E3 2K14 - what do you plan to buy?

fridgeracer

if you have not yet bought an 8th gen console, or something different, now that E3 is over, if you were on the fence about it have you made your mind up?

i have... and it's going to be sticking to pc gaming for the foreseeable future.

donnajunkie

will wait until next year and if theres been no ring of death type problems and the ps4 gets a big enough hard drive we may get one.

Johnmcl7

E3 didn't change my opinion of the current console line up, the PC remains my main gaming system with the Wii-U as my only current games console (the 360 was my pick of the last generation). I've not been bothered about Nintendo since the N64 but this time they offer something quite different to the PC and the content they showed at E3 was of the most interest.

Forza 5 is the only game I'm interested in on the Xbox One but I'm disappointed how limited it is (it only just got the Nurburgring) so until there's a better games library out for the Xbox One/PS4 I won't be buying either.

John

bluenoseam

I will probably continue in 8th gen as I did in 7th, combining both Playstation & Xbox alongside a PC. I won't waste my time with a Wii U, when your previous gen effort gets a game which your current gen effort doesn't it shows you're in trouble! (FIFA) At the risk of sounding contradictory, they're churning out the same old stuff (Mario, Zelda, Smash Bros) just with updates and missing out on the vast majority of goods from other places. Simply put that machine's as good as a dead duck until Nintendo wise up - which they won't do as we've seen in the past from them!

Both the true next gen hardware options (Xbox & Playstation) look appealing, Playstation has some good looking things going on with exclusivity rights where Xbox has better economics & secondaries. I don't necessarily mean exclusive games, but extra content for multi-platform efforts. Both consoles have piqued my interest though and are definately up for consideration.

PC will always be a staple though & it's arguable that I will upgrade my current machine before I upgrade my consoles - mostly because this machine is starting to show it's age!

fridgeracer

bluenoseam wrote: »

I will probably continue in 8th gen as I did in 7th, combining both Playstation & Xbox alongside a PC

smart choice. i'm also highly considering doing the same except just with a PS4 and my current PC which got upgraded last xmas.

i really wanted a PS4 at launch but i backed out 1 day before release because:

1. watch dogs got delayed
2. too much negative hype about specs and being obsolete before even out

but i have done my homework for 4 months now and i have come to the conclusion that lower hardware specs than expected does not matter. it's x10 more powerful than the PS3 and like with all consoles, there are no overheads like on the PC so games that need more PC hardware to run well need less from a console and there's also all that console optimisation stuff devs keep talking about.

for that reason, instead of getting GTA5 for the PC i'm going to use it as an excuse to get the PS4 i wanted back at xmas. the time wasn't right then, but because of GTA, last of us remastered, and news of uncharted 4, it's definitely worth getting now i believe.

Johnmcl7

Although developers can optimise far better for consoles as they're a single platform, they also have to last a very long time with the Xbox 360 having its ninth birthday this year. This means they have to start off strong hence the 360's ATi graphics card was more advanced than the best PC card ATI sold for the PC (R520) as the 360 GPU used technology which ATi would eventually offer on their next graphics card (R600). The Xbox One/PS4 instead of using the newest graphics technology are based on an older graphics card (although still a current architecture) and while the previous consoles went from SD to HD, the new ones haven't managed to move up to 1080p as a base standard. Budget gaming PC's (such as AMD's Kaveri platform) are currently reaching for 1080p already so the consoles don't have the performance advantage they should have at this stage.

Of course whether that matters depends on what you want from the device, graphics don't make a game and good exclusives will still make a console worth buying. However it does mean there's less incentive, one of the reasons I bought a 360 (aside from PGR!) was because my PC was struggling with newer titles and I knew they'd run fine on the 360. This time though my PC even though it's a couple of years old can still manage better performance the Xbox 360/PS4 ever will plus with all the platforms now being X86/GCN based there's likely to be less exclusives.

So I wouldn't hesitate to buy a console for a good exclusive but definitely less incentive this generation and I can see why people are complaining about the specifications.

John

fridgeracer

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

Although developers can optimise far better for consoles as they're a single platform...

John

you have a fair point, and although correct on a level, i personally just don't agree with it completely.

i had a PC with very similar specs to the PS4 hardware 2 years ago yes, but it was still able to play at best 1080p and 50-60 fps with v sync switched on in my games.

furthermore, there's some games on the PS4 that are in 1080p and 60 fps, and there's even some confirmed to be coming hitting that level as well.

those 2 reasons are very convincing. and since if a PC with the same level of hardware 2 years ago could make a game perform at 1080p and 60 fps, then there is no scientific or logical proof that the PS4 cannot achieve this.

the same goes for the xbox one, and the only reason i don't mention it as much is because i don't know about it as much except that it's hardware is almost identical to the PS4.

i know... some games have come out disappointing not hitting these levels of performance that we hoped to expect but i sincerely believe that's the devs fault.

the PS3 for example is at least 10 times less powerful than the PS4. GTA 5 still looks beautiful, performs very well even at 30 fps. 60 fps and a full HD picture is at most going to require x2 more PS3s power worth in terms of hardware. the PS4 is 10 times more powerful - how could it possibly be unable to allow a dev to code his or her game well enough to display full HD and a high fps.

Johnmcl7

fridgeracer wrote: »

you have a fair point, and although correct on a level, i personally just don't agree with it completely.

i had a PC with very similar specs to the PS4 hardware 2 years ago yes, but it was still able to play at best 1080p and 50-60 fps with v sync switched on in my games.

furthermore, there's some games on the PS4 that are in 1080p and 60 fps, and there's even some confirmed to be coming hitting that level as well.

those 2 reasons are very convincing. and since if a PC with the same level of hardware 2 years ago could make a game perform at 1080p and 60 fps, then there is no scientific or logical proof that the PS4 cannot achieve this.

The PS4 uses a lot of off the shelf PC parts but they're not in the same configuration as a PC particularly the CPU design which uses a lot of weak CPU's rather than a couple of high performance CPU's (which PC games tend to be optimised for, my PC was bought for video editing so has a lot of threads available which mostly sit idle while gaming). We're certainly going to see some improvement in the consoles but I don't think the gains will be as big as previous generations as the hardware this time is much better known to the start whereas for previous consoles, particularly the PS2 and PS3 (never worked with the PSX) their hardware was very different and difficult to work with.

Even then you're still talking about performance from two years ago for a newly released console which has to last many years yet. My current PC can still mostly manage 1440p with at 60fps with AA/AF and I suspect within this console cycle we'll see affordable 4K gaming on the PC while the consoles look like 1080p is the best they'll manage.

the PS3 for example is at least 10 times less powerful than the PS4. GTA 5 still looks beautiful, performs very well even at 30 fps. 60 fps and a full HD picture is at most going to require x2 more PS3s power worth in terms of hardware. the PS4 is 10 times more powerful - how could it possibly be unable to allow a dev to code his or her game well enough to display full HD and a high fps.

I don't know where the ten times figure comes from (Sony I'm guessing?) but it's not accurate, the PS3 and PS4 have completely different architectures so boiling them down to a single number then comparing those two numbers is meaningless. I suspect GTA V will be a reasonable system seller as it will be a noticeable upgrade over the current consoles and a long enough gap for people to buy it again. For me though it's no reason to buy a console, there's a PC version coming out which I suspect I'll get better performance from and I wasn't that fussed about the 360 version anyway due to the clumsy online design.

Plus none of that really matters anyway because while I think the PC has made huge improvements over the last few years including the likes of Steam's big picture mode making it more usable with a TV it's still not a general platform of choice and the complete mess Valve have made of Steam boxes isn't going to help either.

John

fridgeracer

Johnmcl7 wrote: »

The PS4 uses a lot of off ...

so basically, even if PC gaming is still the creme de la creme platform to play on, there are still justified reasons to own a console along side that gaming pc.