Next Gen? Pah!

[ThunderPeel2001]

Am I the only one who is yet to see a benefit from going "next gen"? I'm an owner of a 360 and I'm, quite frankly, bored to tears with it. I find myself getting more exciting with the games on my girlfriend's GameCube, than I do with anything on the 360.

And really what extras does the 360 have anyway? All of the games on the 360 are pretty much available on the PS2, only with slightly worse graphics. As we all know: Graphics are the most important thing!

Now the PS3 has come along and I'm still a bit baffled. What are these new ultra-expensive consoles actually offering to us? They're certainly not offering the leap in gaming quality that the PlayStation > PS2 offered us. I could quite happily stick with the graphical quality of the PS2, but have a better selection of more interesting games. I haven't seen a single game that HAS to be played on a next gen console (Oblivion and FEAR are graphically intensive, but they're essentially PC games anyway - more mods and options on the PC, too). It seems to me that the only time we see a game that's "next gen only", it's more to do with rights than processor limitations.

(If only Microsoft would get it's thumb out of its arse and actually give us proper backwards compatibility, at least I could enjoy some decent XBox games!)

At this rate I'm considering selling my 360 and just getting a cheap PS2, and maybe a even Wii (for the same price!)

[elmuerte]

give it time... I guess...

As for PC it's always keep up or ahead of consoles except for input devices.

One of the actual new things with next gen consoles is the promised functionality of user created content.

[Nachimir]

Pah indeed right now, but it's kind of to be expected that early games in the console cycle won't be that amazing or use the hardware efficiently. In that sense pretty much everyone is yet to see any benefit from going next gen.

I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with them a year or more on, but right now haven't bought anything from the newest gen for exactly your kind of reasons.

I like the idea of live arcades etc., but word I got on XLA is that there's a big queue of well known publishers with games ready or in development, a restricted schedule of release slots, and a lot of indies going without. UCC seems to be something of a marketing bullet point than a business philosophy, and I guess because of that the online marketplaces might end up as "video games industry lite" while completely missing stuff like Armadillo Run.

[General Fuzzy McBitty]

Really, the contest has only just begun. The 360 hasn't really had to compete with anyone in terms of titles because it was the only "next gen" console available.

I'm trying to find a scheme that will allow me to own a Wii.

[twmac]

And really what extras does the 360 have anyway? All of the games on the 360 are pretty much available on the PS2, only with slightly worse graphics. As we all know: Graphics are the most important thing!

Not that I would recommend you play it, but try Just Cause on the PS2, then try it on the 360, if you don't notice that the 360 is more than slightly better, I recommend you go buy yourself a Dreamcast and play some truly great games.

[miffy495]

From what I've heard, Just Cause isn't really worth playing on any system. It's odd, but for me the turning point was seeing Lego Star Wars 2 in HD. It's not a graphically intense game at all, but seeing those crisply animated and shiny lego guys running around just made me insanely happy. By contrast, my copy of LSW 1 on the PS2 is great, but something just seems really off now when I play it. Graphics are a less important thing than gameplay or fun, of course. Thing is, if you have the choice between the same game, pixelated to the point of distraction or fucking gorgeous, which would you choose? Yeah, there's a $10 difference, but I've found that getting 360 games off eBay will normally result in a sane (read: same as last generation) price.

[Ginger]

Remember the PS2 release line up, it was rubbish, all the games were exactly the same as the PS1 games with slightly better graphics. It will take some time but I'm sure some great games will eventually come. And for a console like the Wii where innovation has been forced on the developers hopefully they will come sooner.

[Francois Taddei]

Look who's now on the Xbox 360 compatibility list:

Backwards compatible Xbox Titles :

1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

2. Dead Or Alive Ultimate

3. Destroy All Humans!

4. Dynasty Warriors 4 / Shin Sangokumuso3

5. Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick

6. Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy

7. Family Guy

8. Far Cry: Instincts

9. Incredibles/ Mr. Incredible

10. I-Ninja

11. Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude

12. Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

13. MotoGP

14. Open Season

15. Pariah

16. Psychonauts

17. Rainbow Six: Lockdown

18. Rapala Pro Fishing

19. Scarface

20. Shark Tale

21. Shenmue II

22. Splinter Cell: Double Agent

23. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie

24. Ultimate Spider-Man

25. Wakeboarding Unleashed: Featuring Sean Murray

26. Whacked!

27. Winback 2: Project Poseidon

28. Xiaolin Showdown

At last! It took quite some time for the almighty Microsoft to figure this one out... I really couldn't live anymore without my dose of Rapala Pro Fishing!

[miffy495]

Gasp! Not only can I finally load up Psychonauts on my 360, but bust out my copy of DOA Ultimate when drunk on New Years! A better drunken fighting game, I've yet to find.

Also, anyone else try out Assault Heroes on Live Arcade? I had 1000 MS points that I wasn't going to spend on anything else, and the game is getting generally nice reviews so far so I grabbed it. Not bad. Won't replace Lumines and Geometry Wars as my most played Live games, but I can see the co-op lasting me and a friend through a few "so what are we going to do?" type nights.

[twmac]

I heard that Psychonauts had been removed, for shame.

What a bizarre selection of backwards compatible games. I mean, has Evil dead: Regeneration already been made backward compatible? It supports 720p and is a better game than 'Fistful of boomstick'.

[Aussie Ben]

I heard that Psychonauts had been removed

No.

[ThunderPeel2001]

You just know that there's two guys doing the entire backwards compatibility on their own... inbetween bug fixes for Vista. MS really suck sometimes. It's very annoying to not be able to play decent XBox games with we wait for some decent/interesting XBox 360 titles.

The PS3 has damned decent backwards compatibility already, it's just ridiculous that we're still waiting for games to trickle in. I for one am getting very fed up!

On the upside, I think they added some games I asked for, so that's cool... Still plenty I'm waiting to play though!

The Wii calls!

[SiN]

You just know that there's two guys doing the entire backwards compatibility on their own... inbetween bug fixes for Vista. MS really suck sometimes. It's very annoying to not be able to play decent XBox games with we wait for some decent/interesting XBox 360 titles.

I realize you were half joking here, but it *really* pisses me off when I hear stuff like this.

Emulation isn't easy. Ninty and Sony had it easy for different reasons ...

Ninty doesn't really count. When the Wii is just a GC++, there isn't any emulation going on, it's just a matter of "switching off" the right parts of the console when a cube disc is inserted, which pretty much turns the Wii into a gamecube.

Sony would have had a hard time doing PS2 emulation, but they did The Right Thing, by just sticking the PS2 Emotion Engine chip on the PS3. I'm sure they've been working on software emulation (it's much cheaper), and I'm sure that in later revisions of the PS3 everything will be done in software.

Now Microsoft didn't have either option.

First off, there is no way to turn an X360 into an XBOX. The processor is different (x86 vs PowerPC), the video card is different (nVidia vs ATi) which makes the whole emulation process so much harder.

Second, they couldn't do what Sony did and stick an XBOX on the 360. The blame for this lies within the design of the XBOX, specifically the fact that it used (more-or-less) off-the-shelves parts. With it's Intel Celeron processor, and it's nVidia GeForce 3, Microsoft didn't "own" the chips, so they couldn't be optimized. Where Sony have spent the past couple of years making the PS2 chips smaller and smaller, Microsoft haven't had the option to do that at all.

SiN

[Marek]

What a bizarre selection of backwards compatible games.

The way I understand it they're just tackling certain issues and once they're solved certain games become BC. It isn't like they're saying "let's do Barbie's Horse Adventure before we start work on any of the good games". It's "problem X with emulation is now solved, so Barbie's Horse Adventure will work".

So it's doubtful they specifically spent time getting "Fistful of boomstick" (what?) to work.

[brkl]

You don't get "Fistful of Boomstick"? Haven't you seen the movie? Have you completely lost touch with the achievements of Western culture?

[twmac]

Shop Smart, shop S-mart.

[Marek]

Whoops I didn't know that was an Evil Dead game.