Underwhelemd by the 'next' generation of consoles and games?

[andy85wsm]

I'm slightly underwhelmed but still happy to purchase.

Right now I have a PS3 as I sold my Xbox 360 and saved the money for next gen.

All my friends are getting a console so I'll have plenty of people to play the games with. There's plenty to choose from depending on what you like of course.

However if you're still buying current gen games like BF4, CoD Ghosts etc then yeah I can see how next gen might be underwhelming.

 

[gord]

I wouldn't say that they have been comparable to high end gaming PCs at all. On a single GPU level, maybe, but multi GPU has been around for a long time, the 7950GX2 I think it was called, was out quite a while before the Xbox 360 and PS3 for example, and that's just looking at the GPU and ignoring the other things like memory amount, memory bandwidth and so on.

With game engines being highly scalable too, there isn't an actual reason why *consoles* would hold anything back, or have been holding things back. Any compromises have been down to the developers really, where they, for want of a better word "consolifiy" a game, or rather make a really lazy PC build whilst ignoring the extended capability of the PCs.

I think the only fair comparison is to factor in cost rather than out and out performance. Consoles still represent good value for money in my opinion, but the next generation has lessened that.

You say no actual reason and then give the main one, developers. Most have finite resources, whether that's time or money. And thanks to the cost/accessibility of console gaming it's easy for them to pick a lead platform. There's some great scalable tech out there, but it's not cheap and doesn't guarantee a good multi-platform title. Like I said, BF4 appears to be a good cross platform title, but Dice make their own tech and have the resources to do so.

 

[Calabi]

I'd wager it's a safe bet that it simply wont be and a lot of games wont even make it to pc or be delayed because of easier pc piracy.

There is no reason to believe they wont be taking the same stance as last gen when it comes to pc versions they know millions will simply download the torrent rather than pay so they will delay the pc version.

For me the best games will come from the big players again the santa monicas the naughty dogs platinum games etc and those games just wont be on pc.
Are forza 5 last of us 2 dead rising 3 gran turismo on pc ?

I'm sure there will be a few developers that are stupid and cant be bothered to get some extra money by releasing on the pc. The cost to release it when the development is basically the same would be very small. They have a higher share of the profits plus they have to sell fewer copies.

Anyway I dont mean that everything on the consoles will be released on pc, just that the pc will be at the cutting edge.

 

[TheVoice]

I wouldn't say underwhelmed, but I feel less regretful about cancelling my PS4 pre-order ever since games have been delayed, and expected features have been announced as removed/coming at a later date.

I cancelled simply because I'd have less than a week between getting the console and then leaving the country for several weeks, but now I'm glad because it's given me more time to focus on the current-gen games that many early-adopters are likely to be missing out on simply because they've put their blinkers on early and are ignoring anything that isn't next-gen.

Also means I can avoid the inevitable teething issues that any new console and its games will suffer for the first few days/weeks/months. Shame I'll be missing out on BF4 for a while, but I'll have more than enough to keep me entertained until I look into getting a PS4 in 6 months time or so. Plus I'll have my employee discount so I'll be able to get it all cheaper anyway!

 

[nucastle]

Underwhelming, probably because an industry where the players used to go off and do their own fancy unique things with architecture (SNES custom chips vs Megadrive) where you had a clear choice about what you bought based on what it brought to the table, is now just about basing everything off an x86 architecture and whatever Nvidia or ATI are doing.

Now, the consoles are just nothing but integrated pcs, using pc graphics cards and cpus for pcs (or thereabouts).

It's a shame that all the dev tools have converged to a point where you can build a game for any platform in the same environment and then just target it at PC, PS3 or XBOX without a ground up re-write. I'd say that's probably why the likes of Assassins Creed 4 look not a lot better on PS4 than they do on PS3. It all looks like the dev tools are yet to be redeveloped to take advantage of the substantial boost in horsepower yet ... Even the likes of Titanfall etc just look like really nice PC games. Big deal eh.

 

[blitzwing85]

Believe it on not once upon a time you had to sit side by side and play on the same 20" TV

Anyways.... BRING BACK THE SNES !!!! (and mega drive)

I remember 4 player split screen deathmatches on a 17" SD portable TV on Timesplitters.

How that was even playable I do not know...