Xbox One

[deoxys]

[Char]

nooo i was gonna post that

[Raves]

Stick a fork in it, Xbox's dOne.

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by Talon87

What happens if you want to play a game you own the disc to at a friend's house? You have to lug your console over there, even if he/she already owns the same console? (Maybe this can be worked around by allowing people to log in and out of XBox Live accounts and linking the game authentication to the Live accounts and not the machines? *shrug* You could say "You can only be logged in to one XBox One at a time with your account, but you're free to log into and out of machines in order to play games on friends' consoles.")

Nailed it.

Originally Posted by BBC

He added that gamers could bring their games to a friends' house to play without paying a fee - but only if the game's owner is signed in to the Xbox Live account with which it is registered.

Source

So yeah, Microsoft is basically saying "We like the Steam model. We want to move to that, please. " Which, given the success of Steam, should prove no problem for 90% of you. For the 10% of us that don't like the concept of digital-only distribution, though, this is a bummer as I imagine Nintendo and Sony may be quick to follow suit.

[deoxys]

The steam model works fine because it's ON A PC. If you own a laptop or buy another PC down the road, you can sign in and download all of your shit again. The whole idea of a console is ease of access. You pop your disc out of your tray and take it to a friends house and play it. If this is the future of consoles then I have no reason to even get one, especially when said console is an over glorified cable box whose biggest feature is voice commands.

Also, it just keeps getting worse.

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by deoxys

The steam model works fine because it's ON A PC. If you own a laptop or buy another PC down the road, you can sign in and download all of your shit again. The whole idea of a console is ease of access. You pop your disc out of your tray and take it to a friends house and play it. If this is the future of consoles then I have no reason to even get one, especially when said console is an over glorified cable box whose biggest feature is voice commands.

Also, it just keeps getting worse.

The problem I have with the "I'll just use a PC! " argument is your own answer: accessibility. In this case, though, we may be talking about two different kinds of accessibility, so I'll clarify. The accessibility I'm talking about is socioeconomic or marketplace accessibility. And to translate this still further ...

In order to play XBox 360-caliber games on my PC, I would need to upgrade almost the entire machine. My computer was built in July 2007 from store-bought parts, and even at the time it wasn't really a dedicated gaming rig. It had the right CPU for it -- an AMD Athlon 64 dual core processor clocked at around 2.20 GHz -- and pretty decent RAM for the day -- 2 GB on Windows XP, emphasis on the operating system and the (comparably) low resources it hogs up vs. Windows Vista or Windows 7 -- but the video card was only in the top 70% or so. A gaming PC it was not, not even in 2007. To give you some perspective, my system specs were good enough to let me install The Orange Box but were poor enough to prohibit me from installing Portal 2. Not Crysis 3, deo, but Portal 2. So let's talk. Assume I just want to play Portal 2. I'd probably only have to upgrade my graphics card and maybe my CPU. But that's already running me $300 minimum. Now say I want to play the latest, sickest games from 2013. And I want to play them at max visuals. You're talking a minimum of $2,000 for a brand-new rig and probably something more in the neighborhood of $3,000 or higher. Let's hurt my argument though, okay? Let's say I'm dead wrong, and let's say that the $800 Best Buy spyware-laden tower you can take home from the store today is good enough to run the very best games at their very highest settings. Say. This is STILL more expensive than me going out and just buying an XBox One (once it comes out). Or so we expect, anyway: it's doubtful that they'll launch it at a price higher than Sony's notorious $599, and even that's $200 cheaper than the cheapest of "high performance" Best Buy computers.

When you buy a gaming console, you're buying a gaming PC's beautiful and flawless experience but for way, way cheaper. As a consumer, you're saying with that purchase that you're willing to trade off a PC's other capabilities (like letting you write homework up in Microsoft Word or surf the Internet painlessly on your web browser of choice) in exchange for the holy grail of PC gaming, sweet graphics @ no hang-ups, for a mere fraction of the cost of a PC. Because the games were written specifically for a one-size-fits-all box, which is not the same story for PC games, console games are often capable of looking far prettier than their PC counterparts with far weaker, cheaper components. When was the last time you personally played a game on a PC in your own home that looked as gorgeous as Final Fantasy XIII? When was the last time that you personally played a game on a PC in your own home that looked as stunning as Uncharted 3? And if you tell me, "Why, just yesterday, Talon! Not everybody owns an ancient PC like you! ", then I'll ask you when was the last time you upgraded part or all of your PC and how much did it cost you? 'Cause as far as I know, no one is running FF13 on their PCs at PS3-level graphics unless they have a dedicated gaming rig that cost them over $2,000 to make and was built within the last few years. And that's why the constant comparisons between consoles and PCs in this XBox One conversation nerds are having is so flawed. Yes, a gaming PC built in 2013 is obviously superior to an XBox One or a PS4 if you ignore the costs and you focus strictly on performance; but if you do the reasonable thing and pay attention to the cost, the "Why buy an XBox One when I could just buy a PC? " argument completely crumbles. Sure, you can buy a PC! ... if you have the money. If you don't, then a gaming console can be your affordable ticket in to the world of luscious graphics gaming.

[Talon87]

PAR reports that the Kinect requirement we heard about earlier and Microsoft denied is in fact true. Wasn't a man fired over tweeting about this back in March or April?

In other news, fanboys appear to have already come up with the moniker for the XBox One which will be gleefully used by detractors for years to come: the "Xbone", which I read (and I assume is meant to be read) as "Ex Bone", as in, "Microsoft is trying to Xbone you with this console." Oh boy. ^^; And I thought Phony and Micro$oft were bad ...

[Loki]

Gonna argue the price of a PC with the price of a console in several ways.

A) Consoles consistently rise in price by large leaps.

XBox sold for $299 on launch. There was only one model. Cheaper than even low priced PCs at the time.

360, the launch price in 2005 for their high quality unit was $399. Not horrific. This is right around the price of a very low budget gaming PC. It easily ran better than PCs at those price ranges.

But if we look at the PS3's launch price in 2006 for their high quality unit was $599. This is a big leap up in price as this pretty much breaks into a lower mid-range budget of gaming PCs. While it's possibly prettier than the average PC of this exact price, it wasn't exactly a deal. Add in the fact that at launch, it totally sucked. (Installing games taking forever, extremely long load times, poor launch titles)

A $550ish low-budget PC can run Battlefield 3 at medium graphics at 1920x1080 or Skyrim at high end graphics and still maintain good frames per second (30+). That's arguably as good as what the PS3 or XBox360 are basically running at.

If this trend continues, consoles will break the $1k price range or get really close and will no longer be a better value than a similarly priced gaming PC.

B) Consoles are limited by lower television resolution.

Computer monitors have long exceeded what television resolutions have been putting out for quite a few years. When we say the PS3 graphics look great, we have to remember it's at 1080. 1080 is not that high for most modern PCs. Even low budget PCs can run at 1080 easily as stated above.

C) Advantages of the Console vs. the PC are slowly getting phased out.

One of the big reasons I play games on console was because I felt it wasn't possible to hack your console. How wrong I was! In fact, its worse on a console than on PC because on the PC, various games hoping to stop hacks will put a system to stop hacking. i.e. in-game banning.

Consoles have no such protection. Your only chance of stopping someone who is hacking on XBox Live is that you report him and hope someone on Microsoft's end will shut down his account. Don't know what they do on PSN. This basically allows someone to hack in and ruin the gaming experience for everyone else if they want to. Hell, Borderlands 2 is illegal to mod on 360, yet there are people on Youtube showing off their modded games and have received no punishment.

D) No fan-made content for consoles.

The PC version of almost any game can have their playlife expended greatly by fan made content. Shooters get fan made maps. RPGs get fan made dungeons or skin mods, or whatever (the list is long for RPGs).

Fans can also help release Unofficial patches to fix glitches and errors not fixed by the developers.

All for free generally.

None of this is available for console users. You have to hope for DLC or a patch or something from the developer or you're done. In addition, free DLC on PC can sometimes cost money for consoles because of various XBL or PSN fees.

[Amras.MG]

Digital distribution models don't work for physical media, especially if you have a nasty habit of not supporting backwards compatibility, like the Xbox Juan is refusing to do. If consoles were like PCs, all XBLA games would be playable on the new Xbox, but they aren't. That's just one reason for why the model doesn't work.

[Talon87]

But if we look at the PS3's launch price in 2006 for their high quality unit was $599. This is a big leap up in price as this pretty much breaks into a lower mid-range budget of gaming PCs. While it's possibly prettier than the average PC of this exact price, it wasn't exactly a deal. Add in the fact that at launch, it totally sucked. (Installing games taking forever, extremely long load times, poor launch titles)

If you honestly believe this, then we're going to have to agree to disagree. I can't believe you believe that a "lower mid-range gaming PC" cost only $600 in 2006. I built my PC on a budget of around $1,600, from scratch, with help of IRL dami types, with no added cost from operating system. It is not a gaming PC.

Here, let's talk facts. Took this very photo less than an hour ago when I visited the local Best Buy. Yes, Best Buy's prices are higher than Fry's or TigerDirect's or whomever's. No, they're not 200%+ the competition's prices, so yes, we can use them as a decent yardstick to see how realistic people are being:

Spoiler: show

That first one is rated mostly 5 stars on Amazon, who's selling it for only $50 less. The card is also one year old this August. $300 to $350 ... for one component of your DIY gaming PC ... that's quite literally last year's technology. That's how prohibitively expensive it is to make a good gaming PC. The graphics card alone will run you the cost of an XBox! Never mind:

• you need an operating system that runs it
• you need RAM
• you need a CPU
• you need a PSU
• you need fans and a cooling case
• you need a motherboard

You're easily talking $300 for a good PSU and tower (cost combined). You're easily talking several hundred dollars apiece for good RAM, a good CPU, and a good motherboard. Never mind stuff that's so good, that's so cutting edge, that you'll still be playing the newest games on it four years from now! >_>

There is much to take issue with in any claims that "You, too, can have a gaming PC that rivals the PS3 in looks for just $500!" The way your computer allocates resources and the way a PS3 allocates resources are completely different. A PS3 wrests every last ounce of juice out of its components and places them towards the video game. Your PC, by contrast, devotes most of its resources to the operating system and a slew of background processes. XBox quad core CPU clocked at 3.0 GHz and PC quad core CPU clocked at 3.0 GHz mean fundamentally different things for how well a video game will be processed. 8 GB of RAM on an XBox One and 8 GB on a PC running Windows 7 mean different things for how much memory will be freely available to the game at all times.

I've said it once, I'll now say it again: if you can show me a computer that costs (retail) $599, in today's money and parts, that can run Final Fantasy XIII and look just as good as on the PS3, fine. And if you can find me a PC that cost $599 in 2006 that is still around and can do it, I'll eat my hat. The fact (I'm pretty damn sure) is, you won't be able to find me such a one. And that's because $599 of liquid gaming (the PS3) and $599 of computer are two very different things.

[deoxys]

My view here is basically the same thing MG said, but he simplified it for me. Steam is digitally distributed content. The same sort of expectations and limitations that digital content has should *not* be applied to physical media. Certainly this is how a lot of PC games used to be and still are to this day, but going to a friends house to play a PC game or lending your friend a PC game just... that doesn't make any sense. I guess I'm looking at this thing in a historical and traditional sense and think that Microsoft breaking that tradition is a very worrying move for console gaming. The two have always been separate, and seeing the PC model applied to a console just makes it null and void, especially since the console has always been a very social machine while the PC has not (save for online multiplayer).

[Talon87]

going to a friends house to play a PC game or lending your friend a PC game just... that doesn't make any sense

... what?

1992-94: would go to friend 1's house and play Rebel Assault 1 on his dad's Macintosh
1997: friend 2 lent out his floppies for Carmen Sandiego
1998: would go to friend 1's house and play Mysteries of the Sith on his dad's computer
1999: would go to friend 3's house and play Half Life: Counter-Strike on their family computer

[Loki]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130828

$129.99 today. If you look at this chart you see the overall performance of the product is well within tolerance of most games.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html

This shows the price per performance of each video card still on the market. The 660Ti has a lower price per performance than the low budget standard of the Radeon HD 7850, which is priced at $180 on average.

Just because that card is high priced and exceedingly good, doesn't mean you need it to be at that level to match or beat the PS3/360. In addition, the 660Ti is the higher quality unit of the GeForce's series. The non-Ti version is $100 cheaper is still a comparable overall.

Also, the only components which are expensive are:
1) Video Card - $180 average, higher if you want but still capable of getting high quality at this price point.
2) Processor - $100, roughly the price point where it's good.
3) Motherboard - >$100, honestly I've never paid more than $100 unless it was some crazy top end mobo.

Everything else is also less then $100. 8GB of RAM is like $60, Power Supplies are usually ~$50 but people tend to buy too large a unit not knowing what size to get. The only thing left is Hard Drive (which is dropping but also definitely considerably larger than those sold on consoles) at like $100 for 1TB (cheaper for less obviously), and Optic Drives which are practically free, and case which is like $50 to $80.

Oh hell, just go to GamerNexus and see what a budget build goes for.

[deoxys]

Originally Posted by Talon87

... what?

1992-94: would go to friend 1's house and play Rebel Assault 1 on his dad's Macintosh
1997: friend 2 lent out his floppies for Carmen Sandiego
1998: would go to friend 1's house and play Mysteries of the Sith on his dad's computer
1999: would go to friend 3's house and play Half Life: Counter-Strike on their family computer

Well of course, I worded that completely wrong, I really should have known better than to say it like that. I still go to friends houses and play League with them like a mini-LAN party, but what I'm getting at is that consoles have always had the extra accessibility of being social due to not having limitations on physical games. It would be like lending a friend a CD you just bought and them putting it in the CD player only to say "THIS DISC ONLY WORKS IN ONE CD PLAYER, PLEASE PLACE IN THE ORIGINAL CD PLAYER IT WAS FIRST PLAYED ON". It's ridiculous. Getting rid of this is like shooting yourself in the foot on purpose, especially after Sony already said they would have no such limitation on the PS4.

Basically, the Steam model (which by the way often sells games at INSANELY cheap prices) really cannot be compared to a console's model, especially with physical media. It just doesn't make any sense. At all.

[Talon87]

Price per performance is misleading. If one household of five makes $50,000 per head and another household of one makes $150,000 per head, which household has more money? Obviously the one with the $250,000 -- even though their "price per performance" suggests otherwise. If a $300 card performs 17/20 and a $180 card performs 14/20, sure you can say the $180 is "better performance per dollar spent", but that's not the same as saying "it performed best" or even "it performed well enough to run these games at max graphics."

Your Newegg citation is misleading. Newegg is not selling the 660 Ti for $129. They're selling it for $289, just $11 cheaper than Amazon. You've linked to the 650. But the 650 isn't going to get you maxed out graphics on games from the past two years. Again, just because it has a favorable performance-to-cost ratio doesn't tell us shit about absolute performance without considering the price. If we do rough math and use your site:

• performance of GTX 660 Ti = 4,662
• performance of GTX 650 = 1,825
• performance of GeForce 9800 = 714

Cost x (Performance / Cost) = Performance. As we see, you get what you pay for. The 660 Ti is worth three 650s performance-wise. If you want to play FarCry 3 or Tomb Raider at max graphics, you're going to not just want the 660 Ti but need something better than the 650.

You still haven't shown me a $600 PC running FF13 as smoothly and gorgeously as a PS3 though.

[Princess Ana]

Originally Posted by Talon87

You still haven't shown me a $600 PC running FF13 as smoothly and gorgeously as a PS3 though.

Protip: FF13 was not released for the PC. Henceforth, it is the capabilities of an emulator that are the deciding factor.

Don't make a statement that has no sound fact behind it.

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by blazeVA

Protip: FF13 was not released for the PC. Henceforth, it is the capabilities of an emulator that are the deciding factor.

Don't make a statement that has no sound fact behind it.

Protip: never say "Protip" again. It makes you sound like a pretentious asshat, and DESTROYS your credibility when you are wrong -- as you partly are here. (Logical fallacy to say "Not made for PC, therefore not a fair comparison." If a console game is kicking your ass, PC, then there's something very wrong with your "ALWAYS DA GREATEST!" argument.)

[Princess Ana]

Originally Posted by Talon87

Protip: never say "Protip" again. It makes you sound like a pretentious asshat, and DESTROYS your credibility when you are wrong -- as you partly are here. (Logical fallacy to say "Not made for PC, therefore not a fair comparison." If a console game is kicking your ass, PC, then there's something very wrong with your "ALWAYS DA GREATEST!" argument.)

But that isn't right either. Do you have proof that FFXIII wasn't released for the PC because of processing needs? If you do, I would like to see it.

In this case, the capabilities of an emulator are the ones in question. Not the computer's specs(though those help). A better comparison would be a game like Bioshock or something.

[deoxys]

@Blaze Well the point he was trying to making didn't use a good example, but I understand it. Also, you kind of are coming off as a bit of an ass.

As someone who owned both a PS3 and has a PC that was modified to play games at a decent graphical level, I only invested an additional ~$230 into the $400 PC I bought and I can tell you from experience that a lot of the games I've played on here run smoother than they do/would on PS3, no question. Case in point, Arkham City. It looked utterly fantastic compared to the console versions and even ran at a faster framerate. And yes, Bioshock Infinite, too, I suppose, though I haven't actually seen that one played on a console in person, just through youtube video comparisons to what I played on my PC. It looked very muddied and washed up compared to what I played, though, even in full 1080p.

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by blazeVA

But that isn't right either. Do you have proof that FFXIII wasn't released for the PC because of processing needs? If you do, I would like to see it.

In this case, the capabilities of an emulator are the ones in question. Not the computer's specs(though those help). A better comparison would be a game like Bioshock or something.

Let me put it to you very simply:

PS3:

• seven years old
• $599
• plays Tomb Raider (2013) gorgeously

PC:

• one year old
• $2,400
• plays Tomb Raider gorgeously

Loki's Shitbox Example:

• one year old
• $599
• can it even play Tomb Raider at half of maximum?

2006's PS3 stands shoulder-to-shoulder with 2013's very best PCs. That. SAYS SOMETHING.

[deoxys]

Originally Posted by Talon87

Let me put it to you very simply:

PS3:

• seven years old
• $599
• plays Tomb Raider (2013) gorgeously

PC:

• one year old
• $2,400
• plays Tomb Raider gorgeously

Loki's Shitbox Example:

• one year old
• $599
• can it even play Tomb Raider at half of maximum?

2006's PS3 stands shoulder-to-shoulder with 2013's very best PCs. That. SAYS SOMETHING.

Hold up. This is very easily explained.

The money invested into games that look really nice on older consoles as well as newer PCs is invested by the big companies that have it, and it is usually ported to PC following development with little to no graphical improvements. The smaller independent companies that make PC exclusive games don't have the money or means to develop a game that would graphically blow your mind like a large publisher/dev could if they were to invest in a PC only title (which just isn't viable in this market).

IF PCs could, which they can, they would be playing games right now with this kind of capability. That is all real time, not pre-rendered. But they can't, because PC games are limited to what console games can do, which are technological decades behind where PC gaming should be today.

And I have a feeling I know exactly how you're going to reply to this,

Talon: Right, they should be able to but the fact is they don't, therefore it's not viable to buy a $2,400 gaming PC when you could just buy a PS3 for slightly worse graphics!

or something. lol.

[Loki]

I've already used comparisons for the cards I named with games for both systems. i.e. Battlefield 3 and Skyrim. They run those games at roughly equivalent or only marginally weaker than their 360 or PS3 versions.

The PS3 basically runs the Geforce 7800GTX which is in fact, weaker than the non-Ti version of Geforce 660 as well as the Radeon HD 7850.

Also, like I've said, High Resolution for PC is higher than the High Resolution on a PS3 simply because the TV can't handle a higher resolution.

[Talon87]

Discussing the matter with my IRL damis, they weigh in that PC pricing isn't the same now like it was back in 2007 when we built my PC, and offered this article as an example of how one can make an entry-level gaming PC from scratch for only $600. It won't carry you very far into the future, they note, but it'd be enough to play any games currently on the market minus the 1% of games designed expressly to break the backs of all but the sturdiest gaming rigs.

So ... if they say I'm wrong, then I guess I'm wrong. Still though. We've all dodged the major elephant in the room regarding your claims that you've no reasons to buy an XBox One, an elephant so persistent he shows up in the Nintendo 3DS room too, and that is ...

... won't you "have to" buy one if some of your must-have franchises are Microsoft exclusives?

For Deo, I'm looking at the Halo project of 343's and the non-Halo project of Bungie's both, given that he's such a huge Halo fan.

For Loki, I'm wondering "Won't you have to buy either a PS4 or an XBox One?" if he wants to play most arcade fighters like MvC or Street Fighter. (Then again, Loki has gone through a messy divorce with Capcom, so ... *sigh*)

For others of you, I'm wondering what happens if/when Microsoft releases the next Mass Effect or the next BioShock and we're in that window of time (like we were once upon a time with those two franchises) where the game is only on Xbox. Will you wait patiently and cross your fingers that a PC release will be forthcoming? Or will you be unable to wait, given all the rave reviews from friends and the gaming press, and splurge on an XBox One so that you too can be part of the next Mass Effect phenomenon?

[deoxys]

I simply can't bring myself to justify a purchase of Xbox One to play Halo 5. And it's going to be very hard to do.

[Lady Kuno]

The best thing about my PC is that I can play all my old games, windows 95 until now. Whereas the xbox1 won't be able to play any 360 games I have now or buy until the xbox1 comes out.

I think the ps4 and xbox1 are both pieces of shit for lacking backwards compatibility.