The Glade 4.0

Personally, the biggest thing selling point for me so far is the home page/profile recognition. I don't watch sports. I don't do cable/satellite tv. I don't listen to my music in the area where I play console games.

But I do hate the time it takes to power-on the device as well as change profiles, since I have a hardcore gamer wife. Saying "Xbox on" and then it seeing my gorgeous mug and knowing to immediately take me to my profile/home page is by far the best thing I've seen any console do.

The only thing that would make it cooler would be if I could modify the command words. Much like Wesley Snipes' "Illuminate" in Demolition Man. Except I'd change "Xbox On" to be Power On!

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... out-of-Ten

What this guys says.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Darkroland:

Listening to System-On-A-Chip claims from AMD is generally a bad idea; the original AM2 socket architecture was developed to turn desktop PCs into modular SOCs. It failed disastrously and AMD never got it to work. More to the point, ATI's best patents became Nintendo's patents, not AMDs. The Flipper (of GameCube says) still represents one of the largest leaps forward in GPU technology in a long time; and those patents went to the GameCube owner, not AMD. The concerns over the SOC(s) driving the PS4 and the XBox One are legit: the hardware won't be more powerful than current PC hardware. In fact, the fallacy that consoles have more powerful hardware than gaming PCs are the start of their life cycle has always been a fallacy. Fixed hardware platforms allow you to do things you cannot when publishing games for a non-uniform platform (PC). It's why people spend so much time working on Commodore 64s in this day and age. They keep pushing 30 year old technology to do things people said were impossible in 1980s (C-Base functionality for example; actual sound processing for another).

The CELL should have ended all discussion about more cores being better. It didn't. The Jaguar is an 8 core embedded solution, and as such, to quote ZDNet:

The hardware is designed to compete with Intel's light business class of hardware. So, tell me, why shouldn't I be concerned with the relative power of the console when they're putting it up against PCs that have lower visual fidelity than the 360?

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I agree, I'm definitely skeptical of the system for not having a Discrete GPU. Also, I hadn't read the quote about it being competitive with the intel 4000, which basically means "It's not competitive with a gaming PC by any stretch of the imagination." While I feel like with good design, and if there is minimal OS overhead (much less than a PC), consoles can do more with less. However, after seeing the UI/OS they have planned for Xbox One, I don't think that's going to be the case.

How many of you guys actually buy used games still? I'm just curious. Maybe I'm out of the loop these days, but last I checked used games were only slightly cheaper than new copies and generally not worth the hassle. Maybe it's because I mostly game on Steam these days, but I don't see the big deal with getting rid of the used game market (if those rumors are even accurate).

I think everyone can benefit from a market more like Steam, where you can purchase and download all games online and they're tied to your account instead of a disk. This is just conjecture on my part, but it seems to me that increasing the availability and ease of purchasing games drives prices down (see: Steam, Android and iOS markets). I don't care about not being able to sell and buy used games if it means that prices for new games go down.

On the other hand, consoles are becoming more and more like gaming PCs and they need to have something to distinguish them from PC gaming. Being able to take your games over to your friend's house, pop them in a console, and immediately start playing is something you cannot do with PC gaming.

I still think a lot of the new features on the Xbox One look cool. If they get rid of the stupid monthly fee being required for basic functionality.

As for all this debate on how powerful they are, I think it's a silly thing to complain about unless you're a developer creating games for the consoles. Why should we as consumers care how powerful the chipset is? The games will either look good and run smoothly or they won't. I have a hard time believing that Microsoft, with all the money they have invested in the console market, is going to make a console that performs worse than a mid-range computer without a dedicated graphics card, or a cell phone. If you want to argue that, great, go ahead and short their stock. You'll probably make some good money. Personally, I'm going to wait until they are actually released, or at least until we have actual gameplay footage before judging.

Hrmmmm...

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/30574/ps4-lays-the-graphical-smackdown-on-the-xbox-one-has-50-more-gpu-power/index.html/index.html

How are they benchmarking Sony hardware no one has? When I mention media bias towards Sony, this is precisely the kind of thing I'm pointing out. That said, it doesn't surprise me that Microsoft would go for the lower consumption variant with the eSRAM added by their request over the higher power consumption APU that Sony chose. All that really confirms is that our next console will be this generation's ultrabooks.

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The start of the article:


So basically they're theorycrafting.

Why does that article say Microsoft is running a proprietary 8 core processor? I thought it was the same as the PS4?

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They're based on the same chip but they're not exactly the same.

That's actually an improvement for IGN, but the PS4 is still privileged over the other two consoles (about which we have more information) in the arrangement.

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How used games sales will (supposedly) work...

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/publishe ... il/0116137

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Microsoft is predicting "potentially upwards of a billion" Xbone sales.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/microsof ... es/0116140

Um, OK. Do you not have to take a drug test to work at Microsoft?

Interesting. That model ignores paying the customer for their used game. If Gamestop only gets 10% the customer would get what from Gamestop 1-2% max?

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You presume Gamestop pays people for their used games. /snark

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Holy shitsnacks!

/facepalm

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Holy shitsnacks!

18 days...

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I don't really buy used games, but I do sell them when I make a mistake. Anyone want a copy of Witcher 2?

Until people get boxes in their sweaty hands and void warranties, we don't really know all the details about the systems. Unless they released white papers?

I don't know who you talked to that thought consoles have greater gfx capacity upon release, Khross, but you should probably stop talking to them. That's the dumbest thing I've read this morning. Consoles do not replicate a PC. That's not the reason I use the 360. I may focus on PC gaming this gen, but I'm in the wait and see camp.

The problem is (if you watched the link I posted) the Xboxes are trying to replicate something that's unnecessary. Smart TVs do all the things they are trying to do better and for free.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I have a smart TV and that's not really true. The X1 is going to solve something that I find annoying any time I turn on a gaming console - switching inputs.

My TV isn't smart. But I'm pretty sure I won't be able to tell it "smart tv, watch ESPN" and have it go to ESPN. And then when my seahawks game is over, I say Xbox, game, and I go back to pwning face in Halo 5.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Harmony remote ftw.

There are TVs that do do (/snerk Doodoo) xbox stuff, and those TVs will become more and more common and the 360 will not be needed for anything but gaming. You also have to pay for the xbox service, but you can just connect these TVs to the internet and have access to Hulu, Netflix, and etc. Microsoft needs to focus on the gaming part, they're setting themselves up to lose this gen imo.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Interesting argument Wwen, food for thought surely.

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