I said nothing about requiring $1000 to beat the current generation. $1000 is what I spend to play the games in their FULL GLORY, read 1440p60 and beyond. Is that really hard to understand?
No offense but that "rig" is hardly a gaming one. As a PC and console gamer, spending more less than 800~1000 dollars on a gaming PC, specially if you're only gaming on a PC, feels like you're building a machine that with the worse of both worlds: The lack of power of consoles with the larger form factor and extra maintenance/knowhow/work required for a pc. Let alone the fact you won't be able to play many PC games at their full glory nor will enjoy any of the console exclusives. Unless you have a very limited and specific taste in non-demanding games and don't care how crappy a standard desktop PC looks in the TV rack, it's not really a good option.
I wonder if there will be need for an full blown emulator(i.e. emulate everything down to the CPU) or a VM would suffice for this generation.
Personally I'd rather Sony swallowed that ego and release Orbis(the name of the BSD based OS on the playstation consoles) images for PCs. Most of their money is made by selling the software and services. Letting PC users install their OS and buy their games will expand their userbase at little to no cost. At least release some AMD based Vaios that can dual boot between Orbis and Windows.
I partially agree with you but partially agree with the parent post as well. Competition is good but fragmentation is not. Developer time is precious and limited. For one project to simultaneously develop for many similar APIs and ecosystems can be really costly and inefficient in many aspects. I personally would just prefer that each team focused on getting something that works well first on limited number of configurations first and then expand in to other APIs/devices/environments/OS later. Successful closed source projects/corporate world functions, I see no reason for open source not to adopt similar policies.
On a side note, I'd love if sony made the rumored PS VR headset compatible with the Vita as well. There are some funny applications I can think with a handheld+VR system.
No it didn't. If my memory serves me right it took almost 5 minutes from boot to usable "smooth" state. Can't say anything about printing large professional documents because I was just a high schooler that managed to by a crappy computer for traveling after saving lots of money. However, thanks to that, I learnt how to linux.
Win95? My first laptop had 128MB of RAM and was capable of running XP.
But the answer is no. The OS just wasn't designed to use that function of the processor in such way. Maybe if you wrote a VM that emulated RAM on the L4 cache, but the only purpose of this approach would be satisfy the curiosity.
Yes! And as AMD is the company behind performance chips and as an x86 chip manufacturer they'll be developing better chips regardless of the console industry, I hope we see more powerful, but still affordable versions of consoles at ~2 years span, instead of the slow 4~6 years standard we have right now.
When I see apple releasing iDevices every year with very little backwards/forwards compatibility issues(within a certain reasonable plus minus 3 generation span of course), there is no reason for having newer more powerful PS/Xbox consoles every 2-3 years anymore. First, Sony/MS don't make their own PowerPC based proprietary architecture chips anymore. Therefore the expensive costs of designing new chips are in the shoulders of AMD, which will do so regardless as they make chips for a lot more than game consoles. Second, the software abstraction layers on consoles are already sophisticated enough to pretty much allow devs to avoid using any sort of hardware hack to get their games running, I really doubt we'll see any more games using some obscure instruction that only is available on a specific chip. As long as Sony/MS keep using x86 or ARM(on the mobile front), compatibility shouldn't be a problem.
I hope AMD also makes the push for this more dynamical policy because, while they will make some money now that the consoles are new, as time passes this amount will reduce as the console user base stabilizes and demand drops. By having shorter release cycles they will have more incentive to make better hardware while also making more money. And that will be great to keep Intel from abusing it's monopoly on the PC market.
The FOV in my hack was actually quite big. Not as large as the current OR but much bigger than the one in the sony HMZ. I understand my weekend hack it doesn't compare a product being developed by a 50 employee multi-millionary company, but I'm still pretty sure any decent hardware maker out there could easily make an OR clone. Heck, I'm pretty sure I could do that if I start pumping money and time in the project.
In almost every VR thread I see this huge focus on specs. Overall I agree that the smaller the latency, the higher the resolution and FOV, the better, but there is minimal spec line which most people are willing to accept. Not everything needs to be "the best". As a matter of fact the most successful products are hardly the most hardware advanced products(that is specially true in the game industry). Things like cost, marketing and support play huge roles.
If sony(or even MS) gets a singe 1080p(roughly as many pixels there are on a 720p screen on each eye) device with rotational and positional tracking and sell it for around ~$150 for their console, which is basically a OR consumer version for half of the price, and make sure they support it good marketing and games running at around 30 fps, I guarantee you it'll sell like hot cakes. Pixilation might be a problem if they go with the OR like FoV, but I don't think such wide FoV is necessary for the "next gen" consoles. As long as it's more immersive than playing games on a TV, it's good for now. Plus in 5 years they'll have another marketable excuse to sell a better device.
A console VR google won't satisfy the needs from the enthusiasts, but it's what is most likely to a create a healthy VR industry and the much needed lowest common denominator. While adding support for the OR API is a no brainer, making truly immersive games with VR in mind not easy. If consoles don't get VR and the industry still uses them as leading platforms, save for a handful of exclusives, the PC will not get many high quality VR titles either. Another thing is exposition. Unless you're a hard-core PC gamer or tech enthusiast, most likely you have no idea what the OR is. On the other hand everybody and their gran'ma know what a Nintendo or Playstation is.
BTW, I'm not really judging the OR for having only one model, but the current overall lack of competition in this field. The only other consumer product out there is the HMZ which is a completely different category of HMD. HMDs sound something so obvious to me to expect from computers that it's surprising that noone else is doing it. My only regret is not making a kickstarter based of my hack back in the day, but instead of using an iPhone I'd use a custom board.
As for the dorkness problem, while I agree both OR prototypes are some of the ugliest things I've ever seen, screens will get smaller and maybe in a couple of years HMZ like devices will be the norm. The "head mounted" aspect doesn't sound like a huge problem as I see people with those huge ass headphones and nobody complaining. Plus gaming, in particular PC gaming is something you do in private. The bluetooth headset shame we hear about shouldn't be an issue for VR headsets, that is Google Glass' problem.
I really don't think Oculus VR as a company has a future, at least not as the mainstream VR king they keep picturing. Not because VR is not the future, we all know it is, but because they lack what really matters for the commercial success of a product in the mainstream tech/gaming industry: marketing, content and first party support. And on top of that their device is nothing but rehash of 90s tech with modern components. Back in 2008, when I was in college, I built in a single weekend a VR google prototype for a school project using a jailbroken iPhone and those zoom lenses that came with Metal Gear Ac!d for the PSP. If a nobody like me could do that, the only reason we don't see other PC peripheral manufactures like Logitech, Razer, Asus, Madcatz, etc making their own VR googles is because they lack the content and marketing to make it a profitable product. If by any chance Oculus end up being the only company in the field, VR is going the way motion controllers went on the PC: total oblivion. Only years later with the Wii, is that motion controllers actually became something that devs were willing to spend time with.
Said that, IMO, as a PC, console and handheld gamer there are only two companies capable of making VR a mainstream reality: Valve and Sony.
Sony because they already have experience making non-VR HMDs since 1997. With the push they've been making with the high-end HMZ and the huge success that was the launch of the PS4, alongside the many related patents on the subject, there are solid rumors that there is a PS4 VR google in the cookings(can't wait for E3 2014). Why is that a good and important thing? First, because the PS4 is a affordable and mainstream and somewhat powerful gaming platform. For $150 sony could easily deliver a peripheral capable of a enjoyable experience. Second, they have decent first party content. Their biggest system seller, Gran Turismo, is IDEAL for VR. Third, with the PS Move and Camera, they'll be the first and probably only company to provide a plug and play and "full body" VR(and AR) experience. With all that and the already 1 million users they've got during the PS4 launch it'll be much attractive for 3rd parties to support VR(instead of being a niche product on a already not mainstream platform).
As for Valve, on the other side of the spectrum, not only they are by far the most popular publisher on the PC with their own first party content and good marketing strategy, but they are their own hardware platform and standards, most of which are based on the Open ideology. With their VR prototype, there is a chance they'll be licensing the design to OEM just like the steam machines along side creating an standard protocol for VR headsets(open source head-tracking API and screen sizes/lenses specifications). That would allow the creation of headsets on all sizes and shapes(after all as a wearable device that is important) and for all price ranges. You could buy a cheap single screen 720p headset for $100 or a high-end dual screen 1440p headset for a $1000 dollars. Extra features such as eye-tracking, AR cameras, vestibular stimulation, etc, could all be an option if you have the money. This one device with one not so cheap price with a proprietary API strategy that Oculus VR is adopting is completely against the PC vision/mentality.
I think Nintendo could also do something VR related, but they dropped the ball with the WiiU. The natural evolution of motion controllers is VR not tablet games. That is the opposite of VR.
but CC really don't take that much space and most people only have two or three of them. Plus the redundancy is great if you need to temporary share the CC with the wife in case she lost her or similar situations.
When it comes to gaming, technology is hardly the only variable in the success of a product. Without a large game library and preferably some exclusive content alongside significant marketing, there is no way OnLive could even compete. I'm not dismissing the technical problems of OnLive but, that from being the whole story.
Another problem is that they're the first (AFAIK) to offer a streaming gaming platform. Hardly ever pioneering business are successful, in particular when it comes to consumer electronics.
I'm a idort. I counting only this next generation, my game platforms are PC, PS4, Vita and 3DS. I'm still on the fence on the WiiU, but if X (a game made by Monolith Soft, creators of Xenoblade) is good I will buy it.
As a PC gamer everytime I see fellow master race brother criticizing the new consoles for the specs I feel ashamed for the whole community. Leave the console wars BS for 12 year old who can't choose what to buy. Consoles have exclusives, are cheap, have decent gaming capabilities, and being the mainstream lowest common denominator are actually the main drive force into transforming new gameplay technology from a niche product in to a mainstream finished and widely used product. Motion controllers on the Wii, multiple attempts at Augment Reality by Sony, motion capture with the Kinect, driving wheels, fighting sticks just to mention a few. BTW, I bet same thing will happen to VR. CastAR and OculusRift may be successful between the high end PC gamers, but it will be adoption of VR on a console (probably the rumored PS VR headset) that will drive adoption of the tech by AAA studios, as well as, with the mainstream presence, increased interest on the tech for non-gaming applications.
Don't get me wrong: PC gaming is great. The freedom to buy any game regardless of the content. The low cost for most games(Whether that is a good thing or not for devs I'm not sure). Mods and the ability to choose as much performance as I want. All these features make me a proud PC gamer, but not recognizing the importance of the consoles in the industry is foolish.
I agree. Actually for the past couple of years, sony has being doing official tear downs of some of their flagship products, I remember seeing one for the Xperia Z and another for the Vaio Pro. I think they also did for the PS3 super slim, but not sure on this one.
Apple, IMO, did some thing similar, or even better depending on the person, with the new MacPro. Not only they also showed the insides but they also have a video of the manufacturing process(whether what that video shows is the real mass manufacturing process of the MacPro or not, I cannot say for sure)
Because that is how mass media works. Tesla is a "hot" topic. Anything about them will generate clicks. Anything bad about them will generate even more clicks. Polemic and scandals over pointless things are the bread and butter of modern mainstream journalism. Once the hype ends, Elon Musk can personally burn as many cars he want, no one will give a crap.
But just a little hopefully constructive criticism about your math. Tesla Model S has been available for how long 1 year? 2? IDK. But a lot less than 6 years. Furthermore, there is a 4 order of magnitude of difference between the number of sold gas vehicles and Tesla cars(heck, there are 10x more burning cars in the streets than Model S sold). And finally, the average Tesla owner is much more likely to take care of their car, given financial and intellectual/cultural conditions than the average gas vehicle owner. Lets wait until the Tesla and EVs in general are more mainstream and the sample sizes and conditions of both types of vehicles are comparable before we use statics.
That is something that is bugging me. I'm thinking two situations here:
1) Sony is actually going full retarded and helping MS/Apple suing google even though it's thanks to Android that their mobile business is becoming successful.
2) Sony, alongside RIM and the other smaller players have their part in Rockstar just for the right to use the patents and not get sued by the big boys
Yeah, from my perspective I can't help but to notice the huge boner most people on internet have towards market share and mainstream market acceptance, regardless if it's for smartphones, computers, game consoles and accessories or services. People just seem to forget that business are about making money. Having a huge share may have some help with it, but that is not always true.
Whether the cloud strategy is working or not doesn't matter. As long as artists, web designers, graphic designers, wannabes, etc, keeping using Photoshop et al for everything they do, even when is completely unnecessary either because there are cheaper, sufficient or better alternatives depending on the job, Adobe has no need to listen to reason. They'll still be making all the money they want.
AMD/ATI also has introduced MANTLE Api for lower level access than DirectX which is cross platform. This may turn into a very important API as AMD/ATI have their GPUs in the next generation Sony and Xbox consoles as well with a large marketshare for game developers to target
MANTLE is not on any of the consoles. This articles mentions only the lack of Mantle on the Xbone, but since the PS4 GPU is the same architecture with bigger numbers, it's safe to say it's not on the PS4 either.
Anyway, the problem with Mantle is not mantle it self, but the lack of games that will actually make good and innovative use of that tech. Sure, FrostByte 3 games will support Mantle but for what? So that you can play console games with better graphics? Sorry, good graphics are a great but after a certain point unless you do something never done before, just bigger textures/resolutions/etc hardly improve a game and thus hardly the extra money to keep a high-end pc. The same could be said of many graphics and physics APIs on the PC. I guess it may be worth it if you have the money and really like to invest in eye-candy. For the PC crowd that may sound stupid and kind of a asshole thing to do, but given how the consumer electronics market works, if AMD really wants Mantle to be a truly game changing tech, they could use some of the profits they'll get from the hype to invest on an high-quality exclusive title that does what noone else can do. AMD knows better than anyone else that just releasing good products doesn't guarantee you sales...
The internet considers Nintendo a failing company simply because they are not following the "western" trends of putting every game on every device out there in order to "maximize the user base". Instead they are trying to focus on having a vision and making a exclusive content that takes full advantage of their hardware. If it's not trendy it's a fail. It's like the criticism toward MS or Apple, regardless of the record breaking net profits and huge sales they report, they are called dying companies because they are not trendy anymore. Not paying attention to trends may be a bad thing sometimes, but only if your company doesn't have a decent vision and strategy.
I'm far from being a huge nintendo fan myself. As a matter of fact the only Nintendo game I'm looking forward is the project X for the WiiU, by their second-party studio, Monolith software. Plus I think their hardware, while it has a vision, is just a bit too underspec'd for my own tastes and their network services still suck. I don't enjoy Mario anymore because it's too easy, I lost interest in Zelda because it's too predictable, and while Pokemon lore fascinates me, I just don't have the hundreds of hours required to catch and grind my pokemons. Other franchises like Metroid, Fire Emblem or Advance Wars are great, but there are just so many other games to play that I pretty much let them slip through. HOWEVER, may the Gaming Gods strike me where I stand right now if I don't have a huge respect for their strategies and vision. Not even Valve and Sony(SCE) together understand gaming and gamers as much as Nintendo does. There are situations such as the first 6 months of poor 3DS sales and nogames or the current poor WiiU state, or the Gamecube and N64 eras when Nintendo stayed behind the competition in terms of sales/numbers, but they still managed to stay profitable and respected. I may not be in their target market but damn they know their stuff.
IMO, the only thing I would consider a genuine mistake for their part, was trying to appeal to the tablet crowd with the WiiU. I think they should had gone for VR. From a pure electronics point of view there is barely no difference between a tablet and a Oculus Rift, 90s style head mount display. Plus visual VR is the perfect companion for motion controllers from the Wii. Plus they are already had experience with the Virtual Boy. Instead they're letting a kickstarter that can't even design games by themselves take all the credit for resurrecting 20 year old tech. Not only that but given the OR success, sony is likely bringing VR to the ps4 as well, making it harder form them to market a nintendo version of VR as innovation later.
Steambox (and PC gaming) is it's own market. It has some overlap with the high-end game(PS4/XBone) consoles, but it has it's own perks, needs and expectations. Sure it technically can run anything, but gaming is much more than just running software.
Said that, the micro-console market is also it's own market, with a even more niche set of gimmicks, needs and expectations. Plus, on a pure hardware point of view, to compare a $900+ machine that needs both arms to be lifted against a $99 embedded device that fits on the palm of your hand is nonsense. Just because everybody owns a certain platform, that doesn't make support for that platform mandatory. Vision(and the guts to fight the odds and make it a reality) is more important and without it many business, including gaming business wouldn't exist. Said that, that is exactly where the problems with the OUYA begin: they don't have a vision. I could write pages pages on the problems associated with their strategy but just to expose the tip of the iceberg, marketing is nonexistent and support from firmware and network services to exclusives and first-party games is totally lacking. Consumer media devices, in particular gaming devices, just cannot live without those two things. And on top of that there is that PSVita TV, which is in the same price range, has similar hardware, but has much better software and the PlayStation brand behind it.
I'm usually not really bitchy about patents. I even tolerate software patents as long as they actually describe something truly novel, after all everything can be described as a set of mathematical equations. But what is novel about that? Earplugs and phone calls? If that passes does it mean that if a decide to "invent" any existing device, but with integrated earplugs and capable of making phone calls, I can patent it?
I don't care. As long as the basics, i.e., OS, drivers and APIs as well as the marketplaces/repositories are open, thus giving the power to the users to write any app for anything, I'm okay with that. If the apps are closed, I really don't mind. TBH, I have little faith in the success of steamOS. Unless Valve makes HL3 and following games steamOS exclusives, there will be very little reason to choose steamOS over anything else. But if it is successful I hope that will make other gaming companies and accessories maker to adopt open/standard APIs and drivers for the PC(I'm looking at you Nvidia, OcculusVR and Sony).
Slashdot Mirror
I said nothing about requiring $1000 to beat the current generation. $1000 is what I spend to play the games in their FULL GLORY, read 1440p60 and beyond. Is that really hard to understand?
No offense but that "rig" is hardly a gaming one. As a PC and console gamer, spending more less than 800~1000 dollars on a gaming PC, specially if you're only gaming on a PC, feels like you're building a machine that with the worse of both worlds: The lack of power of consoles with the larger form factor and extra maintenance/knowhow/work required for a pc. Let alone the fact you won't be able to play many PC games at their full glory nor will enjoy any of the console exclusives. Unless you have a very limited and specific taste in non-demanding games and don't care how crappy a standard desktop PC looks in the TV rack, it's not really a good option.
WINE is not an emulator. Literally.
I wonder if there will be need for an full blown emulator(i.e. emulate everything down to the CPU) or a VM would suffice for this generation.
Personally I'd rather Sony swallowed that ego and release Orbis(the name of the BSD based OS on the playstation consoles) images for PCs. Most of their money is made by selling the software and services. Letting PC users install their OS and buy their games will expand their userbase at little to no cost. At least release some AMD based Vaios that can dual boot between Orbis and Windows.
I partially agree with you but partially agree with the parent post as well. Competition is good but fragmentation is not. Developer time is precious and limited. For one project to simultaneously develop for many similar APIs and ecosystems can be really costly and inefficient in many aspects. I personally would just prefer that each team focused on getting something that works well first on limited number of configurations first and then expand in to other APIs/devices/environments/OS later. Successful closed source projects/corporate world functions, I see no reason for open source not to adopt similar policies.
Random teenager downloads enough music CDs to fill his iPod -> millions in damage representing the sum of the full price of each song
US government downloads software on more devices it's licensed to -> get's a 90% discount in the fine and not even a warning
http://www.joystiq.com/2013/11/22/report-ps4-and-vita-ultimate-bundle-coming-to-uk-this-year/
Too bad I already own a Vita and the PS4 is only getting released in Japan in February.
On a side note, I'd love if sony made the rumored PS VR headset compatible with the Vita as well. There are some funny applications I can think with a handheld+VR system.
No it didn't. If my memory serves me right it took almost 5 minutes from boot to usable "smooth" state. Can't say anything about printing large professional documents because I was just a high schooler that managed to by a crappy computer for traveling after saving lots of money. However, thanks to that, I learnt how to linux.
Win95? My first laptop had 128MB of RAM and was capable of running XP.
But the answer is no. The OS just wasn't designed to use that function of the processor in such way. Maybe if you wrote a VM that emulated RAM on the L4 cache, but the only purpose of this approach would be satisfy the curiosity.
Yes! And as AMD is the company behind performance chips and as an x86 chip manufacturer they'll be developing better chips regardless of the console industry, I hope we see more powerful, but still affordable versions of consoles at ~2 years span, instead of the slow 4~6 years standard we have right now.
When I see apple releasing iDevices every year with very little backwards/forwards compatibility issues(within a certain reasonable plus minus 3 generation span of course), there is no reason for having newer more powerful PS/Xbox consoles every 2-3 years anymore. First, Sony/MS don't make their own PowerPC based proprietary architecture chips anymore. Therefore the expensive costs of designing new chips are in the shoulders of AMD, which will do so regardless as they make chips for a lot more than game consoles. Second, the software abstraction layers on consoles are already sophisticated enough to pretty much allow devs to avoid using any sort of hardware hack to get their games running, I really doubt we'll see any more games using some obscure instruction that only is available on a specific chip. As long as Sony/MS keep using x86 or ARM(on the mobile front), compatibility shouldn't be a problem.
I hope AMD also makes the push for this more dynamical policy because, while they will make some money now that the consoles are new, as time passes this amount will reduce as the console user base stabilizes and demand drops. By having shorter release cycles they will have more incentive to make better hardware while also making more money. And that will be great to keep Intel from abusing it's monopoly on the PC market.
The FOV in my hack was actually quite big. Not as large as the current OR but much bigger than the one in the sony HMZ. I understand my weekend hack it doesn't compare a product being developed by a 50 employee multi-millionary company, but I'm still pretty sure any decent hardware maker out there could easily make an OR clone. Heck, I'm pretty sure I could do that if I start pumping money and time in the project.
In almost every VR thread I see this huge focus on specs. Overall I agree that the smaller the latency, the higher the resolution and FOV, the better, but there is minimal spec line which most people are willing to accept. Not everything needs to be "the best". As a matter of fact the most successful products are hardly the most hardware advanced products(that is specially true in the game industry). Things like cost, marketing and support play huge roles.
If sony(or even MS) gets a singe 1080p(roughly as many pixels there are on a 720p screen on each eye) device with rotational and positional tracking and sell it for around ~$150 for their console, which is basically a OR consumer version for half of the price, and make sure they support it good marketing and games running at around 30 fps, I guarantee you it'll sell like hot cakes. Pixilation might be a problem if they go with the OR like FoV, but I don't think such wide FoV is necessary for the "next gen" consoles. As long as it's more immersive than playing games on a TV, it's good for now. Plus in 5 years they'll have another marketable excuse to sell a better device.
A console VR google won't satisfy the needs from the enthusiasts, but it's what is most likely to a create a healthy VR industry and the much needed lowest common denominator. While adding support for the OR API is a no brainer, making truly immersive games with VR in mind not easy. If consoles don't get VR and the industry still uses them as leading platforms, save for a handful of exclusives, the PC will not get many high quality VR titles either. Another thing is exposition. Unless you're a hard-core PC gamer or tech enthusiast, most likely you have no idea what the OR is. On the other hand everybody and their gran'ma know what a Nintendo or Playstation is.
BTW, I'm not really judging the OR for having only one model, but the current overall lack of competition in this field. The only other consumer product out there is the HMZ which is a completely different category of HMD. HMDs sound something so obvious to me to expect from computers that it's surprising that noone else is doing it. My only regret is not making a kickstarter based of my hack back in the day, but instead of using an iPhone I'd use a custom board.
As for the dorkness problem, while I agree both OR prototypes are some of the ugliest things I've ever seen, screens will get smaller and maybe in a couple of years HMZ like devices will be the norm. The "head mounted" aspect doesn't sound like a huge problem as I see people with those huge ass headphones and nobody complaining. Plus gaming, in particular PC gaming is something you do in private. The bluetooth headset shame we hear about shouldn't be an issue for VR headsets, that is Google Glass' problem.
I really don't think Oculus VR as a company has a future, at least not as the mainstream VR king they keep picturing. Not because VR is not the future, we all know it is, but because they lack what really matters for the commercial success of a product in the mainstream tech/gaming industry: marketing, content and first party support. And on top of that their device is nothing but rehash of 90s tech with modern components. Back in 2008, when I was in college, I built in a single weekend a VR google prototype for a school project using a jailbroken iPhone and those zoom lenses that came with Metal Gear Ac!d for the PSP. If a nobody like me could do that, the only reason we don't see other PC peripheral manufactures like Logitech, Razer, Asus, Madcatz, etc making their own VR googles is because they lack the content and marketing to make it a profitable product. If by any chance Oculus end up being the only company in the field, VR is going the way motion controllers went on the PC: total oblivion. Only years later with the Wii, is that motion controllers actually became something that devs were willing to spend time with.
Said that, IMO, as a PC, console and handheld gamer there are only two companies capable of making VR a mainstream reality: Valve and Sony.
Sony because they already have experience making non-VR HMDs since 1997. With the push they've been making with the high-end HMZ and the huge success that was the launch of the PS4, alongside the many related patents on the subject, there are solid rumors that there is a PS4 VR google in the cookings(can't wait for E3 2014). Why is that a good and important thing? First, because the PS4 is a affordable and mainstream and somewhat powerful gaming platform. For $150 sony could easily deliver a peripheral capable of a enjoyable experience. Second, they have decent first party content. Their biggest system seller, Gran Turismo, is IDEAL for VR. Third, with the PS Move and Camera, they'll be the first and probably only company to provide a plug and play and "full body" VR(and AR) experience. With all that and the already 1 million users they've got during the PS4 launch it'll be much attractive for 3rd parties to support VR(instead of being a niche product on a already not mainstream platform).
As for Valve, on the other side of the spectrum, not only they are by far the most popular publisher on the PC with their own first party content and good marketing strategy, but they are their own hardware platform and standards, most of which are based on the Open ideology. With their VR prototype, there is a chance they'll be licensing the design to OEM just like the steam machines along side creating an standard protocol for VR headsets(open source head-tracking API and screen sizes/lenses specifications). That would allow the creation of headsets on all sizes and shapes(after all as a wearable device that is important) and for all price ranges. You could buy a cheap single screen 720p headset for $100 or a high-end dual screen 1440p headset for a $1000 dollars. Extra features such as eye-tracking, AR cameras, vestibular stimulation, etc, could all be an option if you have the money. This one device with one not so cheap price with a proprietary API strategy that Oculus VR is adopting is completely against the PC vision/mentality.
I think Nintendo could also do something VR related, but they dropped the ball with the WiiU. The natural evolution of motion controllers is VR not tablet games. That is the opposite of VR.
I hope that quote makes in the Morgan Industries datalinks.
but CC really don't take that much space and most people only have two or three of them. Plus the redundancy is great if you need to temporary share the CC with the wife in case she lost her or similar situations.
When it comes to gaming, technology is hardly the only variable in the success of a product. Without a large game library and preferably some exclusive content alongside significant marketing, there is no way OnLive could even compete. I'm not dismissing the technical problems of OnLive but, that from being the whole story.
Another problem is that they're the first (AFAIK) to offer a streaming gaming platform. Hardly ever pioneering business are successful, in particular when it comes to consumer electronics.
I'm a idort. I counting only this next generation, my game platforms are PC, PS4, Vita and 3DS. I'm still on the fence on the WiiU, but if X (a game made by Monolith Soft, creators of Xenoblade) is good I will buy it.
As a PC gamer everytime I see fellow master race brother criticizing the new consoles for the specs I feel ashamed for the whole community. Leave the console wars BS for 12 year old who can't choose what to buy. Consoles have exclusives, are cheap, have decent gaming capabilities, and being the mainstream lowest common denominator are actually the main drive force into transforming new gameplay technology from a niche product in to a mainstream finished and widely used product. Motion controllers on the Wii, multiple attempts at Augment Reality by Sony, motion capture with the Kinect, driving wheels, fighting sticks just to mention a few. BTW, I bet same thing will happen to VR. CastAR and OculusRift may be successful between the high end PC gamers, but it will be adoption of VR on a console (probably the rumored PS VR headset) that will drive adoption of the tech by AAA studios, as well as, with the mainstream presence, increased interest on the tech for non-gaming applications.
Don't get me wrong: PC gaming is great. The freedom to buy any game regardless of the content. The low cost for most games(Whether that is a good thing or not for devs I'm not sure). Mods and the ability to choose as much performance as I want. All these features make me a proud PC gamer, but not recognizing the importance of the consoles in the industry is foolish.
I agree. Actually for the past couple of years, sony has being doing official tear downs of some of their flagship products, I remember seeing one for the Xperia Z and another for the Vaio Pro. I think they also did for the PS3 super slim, but not sure on this one.
Apple, IMO, did some thing similar, or even better depending on the person, with the new MacPro. Not only they also showed the insides but they also have a video of the manufacturing process(whether what that video shows is the real mass manufacturing process of the MacPro or not, I cannot say for sure)
Because that is how mass media works. Tesla is a "hot" topic. Anything about them will generate clicks. Anything bad about them will generate even more clicks. Polemic and scandals over pointless things are the bread and butter of modern mainstream journalism. Once the hype ends, Elon Musk can personally burn as many cars he want, no one will give a crap.
But just a little hopefully constructive criticism about your math. Tesla Model S has been available for how long 1 year? 2? IDK. But a lot less than 6 years. Furthermore, there is a 4 order of magnitude of difference between the number of sold gas vehicles and Tesla cars(heck, there are 10x more burning cars in the streets than Model S sold). And finally, the average Tesla owner is much more likely to take care of their car, given financial and intellectual/cultural conditions than the average gas vehicle owner. Lets wait until the Tesla and EVs in general are more mainstream and the sample sizes and conditions of both types of vehicles are comparable before we use statics.
That is something that is bugging me. I'm thinking two situations here:
1) Sony is actually going full retarded and helping MS/Apple suing google even though it's thanks to Android that their mobile business is becoming successful.
2) Sony, alongside RIM and the other smaller players have their part in Rockstar just for the right to use the patents and not get sued by the big boys
Yeah, from my perspective I can't help but to notice the huge boner most people on internet have towards market share and mainstream market acceptance, regardless if it's for smartphones, computers, game consoles and accessories or services. People just seem to forget that business are about making money. Having a huge share may have some help with it, but that is not always true.
Whether the cloud strategy is working or not doesn't matter. As long as artists, web designers, graphic designers, wannabes, etc, keeping using Photoshop et al for everything they do, even when is completely unnecessary either because there are cheaper, sufficient or better alternatives depending on the job, Adobe has no need to listen to reason. They'll still be making all the money they want.
AMD/ATI also has introduced MANTLE Api for lower level access than DirectX which is cross platform. This may turn into a very important API as AMD/ATI have their GPUs in the next generation Sony and Xbox consoles as well with a large marketshare for game developers to target
MANTLE is not on any of the consoles. This articles mentions only the lack of Mantle on the Xbone, but since the PS4 GPU is the same architecture with bigger numbers, it's safe to say it's not on the PS4 either.
Anyway, the problem with Mantle is not mantle it self, but the lack of games that will actually make good and innovative use of that tech. Sure, FrostByte 3 games will support Mantle but for what? So that you can play console games with better graphics? Sorry, good graphics are a great but after a certain point unless you do something never done before, just bigger textures/resolutions/etc hardly improve a game and thus hardly the extra money to keep a high-end pc. The same could be said of many graphics and physics APIs on the PC. I guess it may be worth it if you have the money and really like to invest in eye-candy. For the PC crowd that may sound stupid and kind of a asshole thing to do, but given how the consumer electronics market works, if AMD really wants Mantle to be a truly game changing tech, they could use some of the profits they'll get from the hype to invest on an high-quality exclusive title that does what noone else can do. AMD knows better than anyone else that just releasing good products doesn't guarantee you sales...
The internet considers Nintendo a failing company simply because they are not following the "western" trends of putting every game on every device out there in order to "maximize the user base". Instead they are trying to focus on having a vision and making a exclusive content that takes full advantage of their hardware. If it's not trendy it's a fail. It's like the criticism toward MS or Apple, regardless of the record breaking net profits and huge sales they report, they are called dying companies because they are not trendy anymore. Not paying attention to trends may be a bad thing sometimes, but only if your company doesn't have a decent vision and strategy.
I'm far from being a huge nintendo fan myself. As a matter of fact the only Nintendo game I'm looking forward is the project X for the WiiU, by their second-party studio, Monolith software. Plus I think their hardware, while it has a vision, is just a bit too underspec'd for my own tastes and their network services still suck. I don't enjoy Mario anymore because it's too easy, I lost interest in Zelda because it's too predictable, and while Pokemon lore fascinates me, I just don't have the hundreds of hours required to catch and grind my pokemons. Other franchises like Metroid, Fire Emblem or Advance Wars are great, but there are just so many other games to play that I pretty much let them slip through. HOWEVER, may the Gaming Gods strike me where I stand right now if I don't have a huge respect for their strategies and vision. Not even Valve and Sony(SCE) together understand gaming and gamers as much as Nintendo does. There are situations such as the first 6 months of poor 3DS sales and nogames or the current poor WiiU state, or the Gamecube and N64 eras when Nintendo stayed behind the competition in terms of sales/numbers, but they still managed to stay profitable and respected. I may not be in their target market but damn they know their stuff.
IMO, the only thing I would consider a genuine mistake for their part, was trying to appeal to the tablet crowd with the WiiU. I think they should had gone for VR. From a pure electronics point of view there is barely no difference between a tablet and a Oculus Rift, 90s style head mount display. Plus visual VR is the perfect companion for motion controllers from the Wii. Plus they are already had experience with the Virtual Boy. Instead they're letting a kickstarter that can't even design games by themselves take all the credit for resurrecting 20 year old tech. Not only that but given the OR success, sony is likely bringing VR to the ps4 as well, making it harder form them to market a nintendo version of VR as innovation later.
Steambox (and PC gaming) is it's own market. It has some overlap with the high-end game(PS4/XBone) consoles, but it has it's own perks, needs and expectations. Sure it technically can run anything, but gaming is much more than just running software.
Said that, the micro-console market is also it's own market, with a even more niche set of gimmicks, needs and expectations. Plus, on a pure hardware point of view, to compare a $900+ machine that needs both arms to be lifted against a $99 embedded device that fits on the palm of your hand is nonsense. Just because everybody owns a certain platform, that doesn't make support for that platform mandatory. Vision(and the guts to fight the odds and make it a reality) is more important and without it many business, including gaming business wouldn't exist. Said that, that is exactly where the problems with the OUYA begin: they don't have a vision. I could write pages pages on the problems associated with their strategy but just to expose the tip of the iceberg, marketing is nonexistent and support from firmware and network services to exclusives and first-party games is totally lacking. Consumer media devices, in particular gaming devices, just cannot live without those two things. And on top of that there is that PSVita TV, which is in the same price range, has similar hardware, but has much better software and the PlayStation brand behind it.
I'm usually not really bitchy about patents. I even tolerate software patents as long as they actually describe something truly novel, after all everything can be described as a set of mathematical equations. But what is novel about that? Earplugs and phone calls? If that passes does it mean that if a decide to "invent" any existing device, but with integrated earplugs and capable of making phone calls, I can patent it?
I don't care. As long as the basics, i.e., OS, drivers and APIs as well as the marketplaces/repositories are open, thus giving the power to the users to write any app for anything, I'm okay with that. If the apps are closed, I really don't mind. TBH, I have little faith in the success of steamOS. Unless Valve makes HL3 and following games steamOS exclusives, there will be very little reason to choose steamOS over anything else. But if it is successful I hope that will make other gaming companies and accessories maker to adopt open/standard APIs and drivers for the PC(I'm looking at you Nvidia, OcculusVR and Sony).