The second Crackdown was a mess because the original developers were busy on another game so MS helped set up a new studio to make the sequel and only gave them about a year to develop it. If it had been an expansion sold for $20 it would have been fine, but charging full price for it was a rip off. For this new Crackdown game they claim to have the original lead developer back, they've said it will be in a new city, and they're returning to the gangs of the first game and not the lame post-apocalyptic zombie stuff of the second. The trailer also hinted that the game may have a fully destructible city, but it was CG and might not mean much. I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm still leaning towards getting a PS4, but the promise of a true sequel to Crackdown makes the Xbox One tempting. Agreed. There was some good stuff at the Sony conference, but they spent 20 boring minutes talking about statistics and TV stuff. You'd think these companies would have learned from the Xbox reveal last year that the kind of people that watch these conferences just want to see games. After last year's amazing E3, this year's showing was underwhelming. It's understandable considering last year had the next-gen consoles to look forward to, and all the drama that surrounded Xbox One's DRM, but it's still disappointing that nothing exciting was shown at any of the conferences.
I'll get an Xbox One when I can be 110% sure that they won't pull a re-reversal over their DRM and used-game policies. Til then, Xbox 360 is as far as I go with Micro$haft. I also was not keen with one of M$ higher up's attitudes when it came to (at the time) the requirement (that they've since, provisionally, rescinded) that your Xbox One be online at all times. "if you want to play games that don't require you to be online, or if you don't have an online connection...there's another solution....it's called Xbox 360.". Don't get me wrong...I enjoy games for 360 as much as I do PS3/PS4....but I'm very gunshy about Xbox One.
Personally that ship has sailed and i believe MS learned its lesson. I don't believe they'll reverse any of their pre-launch policies because Sony won't and then they've artifically and needlessly worsened the appeal of the XO. Now that there's been a management change with MS i expect the XO to become more popular (even if it's only due to the lowered price) and it now depends on game output and maybe some additional hardware (Kinect sure won't move units because it's an unrealiable gimmick and still no must have games for it in sight). Project Morpheus however (VR headset for the PS4) could be a real wrench in MS' plans if it turns out to be good and receives some good games, so far i have not seen a similar device for the XO.
Well I'm buying a Wii U soon. I'm not sure how much this Direct would appeal to more casual Nintendo fans, but for me it was fantastic. The entire lineup was brilliant. And, as for the conference itself, I loved the focus on developers. It was great to see the actual developers behind the game sitting in a relaxed place talking about their games. And, even the humour was spot-on. Mother 3 joke? Nicely done Nintendo.
One of the things I'm actually excited the most about is the return of Rainbow Six. The last few versions of the games turned them into pure shooters, but it seems like they're returning the series back to its roots as a tactical shooter with planning. I had a bunch of friends I'd play with. We all played the original, Raven Shield, and Rogue Spear and we loved every minute of it. Not sure If I believe it to be in-engine as the trailer says it is, given Ubisoft's track record with trailers, but it's incredibly intense and gives an idea of the direction they're going in with this. http://kotaku.com/rainbow-six-is-back-1588343662
I had Nintendo's briefing on in the background as I'm not much of a fan of theirs, but they seemed to have some good stuff on display. I feel they were probably the best of the big three, although I personally found the MS and Sony conferences more interesting. Thankfully, that guy (Don Mattrick) was banished to Zynga within a month of that gaff. The new head of Xbox is Phil Spencer and he seems to have a better ear for what gamers actually want, which is why they dropped so many of their offputting policies, and why their E3 conference this year was focused intently on games. At this point, I think the PS4 and Xbox One are fairly evenly matched. The PS4 has better hardware while the Xbox has better software, and they both have decent exclusives lined up. But I can't help shake the feeling that MS might not be committed to Xbox for the long haul. The Xbox brand was intended to use video games as a trojan horse to allow MS to take over the living room, but the tech industry has moved towards tablets and phones and controlling the living room isn't as important for MS any more. What's more, consumers just didn't want the Xbox when it was presented as a media centre, which suggests their vision they set out with 15 years ago may itself be flawed. MS shareholders have been increasingly vocal about dropping Xbox in recent years, and I fear that if the new Xbox management don't manage to turn things around quickly then MS could drop them, or sell the division to some other company. I don't have that fear about Playstation, they're far too important and successful for Sony to cut them loose. I'm confident that PS4 will still be supported and will have new games five years from now. Xbox One probably will too, but I'm not confident about that. VR could be the biggest thing to happen to video games in decades. Or it could fizzle out like 3D did. But it is another reason to side with PS4 this gen because we know that Sony are at least experimenting with the concept.
Traditional games, be it FPS or 3rd person ones, don't work properly in VR. The mismatch between visual and physical feedback becomes way too big, causing sickness. You want full range of motion when you already have full range of vision, but that will never be possible in the living room. You want different interaction, like really holding your virtual rifle. And when you have full range of motion, you for example run through virtual walls because there are not real wall stopping you, which breaks the immersion (and when you disconnect the camera movement from your head movement once you hit a wall, you cause motion sickness, so it's a lose-lose situation). So VR ready games need to be very different. So I think it's highly certainly going to fizzle for mainstream games. 3D on the other hand is going to stay. High res autostereoscopic displays coupled with Fishtank VR will be da shiznit, enhancing traditional game setups.
GodBen, those are all excellent points you raised. Believe me, I was well aware of that guy's outing shortly after his arrogant statement, and his replacement by another who seemed to have a better grip on things. . The stigma still lingers with me a bit though. To be honest, I have no doubts that, as a machine, the Xbox One is excellent, as is the PS4. Certainly, M$ learned their lesson after Xbox 360's massive tech problems..... 52% manufacture fail rate in some shipments. Xbox One in its first production run is probably far more sound than Xbox 360 was in its production life. Something else that concerns me is, how long will the two companies continue to support/sell their older systems? Sony was really good about this, seemingly realizing that not everyone can afford the latest, greatest in gaming...so they continued to support the PS2 well into PS3's production life. M$ pretty much dropped the original Xbox not too long into the 360's production life. Sony's mindset: not everyone has 200-300 dollars of disposable cash to afford a PS3, but they still love video games. So, we offer them the option to get a PS2 for 100 bucks, which still has a massive library of quality games. (just good luck in finding a lot of them that aren't "previously enjoyed") The devil in the details: Sony dropped backwards compatibility not long after 360 did, meaning that if you wanted to continue to play PS2 titles, and did not have an original 60GB model of the PS3, you either had to hope you still had a PS2, or had to go buy one (relatively inexpensive as they are.). A way of maximizing some money for themselves. Yeah...rather shrewd and ruthless...so for that matter, they didn't exactly win points in my ethics book...and it's probably a far more overriding reason than the more altruistic one I offered earlier. M$ mindset: Can't afford the latest and greatest? Sucks to be you.
Welcome to the club. I picked up a Wii U last October (the Wind Waker bundle) and although I don't have a whole lot of games for it yet, there was a lot in this presentation that I will be picking up when they're released or shortly thereafter. I had the Live @ E3 broadcast on during the day, and I gotta say that Splatoon looks like so much fun. Xenoblade Chronicles X looked beautiful and I can't wait to try out Hyrule Warriors. I've never played any of the Dynasty Warriors games and it looks like organized chaos. Anyone watching the Smash Bros. tournament at the moment?
I've been home sick from work today, so I've been lying on the couch watching Nintendo footage all day. I fell asleep once or twice and missed a bit of footage, but I got most of it. The Smash Tournament was awesome. I'm not a huge fan of fighters and Smash Bros. is no exception to that, but it was fun to watch. The Zelda Williams appearance was a nice touch. And Nintendo still isn't done with the reveals. We've just learned that Pacman is a playable character in Smash Bros. and that there's a big new 3DS title set to be announced tomorrow at 6pm PST (9pm EST). Come on Advance Wars 3DS!
Define "support". Sony has no announced PS3 games that I'm aware of (though many third parties like EA are still dual-platforming; Ubisoft is the only exception I can name right now). Their last game was, what, Gran Turismo 6? I'd argue that Sony's dropped support already, myself. 360 never dropped backwards compatibility; they did stop adding more titles at some point, but even a new Xbox 360 E should still be able to play the backwards-compatible Xbox [1] titles.
The problems you mention applied to previous generations of VR hardware which couldn't provide the latency and resolution needed to create a usable VR experience. Oculus Rift seemed to be the first commercially available product that may have solved these issues and Morpheus doesn't see too far behind. There are tons of videos where people try out the developer versions of Oculus and many have reported some motion sickness with early versions which have been fixed now. What remains to be done is mostly the programming and that's for the game developers to accomplish which will inevitably take some time but it should be no problem to disallow movements that are not allowed in real life such as walking through walls. Input wise i could see specialized third party controllers being developed if the VR thing takes off. Especially shooters could benefit by making model guns (pistols and assault rifles) that you hold like the real world equivalent with adapted movement controls so you can move around while holding the gun (this would also be very interesting for real militaries for training purposes). It just depends on how big the VR market will be if the headsets work as advertised. As someone else has already mentioned this could be the killer device of our generation and open up whole new possibilities to use them for entertainment as well as many other real life applications.
Support, I was referring to their past practices, that Sony supported PS2 during PS3's production life far longer than M$ did for Xbox during the 360's life...again leading to the notion that at least Sony considers those gamers who are not fortunate enough to have gotten a PS3 at that time, the PS2 was still available. I'll reiterate the M$ mindset: "Can't afford the latest and greatest? Sucks to be you." Of course it was inevitable that support and production for PS2 would eventually cease....but, Sony maintained such support for a previous gen system for far longer than M$ did. The Xbox was practically history when they rolled out the 360 . However, both companies have adopted services that allow you to download games from prior generations to be played on 360 or PS3. As far as the new systems go: I can also say that right now, I am not impressed with PlayStation Now, which is a service (currently in beta test) that allows PS4 owners to play PS3 titles via streaming. I started playing Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 via PS Now, and the visuals were fine for all of five minutes of gameplay...then I got a message saying I didn't have the bandwidth to properly play PS Now....and the picture quality dropped to something like a piss poor YouTube video....and I have kick-ass broadband service. I still cannot be bothered to get an Xbox One until I am 110% sure they won't try to reinstitute the drm and anti-used game policies they tried to push on gamers before system release. Even if it was merely a publicity stunt to make them suddenly appear as if they actually "listened to gamers", the damage has already been done. Sorry,M$, but you've lost this prospective buyer until you can prove to me beyond a shadow of a shadow of a doubt that you WILL NOT pull that horseshit again. Til then, I'll just stick with my 360, my PS3 and my PS4 . I still hang onto my older consoles so I can go back and revisit titles that didn't make it into download or backwards compatibility support. I still have a PS2, original Xbox, GameCube, two PSP's, two 360's and two PS3's. I have a PS4 and a PS Vita.
I have a PS1, 2, 3 and PSP and plan on adding the 4 in there when I get around to it. Vita though, no, the battery life and tiny game library are pretty big turn offs for that one. Never owned a M$ console and don't plan to.
The Vita is awesome, but it does have niche appeal. If you enjoy indie games and quirky Japanese games it's one of the best systems that you can buy.
And Borderlands 2 runs purdy durned good on the Vita too...now that they seem to have worked out the bugs.
Sure, I'm going to get both, years from now when more games are out and I can get a cheaper used copy. I didn't buy my PS3 for years and then got a used one for $150 and it has been running great with no problems.
The things I mention also apply to the current version of the Oculus Rift. Motion sickness in these cases isn't caused by latency, it's caused by the disconnect between virtual and real movement. Of course the impact varies from user to user, but the issue will always remain.
Took me a while to get used to the 3D effect on the 3DS, now it's not straining at all. I realize that's not even close, but I think at least for me I'll be perfectly comfortable in an Oculus Rift after an initial acclimation period.
A wise policy. One that I honestly should follow, since I don't really do multi-player gaming anymore....the down side is that if I did follow such a policy, and did decide to get back into MP gaming, a lot of the games that had come out initially for the newer systems probably have lost their online support by that time. One of my favorite Xbox 360 games was Chromehounds. I got in quite a few rounds with a clan I had joined, and then, a couple months later...bam....no more online support. The game was then useless. It had a shallow single player mode, that really was just a tutorial for the online matches.