Salarn

The mandatory game install has nothing to do with DRM, it has everything to do with load times and a guarantee to developers that they can develop for fewer hardware targets. However, MS did make it a requirement that the game is playable after the first 2gb are installed while the remainder is installed in the background so it's not as bad as what we currently know as disk installs.

eShip and WiiUShop merge, all 3DS digital games will cross play on your WiiU, and all virtual console games will work cross device.

The best way to handle this would to leverage that 'Day one' deal they already have going.

They are tossing in a year of gold, if they were to also say, '$50~$100' from release to end of Thanksgiving weekend to support early adapters. People would go crazy for the box, a lower price is good but something on sale even at a higher price makes our lizard brains go insane wanting to not miss out on the 'deal'

Don't forget the exact phrasing was 'Disk based single player games' I expect heavy details, how many games have there been shown that are not in some way multiplayer?

• Game rentals are not supported - Nothing was said about this, it might up to the publisher to offer timed deals or free weekends like steam.
• Not being able to disconnect Kinect, or turn it off separately from the console itself. - They said you can pause or completely turn off the kinect in the release from major nelson. Also, collecting millions of hours of grimy audio a day is not as valuable as people think.
• The uncertainty of what happens to your game collection once Microsoft eventually turns off the Xbox One servers. - They haven't said anything on this at all yet and assuming they don't have a DRM kill switch like steam does if steam explodes is fear mongering.

I never buy physical media if I can help it and plan on buying less and less as time goes on, so I'm going to make steam comparisons because physical game media is losing ground every year. If more than half of consoles sales are still physical by then end of the xb1 life cycle in 2018~2020 then I'll eat my shoe.

Go and count the number of times XBL has had downtime longer than 24 hours? It's pretty small set, not since the holiday of 2007 was there any long lasting down time. Putting the authentication on the same servers as matching making would be a rookie mistake.

That all being said, I won't buy an XB1 or PS4 until there is something that I absolutely must play as an exclusive and stick to PC and steam DRM

@yetiantics: I voted 'None of this bothers me in the least.' because most of the choices were inaccurate based on partial information.

24 hour check in, if I don't have internet for longer than 24 hours I either have bigger problems or in a situation where having a xb1 is not important.

Other than that, don't care one bit about being able to resell my games since steam is the same way.

Arcade cabinets are pretty cool and there is a lot of great nostalgia that goes along with them for me. However, they are very difficult and expensive to move. In fact, the last time I had to move for work, I had to ditch my 4-player cabinet. Sad times, but this story has a happy ending, I decided to replace the cabinet but this time build one myself. I've not done a build of this size ever, my only previous experience had been shop class and working on existing arcade machines.

The first question that one must ask themselves is: "Real hardware or emulated?" this is a tough one with no one right answer but my choice was made based on the following.

1. I don't want to die if I touch the screen wrong, this means no CRT monitor. Yes there is no doubt that there is a difference in the color temp and feel of a CRT vs LCD but I've discharged monitors and it's a death trap. No thanks.
2. I already have a jamma based 2-player cab that survived the last move and runs real hardware, and while I could load this new 4-player one up with my Sunset Riders, Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, etc... it's a damned hassle to physically switch the cables and I'm lazy. So I went with a PC and big picture mode as the presentation for the setup. If you want to use real jamma on a TV I recommend this, I've used a bunch of them and they work great.

From there came the google searches, which in the end didn't come up with many results. There are few 4-player cabinet plans out their because only insane people would want to build one, and they were not the dominate form factor in the arcades. The other factor that went into all the plans that I found was that adults take up a lot more space than kids so all the plans were small and cramped when I put them out on paper mockups which resulted in needing to scale up a lot of it manually anyway.

So the first step was using 'Google Sketch Up' to get the basic size and shape mocked up. Since there was no CRT to fit into the cabinet the overall depth of the cab went down by half which is great since it rolls through normal doorways without batting an eye. Going with a square layout of instead of more complex rhombus or multi-corner designs was simply because it's been over a decade since shop class so less is more quickly became the motto for this entire build. You're going to have to cut some corners (literally) if you want to finish.

With sketch in hand and a brisk Saturday morning in January it was time to get the materials to start the build. I went with cheap 2x4s and a lot of 1/4 & 1/2 inch MDF. As you can see in the picture, most of the pieces I got cut from the store, they have better and more accurate tools and most likely won't charge you if you don't go to overboard on how many cuts you need.

A few hours later, we have our self a control panel for the 4 player button layout. Now, why are they curved? Because I like them curved, due to my large monstrous hands. The templates I used for the button layout I got from here, a great resource for building arcade controllers. I ended up scaling the image to 110% before printing and drilling on the center points, this added just a bit more spacing for the buttons to fit adult hands better and make the wiring slightly easier.

So then all that is left is to drop in all the buttons and see how awesome it looks. Oh crap. Take note, standard arcade buttons are 1 1/8 inch in size, if you happen to say use a 1 inch bit to drill your holes, you're going to have to start all over because you were lazy and didn't check. So remove that top panel and do it again, you never save time by guessing. Also it turns out I lost some buttons during the move so I'll just order the 6 I need.

The white stuff on the panel is wood filler or dry wall Spackle, using that on the gaps and sanding it down hides most of the seams. Sanded and primed I moved onto building the base. The 2x4s were the frame with MDF as the sides it came together pretty quickly, putting the coin slot from the previous cabinet really starts to make the project come alive. However, not pictured there is the weight being used to hold down controller box.

Why was there a weight you might ask? Because I measured wrong, and the base was 1/2 an inch larger than the recess in the control box to fit properly. Looking back on it, the right answer would have been to pull off the 1/2 sides and replace them with 1/4 and then everything would have been nice and snug. However, at this stage 'less is more' hadn't sunk in 100% and building this cab to withstand a nuclear blast seemed like an important requirement.

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Moving on it's time to build the hood, this shot you can see the hammer holding the control panel in place, a testament to my shame. Also that light in the first picture, it's broken in the later ones because tall and clumsy in a workshop is just a recipe for fun times.

But let's move on. The hood was build using some 2x2 as a framing and more MDF for sides, it's darn study now and surprisingly light. The control panel is a bit dinged up there because sanding for smoothness, I ended up doing at least times as much sanding and smoothing on the control panel because it's going to get the most interaction.

The TV I used was one a 32 inch screen picked up on a black Friday sale the in 2012 for < $100 it only does 720p but for an arcade cab that's more than enough. Having a wide view angle was very important so I was really lucky to get one with >160deg angle for that price. With the bottom plate in we transition from using hammers to hold up the control panel to a loose piece of lumber.

Now let's talking sanding. Sanding is great, it makes a huge different in how well paint sticks, it's time consuming and tedious. It's also your punishment for not measuring properly and making mistakes for your cuts. I did a lot of sanding, by hand and by power tool, sand sand sand. I don't have any idea who that guy is on the back of the sandpaper, but he looked like a man who knows his grit and that is how you sell sandpaper.

And there we go, check that baby out. It's got two coats of poly on two coats of copper on two coats of 'chocolate kiss' on two coats of primer. With lots of sanding and love in between. The brass fittings add a bit of steam punk / victorian age flavor to it and if it's going to run steam big picture it's almost fitting.

See that weird 'n' shaped brown splotch to the left of the coin slot? Yeah, that's a spot that wasn't quite dry and the copper paint mucked up the brown paint. There are a few more of them on different spots of the of the cabinet, a constant reminder of my failings as a carpenter. Or it adds character and a personal touch who knows, most people probably won't even notice. Also, you're going to want WAY more ventilation that I had in the basement I was working, the fumes are very interesting after a while.

And that was the end of the major build parts, sure I had to paint the front bezel that you can see littered with little dots of filler on the screw holes, but all things considered it was an arcade cabinet, at least in shape. The next step was to take all of this and move it 40 miles from where I was working to my office where it was going to live and bring joy to others.

So, remember how I was missing maybe 4 ~ 6 buttons and I could totally just pay < $10 to get the ones I was missing? That's no fun, instead why don't I pay six times that much to get a full set of light up buttons because why not I'm an adult I can have light up buttons on my arcade cabinet if I want to. Why is there no stick for the blue player? Well that's because I didn't measure properly and the internals wouldn't fit until I dremel'ed out a small groove into the cross support.

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Control is a complex thing when building an arcade cabinet, there are lots of wires and lots of ways to solve the problem of tricking the computer to make it think that it's getting input that it can understand. One option was to use an I-Pac, which allows you to wire up controls as if they were a keyboard.

Not a bad solution, but instead I went with the other option of destroying a four pack of 360 'Slam Sticks' if you can get a good deal they can run you around $20 each. Now special security screws so the disassemble was easier than expected. Using these have the huge advantage of being recognized natively by windows as unique devices, and more importantly steam big picture mode works great with them. This is the most I've spent on wrestling related merchandise since the 1980s.

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I'm terrible at soldering, really really bad. It had been a long time since I had electrical engineering in university and if my professor saw my first dozen or so attempts I'd have fail the class, fortunately it's just like soldering a bicycle you remember pretty quickly after you singe a few fingers.

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Drop in the PC, plug in the USB and surprisingly ever wire worked on the first go, the 4p left has a bum microswitch that drops off early, had I been smart and tested before I installed wouldn't have taken hours to replace, but we've established a pattern at this point.

Now what games do I use to test this out with...

@selfconfessedcynic: Well that's my original answer then, it depends on the game.

If it's a racing game, the FPS directly contributes to the sense of speed which is part of the graphics quality due to how things will feel smoother. If it's a fighting game, quantity of frames is less important than consistency you want a locked FPS at 30 or 60 so the input timings are consistent.

Now if the question was no AA and 60fps vs 16x AA and 30fps in the same First Person Shooter, I'd probably go with the AA

@selfconfessedcynic: Yes really.

Some games frame rate matters a lot, some games frame rate doesn't matter at all. Same with graphic fidelity.

The assumption that adding more bells and shaders to a game will make it better and the only trade off is frame rate is inaccurate.

FTL - Faster Than Light

Limbo

Bit.Trip

Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress

Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

Super Meat Boy

Could go on and on but for many games your visual style is not decided based on frame rate. While at the same time many games wouldn't be different if their frame rate was 15/30/60 or whatever.

It depends on the game.