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

[HaemishM]

The Steam Machine is basically Valve's way to try and save the PC as a viable platform once Microsoft completely abandons gaming on the PC as part of their strategy or is becoming so marginalized because of tablet and phones that nobody would care for it as a gaming platform anyway.

This. Microsoft released Windows 8 and basically took one giant shit all over the desktop as an entertainment platform. They don't want you on the PC at home, they want you on a laptop/tablet/phone or the XBone at home and on a cloud-controlled desktop at work. The home PC is an impediment to Microsoft these days. It's a pain in the ass to support and people with PC's tend to want to control what software and media is consumed on it. They've walked that back a bit with the utter disaster Windows 8 has been but even Windows 9 is probably only there to make people forget 8. Valve was smart enough to see this and knew that the Windows platform was getting strangled as a gaming platform. Linux is a viable games platform but it needs hardware that works and it needs software.

Insert SteamOS, which is really Steam-flavored Linux with much of the difficulty of Linux removed. I.e. it's like the Mac OS only not controlled by a bunch of dickless Apple mooks with their walled garden. It's a reason for game devs to add Linux ports/development to their repertoire and hardware to make that more palatable to the non-neckbeard PC audience.

[Quinton]

Valve is also heavily investing in development and profiling tools for Linux.  One nice thing about Linux is that since you have the full OS and kernel source, you can build instrumentation that's all but impossible for anyone but the OS vendor to do on closed platforms.

http://richg42.blogspot.de/2014/01/vogl-opengl-tracerdebugger-bonus-content.html

[Kageru]

The gaming that happens on mobiles / tablets has very little cross-over with console / PC gaming. I agree that idiots with ipads are a huge and growing market (as where wii-sports and pop-cap games) but they're largely irrelevant to people wanting an immersive and deep gaming experience.

"'Classical' PC boxed games or downloads had only 9% of the revenue share"

Valve reports their sales data?

[Jeff Kelly]

No, the businesses selling their stuff on platforms such as Steam do.

[jakonovski]

A lot of Titanfall footage has leaked. It's pretty much a reskin of CoD with mechs. I was struck by the bad textures and small maps. Mech battles in a phone booth!


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19x61p_tf_videogames

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19yzeh_tf2_videogames

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19x14l_titanfall-alpha-gameplay_videogames

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19yv4f_titanfall-closed-alpha-gameplay-directfeed_videogames

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19z0fe

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19v9ni_titanfall-closed-alpha-offscreen_videogames

[luckton]

I heard Dead Rising 3 got a 13GB patch today.  That's...really big?  I mean, I know we're in the age of broadband and all, but really, 13 gigs?  There was that much fail in trying to rush the game out the door?

[Merusk]

A lot of Titanfall footage has leaked. It's pretty much a reskin of CoD with mechs. I was struck by the bad textures and small maps. Mech battles in a phone booth!

I just wish it would release so I could stop hearing a few folks at work tell me how it was going to revolutionize/ reinvent FPS gaming on consoles.  I don't even care if it does, I just want to stop hearing about it.

[Fabricated]

Microsoft is apparently paying Machinima members for mentioning the XBone.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/stealth-marketing-microsoft-paying-youtubers-for-xbox-one-mentions/

edit: also the way they did it might be against FTC rules.

http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2013/03/ftc-staff-revises-online-advertising-disclosure-guidelines

[Nonentity]

A lot of Titanfall footage has leaked. It's pretty much a reskin of CoD with mechs. I was struck by the bad textures and small maps. Mech battles in a phone booth!

It still blows my mind that people see that and think it's a CoD reskin. That just seems like an incredibly close-minded viewpoint, I saw all that footage and got super excited for an arcade shooter with an emphasis on mobility and robots.

Y'all are even cynical when it comes to shooters.

EDIT:

[Lakov_Sanite]

Not gonna lie, that gif is kind of awesome.

[eldaec]

Valve are not stupid enough to think VR is the core future game mechanic, or to think processing power will kill consoles.

What might hurt consoles current model is the death of physical media and rise of low rent microtransaction gaming that isn't really compatible with an onerous certification process. Nobody expects the Xbox or PS to go away, but valve aren't beyond the pail in thinking the disruption means a new entrant with something to offer can grab a slice.

Valve's model of working with indies is very well aligned with the android / ios model, as well as appealing to old non-dudebro gamers.

[jakonovski]

A lot of Titanfall footage has leaked. It's pretty much a reskin of CoD with mechs. I was struck by the bad textures and small maps. Mech battles in a phone booth!

It still blows my mind that people see that and think it's a CoD reskin. That just seems like an incredibly close-minded viewpoint, I saw all that footage and got super excited for an arcade shooter with an emphasis on mobility and robots.

Y'all are even cynical when it comes to shooters.

EDIT:

I'm a Battlefield 4 survivor and I even played Brink. MP shooters always disappoint in one way or another.

[Riggswolfe]

So, the PS4 has this generation's red ring of death bad press:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/01/21/ps4-error-corrupting-save-files

Thankfully for them this will be fixable with a firmware patch and I wouldn't be surprised if it only takes days to do but it's still not something they want especially in the early going. My guess is it will be fixed before the Japanese roll-out at the latest.

[HaemishM]

The Titanfall gameplay footage was very meh. Giant robots shoehorned into phone booth of death level design. There were some cool graphical things going on there, but I'd much rather have Battlefield 2142 Part Deux than 6v6 arena fighting with mechs.

[Nonentity]

A lot of Titanfall footage has leaked. It's pretty much a reskin of CoD with mechs. I was struck by the bad textures and small maps. Mech battles in a phone booth!

It still blows my mind that people see that and think it's a CoD reskin. That just seems like an incredibly close-minded viewpoint, I saw all that footage and got super excited for an arcade shooter with an emphasis on mobility and robots.

Y'all are even cynical when it comes to shooters.

EDIT:

I'm a Battlefield 4 survivor and I even played Brink. MP shooters always disappoint in one way or another.

I'd agree with you if the studio didn't have the pedigree it does. Love it or hate it, that team knows how to make the style of game they want to make. I'm pretty sure they're going to do some sort of an open beta of the game before release, though, so people can go in and hate it on its own merits.

[Jeff Kelly]

MS PR apparently hasn't learned anything from its recent blunders and is currently putting its foot back in its mouth with regards to Tomb Raider Definitive Edition for PS 4 and Xbox One.

For those who haven't heard, Tomb Raider will run at 1080p/60 on PS 4 but only at 1080p/30 on Xbone (confirmed by Crystal Dynamics). This obviously didn't go over well with Xbone owners, has lead to all kinds of hilarity and stupidity - including an epic 70 pages Neogaf thread and hyped up fanboys in all 7 stages of grief - and has MS PR at their inept best trying to contain the situation.

It started with Square Enix issuing a statement that sounds as if a MS rep made them read a written statement while he was standing right behind them : "Both platforms offer the same outstanding Tomb Raider experience. Delivering the core Tomb Raider gameplay at native 1080p and running at 30fps was always our primary goal given the type of experience Tomb Raider is and the exploration we want players to do. Anything beyond 30fps for this version is gravy."

Today Albert Penello 'lead planner' for the Xbox division and PR mouthpiece par excellence (citation needed) chipped in with an interview he gave to the podcast GamerTagRadio.

“Look, I had a lot of time to think about this and I believe in what I said. I believe that the differences between the boxes [PS4 and Xbox One] is not all that great and I know what is going behind the scenes and I have access to more information about some of this thing than a lot of people. Sometimes people tend to neglect the points that are in my favor and they like to highlight the points that tell me I am wrong. I still think Ryse is still the best looking game on any platform. Period. End of story.”

“I think if you look at the title which we launch, which were multiplatform titles, The bulk of them were the same. I think there were 12 titles released on both platforms [PS4 and Xbox One], leaving three all of them had the same performance on both boxes. Everybody wants to focus on frame rate, there is the Tomb Raider, there is a resolution thing going on and OK, there could be a lot of reasons why that could be true but we are just a [few] weeks in, we just shipped, it’s a long generation. People who bought an Xbox One are going to be in for an awesome generation of games that are only going to get better. I think these little things get way overblown versus like the quality of the games and the real differences in experiences which are pretty minor.”

As you can imagine these statements did nothing except put even more fuel to the already red hot fire of internet rage. Meanwhile the die hards are looking for any reason they can find that might explain the disparity between versions. Starting with the fact that the PS 4 and Xbone versions were developed by different devs, so obviously the dev responsible for the Xbone version fucked up, citing ominous 'driver problems' for the Xbone's problems or going as far as to accuse SE of purposefully gimping the Xbone version on the behest of Sony.

This is really going to be a long generation if any new release provokes such an intense reaction. The power disparity between both systems won't magically disappear after all.

[Yegolev]

PS4 - GRAVY EDITION

STERIODS

[Fabricated]

Microsoft: Uhhhh, well if you trade in your PS3 we'll give you $100 towards and xbone!

[Sir T]

This isn't really that serious, just amusing
MS Xbox team caught tweeting from an Android device!

[apocrypha]

PS3 better media played than both PS4 & XBone.

Very disappointing how bad both new consoles are at media playback, if that article is accurate (and I have no reason to doubt it) given how much marketing emphasis was put on their multimedia capabilities. Definitely just staying with my PS3 for now.

[schild]

This is not shocking. Outside of not playing a couple super common formats, the PS3 is a superb home media device.

[Rasix]

PS3 media server is outstanding.  This is why it's still being held hostage by my wife.   

[apocrypha]

No, not shocking, I agree. Just a bit sad to see them going backwards.

[Velorath]

I don't think Sony or MS consider it going backwards. They want us to get content from sources they can make money from. If people download media onto their PC either legitimately or not and then stream it to their TV through a console, MS and Sony don't get anything out of it. Some family members actually got me a PS4 for Christmas, but my PS3 is going to remain hooked up for a long time to come.

[sickrubik]

I'm also not really sure if we are going backwards. We're still quite young in this cycle and as I recall the PS3 didn't launch with all those nice touches.

That being said, the PS3 will probably move to the bedroom soon as the bedroom Blu-Ray/streaming device.

[Jeff Kelly]

There needn't be a conspiracy behind it. Unless they keep features like they are for the foreseeable future it's just prioritizing development resources. Sony switched from PPC + Cell to X86 and Microsoft from PPC to X86 also so both had to redo their whole development ecosystem. Tool Chain, including compiler, linker, libraries, frameworks etc. The whole OS needed to be ported or implemented.

I'd prioritize getting the basics ready + stability over supplementary features like BluRay playback every time. Shit had to get out of the door and most of the missing features can be delivered via OS updates in the future.

That both consoles have a decent feature baseline and are pretty stable apart froma few minor glitches is half a miracle in the first place.

[Severian]

Y'know, time was, people had a hankerin' for consoles over them finicky peecees 'cuz they "just worked"   

[Jeff Kelly]

From the 'what the hell have those guys been smoking?' Department: Activision CEO Bobby Kotick told investors during today's earnings call that the publisher expects "Destiny will be the best-selling video game in history".

This will totally not come back and bite him in the ass.

[schild]

Can a CEO get dumped for being a straight up liar to investors? Because that's the kind of shit that deserves an immediate vote.

[Father mike]

Just for the record, what is the best selling game of all time?  I'm sure the snarky answer is 'Solitaire', but I'd like some frame of reference for what he's dreaming about.

[Cyrrex]

I don't know the answer, but it probably matters if you mean dollars earned or units sold.

[MisterNoisy]

Just for the record, what is the best selling game of all time?  I'm sure the snarky answer is 'Solitaire', but I'd like some frame of reference for what he's dreaming about.

Wiki says it's Wii Sports at ~82M units (which would admittedly include the pack in copy almost everyone that bought a Wii got).

[Rendakor]

Super Mario takes #2 for the same reason, which to me says the true winner is #3: Minecraft.

[Bunk]

Yea, that kind of rigs the contest. The rest of the top ones were interesting though: three Marios, Minecraft, Tetris. Three GTAs in the top 12.

Top PC game on their list that I actually bought as a PC game (GTA is a console game to me): Skyrim at 20 million units.

[Nija]

Tetris was bundled with the Gameboy.