Yeah, as others have said, for those that don't know, the runaway sales success is almost entirely in China alone, and there, nearly entirely on PC. The game is sort of a cultural touch point in China, based on one of their most famous classical literary works that's deeply tied into the culture, plus a big AAA Nvidia sponsored game from a Chinese studio and it turned into a viral success instantly.
Doesn't mean it's a bad game, but it's extreme success looks different in context than at a glance. It's not really because the game became the biggest thing ever, it's explicitly a China thing and is a game that sells averagely decent elsewhere as well.
@CaptainCluck IDK if it's even a "DEI" thing, but it feels insanely awkward. We play AC to live in this historical settings for a bit, and if we're playing in Japan it stands to reason we want to step into the shoes of a Japanese figure. If we wanted to step into the shoes of an African figure......we could replay Origins. Which is probably a much better game anyway.... We already had AC:Africa. We wanted AC:Japan since AC:Holy Land ended. And they give us AC:Japrica. Still better than AC:London though
It still looks like a fun time once it hits sales, but they definitely short changed what it could have been with some bizarre choices just to differentiate from GoT, IMO.
@Bigmanfan or even an unpopular one, opting only for their own which absolutely nobody voluntarily uses. And still loses steam sales when on steam because of it. Their games don't even show up in the steam mobile app library because they're the only publisher I know of that opts out of family sharing explicitly and the mobile app doesn't show the ones omitted...
At this point they should just throw the games on gog and hope for the best because they literally can't sell any worse....
@HonestHick IMO I think the success of Halo was a fluke. Fps was the big thing at the time and everything was a doom clone. They really rode the trend but happened to have a unique spin on mechanics and one great lore writer and one great composer they've since ousted and the sued, and it all clicked. But that was it. They copy pasted a few times with extended story and it worked but they really haven't had an original idea since CE, and even that was a fresh spin on what was already there. Myth was their only really unique game.
@themightyant marketing. The new box is an opportunity to reboot the marketing and boost the brand while having temporary advantages to market.
I'm not saying I believe they'll successfully do that, because Xbox. But that's why these companies do it. And realistically there's no way they can reboot the Series, it's already over. They need a new platform to reboot. Especially if it's a shakeup and disruptor somehow (PC integration, handheld hybrid, SOMETHING to disrupt the status quo.) It's all diminishing returns. It's never going to be anything but diminishing returns ever again unless VR hits it big. It's about marketing, and only about marketing forever more.
I still disagree, strongly about "the games" narrative though. I think that's outdated for a different consumer than the current console consumer. Nintendo excluded, because what they have aren't "great games" what they have is "household child-driven, nostalgia-focused legendary brands and characters on a bigger-than-Disney-itself scale." Nobody else will ever be able to leverage IP exclusivity the way Nintendo can, because nobody but Disney itself has IPs of that nature. Even if they sell lousy games (like half the Pokemon games of the last decade) they'll still outsell everything else by double. Let's be real, modern Pokemon is an Xbox grade series.
I don't think the modern consumer is buying it for "exclusive games from the first party". I don't think the modern console consumer could give two flips about "first party exclusives", and I think both Sony and Microsoft are very, very, very aware of that at this point. They know their install base numbers. They know what people are playing. They know their first party numbers are a fraction of their install base. I don't think a dozen TLOUs are gong to move Xbox. It's all about marketing and getting into people's heads why they should play GTA and the like on an Xbox instead of a PS. And that's where they've failed. They haven't really given reasons why people should play it on an Xbox, and everybody already knows everybody they know plays on a PS. "Because Game Pass" and "Because Halo 6" isn't enough of a reason if you just want to play GTA. Which is MOST console buyers. I think people in the lifelong enthusiast circle are a bit behind the current market in the obsession with 1st party exclusives. We're still reliving N64 vs PSX vs Saturn forever and ever.
@HonestHick If the talent came from apple, I'm pretty sure it's all the people responsible for the S-Mac before they had to beg Steve Jobs to come back from exile they sent him on
Something SERIOUSLY happened at Bungie. They were a nobody, and made Mac games of all things, that's like launching WiiU exclusives. Then they did Halo and it went straight to their heads and never did anything well again. And everything that descends from them seems equally cursed.
@Real_game_passion Valve doesn't have the reach to put Steamdeck on shelves in every Walmart. Xbox does. That's the key difference. For enthusiasts, Deck, Ally, Legion make sense. For the masses that go to Walmart and see the new handheld console on the endcap and get interested, Deck and Ally never existed to begin with.
@Fenbops Yeah others said it but "biggest tech leap" doesn't mean "biggest jump in raster performance", it's codeword for things like AI or other innovation systems, not raw power.
Pricing, yeah, Phil had said in that interview about the end of Moore's Law and how the console subsidy model is over, and people might have to pay "maybe more than they're used to" for consoles. I'm fully expecting both PS6 and neXtBox to be in the $700-1200 range. And I think that's a falling of point where people stop caring. Consoles were meant to be "cheap" ways to play video games. Once they become major investments and there's plenty of alternatives most people won't bother. Once you get to where consoles are competing in price with PCs, anyone tech inclined will head straight to PC, where the only real negatives were price and convenience, and once they're in similar pricing, the convenience isn't worth paying almost the same to get much less for all but the tech disinclined.
It may be that the future of gaming is 100% handheld hybrids with docks for affordable prices, PCs for enthusiast gaming and a weird niche of "really expensive home consoles" for people with lots of money and little skill and patience.
@sixrings Even the $1600 4090 can't handle 4k60 with full path trace in CP2077 without huge drops. Even FFXVI without RT cripples it to 30fps. Not all the money in the world can fix poor optimization and even decently optimized RT. If you're waiting for that in consoles, set your sights on 2034 or beyond. And also $1200-1500 consoles.
@themightyant Point 1 doesn't matter, they all just want to sell hardware, not really to sell hardware but to "reinvigorate interest in the brand." But point 2 is a major problem. I think that's a bigger issue for Sony. For MS, Series is stalled beyond recovery, it's lost interest and momentum. If they want Xbox hardware at all they need to "reinvigorate interest in the brand" with "exciting new hardware", and sooner is better. Long term, that's a problem, but Xbox kind of doesn't have a choice. Which is their long term problem, their hand is always forced by past mistakes, which just leads to new mistakes.
OTOH launching first helped with the X360, and if they're trying to cause a disruptive paradigm shift, going first, if it goes beyond specs (adding PC stores etc) could have a perception impact on PS6, IF it's successful. What MS needs most right now is just market growth. Even if PS leapfrogs them after, that initial period of selling as much as they can on hype with no Sony competitor, if they market it right (spoiler: they won't), could get them a foothold in markets they have none in now.
It could also force Sony to overreact and rush PS6, compromising it. Their current management absolutely would do that, too.
I think the problem for MS is it's clear they aren't interested in the "old" traditional console business and are looking to disrupt it (what's weird is that's what they were trying to do in 2001, then somehow morphed into an old traditional console), and the sooner they move onto whatever paradigm they're aiming for (if they can figure out what it is), the sooner they get out of this weird stall and talking out both sides of their mouth.
Will it succeed? It's Xbox, of course it won't But that's not the point....
Also "You'd also lose some of the major advantages consoles have over PC like being able to optimise for fixed hardware, and to subsidise hardware costs. Lastly many think Series S holds back Series X, if you had an even wider set of hardware wouldn't this be amplified?"
Who optimizes for Xbox? Even Xbox doesn't optimize for Xbox. At least the PC optimized version would work as it should on an equivalent PC.
And Phil already said hardware subsidy is over and hardware costs will go up. And then we saw PS5 Pro. Phil called it, and expect the same for XB.
I think the handheld WILL "hold back" Xbox the same way S does. And the rumor that Sony might do a handheld could for PS6 too. I think one thing we know for sure is the industry hit a dead end chasing power above all. Devs are going bankrupt trying to make games to use it, nobody's making healthy profit in the attempt except the established handful and most of them are still selling a PS360 game with bumped gfx. Chasing the graphics dragon may work for Nvidia but it's not working for anyone else. Hardware, even on PC, needs a great reset to be rolled back in what games need. Next gen might be the right time with the introduction of "me too" Switch platforms.
@Tyrant_T103 @themightyant @OldGamer999 The one thing that strikes me about all the things we poke fun at, is that half the biggest fails of the past 5 years in gaming all have one common thread: They're all rooted in Bungie.
There's Bungie itself going downward, there's 343 which fell out of Bungie and made beyond a mess and money hole of Infinite, there's Concord, enough said. Everything that has ever touched Bungie is pure poison. Whatever happened in that organization is so bad it tainted everything connected with it permanently.
There's been other fails, of course, Skull and Bones and SS:KTJL come to mind, but even those don't seem to have failed as hard as the Bungie connected stuff.
@Lup They hire an entire building full of lawyers to spend every day for decades pouring over every possible related patient and finding new ones to make for themselves so secure every area that the can own for themselves. Like Nintendo.
For everyone else, you don't, and pay your hundreds of millions when corporate comes knocking, or just let them absorb your company as collateral..
Nope never bothered with cod.. Bought the two that came out on wiiu. Campaign was kind of fun on the first one. Didn't bother finishing the second one (Call of Doggy). Tried the free one on ps and the auto aim shooting gallery is not for me. Still don't get why it's the biggest thing since sliced bread. Plenty of more interesting stuff to play. Better than fortnite I guess?
@Fiendish-Beaver Play all the games. Play all the games. Do it. Just do it. (Isn't Majima a cameo in LaD though?)
He's kind of the antagonist/protagonist/mostly bats**t nuts in a lovable way part of the main side cast in Kiryu's Y0-6 saga. A sort of frienemy turned friend? He's also the other main playable protag for half of Yakuza 0, so he's been playable before.
But a whole game with his crazy self as a pirate? Yes. This will be awesome.
Dunno about the English dub though. His Japanese VA Ugaki has such a style of his own that the character seems mostly built around that it's hard for me to imagine him without that voice. Kind of the same for Kiryu and Kuroda though. I don't understand half of what he says, but his smooth baritone is Kiryu.
OMG, at first I was disappointed about Hawaii again, I play LaD/Yakuza to enjoy Japan, not the US, but Majima gets is own whole game, lol? Sign me up! Instantly better than Y6.
"“I’m not being paid to do what he says,” it read. “I’m being paid to do what he meant.""
LOL if this doesn't sum up the entirety of the Xbox Series experience, I don't know what does.
@Balaam_ I mean we did just read how Hulst blew $400M on the "future" of the company that flamed out in 12 days. I think the takeaways is what we already know. Nobody knows wtf they're doing in the games industry C suites.
@smoreon Ah, my error, I said "SMT1", but it was really Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei (or DDS:MT2). SMT1 was basically a remake and reboot of DDSMT2 (same story etc.) So yeah, it was still "MegaTen", just the precursor to the "Shin" part of the series. Either way Pokemon's an Atlus ripoff. Cuter though. Much, much cuter.
This guy has a more level head than most of the industry. Instead in shoveling god money into one game that must become the next big thing, having variety of diverse content to get more chances of success. I remember when the industry worked that way and grew until the snack food executives took over and made it shrink.
@16BitHero nice, I have my quest 3 and a 6ghz router ready 4090 soon, didn't wait for 5090 because I feel between scalpers and delays it'll be next summer till its available anyway and affording it is questionable. I'm actually considering a Pimax Crystal Super, but I'm not sure finances will allow when it launches in a frew months.
I love the small file size as this will be a permanently installed PCVR game for me. But I do wonder how seamless the streaming is, especially for VR where you do NOT want any kind of stutters.
@Banjo- @Cherip-the-Ripper It goes deeper than that. Game Freak was originally a gaming magazine, not a developer, founded by the same 3 guys that have been running it through today (all pre-Nintendo, who technically still does NOT own them, they simply have an investment stake in them which is why they were able to make Tembo and the horse racing game for PC/XB/PS. Nintendo just bought the Pokemon brand and invested into GF.)
Anyway, Tajirii was reviewing SMT1 for the magazine, which is actually the original monster collecting game, though I suspect there could have been something earlier that borrowed from, that was the first complete package. While he was reviewing it and coming up with criticisms he decided he could make a better RPG than SMT. He put together his childhood hobby of bug collecting, and the, then new, idea of the Game Boy Link cable allowing people to connect their games, and the ideas of SMT's demon collecting, and built it out into what became Pokemon, and the rest is history.
So, yes, Pokemon is literally based on/"inspired by" Shin Megami Tensei directly, back when GF was a indie outfit/magazine.
Of course Nintendo, in this case, is suing for patents from code/database implementation (??) not game similarity. But unless they have reason to believe a former employee jumped ship with proprietary information (maybe they did? We don't know, that would be genuine theft), or maybe thy reverse engineered (illegally) the game to find (not directly stolen but "similar things" to send to the patent team).
But what irks me is they've had it in for this game for a while, they were rumored to be pressuring retailers and media to ignore the game, and clearly spent their time digging for dirt to find anything to hang it with and found something, somehow, eventually.
OTOH, Palworld going out of it's way to copy the aesthetic of the #1 franchise in the world was playing with fire, and it's hard to be too sympathetic to them either. If you make a game copying GTA'a asethetic, or pokemon, or WoW, or whatever, you know you're going to have a bad time, it's like having a fireworks display in a DMZ.
@anoyonmus Yeah I took a look at all that. That still seems amazingly tenuous. Those parents may be legal but they're parents on obvious systems that anyone doing similar things would end up doing largely. Shameless. Legal but shameless. Palworld was shameless in copying the Pokemon aesthetic. Nintendo is shameless in pressuring media and stores to ignore the game and now searching to find something to attack for. Unless someone at palworld is former game freak or obviously reverse engineered and duplicated Pokemon systems and can be fingered, then I really question if Nintendo violated copyright and tos to reverse engineer palworld to find this supposed violation. Is like a pair of bandits saying "wasnt me, he did it"
@VisitingComet1 seriously with the way the industry is behaving these days if I wasnt already switching to PC I think I'd just switch to phone games. I can't stand supporting these whack jobs anymore.
@anoyonmus That's interesting information. Though it also seems very dubious. Patenting coding techniques? And how would they even know that was violated without reverse engineering palworld which is itself a copyright violation. I think the biggest crime here is that the uspo actually granted these patents to begin with.
Still going after palworld for internal things that probably should never have been patentable seems like such an obvious witch hunt to find "something" to pin on a product they didn't like existing. after Nintendo was allegedly pressuring organizations in Japan to disassociate with pal world.
THERE'S the Nintendo ninjas. Wondered where they got to.
Just when they finally look like the less bad console vendor they do this. I swear the console business doesn't WANT to exist. Curious what patents this allegedly violates. It has a very visually similar look but gameplay isn't similar at all.
Pokemon itself was literally adapted from SMT. Should Sega sue Nintendo for infringements now? Are we really back to 1990s playgrounds?
Every day this industry wants me to hate it more and more.
Does anyone have high expectations for a Bethesda game? We love Bethesda games because they're really the only ones that do what they do the way they do it. But we also have low technical expectations and expect tons of jank. The part I worry about is they seem to be declining rather than improving. Morrowind was an amazing experience. Oblivion, IMO was the high water mark, it was the peak of everthing Bethesda does, doing it in a way that felt tight, yet still completely unrestrained. IMO Skyrim was a step down despite being more commercially successful, their Fallouts were always "ok at best" and IMO distracted them far too much from making TES great (Obsidian did the best "new" Fallout anyway), and Starfield is......honestly IDK why they made it, it was too ambitious, and again took them away from making TES the best it could be, while also faffing about with Fallout they're not great at.
They need to stop focusing on side projects and really focus on getting back to the momentum they had with Morrowind and Oblivion. But of course they won't because the stupid Fallout TV show means MS will make them milk an FO cashcow now.
Sounds like every large corporation ever. 1000 workers, most of them with high turn over, 899 managers, most of which are just there to climb the ladder, 100 executives each with a conflicting agenda, 0 strategies.
Xbox HQ needs to move to the post office. So much synergy.
@Banjo-Good idea, not sure what thread for it. though.
@gollumb82 No problem! Yeah that's a sensible plan. Z2 should be beastly though I worry about price after Ally X 5 Pro lol. Personally the legion fan hype seems overblown to me. It produces sound but it's not loud. I've not played in a dead silent room but I don't really notice it over the game, personally. It's no PS4 lol. It's quieter than my laptop
@CallMeDuraSouka maybe they've dramatically improved their streaming app since I saw it? But the official Sony streaming app has always been shades of awful and portal was no exception with brutal compression and questionable frame pacing. Third party apps, psplay, chiaki etc have long had much better streaming performance even on platforms Sony has an official client. Give chiaki a try on your deck if you haven't. Or PC. During my nms fetish I was living on PSPlay on my G Cloud for doing dailies lol.
Yeah the dongles... It's ok, tried that with switch and it's such a pita to me. And then Nintendo enabled actual bt like 5 years later lol
Edit: I don't think portal is bad per se and it's not a horrible value unlike, well, most Sony offerings, it's actually cheaper than most alternatives, so for Sony only players it isn't a bad cost effective option at all. But for multiplat players you can get so much more and even better ps streaming with slightly more expensive devices.
@gollumb82 That's a good question that I think comes down to ergonomic preferences above all. The z1 extreme Ally and legion are more or less the same rig with a lot of form factor differences. More, the allyX definitely has some advantages internally but it's still the same soc and is a whole other price class. We'll call it the Ally 5 Pro... Still a better value than that blue company model though lol
I'n my case I got the non extreme cheap Ally to compliment my legion go as a Super Switch. I definitely tend to like the Legion more as my "power" handheld. It's less dense, but it's not really heavier, the screen is just incredible, I like having the option to detach the controllers and play tabletop mode switch style, I don't use it a lot but I like using it sometimes, and also means you can replace the controllers if they fail which seems important on $600+ devices. But you're less likely to need to because it uses hall effect and Ally does not. Also has the little track pad, semi hard case, and the controller has an attachment you can use as a mouse mostly meant for shooters but I haven't used that.
The size can be ungainly for some and it's harder to one-hand than the ally with its wide center of mass. And some might not like that it's more hollow and less dense feeling though similar total weight.
One thing some don't like is the louder single fan. Hasn't bothered me at all. Ally kind of whines, legion kind of whooshes, doesn't seem that different really but some take issue with it.
One perk on the ally is the fingerprint scanner though. Legion you have to enter windows pin every time. Minor things but they can matter.
@endlessleep I like the plan but the egpu dock for a 4k60 output would have to be way more expensive. Egpu doesn't come cheap, and they don't need to subsidize the performance dock. I think the bundled price can work though.
@HonestHick if you luuuuuuuuuuuuv the Dual Sense, and I know you do, and need an 8" screen, portal is nearly fine. As long as you also love wired headphones or didn't mind buying Sony proprietary wireless ones because no BT. And don't mind short battery. and also don't mind substandard steam quality. It's ducky.
If you're not the Dual Senses BFF, like having a battery you don't need plugged into a 10lb sack of potatoes for more power, and have any wireless headphones on planet Earth other than magic Sony Specials, and like a quality stream I'd recommend the Logitech G cloud over it. A little more expensive and a bit worse display, but Xbox format controller, battery that runs for days, 3rd party PS Play app (must purchase on app store) streams better and Bluetooth, because standards are so hard.
It cost a little more than portal but..... Also works for Xbox, PC moonlight, and every other streaming service and is also a full android tablet for video and all too.
Then if course Ally and the like are full PCs, can do all the above, play all the PC store games, game pass natively, not streamed, and can even stream ps plus premium while portal can't 😆
@gollumb82 Yeah, the suspend/resume is a big deal for me, so I can definitely appreciate the appeal of that. For me it depends on game of course. MOST of the ones I've tried suspend fails horribly on (Elden, Armored Core 5, FF13, Live a Live, a few others fail horribly.) Windows suspend does seem to work fine on Little Kitty big City, P3R, Octopath 2, Rune Factory 5. So it's not a total fail. But yeah, suspend is actually important to me, so I don't like how bad it is on Windows. Maybe that'll improve with the Xbox handheld sounding windows based, Win11 may get some boosts from that (like it got AutoHDR from Xbox etc.)
Heh, Windows update...don't start me on that. At all.
Yeah Ally people seem to love Crate, Asus mobo buyers seem to hate Crate as awful bloatware and nix it instantly. There's a few other loaders out there to replace it, including Steam's Big Picture. I keep it on my Ally, launch from it, mostly prefer to use the native launchers though, or just the desktop icons for steam games even on Ally lol. Guess I'm old skool too much. I haven't used the content store tbh, I do all my shopping on my phone, really. I just have the Steam and CDKeys app, use thos most of the time, GoG when I feel like it, and use the Windows popups from Epic to remind me to grab my freebies weekly, lol.
I haven't actually messed with fancurves so much, since it's a closed box system I just kind of leave them at factory. Custom builds? Yeah I do the curves in BIOS like the ubernerd I am, but not in this. DEFINITELY believable about better battery life. Only semi-surprised about fps. Windows bloat, and shoddy AMD drivers are the culprits there.
I think I still prefer the Windows interface (after all that's the reason I bought it instead of a Deck to begin with), but it definitely sounds like there's some nice benefits without it.
@gollumb82 Really? What didn't you find user friendly about the default Windows OS (with or without Crate or Big Picture?)
Personally, I never find it gets in the way, especially with the hardware button to get to those important shortcut buttons, and I like being able to swipe up while in-game to get the taskbar up for anything else. Nothing wrong with SteamOS, I just haven't found Windows to get in the way, and of course value having the Play Anywhere games I already own and GOG available.
The only thing I really miss is a working suspend state. Is that any better on SteamOS (probably?)
Got to admit, I've been doing 90% of my gaming on Legion and Ally recently. Funny to see it get more attention from Xbox than the consoles.
@Balaam_ I think between Switch and phones we get a pretty clear picture that the overwhelming majority of people who play video games prefer playing on handheld devices. Switch proved that they ALSO like playing on the TV when possible, but it's not the main driver, and that ultra extreme graphics do not matter to them. Considering the costs of ultra extreme graphics and most devs trying to provide them going bankrupt....a rollback to a handheld focus might be good for everyone, including devs keeping the doors open. We're rapidly getting to the point in tech that "dockable handhelds" won't really have any negatives vs a "dedicated" console, other than super duper gfx and >$1k price tags to get it.
As for tiny and cramped controls, lol, you should hold a Legion Go. It feels like The Duke in your hand, only bigger, lol. Too big tbh, those bumpers are massive and I have to shift my hand to the dpad. Ally is more Xbox XS controller proportions (and Xbox assisted in the development.)
Yeah, big screen and "small" screen isn't the same experience, but you can dock these things to the big screen, just BYO HDMI adapter like any PC. FWIW, while it's no 4070, the Z1 Extreme chip sports the same integrated GPU that the Ryzen 7 7800x3D comes with. It's no slouch. Starfield doesn't even function without mods, but it's kinda broken. But games like Armored Core 5 run 40-60fps with RSR doing the heavy upscaling from 720p up. Elden Ring runs similarly. That's on the NON-EXTREME Z1 Ally I have. Runs even better on the Extreme Z1 legion. These ain't Nintendo.
@InterceptorAlpha in context they seem to be publishing and corporate roles more than development. Mostly. Or so it seems.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner @EvenStephen7 "In a statement from Herman Hulst regarding the unexpected announcement of the closure of Santa Monica Studio he had this to say: 'I know they gave us God of War and Ragnarok, but, like, what have they done for us lately?'"
@Banjo- Yeah, I don't know what it is with modern devs. IDK if it's pure vanity, where, I think a lot of them are in an arms race to "prove their worth" and "keep their skills marketable and up to date" by always being deep into whatver the latest cutting edge is, so their continuing education comes at the consumer's cost, because they're all afraid of being obsolete, which is a deep industry problem if true, or if it's the marketing heads pushing forever on "we want shinier" and nothing else matters because shiny stills and youtube vids sell games. But we have more powerful, more expensive hardware than ever that drives ever shinier looking games than ever with ever worse performance and hollowed out gameplay. Physics just astounds me. We had physics on everything in HL2. We had physics in old PS2 games. For all it's faults, BotW had full physics simulation on every object across the world running on a 2011 tablet. Yet the PS5/Pro and XSX and $3k PCs still don't get games with physics in 2024 and performance is terrible. Something is really really broken in the industry, and it's not the hardware. And buying more hardware to brute force past the problem isn't a good solution.
I think... There's needs to be a line drawn, are games a creative medium or a tech demo? The industry never got this right on the PC side before console became PC. You can design gameplay stories all very well on a phone game or a 4090. Does the game need to push hardware boundaries to do what it's trying to do? And if so, why? Hardware makers need games to do that to justify selling hardware. Do software makers need to do that? Is photorealism to simulate live action actually necessary?
Meanwhile there's a vr app that sells 4 song concerts, mobile processor mind you, only a few artists participating right now, but big artists. It uses 3d capture and a ue4 environment and it seriously looks like you're there with the real artist. Sure there's only a few characters at once but it's a freaking phone chip. That needs to be photo-realistic, is a performance by a real person/band.
It's all vanity projects. They're pushing hardware they know their customers don't even have just because they can because tech demos are fun to create and are marketable. Is it needed? No. She Spiderman need to be 300m for a game that's like a really really pretty PS2 game? With less physics than the actual PS2 Spider-Man game.
The software part of the industry is seriously messed up. What they are spending money on isn't what everyone wants. It's what they want. The ENTIRE industry is now the original FFXIV team. The one that made flower pots with a higher poly count than the player model. Read yoshiPs commentary on what was wrong with og xiv. Everything wrong there is now the whole industry.
@HonestHick I mean, those cheap meta games are a flavor of mobile games which are outperforming their "high end games" 1000:1.
Same for Nintendo games.
I don't see anything wrong with big budgets and stories so long as the budget doesn't exceed likely sales without fleecing customers. What I do see problems with is adding rt path traced reflective water and individual photon particle effects while clobbering CPU without even having physics that Half Life Freaking 2 had in like 2002 while knowing your customers want 60fps and are on PS5 and xss and 3060s and just dgaf. You can tell stories without setting 4090s on fire. Jrpgs do it. The PS3 did it. The PS2 did it. Deus Ex 1 is still one of the best gaming stores ever. In 1999. You don't need 700 dollar consoles and 1000+ video cards to tell stores or have big games. On fact the customers ACTIVELY keep telling them this.
4060s cost less than an OLED switch and run cod at 180fps in 1080p for competitive play. Something is wrong with the software part of the industry if they can't get this to work correctly. But they're too focused on spectacle because??
@HonestHick the problem isn't gamers demanding more. The problem is developers overambitiously making games knowing they have no chance to hit the targets gamers want. they build vanity projects with all the effects they want to flex their skills on without actually designing around the hardware and what the customers want. Quest 3 is a phone inside. Games run 90 and 120fps easily. Why? Because they're designed for the hardware. You can't have devs building for 4070s and above while the common card on steam is 3060, handheld chips are rising, and the consoles aren't close. The devs know what gamers want and they know what hardware gamers have and they ignore it and build whatever they want for high end hardware and then tell gamers to buy expensive hardware if they want it to run right. This isn't a problem with silicon price, this is a problem with software planning.
@Banjo- I'm hoping for it really. I know it's rumored they'll have their own launcher and store on PC which makes sense for price control in Sony style.
Plus if Astro goes to PC it'll get vr mods pretty fast so it'll finally run properly lol
@Banjo- IDK that square privileges had been doing much for them lately anyway. Lackluster sales in general. Activision definitely though.
I figured astrobot would be one they keep exclusive. I was surprised to see the producer asking for feedback on interest in a PC port. Yet tlou2 didn't get one yet which you'd think it would have given the TV show and sunken sales on PS5.
@Banjo- absolutely. Though I suspect there's going to go back and forth supporting games on PC. They'll realize they need to lock games to sell hardware, then they'll want the revenue. I think they'll be consistently inconsistent.
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Re: Phil Spencer Says 2024 Is Xbox's Best Year In Asia 'Across All Devices'
Incidentally Concord just had it's highest concurrent player count ever this month!
I love statistics.....
Re: Black Myth: Wukong Sells 20 Million Copies Before It Even Comes To Xbox
Yeah, as others have said, for those that don't know, the runaway sales success is almost entirely in China alone, and there, nearly entirely on PC. The game is sort of a cultural touch point in China, based on one of their most famous classical literary works that's deeply tied into the culture, plus a big AAA Nvidia sponsored game from a Chinese studio and it turned into a viral success instantly.
Doesn't mean it's a bad game, but it's extreme success looks different in context than at a glance. It's not really because the game became the biggest thing ever, it's explicitly a China thing and is a game that sells averagely decent elsewhere as well.
Re: Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Apparently Spotted On Xbox
@GamingFan4Lyf Lol. Is it very exclusive feeling to be playing a game with 6000% more players than Concord?
Re: Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Apparently Spotted On Xbox
Dadadada-da-da-da-dada!
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Delayed To Feb 2025, Partly Due To Poor Start For Star Wars Outlaws
@CaptainCluck IDK if it's even a "DEI" thing, but it feels insanely awkward. We play AC to live in this historical settings for a bit, and if we're playing in Japan it stands to reason we want to step into the shoes of a Japanese figure. If we wanted to step into the shoes of an African figure......we could replay Origins. Which is probably a much better game anyway.... We already had AC:Africa. We wanted AC:Japan since AC:Holy Land ended. And they give us AC:Japrica. Still better than AC:London though
It still looks like a fun time once it hits sales, but they definitely short changed what it could have been with some bizarre choices just to differentiate from GoT, IMO.
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Delayed To Feb 2025, Partly Due To Poor Start For Star Wars Outlaws
@AverageGamer They haven't been consistent with that, either, sometimes only launching on Ubisoft Connect.
Re: PSA: Microsoft Is Discontinuing The Xbox Game Pass Mobile App In November
I will never understand why it was ever a separate app to begin with....
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Delayed To Feb 2025, Partly Due To Poor Start For Star Wars Outlaws
@Bigmanfan or even an unpopular one, opting only for their own which absolutely nobody voluntarily uses. And still loses steam sales when on steam because of it. Their games don't even show up in the steam mobile app library because they're the only publisher I know of that opts out of family sharing explicitly and the mobile app doesn't show the ones omitted...
At this point they should just throw the games on gog and hope for the best because they literally can't sell any worse....
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Delayed To Feb 2025, Partly Due To Poor Start For Star Wars Outlaws
@Bigmanfan Whoa, launching right to Steam?! That's new. What's next, not tying it to the Ubi launcher?
STILL waiting for Mirage on Steam...
Re: Xbox Exec Reveals How Much Money Microsoft Has Made From Halo
@HonestHick IMO I think the success of Halo was a fluke. Fps was the big thing at the time and everything was a doom clone. They really rode the trend but happened to have a unique spin on mechanics and one great lore writer and one great composer they've since ousted and the sued, and it all clicked. But that was it. They copy pasted a few times with extended story and it worked but they really haven't had an original idea since CE, and even that was a fresh spin on what was already there. Myth was their only really unique game.
Re: Rumour: Microsoft To Launch Next-Gen With Series X Successor & Handheld Xbox
@themightyant marketing. The new box is an opportunity to reboot the marketing and boost the brand while having temporary advantages to market.
I'm not saying I believe they'll successfully do that, because Xbox. But that's why these companies do it. And realistically there's no way they can reboot the Series, it's already over. They need a new platform to reboot. Especially if it's a shakeup and disruptor somehow (PC integration, handheld hybrid, SOMETHING to disrupt the status quo.) It's all diminishing returns. It's never going to be anything but diminishing returns ever again unless VR hits it big. It's about marketing, and only about marketing forever more.
I still disagree, strongly about "the games" narrative though. I think that's outdated for a different consumer than the current console consumer. Nintendo excluded, because what they have aren't "great games" what they have is "household child-driven, nostalgia-focused legendary brands and characters on a bigger-than-Disney-itself scale." Nobody else will ever be able to leverage IP exclusivity the way Nintendo can, because nobody but Disney itself has IPs of that nature. Even if they sell lousy games (like half the Pokemon games of the last decade) they'll still outsell everything else by double. Let's be real, modern Pokemon is an Xbox grade series.
I don't think the modern consumer is buying it for "exclusive games from the first party". I don't think the modern console consumer could give two flips about "first party exclusives", and I think both Sony and Microsoft are very, very, very aware of that at this point. They know their install base numbers. They know what people are playing. They know their first party numbers are a fraction of their install base. I don't think a dozen TLOUs are gong to move Xbox. It's all about marketing and getting into people's heads why they should play GTA and the like on an Xbox instead of a PS. And that's where they've failed. They haven't really given reasons why people should play it on an Xbox, and everybody already knows everybody they know plays on a PS. "Because Game Pass" and "Because Halo 6" isn't enough of a reason if you just want to play GTA. Which is MOST console buyers. I think people in the lifelong enthusiast circle are a bit behind the current market in the obsession with 1st party exclusives. We're still reliving N64 vs PSX vs Saturn forever and ever.
Re: Xbox Exec Reveals How Much Money Microsoft Has Made From Halo
@HonestHick If the talent came from apple, I'm pretty sure it's all the people responsible for the S-Mac before they had to beg Steve Jobs to come back from exile they sent him on
Something SERIOUSLY happened at Bungie. They were a nobody, and made Mac games of all things, that's like launching WiiU exclusives. Then they did Halo and it went straight to their heads and never did anything well again. And everything that descends from them seems equally cursed.
Re: Rumour: Microsoft To Launch Next-Gen With Series X Successor & Handheld Xbox
@Real_game_passion Valve doesn't have the reach to put Steamdeck on shelves in every Walmart. Xbox does. That's the key difference. For enthusiasts, Deck, Ally, Legion make sense. For the masses that go to Walmart and see the new handheld console on the endcap and get interested, Deck and Ally never existed to begin with.
@Fenbops Yeah others said it but "biggest tech leap" doesn't mean "biggest jump in raster performance", it's codeword for things like AI or other innovation systems, not raw power.
Pricing, yeah, Phil had said in that interview about the end of Moore's Law and how the console subsidy model is over, and people might have to pay "maybe more than they're used to" for consoles. I'm fully expecting both PS6 and neXtBox to be in the $700-1200 range. And I think that's a falling of point where people stop caring. Consoles were meant to be "cheap" ways to play video games. Once they become major investments and there's plenty of alternatives most people won't bother. Once you get to where consoles are competing in price with PCs, anyone tech inclined will head straight to PC, where the only real negatives were price and convenience, and once they're in similar pricing, the convenience isn't worth paying almost the same to get much less for all but the tech disinclined.
It may be that the future of gaming is 100% handheld hybrids with docks for affordable prices, PCs for enthusiast gaming and a weird niche of "really expensive home consoles" for people with lots of money and little skill and patience.
@sixrings Even the $1600 4090 can't handle 4k60 with full path trace in CP2077 without huge drops. Even FFXVI without RT cripples it to 30fps. Not all the money in the world can fix poor optimization and even decently optimized RT. If you're waiting for that in consoles, set your sights on 2034 or beyond. And also $1200-1500 consoles.
Re: Rumour: Microsoft To Launch Next-Gen With Series X Successor & Handheld Xbox
@themightyant Point 1 doesn't matter, they all just want to sell hardware, not really to sell hardware but to "reinvigorate interest in the brand." But point 2 is a major problem. I think that's a bigger issue for Sony. For MS, Series is stalled beyond recovery, it's lost interest and momentum. If they want Xbox hardware at all they need to "reinvigorate interest in the brand" with "exciting new hardware", and sooner is better. Long term, that's a problem, but Xbox kind of doesn't have a choice. Which is their long term problem, their hand is always forced by past mistakes, which just leads to new mistakes.
OTOH launching first helped with the X360, and if they're trying to cause a disruptive paradigm shift, going first, if it goes beyond specs (adding PC stores etc) could have a perception impact on PS6, IF it's successful. What MS needs most right now is just market growth. Even if PS leapfrogs them after, that initial period of selling as much as they can on hype with no Sony competitor, if they market it right (spoiler: they won't), could get them a foothold in markets they have none in now.
It could also force Sony to overreact and rush PS6, compromising it. Their current management absolutely would do that, too.
I think the problem for MS is it's clear they aren't interested in the "old" traditional console business and are looking to disrupt it (what's weird is that's what they were trying to do in 2001, then somehow morphed into an old traditional console), and the sooner they move onto whatever paradigm they're aiming for (if they can figure out what it is), the sooner they get out of this weird stall and talking out both sides of their mouth.
Will it succeed? It's Xbox, of course it won't But that's not the point....
Also "You'd also lose some of the major advantages consoles have over PC like being able to optimise for fixed hardware, and to subsidise hardware costs. Lastly many think Series S holds back Series X, if you had an even wider set of hardware wouldn't this be amplified?"
Who optimizes for Xbox? Even Xbox doesn't optimize for Xbox. At least the PC optimized version would work as it should on an equivalent PC.
And Phil already said hardware subsidy is over and hardware costs will go up. And then we saw PS5 Pro. Phil called it, and expect the same for XB.
I think the handheld WILL "hold back" Xbox the same way S does. And the rumor that Sony might do a handheld could for PS6 too. I think one thing we know for sure is the industry hit a dead end chasing power above all. Devs are going bankrupt trying to make games to use it, nobody's making healthy profit in the attempt except the established handful and most of them are still selling a PS360 game with bumped gfx. Chasing the graphics dragon may work for Nvidia but it's not working for anyone else. Hardware, even on PC, needs a great reset to be rolled back in what games need. Next gen might be the right time with the introduction of "me too" Switch platforms.
Re: Xbox Exec Reveals How Much Money Microsoft Has Made From Halo
@Tyrant_T103 @themightyant @OldGamer999 The one thing that strikes me about all the things we poke fun at, is that half the biggest fails of the past 5 years in gaming all have one common thread: They're all rooted in Bungie.
There's Bungie itself going downward, there's 343 which fell out of Bungie and made beyond a mess and money hole of Infinite, there's Concord, enough said. Everything that has ever touched Bungie is pure poison. Whatever happened in that organization is so bad it tainted everything connected with it permanently.
There's been other fails, of course, Skull and Bones and SS:KTJL come to mind, but even those don't seem to have failed as hard as the Bungie connected stuff.
Re: Palworld Dev Pocketpair Responds To Nintendo Lawsuit
@Lup They hire an entire building full of lawyers to spend every day for decades pouring over every possible related patient and finding new ones to make for themselves so secure every area that the can own for themselves. Like Nintendo.
For everyone else, you don't, and pay your hundreds of millions when corporate comes knocking, or just let them absorb your company as collateral..
Re: Poll: How Excited Are You For Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 On Xbox Game Pass?
Nope never bothered with cod.. Bought the two that came out on wiiu. Campaign was kind of fun on the first one. Didn't bother finishing the second one (Call of Doggy). Tried the free one on ps and the auto aim shooting gallery is not for me. Still don't get why it's the biggest thing since sliced bread. Plenty of more interesting stuff to play. Better than fortnite I guess?
Re: Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii Launches February 2025 On Xbox
@mousieone never before have I been so tempted to pay the full $70 for a launch game...
Re: Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii Launches February 2025 On Xbox
@Fiendish-Beaver Play all the games. Play all the games. Do it. Just do it. (Isn't Majima a cameo in LaD though?)
He's kind of the antagonist/protagonist/mostly bats**t nuts in a lovable way part of the main side cast in Kiryu's Y0-6 saga. A sort of frienemy turned friend? He's also the other main playable protag for half of Yakuza 0, so he's been playable before.
But a whole game with his crazy self as a pirate? Yes. This will be awesome.
Dunno about the English dub though. His Japanese VA Ugaki has such a style of his own that the character seems mostly built around that it's hard for me to imagine him without that voice. Kind of the same for Kiryu and Kuroda though. I don't understand half of what he says, but his smooth baritone is Kiryu.
Re: Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii Launches February 2025 On Xbox
OMG, at first I was disappointed about Hawaii again, I play LaD/Yakuza to enjoy Japan, not the US, but Majima gets is own whole game, lol? Sign me up! Instantly better than Y6.
Re: Xbox's Sarah Bond Initially 'Clashed' With Phil Spencer When Working Together
"“I’m not being paid to do what he says,” it read. “I’m being paid to do what he meant.""
LOL if this doesn't sum up the entirety of the Xbox Series experience, I don't know what does.
@Balaam_ I mean we did just read how Hulst blew $400M on the "future" of the company that flamed out in 12 days. I think the takeaways is what we already know. Nobody knows wtf they're doing in the games industry C suites.
Re: Nintendo And The Pokémon Company File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer
@smoreon Ah, my error, I said "SMT1", but it was really Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei (or DDS:MT2). SMT1 was basically a remake and reboot of DDSMT2 (same story etc.) So yeah, it was still "MegaTen", just the precursor to the "Shin" part of the series. Either way Pokemon's an Atlus ripoff. Cuter though. Much, much cuter.
Re: Tango Gameworks' New Owner Doesn't Even Expect Hi-Fi RUSH 2 To Make Money
@Elbow I imagine they learned a lot from calisto being a disaster though.
Re: Tango Gameworks' New Owner Doesn't Even Expect Hi-Fi RUSH 2 To Make Money
This guy has a more level head than most of the industry. Instead in shoveling god money into one game that must become the next big thing, having variety of diverse content to get more chances of success. I remember when the industry worked that way and grew until the snack food executives took over and made it shrink.
@NintendoByNature lol good catch, sounds like it!
Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Will Have Drastically Lower Install Sizes
@16BitHero nice, I have my quest 3 and a 6ghz router ready 4090 soon, didn't wait for 5090 because I feel between scalpers and delays it'll be next summer till its available anyway and affording it is questionable. I'm actually considering a Pimax Crystal Super, but I'm not sure finances will allow when it launches in a frew months.
Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Will Have Drastically Lower Install Sizes
I love the small file size as this will be a permanently installed PCVR game for me. But I do wonder how seamless the streaming is, especially for VR where you do NOT want any kind of stutters.
Re: Nintendo And The Pokémon Company File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer
@Banjo- @Cherip-the-Ripper It goes deeper than that. Game Freak was originally a gaming magazine, not a developer, founded by the same 3 guys that have been running it through today (all pre-Nintendo, who technically still does NOT own them, they simply have an investment stake in them which is why they were able to make Tembo and the horse racing game for PC/XB/PS. Nintendo just bought the Pokemon brand and invested into GF.)
Anyway, Tajirii was reviewing SMT1 for the magazine, which is actually the original monster collecting game, though I suspect there could have been something earlier that borrowed from, that was the first complete package. While he was reviewing it and coming up with criticisms he decided he could make a better RPG than SMT. He put together his childhood hobby of bug collecting, and the, then new, idea of the Game Boy Link cable allowing people to connect their games, and the ideas of SMT's demon collecting, and built it out into what became Pokemon, and the rest is history.
So, yes, Pokemon is literally based on/"inspired by" Shin Megami Tensei directly, back when GF was a indie outfit/magazine.
Of course Nintendo, in this case, is suing for patents from code/database implementation (??) not game similarity. But unless they have reason to believe a former employee jumped ship with proprietary information (maybe they did? We don't know, that would be genuine theft), or maybe thy reverse engineered (illegally) the game to find (not directly stolen but "similar things" to send to the patent team).
But what irks me is they've had it in for this game for a while, they were rumored to be pressuring retailers and media to ignore the game, and clearly spent their time digging for dirt to find anything to hang it with and found something, somehow, eventually.
OTOH, Palworld going out of it's way to copy the aesthetic of the #1 franchise in the world was playing with fire, and it's hard to be too sympathetic to them either. If you make a game copying GTA'a asethetic, or pokemon, or WoW, or whatever, you know you're going to have a bad time, it's like having a fireworks display in a DMZ.
Re: Nintendo And The Pokémon Company File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer
@LogicStrikesAgain Lol, the popcorn sounds good but this industry has become a shadow of itself. Well, except Nintendo. They were ALWAYS shady AF 😂
@Scummbuddy Good Old corporate espionage....
Ugh.
Re: Nintendo And The Pokémon Company File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer
@anoyonmus Yeah I took a look at all that. That still seems amazingly tenuous. Those parents may be legal but they're parents on obvious systems that anyone doing similar things would end up doing largely. Shameless. Legal but shameless. Palworld was shameless in copying the Pokemon aesthetic. Nintendo is shameless in pressuring media and stores to ignore the game and now searching to find something to attack for. Unless someone at palworld is former game freak or obviously reverse engineered and duplicated Pokemon systems and can be fingered, then I really question if Nintendo violated copyright and tos to reverse engineer palworld to find this supposed violation. Is like a pair of bandits saying "wasnt me, he did it"
Re: Nintendo And The Pokémon Company File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer
@VisitingComet1 seriously with the way the industry is behaving these days if I wasnt already switching to PC I think I'd just switch to phone games. I can't stand supporting these whack jobs anymore.
@anoyonmus That's interesting information. Though it also seems very dubious. Patenting coding techniques? And how would they even know that was violated without reverse engineering palworld which is itself a copyright violation. I think the biggest crime here is that the uspo actually granted these patents to begin with.
Still going after palworld for internal things that probably should never have been patentable seems like such an obvious witch hunt to find "something" to pin on a product they didn't like existing. after Nintendo was allegedly pressuring organizations in Japan to disassociate with pal world.
Re: Nintendo And The Pokémon Company File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer
THERE'S the Nintendo ninjas. Wondered where they got to.
Just when they finally look like the less bad console vendor they do this. I swear the console business doesn't WANT to exist. Curious what patents this allegedly violates. It has a very visually similar look but gameplay isn't similar at all.
Pokemon itself was literally adapted from SMT. Should Sega sue Nintendo for infringements now? Are we really back to 1990s playgrounds?
Every day this industry wants me to hate it more and more.
Re: Bethesda Veteran Says It Will Be 'Almost Impossible' For ES6 To Meet Expectations
Does anyone have high expectations for a Bethesda game? We love Bethesda games because they're really the only ones that do what they do the way they do it. But we also have low technical expectations and expect tons of jank. The part I worry about is they seem to be declining rather than improving. Morrowind was an amazing experience. Oblivion, IMO was the high water mark, it was the peak of everthing Bethesda does, doing it in a way that felt tight, yet still completely unrestrained. IMO Skyrim was a step down despite being more commercially successful, their Fallouts were always "ok at best" and IMO distracted them far too much from making TES great (Obsidian did the best "new" Fallout anyway), and Starfield is......honestly IDK why they made it, it was too ambitious, and again took them away from making TES the best it could be, while also faffing about with Fallout they're not great at.
They need to stop focusing on side projects and really focus on getting back to the momentum they had with Morrowind and Oblivion. But of course they won't because the stupid Fallout TV show means MS will make them milk an FO cashcow now.
Re: Rumour: Microsoft Employees 'Completely Confused' About New Xbox Strategy, Says Insider
Sounds like every large corporation ever. 1000 workers, most of them with high turn over, 899 managers, most of which are just there to climb the ladder, 100 executives each with a conflicting agenda, 0 strategies.
Xbox HQ needs to move to the post office. So much synergy.
Re: Xbox Has Begun Including Handhelds In Promotional Images
@Banjo-Good idea, not sure what thread for it. though.
@gollumb82 No problem! Yeah that's a sensible plan. Z2 should be beastly though I worry about price after Ally X 5 Pro lol. Personally the legion fan hype seems overblown to me. It produces sound but it's not loud. I've not played in a dead silent room but I don't really notice it over the game, personally. It's no PS4 lol. It's quieter than my laptop
Re: Xbox Has Begun Including Handhelds In Promotional Images
@CallMeDuraSouka maybe they've dramatically improved their streaming app since I saw it? But the official Sony streaming app has always been shades of awful and portal was no exception with brutal compression and questionable frame pacing. Third party apps, psplay, chiaki etc have long had much better streaming performance even on platforms Sony has an official client. Give chiaki a try on your deck if you haven't. Or PC. During my nms fetish I was living on PSPlay on my G Cloud for doing dailies lol.
Yeah the dongles... It's ok, tried that with switch and it's such a pita to me. And then Nintendo enabled actual bt like 5 years later lol
Edit: I don't think portal is bad per se and it's not a horrible value unlike, well, most Sony offerings, it's actually cheaper than most alternatives, so for Sony only players it isn't a bad cost effective option at all. But for multiplat players you can get so much more and even better ps streaming with slightly more expensive devices.
Re: Xbox Has Begun Including Handhelds In Promotional Images
@gollumb82 That's a good question that I think comes down to ergonomic preferences above all. The z1 extreme Ally and legion are more or less the same rig with a lot of form factor differences. More, the allyX definitely has some advantages internally but it's still the same soc and is a whole other price class. We'll call it the Ally 5 Pro... Still a better value than that blue company model though lol
I'n my case I got the non extreme cheap Ally to compliment my legion go as a Super Switch. I definitely tend to like the Legion more as my "power" handheld. It's less dense, but it's not really heavier, the screen is just incredible, I like having the option to detach the controllers and play tabletop mode switch style, I don't use it a lot but I like using it sometimes, and also means you can replace the controllers if they fail which seems important on $600+ devices. But you're less likely to need to because it uses hall effect and Ally does not. Also has the little track pad, semi hard case, and the controller has an attachment you can use as a mouse mostly meant for shooters but I haven't used that.
The size can be ungainly for some and it's harder to one-hand than the ally with its wide center of mass. And some might not like that it's more hollow and less dense feeling though similar total weight.
One thing some don't like is the louder single fan. Hasn't bothered me at all. Ally kind of whines, legion kind of whooshes, doesn't seem that different really but some take issue with it.
One perk on the ally is the fingerprint scanner though. Legion you have to enter windows pin every time. Minor things but they can matter.
Re: Xbox Has Begun Including Handhelds In Promotional Images
@endlessleep I like the plan but the egpu dock for a 4k60 output would have to be way more expensive. Egpu doesn't come cheap, and they don't need to subsidize the performance dock. I think the bundled price can work though.
Re: Xbox Has Begun Including Handhelds In Promotional Images
@HonestHick if you luuuuuuuuuuuuv the Dual Sense, and I know you do, and need an 8" screen, portal is nearly fine. As long as you also love wired headphones or didn't mind buying Sony proprietary wireless ones because no BT. And don't mind short battery. and also don't mind substandard steam quality. It's ducky.
If you're not the Dual Senses BFF, like having a battery you don't need plugged into a 10lb sack of potatoes for more power, and have any wireless headphones on planet Earth other than magic Sony Specials, and like a quality stream I'd recommend the Logitech G cloud over it. A little more expensive and a bit worse display, but Xbox format controller, battery that runs for days, 3rd party PS Play app (must purchase on app store) streams better and Bluetooth, because standards are so hard.
It cost a little more than portal but..... Also works for Xbox, PC moonlight, and every other streaming service and is also a full android tablet for video and all too.
Then if course Ally and the like are full PCs, can do all the above, play all the PC store games, game pass natively, not streamed, and can even stream ps plus premium while portal can't 😆
Re: Xbox Has Begun Including Handhelds In Promotional Images
@gollumb82 Yeah, the suspend/resume is a big deal for me, so I can definitely appreciate the appeal of that. For me it depends on game of course. MOST of the ones I've tried suspend fails horribly on (Elden, Armored Core 5, FF13, Live a Live, a few others fail horribly.) Windows suspend does seem to work fine on Little Kitty big City, P3R, Octopath 2, Rune Factory 5. So it's not a total fail. But yeah, suspend is actually important to me, so I don't like how bad it is on Windows. Maybe that'll improve with the Xbox handheld sounding windows based, Win11 may get some boosts from that (like it got AutoHDR from Xbox etc.)
Heh, Windows update...don't start me on that. At all.
Yeah Ally people seem to love Crate, Asus mobo buyers seem to hate Crate as awful bloatware and nix it instantly. There's a few other loaders out there to replace it, including Steam's Big Picture. I keep it on my Ally, launch from it, mostly prefer to use the native launchers though, or just the desktop icons for steam games even on Ally lol. Guess I'm old skool too much. I haven't used the content store tbh, I do all my shopping on my phone, really. I just have the Steam and CDKeys app, use thos most of the time, GoG when I feel like it, and use the Windows popups from Epic to remind me to grab my freebies weekly, lol.
I haven't actually messed with fancurves so much, since it's a closed box system I just kind of leave them at factory. Custom builds? Yeah I do the curves in BIOS like the ubernerd I am, but not in this. DEFINITELY believable about better battery life. Only semi-surprised about fps. Windows bloat, and shoddy AMD drivers are the culprits there.
I think I still prefer the Windows interface (after all that's the reason I bought it instead of a Deck to begin with), but it definitely sounds like there's some nice benefits without it.
Re: Xbox Has Begun Including Handhelds In Promotional Images
@gollumb82 Really? What didn't you find user friendly about the default Windows OS (with or without Crate or Big Picture?)
Personally, I never find it gets in the way, especially with the hardware button to get to those important shortcut buttons, and I like being able to swipe up while in-game to get the taskbar up for anything else. Nothing wrong with SteamOS, I just haven't found Windows to get in the way, and of course value having the Play Anywhere games I already own and GOG available.
The only thing I really miss is a working suspend state. Is that any better on SteamOS (probably?)
Re: Xbox Has Begun Including Handhelds In Promotional Images
Got to admit, I've been doing 90% of my gaming on Legion and Ally recently. Funny to see it get more attention from Xbox than the consoles.
@Balaam_ I think between Switch and phones we get a pretty clear picture that the overwhelming majority of people who play video games prefer playing on handheld devices. Switch proved that they ALSO like playing on the TV when possible, but it's not the main driver, and that ultra extreme graphics do not matter to them. Considering the costs of ultra extreme graphics and most devs trying to provide them going bankrupt....a rollback to a handheld focus might be good for everyone, including devs keeping the doors open. We're rapidly getting to the point in tech that "dockable handhelds" won't really have any negatives vs a "dedicated" console, other than super duper gfx and >$1k price tags to get it.
As for tiny and cramped controls, lol, you should hold a Legion Go. It feels like The Duke in your hand, only bigger, lol. Too big tbh, those bumpers are massive and I have to shift my hand to the dpad. Ally is more Xbox XS controller proportions (and Xbox assisted in the development.)
Yeah, big screen and "small" screen isn't the same experience, but you can dock these things to the big screen, just BYO HDMI adapter like any PC. FWIW, while it's no 4070, the Z1 Extreme chip sports the same integrated GPU that the Ryzen 7 7800x3D comes with. It's no slouch. Starfield doesn't even function without mods, but it's kinda broken. But games like Armored Core 5 run 40-60fps with RSR doing the heavy upscaling from 720p up. Elden Ring runs similarly. That's on the NON-EXTREME Z1 Ally I have. Runs even better on the Extreme Z1 legion. These ain't Nintendo.
Re: Xbox Is Cutting 650 More Jobs, Confirms Phil Spencer In Letter To Employees
@InterceptorAlpha in context they seem to be publishing and corporate roles more than development. Mostly. Or so it seems.
@PsBoxSwitchOwner @EvenStephen7 "In a statement from Herman Hulst regarding the unexpected announcement of the closure of Santa Monica Studio he had this to say: 'I know they gave us God of War and Ragnarok, but, like, what have they done for us lately?'"
Re: Xbox Reportedly Told To 'Go Dark' On Social Media Following Latest Round Of Layoffs
@Fiendish-Beaver "you don't need two PR departments when one will do the job perfectly well"
Bwahahahaha 🤣🤣. You do know you're talking about Xbox right.
Re: Xbox Series X Vs. PS5 Pro: What Are We Missing Out On?
@Banjo- Yeah, I don't know what it is with modern devs. IDK if it's pure vanity, where, I think a lot of them are in an arms race to "prove their worth" and "keep their skills marketable and up to date" by always being deep into whatver the latest cutting edge is, so their continuing education comes at the consumer's cost, because they're all afraid of being obsolete, which is a deep industry problem if true, or if it's the marketing heads pushing forever on "we want shinier" and nothing else matters because shiny stills and youtube vids sell games. But we have more powerful, more expensive hardware than ever that drives ever shinier looking games than ever with ever worse performance and hollowed out gameplay. Physics just astounds me. We had physics on everything in HL2. We had physics in old PS2 games. For all it's faults, BotW had full physics simulation on every object across the world running on a 2011 tablet. Yet the PS5/Pro and XSX and $3k PCs still don't get games with physics in 2024 and performance is terrible. Something is really really broken in the industry, and it's not the hardware. And buying more hardware to brute force past the problem isn't a good solution.
Re: Xbox Series X Vs. PS5 Pro: What Are We Missing Out On?
I think... There's needs to be a line drawn, are games a creative medium or a tech demo? The industry never got this right on the PC side before console became PC. You can design gameplay stories all very well on a phone game or a 4090. Does the game need to push hardware boundaries to do what it's trying to do? And if so, why? Hardware makers need games to do that to justify selling hardware. Do software makers need to do that? Is photorealism to simulate live action actually necessary?
Meanwhile there's a vr app that sells 4 song concerts, mobile processor mind you, only a few artists participating right now, but big artists. It uses 3d capture and a ue4 environment and it seriously looks like you're there with the real artist. Sure there's only a few characters at once but it's a freaking phone chip. That needs to be photo-realistic, is a performance by a real person/band.
It's all vanity projects. They're pushing hardware they know their customers don't even have just because they can because tech demos are fun to create and are marketable. Is it needed? No. She Spiderman need to be 300m for a game that's like a really really pretty PS2 game? With less physics than the actual PS2 Spider-Man game.
The software part of the industry is seriously messed up. What they are spending money on isn't what everyone wants. It's what they want. The ENTIRE industry is now the original FFXIV team. The one that made flower pots with a higher poly count than the player model. Read yoshiPs commentary on what was wrong with og xiv. Everything wrong there is now the whole industry.
Re: Xbox Series X Vs. PS5 Pro: What Are We Missing Out On?
@HonestHick I mean, those cheap meta games are a flavor of mobile games which are outperforming their "high end games" 1000:1.
Same for Nintendo games.
I don't see anything wrong with big budgets and stories so long as the budget doesn't exceed likely sales without fleecing customers. What I do see problems with is adding rt path traced reflective water and individual photon particle effects while clobbering CPU without even having physics that Half Life Freaking 2 had in like 2002 while knowing your customers want 60fps and are on PS5 and xss and 3060s and just dgaf. You can tell stories without setting 4090s on fire. Jrpgs do it. The PS3 did it. The PS2 did it. Deus Ex 1 is still one of the best gaming stores ever. In 1999. You don't need 700 dollar consoles and 1000+ video cards to tell stores or have big games. On fact the customers ACTIVELY keep telling them this.
4060s cost less than an OLED switch and run cod at 180fps in 1080p for competitive play. Something is wrong with the software part of the industry if they can't get this to work correctly. But they're too focused on spectacle because??
Re: Xbox Series X Vs. PS5 Pro: What Are We Missing Out On?
@HonestHick the problem isn't gamers demanding more. The problem is developers overambitiously making games knowing they have no chance to hit the targets gamers want. they build vanity projects with all the effects they want to flex their skills on without actually designing around the hardware and what the customers want. Quest 3 is a phone inside. Games run 90 and 120fps easily. Why? Because they're designed for the hardware. You can't have devs building for 4070s and above while the common card on steam is 3060, handheld chips are rising, and the consoles aren't close. The devs know what gamers want and they know what hardware gamers have and they ignore it and build whatever they want for high end hardware and then tell gamers to buy expensive hardware if they want it to run right. This isn't a problem with silicon price, this is a problem with software planning.
Re: Xbox Series X Vs. PS5 Pro: What Are We Missing Out On?
@Banjo- I'm hoping for it really. I know it's rumored they'll have their own launcher and store on PC which makes sense for price control in Sony style.
Plus if Astro goes to PC it'll get vr mods pretty fast so it'll finally run properly lol
Re: Xbox Series X Vs. PS5 Pro: What Are We Missing Out On?
@Banjo- IDK that square privileges had been doing much for them lately anyway. Lackluster sales in general. Activision definitely though.
I figured astrobot would be one they keep exclusive. I was surprised to see the producer asking for feedback on interest in a PC port. Yet tlou2 didn't get one yet which you'd think it would have given the TV show and sunken sales on PS5.
Re: Xbox Series X Vs. PS5 Pro: What Are We Missing Out On?
@Banjo- absolutely. Though I suspect there's going to go back and forth supporting games on PC. They'll realize they need to lock games to sell hardware, then they'll want the revenue. I think they'll be consistently inconsistent.