Be Excellent To Each Other

By all accounts it's going to be easier to list 'next-gen' console titles that DO run natively at 1080@60, than those that don't.

Frankly I'm gob-smacked, I realise we're not comparing apples with apples to an extent, but Virtua Tennis 3 and Ridge Racer 7 ran natively at 1080@60 in 2007, on the PS3.

For the main raft of launch titles on both XBone and PS4 that are targeting 60FPS we're seeing gimped resolutions (720p/900p respectively for 360/PS4 in BF4, 720p (!) in COD Ghosts for the XBone), and where 1080p is the native resolution we're seeing gimped framerates (targeting 30FPS).

(Or a strange sort of inbetween for COD Ghosts on PS4 which is native 1080@60 but with distracting framerate issues according to reviews.)

This article from Eurogamer sums it up pretty well - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013- ... -right-now





Obviously it's early days yet, but I'm disappointed, I honestly thought that 1080@60 was going to be the starter for ten for all next-gen console titles, that what was on offer would be a measurable and obvious improvement over 360/PS3 titles of late, where the elderly architecture has clearly been struggling - but apparently not.

Neither the XBone or the PS4 are cheap, the total cost of entry isn't insignificant once you factor in a couple of games, and for what? Nothing that justifies the outlay IMO. I was hoping that the PS4 at least would present a compelling purchase temptation, but given what we've seen so far, not a bit of it.

Was anyone else expecting more?

Shut the fuck up.

I don't see anything in my post that warranted that kind of a response TBH, and I stick by my point, where's the 'wow factor'? Where's the thing that's really going to make anyone want either an XBone or a PS4?

Even as the resident PC arsehole the 360 wasn't exactly a hard sell to me, with titles like Ridge Racer 6 and Fight Night Round 4 (or whatever it was at the time) on offer, and the gorgeous ease of use of XBox Live and XBLA and the friends integration and the achievements and playing games straight from disc and so on and so on - when I got my first 360 my PC was relegated to an internet and email client for quite some time.

Last time around the consoles delivered ease of use AND swishy graphics that the PC had a hard time matching (the likes of Ridge Racer 6 simply didn't exist on the PC, and I totally ragged the arse out of that game), this time around they've managed not only to become annoying constantly-updating clunkathons (or certainly, if the current state of my 360 is anything to go by they are, whereby it was 35 minutes before I could even play GTAV by the time my console and the game had both updated themselves, and then gone through an appallingly long mandatory install), but they've also got a serious graphics deficit AT LAUNCH against even a modestly specced and very affordable PC.

Chuck in the massive improvements in both Windows and Steam (plus other digital delivery platforms) since the 360 and PS3 hit the scene, and I'm honestly wondering what's left as the hook, especially since games are more expensive on the consoles too.

I like console gaming, I like sitting on the couch in front of the big telly and the 5:1 speaker setup, pad in hand and a glass of wine beside me, I was looking forward to the PS4 offering something to really make me want one early doors, and it's just not there.

FFS, it's all about the games. The PS4 and Xbone aren't exactly going to be overflowing with exhilarating and innovative new gameplay experiences at launch, that is what makes both a disappointment, not some boring numbers on a spreadsheet.

(Besides, all games consoles in history have had hardware deficiencies even from day one. They're not meant to be mass market products, not bleeding-edge technology.)

I do agree that they seem a little less shiny than in previous console launches, but whether that is due to my age, lack of current investment in gaming, ubiquitous internet coverage or just a lack of quality is up for debate.

I'm really enjoying my WiiU. Whatever gen you want to call it.

No console games use 100% of their capability at launch. Compare Ridge Racer to Ridge Racer Type 4, PS2 launch titles didn't come on DVDs, if someone told you at the start of the 360/PS3 era about GTA5 you'd tell them to fuck off, stop lying.

For a start launch titles are mostly designed for theoretical hardware, they get devkits, but devkits!=actual consoles, especially the first gen devkits. They'll take a look at the devkits, read what they're supposed to be able to do, and then decide how far they want to push it. I'd expect them to reach 100% of the listed potential in about 6 months, then continue to improve due to working out tricks to maximize what they can get out of it.

The Wii U makes far more sense to me than either the XBone or the PS4.

The Wii U buys you into the Nintendo games universe, and I can totally understand people paying cash to get into that universe.

The XBone and the PS4 get you current gen games with a few more shinies, certainly to start with. I'm seeing nothing that's making me want to jump on board early doors.

But even then, outside of platform exclusives, I'm struggling to think of what might be the hook for me buying one in the future. I know I keep coming back to Ridge Racer 6 but it was an awesome arcade racer on the 360 the likes of which you couldn't get on the PC at the time, it almost made getting a 360 worthwhile all by itself, and this was very early in the console's life.

But now the XBone and PS4 are just moderately specced PCs stuffed into little boxes, and if BF4 is anything to go by my years-old PC massively outguns both of them, which isn't something I was expecting at all.

On top of that, Steam is so damn good these days that it's entirely capable of replacing XBLA, and the games on it don't break from one generation to the next, as would happen with my entire XBLA catalogue if I bought an XBone.

I'm sure they'll get more out of the machines as time goes by, but I think you might be overestimating how much.

The 360 had its tri-core architecture and ESRAM for developers to really get to grips with, and the PS3 had its exotic SPU setup, there was a lot of potential for them to unlock - but the XBone and PS4 are both using entirely standard PC components, and not particularly beefy ones at that, I suspect they'll hit a ceiling sooner rather than later with what they can squeeze out of them.

Frames per second and resolutions? I'm bloody sick to fackin' death hearing this tired old shit. Give it a fackin' rest.

Rise of the Robots must be fucking awesome now though, the resolution is WAY up from the Amiga.

Personally, I'd be happy if graphics stayed at roughly where they are now on GTAV. If we end up with photorealistic umpty million res @ a trillion infinity FPS, I'm a bit worried about getting PTSD after playing COD25.

Rise of the Robots has always been awesome.

Except, how often has anyone ever sat down and gone 'How can we get more out of this particular PC graphics card'? No one. Ever. In the history of the world. Because idiots will go and buy new ones because they can only play BF4 at 19 million by 10 million pixels, rather than 19 million and 1 by 10 million and 1 pixels. Why bother?

There's always little tricks you can use when you have to. Sony produces the Performance Analyser for its boxes. I'm sure Microsoft have something similar they send out to devs.

What's the point in having shinier graphics in games like BF4 and CoD nowadays, anyway? You start a level and then suddenly you're being hustled along with stuff thrown at you and massive 'splosions and nonsensical bellowing and chases and falling out of helicopters and crawling along and unpleasant jugular kills and then more bellowing and forever-ever-ever been stuck behind your squadmates as they open doors whilst orders are barked in your ears and you haplessly bungle along unquestioningly as the US military seem to decide to make you their go-to guy for every single pissing room-clearance detail ever.

As a consequence there's absolutely no savouring the environmental detail. Past the initial ten minute rush of a new shinier engine friend player rapidly becomes blase as to graphics and begins to grind teeth at same-old tedium. A falling skyscraper. Wub-wub noises. YAWN.

This is all down to a mistrust amongst game designers at the simple notion of being in an interesting locale with time and freedom to explore with a decent plot being infinitely more intriguing than hi-octane action-action-action for its own sake. Remember that bit in Saving Private Ryan in the village where they're preparing for the arrival of the Nazis? You don't seem to get such enjoyable down-time anymore. Everyone you meet is a caricature and there's no real feeling of desire to overcome and save the little plot of land you call home.

One of the best FPS games I ever played was Terra Nova on the PC. The graphics look like bobbins now, consisting as they do of sprites on 3D terrain. But as you blasted around the landscape in your armoured jump-pack Starship Troopers novel style mech-suit you didn't mind at all owing to the love poured into the lore of the story and the fun characters you budied with. For once, cheesy FMV scenes worked and the fact that you were this little hard-hitting army fighting to protect your off-world colony against a massive Earth invasion force meant that you really felt attached to your world and mission. Clever emails, briefings, dialogue and some strong visual design meant that fighting amongst the hydroponic farms, spaceports and mountain ranges made you feel like you were making a valient last stand, making the Earther bastards pay for every mile they captured. You dropshipped in there, bounced over the mountain ridges, descended upon the slow moving convoys in the passes and hit them with lasers and rockets and then bounced back out of there - praying that your superior jump speed would take you out of range quickly from the angry return fire. Then back to the ship and home for tea and muffins at the base bar, until the sudden and inevitable betrayal by John Malkovich lookalike team-buddy.

It didn't treat you like an idiot and made you feel as if you were in a Heinlein novel. I'd quite happily battle sprites on a 3D landscape again for a dose of the same immersion. But this stupid world of instant gratification rollercoast SFX extravaganza's leave me terribly cold. And as such, I don't give a shit about new graphical improvements.

The slide during sunset in journey.
Everything about the new Super Mario 3D World.
Super Mario Galaxy.
Super Hexagon
Rhythm Tengoku
Flower
And so on.

All came out when PC's massively overshadowed the consoles they were on when it came to power.

But graphical design is of far greater importance than pure graphical power. Buying a PS4 or Xbox One now is nothing but a bet on future games. And so rather silly. But consoles make certain games and style financially viable. If they were all on a PC then an comparison argument could be made. But they don't (and, of course, vice versa. If I want Dwarf Fortress (and boy I really, really do) I'll always have to have a computer).

Bayonetta 2 is only coming out on nintendos crippled hardware. The future is ruined.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (the good one) was one of the first games I played on my 360 when I got one. I don't know if it was a launch title but it was close.

It was slick. Slick as heck. Hecka slick. It would have looked a lot worse if it weren't 60hz.

So I think framerates are important. Sometimes a lower framerate looks better: to me it seems like the game is doing more stuff. Timesplitters' 60hzness makes the whole game seem really artificial.

They really ought to be writing the games so they can hit 60. And then add in an option for 30 if anybody prefers it that way. Because options really do solve everything.

I like 50hz because I'm British, gosh dang it to heck.

Console components are all so standardized nowadays that i don't understand all the surprises and anticipation when it comes to know the performance of the games. We all know they're quite a leap over the previous generation, specially in the case of the PS4, and if these new games look underwhelming it's due to the developers and publishers, not the machines.

I'm sure we'll see some amazing looking games in 1080p or wherever this generation, particularly exclusives on the ps4.

The octo-core processors aside, not really. (And even then the processors are low-power cores, basically eight of AMD's 'Atom' equivalents on a single die.)

8GB of RAM has been mainstream in the PC arena for years, and the GPUs in both consoles were distinctly mid-range parts even 18 months ago.

I don't doubt there's better to come, but 1080p is a massive jump in pixels to render from 720p, and I'm not convinced that either console has the raw grunt to reliably hit 1080@60 at what we might consider to be 'next-gen' detail levels.

BF4 is basically a current-gen game and engine, and even the more powerful PS4 can only manage 900p at 40-50FPS.

I'd like to be proved wrong 'cause I do like me a bit of console gaming, but I'm definitely in the 'wait 12 months and see how it's going' camp for now.

I think most of us console gamers are in that camp. No massively compelling games at launch, high (for consoles) hardware prices, waiting's the sensible move at the moment. Particularly as we're not seeing a gulf in power like the 8-bit to 16-bit leap, or 16-bit consoles to 32-bit-ish consoles.

It'll be amazing when they start pushing 4k screens then.

Yeah, true - I was (before the PS4 and 'Bone were announced) at one point half expecting the next generation consoles to be pushed back further, and waiting until 4K screens start to take off. But, let's be honest, that's a while off, if it happens.

To give you an idea of what's required for gaming on 4K screens, Custom PC did a big piece on it this month.

The only single GPU cards that are even close to capable of it cost £450-£550, that's for the graphics card alone, and there you're looking at games such as Bioshock Infinite and BF3 running at around 30FPS.

Realistically you need to SLI/Crossfire a couple of £350-£400 cards, so you're looking at £700+ on just the graphics cards, if you want to get closer to 60FPS.

Total cost of entry for a 4K capable PC is pushing £2000, and it's going to be a big, hot, noisy beast of a thing.

So whilst 4K screens are here, it's going to be a few years before 4K capable consoles are a possibility at a sane price and in a sane form factor, you're basically talking PS5 before that happens.

4K is a boondoggle. It's only barely distinguishable from 1080p at normal TV sizes and normal viewing distances.

I'm waiting for boondoggle 2.0

It's where the smart money is heading.

You know I said 60fps can make racing games look slick?

Here's Need for Speed Rivals (locked to 30fps in all releases) in 60 fps!

Yeah... what...

Edit - Oh for fucking fucks sake. It looks like they've left Burnout's 'CRASHED!!' in, from NFS:MW:ACG. Shitheads. I was gonna enjoy that game too.

that's why they don't come in normal TV sizes (at the moment).

I stood in front of a 4k setup in currys the other day. Decidedly underwhelming. I remember standing in front of a blu ray display in HMV back when it was all new and shiny. Now that was impressive. And, let's be honest, still is

What the hell is a 4K telly?

2160p, the 4k comes from rounding up 3840.

Expensive.

Gaming aside there is very little in the way of films yet they are being pushed like mad at the big stores. Sony have an "unlimited" 4K streaming service, which you need to buy one of their TV's to use. Unlimited translates to 70 titles, its only available in the US and you need 15mb sustained to steam it

I was in Cost Co 6 weeks ago, they had a 90 inch LCD for £8,000 and an 84 inch 4K set for £15,000!

I still don't understand. Is it made of fibre glass, does it float in the air like a hi-def hologram, does it come with sexy robots that spank you? I must knows.

No, it is simply more expensive for no noticeable improvement other than to be able to say, "I have a 4K telly, and it looks awesome at 200fps! What, you are still using 1080p? Get out of my way, you pleb!"

My iPad is 2048p (when I hold it in portrait).

Seriously though, my iPad seems to cope alright. So I guess it just upscales 3D games?

You want next gen? I'll show you next gen.



Will be out on PC first, but confirmed for Xbone and PS4

"PROJECT CARS represents THE ULTIMATE DRIVER JOURNEY...
FRANCHISE MODE allows you to carve out a personalized career starting in the Karting world and then progressing on to whichever motorsport specialization you prefer including Rally, Touring Cars, Open-Wheel, GT, Le Mans, and many more!
Play CO-OP with a friend as Driver/Co-Driver
FULL TEAM MANAGEMENT... Have a large number of friends? Create, manage, and compete together!
Experience the excitement of PIT STOPS like you've never seen before!
Revolutionary PIT-2-CAR RADIO gives you the strategic advantage
DYNAMIC Time Of Day & Localized Weather make every race unique and challenging
10+ GAME MODES covering every form of motorsport
CLOUD-BASED SOCIAL NETWORK allows you to connect with friends, compare times & scores, compete and challenge each other, and share content
USER-GENERATED CONTENT - Create your own liveries, decals, tuning setups, and even events! Then share them with the world - either for free, in-game credits or even real money!
PUSHING TO THE LIMITS - Advanced physics, lighting, and AI"

It looks fucking great

A. Car. Game.

Hang on, can you look behind and reverse using massive head gear? If so, I'm in, even if it is just driving a car about a circuit going bruuuuuuum, brum, brum, bruuuum.

I was expecting them both to be 1080p and run stuff at 60fps but *shrug* whatever. We've got what we've got for the next 5-6 years now. I was expecting similar levels of graphical detail to what we have now, but rendered at 1080p and 60fps, instead there's been a wide variety of approaches to using the extra power compared to the 360/PS3. When you remember what kind of level of hardware those two machines are running, and compare what they're doing to what a similarly specced PC to that can manage, they're pretty impressive boxes, and I look forward to seeing what starts to happen with PS4/XB1 as devs get to grips with them.

The really good news based on this more "moderate" spec for both consoles is when I decide to upgrade my PC I shouldn't need a £1500 box full of OMG BLEEDING EDGE components to run games in a reasonable fashion. My current PC (which was a pretty conservative and mid-range spec when I originally got it) has happily run everything I wanted it to well for the last 3 years at either a bit higher res than console counterparts or with a few more bells and whistles. It's a nice bonus, but if it could only handle them at 720p and 30fps and they were decent games then so be it (hello Dark Souls pre-dsfix).

So y'know, I expected more, but whatever. It doesn't make any difference, and my favourite console PS3/360/Wii "generation" games I've played are mostly on the Wii, which really has had a lot of bashing over resolution and being underpowered, so probably in summary I don't care.

My best mates father in law has just bought one. Its 55 inch and cost £3500, a lot more than your Plasma or LCD screen at that size.

He hasn't seen yet but is going for a look this weekend, his father in law said that it upscales and that the sound (from the TV alone with no amp or speakers) is very good

Also the PS4 has some sort of 4K content, not sure what but his father in law is getting one of those as well.

Holy shit, trilinear filtering.

I'm trying to remember the last time I played a game with trilinear filtering enabled, to the nearest decade.

By all accounts it's a case of 1080@60, but by crikey at what cost.....

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013- ... torsport-5

Looks good to me, what's the problem?

The reviewer says it looks sharp but there's a lack of shiny shiny on shit people won't notice like foliage, and some trackside shit. Surely, SURELY, there's got to be a touch of a rush job on the incidentals to get it out as a launch title. Also: I couldn't tell the fecking difference!

Also, also, I'm going to have a go on my mates XBONE tomorrow so I'll see for myself in the flesh.

Youtube has gone so fucking shit - with a 75mbps connection it's nearly impossible to make it show 1080p from the off because by the time it's realised I can stream fast enough, or I can get to the override, it's already fucking downloaded half the video and only a combination of flicking back and forth between full-screen and embedded eventually works.

Or in the case of that first forza video, after leaving it paused for five minutes it decided that 1080p was no longer an option and wouldn't show anything but 360p even though it said it was doing 720p.

And in IE11 it won't actually go full-screen, you have to press full-screen then F11 to put IE in full-screen. *other* players can still do it.

It's the huge number of technical compromises that have been made to get the game running at 1080@60 that's the problem. Even if we allow for 'developer new to the architecture', 'possibly hurried a bit to make launch' and other 'launch title' reasons for it not being the best that the XBone is capable of, that's a worrying amount of dialling back that's been done to hit the target 1080 native rendering at 60FPS. (Not just the trilinear filtering, but the 2D crowds and scenery, the almost total lack of aliasing which as noted leaves a 1080p frame on a big telly looking very jaggy, and so on.)

It just doesn't fill me with confidence that there's a lot of untapped power under the hood, waiting to get out.

To get back to your point, yes it looks nice enough in and of itself, but remember that this is going to be the 'next-gen' console for a good six or seven years AT LEAST, and right out of the gates the box seems to be struggling with something as 'cheap' resources wise as a decent level of anisotropic filtering.

I entirely accept that there's going to be better to come as time goes by, but I find it hard to believe that it's going to be anything like what we saw with the 360/PS3 in that regard. This is bog-standard PC architecture that's been around for yonks, and from where I'm sat it looks like it's struggling already.

Upscaling isn't a magic solution that makes 1080p content look like 4k content. If it was, games would just render at 5x3 pixels at superhigh speeds and upscale to whatever res the TV runs at. Upscalers can't create information that wasn't in the incoming signal to begin with.

TV audio is inherently meh because it's not surround and bass response can only ever be mediocre with such tiny drivers.

And the PS4 doesn't support 4k for video or games right now, but might get video support later. I don't think it'll ever arrive for games.

Really? Have you used a lot of PCs with a unified memory architecture across GPU and main memory, then? Or many that use high-bandwidth DDR5 for main memory? Or use DDR3 for the GPU, coupled with extremely fast SDRAM caches? Or have custom hardware chips for video and audio stream decoding? Or offer low-level to-the-metal access to the GPU ROPs? Or offer a mass-market platform for viable GPGPU programming?

Hint: no, you haven't, because all of that stuff (and more) is exclusive to the consoles. This "bog standard PC" meme is a shallow examination that misses an enormous amount of detail.

All granted, but my contention here is that 'all of that stuff' will only go so far, nothing is going to replace the core CPU and GPU for the life of the consoles, however much cleverness goes on with how the developers can interact with it either now or in the future.

The theoretical performance advantage of the PS4 is already manifesting itself as a real-world advantage (and if COD Ghosts is anything to go by, by more than in theory), and the PS4 is the console that I have hopes for being worth a punt maybe 12 months down the line. Its GPU kicks a fair bit harder than the XBone's, and is has the unified GDDR5 memory architecture too, it's the one to watch IMO.

Early days to call it but the XBone is looking like a busted flush to me if 1080@60 is your baseline for next-gen gaming, which it is for me.