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

[Jeff Kelly]

Apparently the issue was that retail PS4 units don't let you capture video directly.

Like any other device that has to adhere to the HDMI spec. An issue that is neither really new nor uncommon.

[jakonovski]

It's confirmed, Activision is releasing a patch day 1 that changes Cod from 720p to 1080p on PS4. And nobody noticed anything until now! This launch is the best thing to happen in a long time.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-13-day-one-patch-makes-call-of-duty-ghosts-single-player-1080p-on-ps4

[Yegolev]

Horseshit Megathread is paying off.

[Falconeer]

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.

Is DTM still in business? I am gonna visit in May for a hooping workshop,if you feel like sharing a lonkero.

[Margalis]

It's confirmed, Activision is releasing a patch day 1 that changes Cod from 720p to 1080p on PS4. And nobody noticed anything until now! This launch is the best thing to happen in a long time.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-13-day-one-patch-makes-call-of-duty-ghosts-single-player-1080p-on-ps4

This launch is pretty amazing.

By that I mean it's pretty standard, but people had such lofty expectations that it's turning out to be a hilarious mess.

[Pennilenko]

but people had such lofty expectations

Not picking on you exactly, but who are these people you are referring to?

[Falconeer]

Every PS4 review so far, according to IGN, and some shocking announcement from Hideo Kojimacoming this week.

[Margalis]

but people had such lofty expectations

Not picking on you exactly, but who are these people you are referring to?

People on other forums and twitter, notably Neogaf and Gamefaqs.

[Shannow]

Yahoo writer predicts, Xbone will win because of Kinect
 

 

[Mrbloodworth]

Win what?

[HaemishM]

Our unending derision and contempt? 

[Miasma]

Some guy firing a .50 cal anti-materiel rifle at the ps4.  I dunno.

[Quinton]

I had preordered a PS4 and Amazon and UPS did not fail me -- it was waiting on my front step when I got home Friday evening.  Had to waste some time on a 300ish MB OS update, resetting my long-forgotten PSN password, setting up my PSN account on the PS4, and so on.

The PS4 in general is snappier than the PS3, not always smooth (especially when you have a game paused in the background), and has removed some of the clunkiness -- when you hit the PS button the active game is immediately backgrounded and you get back to the homescreen in a hurry.  If you launch another game or app it'll ask if you want to end the one that's paused.  Getting in and out of the PSN store is faster -- app and game launch time in general is faster than PS3.

The share button takes screenshots when you tap it and allows for uploading them (to twitter) and uploading videos (live to twitch.tv or ustream or offline to... facebook?! wtf, where's a youtube option).  Oddly there is no mechanism I can find to view screenshots or videos on the PS4 itself -- they're listed in the share UI but just as thumbnails.

The launch titles available at the moment are not terribly exciting (though AC4 seems to be getting positive reviews).  I grabbed Resogun which is a pretty slick shmup.  Enjoying it a bunch.

Download from PSN can be painfully slow, and background downloads kept failing while I was using Amazon Instant Video (not sure if that was a multitasking problem or a PSN problem). 

Lack of support for the PS3 AV remote is annoying.  Crap integration for bluray playback is annoying as well -- no way to resume where you left off if you hop back to the launcher with the PS button, unlike games.

I really like the feel of the dualshock controller but am scratching my head about the big 'ol headlight on it -- would like to be able to turn that off and save some battery.

[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.

Is DTM still in business? I am gonna visit in May for a hooping workshop,if you feel like sharing a lonkero.

DTM went bankrupt a few years ago and then another company bought the rights and opened one up in a different location. I've no idea how it is.

We can totally go for a lonkero if I'm around in May!

On topic: It's even possible I have a PS4 at that point.





 

[Ingmar]

Apparently you do need to be online to start up games you downloaded from the PSN.

[Rendakor]

That's designed to counter the rampant account sharing from the PS3.

[Jeff Kelly]

It's kind of admirable how determined some parts of the press are to stick to the narrrative.

At first the claim was '1080p doesn't matter it's all in the games' (might as well, would be a welcome change from the current state of gaming).
Then the claim was that 'just because a lot of people claimed they have pre-ordered a PS4 it doesn't have to translate to sales'.
Then the claim was that 'Kinect and media integration offers a unique package that people might prefer'

Then Sony announced that they sold through 1 million consoles in North Amerca alone during the launch (biggest Sony Playstation launch yet) and now the claim is that 'a strong launch is nice, but it doesn't necessarily imply long-term success'.

[Falconeer]

I recently realized the PS4 is coming out in February 2014 in Japan, three months after pretty much every other place in the world. Considering it's their console, I thought it was weird and wanted to check out what was going on. The explanation makes a lot of sense and basically makes me feel like the stereotypical first world idiotic consumerist which wants the new shiny even though there is fucking nothing worth playing on it. Japan, not being obsessed with Christmas as some other countries, and wanting to launch their new product with a decent lineup of games people actually want to play, is gonna give developers a little more time.

Considering I don't feel like canceling my preorder (PS4 is coming out next week in Europe) for the reasons I mentioned above (idiotic consumerism, new shiny, etc.), I am grateful to Japan for showing me a side of myself I was conveniently overlooking, and to teach us a tiny lesson about patience.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-09-20-sony-explains-why-ps4-will-launch-in-japan-after-the-west

Explaining the decision, senior Sony executives told Eurogamer at the Tokyo Game Show that February was chosen because that's when Sony expects more games to be ready for its home market.

"Sony just wants to make sure that when PlayStation 4 launches in Japan there is a good line-up of titles for Japan," the console's lead architect and Knack creative director Mark Cerny said.

[Jeff Kelly]

I'm going to sound like a PS fanboy and also like a nationalist but bear with me.

The Xbox 360 might be the sales and mindshare leader of the current gen in the US or North America. On a global scale however the US and the UK are the ONLY markets the 360 has a lead over the PS3 even though it launched a whole year earlier.

Yet the big assumption by most US or UK based media coverage seems to be that the 360 was always the 'dominant' console and the platform leader and that it was so on a global scale. If you want to understand why the PR and product startegy of Microsoft failed as disastrously as it did please keep in mind that this viewpoint is myopic and that you are professionally blinkered if you think that the US/NA situation is or was any indication of how things are in other markets. The PS3 managed to match the sales figures of the 360 even though it launched a year after the 360. It did because it managed to outsell the 360 in most major markets except US and UK.

I mention this because the Xbox 1 focuses even harder on the supposed needs of the customers, developers and advertisers in its two core and leading markets to the detriment of potential buyers in oversees markets. This is bad news especially in light of the recent PS4 successes in North America. If Sony manages to sell a record number of consoles in the US/NA market where its competitor has the biggest advantage imagine what this might lead to once the PS4 launches in markets Sony traditionally is stronger than MS.

The XB 1's media integration features are essentially custom tailored to the needs of North American consumers and the US media landscape. Most of the features will not work anywhere else at launch, some features will not be needed anywhere else at launch (HDMI passthrough and TV overlay for example) and if the 360 is any indication most of those features will not work anywhere else in the world ever. European and Asian Xbox live buyers still get a lot less features yet still pay more for the service 8 years after the 360 launched for example. In fact many features of the 360 were too focused on the US market as well, with the most famous blunder being that the original Kinect camera didn't work in many EU or Asian homes due to being developed for the average US living room layout. Yet MS is doubling down on the features that US buyers or US media companies might like yet probably won't translate well to other markets. For a globally invested company MS has always managed to be just too US focused, pathologically so, a trait it shares with rival Apple.

Sony despite its many failings this generation has always been a much more globally oriented company and the effects are already noticeable this time around. Sony even manages to build a global developer and designer mindshare while MS at least seems to be only focused on the NA developer base. COD is by no means that much of a cultural phenomenon globally as it is in the US yet MS gave the stage exclusively to Infinity Ward and Activision to present it at its launch event. The message was clear: If you like Call of Duty, American Football and media integration entirely focused on US TV then this is your thing. Somehow this didn't even convince many of the potential buyers in THE core market the message and product was entirely tailored to and because of that MS is in trouble.

Yet most of the US based gaming press doesn't seem to get why the PS4 is so popular right now and this bothers me to no end because for me it signals that not only are the people responsible for building the new Xbox out of touch with their global customer base, the gaming media is as well. So the US market is too much of an echo chamber so much so that the people involved failed to even realisticly assess the needs of their own domestic customer base.

Things like performance or price aside it's the fact that Sony's PR campaign strategy was focused and tailored to most if not all potential global markets. They work with, promote and listen to the needs of developers worldwide (something of a turnaround for Sony), are present at trade shows and industry events in all major markets and didn't design their product around a feature set that is and probably always will be only useful to customers in ONE core market, while sacrificing features that would be useful for all markets. MS on the other hand coudn't even tell potential buyers at this years GamesCom in Cologne which of the XBox One's features will ever be usable or useful for potential buyers in the EU or other oversees markets. They couldn't even present a time frame of when certain features will be available if ever.

Every time an industry expert says something to the effect of 'the Kinect was a success' or the '360 is the globally dominant console' I flinch a little because the latter is only arguably true and the former objectively isn't, at least if you don't hear the 'in North America' that should be added. For potential buyers in the EU the value proposition the PS4 offers makes buying one even more of a foregone conclusion. $100 less gives me a piece of hardware that is significantly more powerful, a platform that has a much more globally oriented developer mindshare and I won't have to purchase a lot of features I probably won't be able to use ever on a console that has gutted an aspect of its feature set that would be useful to me (performance for example) in favour of a design approach that is probably only useful for a certain subset of people in one core market.

MS's product strategy failed in large parts because the people involved managed and implemented it very incompetently, but MS's product strategy was doomed to fail regardless. The success of the 360 this gen had as much to do with Sony's failures as it had with Microsoft's efforts. If Sony had been that strong and that focused at launch of the PS3 as it is today then MS probably would have been trounced last gen especially at a time when 1/3rd of all 360 consoles failed with a RROD. That nobody at MS seems to have gotten this baflles me, that nobody in the mainstream gaming press has gotten this baffles me even more. A product that needs global sales and a huge global installed base to be even marginally profitable cannot afford to be focused too much on a single market - even if sales in that market are undeniably strong.

If the rumors are true and MS is still losing billions on the Media and Entertainment division and its core product the Xbox then this spells trouble and it should be picked up on by the press and the publishers

[Jeff Kelly]

Falconneers post adds into the point I'm making in that we are too much focused on a single market and mindset and that anecdote might as well be further evidence that Sony is actually thinking about each market indicidually this time around.

This brings me to the biggest elephant in the room - the Wii.

Nobody even mentions that both the Nintendo Wii and the DS/3DS individually managed to outsell both the PS3 and the 360. Nintendo sold in excess of 120 million Wii and even more DS/3DS. In any other business, except gaming, companies would get serious flack from investors and the press if they completely ignored an installed base and potential customer base of that magnitude. Yet big companies that are listed on the stock market can publicly state that they simply won't offer products or target a potential audience of > 100 million and nobody bats an eye.

EA and the other big publishers seem to be of the opinion that if AAA titles like Battlefield aren't easily portable and aren't getting bought on that console then they won't do anything for it and this sentiment seems to be largely OK with the press and investment circles. Hell even the PS3 got flack because it wasn't 'easy to develop for' and made PC ports harder and more expensive.

An Ars editor recently called the Wii the 'Nintendo Dust Collector 1000' and while it is true today that the Wii has somewhat failed despite being a sales hit but this has probably more to do with the lack of industry support the Wii got by the big three publishers than with Nintendo itself troubling relationship with Nntendo and its third party developers or not.

Imagine the CEO of any other Fortune 500 company going on record with the statement that they simply won't bother to go after a 120 million plus segment of consumers despite being a significant market compared to your traditional segment (Wii's approx. 120 million vs. 90 million 360 and 90 million PS3). He would get fired and laughed out of town. Now imagine that CEO's of the major game publishing houses not only said exactly that but that the press and pretty much most of the investors are pretty much OK with that.

I don't know what my opinion is of a business that has a habit of ignoring huge potential markets because 'it's too hard' or 'we don't want to' and has such control over the conversation and 'story' in that sector that those topics completely fall out of the public's perception even.

Wii trounced the current gen on sales and Nintendo completely failed to translate that into any kind of mindshare or exploit it in any sort of way that would lead to a strong position let alone 'market dominance'. As much as that is Nintendo's owm failure it got compounded by an industry that is nesting so comfortably inside its bubble that it couldn't predict let alone capitalize on the Wii's success and found it easier to just pretend it didn't exist. The fact that there seems to be a huge untapped potential of customers THAT THEY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW OF probably was too much for the collective psyche. The Wii's initial success seems to be such an aberration and such an explicable event that the existence of the Wii and even the DS/3DS seem to have been completely blocked out by most industry insiders. It's as if the whole system never existed or is part of an Alien incomprehensible world where the mythical 'casual gamer' roams freely amongst Women,  Big Foot and the Loch Ness monster.

It somehow seems fitting that professional product managers and marketing people actually deluded themselves into thinkling that everybody liked Football, Call of Duty and US broadcast and cable TV and are probably really confounded as to why that isn't the case

[Yegolev]

Great Caesar's Ghost

[Jeff Kelly]

As a postscript to my - somewhat psychotic - ramblings.

The game industry is also the only industry I know of where people can publicly claim that their customers are wrong and that their opinions are wrong and don't matter. Look at most of the PR after MS tanked its presentation and at most of the articles defending Microsofts strategy afterwards for an example ofbwhat I mean.

A lot of industry professionals came out and flatly told people that their opinion about the Xbox 1 and its always on DRM were from or ill-informed and who were outright dismissive of the opinion of their customers. How often have I seen the written sentiment that people who bought a Wii are not 'real gamers' are not indicative or any trend or are simply 'stupid sheep', how often have I read somebody in a professional capacity being apologetic about gender issues, sexism and misogyny etc.

[Merusk]

The games industry can do that because its consumers are of a few categories:  1) Morons  2) Fanbois who will slaver up anything 3) AdultChildren who can't get their fix anywhere else.

You see Software companies doing the same thing as they solidify their shares and competitors are bought-out or go out of business for being too small to have a chance.  Or was the market REALLY clamoring for The Ribbon in Office (and all the apps that followed-along)

[Hawkbit]

I'm going to need this in APA format.

[Miasma]

You know that console that wants to be about more than games, that wants to be the centre of your entertainment universe, that wants you to do all you social network crap on it, that wants to be a hub?  It can't even get twitch streaming to work.

"One"

[Yegolev]

Thanks to that link, I know AOL still exists.

[HaemishM]

Yet MS is doubling down on the features that US buyers or US media companies might like yet probably won't translate well to other markets.

Here's all you need to know about why the Bone is a failure. It wasn't designed for CONSUMERS. Every feature, everything they highlighted as a positive for the box from the beginning has been about features media companies want, not consumers. The design document might as well have been a bullet point list of "things no consumer has ever asked for but every media company who will pay us a dollar wants us to implement so they get paid for every micro-viewing of their product."

[Yegolev]

Yeah, I think you nailed it.

[Paelos]

Yep, and that's why I will never own one.

[Velorath]

How often have I seen the written sentiment that people who bought a Wii are not 'real gamers' are not indicative or any trend or are simply 'stupid sheep'

All the stuff you say about the Wii (particularly in your previous rant) is batshit insane. A lot of people bought that thing as a Wii sports machine, and a lot of other people bought it for Nintendo games. 3rd party ports were obviously going to sell like shit because most people interested in any of those games already had a 360 or PS3 where they could play them in HD. That meant that publishers had to make exclusive games that were still aimed toward the hardcore gamers or try to compete with Nintendo doing their kind of games. The former category gave us stuff like MadWorld, No More Heroes, and Sin and Punishment: Star Successor which reviewed ok and sold abysmally. The later category gave us Zack & Wiki and Boomblox which also reviewed well and sold abysmally. Ubisoft had a good-sized hit with the Just Dance games, but EA's only breakthrough was EA Sports Active which sold 1.8 million copies (which then had a huge drop-off for the sequel). Epic Mickey received somewhat less favorable reviews, but even there you could see that at least a lot of effort had been put into making a Wii specific title (lot of publicity, Warren Spector heading development, one of the best known characters of all time) and was still met with failure.

The idea that the Wii was some untapped mother lode of sales if only developers had just tried is ridiculous.

[Jeff Kelly]

Why exactly? For me it sounds entirely like a self-fulfilling prophecy. '3rd party ports were obviously going to sell like shit because most people interested in any of those games already had a 360 or PS3 where they could play them in HD' seems to make this a foregone conclusion.

Studios were caught completely flat-footed by Nintendo's success with the Wii.  It was completely sold out through most of its first year run. 'A lot of people bought that thing as a Wii sports machine', come on, really? Might that have anything to do with the fact that for the first six months of the Wii's run this was practically the only game you could get with a 15 title launch lineup that wasn't exactly great?

Look Nintendo pretty much killed any sort of momentum it had by sticking with cartridges at a time when the industry had already begun to embrace the CD-ROM and by how they treated their third party developers, I don't deny that. The game cube had non-standard discs with lower capacity and by the time the Wii came around Nintendo was already seen as an 'also-ran' where only first party titles sell and that has a 'kiddie-console' image. The gamecube had a pretty decent games lineup, decent third party support and featured a lot of 'grown-up' games yet the 'kiddie' label stuck while 'grown-ups' bought a PS2. By and large Nintendo was seen - even in 2006 - as a company that had its audience and that sold consoles and was profitable but whose customers bought it to give it to their kids or to play the newest Zelda and Mario games. The Wii was also completely orthogonal to most companies' strategies at the time, significantly less power and a different control scheme meant that they couldn't do straightforward ports of 360 or PS3 titles.

Then the Wii sold 600.000 consoles in the first week - more than the PS2 did in its first week - and pretty much the whole industry did a double-take. According to their market research this shouldn't or couldn't have happened. It was seen as a novelty Nintendo fans would probably buy. According to them the platform could safely be ignored and most of the customers - many of which didn't even own a game console or had owned one before - shouldn't even exists. A lot of articles were written at that time trying to make sense of a situation NOBODY saw coming not even Nintendo. A lot of it was simply rationalization hence the 'casual gamer' myth, a person that doesn't really play much and that largely bought the Wii for the hype and Wii sports.

At this moment the Wii features 1220 games yet it still has the image of a console that had none. If you look at release dates most of those games came out from 2008 onwards, two or even three years after release. By that time any sort of interest the general public had about the Wii was gone. I had already sold mine by that time and I know a lot of people who patiently waited more than a year for SW that didn't come and moved on. I mean the two biggest titles of the first year were Twilight Princess and Rayman fucking Rabbids because even Super Mario Galaxy came out a year after launch.

I don't blame the publishers exclusively because Nintendo botched it as well and worse they don't even seem to get that they've botched it. I also get it. Nobody expected the Wii to be the success it was and so it took them years to finally release games that were not rush jobs and were actually made for the console. By the time the games rolled in most of the people who had any interest in the Wii or gaming had already stopped caring.

The image of the Wii as a platform that has no games, that's a Wii Sports device, where nobody sold anything on is entirely shaped by the first two years of its run when publishers either scrambled to put anything out for a console that wasn't really on their radar or simply had nothing and by the time some titles did roll around people had already sold their Wii on ebay or simply moved on. Also iPhone which came out in 2007.

Epic Mickey came out in 2010
Sin & Punishment was 2009
Boomblox was 2008

Only No more Heroes and Zack & Wiki even came out in 2007.

The Wii's 'out of left field' success is also pretty much what they've now have to deal with with the Wii U. Still significantly less powerful than the Xbox One and PS4, still a somewhat different control scheme albeit less of a problem. But now it has the addditional problem of having to work against the Wii's image as the most successful failure in console history. Pretty much the everybody claims that the Wii U will probably end up like the Wii as an interesting console that collects dust and that doesn't have any games except Nintendo First Party titles.

[Merusk]

There's no market for more casual games with actual gameplay instead of half baked features and more cutscenes on a lower res device!  None.  Because muppets.

[Quinton]

I'm loving Resogun on PS4.  Otherwise waiting for more compelling titles, but tempted to try AC4 since I've never played an AC game and people seem to be loving this one, especially all the sandboxy pirate ship stuff.

[Velorath]

Jesus, don't make me SirBruce this thing.

Yes, it was a foregone conclusion that 3rd party ports weren't going to sell well on the Wii. Due to the hardware, they were always going to be the inferior versions. I'm fairly certain sales numbers will back this up in the instance of almost every single game that got ported to the Wii (Guitar Hero 3 being the only exception I know of). Almost every original game made for the Wii outside of games made by Nintendo also sold poorly. Now your argument is that the games didn't come out early enough in the consoles life cycle? Elebits, Wii exclusive came out in 2006 to decent reviews. Failed. SSX Blur, Wii exclusive came out in 2007 to decent reviews. Failed. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07, mutlipatform but noted for good use of the Wii controls. Failed. Carnival Games, Wii/DS shovelware that got horrendous reviews, released in 2007 and somehow managed to sell over 1.5 million copies probably because it looked enough like a Wii Sports/Wii Play experience to people who were looking for more of that. By all means though go through the first couple years of PS3 releases and mention all the awesome 3rd party games that were coming out that didn't make it to the Wii which clearly is what caused the two to go down such different paths.

[Miasma]

They released a patch yesterday to up the resolution on AC4 to 1080p and add in more powerful anti aliasing so now it clearly does look better than the PS3 version.  Earlier side by side comparisons showed almost no difference.  People really do seem to love that game, I'll get it once I get a PS4.  Also Need for Speed is getting unexpected praise.

I guess Killzone looks nice but the single player campaign is kinda shitty and annoying, multiplayer is good though.

A lot of people are also talking about this Flower psn game that I hadn't heard about, looks interesting.  If you have a PS3 version you get a free PS4 version apparently.