The Pee-Ess Four: It's a PC FFS.

[MahrinSkel]

Sorry, tgr but an article disagrees with you, and I think he is making a good point.

Looking at the popularity of platform-exclusive titles doesn't really help make the keyboard-and-mouse popularity case either, I'm afraid. Steam data shows a peak of about 70,000 people playing Team Fortress 2 concurrently on Steam yesterday, but Halo 4 peaked at about 75,000 players (down from an astounding 400,000+ concurrent players at launch), according to HaloCharts.com. Counter-Strike and CS: Source may combine for about 100,000 peak concurrent players on Steam in an average day, but Gears of War 3 managed 300,000 simultaneous players on launch day, and Gears of War 2 had a million people playing simultaneously at launch [PDF, page 5] (yes, these games are "third-person" shooters and may have dropped off significantly post launch, but the data argues a similar point).

Remember Fury? Or cross-platform Q3A servers the console monkeys wouldn't log onto if they allowed PC players?  If everyone is running the race with one foot in a bucket, it's fair, but it's still running with a handicap.  So there are more people out there that have only played shooters with dual sticks?  The reason they won't allow any console game to support a mouse even as an option is that the mouse players will kick everyone's ass, and from then on be as ruined for dual-stick as anyone who first played shooters in PC.

--Dave






 
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[Goreschach]

If everyone is running the race with one foot in a bucket, it's fair, but it's still running with a handicap.

No it isn't.

[MahrinSkel]

If everyone is running the race with one foot in a bucket, it's fair, but it's still running with a handicap.

No it isn't.

Then why don't PC players use the dual-stick controllers they use for console ports for their shooters?  Even the ones that are also good at console shooters don't attempt it.  Dual stick is a crappy interface for a shooter, only accepted because it's the best allowed for consoles.  It's a handicap deliberately maintained by the consoles to keep them a 'couch-based' experience.

Which raises a big question for the Steambox: If they don't support mice, most of their existing customer base will reject it.  If they do, how will the console players they're trying to reach out to respond?

--Dave

[Ragnoros]

I'm surprised they haven't straight up announced a Steam Big Picture App for the PS4.

I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

This.

Steam and PC in general has completely and utterly spoiled me. I can't imagine having to friggen go buy disks ever again. Plus, you know, Steam sales.

[rk47]

If everyone is running the race with one foot in a bucket, it's fair, but it's still running with a handicap.

No it isn't.

Then why don't PC players use the dual-stick controllers they use for console ports for their shooters?  Even the ones that are also good at console shooters don't attempt it.  Dual stick is a crappy interface for a shooter, only accepted because it's the best allowed for consoles.  It's a handicap deliberately maintained by the consoles to keep them a 'couch-based' experience.

Which raises a big question for the Steambox: If they don't support mice, most of their existing customer base will reject it.  If they do, how will the console players they're trying to reach out to respond?

--Dave

Special Olympics, man.   

[jakonovski]

A controller is perfectly ergonomic for shooters, you dinosaurs just don't know how to use one. After that it comes a question of game balancing, as Dead Space taught me (normal console difficulty + mouse & kb = god mode).

[Bzalthek]

A controller is perfectly ergonomic for shooters, you dinosaurs just don't know how to use one. After that it comes a question of game balancing, as Dead Space taught me (normal console difficulty + mouse & kb = god mode).

You go you hardcore you

[tgr]

The reason they won't allow any console game to support a mouse even as an option is that the mouse players will kick everyone's ass, and from then on be as ruined for dual-stick as anyone who first played shooters in PC.

I am utterly comfortable with the idea of FPS games being ruined for dual-stickers, since they've ruined tons of games for me the last few years.

[apocrypha]

First of all, it's not a PC. Yes there's similarities, but there's some crucial differences too.

For starters it'll cost about a third to a half as much as a decent gaming PC and won't need you to buy a monitor, mouse, keyboard. Others have already pointed out the differences in maintenance, space requirements, etc. The downside is that you can incrementally upgrade a PC over the years which you can't do with a console. But at the end of the day the PS4 is still a console and if you can't see the differences between the two things then you're a bit blinkered.

Secondly... who cares? The original XBox was lambasted by many people for being "lol just a PC" and it was just as pointless a thing to say then as it is now. I would be very surprised if the majority of regular posters here didn't have both a PC and a console, if not multiples of each. Consoles, PCs, laptops, tablets, all different tools with different capabilities - with increasing amounts of crossover, but for many people they're not exclusive things.

In this house there's 2 PCs, 2 laptops, 2 tablets, 1 console and if you want to consider home entertainment as a total there's also a couple of dedicated music systems and some assorted set-top boxes, oh and a TV with more functions than any TV had 10 years ago.

If by saying "it's a PC FFS" you mean to imply that the similarities the PS4 has to a PC will hamper its sales, reduce it's competitiveness, make it lose out to Microsoft (or Ouya or Steam or whatever) and doom it to failure then I humbly suggest you're full of shit. The TV-connected home gaming market is going to be a total bloodbath over the coming years and is going to be a very competitive arena. It's going to be won or lost on the basis of cost, quality of titles, not fucking consumers over (eg. by prohibiting 2nd hand game use), ease of use, etc etc. Not superficial similarities to PCs.

Personally I think cost is going to be the biggest issue in the early days of PS4/720/Ouya/Steambox sales. If the PS4 is £300 and the 720 is £400 the PS4 will probably sell a lot more at first. I think the biggest questions yet to be answered are those of initial cost plus subscription services, and we're not going to know those for a long time yet.

[Quinton]

For me (and I suspect many others) it will remain a question of title availability.  The PS3 has not been as good as the PS2 as far as raw number of games I wanted to play (and could not play elsewhere or were better enjoyed on the big screen in the living room), but still has had a few, and it does reasonable double duty as my dvd/bluray/netflix/amazonvideo box.  I haven't yet found a compelling reason to buy an xbox or xbox360, mostly because the game titles available are either not interesting to me or readily available for the PC.

I am getting a little fed up with the "let's sell you all your content again for a new device" model that Sony's been taking.  Steam's model of content ownership having no relationship to device ownership feels far more reasonable, and given the increasing architectural similarity between the upcoming consoles and commodity PCs, availability of interesting titles seems far more likely to be a factor of exclusive licenses than technical difficulties in porting.

I don't think ouya or android gamestick low cost consoles are likely to have a big impact on ps4/xbox720/steambox (assuming a reasonably featureful, affordable, turnkey steambox) competition in that the low cost competitors are going to be much more last generation (not just GPU-wise, but memory, memory bandwidth, and storage-wise) and not capable of providing many of the higher end (required specs wise at least) titles.  On the other hand, a small $100-200 needs far fewer interesting titles or content streaming services to justify its purchase compared to a bulkier $400-600 device.

[luckton]

PS3's biggest downfall, IMO, was it's "you must be a fucking savant to code for our system" bullshit.  Sure, it kept the shovel-ware devs away, which had them flocking to the Wii, but then for those that tried and failed to make something decent, such failures were painfully obvious.  The patching system was a PITA, and the overall costs/proprietary-ness  of the system and games was Apple-style atrocious.

That they had the PSN for free multiplayer and matchmaking was one big saving grace.  I expect that when the PS4 launches, if it is in fact a little more easier to code with, you can expect the PS3 to get kicked out the door a lot faster than for how long the PS2 stuck around.

[sickrubik]

Steam's model of content ownership having no relationship to device ownership feels far more reasonable, and given the increasing architectural similarity between the upcoming consoles and commodity PCs, availability of interesting titles seems far more likely to be a factor of exclusive licenses than technical difficulties in porting.

Exclusive licensing has always been more or less the reason for title availability. It's not technical difficulties as much as it's sales driven.

Re: steam. That's not strictly true. You still run into hardware issues on abilities to run games. Not all games being playable on Mac or Linux for example. Additionally, you only have a license, strictly speaking, to run it on only YOUR machine. Steam IS still DRM, it's just better developed, really.

[HaemishM]

How awesome is it that in a discussion about the PS4 and future consoles, Steam is being talked about as much if not more than the actual PS4 console itself?

[luckton]

Well, PC Master Race and all that jazz 

[sickrubik]

How awesome is it that in a discussion about the PS4 and future consoles, Steam is being talked about as much if not more than the actual PS4 console itself?

It's exciting that we have a possible third option. Valve really has been reading the trends and pushing right at the time when PC games have gained a foothold again. Which of course, tends to happen at this point in the console cycle. The difference now is the landscape is just a bit better for what Steam was doing 7-8 years ago.

[Paelos]

For starters it'll cost about a third to a half as much as a decent gaming PC and won't need you to buy a monitor, mouse, keyboard. Others have already pointed out the differences in maintenance, space requirements, etc. The downside is that you can incrementally upgrade a PC over the years which you can't do with a console. But at the end of the day the PS4 is still a console and if you can't see the differences between the two things then you're a bit blinkered.

Seeing as we don't know the cost, or how gaming PCs are shifting towards lower pricing, that may not be true. As gaming PC companies, video card makers, other hardware providers, etc struggle to remain relevant in a console/casual/tablet world, they can't afford to price themselves out of the market, or make people pay a premium for small upgrades in performance.

Also, the price of a monitor mouse and keyboard are going to be less than most people's TV. And why can't I hook a PC up to my TV now? There's literally nothing stopping me from using my PC from the couch, unlike the technology that existed when PS3 first came out in 2006. Do you remember 2006? A 42 inch HDTV was $3000 back then. Now? It's better tech and I can get one at Walmart for $350.

[Kageru]

First of all, it's not a PC. Yes there's similarities, but there's some crucial differences too.

The trick is it could be a PC. It's probably running linux underneath and nothing unique in terms of hardware. Break Sony's DRM, attach some peripherals, and you have a computer. Take a PC and lock it down like the valve steambox will be and you have a console.

And I guess from that the value proposition is whether you accept the fact it can't do as much as a PC (being locked down) in exchange for it doing some things much better. Which at the end of the day would be determined by price, game playing performance (which relates to price) and game exclusives (which relates to buying favors).

Since we don't know the price for the PS4 or the next Xbox I guess we are missing the main factor. The more expensive hardware is probably going to push the price up a bit and Sony may not have the money to subsidise it to the same extent and buy exclusives. If they don't Valve has a potential chance to push the advantage of having games that run on both PC's and Consoles which has some nice possibilities.

Should be fun to watch.

[Merusk]

I am getting a little fed up with the "let's sell you all your content again for a new device" model that Sony's been taking. 

It's worked so well for Music and Movies are you really that surprised they're trying to push it with games now?  How many people have LP, 8-Track, CD and .mp3 versions of the Beatles, or some combination of at least two?

[HaemishM]

Take a PC and lock it down like the valve steambox will be and you have a console.

I'm not sure what you've read that would make you think the Steambox is going to be as locked down as a console.

[sickrubik]

I think the conjecture about what the steambox is going to be is far outracing the conjecture over the PS4. At this point we know more about the PS4 than the Steambox/steambox it seems. We also seem to be mixing the usage of Steambox and steambox. IE, the one that Valve is going to put out vs the licensed manufactured ones.

[eldaec]

Well, PC Master Race and all that jazz 

Fuck Yeah!



OTOH, I'm really fucking sceptical about when or if steambox might actually happen. Or if it comes how well the Linux thing will really work. Or how it would deal with Xbox moving into the same space or Originbox appearing and everything getting all crappy.

[luckton]

Honestly, if they can get Steam to take off on Linux and bring developers to start coding for that instead of continuing to appease the Windows/Microsoft gods, I might just force myself to learn Linux.

[Stormwaltz]

For dedicated games, the difference between PCs and consoles is at this point largely price cheats and interface (handheld/motion controller vs. mouse and keyboard).

Consoles can rely on the end user not needing to invest in a "monitor" and speakers to go with the box, and they sell the hardware for less than it costs to manufacture, counting on game sales to make up the difference.

I bought consoles from the last generation when they offered things I could not get on PC - the Wii had its then-unique motion control and party games, the PS3 had the best Blu-Ray player. The 360 offered nothing my PC didn't have (and wanted to charge me subscription fees for features I get for free on PC), so I never bought one. I only bought games for console when they were platform specific. That ended up being a whopping 6 PS3 and 13 Wii games.

[Ingmar]

For dedicated games, the difference between PCs and consoles is at this point largely price cheats and interface (handheld/motion controller vs. mouse and keyboard).

There's one other fairly important thing that should probably not be overlooked, which is that consoles still have single-device multiplayer games. There's a social dynamic there that just doesn't exist with PC games for the most part.

[luckton]

Someday they'll allow PC gamers to dominate over play with console players in MP.  Someday....

[Phred]

It is genuinely more fun for me playing a game like Mass Effect on your living rooms big screen television rather than a monitor in the study.

Fixed that for you.
Opinions and all.

[eldaec]

For dedicated games, the difference between PCs and consoles is at this point largely price cheats and interface (handheld/motion controller vs. mouse and keyboard).

There's one other fairly important thing that should probably not be overlooked, which is that consoles still have single-device multiplayer games. There's a social dynamic there that just doesn't exist with PC games for the most part.

Family / drunk multiplayer is only thing I've ever found remotely interesting about consoles.

But it is also an area indies should be well placed to attack on a steam box model I guess.

[Ingmar]

Someday they'll allow PC gamers to dominate over play with console players in MP.  Someday....

That's not what I'm talking about, though. You're not going to be sitting in the other room on the PC joining in with people playing Mario Party or whatever in the other room and enjoying yourself at all. (Note: I cannot fucking stand Mario Party, but it makes a good example of the dynamic I'm talking about.)

[Mosesandstick]

I think I'll pick up a console eventually for Rock Band 4.

[Ingmar]

If it ever exists. Harmonix isn't working on RB4 (so they say) and they're ending RB3 DLC in April. Franchise may be dead.

[Rendakor]

Someday they'll allow PC gamers to dominate over play with console players in MP.  Someday....

That's not what I'm talking about, though. You're not going to be sitting in the other room on the PC joining in with people playing Mario Party or whatever in the other room and enjoying yourself at all. (Note: I cannot fucking stand Mario Party, but it makes a good example of the dynamic I'm talking about.)

This has become much less common throughout this console generation, as devs focus more on online play and less on local multiplayer. The recent Just Dance craze is an exception, but Nintendo is the only first party developer focused on that sort of interaction which makes that argument sort of invalid in the PS4 : PC debate.

[Ingmar]

Pretty sure just about every fighting game still works with local multi.

[luckton]

Pretty sure just about every fighting game still works with local multi.

Yeah, but that's a genre that really WORKS with local multi.  Aside from that and the party-style games of MP, what else is there that allows for a top-rate enjoyable experience these days?  I for one am done with split-screen stuff.

[Merusk]

Skylanders is a bunch of fun MP and doesn't do split-screen.   Ditto the Lego games.   We don't own many games but those are the two that the kids really love to play MP.   

Basically any Cooperative vs Competitive play games.

Aside: I find it funny watching a bunch of traditional introverts discuss the merits of face-to-face MP.

[Phred]

For dedicated games, the difference between PCs and consoles is at this point largely price cheats and interface (handheld/motion controller vs. mouse and keyboard).

If you completely ignore the inefficiencies and overhead of the d3d and ogl graphic layer that's true.
http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/12324/article/ps4-a-speculative-analysis-of-sony-s-next-gen-console/