Video Games

[MyOtherLife]

My SO has me hypmorized on 'Jewels Star' on her Android phone.

 

[lesamourai]



I think people forget how much the music industry has changed over the last 10 years and at the heart of that is DRM and increasingly targeted advertising. It's rare that you find people now that would consider buying CDs, this is happening as well with DVDs as the cost of digital storage and / or cloud solutions goes down.

But millions of people still buy CDs, and CDs are still made to accommodate those sales. Also don't see how DRM is driving more digital sales, especially considering the largest user of it, Apple, changed its tune a couple of years ago. I don't know what cloud storage has to do with DVDs and it's not like they'll be letting me download 40GB blu ray rips any time soon. There's still a strong presence for physical copies, especially when the market fails to evolve in its transition to digital.

 

[RedLantern]



State of Decay. Really fun and original game. It's a little buggy (although not as bad as Fallout New Vegas was when it was released) but pretty incredible for 20 bucks.

Yeah, cool blend of sandbox and survival horror. Would be so, so, so fun with multiplayer.

 

[Jr Mouse]

MS' real problem.

 

[whnay.]

I think its as much about poor messaging as it is lack of imagination (or denial of current digital trends) on the part of gamers....

The digital gaming experience is coming whether you like it or not. Many will say its about greed, power, control, etc. But I think that ignores a lot of the obvious benefits.

Take the cloud computing power MS is dedicated to support X1. It will allow developers to create environments in excess of 10x larger than what is capable using just the system. Think about that for a minute. Imagine game worlds that expand as the players increase or games in which most of the background noise / graphics are offloaded so that your box is in charge of the important stuff (character movement, hit boxes, etc). The PS4 should be called the PS3.5.

The leap forward is creating a much more immerse, real time, community experience - the only way to do this is online and using things like the cloud to make it a reality.

 

[Jr Mouse]



I think its as much about poor messaging as it is lack of imagination (or denial of current digital trends) on the part of gamers....

The digital gaming experience is coming whether you like it or not. Many will say its about greed, power, control, etc. But I think that ignores a lot of the obvious benefits.

No one is denying digital downloads are the future. Both the X360 and PS3 had them and both next generation systems will too. I don't understand why you seem to want to ignore the simple fact that this is about MS applying the types of restrictions usually reserved for digital downloads to physical media.

Also, what are these obvious benefits here that MS is promising that their new DRM restrictions on physical media will provide gamers?

Take the cloud computing power MS is dedicated to support X1. It will allow developers to create environments in excess of 10x larger than what is capable using just the system. Think about that for a minute. Imagine game worlds that expand as the players increase or games in which most of the background noise / graphics are offloaded so that your box is in charge of the important stuff (character movement, hit boxes, etc). The PS4 should be called the PS3.5.

The leap forward is creating a much more immerse, real time, community experience - the only way to do this is online and using things like the cloud to make it a reality.

You really swallowed MS's PR spin hook line and sinker didn't you? The cloud stuff is marketing bullshit. You cannot realistically share processing load between a local system and a remote system because the passing of data back and forth, even over broadband, is to slow. Latency will be too high. This will not live up to the promises MS is making.

One can only off-load tasks that require a lot of processing on very small data-sets and that the system doesn't mind waiting on asynchronously to finish. You can use it for heavy non-time critical number crunching. Chess AI, city simulations - that sort of jazz, but it in no way grants the system additional "power" in a traditional sense, it won't render more polygons per second for you, it can't aid with anything that needs to be computed every frame such as movement, animation, game play processing.

What you can do in the cloud are the things like remote video compression and streaming of games running on remote hardware. But for both of these the device you are using isn't vitally important, you could theoretically stream a next-gen game onto a Xbox just as well as you could an Xbone.

So to conclude, it's bullshit. It's not even 10x as powerful before you take the fairy dust and magical unicorns into account. Marketing spin being fed to the masses to cover-up the fact that MS is delivering a system that’s measurably less powerful than the PS4 for $100 more.

Not to give Sony a pass here either with this type of BS. Everyone seems to forget that Sony has made these types of pie in the sky “cloud power!!!” promises too. It’s not even a “feature exclusive” to the Xbone, so I am not sure why it keeps getting touted out as one. Really the only difference here is Sony is focusing on game streaming and remote play, which are far more realistic and achievable with current technology and broadband infrastructure.

 

[Jr Mouse]

Anyone playing the new Kingdom Rush game, Frontiers? Best tower defence series on the market. I have the iPad version and am addicted, but have been told it plays well on smaller phones too.

 

[whnay.]



No one is denying digital downloads are the future. Both the X360 and PS3 had them and both next generation systems will too. I don't understand why you seem to want to ignore the simple fact that this is about MS applying the types of restrictions usually reserved for digital downloads to physical media.

Also, what are these obvious benefits here that MS is promising that their new DRM restrictions on physical media will provide gamers?
You really swallowed MS's PR spin hook line and sinker didn't you? The cloud stuff is marketing bullshit. You cannot realistically share processing load between a local system and a remote system because the passing of data back and forth, even over broadband, is to slow. Latency will be too high. This will not live up to the promises MS is making.

Family feature for one. Ability to access your games on any X1 system assuming you are logged in.

 

[whnay.]



One can only off-load tasks that require a lot of processing on very small data-sets and that the system doesn't mind waiting on asynchronously to finish. You can use it for heavy non-time critical number crunching. Chess AI, city simulations - that sort of jazz, but it in no way grants the system additional "power" in a traditional sense, it won't render more polygons per second for you, it can't aid with anything that needs to be computed every frame such as movement, animation, game play processing.

What you can do in the cloud are the things like remote video compression and streaming of games running on remote hardware. But for both of these the device you are using isn't vitally important, you could theoretically stream a next-gen game onto a Xbox just as well as you could an Xbone.

So to conclude, it's bullshit. It's not even 10x as powerful before you take the fairy dust and magical unicorns into account. Marketing spin being fed to the masses to cover-up the fact that MS is delivering a system that’s measurably less powerful than the PS4 for $100 more.

Not to give Sony a pass here either with this type of BS. Everyone seems to forget that Sony has made these types of pie in the sky “cloud power!!!” promises too. It’s not even a “feature exclusive” to the Xbone, so I am not sure why it keeps getting touted out as one. Really the only difference here is Sony is focusing on game streaming and remote play, which are far more realistic and achievable with current technology and broadband infrastructure.

I'm pretty sure the Respawn developers are much more qualified to speak about the benefits of the cloud than you are. Its the reason they went exclusive with X1. It won't be available day 1 for PS3.5.

 

[Jr Mouse]



I'm pretty sure the Respawn developers are much more qualified to speak about the benefits of the cloud than you are. Its the reason they went exclusive with X1. It won't be available day 1 for PS3.5.

Let me show you how the industry really works.

 

[Piobaire]

So last time I logged onto Wow was Feb 2012. I am not going to get into the Panda ex-pac and I think WoW is officially on a downwards arc. I say this as I see subscribers down about 20% and pretty sure I read Panda was the last ex-pac they plan to do for WoW.

Any replacement out there I should check out?

 

[Jr Mouse]

I'd be surprised if Pana is the last one, but do think it's time they bring out something new. You can't just keep expanding WoW forever and expect to see growth. There has been rumors about Blizzard working on a sci-fi themed MMO for years. Maybe we will finally see something related to that soon.

 

[gort]

It was announced that blizzard scrapped everything they had for the unannounced MMO code named "Titan" and started from scratch. Drastically reduced the size of the development team on it too.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/3262-Titan-project-reset-delayed-until-2016

So, with that said, I wouldn't be surprised if there is at least one additional expansion pack. Like you Piob I haven't played WoW in years. I stopped hardcore at the end of WOTLK and dabbled in Cata but it just lost its fun.

 

[Jr Mouse]

Interesting. I didn't know that. Wonder if the reasoning is similar to what happened with Warcraft 3 when it got rebooted. Things were shifting a little too far away from the normal gameplay concepts of the series. Took it back and closer to what gamers were used to and was proven to sell.

 

[brimley]



I'm first and foremost a PC gamer (when I have time). It shouldn't be surprising that consoles are dominating the news right now though considering they were just announced.

That being said, FTL is kicking ******. Such a hard game.

The ship unlocks help a lot. Both Engi ships are great, both versions of Artillery Beam are good, Slug 1, etc. Learning to board ships (or kill the crew in other ways without destroying the ship) is incredibly powerful as you get better loot. Pretty much necessary to beat normal. Ion guns very powerful. Bio, Fire, Bombs powerful. Disable weapons whenever possible.