Hoping Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 pans out. Looks great. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/tony-hawk-s-pro-skater-5-plays-on-nostalgia-to-gre/1100-6428272/
Just some more thoughts on the "elite" controller. I'm sure there are people who would get a lot of benefit from this. I'm not one, though. I don't do well or poorly on a game because the trigger wasn't sensitive enough for me. I'm just not that hardcore or good at gaming, especially twitch gaming. So for the price I won't get those controllers. However, if it were cheaper, I might get a pair. I like the idea of being able to customize the sticks and all of that for comfort, but none of it will really change how well I do on the games I play. And at $150 per controller the benefits just aren't enough for me. But it does open my eyes to just how big the audience for those controllers are. I honestly didn't think there were that many people that fit into that niche out there. Now I know.
Microsoft emailed me about this 1TB Master Chief Collection bundle they are promoting for $399. What caught my eye was their description of the controller: Was this announced? Is it a redesigned controller or did they just add in a 3.5mm jack? I know that the new Elite controller has one, but I have heard nothing about the standard controller being "upgraded". http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/consoles/1tb-halo-master-chief-collection
I'm with you, these days I want to see actual gameplay before getting hyped. Thanks to "The Division" and "Quantum Break" for that. I agree, the $150 controller is for elite gamers only - not for average gamers. I'll probably end up getting one, but will I actually use it and customize it? Dunno. The usage of Windows makes it a worthy investment for me I think though. Word leaked that the 3.5mm jack was coming about a month ago, and then later confirmed via Twitter if I recall. I've actually grown to like the current Headset/Mic input, because of the built in volume and mute controls, but it is nice to give players options.
^ Thanks man! Looks I'll be hitting up the Microsoft store real soon to check out the new Elite controller vs the standard one.
Major Nelson talked about the controller (and the new 1TB sku) a bit during this pre-E3 video about a week ago I think: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Q86LNWlQEg0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Hope the new Xbox One controller lets you set up the back paddles to burn ammo synth in Destiny. If it does, I'll get one just for that. LOVE the backwards compatibility. Hope they really expand the amount of games it will work for.
I was initially excited about it because I thought it was full BC, but it looks like it's very limited. I think only a small handful of games and they'll release updates to expand it.
As I just posted in the console wars thread, if you want in on the Xbox Preview add "Groux" on Xbox Live. I can invite friends from the Preview app.
OMG <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4clvjusF_HI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Dat chainsaw and ending tho... There's a video called "Welcome to Hell" with more gameplay. Crazy stuff.
I say this as a nerd myself but my favorite part of these videos is all the nerds going crazy in the background of these clips. Doom looks awesome
Correct, currently about 25 games and growing to 100-200 by the end of the year. They are using emulation software for the backwards comparability so they are going by popularity of the game, and ease of writing the emulation software for said game. Since the Xbox 360's end of life isn't for a few more years, we'll continue to see the list grow monthly.
Sony's stance on backwards compatibility vaguely annoys me. Look, we get it. Emulating the PS3 is hard. But is there any particular reason they couldn't throw us a bone and add backward compatibility for PS2 & PS1? Let me finally toss my old PS2? Big applause to Microsoft for adding some BC.
My only concern about Doom is that after about an hour or two all of the finishing moves will get stale and repetitive. The game doesn't seem to have a whole lot of dynamic gameplay - at least of what I've seen yet. I know classic Doom was a run and gun game, but I was hoping to see something a little more involved.
Agreed. It seems Sony is putting the bulk of their budget into games (plus a little bit towards VR). Their system and OS features are really lacking. If I had to pick, I'd prefer that route over the alternative too. But at some point, I think Sony needs to increase the budget for these kind of things, and start offering many more features that gamers want. At first, I thought your link was to Jim Ryan's interview, who handled this situation even worse than Yoshida IMO. He did the whole "No one even uses this feature" approach, which is a pretty bad response, even if it is true. At least Yoshida sorta tried the "it's hard" approach, which is a bit more understandable. However, to your point, PS1/PS2 emulation should not be hard.
The problem with Sony continues to be the architecture of the devices they build. They are not a software company, so they focus more on hammering out insane hardware - then later realize it is comply insane to program for. It doesn't help that their development toolsets leave a lot to be desired as well. An Xbox One is basically a straight off the rack Windows PC, and Visual Studio along with C++ and the DirectX stack are a proven industry standard thanks to the massive PC gaming market. Sure, both consoles now support C# and Unity3D - but Microsoft crushes Sony in developer support. This can even be said about their in-house development, and how slow changes come to the PS4, while the Xbox One changes extremely rapidly.
I feel this was true in the past (PS2 and PS3 eras), but doesn't quite seem to be this case this generation. It is definitely odd to describe the PS4 as insane hardware that is insane to program for. From a hardware standpoint, PS4 is more off the shelf than an Xbox One (how many PC graphics cards have ESRAM?). The PS4 architect gave talks about how they changed their philosophy with PS4. They could have had a machine with 1 TB/s of memory bandwidth, and other crazy specs (very similar to PS2 and PS3). But they went this direction with the PS4 for some of the same reasons you mentioned. I think that's partly why the PS4 (and Vita to an extent, which was designed with similar goals) receives so many indie titles, especially early on. Unlike the PS3, indie PC devs seem to have a pretty easy time getting games built on PS4. Given some of these titles, it seems pretty clear to me that PS4 development must be relatively cheap/easy, or else many of these developers wouldn't even bother porting their games. Their architecture decisions of the past continue to haunt them (can't easily emulate or reuse code from PS3), but I don't think it is something they're continuing. I think even their software tools have greatly improved (some devteams have said they're better than MS tools), but I do think they're pretty far behind MS in the OS/OS features department. It seems to be lack of desire more than anything, but it's clearly a weak spot for Sony right now. As I said earlier, I think their priorities are probably in the right areas (I'd rather them focus on games, dev tools, indie support, new innovative technologies, etc), but that doesn't mean they should be ignoring their OS as much as they have IMO.
