This is the new (console) shit!

[youmeyou]

Y'know I just added up that the Wii U's made a tenth the splash of the Wii, the PS4 is a lot like a PS3 with More Graphics Technical, Zynga's dropping out of social to work on fucking casinos, and Unreal's publicly asking people to double their budgets and team sizes...

The next few years of video games is starting to look fucking NOT GOOD.

 

That's a pretty selective view of events.

[I_smell]

Yeah you're right, but I still feel like this might be the last console we'll see from one of these companies, and nothing so far looks like it could be the next PS2 or Wii.

[youmeyou]

Ian Bogost's write-up of the PS4 event speaks to that: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/playstation-4-a-Video game-console/273404/

 

True innovation is pretty damn hard to do, and as technology improves faster and faster thanks to Moore's law, our ability to be surprised by new tech will be diminished.

 

Thankfully, that's not always the case. The Occulus VR goggles have me genuinely excited. I could see them facilitating entirely new kinds of gameplay experiences (something I don't expect from any new console by Sony or Microsoft).

[Frenetic Pony]

Yah, the fire has gone out a bit of the console race. Partially, my guess is because the PC is the one going along with Moore's law. Every PS4 "feature" is basically "Oh, you mean what I can do on my PC already?"

 

Then again that's always been true, console's have never really lead the way. It wasn't until like 2004 that they even got multiplayer part way right, and Xbox Live is still vastly inferior to a good PC gaming multiplayer experience while costing $50.

 

But there is something to be said for making it easy for people to do. It's sort of why consoles exist in the first place. Still it feels like consoles are at least as behind as they've always been. Sony is busy touting twitch.tv like services and "Onlive" stuff while the first adopter type scene, which has had that for years, has been jumping up and down about the Occulus Rift and such, and doing that for over a year now. Way to keep behind the curve I suppose.

[Twig]

In particular, the video streaming stuff is PRESUMABLY way, WAY easier. As someone who's dabbled in it, out of idle curiosity, streaming on PC can be really annoying. Once you get it working once, it's not a big deal, but that first step can be a big hurdle. Being built right into the OS is huge, I think. That and having a dedicated chipfor it on PS4 - something I consider one of the best features of the PS4 hardware, personally - makes me pretty interested.

[Luftmensch]

I dunno how much a difference a dedicated chip makes, but as far as PS4 having features built right into the OS, that's kind of necessary as a closed platform, and you have to hope that Sony is able to keep the OS up-to-date. So is the separate streaming chip able to run any other OS software you want to run parallel to your games?

[Twig]

AFAIK, the chip is dedicated entirely to download/upload, so you can download updates in the background and such without interfering with your game. I'm not 100% sure it'll be used for the streaming, but I think it'd be foolish not to.

[Joewintergreen]

Y'know I just added up that the Wii U's made a tenth the splash of the Wii, the PS4 is a lot like a PS3 with More Graphics Technical, Zynga's dropping out of social to work on fucking casinos, and Unreal's publicly asking people to double their budgets and team sizes...

The next few years of video games is starting to look fucking NOT GOOD.

Not sure what you mean about Unreal? It seems to me it's going to be quite a lot cheaper to develop on UE4 than 3.

[Gormongous]

Not sure what you mean about Unreal? It seems to me it's going to be quite a lot cheaper to develop on UE4 than 3.

 

I think he's referring to this comment made by Tim Sweeney, who says that, judging from the team size needed for the UE3 and UE4 tech demos, dev costs will double if not triple in the next gen.

[Frenetic Pony]

I think he's referring to this comment made by Tim Sweeney, who says that, judging from the team size needed for the UE3 and UE4 tech demos, dev costs will double if not triple in the next gen.

This is just for Epic and Sweeney's sweaty, acid flashback like vivid dreams of pixels in hues and colors heretofore undreamed of by the waking mind, such glorious visions of unimaginable delight that he has no choice but to heed their calling as those of an entity beyond human comprehension grasping into our mortal plane for a prophet such as him to carry forth a message of such brilliant content that it can only be conveyed in a photo realistic video game.

 

As for those developers not touched by the beyond, Durango and the PS4 won't actually cost much more to make games for, if they cost more at all. It'll probably get a lot cheaper depending on what you're making.

[Gormongous]

This is just for Epic and Sweeney's sweaty, acid flashback like vivid dreams of pixels in hues and colors heretofore undreamed of by the waking mind, such glorious visions of unimaginable delight that he has no choice but to heed their calling as those of an entity beyond human comprehension grasping into our mortal plane for a prophet such as him to carry forth a message of such brilliant content that it can only be conveyed in a photo realistic video game.

 

As for those developers not touched by the beyond, Durango and the PS4 won't actually cost much more to make games for, if they cost more at all. It'll probably get a lot cheaper depending on what you're making.

 

Well, I do think that dev costs will continue to rise, at least in the rarified sphere of the AAA, because there's a bit of an arms race going down. I just don't think that newer/better tech has anything to do with it.

 

Beautifully put, though. Some developers carry themselves like prophets descending from the mountain, having seen the true face of God and carved His new laws on DVDs to bring to the people, that they too might someday taste paradise. "And the Lord God did smile when Moses finished the design doc and said, 'Drop the "e" from "extreme" in the title and add the subtitle "Bitches from Hell". Yeah, that's it. This new game is going to kick ass.'"

[Joewintergreen]

Oh okay. Yeah that's a super weird quote to me. Modellers already make models in the millions of polys and then simplify them down, texture artists already make their shit huge and resize it... seems like as the hardware gets better you just don't do that as much. Maybe he's talking about teams getting bigger but I don't think that needs to happen. I know if I get to start developing on UE4 any time soon I'll save hundreds of hours not having to build lighting or restart the engine to compile code.

Man that's gon' be nice.

[JonCole]

This doesn't really have to do with speculation about these new consoles and specs and junk, but I didn't know where else to say it so I'll say it here -

 

I think that I'm not going to buy new consoles until I completely finish my backlog of games from this generation. Or more specifically, I won't buy a PS4 until I finish my PS3 games. I won't buy a Durango until I finish my 360 games. It's kind of stupid, but it gives me some motivation to finally wrap everything up from this gen and move on. Not to mention HDMI Shortage 2013, which will certainly bring doom and destruction to the port setup on my main television if I don't clear out stuff.

[Salacious Snake]

That's a good idea.

Also, I totally feel you on HDMI Shortage, though I think the even larger annoyance for my setup in particular is TOSLINK Shortage Tycoon 2013.

 

Or, more accurately, the combination of the two is giving me headaches. Anyone know a good switcher box type thing that will handle both (without introducing latency)?

[JonCole]

Are you asking for an HDMI switcher with separation of audio to HDMI + TOSLINK out? Or in other words, something like 4 HDMI in, 1 HDMI + 1 Toslink out? Because I'm looking for something similar, so I can eventually setup some nice wireless headphones for the living room.

[Salacious Snake]

That would get the job done! I need the TOSLINK to go into my surround sound receiver thingie. (It predates HDMI, but is otherwise a totally badass unit that I don't want to replace.) My TV only has 2 HDMI inputs, which is not cutting it anymore.

 

I found this thing: http://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-Switcher-Toslink-Digital-Coaxial/dp/B003L14WB8

 

The reviews are not encouraging.

[JonCole]

http://www.amazon.com/Kinivo-501BN-Premium-wireless-adapter/dp/B0049SCB2Y/ + http://www.amazon.com/ViewHD-Premium-Audio-Extractor-Converter/dp/B00AHS8LD8/ref=pd_sim_sbs_e_1

 

... is what I'm thinking. The reviews on that ViewHD seem generally positive on the few sites I found that stock/have stocked it.

[Salacious Snake]

Yeah… that seems like a good solution assuming everything works as it should. It's at least a little more convenient than having both an HDMI switcher and a TOSLINK switcher. 

 

Nice finds!