@whitegreyblack: I'm not so sure that there is a PR crisis yet. A very small subset of gamers are even aware that these changes are coming and Microsoft and Sony haven't said a word on the issue. I think you need to step back for a second and ask yourself if you and the people around you are representative of the general conciousness when it comes to this stuff. I would bet a majority of America still believes the Xbox One needs to be always connected to the internet. However, if clarity is what you want, wait 3 weeks for E3. I can almost assure you there will be no doubt about this situation on Press Conference day.
@jesushammer: They know it would be crazy but they'll do it anyway. Partially, like Austin said, a lot of people get new phones every year. I will say that that is partially to do with the fact the cell providers here in the US (Speaking from my view point in the US, don't want to presume how other parts of the world handle cellular service), many people get subsidies from carriers to get new phones as an incentive to stay on with your current provider. There's a large part of this that we are missing on the business model side of this thing. We don't know how these companies are going to justify the system to users because they haven't said a word yet. We just know what they are likely to do, but we don't know how they are going to do it or entice people to do the upgrades. I have to imagine that they will both offer a route for current users to get these system's at a lower cost. Really interesting to see how they handle this.
@levio: Unless you're implying Microsoft and Sony knew about the fine details of the 1080/1070, I'm not so sure that's the reason. Making a new console requires more than a weeks notice. They would've had to be planning these things for years. Business planning and development of hardware takes a lot of time. Try to keep that in mind.
I own an Xbox One but have also posted on this site this week in the forums about switching sides and from hearing this it does 2 things. The first thing it does is tell me to buy a NEO. the issue I have with Xbox right now is that they aren't giving me the games. So instead of getting a better lineup of games, they're just throwing more horsepower and adding in Rift support. That does next to nothing for me or anyone who wants more and different choices for what games they play. The second is that it makes me a little scared for what companies like Sony and Microsoft are going to do to consumers if consumers don't advocate for themselves through this process. the report Austin published makes it seem like Sony is doing the "right" thing and offering a better performing PS4 while still keeping folks who are fine where they are relatively happy. I don't trust Microsoft to do the "right" thing. Phil Spencer talks a big game about wanting to put gaming on the forefront and giving people a place to enjoy games, which is cool and a better stance than his predecessor had held. But i'm not exactly sure that having new stuff sku every year is the solution. Gamers want games, not having to make tough choices on when to upgrade. Of course this all changes if this is just the result of AMD strong arming the two companies into 14nm architecture.
FYI: AMD just announced 14nm standards that they're trying to implement across their parts making business. the theory that I subscribe to is that Microsoft and Sony are being forced to adopt new standards or incur more costs from AMD who are trying to be more cost efficient by switching to 14nm instead of 28nm.
VT is also a major pusher for this. VR devs want to break out of the PC market. No offense to PC users who have VR, but ya'll are a small pond right now compared to the PC userbase, much less the console userbase. Dev's have go where the money is and the money is where the people are, on console. VR support on xbox is huge for Oculus, There is a potential to put Rifts in a lot of households, getting the headset out to more people. Sony's headset is also important to them. The developer relationship they have right now is really promising for PSVR. I can see if the units sell well, we could see some great stuff on PSVR and have it cement itself early with players. Something Sony really wants if they want to keep being competitive with Microsoft.
@tgjessie: What happened was PC ports used to be terrible, then they got good. Then the hardware for PC caught and then passed consoles in about 2010 and hasn't looked back. Albeit at a rather large cost. Although you do see companies like Nvidia and others starting to offer better GPU and CPU prices. Most parts will still cost as much as a console, but the option for performance is there for people who want that. Also it wasn't long ago when a lot of popular games didn't have PC versions. Indie games on PC also became a thing when Steam got to be more popular and dev-friendly, also around post-2010. Basically a lot of factors came together to make PC a viable option for those who could or wanted to pursue it.
@benspyda: It does look nice. But what happens when you want something on the scale of an RPG? The Witcher 3 was playable but the PC was still outrunning the consoles by some margin. Uncharted 4 can look that good because the game is scaled in a way that you can have the details and the performance. The way consoles are now, developers have to make hard choices on scope vs performance. New consoles would help alleviate the issue somewhat.
This sounds like an unfortunate situation all around. You hope that a game with a great premise is going to be good, but when it isn't you can't help but feel disappointed. At least with a game you know is bad you have the expectation to take it for what it is and try and find the fun in that, kind of like watching bad movies. But I can't help but feel sorry not only for Austin's sake, but for that of the developer. I think some talented people got together and did some good work on general concepts, but from what I can tell this game was not followed through with or at least not checked for consistency or reason. It's kind of like when Jeff Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park explains the flawed decision of bring dinosaurs back to the present. People did what they wanted but forgot to ask themselves if they should or why they should do it. Based on what Austin had to say and the quick look, this game was supposed to be the urban take on Far Cry, but that isn't what we got. and I can only hope that the dev or others can learn from this mistake.
This stinks. But it also seems like it was a shitty thing to have happen on all sides of this. Obviously Avalanche is feeling it pretty hard, but Disney probably had to do some pretty hard soul searching and decision making to decide to pull the plug. Closures like this can go worse. Ask Curt Schilling. I just hope that the severance they received from this whole thing will be distributed in a way that makes sense to at least bridge the gap between jobs for these folk.
As someone who is studying business (at Virginia Tech, fyi) in college right now, you get asked by professors a lot about what you would do in these kinds of really shitty or ethically ambiguous situations. The answer that you get from their point of view is that we should try to respect people's well being and at the same time acknowledge the reality of the situation that we find ourselves in. It's a tough knife's edge to walk but it's one that I think we should try to tread whenever possible. Sometimes it's easy to do and sometimes it's really hard. I don't think I'm stretching it when I say that people on all sides of this story aren't feeling too hot right now. both from the studios point of view and the folks at Disney that have to make these really tough choices. Just a sad day all around, and I don't even like Infinity all that much.
I really like Pokemon Stadium. It was maybe the first game I ever owned and I was 5 at the time and loved Pokemon (still kind of do). I'm not going to stand here and say the mini games weren't good but they also don't characterize the Stadium part of the game that was actually great. Overall the game was actually good, you could do the transfer stuff and play the gameboy games on the tv, and see Pokemon in 3D, albeit not really that great quality but it really brought the characters to life and made the fights more exciting. It also played into the social aspect of Pokemon with the multiplayer and setup a really cool way to experience the battles beyond what the gameboy could provide.
I came for the news, but I stayed to watch that that British man speak Japanese like a boss. Also, Kojima looks like he just got extracted from a sneaking mission.
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