GET YER E3 BULLSHIT RIGHT HERE

[Nonentity]

Went and played a few things today (left early):

Dive Kick - Two button fighting game - not even a movement stick, just two buttons. One jumps, one kicks. You can kick on the ground to move backwards. One hit kills, 5 rounds. Every character has different kick arcs, it's actually super super fun. It's the mind games of fighting games without all the complexity. You can land headshot kills and then they're dazed at the beginning of the next round.

Transistor - New game from Supergiant (Bastion guys) - feels really solid, the time pausing and planning mechanic works great, makes it a bit of a mashup of an action game and a tactical one. Art and voicework are top notch again.

Secret Ponchos - This game is legitimately awesome, it's a wild west dueling game. It sort of uses twin-stick shooter controls for moving and aiming, with a different cast of characters. I played a dude that had a rifle you could root yourself in place to get longer range with, or I could also charge people and impale them on my bayonet, and then shoot them off. They had a 2v2 respawning match going, but I saw support for up to 4v4 and a variety of maps. Should be awesome.

Mercenary Kings - I kickstarted this game, and it is rad. It's like a mission-based free-roaming Metal Slug with crafting.

LocoCycle - this is an xbox one game where you are a sentient motorcycle dragging a dude behind you? you can jump into the air and do combos (your wheel spins out and hits people and you get a combo counter, and you can weave throwing your passenger around as a combo). I dunno, could be dumb fun.

I also got to get hands on with the PS4 and Xbox One controllers.

The PS4 controller is WAY better. The handles are longer, so it doesn't feel as cramped for my large man hands (6'5") to reach the analog sticks. The texture on the back of the controller feels kind of grippy, it's nice. Sticks seem like they have a better tuned tension than the PS3 ones, and the divots in the thumbsticks make them much better. Buttons don't stick out of the controller as much but they still have a really solid hit to them. Triggers on the back are great. That little touchpad clicks like a touchpad on a Macbook. The "options" and "share" buttons are a little higher (since they extend to the top of the controller), but they weren't any harder to hit

The Xbox One controller just feels like an evolution of the 360 one, which isn't the worst thing. Buttons felt great, the triggers have a wierd curve on the end of them but once I adjusted they actually worked a bit better. It's basically the same as the 360 controller, but I don't think it needed as much improvement as the dual shock did. I didn't like the smoother texture as much as I did the one on the PS4.

Could not fucking find Dark Souls 2, might not be on the floor. Namco doesn't have a booth.

[Samprimary]

honestly both of those controllers look like pretty good improvements.

spyched about the xbone controller, which i hope to ruthlessly appropriate to pc gaming. ruthlessly.

[Margalis]

Can someone explain why Bayonetta 2 would be on the wii? I'm so fucking lost right now and sad. I mean Bayonetta is all boobs and over the top and eye candy and boobs and colorful craziness. How the fuck does any of that fit on the wii instead of the other two?

Nintendo is paying for the development. The game was originally being developed as a 360/PS3 sequel but Sega stopped funding it so it went into limbo until Nintendo picked it up.

The list of countries on MS's page is 21 markets baybe!  

What's weird here is that MS recently put out a projection of how they expect the video game market to continue growing, and it was based mostly on emerging and expanding markets - markets they aren't even supporting.

Edit2: MS is saying check the box text to see where a game can be played. Also you need to check the box for stuff like trade-in policy. This is going to be a fucking nightmare, is every box going to have like 20 icons and 10 paragraphs of text on it to explain how and where it can be played?

[Lakov_Sanite]

Xbox:Spreadsheet edition.

[Quinton]

Edit2: MS is saying check the box text to see where a game can be played. Also you need to check the box for stuff like trade-in policy. This is going to be a fucking nightmare, is every box going to have like 20 icons and 10 paragraphs of text on it to explain how and where it can be played?

Lots of opportunity for online store fuckups too.  I see a lot of negative Amazon reviews in the future.

[Paelos]

Xbox:Spreadsheet edition.

Tell me more. 

[koro]

[Paelos]

Global economy? WHAT'S THAT?

[palmer_eldritch]

What a mess. Importing isn't even the right word really, as Poland, the UK and all the other EU states are supposedly part of a single market. Around half the EU countries are missed off the magic 21 list. It's not an exact analogy, because the EU isn't quite as tight as this yet, but what they're doing is close to saying you can buy it in New York but they won't let you use it in Texas.

Edit: I mean, consider the fact that there are no border controls between Germany (which is one of the 21) and Poland.

[koro]

It should also be noted that the Xbone's got an anti-class-action lawsuit bit in its Terms of Service just like everything else nowadays, so if the Xbone's got a hardware defect on the level of the RROD (which is not out of the question considering that the system is reportedly being rushed to completion), everyone's pretty much screwed.

The only thing that got Microsoft off its ass to work on the 360's myriad hardware problems was losing a massive class-action suit.

[Samwise]

It should also be noted that the Xbone's got an anti-class-action lawsuit bit in its Terms of Service just like everything else nowadays, so if the Xbone's got a hardware defect on the level of the RROD (which is not out of the question considering that the system is reportedly being rushed to completion), everyone's pretty much screwed.

The only thing that got Microsoft off its ass to work on the 360's myriad hardware problems was losing a massive class-action suit.

Sounds like they learned the appropriate lesson.   

[Lakov_Sanite]

It should also be noted that the Xbone's got an anti-class-action lawsuit bit in its Terms of Service just like everything else nowadays, so if the Xbone's got a hardware defect on the level of the RROD (which is not out of the question considering that the system is reportedly being rushed to completion), everyone's pretty much screwed.

The only thing that got Microsoft off its ass to work on the 360's myriad hardware problems was losing a massive class-action suit.

I seriously doubt every court in the world is going to agree with microsoft should an epic hardware failure occur. Shady legal language only exists in a vacuum when it never gets challenged.

[Margalis]

Something someone on Gaf or Twitter pointed out: Poland can make Witcher 3 for XB1 but can't play it.

[Fabricated]

Anti-Class Action waivers are horseshit; have they been challenged in court yet?

[Venkman]

MS is screwing the pooch in every possible way. Shit, even my wife, who follows this stuff not at all is wondering if the NSA co-sponsored the thing. PS4 is coming off as much better, but their world view is still very old school. So basically, I sit out this generation, happy with all the PC ports that are coming, which are mostly possible because Sony decided not to go so stupidly proprietary this time.

And SW:BF looks exactly like the game I always thought it should be. That'll be the only BF I'll ever buy anymore. Cute series but I'm done with it and COD. Yawnfests of sameness.

Name me a PC exclusive that has bloated control scheme, excluding flight simulators.

Well, exclude any simulator really. Truck dashboards are bloated bad UIs

But seriously: every MMO and RTS game? Console controllers require the use of contextually-relevant UI elements, compartmentalized by game even. We are benefitting from console ports. Assassins Creed series, Tomb Raider, shit, even vanilla Skyrim wouldn't have such clean UIs if they were PC exclusive, because they wouldn't need it. Conversely, one reason you don't see traditional MMOs on console, and the ones that made the jump either having arcane UI on all platforms, or designed for controller first and merely made to work on PC. Diablo 3 on console is by no means a surprise. GW2 neither. They were thought through to eventuality.

But this is all separate from WASD/mouse. THAT is the best control scheme, particularly if you can add in leaning with Q and E. I don't bother with that Nostromo thing though. If I'm going to adopt that, I might as well suck it up and learn to like a console controller 

I stand by WASD/mouse as the best option for one simple reason: it's the only design that hasn't had to change every generation of video games since the 70s.

[Jeff Kelly]

Global economy? WHAT'S THAT?

That policy directly violates EU law. As EU citizen I'm allowed to buy any kind of good or service in any EU member state and companies in the EU are legally forbidden to prevent me from doing so.

Free movement of goods is one of the 4 basic freedoms of the EU internal market.

If MS prevents a person in a member state (for example Poland) from buying a Xbone or Xbone games ftom any other member state (say Germany) it violates freedom.

As far as the EU is concerned there is only the EU msrket and not 22 individual markets of 22 individual member states.

That would be as if the Xbone was only being sold in a subset of US states.

[Hoax]

You are allowed to buy it in Germany you just can't play games on it until there are poland region games and xbox live is operational in Poland right? I'm guessing that is still ok with the EU and if it isn't yet it will be.

Since when did discs even have specific country locking anyways, I only remember region locks.

[Kageru]

My thought would be you can have finer grained locks once you are locking digital rights as opposed to physical media like DVD's.

I watched the business take on it (CNBC) and it's always amusing for their ability to take a trend and extend it to infinity, plus confuse market overlap. Apparently consoles don't matter any-more because tablet sales are growing so fast now.

[Jeff Kelly]

You are allowed to buy it in Germany you just can't play games on it until there are poland region games and xbox live is operational in Poland right? I'm guessing that is still ok with the EU and if it isn't yet it will be.

Since when did discs even have specific country locking anyways, I only remember region locks.

No,  the same also applies to games. They simply can't region lock with a finer grain than "EU", that would be illegal. The rule also applies to virtual or digital goods so they can't even region lock download games in that way.

[Cyrrex]

Perhaps all it is saying is "well, you can buy it, you can download it, you can even install it...but good luck authenticating it losers!  Oh, and no refunds.".

[schild]

[Ingmar]

Well if it is literally Hitler the good news is it shoudn't take very long for it to reach Poland.

[Cyrrex]

Well if it is literally Hitler the good news is it shoudn't take very long for it to reach Poland.

Nicely done.

[schild]

Well if it is literally Hitler the good news is it shoudn't take very long for it to reach Poland.

[Jeff Kelly]

Perhaps all it is saying is "well, you can buy it, you can download it, you can even install it...but good luck authenticating it losers!  Oh, and no refunds.".

I know what it's saying, enforcing it would be illegal though.

The EU doesn't force companies to have retail or supplier presences in every EU country, they don't force companies to stock retailers in every EU country. They simply state that if you sell it in any EU country you can not limit sale or use of your products or services to one or a subset of EU countries.

No German retailer for example needs to stock UK versions of games but I can always go to play.co.uk or amazon.co.uk and order a UK version of any game and they deliver it to my German address. Preventing or limiting my ability to buy it in any other EU country and preventing or limiting use iin my country would be illegal and is usually heavily enforced with hefty fines (Volkswagen for example was fined several hundred million Euro because they wanted to prevent people from reimporting cars intended for other EU markets like Spain or Italy)

This is not limited to physical goods, it also covers services, virtual or download goods and licenses.

I can for example quite easily open a UK or french iTunes account and buy music or DVDs there. MS already violates most of those terms with the 360 since I can't create an UK XBox live account for example but at least I can buy any UK, French, Portugese etc. game or console and use it in my country. We've even harmonized the age rating system in the EU which was a last legal hurdle for sale of media.

The features and DRM and system design basically makes most of the Xones 'features' illegal according to EU law. If the EU actually enforces those rules is another matter though

[Falconeer]

I think Jeff is right on this. I really wonder what the hell are thinking at Microsoft, or what kind of stunt they are gonna pull in order to "try" and enforce this.

[Kageru]

They can enforce it through the mechanism of your game not working if you live in the wrong region. It's not like they care too much, their press conference made it eminently clear they are almost completely US centric.

It will certainly be interesting if they get sued, but it's not like that's a new experience for them either.

[Jeff Kelly]

I meant that it is unclear if the EU commission will enforce the rules against MS. They did when it concerned Apple, they did when it concerend Valve, so far they haven't though when it concerns Microsoft.

So while the things MS plans for the XBone might be illegal under EU regulations for them to change would depend entirely on the willingness of the EU commission to enforce those rules. The commission has a mixed track record concerning that.

[Teleku]

Welp, thats it for Microsoft and consoles. I cannot see how this gen will do anything but crush the Xbox line.  So much for the last American console.

Maybe Apple will finally jump into the fray, take their spot, and release their own console next gen.  

Or I suppose this gives a great opening to the Steambox if they can actually make it all work.

[Merusk]

I think Jeff is right on this. I really wonder what the hell are thinking at Microsoft, or what kind of stunt they are gonna pull in order to "try" and enforce this.

Never attribute to malice what can be covered by incompetence.  I'd be very willing to bet that the team never consulted with Ms Europe division, who are now sending urgent internal emails.

[Velorath]

Welp, thats it for Microsoft and consoles. I cannot see how this gen will do anything but crush the Xbox line.

I wouldn't go that far. There are millions upon millions of people who buy consoles, the majority of whom don't care that people on game forums hate DRM and restricting used game sales. Particularly in the U.S. where the 360 has been pretty dominant, there are probably a lot of people who have Xbox now and see a new one coming out and just figure that's what they're going to get, and hey they can watch the NFL on it and play some shooting games. The shit MS is doing will cost them a lot of support, but I don't think it's too the point where they're just going to tank completely.

[Quinton]

I think Jeff is right on this. I really wonder what the hell are thinking at Microsoft, or what kind of stunt they are gonna pull in order to "try" and enforce this.

Never attribute to malice what can be covered by incompetence.  I'd be very willing to bet that the team never consulted with Ms Europe division, who are now sending urgent internal emails.

You'd think, having shipped two previous generations of consoles with an online store feature in various international markets, this shouldn't be a surprise to them...

[Cyrrex]

Welp, thats it for Microsoft and consoles. I cannot see how this gen will do anything but crush the Xbox line.

I wouldn't go that far. There are millions upon millions of people who buy consoles, the majority of whom don't care that people on game forums hate DRM and restricting used game sales. Particularly in the U.S. where the 360 has been pretty dominant, there are probably a lot of people who have Xbox now and see a new one coming out and just figure that's what they're going to get, and hey they can watch the NFL on it and play some shooting games. The shit MS is doing will cost them a lot of support, but I don't think it's too the point where they're just going to tank completely.

Have they actually said what the NFL deal is going to even be, exactly?  I struggle to imagine it be able to compete with NFL Redzone, which is already widely available to everyone who is already using the internet in any capacity.

[Rendakor]

Welp, thats it for Microsoft and consoles. I cannot see how this gen will do anything but crush the Xbox line.

I wouldn't go that far. There are millions upon millions of people who buy consoles, the majority of whom don't care that people on game forums hate DRM and restricting used game sales. Particularly in the U.S. where the 360 has been pretty dominant, there are probably a lot of people who have Xbox now and see a new one coming out and just figure that's what they're going to get, and hey they can watch the NFL on it and play some shooting games. The shit MS is doing will cost them a lot of support, but I don't think it's too the point where they're just going to tank completely.

While the dudebro 360 crowd don't care about DRM, they do usually care about money and the PS4 is $100 cheaper.

[Velorath]

They still have half a year to potentially counter Sony's price with some sort of subsidizing plan. Even if that doesn't happen though, I'm curious how many 360 owners stick with Xbox just due to their personal investment in the XBL community (friends lists, achievement points, already paid for a long term Live sub and such). I don't know, I'm just not yet convinced that this is the death blow for MS in the console business that some make it out to be.