Lost my love of gaming :(

[Gerard]

Gaming imo we just lose interest in as we get older, if you've been gaming since the NES days then a lot of games these days just feel like 'seen it done it'. My last go to pc game was battlefield, then 2042 was released in the worst shape of any game in the franchise ever and my interest just waned from that point on.


In terms of consoles, from a tech pov what is there to be excited about? As I said in a post above both Sony and MS are basically flogging the same AMD SFF pc with a different box and OS slapped on it, yes the X is a little more powerful but they're both using basically the same AMD based components and are close enough power wise to where it doesn't matter much.

The last thing that really had a level of excitement in the console space as being a big thing IMO was the CELL CPU. Sony hyped that thing to the moon and back, originally that was going to be the ONLY processor in the PS3, it was going to handle audio, video, CPU tasks...then the cocaine wore off and they had to run to NVidia for a 7800 series gpu they gave the gimmicky name "RSX Reality Synthesizer".

Back in the 90's there was more breakthroughs to be had and more to get excited about. Nintendo with the Super FX chip bringing rudimentary 3D to a home console, Sega followed suit with their SVP chip for virtua racing on the Megadrive. You had the rumblings about Nintendo and something called 'Project Reality' and the name Silicon Graphics being associated with it. Shortly after you had Sony and a graphics chip called 'Emotion Engine' that was again hyped to ridiculous proportions. Not to mention back then games were actually finished and working when they launched, there was no alternative as downloading a patch to your n64 simply wasn't a thing. With consoles now being nothing more than pc's, console games run into the same issues as pc games with gigs and gigs of updates, wonky performance, crashing issues etc etc. The pc 'ship it now finish it later' publisher mantra is now not only exclusive to pc.

It's just 'meh' these days. Things have advanced but to the point where the 2 main 'consoles' are the same thing in a different box and the only real thing that separates them are game exclusives.

 

[ooStevo]

A fixed spec also takes into consideration clock speeds and core counts, if they're increasing these then the spec has changed. The ps5 pro is rumoured to be using a new iteration of the rdna gpu with better ray tracing capabilities, and it will likely get a cpu clock speed bump as well. And yes games can get a boost from this but that's one of the issues, it goes against what a console is meant to be and has been up until these 'pro' gimmicks came out, that being a fixed spec piece of hardware that you have for around 5+ years before it gets replaced.

When Microsoft were launching the original xbox and selling their online experience one of the things mentioned in one of the blurbs that their online was an 'even playing field' as everyone had the same hardware so nobody had any advantage. They were comparing it to pc gaming at the time. Now that's all been turned on its head as people with pro consoles can get better framerates and that helps in multiplayer gaming. So their even playing field has vanished and its more like a pc upgrade where better framerates can give an advantage. That's not what console gaming was about, yet because Sony and MS want to make a few bucks extra they essentially dip into the pc mindset and offer what's basically an upgrade halfway through the console lifecycle.

As for Sega, yes Sony had something to do with it, but Sega ****** off their own fanbase and basically drove them away by releasing upgrades and consoles and cutting support for them far sooner than many expected, for instance the Saturn had a lifespan of not even 3 years before being replaced by Dreamcast.

The entire point of the upgrades they brought out for the Megadrive was the SNES was a superior console and the Megadrive was starting to show its age. It had a very limited colour palette, its audio in games could be crackly. You just have to look at Streetfighter 2 Turbo for the SNES and compare it to Special Champion edition for the Magadrive, compared to the SNES the Megadrive version looked far duller due to the colours and the audio for the moves in the Sega version was crackly compared to the SNES.

Sega jumped on the cd bandwagon, that was a failure, they tried again with the 32x, produced a grand total of 40 games for it before canning it (they even had some games requiring a cd and a 32 x to play), they had a console called the Neptune in development which was an all in one Megadrive\32x but that never made it out to market, then the Saturn came out, that got a barely 3 year life span as their top console before the dreamcast replaced it. Sega just burned their bridges by releasing upgrades and consoles before killing them off long before they were expected to.

I remember when I was about 9 I was looking through the catalogue ( not the womens lingerie section honest) I saw the Mega CD 2 for £299. I begged my mum to get it for me but she declined. They later got me a Playstation so I suppose it worked out in the end (It worked out in the end....no pun intended)

 

[Gerard]

I remember when I was about 9 I was looking through the catalogue ( not the womens lingerie section honest) I saw the Mega CD 2 for £299. I begged my mum to get it for me but she declined. They later got me a Playstation so I suppose it worked out in the end (It worked out in the end....no pun intended)

It was such a gimmicky addon, Sega tried to dazzle everyone with FMV on the discs. It had some good games but the price was a bit much to say the least. Plus the loading times in a lot of games could be tedious, especially some of the games that had a load of fmv sequences.

 

[NF7-S]

A fixed spec also takes into consideration clock speeds and core counts, if they're increasing these then the spec has changed. The ps5 pro is rumoured to be using a new iteration of the rdna gpu with better ray tracing capabilities, and it will likely get a cpu clock speed bump as well. And yes games can get a boost from this but that's one of the issues, it goes against what a console is meant to be and has been up until these 'pro' gimmicks came out, that being a fixed spec piece of hardware that you have for around 5+ years before it gets replaced.

When Microsoft were launching the original xbox and selling their online experience one of the things mentioned in one of the blurbs that their online was an 'even playing field' as everyone had the same hardware so nobody had any advantage. They were comparing it to pc gaming at the time. Now that's all been turned on its head as people with pro consoles can get better framerates and that helps in multiplayer gaming. So their even playing field has vanished and its more like a pc upgrade where better framerates can give an advantage. That's not what console gaming was about, yet because Sony and MS want to make a few bucks extra they essentially dip into the pc mindset and offer what's basically an upgrade halfway through the console lifecycle.

As for Sega, yes Sony had something to do with it, but Sega ****** off their own fanbase and basically drove them away by releasing upgrades and consoles and cutting support for them far sooner than many expected, for instance the Saturn had a lifespan of not even 3 years before being replaced by Dreamcast.

The entire point of the upgrades they brought out for the Megadrive was the SNES was a superior console and the Megadrive was starting to show its age. It had a very limited colour palette, its audio in games could be crackly. You just have to look at Streetfighter 2 Turbo for the SNES and compare it to Special Champion edition for the Magadrive, compared to the SNES the Megadrive version looked far duller due to the colours and the audio for the moves in the Sega version was crackly compared to the SNES.

Sega jumped on the cd bandwagon, that was a failure, they tried again with the 32x, produced a grand total of 40 games for it before canning it (they even had some games requiring a cd and a 32 x to play), they had a console called the Neptune in development which was an all in one Megadrive\32x but that never made it out to market, then the Saturn came out, that got a barely 3 year life span as their top console before the dreamcast replaced it. Sega just burned their bridges by releasing upgrades and consoles before killing them off long before they were expected to.

Opinions be opinions, but I got to say, the PS1 selling the most ever consoles at over 100m units, that's more than 3 times the best ever sales than Sega had and almost double that of a SNES...hell, it was 25% more than the TOTAL of SNES and Megadrive combined! And what did Nintendo do wrong? They went from a dominant 5:3 to a poor 10:3.

You're massively downplaying the Sony and PlayStation brand, the brilliant marketing around PlayStation which expanded the market to made gaming 'cool' rather than a thing for kids and nerds.

But like I said, opinions be opinions.

 

[ooStevo]

I remember reading about this shooting game in Mega games magazine I think it was called. Sylpheed or something . They were going on about how many polygons were being pushed. That was the game that made me want a Mega CD. Oh to be young again.....

 

[NF7-S]

I remember when I was about 9 I was looking through the catalogue ( not the womens lingerie section honest) I saw the Mega CD 2 for £299. I begged my mum to get it for me but she declined. They later got me a Playstation so I suppose it worked out in the end (It worked out in the end....no pun intended)

The irony being that PlayStation started out as the SNES version of the Mega CD (or rather was born out of the ashes)

 

[NF7-S]

It was such a gimmicky addon, Sega tried to dazzle everyone with FMV on the discs. It had some good games but the price was a bit much to say the least. Plus the loading times in a lot of games could be tedious, especially some of the games that had a load of fmv sequences.

Yeah, everyone was jumping on the CD train, Sony got to the pot of gold and pretty much perfectly nailed it and then sugar coated it.

 

[NF7-S]

Gaming imo we just lose interest in as we get older, if you've been gaming since the NES days then a lot of games these days just feel like 'seen it done it'. My last go to pc game was battlefield, then 2042 was released in the worst shape of any game in the franchise ever and my interest just waned from that point on.


In terms of consoles, from a tech pov what is there to be excited about? As I said in a post above both Sony and MS are basically flogging the same AMD SFF pc with a different box and OS slapped on it, yes the X is a little more powerful but they're both using basically the same AMD based components and are close enough power wise to where it doesn't matter much.

The last thing that really had a level of excitement in the console space as being a big thing IMO was the CELL CPU. Sony hyped that thing to the moon and back, originally that was going to be the ONLY processor in the PS3, it was going to handle audio, video, CPU tasks...then the cocaine wore off and they had to run to NVidia for a 7800 series gpu they gave the gimmicky name "RSX Reality Synthesizer".

Back in the 90's there was more breakthroughs to be had and more to get excited about. Nintendo with the Super FX chip bringing rudimentary 3D to a home console, Sega followed suit with their SVP chip for virtua racing on the Megadrive. You had the rumblings about Nintendo and something called 'Project Reality' and the name Silicon Graphics being associated with it. Shortly after you had Sony and a graphics chip called 'Emotion Engine' that was again hyped to ridiculous proportions. Not to mention back then games were actually finished and working when they launched, there was no alternative as downloading a patch to your n64 simply wasn't a thing. With consoles now being nothing more than pc's, console games run into the same issues as pc games with gigs and gigs of updates, wonky performance, crashing issues etc etc. The pc 'ship it now finish it later' publisher mantra is now not only exclusive to pc.

It's just 'meh' these days. Things have advanced but to the point where the 2 main 'consoles' are the same thing in a different box and the only real thing that separates them are game exclusives.

100%

I think it's also the saturation though, all the 'experts' all the leaks - in a way they're fun, but it's like when everything was official this gen and all the uneducated Xbox gamers saying how much more powerful the Series X was, but anyone with a better understanding knew the end differences would be minimal.

But you/we have to remember, these similarities are born out of requirements from 3rd party devs (or the need of their support), the best thing for me these days are the Cerny talks, I really like how he describes the challenges and how he's provided specific solutions. Don't tell me, the SSD solution was not impressive, way ahead of anything the PC had at the time, but yeah, I much preferred the older gens with exotic hardware...cell, yeah lol, many a discussion on that!

 

[bainbridge]

I think it's an age thing. I no longer spend hours playing but still like to do an hour or so a few times per week, mainly single player so I can go at my own pace.

 

[Kobi]

I remember reading about this shooting game in Mega games magazine I think it was called. Sylpheed or something . They were going on about how many polygons were being pushed. That was the game that made me want a Mega CD. Oh to be young again.....

We had tomcat ally and some Wild West…shooting one. Games were weird haha. I feel sorry for my folks buying my brother the mega cd, he barely touched it

 

[ooStevo]

The irony being that PlayStation started out as the NES version of the Mega CD (or rather was born out of the ashes)

No it was supposed to be a CD add on for the Snes,but Nintendo backed out behind Sonys back,and that's what led to the Playstation. There's actually a Nintendo PlayStation out there if you look it up.

 

[NF7-S]

No it was supposed to be a CD add on for the Snes,but Nintendo backed out behind Sonys back,and that's what led to the Playstation. There's actually a Nintendo PlayStation out there if you look it up.

Isn't the Mega CD a CD add-on for the Mega drive!?

I know the history, although there are some that suggest Sony were the 'bad guys'.

Edit; just realised my typo - I meant SNES (obviously!)

 

[Gerard]

You're massively downplaying the Sony and PlayStation brand, the brilliant marketing around PlayStation which expanded the market to made gaming 'cool' rather than a thing for kids and nerds.

But like I said, opinions be opinions.

Sony had a good console, but they have Nintendo and Sega to thank for being short sighted and letting them go it alone instead of partnering with them.

When Sega launched the cd addon Nintendo's knee jerk reaction was to make their own. They partnered with Sony and got pretty far along with it, a few hundred were produced, then they ditched Sony and went with Philips. In Japan at the time that was seen a a big no no, that being a Japanese company dropping another to go with a western company. But as this was going on, Nintendo seen that the Sega cd was a gimmick and didn't really do any damage in the marketplace so 'Super CD' was eventually dropped entirely.

Sony then tried to partner with Sega who also turned them down. So eventually they went it alone and produced the PlayStation. When the PlayStation launched, Sega was already on the decline because of their obsession with upgrades, the 32x was the last straw for a lot of the diehard Sega fans as only 40 games were produced for it in total, not to mention the Saturn launched about 6 months after the 32x rendering 32x obsolete. Its hardly surprising Sony were able to easily get a foothold as at this point Sega had crapped all over their fanbase and people were willing to try something new that wasn't Nintendo.

 

[ooStevo]

Isn't the Mega CD a CD add-on for the Mega drive!?

I know the history, although there are some that suggest Sony were the 'bad guys'.

Edit; just realised my typo - I meant SNES (obviously!)

Nintendo PlayStation Prototype: Finally Working!

It’s been almost a year since the Team met Terry Diebold and his Nintendo-Playstation prototype at the 2016 MGC (Midwest Gaming Classic). They have a month ...

www.youtube.com

The Nintendo Playstation - Nintendo History

The Nintendo Playstation changed gaming history as much as the Switch has done. This is the story of how Nintendo created its greatest rival and the only sur...

www.youtube.com

I have'nt actually watched the second video but the first few minutes seems really interesting. The first video is really technical,so be prepared for that.

 

[NF7-S]

Sony had a good console, but they have Nintendo and Sega to thank for being short sighted and letting them go it alone instead of partnering with them.

When Sega launched the cd addon Nintendo's knee jerk reaction was to make their own. They partnered with Sony and got pretty far along with it, a few hundred were produced, then they ditched Sony and went with Philips. In Japan at the time that was seen a a big no no, that being a Japanese company dropping another to go with a western company. But as this was going on, Nintendo seen that the Sega cd was a gimmick and didn't really do any damage in the marketplace so 'Super CD' was eventually dropped entirely.

Sony then tried to partner with Sega who also turned them down. So eventually they went it alone and produced the PlayStation. When the PlayStation launched, Sega was already on the decline because of their obsession with upgrades, the 32x was the last straw for a lot of the diehard Sega fans as only 40 games were produced for it in total, not to mention the Saturn launched about 6 months after the 32x rendering 32x obsolete. Its hardly surprising Sony were able to easily get a foothold as at this point Sega had crapped all over their fanbase and people were willing to try something new that wasn't Nintendo.

Yeah, we're just going to have to disagree around how much credit Sony deserve for pushing gaming to the next level (3D) and making it 'cool' vs a toy/kid/geek thing.

Of course part of that is the competition, look at Xbox, if Sony hadn't fumbled PS3 so bad it would have been DOA...but the brand was so strong, and the recovered so well that PS4 was a massive success (also helped by a MS fumble).

I just disagree that ~6m upset customers (20% of the whole fanbase) was enough to kill a company and give Sony over 100m sales, like a lot of things it's many factors added together and you're not giving Sony enough credit IMHO.

Anyway, I'm out, because opinions.

 

[gamerTM21]

If you're not enjoying games, take a break.

I go through cycles, and I find a lot of the time it's because I'm too mentally fatigued to concentrate, so when I end up with a free weekend or time off, I get really hooked onto a game again

 

[ic1male]

I haven’t played anything since the weather got warmer. Just not in the mood, but I know I’ll be back in September when the heat and light are fading.

 

[DIABLO]

To me gaming is an alternative to watching Series on T.V; so an interactive story, if you will. I literally can’t play games unless they have coherent story, besides 1 or 2 competitive online games.

 

[adam cool dude]

To me gaming is an alternative to watching Series on T.V; so an interactive story, if you will. I literally can’t play games unless they have coherent story, besides 1 or 2 competitive online games.

This is valid point. Games focus too much on multiplayer now unless it is an Mmo I'd much rather have a game that lasts 20-40 hours but gives me a good story.

It is weird that when I was teenager people blasted Nintendo for making kids games but it seems now that their IP's are the only games worth playing for single player content.

 

[jamie2497]

Definitely struggling with this as well, though I have no problem buying games! Seems like the idea of playing games is actually better than doing it at the moment