Microsoft Doesn't Want Sony's Sloppy Seconds

[Venats]

But the main selling point of these modern gaming platforms IS the online gaming capability.

COD games of recent have had utterly atrocious single-player modes but it doesn't matter, because the main feature is the online capability. Gears of War isn't actually that great a game UNLESS you consider the co-op campaign which really is one of the best out there. Halo as well is as famous for online as the campaign.

Which costs, for the XBOX, anywhere from 30-50$ a year if you know how to use the internet and find deals. Like I said, I have two years of XBOX Live on which I spent 60$. Not to mention that as the PSN is more and more moving towards the Plus program, it too won't be left with all that much "free" stuff for people to enjoy.

As for me personally, most of the online functionality between XBOX Live Free and PSN is irrelevant. I don't play COD, the only FPS I play is Halo and I found Reach to have enough of a single player campaign to hold my interest to justify having bought the game without Live (I only went Live Gold about a couple of months ago). Otherwise? I don't need Live or PSN for my games: RPGs, Third Person Shooters (Vanquish), and the general single-player action genre.

360 without the ability to play online multiplayer is hugely compromised and that isn't the only feature you miss out if you don't fork over the $60 every year:
-No Netflix access
-No Hulu Plus access (only the beta was PSN+ exclusive)
-No Social media like facebook/twitter/last.fm
-No youtube (PS3 has always this through free browser access)

All these highly advertised and lauded features are behind a mandatory paywall that makes the console much more expensive than the initial price.

Its not 60$ a year, its 60$ a year if you buy through MS... and you'd have to be silly to give them your CC information or Paypal as there is no way to remove either. And the 360 without online multiplayer is not hugely compromised IN GENERAL, this is only true for FPS players who buy games that lack "a game". Does an RPG player care about online activity? No. Action-adventure? Probably not. Action? Doubtful. Sports? Maybe/Yes. FPS? Yes.

They are highly advertised and lauded features are a gaff, I agree. Its stupid to pay for a service you're already paying for... on an internet you're already paying for. But, I didn't buy a gaming console for movies/hulu/facebook/youtube. I have a computer/laptop for that, I bought a gaming console for games. Yes, it sucks that I have to pay for the multiplayer.

And, lets not be biased and forget the ultimate in dickery from PS: Removing linux. I'll take XBOX's moneywalls over lying to your consumer base.

The mere existence of gold membership has held back services ENTIRELY from being on PS3 like the superb BBC iPlayer service, that is on PS3 but not on 360 as Microsoft could only have such a service behind the XBL Gold paywall that went agaisnt BBC's royal charter of access and profit rules. No Top Gear on 360 then.

So while it is true that you are not forced to invest all those hundreds of dollars... if you don't then You cannot compare PS3 and box 460 as equals.

To be fair, nothing has to be behind a Gold Membership Wall. That's simply how they choose to do it. They could, just as easily, grant every member (free or not) access to certain features (as they already do). It has nothing to do with Gold in and of itself but more to do with backroom politics and business practices.

And where do you find hundreds of dollars from Live? Are you speaking over all of the console's existence?

-You compare the features of PS3 and 360 WITH the expensive Gold Membership...
-THEN, you compare the price WITHOUT the gold membership fee!

We're not dumb, we do notice such an obvious bait and switch. The car analogy is not needed, this is simple enough:

If you are going to compare consoles on features and capabilities, then when it comes to price comparisons then YOU MUST ALSO include the extra cost of accessing those features.

(PS: EVERYONE has to pay for internet/electricity/cables, paying for XBL Gold doesn't deduct from those costs, it is an extra costs that adds up to hundreds of Dollars which you cannot ignore.)

I did compare them including the Live membership, read and pay attention that I did factor it in. if anything I was lenient on the PS3 by not including its dropping support of Linux halfway through its life span. I bought that system because of its ability to support linux, do you realize that when they dropped it, they also dropped my desire for owning most of the console? Should I then include that in the price of the PS3?

Also, I never compared their prices without the Gold Membership fee. I said that for the XBOX 360 (old) the prices were convergent when you included proprietary drives and Live. This statement is true. However, if you were smart and knew how to avoid the proprietary, then the only real expense difference between a fully upgraded PS3 and an XBOX360 is the Live membership fee. In the Slim the former issue no longer exists at all because they don't have crazy-shape casing anymore and you don't even need to be remotely competent to buy a much cheaper 7200 RPM hard drive off of Ebay. if you factor in the price of said drive:

Slim 4GB is 180-200$
PS3 160-320GB ranges from 230-250$ to 320-350$
250 GB HD for your Slim is 50$ (ebay, or make it yourself not that hard)

Compare the top end where there is a difference of 70GBs (Xbox only supports to 250 GB, but that will change with Gears 3, and will reach 320) for about 100$. 70GB =/= 100$, unless you're buying SSDs. The price difference covers Gold for about a year or two (if you're lucky). If you don't need Gold, then you save money.

Now do we factor in dropped Linux support?
Do we factor in PSN having shit security/stability?
How much do just those two things amount to in $$ value?

So I'll make it short: On a first buy the XBOX is cheaper by a good wad of cash. If you need Live membership for your game then that wad of cash dries up over about a year or two, and after the third/fourth years begins to put the XBOX above the PS3. If you don't, then the XBOX remains cheaper.

 

[Treblaine]

There are some great games but they don?t exactly cram those BR discs full of content like they said they would and they don?t look/perform any better than on any other platform...oftentimes worse.

I know others will correct you on your insane suggestion that Sony isn't doing enough for first party (WHAT?!? Microsoft and Nintendo have had dick-all Exclusives in the last 12 months while Infamous 2, Killzone 3, God of War 3 and soon Uncharted 3).

Anyway, you can't just "shovel" content onto a blu-ray or any disc for that matter, it's not like music or video or other simple media content. Game data has to be carefully and packed in as tightly as you can or else you will break your game, literally it will not function.

See optical media (CD, DVD, Blu-ray, anything) has hit a huge wall in the technology: while the capacity can go up hugely there is still a huge limitation on how quickly the data can be read from it and how quickly it can scan to and find new data sectors.

This is not a major problem for things like movies with as with buffering 1080p video can stream easily and steadily from a continuous bitstream.

The problem is with games assets, any one of MILLIONS of textures could be needed and the coder and they have to be TORN off the disc as fast as fucking possible because it is a major bottleneck. If it is too slow you get serious problems with texture pop-in and frame-rate drops. It's actually quicker to compress the file massively just so there are fewer bits to read off disc and take more time decompressing the file. That's moore's law, the CPU

This is why Microsoft were probably pretty smart to stick with DVD and just use the fastest DVD drive they could get.

Size doesn't matter, it's speed:


Blu-ray drive was largely responsible for PS3's huge launch price contributing $175 to the unit costs yet Sony still made a loss selling at $600. But not so bad for consumers as they didn't have to pay for XBL Gold Membership and not so bad for Sony as they popularised their new media format... kinda.

Spoiler: off topic on Blu-ray as a movie media

Blu-ray may have beat HD-DVD but it's becoming apparent it wasn't/isn't just a Two horse race. People still love DVD for movies and why not? They are cheaper, easier to rip, can play on more of their devices (laptop, portable DVD player, PS3/Blu-ray player even). And really why bother switching? DVD was a quantum leap over VHS with no rewinding, scene skipping and small form factor to go in CD folders and even play on your computer! Blu-ray improves NOTHING on ease of use, it actually has more annoyances than DVD.

The increase in resolution isn't actually that important for most movies as most films aren't that sharp, they're shot on relatively low grade film and even when you CAN see the detail... you don't really need to see it. Watching The Matrix on blu-ray only made it easier to see the wires suspending actors in fight scenes. Same with CGI, with the relative blurry (hey blurry - Blu-rry, Blu-ray... huh) of DVD it actually makes CGI look more convincing with with pin sharp Blu-ray it is easier to see how the skin just doesn't look quite right.

VHS tape rot was obviously too much of a hit to quality, but DVD is just about good enough for most films the way they are supposed to be viewed.

High Resolution is VERY GOOD for games where you need pixel perfect precision, not good for movies where like a good magic trick you don't want to obsess over the details or risk ruining the illusion.

I'll tell you what is the real successor to DVD, it ain't blu-ray: it's streaming and digital-downloads. That actually puts PS3 and 360 on a remarkably even playing field though really it's anyone's game, Wii even has a chance!

The most important feature to utilise right now is hard drives, as their have gone into an almost Moore's Law rate of improvement, with their capacity exploding almost exponentially as the price plummets yet speeds still increase, both read speed and scan speed. This is perfect for games files,

And with that it doesn't really matter how the content is delivered whether by a single blu-ray, 5 DVDs or a 5-hour download session. it has still got to end up on a har drive to actually be used.

Hard drive installs are a dream for developers:
-very fast and efficient seek times
-often multiple scan areas
-easy to modify the data for efficiency (impossible with optical disc's fixed data)
-easy to change data at different points
-many hard drives have in built caches of high speed solid state memory that can be utilised almost as extra RAM.
-Virtually no size limit on disc swapping or moving between layers

Who can push this advantage? 360's hard drive is a larger base size now and easier to replace but is expensive and proprietary. PS3's hard drive is the same as any off-the-shelf laptop hadr drive so can be bought cheap at high capacity.

At the moment 360 has the advantage here - but almost unofficially.

Officially, every 360 game must be "functional" without a hard drive, that means it cannot depend on installs, yet developers have the option to allow a 100% install. This is what RAGE has done, even though the game is playable directly from the disc John Carmack warns it will look like shit, but as 360 has option for a full install (while PS3 does not) the game has been also OPTIMISED to pay from 360's hard drive where he says it will outperforms the PS3!

That's another problem with Blu-ray Carmack points out, it has a slower bit-rate than the DVD type used for 360. PS3 is screwed by several things:
-licence won't permit a 100% install
-blu-ray slower than DVD
-also divided memory issues, non-unified shaders on GPU and other bandwidth bottlenecks limit options.

Ultimately, I don't care for Blu-ray for movies or gaming but what I do care for: PS3 games.

Sony deserves way more acclaim than it gets for their investment in first part games making not just he best games on PS3, but the best games you can get on consoles this generation, full stop.

When every game goes 100% install, THEN you can just "shovel in the content" but even then there are problems:
-more content = more play-testing/bug-hunting-fixing
-more content = more coding/artwork
-more content = more development time!

I doubt even without scanning problem a developer could today create 50GB worth of actual game content. Sure, they could make 15GB of game content + 35GB of 1080p CGI cutscenes, but that kind of defeats the whole "50GB of GAME content".

 

[Treblaine]

However, if you were smart and knew how to avoid the proprietary

I can't agree with this sort of thing, it is wheeling and dealing risk that most people don't want to deal with or even have the judgement to seek out.

Nobody knows if they are buying some knock off that will be broken before they even take it out the box or something that will work. Report to trading standards? They're already dealing in dodgy goods, Microsoft is already spamming forums with black propaganda, you're going to get done mate and no one can help you. If you did it, you got lucky and there is no way what you did could work on a massive scale.

The problem is you can save a bit of money but at any time Microsoft could roll out an update that makes your peripheral incompatible. Then you have the choice:
-ignore the update and keep using drive, but can't play new games that need new firmware
-accept the update to get new games but your hard drive is an expensive paperweight
-use a pirate/custom firmware and risk getting blocked from XBL and all the online

A shitty situation.

See knock-off hard drives are crappy solution, you HAVE to buy the prescribed parts or you are risking too much.

Same with getting some dodgy Gold Membership card for half it's normal price. Your solution of turning to the black market is a terrible justification for 360 and anyway, there is no way on 360 you can get online as cheaply, legally and certainly as with PS3.

And yeah, I'm comparing the price of Gold Membership over a console's lifetime, why not? It's not like you are going to be like someone who enjoys paying 360 online several times a week is going to just give up on it for a 12 month period and not go to some other service that is free.

Right now a PS3 costs as much as just 4 years of XBL Gold Membership. Sure you could get Gold Membership cheaper if you go to some dodgy geezer, but so too I could buy a PS3 for half its price by the same measures.

 

[Venats]

I can't agree with this sort of thing, it is wheeling and dealing risk that most people don't want to deal with or even have the judgement to seek out.

Nobody knows if they are buying some knock off that will be broken before they even take it out the box or something that will work. Report to trading standards? They're already dealing in dodgy goods, Microsoft is already spamming forums with black propaganda, you're going to get done mate and no one can help you. If you did it, you got lucky and there is no way what you did could work on a massive scale.

I really don't think you know much about hard drives, or the ones in a gaming console. There is no need to buy knock off anything, pure and simple. The hard drives in a gaming system are 100% normal hard drives (2.5 form factor, what you find a laptop) that have special software. You can, 100%, buy these drives under warranty and all national standards at your local store or the internet. You can download the software from just about anywhere or copy it perfectly from your own old drive if you had one. There is no risk to be had here.

Most people simply are either not tech savvy or they simply do not care about saving 50$, which is where Microsoft makes money.

The problem is you can save a bit of money but at any time Microsoft could roll out an update that makes your peripheral incompatible. Then you have the choice:
-ignore the update and keep using drive, but can't play new games that need new firmware
-accept the update to get new games but your hard drive is an expensive paperweight
-use a pirate/custom firmware and risk getting blocked from XBL and all the online

A shitty situation.

See knock-off hard drives are crappy solution, you HAVE to buy the prescribed parts or you are risking too much.

Impossible, absolutely impossible. Microsoft can the tell when a machine is physically modded, but they cannot in anyway tell their Hard Drive (Usually a WD Scoripion Black 2.5, 250GB) is replaced by another identical model.

Same with getting some dodgy Gold Membership card for half it's normal price. Your solution of turning to the black market is a terrible justification for 360 and anyway, there is no way on 360 you can get online as cheaply, legally and certainly as with PS3.

And yeah, I'm comparing the price of Gold Membership over a console's lifetime, why not? It's not like you are going to be like someone who enjoys paying 360 online several times a week is going to just give up on it for a 12 month period and not go to some other service that is free.

Right now a PS3 costs as much as just 4 years of XBL Gold Membership. Sure you could get Gold Membership cheaper if you go to some dodgy geezer, but so too I could buy a PS3 for half its price by the same measures.

Again, no such thing as a dodgy membership as I am speaking of buying these things from trusted sources not just random ZXGE2 person on EBay, for instance Walmart or Kmart recently had the Gold Messenger Bunbldes selling for 45-50$ (this includes 12-months of membership, a kerboard, 400 points, and a headset). Almost all major retailers have sales over the course of a year, nevermind Black Friday. This sort of argument is flimsy.

 

[robinkom]

No doubt this rule resulted in a more than a few PS3 versions of a multi-platform game being stricken with the bugs, hiccups, and glitches that some have. The two machine's Operating Systems and architecture are completely incompatible, it takes some time to port over a 360 title to PS3. If they're being made simultaneously, I'm sure more debugging and tweaking will go into the 360 version to meet this standard by the deadline from Microsoft.

Familiarity with the PS3 hardware has come a long way with the vast majority of developers and the tide is starting to shift more and more in their favor. This is perhaps what causes Microsoft to issue bravado-filled statements like this over time. The 360 hardware isn't exactly a spring chicken after all.

 

[Beautiful End]

So...you're decreasing your game library so that customers are loyal to you?

Wow, way to go MS! You sure know business!

The way I see it, us PS users will still get more games. We already got Limbo; that's a perfect example. I mean, sure, bravo, MS for sticking to your guns. But you can't play the diva role when your console isn't the best on the market. I'm not saying the PS3 or Wii or anything else is perfect. I'm just saying that it's a dumb move considering that new gamers who are on the fence between buying a PS3 and a 360 would choose the PS3 simply because of the bigger game library they get from both MS-esque titles (Limbo, again) and Wii-esque titles (No More Heroes, etc.)

I honestly wouldn't buy a 360 even if it came with one year of free gold membership. There's only like 3 exclusive titles I KINDA want to play.

Jeez, why is everyone being such pricks?
Gamestop taking premiums out of new games. Sony releasing another overpriced and (sure to be) undersupported machine to the suckers. Every publisher is looking for a way to screw over consumers who buy used. Now MS is denying their own consumers games like they were denying them a working console for the first few years the 360 existed.

These idiots make me wonder why I even bother playing games anymore.

You know, you're right. There's just so much shit going on right now. It might sound cheesy but us gamers should stick together because there's enough people who are out to get us as it is. So yeah, this is bull. Kinda makes me sad to be somewhat affected/involved in all this.

 

[snfonseka]

So more games for PS3 and less games for 360.

 

[GonzoGamer]

So...you're decreasing your game library so that customers are loyal to you?

Wow, way to go MS! You sure know business!

The way I see it, us PS users will still get more games. We already got Limbo; that's a perfect example. I mean, sure, bravo, MS for sticking to your guns. But you can't play the diva role when your console isn't the best on the market. I'm not saying the PS3 or Wii or anything else is perfect. I'm just saying that it's a dumb move considering that new gamers who are on the fence between buying a PS3 and a 360 would choose the PS3 simply because of the bigger game library they get from both MS-esque titles (Limbo, again) and Wii-esque titles (No More Heroes, etc.)

I honestly wouldn't buy a 360 even if it came with one year of free gold membership. There's only like 3 exclusive titles I KINDA want to play.

Jeez, why is everyone being such pricks?
Gamestop taking premiums out of new games. Sony releasing another overpriced and (sure to be) undersupported machine to the suckers. Every publisher is looking for a way to screw over consumers who buy used. Now MS is denying their own consumers games like they were denying them a working console for the first few years the 360 existed.

These idiots make me wonder why I even bother playing games anymore.

You know, you're right. There's just so much shit going on right now. It might sound cheesy but us gamers should stick together because there's enough people who are out to get us as it is. So yeah, this is bull. Kinda makes me sad to be somewhat affected/involved in all this.

I think the big problem is that there are too many suckers out there willing to pay anything that?s asked of them. If gamers showed themselves to be more savvy consumers, we would see less schemes like online pass and childish childish business practices like this.
Gamers really need to find their own identities individually because too many of them want to be seen as a Sony/MS/Nintendo (and even the software publishers?) fanatic and will not only buy into whatever crappy scheme that?s devised but they will defend the company for all the pants on head retarded things they do: like not fixing a console that chronically breaks or taking big features out of the console. The consumers are the ones who should be demanding more for their money not less.
That?s right gamers, I?m telling you to get a life. It may seem mean but at least I?m not trying to sucker you out of all your money and believe it or not, I care more about you than Sony, MS, or EA does. Your not cattle to be farmed, you?re people.

 

[GonzoGamer]

All That.

After reading all that I'm still not sure where you fall on all this.
It sounds like what your saying is that both consoles tried big ideas and both failed miserably. Sony is cool because the disc holds a lot and the HDDs are common but sucks because you can't do full installs. MS is cool because they have full installs but have to because they're working with regular dvds but they also suck because of all the expensive proprietary BS.

I'll agree that the platform devs for this gen each tried doing big things with their consoles and they all failed miserably. Shit, at least the Wii (which has crappy games) was a commercial success, I made a lot of money off nintendo thanks to that thing.

 

[Treblaine]

All That.

After reading all that I'm still not sure where you fall on all this.
It sounds like what your saying is that both consoles tried big ideas and both failed miserably. Sony is cool because the disc holds a lot and the HDDs are common but sucks because you can't do full installs. MS is cool because they have full installs but have to because they're working with regular dvds but they also suck because of all the expensive proprietary BS.

I'll agree that the platform devs for this gen each tried doing big things with their consoles and they all failed miserably. Shit, at least the Wii (which has crappy games) was a commercial success, I made a lot of money off nintendo thanks to that thing.

Don't be so surprised to find someone on these forums who doesn't "fall on one side".

It's my attempt at an objective analysis, based largely on what I have heard from experts such as John Carmack on the nitty gritty of coding for such beasts, and others working exclusively for different systems.

Overall, I'd say PS3 has inferior hardware to the 360 when it comes to making damn-fine looking games. I don't think it's cool for the high capacity, it ultimately makes little difference to games.

But PS3's advantage is with Sony the corporation, what vast amount of money they invest in games like Infamous, Uncharted and Resistance actually make it a more valuable system in terms of unique content. That and Microsoft's over-dependence on multi-platform games: their first-party work it crap, and (as demonstrated with OP) their pride against "sloppy seconds" to spite how much their customers want that.

It's not a problem games coming on multiple discs. It wasn't a problem with Playstation 1 games like Final Fantasy VII over 14 years ago, it isn't a problem today with LA Noire, especially with HDD installs - which I hope I emphasised is a GOOD THING. This DVD's supposed "curse" is a blessing, how it encourages an install it performs better than a Blu-ray possibly could.

I wouldn't say devs have failed "miserably" it just has turned out far differently than many seem to have anticipated it, yet have adapted very well to the situation. The pundits seemed to follow the optical-media trend with CD being so instrumental for PS1 and DVD progressing for the next generation. It seemed to be a foregone conclusion that PS3 would win because blu-ray > DVD.

Except they lost objective perspective on what was actually the best tool for the job. They failed to see other rapidly advancing technology that hadn't even matured yet, particularly how the price of HDD drives would plummet as their capacity and speed skyrocket (just after all 3 consoles were launched). Also at the same time broadband speed and capacity have seen extraordinary improvements, optical-media serves little technical imperative, it seems to be mainly there to serve the established and understood retail model.

I think Microsoft and Nintendo stuck with DVD as quite frankly it was the only optical media format they could afford, and in a way, Sony couldn't really afford the blu-ray format that was very new technology in 2006!

The full exploitation of HDD installation can really extend this console generation, it effectively is an upgrade in media format more than PS3 focusing on blu-ray alone could have. It's closest historical equivalence is the Sega Mega-CD.

So where DO I fall?

I mainly game on PC, but I own and play both a 360 and a PS3.

360 and PS3 I see their strengths and weaknesses, both in the hardware and the companies that control their use.

-But in summary: see what id-software have done with Rage on 360, it shatters impressions of which is the more capable console.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I mainly game on PC, but I own and play both a 360 and a PS3.

360 and PS3 I see their strengths and weaknesses, both in the hardware and the companies that control their use.

-But in summary: see what id-software have done with Rage on 360, it shatters impressions of which is the more capable console.

As console games and consoles themselves become more and more like the PC it makes sense that the games should be installed.
They way I see this console generation is that each player started strong and then plowed it all into the ground immediately: sony stripped away features to reduce costs, MS made the machine with a 50% chance of melting to reduce costs, and Nintendo got horrible software support because they're all high.

They've all been losing customers along the way, so many people I know who owned a ps2, didn't catch up with this generation and those who did, usually didn't end up bothering to replace their 360 or ps3 if it broke. With more and more customers drifting away, I don't think they can afford to take stupid hard line stances like refusing to port games from other consoles...especially if it's one of those rare games that's actually good.

Rage does look cool, that'll probably move to the top of my rental list when it comes out.

 

[Alphakirby]

Just ask for Marcus Fenix in Mortal Kombat to make up for Kratos's appearance.

Also, it seems like a wise decision.

Oh they tried that.
MS said no.

OT:This is so childish,it's not even funny. Somebody call the WAAAAMBULENCE Microsoft doesn't want any games unless it's version is the best one out of the others. So yes,screw Microsoft,now it's just getting ridiculous.