JonCole

Yeah, I think people are downplaying the importance of retail to the sales of a new console. Download-only would directly sabotage retail relationships in pretty significant ways, not to mention the admittedly minority yet important group of people who don't connect their consoles to the internet. I'm fairly convinced that this is why Games on Demand and Sony's full-game download service has practically never been competitive on price with retailers - if you don't make price and convenience a trade-off, retail is essentially worthless. Hence, why the retail PC game section is so insignificant in most game shops.

The PS3 doesn't deliver a particularly good user experience when it comes to blu-ray and I can't possibly imagine that a 360 with an external blu-ray drive would be any better. The interfaces (both software and hardware, the latter being the controller) aren't compatible with normal people who simply want to watch a movie they rented at the Redbox. If people were "smart", they never buy a DVD player and rather buy a PS2 or original Xbox or they would never buy a Blu-Ray player and rather buy a PS3. Unfortunately, simple utility and price consciousness don't always work on normal consumers, especially when you don't have a rich interest in gaming and don't see a $299 box as an "investment". In other words, my relatively tech-savvy girlfriend (she has a gaming PC, uses Steam, plays Guild Wars 2, has online dated, etc) has no idea how to play a blu-ray in the PS3. This is even with the blu-ray remote I bought for the PS3 which adapts the buttons to a more remote-like paradigm. If she can't figure it out, it's difficult to convince me that blu-ray in gaming consoles as a movie delivery format is a big deal instead of just a bonus.

You can buy blu-ray players for less than $50 on a regular basis. Microsoft probably wouldn't produce an add-on drive for the 360 because their margins would be garbage and they'd have to pay to license blu-ray decoding codecs. The PS3 being a blu-ray player hasn't really been a factor for a while now, at least from my perception. That said, I still don't know why that's relevant to the Durango having a blu-ray player.

Those both seriously look like weird spaceships.

I don't really understand your question. Why would they?

I don't think it's particularly constructive to point out that a $2000+ PC will outperform a likely $400 because that's (hopefully) painfully obvious. You bring up a fair point that the GPU in the 360 was much better than what was in most PCs at the time, but you still really couldn't beat a 7800 GTX 512mb running Riddick or Age of Empires 3 on the PC. It made stuff like 360 COD 2 look old in comparison. Regardless, I have absolutely no doubt that the consoles will have above and beyond the specs needed to deliver high quality, 1080p graphics. Even with this purported mobile GPU, it is more than enough. Just like it's just about pointless to buy a GTX 690 if you're only driving a 1080p monitor, it's similarly pointless to desire a high-end power sucking GPU that'll run continuously for hours on end when next-gen consoles are built for 1080p televisions. That's the real thing they're trying to tackle here - power consumption. Sure, the next Xbox could have some kind of equivalent to the Sandy Bridge Extreme paired with a GTX 690, but you would also need a 1200W power supply to run it and it'd be the size of a PC tower just to support heat dissipation. Also, I feel I should point out that you don't need to wait for the GTX 780 to get a video card with 4GB of RAM - some models of the GTX 680 and all models of the GTX 690 have 4GB of GDDR RAM.

Well, the extra core in the Cell is actually just another dedicated CPU core. In the Orbis (according to DF), it's actually a GPU core which grants a lot more computational processing than the typical CPU core. That's why when these people try to make supercomputers out of off the shelf parts, they always use multiple high-end graphics cards rather than multiple processors. I also have a feeling that this will be a much more substantive feature than in Cell because AMD has already been doing this for ages. Their APUs have been putting pretty powerful integrated GPUs on the same die as their high-end CPUs, which can then be utilized as more computing power for calculations when a discrete graphics card is added. You can also configure the APU's built-in GPU to basically contribute more to the graphical power of the discrete card, which can provide a pretty decent boost to mid-range AMD cards. While this hardware news might seem somewhat underwhelming, I'm pretty excited about the prospect of more power-efficient, high-end mobile chips running the show because it drastically reduces the chance of hardware failure. Plus, the simple fact that this will be a locked in target will make console games get a whole lot more out of these chips then regular PC games could.

I think that this generation will further close the gap between how impressive console hardware is and the performance of off-the-shelf PCs. It's kind of inevitable when consoles are targeting 1080p resolution and PCs are targeting multi-monitor or 2560x1440 specs at the spear-tip. That said, consoles will still outperform PCs in some critical ways that are sure to improve user experience. That Digital Foundry article for instance notes that the Orbis will pack a dedicated core beyond the CPU and GPU that will likely significantly help with running the XMB (or equivalent) and other system-level operations like voice chat in the background. It's much like Nvidia's Tegra mobile technology that has a separate low-power core that tackles standby mode/simple tasks as well as helps initialize the GPU cores when starting up gaming applications. This kind of specialized hardware is what will give consoles a solid lead on PCs for a while until PCs can simply brute force these operations by having a ton of power.

I never really thought the Dualshock was particularly ergonomic and it's fairly well agreed upon that the PSP and Vita are rough to hold for extended periods of time, so I really can't imagine what kind of hand mangling this purported Wii U Gamepad/mini-Vita thing will pull off.

It's almost all cosmetic, with one being half cosmetic and half arena-based combat and the another being a full-story based thing. Those are the more expensive packs (I think they're $5 and $10 in the US, not sure what the pricing is elsewhere). I'm absolutely loving this game. I've spent about 6-7 hours and it's really get its hooks in me. The GTA comparisons are natural and I completely agree that the undercover cop trope really helps contextualize the gameplay much better than in GTA IV, for instance. The story is just generally a lot more interesting to me, mostly due to the location and aesthetic of the setting. I honestly think that GTA continually being placed in a US-like country is detrimental to the story its trying to tell, as there's just this increasingly boring baseline story that's being told in each of the games no matter how interesting they individually try to be.

Related to general financial stuff, I like Mint for helping me with money management stuff. I have pretty simple finances but it still does help me keep everything in order without having to have four different tabs open from different websites in order to just figure out when do I have to make a payment to whom. It also does budget stuff by organizing your purchases into different expense categories and letting you set spending limits for each ($100/mo. for food, $50/mo. for games, $30/mo. for the movie theaters, etc). Unfortunately, it's a US/Canada thing only so it wouldn't be of much use to a fairly large portion of you guys.

I seriously can't anticipate buying new consoles day one unless that weird technology lust kicks in and makes me want them just so I can tinker with new hardware. Until then, I'm much more likely to just pump more money into my PC or build another one to put in my living room so I can play my hideously huge backlog on the big screen. Microsoft or Sony will have to do quite a bit to subvert my attitude on this, whether it's through exceptional games or exceptional features. Comparing the launch of the Wii U to the potential impact of Xbox/PS next-gen, I really only have any desire to play ZombiU and beyond that I can't imagine that the other games have any major appeal outside the whole "I'M PLAYING THIS ON A NEW CONSOLE YAAAAY" aspect. In other words, if the Xbox launches with Halo 5 and that alone (at least from my perspective) is what's supposed to get me on the hook, I can wait six or twelve months to make buying that $400 console more worth my while.

Yeah, I've even heard of the "strategy" of just letting the Templars take a region rather than do the tower defense, because all you have to do is recapture the tower which ultimately takes far less time than a whole runthrough of that minigame. That being said, I'm in the same camp as Miffy - only ever got enough notoriety when the story forced me to, so I only played the TD once. It wasn't that bad, but I wasn't really hurting for more variety in gameplay types either.

People are dumping on it, but let me ask anyways - is The Other M worth playing? As I said, I just got a Wii and I like Metroid, so the $11 bargain basement price of this game is beckoning me. =/

For Android folks who like podcasts, I thoroughly recommend Pocket Casts and BeyondPod. I used the former for a while before I switched to the latter because I like the UI a little better, but both are quite solid. Well worth the price for the full versions - very extensive playlist controls, ability to use Presto's 3rd party plugin for modified playback speed, feed-by-feed control of number of back podcasts to retain/deletion behavior after you finish listening to an episode, etc. Pocket Casts is paid-only, but cheap ($2.99 US). BeyondPod has a free/limited version, but the full version unlock is expensive ($6.99). Again, both are worth it if you listen to podcasts on Android but I'm currently using BeyondPod.

Yup. Also, I imagine a weird window where graphics go up in quality at a much faster pace than bandwidth, so physical will be even stronger for a brief period before internet can catch up. The easy analogy is to video distribution formats - if content producers want to distribute 4K movies, they're almost guaranteed to do it on blu-rays or whatever the next standardized physical format is rather than try to force 25GB of relatively uncompressed video and audio down the skinny pipe that ISPs are offering right now. It's even difficult to find 1080p streaming sources right now (YouTube sometimes, Vudu, Netflix only announced 1080 at CES), I'm only aware of a few and most recommend 10mbps+ connections, which is not even close to the lower tiers of cable service in my area (the tiers are something like 4mbsp, 8mbps, then 12mbps).

The Idle Thumbs store will only sell Far Cry 2 and provide a weblink to QWOP.

High-speed internet infrastructure in the US still isn't solid enough to support a download-only market.

Everyone seems to have breezed over my comment re: Halo 2 on Xbox 360. If Microsoft wants to keep their mantle as the premier multiplayer platform among the consoles, backwards compatibility seems necessary as not to lose any momentum with evergreen mutliplayer titles like Halo 4, Gears of War 3, Call of Duty (all of them really), and Minecraft. Beyond that, Microsoft seems full-steam ahead on Kinect but they still don't have good third-party support. Considering there's a very strong chance Kinect will be built into the next Xbox, it would seem foolhardy to throw away the (admittedly small, but still existent) back catalog of Kinect games. Put it another way, I imagine that Wii Sports sales probably got a little bump with the Wii U's release and stuff like Kinect Sports 1+2 bundle would also see a bump with Xbox 720 + bundled Kinect 2's release.

I guess they could use an external power supply, because really the power supply would be the largest component in a PC like this even for just a 95W TDP Core i3 T-series processor.

Huh, thanks for the heads-up on freeware Fences 1. Just what I needed for the really hectic, non-savvy coworkers I have that need to better organize their desktops.

I'm huge into Pokemon but didn't buy Black 2/White 2 day one because this continued DS development reeks of a holding pattern. So color me excited for X and Y despite all the kinda dumb stuff about it, because I really need to justify by ownership of a 3DS and a 100+ hour Pokemon playthrough should do that.

I was having a debate with Arthur Gies over Twitter about this box last night. There's a lot of pessimism as to how this is going to possibly be Valve's Steambox, or at least what people perceive it to be. That is, a PC that works in a home theater setup using the Big Picture frontend and will play essentially all controller-capable PC games. I generally agree with the concerns but don't pair it with so much pessimism, mostly because I have no expectations that a sub-$500 PC will play Crysis 3. The weird thing about this Xi3 company that Valve is teaming up with is that they specifically make small form-factor, low wattage PCs. They've previously made hardware that runs at 20W, mostly thanks to ULV processors like Atom and optimized components for low power draw. They have this proprietary modular design that basically chops up a conventional motherboard into three separate components, meaning you can upgrade the processor/chipset independently from say the port layout that you see on the back of this grapefruit-sized box. Anyways, size really is the limiting factor in this device and why they have such low-power components. They have prototyped what they call the X7A, which purportedly has "gaming capable performance graphics", but Xi3 has yet to detail how they make this happen. The power supply of this device literally can only be so big, which is why I can't possibly see them going over something like... 100W in what will potentially be the Steam box. That means that even something like the lowest power desktop-targeted Core i3 CPU (which has a TDP of 95W) wouldn't fly. So, TLDR? I don't think it's really possible to have conventional hardware in this box, meaning no Core-whatever processor and even more certainly no dedicated graphics card of any kind. This leads me to believe that this runs either an Intel Atom processor or AMD Fusion. Both of these chipsets even at the most performance-oriented tier only crank out 720p, medium, 30 FPS graphics on fairly conventional games like World of Warcraft or Just Cause 2. That would leave essentially no room for the future. If anything, I imagine that this box won't come out for at least 9-12 months because Valve will want to wait for next-generation ULV chips from Intel and AMD. The next-gen Atom will have Intel 4000/Ivy Bridge equivalent graphics, which will bring it slightly beyond current AMD Fusion levels. Next-gen Fusion will drive multiple monitors and be quad-core, both specs that Xi3 has bragged about in this box. Also, Linux? If Valve indeed wants to make their Steambox on Linux, they're going to be sending a big message - AAA isn't nearly as important for PC as you think. Why do I think this? Because there's no way in hell that EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Square-Enix, or anyone else will even consider mainlining Linux development. If the Steambox does run on Linux, Valve will be making a big bet on indie gaming and a much smaller bet on the hardware, which won't need to be nearly as capable to run non-AAA games.

Halo 2 was the killer Xbox Live app until Gears of War came out on the Xbox 360. That's hundreds of thousands if not millions of people playing an original Xbox game on an Xbox 360. I don't know if there's really a comparable situation this generation (maybe Minecraft XBLA?) but it's not entirely unheard of.