Are you actually suggesting that Microsoft are bastards for not defending Nintendo in the press?
I understand that Microsoft hate is pretty much on auto-pilot at the moment. And Gamer Rage has a way of becoming a self-sustaining beast. But this is the absolute most absurd complaint I have seen.
I mean you no offense personally, but I just don't find any logic in your statement.
my observation is that it's apparently okay for Microsoft to watch developers repeatedly rip on your competitor for not having better hardware to the point where they claim they'll never make any games for it just because of that reason, and stand idly by with nothing to say while quietly supporting that trend, but then when your own ass is on the line, suddenly it's not about the hardware but the experience
they're bastards for trying to use a defense that they don't appear to actually believe in just to defend themselves against the monster they've enabled, and perhaps Microsoft defending Nintendo does sound ridiculous, but so is Microsoft expecting people to accept their claims after previously ignoring situations where that argument would have applied
i know we're supposed to be a "democratic" and "consumerist" society where you pick a team and then rally against the opponent blindly, but i think sometimes that life doesn't work that way
Are you actually suggesting that Microsoft are bastards for not defending Nintendo in the press?
I understand that Microsoft hate is pretty much on auto-pilot at the moment. And Gamer Rage has a way of becoming a self-sustaining beast. But this is the absolute most absurd complaint I have seen.
I mean you no offense personally, but I just don't find any logic in your statement.
my observation is that it's apparently okay for Microsoft to watch developers repeatedly rip on your competitor for not having better hardware to the point where they claim they'll never make any games for it just because of that reason, and stand idly by with nothing to say while quietly supporting that trend, but then when your own ass is on the line, suddenly it's not about the hardware but the experience
they're bastards for trying to use a defense that they don't appear to actually believe in just to defend themselves against the monster they've enabled, and perhaps Microsoft defending Nintendo does sound ridiculous, but so is Microsoft expecting people to accept their claims after previously ignoring situations where that argument would have applied
i know we're supposed to be a "democratic" and "consumerist" society where you pick a team and then rally against the opponent blindly, but i think sometimes that life doesn't work that way
are you saying that i should just accept their new stance on faith with the expectation that if they get their shit back together financially that they won't just go right back to what they were doing before? i am just calling them on their bullshit, and i expect them either to prove their support for this claim by having more games that aren't overly plastered with the mentality that smothering things with "advanced graphics" makes up for other poor design decisions, or to entirely forget this claim they're making, which supports my argument that they're bastards who will say anything in order to keep their company afloat instead of playing a clean game
They may be right for a change. the raw processing power wont matter. just like it didnt matter current gen. Raw power of PS3 is at least 10 times faster than Xbox 360. did we saw games with 10 times the graphics? no. because we got games optimized for the weaker console. the only game i cna think of that pushed this was Uncharted. and that was PS3 exclusive from a company that dedicated its life to working on PS3 exclusives.
So yes, we will see console graphics capped at the level of slower - Xbone - console and we wont notice any reasonable difference for PS4. the thing where we may notice is if somone makes a poor programmed game which gets lag spikes on Xbone, the spikes will be less on PS4 by sole fact of it having more "Extra" power to devote to "Carrying" the programming mistake. it wont be a difference most people will notice though.
This is kind of funny. 1st PlayStation was viewed as more powerful, so Microsoft does a last minute fix upping their power a tad to come out still less powerful than the PlayStation, then comes out and says " Power doesn't matter."
Whoever is in charge of their PR really needs to find work that they are cut out for, because this certainly isn't it.
Now I do have to wonder if their last minute CPU changes are overclocking rather than changing actual hardware, because if they went with overclocking without adding the needed extra cooling they are going to burn it up quickly greatly reducing it's lifespan. Hopefully they didn't go that route and are replacing the actual hardware? If they just overclocked it in that little box don't expect it to last very long if you buy one because it is going to cook.
It's too late to make hardware changes in the launch models, particularly given that virtually the entire system is on one huge chip (wich is no doubt going to be causing a massive failure rate during production.) Unless they want to scrap all the stuff they have already built and release a new hardware spec that would be ready in a few months down the line this has to be overclocking.
And I doubt anybody seriously trusts Microsoft with that.
Also; I would have trimmed down the quote, but I'm on a phone and its a canine of the female perswasion to edit text on it.
So I really have to wonder if they claim power doesn't matter, why the hell did they overclock it, reducing it's lifespan at the last minute without adding extra cooling if " power doesn't matter?" The overclocking really doesn't make sense since they don't seem to think the power difference matters. These people make less and less sense every time they talk. They would have done better releasing the Xbox One without saying a word about it. LOL
This is laughable. They point to current games now when the entire advantage of consoles is the ability to optimise software for even the smaller advantages. By the end of the generation the difference in power should be apparent to at least the developers.
It is my guess that part of Microsoft's strategy is to push cloud computing on developers mid/late-product cycle if not sooner. A weaker console may actually benefit that strategy and begin to push the future of cloud computing that I think Microsoft wants.
Panello started wasting our time the moment they kept talking after the "I'm not dismissing raw performance," bit. The moment Panello admitted that, all other information is unimportant. That is the moment Microsoft admitted that the ps4 is more powerful than the XBO. Saying that there are some unknown things about their architecture is almost meaningless with them both boasting the x86 setup under the hood.
The statement that there are some great looking games on both statements is just silly. There are already great looking games on the 360/ps3 generation of consoles and both of these systems (XBO and PS4) are multiple times more powerful than those. The statement that the XBO is less powerful than the ps4 isn't to say that the XBO sucks or won't play next-gen quality games. Just that the ps4 is clearly more powerful by an amount worth mentioning. Saying it isn't noticeable right now or that both consoles have beautiful games isn't contradicting that statement at all. It's just sidestepping it.
Developers aren't going to produce software that is using up all available resources right out the gate. They've got to learn the ins and outs of every component and that will take a couple years.
As for dismissing this as rhetoric that Sony used last generation. Sony was technically correct last generation but made themselves functionally incorrect. Their console was more powerful but Sony forced developers to utilize the hardware in such a way that that was so difficult that most developers just put games on the 360 and ported over the ps3 rather than starting there. Had Sony not forced splitting up assets into various categories and divided their RAM then their statement would have held up. But this generation is an x86 generation. The hardware isn't proprietary the way it's been in the past. The 30% raw power difference (on the low end of the estimate, FYI, if you're only counting the ) means that there is more power in the box and now that it is x86 the developers should be able to access all of it this time around.
That being said, I doubt that 30% would be that noticeable at the end. With the current gen being so impressive and these machines both being multiple times more powerful we may see a kind of graphical diminishing returns this generation where the hardware can handle more polished graphics but the human eye can't really tell the difference so it doesn't matter. At which point the physics engines would start taking up more resources to make the worlds more realistic and thereby being a better step towards emersion than just surface graphics are. The thing about physics engines though, is that they aren't as easily scaled like graphics are. Computers can show much better graphics on games currently on the consoles but underneath the games are the same. So even is the ps4 ends up being 30% more powerful then we may never quite see that difference if games are still made to function on the XBO which they will be.
So, frankly, I think the specs aren't as important as they once were. Just like there was a day when word processing actually taxed computers but advances in tech made them meaningless, so will there be a day when the resources of machines far outweigh the demands of any game. I don't think this is that generation. But it's beginning to feel close now that we appear to be on the upward slope of the uncanny valley.
The Xbone has 32 MB (yes MB) of ESRAM (102GB/s) and 8GB DDR3 RAM (68GB/s). Developers will have to "manage" pushing and pulling things out of the ESRAM as needed - you obviously aren't going to be able to do bandwidth heavy work from the DDR3 that's for sure.
At the end of the day, all of this boils down to nothing more than fodder for fanboys to justify their loyalty to one system or the other.
For those of us who actually care about GAMES, not the platform (Especially since I'm a grown up and will own BOTH systems during the console cycle at some point, just get one, save money and buy the other a year later or so) these arguments always sound stupid to me.
What I care about is the GAME and how it PLAYS, not what it LOOKS like.
Uncharted were really beautiful games, but as the series went on, they became kind of boring because it was basically a series of linked events and encounters where the player's control was increasingly shrank in order to present story. I'd rather have a game that looked cruddy but played phenomenally than something that blows its load on graphical presentation and has no real solid game experience.
Case in point, MGS4 looked FANTASTIC but compared to other action/stealth games, it was BORING and forgettable.
Conversely, Gears of War always looks fantastic for the world it is set in, but Killzone's gameplay trumps it every time (in my opinion of course).
Final Fantasy is a FANTASTIC visual game. But that's it. VISUAL.
Skyrim doesn't look as beautiful visually, but the content blows anything the FF series has to offer.
At the end of the day, all of this boils down to nothing more than fodder for fanboys to justify their loyalty to one system or the other.
For those of us who actually care about GAMES, not the platform (Especially since I'm a grown up and will own BOTH systems during the console cycle at some point, just get one, save money and buy the other a year later or so) these arguments always sound stupid to me.
What I care about is the GAME and how it PLAYS, not what it LOOKS like.
Uncharted were really beautiful games, but as the series went on, they became kind of boring because it was basically a series of linked events and encounters where the player's control was increasingly shrank in order to present story. I'd rather have a game that looked cruddy but played phenomenally than something that blows its load on graphical presentation and has no real solid game experience.
Case in point, MGS4 looked FANTASTIC but compared to other action/stealth games, it was BORING and forgettable.
Conversely, Gears of War always looks fantastic for the world it is set in, but Killzone's gameplay trumps it every time (in my opinion of course).
Final Fantasy is a FANTASTIC visual game. But that's it. VISUAL.
Skyrim doesn't look as beautiful visually, but the content blows anything the FF series has to offer.
This isn't just about the visual though. The loading screen times on Skyrim for Xbox 360 take ages compared to pc for example, and the power has everything to do with that, if you have the game for both you will see how bad it really is to compare it to. This affects every single time you enter a new city, a shop, a house. It is extremely irritating and effects game play to have to waste that much time staring at loading screens.
This will be the first cycle I will not be buying both consoles unless they offer a Kinect free Xbox with a removable hard drive in the future. Those two issues are ultimately deal breakers for me, even though I play Xbox 360 currently MORE than I play PS3. The power you get for the dollar really does account in the " value being offered". They are not really offering me much in regards to games that I cannot play elsewhere, and if the games are going to play better elsewhere, why would I play them on the slower device?
Now, it's my understanding that Microsoft has inferior architecture. That the Xbox One has one chip doing the same things that PS4 has divided among three chips. And that seems to be an issue that could cause a system failure in extended play. Not helped by the less than stellar reputation that the 360 had when it came to failing.
Of course, the reason it's so big is to help with the cooling process. Still not convinced it won't fail in time. Nor am I convinced that the system can handle the same processing as the PS4. The PS4 was designed to download games in the background while you play. It seems (according to a chart I saw) that Xbox One can, too. But I'm thinking they added that after they realized it was a good idea and I'm not certain it's something that the system will do well.
Honestly, it seems that Microsoft is playing catch up already. They pulled all those 180's on the DRM and such. They added the ability to record and upload video. I think they even stated that the system doesn't need the Kinect to work (though I think others have since said otherwise).
In comparison, PS4 has not made any changes.
And with all those recent changes, I'm not certain that the system should be coming out as soon as it is. Can you completely change a system six months before it launches and have it work?
And, of course, the final question. Which system will have better processing and framerate? I doubt graphics will vary much, especially in multiplatform titles, but which is better as the putting it all together?
I'd like to know what has influenced your opinion to give you the indication that they have inferior architecture? I may be misunderstanding what you mean by architecture, as I have no idea what you mean by the PS4 having three chips to the Xbox One's one. As far as I know (I am of course liable to be wrong, I haven't been exactly been following the news on it too closely), there's no real significant difference between the two. They're both running a custom AMD SoC with 8 cores, the main difference being the PS4 getting GDDR5 RAM, and 6 more Compute Units.
I can't remember where I read it, as it was a while back, but I remember it was implied that since the Xbox One only had one chip to use for processing, it would likely run much hotter. Which is why it is a bigger system to allow it to cool off the system. But, assuming the system really does run hotter, it would probably reduce it's lifespan. Hence why I said that to my understanding the architecture is inferior.
They both have roughly the same architecture as far as I can tell, and considering the power advantages the PS4 has it will run hotter (at least on paper, we have no idea what they're actually using to cool these systems).
Saltyk said:
Aesthetical Quietus said:
I'm pretty sure Microsoft is well aware of it's reputation with the 360 on hardware failures, they know they can't have two consoles in a row with the same sort of problems, it will be a far bigger PR problem than less powerful hardware.
Everything will fail in time, it's the nature of electronics. A bigger, cooler box merely reduces the chances of it happening. It can't handle the processing the PS4 can, they don't have the power; however downloading/storing/installing in the background is something that is not hard to do. (The network/hard-drive is far too slow to even begin to have an influence on performance).
I'd say that everything that happened with the 360 says otherwise. They pretty much never fixed the RROD issue. Even much later consoles were still dying due to the same issue. And, Microsoft has never released any statistics on the failure rate. But I know I have heard estimates as high as 50% [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems]. Even the low end is around 20% which is still very high. And when they did fix it, the E74 issue sprang up.
As for how capable either system is at downloading, I can't say. But I do know that while PS3 would let me download in the background, that would stop if I booted up a game. So, it couldn't have been that trivial.
That's precisely why I think they know they can't let it happen again. The 360's tech was brand new for it's time, GPUs had never been done that way (Unified shaders didn't come to the PC for a long time after the 360 shipped). Of course I know nothing of their internal policies and they could be about to shoot themselves in the foot even more.
That download pausing is not because of the power requirements, as I said it's relatively low-cost to implement something like that (especially if the servers are further away). The problem was that it opens up an attack vector, that is you could hack online multiplayer, or the marketplace, or the console; it wouldn't be easy, but someone would eventually do it. Plus it removes all the fringe cases for testing, and means you won't require a reboot when a download finishes (asset checks are done on launch, at least for the 360/XNA developed games, I'm assuming the PS3 is the same). It's something you can add in later, but it does require extra effort to make sure the console works as expected.
Saltyk said:
Aesthetical Quietus said:
Most of their 180's have been mostly PR moves, nothing that could really affect the console too much. The recording of video could actually be performance intensive if they were doing it in a silly way, if they simply stored the result of the draw calls into a circular buffer that's big enough to store the length of the video, then it would only be memory/hard-drive intensive, a single CPU core could handle that pretty easily. It doesn't need the Kinect, you can have it unplugged. It only ships with the Kinect, and that's because Microsoft realised that the kinect was a chicken-egg problem, people don't develop for it because not everyone has it; and people aren't picking it up because people aren't developing for it. They tried to use the new generation to change that.
Are you implying that backtracking on the Online Requirement and DRM was a PR move? I actually hope you're wrong. As that would imply they would be willing to put those back in at a later date. Something that would piss off a lot of people. The mere threat of that is enough to turn several people I know off of the system. And we don't know the details of the DRM (and yes, it was DRM). But considering the original intent was to completely copy the game to the systems hard drive and render the disc effectively useless, I would say they had to make some pretty big changes since it now reads the disc to play it (or does it? I've just read otherwise). Big enough to require a Day One patch.
And honestly, I don't even think Microsoft knows what's the deal with Kinect. I've heard it was required and the system absolutely wouldn't work without Kinect. Then, I heard it could be turned off, but not completely. Then, that it could be completely turned off. Then, that it wasn't required. Then, I heard it actually is required. Now, there's rumor of a Kinect-less Xbox One next year.
They seriously don't even know what they are selling or what it needs to work.
Yes I am, it was a PR move in that they realized that people weren't willing to accept those requirements for the benefits it would've allowed the console to have. It would've been foolish to stick to their guns for a feature that people weren't desperate to have (the disc-free play). I don't think they'd be silly enough to force the matter, I think if it came back it would be either optional, or only on games that you don't already have the disc in for. In any case, I was implying that it's a PR issue because handling it software side is essentially an abstracted step (if(DRMCheck()){loadGame();})No, we don't know the details of the DRM, which is Microsoft's problem, they let people speculate and their imaginations took off running (not that that's a bad thing).
Yes, it is DRM, Microsoft and Sony are not only trying to sell the consoles to us but also to the publishers, and they know that the publishers are the more important part of that equation. Eventually gamers will come around if there are enough good games, Publishers aren't going to rush to develop for a console if it's just going to be pirated.
It of course depends on how they implement it, but I think they will install the game and use the disc for DRM checking, which won't be that massive of a change (merely requiring them to make sure their DRM check step can't be worked around).
The disc drive is going to be too slow to be able to provide next-gen graphics at any kind of decent load-speed in my opinion.
Microsoft has certainly back-stepped on the Kinect, and I'm not even going to pretend to know what they thought they were doing. Last I heard it ships with it, but isn't required. I think the Kinect-less Xbox one would happen if the Xbox-one doesn't reach the sales quota they want, they desperately want to push the Kinect as it's a unique feature, and if everyone has one developers can count on it being there, but they don't want to do that at the cost of sales. Hence the PR cluster-fuck.
Saltyk said:
Aesthetical Quietus said:
Sony have played it pretty safe this generation, stronger hardware that's not radically different (i.e., not using the cell processor), no risky moves (such as DRM/Kinect), and their competitor has been making stumbles. They haven't need to make any changes, and any that they did make would make them look weaker.
As I mentioned earlier, most of their changes have been PR moves. It's mostly been minor OS edits and minor tech changes, a minor CPU clock upgrade and stripping the new DRM system out is going to mean next to nothing in terms of the bigger console picture.
They played it safe? No. Microsoft played it stupid. They tried to force Online requirements and DRM on console gamers. They made their console inconvenient to the general player. They forgot that people had other options. Sony actually gave a Gaming System. Most of the things that Microsoft touted as "Game Changing" Sony also has. And without a Pay Wall.
Coupled with PR disaster after PR disaster, Microsoft hurt their image in the gaming community. And if you don't believe me, check out PS4 and Xbox One vids on Youtube. PS4 generally garners 90% or better likes while Xbox has a two-thirds dislikes.
Making sure your console is easy to develop for is not playing it safe. I'm not saying Sony is a master of Chess in this regard. Merely that they didn't screw up and have been wise to capitalize on the competitions fumbles.
I'd argue that both happened, Sony played it safe by sticking to regular things, Microsoft tried to push features without properly interpreting the way the public would see it. As I mentioned earlier, the DRM/Online requirements was an attempt to bring disc-free gaming into play, while keeping the publishers happy. It backfired badly in terms of PR. What do you mean without a Pay Wall, last I heard they're going to require PS Plus for online play.
They did, and they're now playing catch-up. My point was that they haven't needed to make any changes with the PS4, Microsoft has handed that to them with all the PR disasters. Although, that being said, it is important to remember that the Gaming community has a very vocal subset that don't really follow through (remember L4D2?).
Actually it pretty much is playing it safe, there's no way for that to backfire. You won't hear developers (indie or otherwise) complaining about making their jobs easier, it means they get to spend more time implementing features rather than working on getting the game engine running at an optimal performance. Actually, fun note, you didn't hear much about it but Microsoft made the same sort of moves for the 360. They developed the XNA library which is a .NET library that abstracts a lot of the nasty DirectX handling, and as an added bonus it also means you get automatic garbage collection. Of course, they didn't make it easy to get into their marketplace, which was their main problem.
I'm also not saying playing it safe is a bad thing, Microsoft has a lot more money to play around with, letting them do their business and playing to your strengths is a bloody smart move. Use your opponent's strength against them and all that.
Saltyk said:
Aesthetical Quietus said:
The PS4 will, almost without a doubt, but it won't be by much. Developers will find a way to squeeze that extra power out, but it won't happen for a while. You won't notice it until a lot closer to the end of the consoles life-time, and the multi-platform titles will show it to an even lesser extent. Much like the current consoles the extra power will be used blindly at first while developers get used to it, then as the generation goes on they will settle in and find all the little tricks to stretching out the power (such as doing certain operations before others, building this shader operation this way because the GPU can do it .01% faster, etc, etc). It won't be as bad as this generation was because the consoles are pretty similar to PCs, unlike last time. The 360 introduced unified shaders (and a few other things) and the PS3 had the cell processor, which required a fair bit of work to get used to.
This is true of all consoles. Compare early Genesis games to later ones. Compare early PS One games to later ones. As developers get used to the hardware, they learn how to push it and take advantage of it. It even shows up in things like loading.
Yes, I am aware of that, that's why I made the point. My point was that in the end the consoles and their hardware will only do so much, it's what the developers do with it that makes it special. Which has always been my problem with the console wars, people argue over the hardware when the only people that should be worrying about that are the people developing for it. Only have the money for one console? Stand back and see which is the best after a couple of months, you'll get it cheaper then anyway. Buy any hardware on day one and you pay for it, it's called the bleeding edge for a reason.
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