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

Mix/Tuco: It's likely because of optimization shortcuts ala 3dFX - nVidia has been using operation shortcuts off the OpenGL norms more and more recently in their PC cards, odds are they completely kicked them aside for their Android/Steam hybrid doodad thing. I don't know if ya'll remember the days of Glide doing multiple times the framerate (and looking better too!) than OpenGL during the early days of when 3D gaming really started, but I sure do. 3dFX cards back then actually had lower horsepower than you'd expect for the framerate results they got, all because of shortcuts in how it handled various operations. (Or in some cases completely ignoring some that didn't increase fidelity to any obvious fashion)

Szlia_sl said:

This would be a good argument if it was a third party peripheral that did not sell well. But it's first party and it sold well and Microsoft pushed for support as did Sony with the EyeToy and the PS Eye and the PS Move. It is just a shitty interface at an ontological level (its very nature is flawed), so no amount of creativity or technical achievement can fix that. You can make some very specific game work and maybe you can even make a great game using it (Poker Face: Murder Suspects - an interrogation room game where you play the suspect?), but you cannot make twenty, because it lacks breadth, it is too specific, not abstract enough, not reactive enough...

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That is why i said THEY think that is why. I know I get tired of jumping up and down and flailing my arms about. Looks like only about 1/3 of xboxs have a kinect setup. I could see why a developer might not want to develop for it if you already cut your possible target audience down by that far.

24 million units of the Kinect sensor had been shipped by February 2013.
xbox 360s sold 78.2 million as of June 30, 2013

And of course that 1/3 doesn't account for the people that still own it and stopped using it out of distaste for it.

Szlia_sl said:

This would be a good argument if it was a third party peripheral that did not sell well. But it's first party and it sold well and Microsoft pushed for support as did Sony with the EyeToy and the PS Eye and the PS Move. It is just a shitty interface at an ontological level (its very nature is flawed), so no amount of creativity or technical achievement can fix that. You can make some very specific game work and maybe you can even make a great game using it (Poker Face: Murder Suspects - an interrogation room game where you play the suspect?), but you cannot make twenty, because it lacks breadth, it is too specific, not abstract enough, not reactive enough...

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Many of the XB1 games already announced use the Kinect in some way. Just because a game doesn't use Kinect exclusively doesn't mean that it's not using the Kinect at all. The little bit that it adds here and there alone makes the price worth it. Add to that all of the games that use Kinect exclusively and it's more than made up for its cost. We are talking about a $100 accessory. It doesn't need to be justified as an entirely separate console.

Thusfar from what I've seen even the games with light Kinect use (like Dead Rising 3) are still being listed as Kinect "exclusive" FYI. Perhaps there's one I've missed but I've got a feeling they've lumped them all.

meStevo_sl said:

I know, right? They only sold 24 million of them in less than 3 years, what a failure, LOL Microsoft. Nobody cares.

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TBH 24 million Kinect units sold is pretty impressive for the XB1. I can see why if you look only at that stat why you might want to push it onto everyone in your next gen system. I would be VERY curious as to the actual Kinect usage rates and a more detailed breakdown of how Kinect units are being sold. I.E. How many units were sold as part of specials or bundles? What is the usage rate of those? What are the sales for kinect exclusive games?

It's a total gimmick for me and a waste of time but maybe I'm that old gamer who can't see what the new thing is anymore....

Selix_sl said:

TBH 24 million Kinect units sold is pretty impressive for the XB1. I can see why if you look only at that stat why you might want to push it onto everyone in your next gen system. I would be VERY curious as to the actual Kinect usage rates and a more detailed breakdown of how Kinect units are being sold. I.E. How many units were sold as part of specials or bundles? What is the usage rate of those? What are the sales for kinect exclusive games?

It's a total gimmick for me and a waste of time but maybe I'm that old gamer who can't see what the new thing is anymore....

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Yeah I agree. Seems like everyone has some pics of them playing a Kinect game the first few days they get it and then they never use it again. I personally have a few friends and a relative who own the Kinect and none of them use it at all.

When they started including the Kinect bundle with x360, I know a lot of retailers would throw products at customers to make them buy. Bestbuy did a free game and $50 giftcard or something similar. I'm sure those deals skewed sale numbers a lot. (As was intended)

I bought a kinect and eventually stopped using it, but I can say with 100% certainty that if it worked as well as it should, I never would have stopped. The voice commands alone are extremely convenient [when they work]. If the fidelity of the new kinect is really what they say it is, I'd be stoked to use it.

I am really anxious to find out if EQN will go to PS4. August 2!

Tuco_sl said:

I'm not sure if you're saying that only a certain segment of the graphics processing community is really using optimization shortcuts or what, but I think you can be assured that anyone worth their salt is making use of whatever optimizations they can.

I do miss my voodoo2.

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Nononono... almost all developers make use of all available shortcuts in development - what I mean is OpenGL defines how X/Y/Z 3D operation should be handled. nVidia regularly breaks from that and makes up it's own rules for ~20% or so of operations which leads to different results with a speed gain at all times. (ATI does it too, but to a lesser degree ~5% from what I've heard)

Assuming zero ATI/nVidia specific tweaks done on the part of developers they're subpar cards, they do truncated operations to up the speed with lower hardware overhead - its part of why a few developers out there are starting to complain from time to time about how obnoxious the extra work involved in nVidia being a market force is. (along with the references to 3dFX and how the developers effectively killed them because they got too heavy handed with "forcing Glide" and their worries that nVidia will start the swing towards nearly 100% unique truncated operations like Glide used to)

So it's not unreasonable to think that their first party peripheral that has it's own compliance standards is running close to 100% truncated operation sets ala Glide rather than an open standard like OpenGL anymore.

I'm sure the end results they're quoting are reasonably accurate - just that the MEANS involves some trickery like that to pump out larger numbers out of more limited hardware. (Similar to how consoles don't stick to OpenGL - and as a result for a near identical output GPU can end up presenting something more impressive at times)

Rhuobhe_sl said:

I am really anxious to find out if EQN will go to PS4. August 2!

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Better support KB/Mouse if so. Gonna hate if it's completely consolized with no KB/M option for a good hunk of players leading to "silent groups" and "voice chat groups" only - I want typist groups dammit.

meStevo_sl said:

Apparently a site has a story about Sony having problems with RAM. Sony asked for 24 hours to prepare a statement so they're holding onto the story until then. Most popular suggestion is that they're going to announce a reduction/ram change.

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Apparently its nothing: the Eurogamer guy who tweeted the original "drama" recently tweeted for everyone to calm down and that the story is just about how the RAM works or something. Neogaf insiders also have no clue what he is talking about.

How soon mates do you think either Sony or Microsoft will show there hand first and officially announce a launch date?

I am asking cause in week it will be august and I would assume a launch of Mid Nov or 1st week in Dec there massive marketing machines would want at least 2 month window ahead.

Cheers.

meStevo_sl said:

Hopefully it remains nothing, rather then something like this:http://gyazo.com/18c8dad04e2cbf52dd57b646129a48c5

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No offense to the so called source.

But fuck who is to say that so called source saying that shit, is not some Microsoft marketing dis information genius trying to combat all the bad press they got and world of mouth.

So they make up Major lie to spread across all social media sites to try to hurt sony.