirectly have managed to point out, there's more to a purchase than just pure hardware specs.

Yes you're right, Samsung has more choice, and that's exactly the point, they recognise that people don't buy shit based on spec alone, they buy it on any number of different factors. That's exactly what I'm talking about. If it was wholly about spec people would buy Samsung's most powerful smartphone at the time because it's normally at the top of the market, but they don't, because there's far more too it than pure spreadsheet specs. I cited Samsung's poor software as but one example, you're right others include everything from price, to size, to style.

Re: haven't "played" Minecraft

[aliquis]

No. Because it's ugly / what people build is ugly / it have seemed boring but I haven't investigated it much.

In some recent Humble Bundle you could donate money for a charity for designing your living area in Minecraft but I didn't saw the purpose because it's not like your playground or garden or houses will look good and realistic in Minecraft.

Ready-made

[tepples]

Would it be common to find one of these cases combined with a motherboard, CPU, RAM, operating system, a controller, and assembly labor for less than 500 USD?

Re:And console owners feel pc

[Xest]

"Apple isn't relevant in the "Oh but Samsung phones are so bloated with Samsungs software" because regardless most people for whatever reason buy the Samsung phones."

Yeah and that's really my point - they don't buy them because they're more powerful, because no Samsung phones that are more powerful than iPhones outsell the less powerful iPhones. A large part of this is because the Samsung UI stuff is crap. When people blow £600 on a phone they go for the one that's most pleasant to use, not the one that's most powerful and okay, sure that's a generalisation, maybe some people do so because they perceive the iPhone to be a better status symbol or similar, but fundamentally all I was getting at was the fact that whilst many geeks focus on specs, the wider market most definitely doesn't, because technology products never win the market based on spec alone - it doesn't matter how powerful your system is perceived to be if no one likes it. The Wii is another fine example, it outsold the PS3 and Xbox 360, yet was far less powerful - the wider market didn't give a shit about specifications of the system.

That doesn't mean people are willing to accept the crappier UI on a cheaper phone, because at that point something like cost or maybe size becomes their overriding concern, and that's why Samsung normally sells more devices, because they offer choices that are far wider ranging than simply higher specs.

If only

[trawg]

If only there was a way to not buy these games!