Well, my dad works at Nintendo and~: Console Wars Horseshit Megathread

[Yegolev]

my eyes

[schild]

Console launches are almost always terrible. If you're buying a system on day 1 it's mostly likely it's because you like the concept of being a day 1 owner. With Sony and MS I'd be weary just for hardware reliability issues. You know there is going to be a hardware revision that is some combination of quieter, smaller and less prone to breakage in the not too distant future.

It's amazing that Mario 64 was a launch game. It was one of the first 3D platforming games, one of the first games to use an analog stick, and still one of the best 3D platformers of all time. Nailing it that well right out of the gate was insane. Meanwhile Knack probably isn't as good as Mario 64.

Once again, as an owner of multiple launch PS3s, PS2s, PSPs and PS1s, my sample size of like 13 or something dismisses the fact that Sony has reliability issues. They're just as reliable as Nintendo has been over time. The only reason I'm even responding to this is you clumped it in with Microsoft who makes literal shit disguised as hardware.

[Bann]

What are people eventually excited to play on a next gen console? The only console game on my game radar right now is darksouls 2 in march, and thats coming out for ps3/360. The only thing so far I've managed to get somewhat excited for is a few passing references to a twitch app on ps4. I'd really like the idea of watching some dota2/lol matches on my tv instead of reruns of shows I've already seen all the episodes of while eating dinner (realistically) or working out (hypothetically.) Someone point me at a game or 2 coming down the pike before I just spend my next gen console money on a HTPC instead.

[Falconeer]

I'll tell you what I played on PS3 that justified the purchase. Note these are all games I couldn't have played on a PC (or not before a long awaited possibly mediocre port), which is still my favourite gaming machine, and pretty much express why I want a "next gen" console.

- Disgaea 3
- Disgaea 4
- Gran Turismo 5
- Final Fantasy 13
- Grand Theft Auto 4
- Soul Calibur 4
- Demon's Souls
- Heavy Rain
- Dark Souls
- Journey
- Catherine
- Dragon's Dogma
- Beyond: Two Souls
- The Last of Us

These are the ones I completed and loved. Of course I am not counting all the other games I have played extensively and enjoyed a lot but were somehow less important and/or I could have played on some other system, like Pro Evolution, Madden, NHL, Midnight Club and many more. It might look like not much but it was more than worth it for me. For the PS4 I am looking forward to Gran Turismo 7, Dark Souls 2, the next Quantic Dream, the next Naughty Dog, and then the usual amount of Japanese things I will absolutely love but could not predict.

[Yegolev]

[Nightblade]

[HaemishM]

So much 

[Merusk]

What are people eventually excited to play on a next gen console? The only console game on my game radar right now is darksouls 2 in march, and thats coming out for ps3/360. The only thing so far I've managed to get somewhat excited for is a few passing references to a twitch app on ps4. I'd really like the idea of watching some dota2/lol matches on my tv instead of reruns of shows I've already seen all the episodes of while eating dinner (realistically) or working out (hypothetically.) Someone point me at a game or 2 coming down the pike before I just spend my next gen console money on a HTPC instead.

Not I, but the son was excited to get a Wii U so much that I let him buy it himself.  He's all jazzed to play Rayman, Scribblenauts, the Lego games, etc on it.  Neither he nor the daughter give two squirts about the PS4 or Xbone, so I get to pocket funds this gen.

I bought the PS3 for God of War, FF14 & 14-2 for the wife and Soul Caliber.  I own a total of 20 games (I just counted) 4 of which are Lego or Assassin's Creed variants the daughter bought.   It was not a good investment, I'm going to skip this gen.

[Margalis]

Lastly for a sector that obsesses about graphics and system performance and that outright dismissed the Wii and Wii U for being sub par and 'not next gen' it's actually beyond ridiculous. It's silly that they now adopt the talking points of a vocal fraction of gamers who've always said that gameplay > graphics and that have been largely maginalized by the press just because their favourity console hasn't the upper hand. You usually only see that amount of cognitive dissonance with full blown schizophrenics.

In this case it's multi-platform games being compared, so "gameplay vs graphics" doesn't even factor in. It's graphics vs graphics with the same gameplay for both versions.

I think there are a lot of reasons why this is happening, including MS being a US-based company, being better at cupping the balls of the press, the press being antagonistic just for the sake of it, etc - but it clearly is happening. All last gen we heard about how the 360 was better because the mutli-platform games were better on it and thus even multiplats were differentiating strengths.

All of these things will be noticeable. You might not actually 'see' the pixels of a 720p version at your viewing distance (btw that's the ONLY thing about the'resolution increase isn't noticeable' that's actually true) but the added fidelity and clarity of the picture and the better overview an increased res might give you will be. Even on multiplatform titles that usually only vary in the graphics feature sets among platforms and keep the gameplay the same.

The whole "you can't tell the difference" thing is a straight up lie. Anyone with working eyes can tell the difference.

[Jeff Kelly]

my eyes

Huh?

[jakonovski]

Ha, Sony handed out free PS4's with personalized engraving to all the journos, who predictably flocked like kids getting free candy. Embarrassing pics and tweets ensued:

[Jeff Kelly]

Could you tell me for what sort of games media outlet they work so that I can avoid it like the plague in the future? I'd be much obliged.

[schild]

Who knows. I'm pretty sure Gameovergreggy follows Blue's Clues on Nickelodeon though.

[jakonovski]

It's IGN as per the watermark.
 
Also I have no idea what Blue's Clues is.

[Margalis]

When people accuse the gaming press of bias / influence the response is typically some reductive "it's not like we trade reviews for compensation." Then stuff like this happens and even that looks silly.

[Azazel]

Going from 720>upscaled>1080p to native1080p isn't nearly the same thing as 480i>1080p.

Also, the differences will be relatively minor in a lot of 3rd party games, as they develop for ease of conversion along the lowest (mainstream) common denominator of the "big two" of the day (no-one cares about Nintendo anymore). 99% of the stuff that you list that devs "could" do they won't do, particularly in the first year of titles. Anything that one has over the other will be idiot Kinect connectivity or other gimmicky touchscreen controller shit. Where the PS4's extra power will shine will be in exclusives, and you won't be able to compare those anyway.

Also, caring too much about the idiot gaming press is a bad idea. 

[Jeff Kelly]

No I pretty much expected nothing less (or more?) in that case. Mainly confirms my suspicions.

It's blatant, yes and it would violate the code of conduct and terms of your contract if you were employed at any 'serious' news organization, i..e it would get you fired. This is the gaming media though and so it pretty much just confirms the suspicions most gamers have had already though.

Making it seem like you are a gay couple that just came back from adopting a baby and has to share the joyous experience with the world is just added hilarity/facepalm-worthy.

[Jeff Kelly]

Going from 720>upscaled>1080p to native1080p isn't nearly the same thing as 480i>1080p.

Well I didn't really claim that and I realize you don't imply I did but going from 720p to 1080p is a 2.25 increase in the number of pixels pushed (1.5 times the number of pixels in each dimension). Granted it's not a 9-fold increase like Wind Waker did when going from 480p to 1080p (3 time increase in each dimension) but WW HD is essentially the same game as the GC version just with high res textures and more detailed models. While it may be exaggerated for comedic effect if the argument that 720p and 1080p is pretty much the same would be valid you shouldn't notice a visible effect just by a game being blown up from 480p to 1080p with little extra graphical resources added.

As it stands though it shows just how different and better a game can look when you use the added resolution and additional processing power for even just a little bit of additional graphical work.

Also, the differences will be relatively minor in a lot of 3rd party games, as they develop for ease of conversion along the lowest (mainstream) common denominator of the "big two" of the day (no-one cares about Nintendo anymore). 99% of the stuff that you list that devs "could" do they won't do, particularly in the first year of titles. Anything that one has over the other will be idiot Kinect connectivity or other gimmicky touchscreen controller shit. Where the PS4's extra power will shine will be in exclusives, and you won't be able to compare those anyway.

That was true in the PS3/Xbox 360 days because harnessing the additional power of the PS3 would have required a wholly different optimization path.  PC versions have almost always had added additional graphical effects or higher res resources even for multiplatform titles because it was basically just a 360 version with a different set of graphical options - something a modern gaming engine could quite easily support anyway. Also the PS3 came out a whole year after the 360 so it didn't make sense financially to fund a lot of additional optimization work for a platform that initially offered little additional sales.

Since both consoles are now basically the same architecture I expect to see a lot more graphical differentziation between both systems since targeting all three platforms has gotten a whole lot easier. On the contrary though I expect most developers to not really utilize the embedded SRAM on the Xbox 1 since doing so would require additional optimization work to be put into the XB1 version wrt. the PS4 and PC versions of the same game at least if you really use it to offset some of the performance hit you get from the DDR3 memory.

Also, caring too much about the idiot gaming press is a bad idea. 

I don't care, at least I think I don't. It's quite interesting though to see an industry or even a lot of the same people do a complete 180 on everything they said at a time when the 360 was king and the PS3 just because the PS4 now has the performance advantage and lower price.

[KallDrexx]

I have played both 720p and 1080p games on my 55" TV and I have honestly never noticed the difference.  GW2 the only difference I noticed was a difference in the UI sizing.

[Margalis]

1080 just gives you better overall image quality. It's not a night and day difference, but for the same game running at 720 vs 1080 it should be pretty obvious.

As far as other differences between PS4 and XB1 versions, I would expect things like more physics-based animations, better water, etc on PS4. Basically ancillary stuff. (For multi-plats I mean)

[Fabricated]

VIDEO



GAMES

[jakonovski]

So he (Adam Sessler?) whined until he got a debug unit for review purposes and then went to the party to get another, personally engraved retail unit?

Phat lewts indeed.

[Yegolev]

SRS BZNS

[HaemishM]

Game reveiwers are whiney douchebags just looking for free shit - film at 11. 

[jakonovski]

They're like Finnish politicians, so inept that they sell themselves for a pittance. 400 bucks worth of plastic and they willingly debase themselves on Twitter.

 

[Yegolev]

The politicians?

[jakonovski]

The politicians?

Well there was this one guy who got lured with free drinks and then the yellow press had a field day with photos. But that felt more sad, taking advantage of someone's addiction.

[Yegolev]

I really want to meet you in real life because I think you'd be a great Bud Abbot to my Lou Costello.

[Azazel]

What are people eventually excited to play on a next gen console? The only console game on my game radar right now is darksouls 2 in march, and thats coming out for ps3/360. The only thing so far I've managed to get somewhat excited for is a few passing references to a twitch app on ps4. I'd really like the idea of watching some dota2/lol matches on my tv instead of reruns of shows I've already seen all the episodes of while eating dinner (realistically) or working out (hypothetically.) Someone point me at a game or 2 coming down the pike before I just spend my next gen console money on a HTPC instead.

Honestly? The same shit we're playing now in next year's iterations. So with that in mind, I'm looking at 6-12-18 months before I bother seriously looking at buying one (which will be a PS4, because fuck MS and their XBone) If they ungimp the PS4's media capabilities, so much the better.

[jakonovski]

I really want to meet you in real life because I think you'd be a great Bud Abbot to my Lou Costello.

There's this great beer house if you ever visit Helsinki. And one place that makes their own blueberry cider.


----

In console war news, there's an amusing thing brewing on Neogaf. Seems like some "journalism" outlets have posted comparison videos of CoDGhosts, both games running at 720p. Then saying the games look identical.

[Miasma]

I guess the PS4 media embargos and such are now gone so you can go to your least hated video games "journalism" source to see reviews, livestreams, rants raves and all that.

People do not like that Knack game.

[jakonovski]

It seems pretty likely now that CodGhosts is actually 720p on PS4 single player and nobody noticed until someone counted the pixels. People with the game have just been going "gee this 1080p sure looks just like 720p".  

Also, Knack is Mark Cerny trying to recreate Crash Bandicoot, it was never going to be good. I like how PS1 the whole idea feels, but Resogun is where it's at. Tech demo and good retro gameplay.

[Fabricated]

Knack was never going to be good since it looked like it was entirely designed to be a tech demo and not a game.

[Yegolev]

Tech demos stretched out to a few hours is what console release titles are all about.

[Margalis]

Fabricated why are you posting a twitter tirade from a retarded person? Have you read that guy's Twitter stream?

Debug units have nothing to do with piracy. It's not like debug units have some exposed keys you can get at and break encryption with. Nor are debug units highly prized, MS gave them out like candy last gen. It's very common for people in the media to have debug units. (In part because they can play early versions of games that aren't pressed onto retail discs)

Apparently the issue was that retail PS4 units don't let you capture video directly. For someone who does a video show this is obviously a legitimate issue. Considering that this guy's job (Sessler I mean) is producing video content not having a debug unit would adversely affect him. I don't know if vague rants on twitter was the best approach for dealing with it, but I can certainly see why he'd be miffed.