The Big Bad Console Thread - Sway your Station with an Xboner !

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Tuco

Tuco

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the count is irrelevant. If you went PC only or console only in that generation you missed out on some incredible games.
 
Pancreas

Pancreas

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Sean_sl said:
My TV can do most of this itself without a dedicated device. Your laptop, tablet, and phone can also pretty much do all of that as well while streaming and/or being docked to your TV. The "future" is not some "all in one" box, the future is using your mobile device for everything and docking it to whatever display you want. It's a long ways off before they're powerful enough to replace dedicated gaming machines, but they'll get there at some point in the next couple decades.

Microsoft bet on a bad horse that didn't actually replace anything in your home theater setup, since you still have to have your TV crap hooked up to it. Not to mention one that has a very short term future at best. They also terribly misjudged the market and how just bad broadband penetration is.
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Well that is what I mean, they had this vision of being able to combine a lot of content delivery services, and yet did none of the leg work to make it possible. I still think the interim between when mobile devices rule everything and today will see an expansion of the set top box or merger with living room pc's/ consoles.

But you're right, eventually everything people do will be through their mobile device. It will simply interface with whatever tech is around them. Start your car, turn on this, download that, everything in the home/office/public spaces will be set up for people to interact with digitally through their mobile device. Interfacing will be through augmented reality, so gestures and crap will allow people to wave their hands and have all kinds of effects go off.

Surfaces will display different things to different people through their augmented reality. Virtual screens will be set up that are nothing more than geo referenced blank canvasses. I am sure there will be restrictions as to who is authorized to display effects that others can see. Someone might have a ridiculous looking costume overlay, but it will only be visible to people who allow that person to project into their reality.

But all of that is going to be off quite a ways.
 
Z

Zombie Thorne_sl

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I actually thought you were right at first, then i started to remember walking into Babbages in the late 80's early 90's and comparing it to the toy stores.

I don't remember exactly when PC gaming really started to take a big hit. I am thinking somewhere midway through the original Playstation.
 
Abefroman

Abefroman

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Tuco is pretty much spot on. Console bragging is for 12 year olds. Gaming adults will cover all their bases and not miss anything. It's all about the games and always has been.

Those with limited budgets will most likely get the PS4 but will still miss out on a lot of good games from the other systems.
 
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Northerner

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Azeth_sl said:
i just assume that eventually the modem, cable box, gaming console, pc etc all becomes one central home ent. unit.
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In an open market this would eventually happen. This particular market is absolutely not even close to being open though and it really does suck. There's only so much you can do when access is dictated by a damned cable box.
 
Xarpolis

Xarpolis

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Tuco_sl said:
the count is irrelevant. If you went PC only or console only in that generation you missed out on some incredible games.
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You're right. You weren't a true gamer unless you mastered PC Pool.
pc-pool_3.gif


Or Leisure Suit Larry in he Land of the Lounge Lizards.
 
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Laedrun

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Northerner_sl said:
In an open market this would eventually happen. This particular market is absolutely not even close to being open though and it really does suck. There's only so much you can do when access is dictated by a damned cable box.
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http://blog.mysanantonio.com/technol...ers-with-xbox/

from article

"Before the end of this summer, a new deal between Time Warner Cable and Microsoft will allow Time Warner's customers and Xbox Live Gold members to view up to 300 live TV channels through their Xbox 360, and later the Xbox One.

During recent Xbox One presentations, Microsoft touted the ability for Xbox One owners to be able to watch live TV through their consoles.

Now we are seeing the first steps of that function happening here in S.A. and other TWC markets, only first with the Xbox 360., and probably the Xbox One after it releases in November.

The service is offered to Gold members as an app through Xbox Live Marketplace.

Available channels depend on the market and each customer's subscription package."
 
Joeboo

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Sean_sl said:
You're kidding, right? NES and SNES libraries were gargantuan and they were back before crossplatform was even a thing (SNES and Genesis versions were largely different games).
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Did you even game on a PC pre-Everquest? The late 90s is when PC gaming really slowed down, but up until that point there was really no comparison. Maybe if you compared the libraries of all the 16 bit systems combined to PC over the same time frame it might be close, but no single console had anywhere near the library of the PC until the Playstation and affordable consoles with 3D-accelerated graphics came around. At that point in the late 90s, the graphics you got from a $300 Playstation were comparable, if not better than what you got from a $2000 PC, so it was a no-brainer at that point for developers to start switching over to consoles as their primary gaming focus. You could walk into a Babbage's or Software Etc in the early 90s and the perimeter walls of the entire store would be PC games, with a handful of gondolas in the middle with the console libraries. Yeah, SNES and NES each had 700+ games in their lifetimes, the PC probably saw that many games released every 2 or 3 years. Of course, part of that problem was a flood of mediocre games. You could probably find 10 different poker games, and 50 different "3D pinball" type games at any point. And that's not even counting all the shareware/garageware games that were around, I'm talking only professionally published games.

Here's a list of 5720 DOS games over a period of about 15 years(roughly 2 console generations) from the early 80s to the mid 90s:
http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/dos/list-games/

The first 200-ish pages have publishers listed, so at least 5000-ish of those(25 per page) aren't shareware/bloatware. Heck, just the year of 1990 is showing over 500 releases.
 
Szlia

Szlia

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It should be noted that at that time PC games took a lot of real estate in stores because they were sold in humongous boxes with three floppies and a manual running around in it...
 
Joeboo

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Szlia_sl said:
It should be noted that at that time PC games took a lot of real estate in stores because they were sold in humongous boxes with three floppies and a manual running around in it...
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Yeah I'm not quite sure how we made progress from giant PC game boxes, to giant original Playstation game boxes, to then jewel cases for later playstation/dreamcast releases, and then now we're back up to large DVD-sized cases again. The disks haven't gotten any physically bigger in the switch from CD to DVD, and since games rarely come with anything of use anymore it's a complete waste of space & plastic.

Even more maddening for PC gaming was that every company had different sized boxes, some didn't even have rectangular boxes, some had circles or triangles(I'm looking at you, Eidos)
m9_1Dky5tksO86xwHtVziEw.jpg


Made stocking shelves of PC games a royal bitch, they always looked cluttered and chaotic due to the varying box sizes/shapes
 
Vaclav

Vaclav

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We always faced the TR boxes face front because of the stupid shape. (Although even that wasn't perfect since if you spined stuff next to them it would flop over onto the sloped edges...)

And ironic you acknowledge that joeboo - I started considering my exit from Babbage's because of my District Manager being an asshole about me being OCD about keeping our PC stock actually looking presentable - because I felt it was required to make the store look professional. [He was a complete asshole though, he ran out my Manager [which opened up Manager for me - but he was a best friend so....] because we actually had 0% shrinkage for two inventories in a row which he found unbelievable and gave us shit over it, rather than praising us (and it was the boonies and a pretty low traffic store - not exactly things that scream "THEFT RISK!")]
 
S

Sean_sl

shitlord
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joeboo_sl said:
Did you even game on a PC pre-Everquest? The late 90s is when PC gaming really slowed down, but up until that point there was really no comparison. Maybe if you compared the libraries of all the 16 bit systems combined to PC over the same time frame it might be close, but no single console had anywhere near the library of the PC until the Playstation and affordable consoles with 3D-accelerated graphics came around. At that point in the late 90s, the graphics you got from a $300 Playstation were comparable, if not better than what you got from a $2000 PC, so it was a no-brainer at that point for developers to start switching over to consoles as their primary gaming focus. You could walk into a Babbage's or Software Etc in the early 90s and the perimeter walls of the entire store would be PC games, with a handful of gondolas in the middle with the console libraries. Yeah, SNES and NES each had 700+ games in their lifetimes, the PC probably saw that many games released every 2 or 3 years. Of course, part of that problem was a flood of mediocre games. You could probably find 10 different poker games, and 50 different "3D pinball" type games at any point. And that's not even counting all the shareware/garageware games that were around, I'm talking only professionally published games.

Here's a list of 5720 DOS games over a period of about 15 years(roughly 2 console generations) from the early 80s to the mid 90s:
http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/dos/list-games/

The first 200-ish pages have publishers listed, so at least 5000-ish of those(25 per page) aren't shareware/bloatware. Heck, just the year of 1990 is showing over 500 releases.
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I did game then, I guess I didn't realize the sheer volume of shit (literally) there was back then. My bad. That truly was an era of Quantity over Quality. I don't think those libraries are really comparable to the the number of quality console games back in that era though, at least from the SNES onwards.
 
Intrinsic

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I haven't read any of the PC Wiki links so my time frame could be way off (from a pre/post EQ if we're using that as the metric?), but when I think of PC gaming it involves, in no particular order: X-Wing/Tie Fighter series, Kings Quest, Police Quest, Myst, Ultima, Wolfenstein (and Hexen, and Rise of the Triad, and eventually Quake), Command and Conquer, and others that would take more than 10 minutes to remember. It is purely emotional, but just those titles resonate more with me than probably anyconsolegeneration title. Dunno, just because there was a ton of quantity it doesn't diminish the quality that existed.
 
K

Kedwyn

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It will be interesting to see where PC gaming heads and how long this life cycle will be for consoles (I'd guess shorter). The good thing is games developed for next gen consoles will be easier to port. The question will be how many developers will actually do it? Will more companies shun the PC or will it be a new emergence of PC gaming and hopefully PC sales. I believe the lengthy life span of this last gen helped boost PC gaming the last 3 years. Will that continue or will terrible PC sales push more companies to shun it as a platform?

I do know that the last bastion of PC exclusivity (MMO) will be heading over to consoles this gen. I'm not really sure what to make of that but given the trends I'd expect consolification will be an even bigger issue as a result.

Better question will be I wonder if someone will manage to get PS4 games running on specific types of PC's..
 
S

Sean_sl

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Kedwyn_sl said:
It will be interesting to see where PC gaming heads and how long this life cycle will be for consoles (I'd guess shorter). The good thing is games developed for next gen consoles will be easier to port. The question will be how many developers will actually do it? Will more companies shun the PC or will it be a new emergence of PC gaming and hopefully PC sales.

I do know that the last bastion of PC exclusivity (MMO) will be heading over to consoles this gen. I'm not really sure what to make of that but given the trends I'd expect consolification will be an even bigger issue as a result.

Better question will be if someone manages to get PS4 games running on specific types of PC's..
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I'm guessing it'll probably be 6-7 years, no longer than that. I have my doubts about it being as short as 5 though.

I don't think we'll see many, if any, Western console exclusives outside of First Party studio games and First Party IPs contracted out to Third Parties. However, we'll definitely still see a bunch of Japanese third party console exclusives.

One neat thing we'll see is Kickstarter games doing PS4 versions due to the ease of development + the ability to self publish. They've already started to pop up.
 
Tuco

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6-7 years is a good guess, but with xbone/ps4 not selling at a loss (allegedly) I could see MS/Sony having less reason to squeeze the life out of the next gen of consoles. Plus I imagine that jumping from one x86 platform to another x86 platform will be a much easier step. I wouldn't be surprised to see the next-gen come in 4-5 years. I think the counter-balance to that is that there might not be as big of a need to upgrade the hardware.
 
D

DMK_sl

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To be honest I thought the hardware would be better for this generation. It already lags behind computers by quite a way.
 
L

Laedrun

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I was hoping they would take the plunge into 3d, I could finally justify buying one of those fucking 3dtvs or that pimp oculus rift headset. the 4k/8k crap would only interest me if i had a 10 foot wide tv screen in my living room, and i dont see that happening any time soon.
 
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