Video Game Chatter

[EZ22]

I think sales of the new Xbox will suffer greatly just because of the part about having to continually connect to the Internet alone unless PS4 does the same thing.

 

[Kbrown]

I was just about to ask when Ace was going to show up and flash his Sony forearm tattoos and be all, "lol This Xbox is gonna suck, BROS."

 

[Texas Ace]

I was just about to ask when Ace was going to show up and flash his Sony forearm tattoos and be all, "lol This Xbox is gonna suck, BROS."

I used to buy all the consoles, but that was when I felt they each offered unique experiences.

I bought an original Xbox and it sat there collecting dust so I didn't bother getting a 360. Xbox has exclusive titles, but outside of Gears of War, they don't appeal to me. On the flip side, Sony has a ton of Sony-only games that I play.

Uncharted, God of War, The Show, Socom, Heavy Rain, etc. For that reason, it would take a ton for me to jump ship to Microsoft.....namely, them somehow acquiring the rights to bring some of those games over to their system.

Nintendo offers something different from both, but my kid didn't even play his Wii and this Wii U thing has FAIL written all over it, so it looks like it'll just be PS4 for me on the next go-round.

 

[Carp]

When the new consoles came out I bought an Xbox 360...after a couple months I traded it in for the PS3. I just like it better. When I play I rarely do online, so alot of the preriphery stuff that hardcore gamers care about don't really apply to me. The rumble joystick and stuff like that is nice, but it is not a showstopper.

 

[Kbrown]

When I buy a new console, probably years from now, it will likely be a PS4. But the 360 has been just fine.

 

[Carp]

Put down the books and get to playing, you uppity sonuvabitch!

 

[Texas Ace]

From simply a hardware perspective, they appear to be the same except for RAM.

PS4 will have 8 gigs of GDDR5 RAM, and Xbox will have GDDR3 RAM.

I'm sure PC gamers like EZ and Schmitty will understand the difference there.

 

[Carp]

Maybe you can all jerk off on each other.

 

[Kbrown]

Yeah, one is gddr than the other.

 

[Texas Ace]

Maybe you can all jerk off on each other.

This comment was even funnier due to the goofy ass song playing in the background by one of my co-workers.

 

[Texas Ace]

Yeah, one is gddr than the other.

Being an IT guy, I'll be honest and admit that I don't know EXACTLY what that means. Only that PS4's RAM is newer and that it is a bit more powerful. According to IGN.com, this will allow developers to put a little more stuff on the screen in a game at once as well as provide better performance while performing background tasks.

 

[Texas Ace]

I'm probably the only one nerdy enough to read this whole article:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/05/22/xbox-one-microsofts-mixed-messages

But here are some of the excerpts that were most interesting:

The real tangle of obfuscation, though, has sprung up around crucial issues that were passed over in the conference: technical specifications, internet requirements, and pre-owned games. I don’t know enough about tech specs to find the holes in Microsoft’s information, but this is the Internet, and there are plenty of people who have.

On the subject of the console’s internet requirement, the information wasn’t vague so much as completely contradictory. Don Mattrick came out and said it wasn’t always-online – but then an FAQ turned up on the Xbox website turned up with the spectacularly conflicted phrasing “it does not have to be always connected, but Xbox One does require a connection to the Internet.”

"You do not require an always-on connection to be able to use Xbox One," said Xbox’s UK marketing director. "It is clearly designed to be connected to the Internet, and hopefully from what you've just seen you realize some of the benefits that brings. But if your Internet connection drops, you will still be able to play games, still be able to watch Blu-ray movies, and still be able to watch live TV.” But then it emerged that the console will still need to connect to go online at least once every 24 hours, according to another Microsoft exec Phil Harrison, and possibly more often – we still have no clear idea how this works.

There are two conclusions to be drawn from this: either Microsoft’s various executives don’t know what the deal is with the internet connection requirement, or they couldn’t get the message straight in time for yesterday, settling on vagueness instead of reassurance. Both would be massively uncharacteristic for a company as thoroughly marketing-trained as Microsoft. Either way, the fact that Mattrick and co spent the entire conference talking about other things suggests that they were rather hoping nobody would mention it – not an effective strategy when you’re trying to integrate something that’s clearly going to be unpopular.

Another unpopular and unclear issue yesterday was game-sharing and pre-owned sales, which was handled with the same total lack of clarity from Microsoft representatives. After a few hours of back and forth, of talk about sharing games with family but not with friends, of being able to take a game round to a mate’s house and play it but not leave it there, of mandatory hard-drive installs and purchases tied to and apparently verified through Xbox Live accounts, the company eventually settled on a message: “We have only confirmed that we designed Xbox One to enable our customers to trade in and resell games at retail. Beyond that, we have not confirmed any specific scenarios.” That's not good enough.

Surely the best way to approach these issues would have been to be upfront about them and be ready with reassurance about things like server infrastructure and ownership rights, not to purposefully ignore them and then say conflicting things when the press inevitably pushes you on the issue. This is exceptionally poor information management, and points to the broader lack of specifics that surround this whole reveal. We were shown plenty of vision, but no detail. Right now the Xbox One still feels amorphous, despite the fact that we've seen the box.

 

[Bob Roberts]

The Xbox One will also have Blast Processing AND Mode 7.

 

[Cotton]

Being an IT guy, I'll be honest and admit that I don't know EXACTLY what that means. Only that PS4's RAM is newer and that it is a bit more powerful. According to IGN.com, this will allow developers to put a little more stuff on the screen in a game at once as well as provide better performance while performing background tasks.

It's just a graphics-centric memory technology that basically disperses heat better than DDR2.

 

[Texas Ace]

It's just a graphics-centric memory technology that basically disperses heat better than DDR2.

You closet-tech sonfoabitch.

I would give you props, but I already assumed that it did a better job of dispersing heat being as an upgrade in RAM usually consists of this feature.

But, I'll give you a half prop just for impressing me.

 

[Cotton]

You closet-tech sonfoabitch.

I would give you props, but I already assumed that it did a better job of dispersing heat being as an upgrade in RAM usually consists of this feature.

But, I'll give you a half prop just for impressing me.

Nah, I'm no tech. I just work with a bunch of geeks.

 

[Texas Ace]

EA Sports says their games on the next-gen will be powered by the "Ignite" engine.

This is the first look at those games:

 

[Bob Roberts]

These 'next gen' graphics don't impress me in the least.

 

[EZ22]

Nah, I'm no tech. I just work with a bunch of geeks.

Riiiight.

Actually, because Google.

 

[BipolarFuk]

I imagine that all the next gen EA sports games will be stripped down versions of the current gen with spiffier graphics just like the bullshit they pulled last time.