Be Excellent To Each Other

I was blind, and then I watched Grim...'s TV, and I saw.

You need to be spending triple that price to get something remotely workable.

I'd agree with this purely because I don't trust most publishers to make anything but stupid, greedy, short-sighted decisions*. Forget about the next generation, the framework already exists via XBL and PSN for them to release their games digitally and what do they do? Release really old games at ludicrously high prices. And, of course, have the brass-bollocked audacity to moan about pre-owned sales while they completely screw up a delivery channel that would allow them to sell games that literally cannot be traded in. I'm sure eventually they're realise the fucking idiocy of their position and start releasing games as reasonably priced downloads but I don't hold out hope that time will come any time soon and certainly not in time for the next generation of consoles.

*This rant is of course based on the assumption that the publishers themselves set the price for downloadable games, if it turns out there are other factors involved that significantly affect the price then I'm prepared to be called a wrong-headed tit.

Yeah... I'd be snatching RE4 for my 360 if it wasn't £14 fucking 99.

They'd sell far more at a £5 the greedy bastards.

I'm talking specifically about proper Xbox games that were also relased on disc, not HD remakes of previous generation games that's only available as a download. Stuff like this and this. However browsing the marketplace to dig those examples up shows me that the vast majority of games are sitting at the more reasonable £15 mark so my point is nowhere near as strong as I thought.

To be slightly fair on me I hadn't looked at the prices recently after writing it off as a bad deal ages ago and apparently they've dropped them since then. I should have checked my facts before ranting away though so apologies Beex.

Disks can't go in the next generation because they've only just built a new Tesco by me. It's got a massive corner for games so without disks, what are they going to put there?

Actually... they could put flamin' hot Monster Munch there because I can't seem to find them anywhere else in the store.

There's absolutely no chance in hell that disks are going anywhere next generation. It's not even worth discussing!

Not worth discussing, my arse. FFS, how long has Steam been around? Has XBLA and PSN just completely passed you by?

You think the concept and infrastructure haven't been proved to work or something? You think the console manufacturers and publishers are going to ignore a generation change which brings with it the opportunity to kill those pesky games shops with their cut of games/console sales, their non-official peripherals and their second hand sales?

CODBLOPS

Buy the physical disk and have it available for resell afterwards (no special codes etc) - brand new from Shopto £22.85
http://www.shopto.net/XBOX 360/VIDEO GAMES/XB2CA26-Call of Duty Black Ops.html

Buying it digitally from Xbox.com £44.99
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/Produ ... 0241560855

Halo Reach

Buy the physical disk and have it available for resell afterwards (no special codes etc) - brand new from TheHut £12.95
http://www.thehut.com/games/platforms/x ... 48622.html

Buying it digitally from Xbox.com £44.99
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-GB/Produ ... 024d53085b

Although I will admit *some* of them are getting better (e.g. Red Dead Redemption is £19.99 on Xbox.com / £14.99 in the shops - Assassins Creed Brotherhood £19.99 on Xbox.com / £12.99 in the shops) they still have a lot to do

Not enough of you are playing the long game. Think about how games just disappear from the shops after 10 years. They are now 'forever' preserved on the marketplace. It's now nigh-on impossible to find a physical copy of Need for Speed: Most Wanted for the 360. It was £14.99 on the marketplace last time I checked - not bad for a game you can't find anywhere now.

When the next-gen consoles come out, most of the 360 shelves will be taken up with new games. The mainstream shops don't do retro anymore, so these will go to landfill. You will still be able to buy them digitally, which is great.

Woah woah woah. I mean it's not worth discussing in that there simply isn't a chance that the next Xbox/PlayStation will be sans disk drive. Therefore it's not worth worrying about yet. Yes, you'll have the option of buying digitally and all of the benefits/negatives that comes with. As proven during this generation. But I'm saying that there's absolutely no way we're going "digital-only" with the next round of consoles. There simply aren't enough people willing to abandon disks completely yet.

Good. Because noone said that.



Maybe I should have said "disappear" and not "go", but my meaning was clear.

What about Outrun ?

Its gone from PSN and will go from Xbox before the end of the year due to licencing problems - if it was a physical disk it would still be out there and you could still buy and play it.

I can see where you are coming from with NFS and there are obviously cult titles that end up going for silly amounts simply because there were not enough physical copies printed - if there was a digitial copy available most people would end up with those.

('new' copy for £13.90 http://www.gameseek.co.uk/pd/Xbox-360kh0arcarab31/ )

Oh and an interesting way of looking at this is the use of digital movies , DVD's are still out there but a lot of the sales are moving to more digital means (and Blue Ray is there as a 'next step' but you can just download HD movies) , in a 'while' a lot of people are going to buy and consume their movies without ever seeing a physical disk.

I'm not saying anyone did. It was merely suggested.



To which I replied "there's no chance of that happening" etc. I wasn't necessarily replying to you directly and arguing with you, I was just stating my opinion that there isn't a chance physical media will disappear next gen. I didn't even respond directly to any of your posts!

Predictions for the net generation of home consoles:

Sony will release all of their retail games as downloadable games. I beleive this is the plan for the PS Vita, and it would make sense to apply it to the PS4 too. They might even try to make PSN prices of retail games a bit more attractive (They recently stopped you from being able to share a game with up to 3 other PSN users, which may have been part of the reason their prices are so high). I'd not be too surprised if Sony released a cheaper version of the PS4 that didn't have a disc drive (think "PS4 go"), but I really don't think games on discs are going anywhere just yet.

Nintendo still won't get indies. Wii-U ware will be a bit better than Wiiware, but probably not by much. Nintendo's online stuff will be mostly run by the publishers (they won't have a live/PSN equivalent, just a single friend code and everything will go through publishers servers). Games will get switched off when the new one comes out, and Nintendo will probably dip their toe into the world of DLC, but likely won't do online passes or that kind of bullshit.

I'd be hugely surprised if the next xbox and PS4 weren't backward compatible for all Xbox 360/PS3 stuff.

Not a clue what Microsoft will do tbh. Will probably have halo and a bunch of shiny knock off of casual Wii games on it.

I expect 360/PS3/Wii-U development to be fairly common for at least a year or two, presumably the next Xbox and PS4 will be an order of magnitude more powerful than the Wii-U that it would make cross development impractical, but I guess we will see.

No one will release a console for more than £350.

Edit: Wait, I mean no one will release a console that doesn't have an entry model below £350.

I remember us saying that with the 360 and PS3, though.

It'd be a much bigger deal this time, though. The amount of money spent on digital releases makes B/C an absolute necessity. It wasn't really "expected" last time around. Not so much, any way. Plus you could always sell your PS2/Xbox games.

Oh, agreed, but I still remember us saying it and then being hugely shocked and disappointed when they weren't.

I wasn't fussed really. By that time my Xbox was hacked and all the games I had were copies, never expected them to work on the new one.

Yeah, I wasn't arsed last time around. This time I'd be mighty fucked off if it wasn't fully backwards compatible.

I hope Sony will shut up about 3D next time round, or at the very least I hope Microsoft don't start going on about it.

What WTB said is basically my line of thinking. Also people (at least anyone who has had a RROD, or bought one of the Xbox slim consoles) know that you can transfer games from one Xbox's hard drive to another. I think expecting a "New xbox" to be able to do that too is pretty reasonable.

Isn't one of the main reasons getting original Xbox games to run on the 360 was hard to do because they switched from nvidia to Ati? Sony only cut backwards compatibility because they are cheap fucks/wanted to cut costs. For the PS3, there are some PSone and PS2 classics, and I think it's safe to assume they will still want to sell those, so I bet they'll work on a PS4 too.

Meh, I got bored of gaming last gen. What got me interested this time around was all the online stuff & even then I've still ended up a bit bored of gaming but still like talking shite with my pals. Can't think what they could add to get me interested again. The way things look I'll be giving the next generation or so a miss.

I was getting that way too, Wullie.

Then I found Jesus Dark Souls.

That said there are still a few games I play regularly on MAME & have done for years (Bubble Bobble ) so maybe it's just that as folk try & make games into ZOMFGAMAZING technical achievements they've forgotten how to make them fun.

I think they'll carry on doing what makes money and be open to all options of distribution... at least for the next Generation. It's a shame in some ways that there isn't more competition for download only games for consoles. If you could buy a codes a bit like steam from MS, HMV, Game,Amazon etc... you'd be able to pick up the code directly and it would force down MS prices or allow peeps to get access to better deals. Only shame is that you can't sell them after. Or perhaps there might be better way of distribution over the internet.

I think the OnLive thing will be integrated slowly with the next Gen, perhaps it might be integrated into parts of the rendering or texture processing in the future, but I don't think it's good enough on it's own to out do a box under your telly, at least for the next 5 to 10 years.

So for next Gen they'll offer everything and every possible combination of digital management until one wins out over the others. I do wonder about the Blue Ray thing, it would seem to make sense to include one in next xbox as it would ensure peoples reliance as a core entertainment device, but with Sony owning this I wonder if MS could realistically ever afford to add it to the xbox. I just hope we don't end up having to install 8 discs when we want to play a new game.

In fact if MS have have any real reason to do full on digital download on us, this would be why. So I wonder if we'd end up with a Blue Ray version but also a no disc version with the Blue Ray being £200 or something like that extra to buy. Either that or they'll have been buying up all the Toshiba HD-DVD writing factories cheap after Sony won the new format wars.


So many possibilities...

Play Dark Souls.

True.

There's nothing like slashing a pixie.

Oh, and it'll deffos have Blu Ray. The WiiU has Blu Ray as well, doesn't it? I don't think Sony could realistically make it difficult for the Xbox to have one. I mean, there's money to be made even if they are essentially "supplying to the competition".

edit: Ah, apparently WiiU will have a proprietary format "similar to Blu Ray", but nobody knows for sure yet. The new Xbox will definitely have high capacity optical media regardless. Would be a shame if it weren't Blu Ray mind.

Do people think there'll be any new hardware gizmos? After the success of Wii / Play / Kinect, I'm sure they'll try to expand that a lot more, and add more face / voice recognition type stuff, but it'll be interesting to see if anything new form that point of view comes out.

With a pre-emptive "I'm not ready 3 pages" if this has already been discussed.

I dunno. There's speculation that some sort of Kinect-like sensor will be bundled with the new Xbox, but wouldn't this up the price of entry a fair whack? We already know that the WiiU has a relatively normal default controller with a big screen in it, and Sony has the option of the Move stuff. Personally I think we'll see fairly standard controllers across the board with each console offering a motion control option a bit like now. Again, whether or not the new Xbox comes bundled with a Kinect-type thing I dunno. Maybe they'll announce that current Kinect will work with the new console?

I'd be surprised if it *is* backwards compatible.
Quite a few of the rumours suggest that they will be using more "off the shelf" pc-related technology to keep costs down while still giving a good performance boost, so the architecture will be quite different and incompatible as a result. If it's only 4 or 5 times more powerful that won't be powerful enough to emulate the previous console, and why push costs up with extra hardware for people who already have the previous gen hardware and games?

I know the 60GB PS3 held it's value for ages because of the PS2 compatibility, but how many people actually played PS2 games on it?

The 360's architecture isn't especially left-field. It's the closest a console has ever been to a PC. I think it'd be probably be pretty straightforward to ensure backwards compatibility. No idea about the PS3, though.

After the death of HD-DVD and the abomination that is UMD, how can they possibly think that's a viable option?

The reason for loss (well, sort-of loss) between Xbox 1 and 360 was nothing to do with the move from nVidia to AMD. It was because of the move from x86 processors to PowerPC. Unfortunately, PowerPC is at an evolutionary dead end so it's unlikely to be used in the next Xbox. This means BC would have to be of the download-a-patch limited variety.

Unless -- Dave, do XNA games compile to binary or bytecode? How about retail games?

Heh. They've always done it! The Wii doesn't even play DVDs!

Well they aren't trying to launch a new multimedia format, they just need something to put games on. Presumably it is to avoid having to pay a license for Blu Ray.

Oh, right. I assumed they'd want to let you play films and stuff.

No, Nintendo just want you to play the three games worth playing on the system and nothing else.

Isn't it a PowerPC CPU? I didn't think they were all that similar to a normal x86 architecture?
The graphics are fairly standard ATI stuff though.

The original X-Box was closer to a PC with a P3 processor.

For the PS3 I suppose it depends if they stick with a newer Cell processor and NVidia graphics or not

XNA, yeah. It's just the standard managed NET stuff.

Retail? Native.

I suspected as much. So backwards compatibility for XBLAH and Indie Games is trivial, then. But for retail games I think we'll see the same situation as the Xbox 1->360 transition; a reliance on a game-specific binary patch, with the limited support and occasional problems that approach implies. It seems highly unlikely to me that Xbox N+1 would continue with the same PowerPC architecture.

I wonder if MS would (or could) attempt to mandate byte code for retail games, too.

My xbla games being compatible and brought over to the Xbox 4 is so much more important to me than the disc based games. they won't age like "proper" games are so quick to do.

Some Xbox Originals weren't originally backwards compatible, so they may invest the time in doing this. Or at least put a working version of popular games on the marketplace.

I don't get why people are calling for the next generation. All it will bring is shinier graphics. Who gives a shit about shinier graphics? More interesting graphics? Sure. More artistic graphics? great. But we won't get those, we'll get higher polygon counts and more particles. And the same old shite underneath.

Not all XBLA games are XNA based. Indeed, few are as far as I'm aware. Because...


Simply put, No.

I think it's important because this should be the final step into "proper" HD. As in 1080p and 60 frames. The current tech simply can't handle that and as such the whole "HD" thing is a bit of a lie. Also, stuff that PCs can do, like 64 player multiplayer Battlefield etc should be attainable on the new hardware. This is good.

Couldn't give a shit about graphics. Would like to see better AI code and more things on the screen using it.