theduke

I'm liking the more open world games. I as well am hoping this means cities won't be so barren and more realistic random city-goers. It won't be apparent until the games come out, but better animations (movement, facial) and compounded with the little things like better reflections, shadows, particles and what-not will increase immersion and make it easier for developers to make more emotionally impactful characters. My favorite genre are RPG games and the main thing I dislike is how all the big capitol type cities are real barren in terms of population or the NPCs are all just plain static. I'm liking the continuing trend of adding RPG elements to other genres. I'm not sure how much new hardware will help enhance that but stronger hardware probably helps with having more dynamic characters and worlds.

I'll still buy a PS4 but will now consider a Xbox One in a couple of years. I'm still apprehensive over the Xbox One since with the 360 I felt that towards the last couple years of this gen, they haven't done much in terms of non-kinect, Halo, and Gears exclusives. I want to see what they plan for their first party studios.

The sales are a major factor in that used games are pretty much unimportant with how prices occur in PC games. PC is an open platform, there are like half a dozen different stores I can buy digital games. That won't be the case on Xbox. Any problem with DRM on PC can be done away with easily with a crack. Also Valve has a great track record for being consumer friendly. I tried to support Microsoft. I had a Xbox, then Xbox 360 and I even have a Windows Phone; but it is apparent that they live in their own world. It doesn't seem to matter what situation they are in, they will try to push as many unpopular policies as they can. I remember when I bought a Zune HD, they were hyping it to have support like the Ipod Touch and Iphone in terms of app development. They kept talking about how it would be their phone counterpart like it. It got like 20 apps and when Windows Phone 7 came out, it got scrapped and pretty much ignored. I like this phone but I swear they are trying to push internet streaming of media rather than syncing it. They made syncing music such a hassle and so prone to errors and are so incredibly slow to fix anything. If not for Nokia support in terms of software and hardware, Windows Phone would already be dead. Microsoft doesn't even know how to play from behind. Zune, Zune Software, Windows Phone, advertisement for practically every consumer product not Xbox, and kin.

This is why I worry when Microsoft gets a strong foothold. They already shown that they would ignore consumer complaints. They had already shown they would hype things way beyond what they were capable of. The Kin, Zune HD, and even Windows Phone 7 were all hyped up real hard and then abandoned with them now seeming more just stop gap beta test for Windows Phone 8. With Windows 8, through all of the preview releases, somehow in all the noise people were making about the start menu, they seriously ignored all of it. I don't mind the tile interface but even just removing the start button was a clearly bad move in that unless you follow tech news regularly, you wouldn't know how to use Windows 8. This was clear before release with videos of people having random people trying to go from desktop back to menu. People were always confused and somehow Microsoft ignores this for more than half a year. Now that they are in a position of popularity with their Xbox I'm sure they're going to try and strong arm publisher agenda and be more aggressive in trying to gut any kind of sharing.

The Xbox One is like steam but without any of the benefits of Steam or being on a PC. If Steam were to cease being a company they said they would do something to make all our games still playable. Steam has sales everyday with huge ones fairly common. We have Amazon, Impulse/Gamestop, GOG, Green Man Gaming, now Gamefly, Humble Bundles, Desura, Gamersgate, Origin, and Steam. There are probably others but what is clear is that on PC we have options. If DRM is atrocious, it is easy to crack them. DRM is becoming less of a problem with how easy it is to open a browser and complain/petition. What will happen to Xbox One games in 10-15 years when Microsoft stops supporting them? Are they now rendered unplayable? In particular the discs that have already been transferred ownership once? When I want to play old games I can go to a yard sale, or the swap meet and find old games that are still perfectly playable. These are the benefits of console games. The games are portable. The console is relatively portable. Now it seems they are trying to lock the games to one household and one system. You can transfer ownership of a game once now, but it's not even a large jump to make that restriction tighter. Leaving all this up to publishers is not reassuring. DRM affects the purchaser the most. It didn't and it won't kill off piracy. It will only kill off the used game market in the present and will most likely significantly hamper nostalgia gaming in the future. It will only give the console manufacturers and publishers more power to turn their games obsolete swifter to push new sales easier. I'm expecting Gamestop and Best Buy be the main partners for used games. No more Craigslist, no more Ebay.

edit: Also in the 30 days friend thing to transfer its one time transfer of ownership. You can't just sell it to some random person on Craigslist or a friends friend. I'd be surprised if someone was willing to wait 30 days to buy the game and hopefully still want it.

On newegg you should look for bundles any specials to try and save money.

For example http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128519

For now it comes with 8GB of memory/RAM. That would help trying to get something nice for under $400. There are also bundles of CPU with a motherboard or other parts that you can look through on Newegg. At under $400, I would think it would be best to go for an AMD build since those are usually cheaper. In gaming builds I would try to put more money into the GPU than the CPU.

You could look through benchmarks of different GPU's and CPU's to get a feel for what would work for you.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/536

Very turbulent year.
Disasters, revolutions, now Osama dead

I remember back Holiday times 07 when Xbox Live was down or unusable for weeks and what we were given from Microsoft was a free game called Undertow. Didn't like it that much. If Sony gives us something I hope it's something good.

just bought the first FEAR which would be the 22nd game so far in this sale and expect to end with a minimun of 30 games since i'm holding off on some purchases hoping they go on a daily deal

RPG lovers get Gothic Universe Edition and Titan Quest Gold Pack
All the Prince of Persia games are on sale and the Hitman Collection
today is a good day
the Indie Kid Pack is real good as well as pretty much all the indie packs

that was much more one sided than i thought it would be