I don’t have anything to add except that I’ve enjoyed your posts, Gozu. Thanks.
As I have enjoyed yours and their enlightening stats.
The FOV wasn’t a problem. I definitely felt immersed. Unfortunately, that seemed to make the motion sickness worse, not better.
Lower latency would certainly help. Unfortunately, there’s nothing that can be done to address the problem of mixed cues. Your eyes tell you you’re moving while your inner ear tells you you’re standing still. The better the hardware gets at producing the illusion of virtual presence, the worse the problem of mixed cues becomes.
The real problem with Kinect is lack of haptic feedback. When I press a button on a physical controller I get instant feedback that I’ve done something. I can feel the springiness and click of the button. With a gesture-based system like Kinect, that feedback has to be routed through my visual system. The screen has to show me that my gesture was successful, and my mind has to translate the abstract imagery into conscious knowledge. What this means is that the Kinect could have zero hardware latency and it would still feel mushy and imprecise compared to a keyboard or a normal controller. It’s a fundamental flaw in gesture-based input systems that can’t be engineered away.
I have no idea what you’re on about. I was explicitly discussing the consumer PC market for game players. As a consumer I have little reason to chase the latest and greatest PC hardware because the system I already own is more than sufficient and will likely remain sufficient for the next year or two if not longer.
Last night I built a system out of old parts from c. 2009: i3-530 processor, socket 1156 board, GTX 550 Ti card, etc. It can still play any game in my catalog. I played Skyrim on High settings on that processor and a 9800 GTX+ card and it looked better than my son’s PS3 version. I played Metro 2033 at default settings on it without a hitch. There was no need from a game playing perspective for me to upgrade between 2009 and 2013 and there probably won’t be a real reason for the next year or so. I only upgraded my “gaming” PC for vanity and hobby reasons, not out of any necessity. While my i7 system with the 7950 card plays better, my old system is still completely capable of playing damn near anything off the shelf at acceptable levels.
That’s what I was referring to when saying you couldn’t really base the growing or waning popularity of PC gaming based on year over year hardware sales. There was a time when stuff went “obsolete” in the span of months. The last five years or so, new stuff has gotten better but the old stuff hasn’t actually become worse as a result.
What is it with people doing this all over the board lately? This isn’t how it works. You brought it up. You are the one proposing that PCs are dying. You have to provide information proving such, or capitulate that you have no information about the subject, and thus withdraw your claim. You don’t get to be lazy and have other people Google your data for you.
And it’s not a GD thing. It’s a “support your arguments” thing, as an attempt to convince of what you say. It’s a basic way rational people behave. If you want us to believe something, give us evidence. Or shut up.
Oh, and the last data I got were developers saying the WiiU can’t handle things that the Xbox 360 can. And since they are the same architecture, that’s pretty much saying the WiiU is worse. And if it’s worse, how can it support a higher resolution?
I know for sure that Epic Mickey 2, which is a game that even ran on the Wii, runs at 720p on the WiiU and lags like crazy. And it’s not a porting problem, as the 720p ports to current consoles don’t have this problem.
This seems to be incredibly stupid to me. It would make more sense to develop on the lower quality platform (within reason) and then make a few tweaks to the higher quality one. Developing for Cell and then crippling your game for PowerPC would by your logic be the better option.
Granted, the fact that they are using the same architecture does change the dynamic, but I don’t think it will change it as much as you think. It’s what they did on console vs. PCs, for sure–games were developed for console first even though PCs could do more. On board Intel GPUs of the current generation can actually play most PC titles as well as their console counterparts.
And, yes, the move to x86 (or is it x64) means that it will be easier than ever to make a PC version of every game. Nintendo’s lack of said move shows that their back catalog is much more important to them than easy portability.
Speaking of Nintendo, the reason people worry about them is the success of the Wii, which was held up not by first party titles but by the casual game market, a market that the WiiU is not capturing. It remains to be seen if the WiiU can pull of the GameCube’s level of success or if things have changed since then. Do people want a console just for a handful of games?
Do you think an Omnidirectional treadmill and eventual sixaxis motion detection (a la VRcade or Valve’s turbocharged OR) will take care of the inner ear problem?
Very good point. Technically, you (can) get feedback to both visual or/and hearing systems which is better than visuals alone. Yes, I fully agree that haptic feedback is extremely important but couldn’t it be solved with gloves with vibration and/or actuators or some other mechanism to fool the nervous system?
The cost, flexibility (or lack thereof) and weight of the glove are valid concerns, as is the hassle of putting gloves to play. Furthermore the first gloves will likely require a cable to connect to the headset to reduce latency and remove the need for in-glove batteries.
With all that said, crude, expensive prototypes already exist and I have no reason to believe it’s impossible, given the right economic incentives, to make one. The question is: how long it will take?
Apologies. I misunderstood what you said. Please disregard my comment.
The typical programmer will do it the easy, less bug-prone way first. Then modify the finished code to run on the second console, then optimize it for its quirks. The xbone is the quirkier one this time. Of course, not all studios will do the same, I’m just betting the PS4 becomes the primary.
Other developers (even non-Nintendo ones) have said the opposite. So you just have to decide who to believe. The games will surely speak for themselves eventually though.
Yeah… no.
The Wii was driven almost completely by Nintendo software. The sales numbers I posted above prove that. If you’ve got different numbers, as you said, you’re the one who brought it up, prove it.
What an odd thing to say, given the circumstances, and the rest of your post seems to be talking to somebody else completely. Anyway, I provided cites on what may be the beginning of the decline of the desktop. I can do it again if you want. If you look real close, maybe you’ll see that it was SenorBeef who asked questions as if he wished somebody to find his answers, but I’m not betting on it.
Would be funnier if the PS2 had actually had a meaningful technological advantage over the Dreamcast.
Funny comic, but Nintendo is in a much better financial shape than Sega was. They are sitting on 4-5 Billion dollars in cash reserves right now, I’m told Sega was practically broke when they launched the dreamcast.
Nintendo remains a wildcard. If they produce some amazing first party games that make a fantastic use of the touchscreen, all bets are off.
If they don’t, they’ll become the new gamecube, except worse because the gamecube didn’t have to compete with 2013’s xbox live! and PSN. The gamecube rivaled the Xbox/PS2 in power. The Wii had an interface that was actually fast, as opposed to the dismal one on WiiU (and DS).
It also doesn’t help Nintendo that the PS4 and Xbone have the closest architectures between two consoles ever (with apologies to the 3DO)
Maybe. But once you start talking about hardware like that (or haptic feedback gloves) you’re getting farther and farther from a living room experience.
Barring a big leap forward like a direct computer-to-brain interface, my guess is that mainstream consumer VR will *never *happen. The problem is that as it stands right now VR is a huge kludge. It’s a bunch of ad-hoc solutions all munged together. Yeah, we can put someone in a headmount and they can look around at things, but once you try to turn that into an experience that’s fun to play, the cracks immediately start showing. Our moment-to-moment sensory experience is far more integrated than most people realize, and it’s really hard to fake all the different channels of sensory input we receive. You have to start proposing very complicated rigs that are so physically intrusive that they actually work against immersion.
It even looks like the PC will be THE main target platform for many multi-plat games, with the consoles being optimized ports of the main Pc version. Something that hasn’t happenned for most multi-plats ina very long time.
Ubisoft, for example has said that the main platform for their upcoming open world game, Watch Dogs, is the PC. I believe EA has said the same about at least one of their titles.
Given the similarities in the architecture it seems plausible that you’ll be seeing a lot of games being made for PC, and ported to consoles, rather than the other way around.
Which reminds me of a issue I haven’t heard anyone comment on with the Oculus.
What about input awareness? If I can’t see the keyboard and my mouse won’t that be problematic? My hand slips and now I have no idea if I’m pressing x or v, or I might be scrolling outside of my mouse mat.
Hmmmm, latest rumors say Xbone is having heat issues, will be downclocking it’s ESRAM and/or GPU to meet yield demands.
If true, this could mean a sizable gap between the two consoles in terms of tech capability. I know average Joe gamer don’t necessarily care, but if Sony starts putting ads during football half times saying: “PS4 twice as powerful as the Xbone”, they might start to care.
Someone did not do the research.
There is going to be an original Mario game this year, and Nintendo’s going to talk about the new Zelda.
Only 3 days left and we’ll see what trickery Mario comes up with to save the WiiU. Zelda just needs to exist and be rendered in HD and it’ll sell, even if it requires a SNES controller.
…here is Yahtzee’s take on the next generation of consoles: from what I’ve read in this thread not entirely accurate on a couple of points, but uniformly hilarious as per normal. Warning, bad language and NSFW.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/7417-Next-Gen-Buyers-Guide
Forbes thinks Microsoft f**ked up with its draconian, controlling DRM measures.
While reading this post, keep in mind I’m definitely biased, as I am vehemently against any gratuitous crippling of the products I’ve loved and bought for so long.
In general, any actions taken by a company because of mistrust towards its consumers is a toxic behavior that is absolutely counter-productive in the long term and must be severely (economically) punished until the incentive to behave that way is removed.
Will people see it my way? I thought Steam Beta was amazing when it was free and buggy, when Beta ended and prices were announced, they were identical to retail, while sneakily removing right of second sale and using the (then) hated Online DRM. I stopped using Steam but it was a smashing success nonetheless, and later started lowering their prices until Valve’s popularity soared and I started coming around.
Yet, I still don’t buy on Steam. I believe deeply in the second hand market. I want to be able to do the same things with my videogames that I can with a painting or a sculpture, as they are all pieces of art. I want to be able to lend them, buy them or resell them without asking for permission. I want my videogames to be an investment that holds value, not some valueless license that can be revoked or require authentication and verification.
Unless Microsoft backs down due to huge consumer backlash, or Sony decides to follow suit instead of positioning themselves as the good guys, I see the xbone as being profitable, but losing dominance and (temporarily) tarnishing the xbox brand.
the regular console DRM was meant to combat piracy, while this new DRM is meant to combat second hand sales, which are something popular with everybody.
Eventually, when the internet is as omnipresent as electricity (including electricity from a generator!) and when people don’t know what speed their internet pipes are because they keeps going up like GMAIL disk space, maybe we’ll move to a licensing model, with official internal ebay clones or integration for resale and trade, and overall have 1:1 digital equivalent guaranteeing our rights. The Xbone isn’t it.
The Xbone is the Anti-christ of consoles.