Be Excellent To Each Other

Or be rammed off the road by Dimrill driving an absurdly pimped Morgan.

Needs to come out, have the price fall and for the dust to settle to see what has the best titles + what you lot get. I got the 360 specifically for Bezzie action. You'll note I actually play few games on it other than the ones we mainly play. Last year has been nearly all Forza 4 and Halo last version and 4.

For general other gaming I have enough consoles and computers to keep me amused forever. I feel no obligation to buy the latest Xbox game unless I really am going to enjoy it.

I did get the last GTA, but like so many modern console games it was a soulless grind.

[edit] I still can't believe people are holding off Halo 4 now it has dropped in price. Forget the campaign, the deathmatches are some of the best we've had. As a team we're also now getting fairly good when there is a few of us. That game of Oddball the other week where we won in the minimum time possible was awesome.

I don't think I'll be getting the PS4 or 720 at launch. Like Dimrill says, expensive, they have Mug Tax for a while and the games are usually shonky apart from the 1 or 2 being developed by the manufacturer alongside the console. Takes a good 6 months for the other developers to find their feet.

And what Chinny said.

You can buy me them for my birthday, big 4-0 for me this year so it's ok for you to spend a lot. I don't mind waiting if they aren't out by then.

I bought the Wii at launch because I thought £180 was a fair price but I wouldn't have done that with the 360 or PS3 and I won't be doing that with the next generation of stuff either.

I picked up another Neo Geo Pocket Color on Ebay yesterday and I'm more excited about that arriving than anything new.

If the Xbox 720 doesn't have Havok then it's PS4 all the way for me.

Having said that the 720 doesn't exactly sound like it's going to be anything other than a trojan horse for a load of other Microsoft shit pretending to be a console so I might just end up not bothering, pimping out a PC and then never fucking shutting up about it ever.

Or I must just think at 43 that I should be spending my time more productively grouting and tending to the garden.

Whatever happens I certainly won't be buying all three consoles at some point like I did this generation. Like a fucking idiot.

You'll be too old for computer games by then.

I'm getting you this:

One thing that concerns me is Microsofts obsession with Kinect. I don't want to flap my arms around when playing a game.

I could see the 720 coming bundled with Kinect as standard and that it has to be plugged in for the system to boot.

I'm pretty sure I will be buying both proper consoles (fuck the Wii-U obviously) at some point for the same reason I did this time round: being able to play all the games. I'm happy to buy one of them relatively early then pick up the second one when it reaches a reasonable price at which point I can not only play all platform exclusives but also take advantage of price drops and good deals on cross-platform stuff. The only thing to be decided is which company gets my money in the first instance. All things being equal it would be MS because I prefer their control pad and achievements vs trophies and stuff like that. However there's some horrible (and horribly believable) rumours floating around about them needlessly locking even more stuff behind the Gold paywall (e.g. Bluray playback) and if that comes to pass then Sony win this time.

I doubt the 720 has Havok. I heard Playstations got it.

PS4 better come with a fecking headset and mic in the pack this time round.

Will either have the Filmation engine? The Spectrum has had it since 1982 so these consoles will be RUBBISH if they don't have it.

PS3 has gone from strength to strength recently, whereas I am now loath to switch on the Xbox what with its spinning discs and shitty ad-infested interface. PS+ is an incredible bargain if, like me, you've gotten a bit behind on your gaming, compared to which Xbox Gold feels like paying Microsoft an annual fee for letting the console do what it's supposed to.

Microsoft will have to bring on some pretty spectaclar exclusives to have me even remotely interested.

Whoa, really? Fuck that then.

Also this. The price isn't such a worry, but no point getting something that will gather dust. *glares at wii*

You want games? Look at the games!

http://m.computerandvideogames.com/3926 ... -trailers/

I've only watched the Killzone one so far but, fuck me, it looks deathly boring and nothing like the outstanding first entry. It needs more baddies with glowing eyes up in your space than CoD's endless waves of baddies in the distant so small that you can't tell what they are. I want a robot with glowing eyes to come up to me and fuck me in my face holes, dammit. Oh, Killzone? Yeah, looks shit.

Never saw the appeal of the Wii. Like every Nintendo console ever, there's a couple of titles that are perfection, and the rest is of no interest whatsoever.

Think I can safely say I'll never own another Nintendo console after the DS.

Answered your own question there.

Wasnt killzone 1 pap, 2 surprisingly good and 3 pap?

only played 2. Which was surprisingly good.

You can entirely simulate that game by drinking heavily and then playing Halo while swaying around the room pissed.

Just a rumour.

Might as well say the console will cost 600 quid and will come with 30 things in the box.

Bayonetta 2 is on the fucking Wii-U...

Two was good, but one had the most menacing baddies that never took their helmets off and got right up in your face. Lots of CQC and heavy thumping weapons.

Two's multiplayer was good, I played it loads. but they never quite sorted out how many bullets should take someone down. It needed CoD refinement in that regard. Three is one of the worse games ever made and they ruined the ace multiplayer.

They did say that Platinum are working on a PS4 game. Probably not exclusive, mind.

Someone on Twitter has just said that the lack of backwards compatibility sure makes the PS+ perks look a lot less generous.

Also.. I think in the next generation, I may break the habit of a lifetime and only get the one console. I have a PS3 but I can count on one hand the amount of games I've played on it. A complete waste of money.

Well at least that settles the PCs vs Consoles war then.

The only choice next generation is what sort of box you want your PC to come in.

You probably imagine you are funny.

Every component in the PS4 is mainstream mid-range PC bits and pieces, nothing like the exotic custom hardware that Sony used for the PS3, PS2 and PS1.

You could argue the 360 was already just a PC stuffed into a small box, (it mainly was), and the 720 is even more so, now that we know the specs.

Yes there will be the performance advantages of a fixed architecture on the consoles, but looking at the specs, even out of the starting gates I don't see them offering any kind of leap over what's been commonplace on the PC for a couple of years or more - they just don't have the raw power.

Of course they'll still be a nice simple box under the telly with a convenient controller - but you can forget about them pushing gaming forward as the previous generations of consoles did.

It's a fair point actually, badly put as usual, but if the price of a PS4 is less than the equivalent PC, why would you buy the PS4? there may be exclusive games, but if this generation has shown anything the good ones are few and far between (and will probably be hacked to run on a PC anyway).

To get girls.

Sorry yes I did put that badly but the point stands, what is the USP of the consoles going to be next generation?

Looking back....

<< You can go back further than this of course, Megadrive and SNES and NES and Master System and so on, but they're more of the same, arcadey consoley easy-to-use experiences were the domain of the game console, and computers were a fucking nightmare. >>

PS1/Saturn era - The PC had absolutely nothing to compare with the likes of Ridge Racer on the PS1, or Sega Rally on the Saturn. Does anyone remember what arcadey/consoley games were like on the PC back then? They were FUCKING AWFUL, if you could even get the bastard things running at all.

If you were a serious gamer at this time, you had one of these consoles, or most likely, both of them. (Mine are still in a box downstairs.)

ALSO NOTE - Some very clever custom hardware that delivered incredible performance out of a tiny box at a time when PCs were hideous, huge, unreliable, temperamental nightmares for playing games on.

PS2/Dreamcast/XBox era - More of the same really. The Dreamcast delivered 'arcade in a little box' and the PS2 delivered the likes of GTA3, the XBox was a bit of a dark horse but there was still awesome stuff like the best versions of the Burnout games, and of course you could chip them.

Again, if you were a gamer, you had one or two or all three of these, the PC was slowly starting to catch up in a lot of ways, but nothing could match the console experience overall. (My PS2 and Dreamcast are still in a box downstairs, my chipped XBox still sees reasonably regular use as a MAMEOX machine and is still connected to the big telly.)

ALSO NOTE - Some very clever custom hardware that delivered incredible performance out of a tiny box at a time when PCs were slightly less hideous, huge, unreliable, temperamental nightmares for playing games on. Better than they were, but still a bit of a pain in the fucking arse overall.

(And I'm not forgetting the Nintendo consoles, but IMO they've always been about the Nintendo exclusives and nothing else, but maybe that's just me.)

360/PS3 era - Out of the gates these consoles got the drop on the PC, personally speaking I ended up with two 360s, an early 20GB JET TURBINE Xenos model and then a later Jasper chipset model. Games like Ridge Racer 6 weren't available on the PC, even though PCs were mostly capable of running them. Plus of course there was the whole XBLA thing going on, and friends lists, and achievements, and a really cohesive connected online experience - and at the time the 360's blade interface was a nice, simple, intuitive design for a games machine.

The PC had Steam and it was mostly OK but nothing like the experience it is today. As before, if you wanted your games to be of the highest standard and conveniently available, you had a 360 or a PS3.

ALSO NOTE - I'd say the PC not only hit parity with the consoles this generation, but then beat them at their own game, certainly in terms of game experience, and mostly in terms of ease of use as well. YMMV on that one, though.

Next-gen - Seriously, what's the point? We know for a fact that the PS4 and 720 will be mid-range PCs stuffed into little boxes, you'll get your Sony or Microsoft 'operating system', and you'll get more of what a lot of folks hated this generation, forced updates to the consoles, forced updates to games, advertising, DLC, increasingly internet-connected requirement, cracking down on pre-owned and so on.

You could very much argue that a Windows based PC is already a lot more open and less fucked with than the 360's dashboard, which bombards you with advertisements and forced updates that move everything around whether you like it or not.

On top of that, the hardware of the next-gen consoles is going to become obsolete sooner rather than later, but unlike a PC that you can easily and cheaply upgrade as time goes by, the consoles are going to be stuck with a fixed architecture, something that really made itself felt with the 360 and PS3 as it became increasingly apparent that they weren't up to the job of running what was being asked of them. (And I'd say it's a safe bet there'll be laptops inside a couple of years that roughly match the spec of the PS4 and 720.)

The other wildcard here of course is the Steambox, which really could change everything and make both the next-gen consoles look a bit daft, but it remains to be seen on that one.

The fact here, and it is a fact, is that hardware for the next-gen is going to be completely homogenised - it's all mainstream PC stuff, CPU, GPU, RAM - the works.

All you're really going to be choosing is what you want the box to look like and what 'operating system' you want to run, with games development (certainly for the 'big stuff') having never been more expensive, very few developers are going to want to go down the exclusive route - so it's a safe bet that 95% of the big titles will come out across all the platforms.

That's all I'm saying, there are no 'games consoles' any more in the traditional sense, just PCs in little boxes.

Fucking hell!

Have you SEEN Windows 8?

I have it installed on this Mac as a VM. The fucking thing thinks its a tablet! Had to install a hack just to make it boot straight to a desktop, and another hack to give me a start button.

During the next gen of consoles there is likely to be 2 more Windows releases. If Windows 8 is this fucked, just imagine how loony tunes Windows 10 will be. It'll probably require you to shit on a glass coffee table just to login!

There's no "games consoles" anymore because there'll be "Multimedia Hubs". That play games occassionally.

Not really. Games are still the main selling point I think. People aren't going to buy an Xbox primarily for watching films etc on when things half the size and a quarter of the price can do that instead, that's if their telly doesn't do most of it already even without anything else plugged in to it.

Yes, which is why I won't be letting it within a million miles of any PC or laptop in the house.

Windows 7 has mainstream support until 2015 and extended support until 2020, therefore it is not something I'm concerned about.

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/ ... 5&c2=14019

So what about the people who buy new PC's to play games on? You may have noticed but Windows 7 is already getting hard to find on new kit.

In fact even if you buy a naked OS as I did last week, 8 is significantly cheaper than 7 and I expect Microsoft will also be giving these discounts to the likes of Dell.

But this is absolutely my point Ian!

Microsoft and Sony can force you to update your console whether you want to or not, to completely change the look and feel of it and even what it's basically for. The last time my 360 updated itself I had trouble fucking finding my XBLA collection, and the dashboard had rearranged itself to bombard me with a pile of advertising and social media shite and movie streaming services and all manner of other shit that I absolutely did not want to be there - and I was like, 'What the fuck? This is my games console!'

You know how often my PC pulls that kind of shit on me? Never.

You know how often Steam has decided to completely decided to rewrite what it's for in ten years? Never.

When games consoles stop being about the games, I start to wonder why I would want to own a games console. As markg very correctly points out, there are far better, and cheaper, and simpler solutions to the media side of things. A mate of mine recently got one of those new Samsung smart tellies that has a computer built into the back of it and what is effectively a Kinect built into the front of it, along with full wireless internet access (or wired if you prefer).

It does all this shit already, and it's just a telly, why add a console into the mix when your telly can do Facebook and the internet and Netflix and so on?

Sure that's a problem, but Windows 8 will bed down in time, the same as Vista did. What I suspect will happen is Windows 9 will be along relatively quickly to correct the mistakes of Windows 8, same as 7 did for Vista. I have a strong suspicion that MS will either patch into Windows 8, or re-introduce with Windows 9, a 'classic desktop' mode and quietly drop the 'pseudo-touch' requirement.

But a key difference here is that Windows can't be 'broken' against your will the same as the consoles can (I'm sure I remember you having a right old rant about a 360 dashboard update Chinny), yes Windows will update and patch itself, but it'll never, ever, look completely fucking different one day after applying some updates and start bombarding you with adverts.

The Windows situation isn't perfect, sure, but are you really telling me it's better than where the 360 has ended up?

It's got lizards in it.

So yeah... About that PS4.

But seriously old chap, what's there to say about it?

We know the specs, we have no idea what it's going to look like yet, we know what the controller looks like, and we know that it'll host pretty much all the games of the next generation. Same as the 720, same as the PC, same as the Steambox, and the Wii-U might have most of it as well.

That's it, basically.

The next-gen is about choosing your faceplate, because the games are all going to be the same.

roffle it even uses Havok. You couldn't make this shit up !

Except, of course, that the PS3 had shiteloads of exclusives because the Japanese care for neither the Xbox nor PC (See, for instance, Demons souls). I see no reason for this to be any different going forward.

When I'm not using my MAC for WORK I like a CONSOLE to PLAY GAMES on with NO FUCKING ABOUT.

Anything else just causes havoc.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Dust. Wind.
dude.

Woah.