Yahtzee and the next generation of consoles

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Count Arioch the 28th
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Yahtzee and the next generation of consoles

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... w-Consoles

Article by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. Maybe it's because I'm now old and cranky, but I agree with him to a point. I'm just not that excited about the newest consoles coming out like I was back in the day. The jump from NES to SNES was huge, or the jump between PS1 and PS2, or the jump between Saturn and Dreamcast (fuck you, Dreamcast had some good games on it) was a BIG deal. Now I really can't find a fuck to give, and the idea of giving up all the crap I've downloaded and shit makes me less likely to buy the XBOX Next One or whatever they call it.

Discuss.

(Note that I will take PC gaming seriously when I can buy a computer that plays current games for less than a grand. I paid almost as much for my laptop as I paid for my car and it melts whenever something appears when I play Borderlands 2).
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Post by zugschef »

i'd say that the real jump (from a technological standpoint) was from 2d to 3d computer graphics plus the possibility to really interact into all three dimensions of the game world. the next jump was probably the motion detecting controller.

the actual problem for the branch is that there are games which are still just best played in 2d with keyboard and mouse, gamepad or joystick. also a game which features 2d graphics, can't be sold for the same price as a state of the art game, regardless of the idea behind it. that's why it's rather that your game can fly than that you can actually take any baggage with you.

there are so many good open source and freeware games that there really is the need for companies to make technological advances the main criteria for quality, because that's the only part dudes can't replicate at home.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

When I compared the fun I could get out of Indie Bundles and keeping an eye on kickstarter/freeware releases, I pretty much stopped console gaming. The only thing I can't replicate without needing to bother turning on a TV is 2-4 player party games, which is why I might buy in when the new smash bros comes out.
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Post by Surgo »

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Note that I will take PC gaming seriously when I can buy a computer that plays current games for less than a grand
At the risk of getting off topic, how much less than a grand? I built both my current one and my past one (still used by my wife, but can't play new games anymore) for $800 (not including the monitor, mouse, or keyboard).
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Post by Kaelik »

I think the problem is that he is using a laptop. You can't buy a good gaming laptop for little, but my current rig cost $1112 from nothing, including monitor/keyboard/mouse ect. and it can play anything that has come out in the last few years with absolutely no hiccups. And I spent $100 on a keyboard, so you could probably get that down with a shit one.
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Post by Hadanelith »

The biggest reason to start a new console generation is a problem that's a total no-brainer for PC gamers - RAM. Seriously. The PS3 has, no joke, 256 MB of RAM. Also, 256 MB of VRAM. You want to know why Skyrim has so much trouble on the PS3? There it is. The Xbox 360 is barely any better, with 512 MB of system RAM and all of 10 MB of dedicated VRAM (as I understand it). PC gamers have 8 GB of RAM and 1.5 GB of VRAM for trivial effort, and the consoles have a combined total of half a gig each. It's no wonder gaming hasn't gotten more expansive except on PC-only games; there's just no where to put anything more on the consoles. You want bigger, better (not to mention, prettier) gaming experiences? A new console generation is necessary. If nothing else, PC gamers are being held back by weak console ports.
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Post by Kaelik »

I think the point is that no one cares about your prettier fucking games.

We already have the graphical fidelity to make things plenty realistic enough, pretty at this point comes from artists, not more RAM.

Now, if the RAM was really holding back gameplay, that might be an issue. But outside of minecraft, I'm not seeing many cases of that.
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Post by Sigil »

Ram is holding back gameplay, you want more complex AI behaviors? That requires ram. A section of the Brainy Gamer Pocaset (episode 40) features Tom Bissell discussing aspects of game creation that he didn't previously realize were limitations. The Boomer in gears of war, it turns out, is a RAM hog. Between the textures and models for the boomer and its weapon, the relatively more complex AI routines the Boomer uses, and the math needed to calculate the radius of the explosions the Boomer's grenade launcher creates, they can't put more than a few boomers on screen at a time. They literally can't have smarter enemies en'masse because the xbox and ps3 can't handle it.
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Post by Surgo »

Oblivion came out in 2008, but the graphical quality to this day remains gated by available RAM and VRAM. Many higher-res texture packs and, more importantly, just putting a lot more shit on the screen at once, will slow things to a crawl.
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Post by Kaelik »

When I play modded Morrowind, I don't fucking add any texture pacts or shit, because unmodded Morrowind is more graphically pretty than I ever need to give a shit about.

I do not care that games can't be prettier, and they can't have lots of boomers because they made the boomers too pretty to handle their AI routines.

If they simplify the textures, I damn well bet they could have plenty on screen, because advanced AI is a fine thing, and I would like more of it, but I don't believe that it is even half as draining on the RAM as the fucking textures.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Kaelik wrote:I think the point is that no one cares about your prettier fucking games.
You have a strange definition of no one that seems to involve pretending lots of people don't exist.
Kaelik wrote:We already have the graphical fidelity to make things plenty realistic enough, pretty at this point comes from artists, not more RAM.
If by 'we' you mean people with PC's, then yes. But I'm going to remind you that the last gen consoles came out in the mid-2000's and despite technological blustering and fappery they weren't actually all that amazingly powerful then. Consoles are definitely outdated and in need of an upgrade. Well, no, correction: the concept of a console is outdated and needs scrapped.

"Hey, brilliant idea. Let's take a technological field that advances significantly on a yearly basis and spend a shitton of money designing a unique, non-modular, unupgradable machine that will likely be obsolete within a year of its own release. And hey, hey - let's give it a completely unique system architecture, so that not only do we have to start from the ground-up with any software we could ever possibly want to put on it, any software designed for it will also completely go up in flames when it's inevitably discontinued. And let's start this whole process from scratch every five years."

FUCK YOU. THEY HAVE THESE THINGS CALLED COMPUTERS NOW. THEY'RE MODULAR, UPGRADABLE COMPUTING DEVICES THAT SHARE AN UNDERLYING SET OF HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE STANDARDS, AND YOUR EXPLICIT GOAL IS TO EMULATE THEIR FUNCTION FOR A SPECIFIC SUBSET OF TASKS BUT WITHOUT ALL THOSE NASTY GOOD PARTS. FUCK OFF AND DIE. FUCK OFF AND DIE RIGHT NOW.
Sigil wrote:Ram is holding back gameplay, you want more complex AI behaviors? That requires ram. A section of the Brainy Gamer Pocaset (episode 40) features Tom Bissell discussing aspects of game creation that he didn't previously realize were limitations. The Boomer in gears of war, it turns out, is a RAM hog. Between the textures and models for the boomer and its weapon, the relatively more complex AI routines the Boomer uses, and the math needed to calculate the radius of the explosions the Boomer's grenade launcher creates, they can't put more than a few boomers on screen at a time. They literally can't have smarter enemies en'masse because the xbox and ps3 can't handle it.
He sounds like he is bullshitting (or misunderstanding, or misrepresenting). Textures are huge. Everything else he talks about there is small. That's like going on vacation with a dozen pairs of shoes and complaining about how hard it is to find room in a suitcase for your toothbrush.
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Post by Kaelik »

DSMatticus wrote:
Kaelik wrote:I think the point is that no one cares about your prettier fucking games.
You have a strange definition of no one that seems to involve pretending lots of people don't exist.
Maybe people in general care, but seriously, it seems to be the consensus of people who play lots of games now that they don't need prettier games. Everyone knows that new consoles would result in a drastic upscaling of the texture quality and basically nothing else, and that is one reason why no one gives a fucking shit.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Kaelik wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:
Kaelik wrote:I think the point is that no one cares about your prettier fucking games.
You have a strange definition of no one that seems to involve pretending lots of people don't exist.
Maybe people in general care, but seriously, it seems to be the consensus of people who play lots of games now that they don't need prettier games. Everyone knows that new consoles would result in a drastic upscaling of the texture quality and basically nothing else, and that is one reason why no one gives a fucking shit.
Console games are actually still pretty ugly (relative to what we are capable of nowadays), or making huge sacrifices under the hood/behind the curtain in order to be pretty. PC gaming could probably go without another improvement ever and nobody would care because it's at the point where finding fucks to give is hard. But the consoles are seven years or more behind PC gaming, so that's an entirely different story.

Dark Souls lags on consoles. That's god damn hilarious, because while I stylistically approve of that game it is not technically impressive and has no real reason to be demanding at all.
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Post by Lokathor »

There's also the issue that PC games that are also console games tend to be designed at the weaker console, and then possibly not improved at all when ported to the PC, resulting in poorer quality PC games.
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Post by Kaelik »

DSMatticus wrote:Console games are actually still pretty ugly (relative to what we are capable of nowadays), or making huge sacrifices under the hood/behind the curtain in order to be pretty.
And I am saying that a sizable chunk of people either disagree with you about what counts as ugly, or straight up don't fucking care. So much that they don't want knew consoles that would make things prettier, like you want them to, because they are fine with how games look now.
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Post by Whipstitch »

I'm 100% in the giving no shits category and am currently awaiting the release of the PS4 so I can get a PS3 cheaper.
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Post by Aryxbez »

DSMatticus wrote: Dark Souls lags on consoles.
Seriously? I recall the PC port for Dark Souls being the lagging one, how it was very bad, and control scheme even worse. Though I guess it's been awhile since I've played Dark Souls on consoles, as I don't really remember there being any lag issues.

I can sympathize with the main poster here, even given a $600 or so cost for a home computer to play "top of the line" games, it'll still be awhile for me to procure such as well. Especially since, I've been someone who's basically been raised on the Consoles, and thus grown to prefer their ease of use. However, given the advancement of things, as sad as it be, even I agree, that PC is pretty much the only way to continue for video games at this point. At best, can go on a retro kicker for awhile, enjoying the older consoles libraries, only to eventually try and catch up to whatever's new.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Kaelik wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:Console games are actually still pretty ugly (relative to what we are capable of nowadays), or making huge sacrifices under the hood/behind the curtain in order to be pretty.
And I am saying that a sizable chunk of people either disagree with you about what counts as ugly, or straight up don't fucking care. So much that they don't want knew consoles that would make things prettier, like you want them to, because they are fine with how games look now.
Well, first off, if you'll recall I went on a huge angry rant about how consoles should fuck off and die like two posts ago. So the bolded portion puzzles me. I am disagreeing with you on wrongs things you are saying ("nobody cares about graphics," "a new gen of consoles will do nothing but upscale textures,"), and the wrong things you are saying are anti-prettier games. That doesn't make me pro-prettier games. But it's a minor point and whatever.

More importantly, let's talk about the part of this you don't seem to be getting:
Kaelik wrote:Everyone knows that new consoles would result in a drastic upscaling of the texture quality and basically nothing else, and that is one reason why no one gives a fucking shit.
DSM wrote:or making huge sacrifices under the hood/behind the curtain in order to be pretty
You are wrong about this in a really big way. Let's pick an easy example: compare the typical PC Battlefield game vs typical console CoD. Battlefield has huge maps and huge player counts. CoD has tiny maps and tiny player counts. That's not only a design decision - that's a hardware limitation. Claustrophobic maps let you reduce the draw distance and reduce the amount of shit you have to draw. Low player accounts reduce the amount of shit going on that you have to draw. And what are the differences between PC Battlefield games and console Battlefield games? They neuter them in the exact same ways. When you are developing for such a ridiculously resource-starved system, graphical limitations have pretty broad-reaching effects. The only reason that console games are "pretty" at all is because graphics are the last thing to go to the cutting board, so console developers chop their own games to pieces in every other way they can in order to give them 2008 graphics. Since consoles are the primary market, that's kind of a big fucking deal for everyone.

tl;dr "Do games really need to be prettier?" is a 2010 question, but consoles are back in 2005 trying to fake it like a 400lb man in a corset.

Edit: Oops, forgot this.
Aryxbez wrote:Seriously? I recall the PC port for Dark Souls being the lagging one, how it was very bad, and control scheme even worse. Though I guess it's been awhile since I've played Dark Souls on consoles, as I don't really remember there being any lag issues.
There were quite a few areas that would chop your framerate pretty substantially, Blight Town being the legendary offender. The PC port was terrible, but keep in mind the FPS is locked at 30 and with their mouse implementation there was no such thing as smooth turning - even without lag, it looked jerky as fuck whenever you tried to do something. My computer's 3-4 years old, and it could handle Dark Souls no problem with the user-created graphical tweak installed and ramped up. YMMV - it wasn't designed, tested, or optimized for PC's, so there are probably hardware builds that stumble to run Dark Souls for no real reason.
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Post by Kaelik »

DSMatticus wrote:or making huge sacrifices under the hood/behind the curtain in order to be pretty
Solution, stop doing that. Stupid designers are stupid, and no matter how good your PC, there exists some dumbshit who wants to make the even prettier graphics and cut other assests to do it. That will continue to be the case regardless of if they create new consoles, so CoD will still have tiny maps. Because people are dumbshits.

Though honestly, at this point, it seems clear that people actually prefer tiny maps for whatever reason.
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Post by Surgo »

Hey wait a sec, I thought Dark Souls has gotten a pretty good PC port? Am I wrong in this?
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Post by Sigil »

You are very wrong, it got a port that is pretty much the equivilant of a verbatim 360 build, it even tells you to use RB and A and shit. They have confirmed that Dark Souls 2 is being developed simultaneously for 360, PS3, and PC, so it should be much better having a native PC build.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Kaelik wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:or making huge sacrifices under the hood/behind the curtain in order to be pretty
Solution, stop doing that. Stupid designers are stupid, and no matter how good your PC, there exists some dumbshit who wants to make the even prettier graphics and cut other assests to do it. That will continue to be the case regardless of if they create new consoles, so CoD will still have tiny maps. Because people are dumbshits.

Though honestly, at this point, it seems clear that people actually prefer tiny maps for whatever reason.
The bolded portion is wrong. You are suggesting that the only thing more powerful hardware implies is better texture and other bullshit graphical bells and whistles. But we can actually make that comparison, because more powerful hardware exists on the market alongside consoles - gaming PC's. If you were correct, then that would imply that the only difference between PC games and console games of the 2006-2013 era would be better textures and other bullshit graphical bells and whistles for PC. But that's obviously not true and I've already provided solid counterexamples.

There are increasing costs (it's not just rendering textures with more detailed outputs) and diminishing returns (past a certain point, people genuinely do give less of a fuck) associated with ramping up your graphics. This situation doesn't scale up infinitely, it's a curve, and consoles are stuck clinging to the start of it by their fingertips. It's a terrible place for the hardware to be, unless you're banking on everybody spontaneously deciding they're okay with games as they looked in 2005.
Surgo wrote:Hey wait a sec, I thought Dark Souls has gotten a pretty good PC port? Am I wrong in this?
The port ran steady for me with zero/minimal crashes, but that's about all I can say for it. The graphics were still console level shit, the FPS was locked at 30, the kb+m control scheme was a fucking joke (are you familiar with mouse acceleration? They managed to create mouse deceleration - fast movements get slowed down, god damn brilliant), all the instruction prompts and menus were still in controller-ese, and one of the menu buttons straight up didn't work because they bound "global menu exit" over top of one of the menu buttons. Also, zero cheat protection so the first area was full of level 1's with max stat immortals for the longest time.

And of course, within the first month one dude with some free time had cracked the game open and got it running with better graphical settings at 60 FPS. That said, if you don't mind playing with a controller it's basically the console experience on your PC, which isn't bad by any means, and it was at least very stable on my machine. And I did eventually get used to playing with the terrible kb+m scheme. So, playable and enjoyable because of the game, but it was still a record-settingly shitty port.
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Post by shadzar »

as with everything now, it is jsut a moneygrab and there is nothing really gained by the consumer. DLC killed the ened for consoles int he first place. the systems to recover content from a damaged console drive is overly complicated and such, where in a lost memory card was easy to replace and could be backed up to another location, or a broke game disc could be replaced with a used one, or new one and you could keep playing.

now like EA is doing with its games and Zynga, the loss of the server easily loses your ability to play a lost game.

i cant find where i read something earlier, but the point is all games are going the route of renting content anyway and i think it was a SimCity game that you were required to be on and connected to the internet 24/7 to be able to play...

consoles will soon be dead and replaced with dumb terminals with graphics cards, so subscription fees and nickle&dime charges can be applied for everything.

Welcome to AOHell! $11.95 a month for 6 hours, and $5.95 per each additional hour! or in other words... Welcome to 1990.
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Post by Kaelik »

DSMatticus wrote:If you were correct, then that would imply that the only difference between PC games and console games of the 2006-2013 era would be better textures and other bullshit graphical bells and whistles for PC.
No it would imply that people could make the exact same fucking games on consoles if they wanted to by not fapping to ultrarealistic graphics.

And hey, they do, because there are plenty of big mapped games on consoles with shitty graphics that aren't CoD.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Kaelik wrote:
DSMatticus wrote:If you were correct, then that would imply that the only difference between PC games and console games of the 2006-2013 era would be better textures and other bullshit graphical bells and whistles for PC.
No it would imply that people could make the exact same fucking games on consoles if they wanted to by not fapping to ultrarealistic graphics.

And hey, they do, because there are plenty of big mapped games on consoles with shitty graphics that aren't CoD.
Was that even a response? No, no it wasn't. I get it: you have a hateboner for graphics and if every game looked like morrowind that would be fine with you and it pisses you off that developers, under hardware restraints, cut things other than the things you would want them to cut. "I am bitter about things other people do" is a perfectly coherent position I can't really argue with. But every attempt to justify that bitterness with some kind of statement about console hardware (everyone knows better hardware will mean nothing but bigger textures!) ends up being retarded, so consider the possibility that you actually have no idea what you are talking.

There are games on PC that probably wouldn't be possible on consoles if you made them look like fucking Quake III Arena. 512 MB of RAM is a hilariously small amount. Do you know what modern devces have 512 MB of RAM? Smartphones. I assure you - 3d games are more intensive than whatever the hell your smartphone is supposed to be doing with that RAM.
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