http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1460482-next-gen-consoles/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1460526-next-generation-consoles-part-ii/

Continuing a ongoing thread.

PS4

XB1

You Decide! (or not)

Need more head-to-head hardware and performance specs.

To pull up my opinion from Gamgee's link in the last thread:

Microsoft has a big ass mouth at the rate their shoving their feet in it.

I may be wrong, but my understanding was that Beth's problems were more software related than hardware related. Software side will still be very different. Microsoft has their Xbox version of DirectX, whereas the PS4 does not (unless they got a license from Microsoft to implement DirectX, but I doubt that).

In that case, uh oh. Unless the PS4 takes off as the winner (which I suspect will be the case).

I've always used Sony's consoles, so I'll probably buy a PS4 as soon as the good games (Kingdom Hearts 3, Final Fantasy XVI, The Elder Scrolls VI) come out.

One thing I forgot to discuss. How suicidal is it for these companies to both launch this year? It almost seems like they are both going all in to launch in the Holidays. I have a feeling one of these consoles isn't coming out alive. Or at least not in any good shape. My bet is on the xbox one.

It's called the Xbox One because they took 359 steps backwards

Pretty much every developer has come out and praised how easy it has been to develop games for the PS4. I want to say I doubt Bethesda will struggle again.

On an unrelated note, I'm expecting (well, praying for) a Last Guardian appearance at E3 for Sony, as one of their "big" reveals. IIRC, Sony diverted some extra resources to help Team Ico in development, including the PS4 lead architect's team. The gaming world has been deprived of a Team Ico game for far too long....

I've not heard of any official praise for actual development, but rather praise for Sony's dropping of Cell in favor of x86. Architecture choice does matter, but APIs and SDKs matter much more.

Do you have any articles of praise where they praise actual hands-on development of a game for the PS4? And not just a game for the PS4, but a cross-platform game for Windows, PS4, AND Xbox One?

The Witcher 3 devs immediately come to mind, and they're making a big open-world game:

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Witcher-3-Port-PS4-Easy-Says-CD-Projekt-Red-54338.html

A bunch of indies have come out in favor of PS4, noting how Sony has been asking for their input, waiving fees, handing out dev kits to them early, etc.

I believe Ubisoft said something similar.

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/ps4-development-a-radical-change-for-sony-says-ubisoft-6406552

Edit: and Blizzard.

http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1932581/ps4_easier_hardware_means_faster_game_development.html

So is there any reason to buy an Xbox One if you don't live in America, apart from exclusives? Seems like 90% of the services are US-only.

Once again, the comment is on the use of x86 architecture, not on an actual done-and-done port.

None of which has anything to do with actual ease of development, just Sony trying to lower the barrier to development


NOTE: I'm not trying to bash Sony here or anything (of the two, I prefer the PS4, though don't know if I'd buy either). I'm just saying architecture choice is too little to go on for how easy development will be. It will, however, undoubtedly be easier than for the PS3, because the cell processor's power wasn't well suited for gaming and was hard to master.

PC game developers, by large, are addicted to DirectX. This is what has made and will continue to make Xbox game development easier for them since it's so familiar. APIs and how they can be used and interact have a much bigger impact than architecture choice once you're past Assembly and really low-level C programming.

Might want to throw http://www.anandtech.com/show/6972/xbox-one-hardware-compared-to-playstation-4 in the first post, it answers most questions about the hardware.

I have to side with Defron on this point for now. While the ease of developing a port is increasing, I would not know if I could classify it as easy or not. If the PS4 is this generations winner (which is likely), then hopefully more games will be made for it and a lot of people will be more familiar making games for it and thus porting from it to PC or vice versa. Assuming it is a problem.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-one/PS4_vs._Xbox_One_Comparison_Chart

I'm leaning more towards a ps4 myself, but my little brother will probably want an xbox one

I just spent an hour looking at comments on that IGN thread and it got me thinking...

Always Online + Always On Kinect with hearbeat rate and emotion sensing tech = spy machine. Seriously, sit back and think about that. To hell with any of the other concerns, because this one is scary.

To give you guys a good comparison of how architecture alone isn't enough to make a port easy:

If that was all that mattered, games (or any software) could be easily ported from Windows to Mac OS X and Linux with little-to-no bugs and small development costs. This is DEFINITELY NOT the case, and the main reason Mac OS X and Linux haven't seen as much love was the lack of DirectX. Only recently have developers been considering ports on a larger scale than previously done and ports are often plagued with bugs initially and have development and beta periods longer than their Windows counterparts.

API matters. Bigtime.

I'm still on the fence. While Microsoft may not be the kindest people, I like the new kinect and they have also stated that they will have 15 exclusives within the first year with 8 of those being new IP's. Whereas with Sony, they may be treating everyone nicer, but I have yet to see anything impressive.

Logic not found.

MS says it has games and shows nothing. You like?

Sony shows games that are only so so, but a lot of them. You rate them lower?

Huh? I'm trying to figure this out.

I'm still waiting for E3. To me it seemed like hardly any new IP were presented on the PS4. I'm quite hesitant in starting a series in the middle of it.

Just what I want, my console telling me to calm down after I stubbed my toe or my Broncos screw up a play.

It matters a lot less when you're talking about the kind of sales numbers consoles produce, though. The difficulties in developing for the PS3 largely have to do with the architecture. Yes, when the APIs are different there is additional work to do, but you can deal with API differences by delegating the actual API calls to libraries that you can plug into your engine if the architectures are congruent. This depends on the engine being designed in such a way that those pieces can be modular (and why wouldn't you design it that way unless your engine is based on very old code ). When the architectures are completely different and the way you have to optimize threading and such don't come anywhere close to mapping to one another you have huge problems. It ripples throughout your entire software architecture.

Nobody ports to MacOS because the return on investment isn't good enough to justify the resource usage. I'm pretty sure consoles are a different story.

Do you have an alarm that goes off every so often to remind you to spam this thread?

If you can change the setting so it just taunts you, I'd buy that.

Fatty mad about his fantasy football league? Why you so mad fatty? You just need a snickers, because you turn into an angry fatty when you're hungry!