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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.
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.
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
http://saveie6.com/
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.
Oliver.
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!
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.
The best games you can play on PC run at 240p/480p.
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?
Marketing; so nobody can say it's just "720p".
Tell me more. Can PC do cinematic FPS too?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
The gap will never truly be closed until they have a mouse on consoles, thereby allowing people to compete against PC gamers.
Yes, it can run Mad Dog McCree in several different formats.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)..
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.
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.
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).
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. :( :( Nope! - only 60fps mandatory games, 2D fighting, racing, online fps high intensity twitch shooters.
60fps MANDATORY or QQ!!!
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.
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.
"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!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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.
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?
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.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Typical Apple fanboy. When Apple loses in some metric you redefine the metric to be something that Apple can win at. Pathetic.
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.
A lower resolution with AA enable in some respects is better than a higher resolution with no AA, specifically the jagged corners.
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.
Good-bye
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.
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.
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.
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.
Good-bye
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?
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!
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.
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.
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?
.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.
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
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.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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.
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.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Oops, I did not mean for the entire bottom half of my post to be italicized, just the I.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
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.
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.
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.
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?
"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 there was a way to not buy these games!
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.