just using dedicated channels instead of pcie removes shitloads of complexity, latency and overhead. now the gpu is in the same package and in the xbone's case has dedicated, albeit small, superfast buffers and ps4's case memory way faster than desktop stuff. It's all isochronous and determinate and probably an order of magnitude better.

The doc understates the 'oh would people stop fucking saying that' aspect. I gave up trying to correct people - and I'm not referring to you ae - a long time ago because it was ignored for the next reiteration. People even said it about the 360 when it was even MORE of a nonsense.

You may as well compare your pc to the met office's weather modeller.

Also, please compare forzas 2 and 4 to see what turn 10 can achieve in 5 years on one platform. But not forza 5's weather to the met office's modeller (it's probably just as good a guesser mind)

Rant over, when I did convince YouTube to show me 1080p I kept getting confused because the 360 was better in some areas.

The 360 and the PS3 were both capable of 1080p/60Hz gaming with appropriate (ie low) mesh and texture details. The odd game went down this road, like Wipeout (technically it used dynamic resolution but was outputting at 1080p quite a lot of the time).

However, most games chose to sacrifice spatial and temporal resolution in return for greater mesh and texture detail, because most people care about the latter more than they care about the former. People's priorities won't change just because it's a new generation. In my opinion games devs will likely continue to favour sub-1080p and sub-60 Hz gaming, giving greater fidelity in other areas, because the other areas matter most to more gamers.

Far Cry 3 had awful framerate issues on consoles, but it sold millions of copies and won tons of praise because people don't care. If people don't care, it's not going to be a very high priority for any developer.

I'm really not disagreeing with you to a large extent, by all accounts we both think that there's far better to come from XBone and PS4, the only issue is how much untapped potential is in there, and how much difference the console architecture and efficiencies can make.

For me it comes down to the fact that there is absolutely going to be a maximum number of pixels per frame, and how many frames per second, at a given fidelity, that the new consoles can chuck around - and that's going to be a limitation of the GPU in the final analysis. (To my mind, anyway.)

In the case of the XBone it's really quite a weak GPU, for the PS4, less so, but still not exactly a stunner.

Plus the consoles aren't unique in having new software get more out of the same hardware over time, Windows can do it with DirectX and driver revisions, for example.

I'd love to see the PS4 become a compelling purchase proposition maybe a year down the line, as it really starts to shine and the awesome games start to line up (I'm still pissed off GTAV wasn't a launch title), but I have my doubts that what I was hoping for, 1080@60 being the baseline, simply isn't going to happen.

I think you're right but I also think it's a shame. Speaking personally I'd much rather a game be like Burnout Paradise was on the 360 (720@60, but with a less detailed game world) than Need For Speed Hot Pursuit (720@30 with a load of pretties that the console clearly can't handle properly).

Burnout Paradise of course came out a long time before Hot Pursuit (Hot Pursuit was the last full price retail 360 game I bought), but for me Paradise was the better game technically.

I commented about GTAV in its own thread, I literally could not play that game because the jaggy mess of graphics lurching around the screen at framerates regularly down in the low 20s drove me to distraction.

But yeah I appreciate that my take on it doesn't chime with a lot of other folks, but then again I suppose I have the choice to game on PC where I can simply chuck hardware at the problem until the game performs as I want it to, rather than what the developer decides is 'good enough' for everyone.

I'm a bit disappointed though, 'cause I really was looking forward to upgrading my trusty old 720p Samsung 40 inch telly to a nice new shiny 1080p model, and getting a PS4 hooked up it and the big 5:1 speakers.

Give this plugin a shot: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... bilbjgpeak

First next-gen face off at Eurogamer, COD Ghosts. If you're in a TL:DR frame of mind it basically comes down to PC > PS4 > XBoner.

The face-off notes that from a pure gameplay perspective, the XBone version is actually preferable because it maintains a solid 60FPS, but the PS4 version looks prettier (albeit with framerate issues).

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... n-face-off

I read it as PC > XBone > PS4, or, when you consider that the £700 GTX Titan can't run the game consistently, a normal person will be looking at XBone > PS4 > PC.

That was all background details to them deciding that CoD is getting a bit boring now. The closing paragraphs are certainly worth a read.

The thing with that is the 'max settings' comment, a lot of PC games these days have a raft of 'insane' settings that leave any PC struggling, stuff like 16xMSAA which is completely over the top, massively taxing on the hardware, but probably still counts as part of the 'max settings' test, and they'll have V-Sync in there too.

Next-gen face off for BF4 now up at Eurogamer.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... n-face-off

DICE appear to have done better with the hardware than IW, although this translates to a very stark difference between the PS4 and XBone version, with the XBone not only rendering at 720p (compared to the PS4's 900p), but consistently giving away 10-15FPS compared to the PS4 version too.

Neither version manages 60FPS in busy multiplayer maps, and both give up some detail/draw distance/etc settings when compared to the PC version.

Overall a better showing than COD Ghosts though.

DICE are true champs. They did Pinball Dreams after all.

Looking at the face-off in more detail there are some stark differences, like entire buildings missing on the console versions and the XBone version in particular having some horrible jaggies which apparently results in a 'constant flickering'.

A 'next-gen' game rendering at 1280x720 really is pretty shocking IMO, especially since the framerate routinely finds itself in the high 30s or 40s, assuming that Eurogamer are calling it all correctly.

I should keep out of this thread....

Those pictures all look exactly the same to me.. They all look like they come from a dull, grey game that doesn't look fun.

MISSING BUILDINGS! JAGGIES! Shoot me in the face I don't want to play games anymore if there's missing buildings and jaggies.

Absolutely, it may be a total non-issue to you, which is fine It's also the reason I started this thread because I didn't want to clutter up the main XBone/PS4 threads with technical stuff that a lot of people may not be even remotely interested in.

For me personally however it is a pretty big problem with both the next-gen consoles (the XBone is almost laughable IMO, the PS4 however remains interesting), as both of them are looking underpowered against even a fairly modestly specced gaming PC, and this is at launch. They've got another six or seven years to go yet!

That's the key difference between the Xbone/PS4 launch and the 360/PS3 launch - the new consoles are looking pretty gimpy right out of the gates, and neither of them are cheap.

Really? No wonder you keep missing the mod buttons.

What? We have Mod buttons?

Whilst this is a reasonable assessment of the launch lineup, I think once the platform holders tools get better, games start using next gen engines, and developers stop supporting the older generation of consoles, we'll probably see the games on both platforms get much closer to parity with the PC versions.

Then in probably 3/4 years time we might start to see a situation where a medium/low end gaming PC can match and start to exceed the consoles in performance, and we'll see a few more bells and whistles added to PC ports, and there will be a meaningful difference between the PC version running on a high end PC and the consoles.

I think it’s far too early to write these consoles off. It’s true that the launch titles (for the Xbox One) are disappointing, but I think given time there will be some good titles, they will be able to squeeze at lot out of the consoles as its standard hardware once they get going.

Also with the Xbox One they is lots more than gaming, it was worth it for Skype and the Blu Ray for me. My brother has a smart 3D Samsung TV with a Skype app, it costs £200 for specia TV Skype camera alone.

One thing I have been surprised by is how much I like Netflix, I took a month’s trial out, but will be keeping it. It’s not as up to date as NG downloading, but my wife loves it as there are loads of chick flicks for her and foreign films for her mum.

The problem with that train of thought is that the consoles are already playing catch-up, BF4 is probably the clearest example of that, with both console versions giving up resolution, detail settings, framerates and loading times to the PC version - and they cost more too! (And we're not talking about a ninja PC either. My PC's CPU, motherboard and RAM are five years old, my graphics card is 18 months old and cost under £300 at the time, an equivalent card can now be bought for under £200 - and this PC kicks out BF4 at settings massively out of reach of both the 'next-gen' consoles.)

In the case of the XBone you're looking at a GPU that's already a sub-£100 part at retail, and around £150 for the PS4's GPU. Both consoles use low-power AMD CPUs, a sub-£100 part. My concern here is that there's going to be a finite limit as to what can be squeezed out of this hardware, however clever the developers get with it - there's just going to be a brick wall where the things simply can't chuck any more pixels around.

OK, maybe 12 months down the line things will have been improved, but of course that's another 12 months down the line in PC development, so whilst the consoles might hit parity with a mid-range PC of today in 12-18 months, the mid-range PC of 12-18 months time will have moved on too - it's not a static target, and the new consoles are expected to have a lifespan of six or seven years, or longer!

This is what I keep coming back to, when it was released and for a while afterwards, the 360 did stuff that a PC of the time couldn't do, and I don't just mean the games.

You bought your 360, you plugged it in, you put a disc in the drive and you played a game. All the friends and achievements stuff was built in, it had a lovely clean interface, it had XBLA, it was a games machine through and through, and it all just worked.

PCs of the time were still a bit clunky, drivers were a problem, Steam was nowhere as good as it is today, games needed to be installed, there were patches and updates and all that shit, there was no unified friends or chat functionality, and so on. PC gaming was a bit of a hassle, console gaming wasn't. (Even things as simple as controllers used to be a pain in the arse on PC, especially fucking analogue ones, having to calibrate the fuckers and all that shit, now you just plug a 360 pad in, job done.)

On top of that the 360 delivered games like Ridge Racer 6, 720p@60FPS, played straight from the disc, there was nothing like it on PC. When I bought my 360 it gave me a games experience that I simply couldn't get on my PC, and that's not the case now, the new consoles have got the same games as the PC, but they're demonstrably worse than the PC equivalents.

Look at where we are with the new consoles, they need patching and updating, the games need patching and updating and they need big, long, mandatory installs. (Launch titles with 6-10GB 'updates' AFTER you've installed the game and BEFORE you can fucking play it!). They've morphed into 'entertainment centres' over which we have no control, if MS or Sony decide they want to fuck with your interface or take something away, they can just do it (look at what happened to the 360's dashboard over time, and no one can do a damn thing about it).

(I honestly think Windows 7 and Steam/Origin/GOG is less hassle than a console, I was fucking appalled that it was 35 minutes before I could play GTAV on my 360, once it'd finished updating the console, updating the game, installing the game, asking for the second disc, and so on.)

You say you like the XBone as an entertainment centre/media player and that's fine, but I already have a small, capable, media centre PC that can play any form of media from anywhere (mostly from my NAS), but I can stream from anywhere too, be it the iplayer or Netflix or Lovefilm or Megashare or discs or USB sticks, and I have total control over what I run on it and how I run it, when I update it, and so on.

I can only speak for myself and my mates, but none of us are seeing anything that makes the new consoles worthwhile purchases, and ALL OF US had a 360 and/or a PS3 last generation.

One of our number in particular is arguably more a console gamer than he is a PC gamer (he loves his COD, screaming American teenagers and all), and even he's taken a look at the XBone and PS4, looked at the cost of entry and what he'd get for his money, and come to the conclusion he'd rather spend £500 upgrading his PC. (£500 will get a new CPU, motherboard, RAM and graphics card far in advance of what's in either next-gen console, with enough left over for an SSD, which cuts loading times to a fraction of what they are with a hard drive.)

Ultimately time will tell I suppose, but I'm calling it now, and I'm saying that the consoles are going to be playing increasingly second fiddle to the PC as this generation continues, they're clearly second best already, and that's only going to get worse IMO.

Yeah, I'd hate to be one of those nearly 2 million people who have bought a new console, only to realise that they could have bought a PC that would have done a better job.

I thought the PC version of The Last of Us was demonstrably better than the PS3.

I do not have a gaming pc or a ps4. I do however have £400 ish that im willing to spend on shiny. Could i really get a miles better than console pc for that? I mean i already have a telly to plug into. Wouldn't i need quite a lot of expensive monitors, controllers and other pc gubbins that i haven't thought of and would i end up with a pretty box (yes i like the design ) that i can put under my telly at the end of it all? I know im wading into this debate a bit late on but I really feel sure a pc would throw up more hassle than a console in terms of setting up and running it. Ready to be proved wrong like...

You could probably just about lash together a gaming PC for around £400 if you did a self-build and didn't mind skimping on bits like the case and power supply.

In my mate's example above he's upgrading an existing PC which is why he's able to do it for under £500 and even get an SSD in there.

If you were buying one off the shelf you'd need to step up to around the £500-£600 mark (which if you think about isn't massively more than either of the next-gen consoles, especially when you factor in how ridiculously cheap games are for the PC), and that'd get you a PC that'd kick harder then either the XBone or PS4.

Looking at the Scan site the G25a comes in at £566 and is fairly nicely specced.

http://3xs.scan.co.uk/value/gaming/pc

The PC has the definitive versions of Uncharted, Infamous, Forza, Red Dead Redemption, GTA V, Halo, ...

Console exclusives are a draw, certainly, although there's nothing on that list that I'm particularly bothered about, with the possible exception of GTAV which will get a PC release in due course.

I never rated Halo, despite giving it a try on the original XBox (Halo 1 and 2) and one of the others on 360, which I traded in after a couple of days, I think it might have been Halo 3, just didn't really rate it at all.

Plus of course the PC gets more than its fair share of platform exclusives too, so it's swings and roundabouts.

If you take the Kinect out of it then the Xbox One hardware is more like £320. You will not get a nice living room friendly case and HDMI out for that sort of money.

No monitor(s) included in that price though, right? Although I suppose you can hook it up to the tellybox.

You're nuts if you think a bunch of of launch titles are representative of the actual capability of the new consoles.

The development process for all these games was rushed for the console release date, they didn't even have the finalised specs for much of the development time, the platform holders tools and documentation will get better over time.

The Xbox 360 launched with a bunch of ports of original Xbox games with barely any improvements, and other games which had PC version which would look better on a high end PC.

The PS3 launched with a bunch of ports from the Xbox 360 which ran significantly worse.

All true, but wasn't AE's point that by the time the game on the be gen of consoles has caught up to the PC versions, the PCs will have motored on ahead again. So improvement on the consoles will have to be comparatively much quicker than on PCs to ever catch up, let alone surpass them. This wasn't the case when the last gen came out.

I don't care much either way, personally. I'll probably get a PS4 at some point, but it's not for certain as I don't have much time to spend gaming these days.

Well you can't take the Kinect out of it so it's a bit of a moot point

If all you're after is a silent, capable, unobtrusive media centre then just get a cheap laptop, they pretty much all come with HDMI out and could even have a crack at running less demanding games.

Here's one for under £300 - http://www.ebuyer.com/581634-packard-be ... -c2cek-002

You don't even need to buy a new one, pretty much any laptop with HDMI out can be reused as a media centre PC, we've got a five and a half year old Samsung laptop in the kitchen that's got a 1080p monitor sat on top of it, HDMI connected, wireless keyboard and mouse that cost £18 from Shoprite, and a small set of 2:1 speakers behind it, works perfectly as a computer and a media centre

Just put it to sleep when we're done and the monitor turns off automatically, wake it all back up with the wireless mouse

krazywookie said he had a telly to hook it up to so I haven't included one in that price

They're another thing that's ridiculously cheap these days though, 1080p 24 inchers are down to about £125, or if you can't stretch to that then 1080p 22 inchers are under £80, which is bonkers cheap.

The monitor we're using in the kitchen is basically the cheapest 1080p 22 incher I could get from Ebuyer, at the time I think it cost £84, and it's got a pretty damn good picture on it.

This is the crux of what I'm trying to say, and I've also acknowledged repeatedly that the consoles have better to come (although I'd debate just how much better).

The 360 represented a leap ahead of a gaming PC when it was released, (which is indeed why me and all my mates bought one), not just in terms of the games but also UI, controller, ease of use, friends and achievements, XBLA digital distribution etc.

That isn't the case this time around, me and my mates are looking at both the XBone and PS4 and saying 'Why the fuck would we want one of those? It's the same games we're already playing, but shitter, and they want £400 or more off us for the privilege'.

Upgradable hardware will continue to upgrade where non-upgradable technology won't: these are fascinating revelations. I, for one, am amazed at this new information.

Yeah, I'm not interested in any of these. What utter garbage. I just want to play Military Shooter 967 all day, thank you please.

On a similar note I was fucking appalled that it took a couple of hours before I could play Dark Souls on my typewriter Downloads off Steam are crawling these days.

Suggesting that you get more diversity on a console than a PC is pretty laughable.

I wasn't suggesting that so I'm safe. Phew.

But that absolutely isn't the point here, as I and others have already pointed out.

The point is that the new consoles are behind the PC at launch, both of them represent a downgrade from what I've already got sat on the floor next to me now, despite it being a distinctly mid-range gaming PC, the guts of which are now over five years old (and indeed which I bought second hand for £180).

The 360 gave me stuff my PC at the time couldn't do. The new consoles just do the same stuff but not as well - that's the key difference this time around.

Why I'm getting a PS4. By Pundabaya aged 34 and a bit.

I can't stand mouse and keyboard as a control method, and don't want to fuck around with setting up & using a poorly/half-implemented PC controller. I can't be fucked with different settings, 'hmm, is that the right setting, could it be prettier? I dunno' fuck that. No fully integrated friends list on PC, so thats another thing that can fuck right off. I don't give a shit about PC 'exclusives', as they're generally not the sort of game I like to play. I used to play for hours on my Spectrum, so y'know what? Don't really give a shit about graphics. I'll go 'ooh, that looks nice...' in the first 30 seconds, and then completely fail to notice them ever again.

The PS4 and Xbone are better than the PS3 and 360 though.

You plug them into a telly and have nothing to fuck about with.

Bliss.

Have you played many PC games recently? I only ask because it's been a long time since the process hasn't been 'plug 360 controller in; sorted'. 90% of the time you'll even get button prompts swapped for the 360 pad buttons and that sort thing so it's exactly like playing with a 360 pad on a 360.

The friends list issue seems to be a fairly important one, how can PCs compete with what consoles have there. The other major draw for me is what zardoz said, sit down, press button, play. I would also require my AE designed (tm) PC to include a bluray player and 2 wireless 360 style controllers. The price rises...

Id really like to see someone spec up a complete PC that's capable of doing absolutely everything that a ps4 can or more on ebuyer or something. Its definitely something i would consider were it not for the voice in the back of my mind saying "wooOOOooo you'll buy games and then they wont work for some mysterious reason wooOOOooo"

Just on that - I bought Pac-Man and the ghostly whatever it is because it was a misprice on Amazon about a month or so back - steam key - redeemed - downloaded - played through the first world and every time i get to the end of that world and jump into the portal to go to the next one it crashes.

I've looked online and saw people with similar problems and tried a number of the different solutions posted and none work - i can only play the first level of this game.

I may try it again at some point in the future but this does happen with PC games - and I know my way around the machine / the drivers / and the ways to fix things.

It also took me an incredibly long time to get Fallout 3 running correctly on my system - now that was partly because it was running Windows 8 but for all those saying the PC is a 'turnkey' system - no its not.

Oh and for those 360 Controllers to work on your PC you'll either need a wired one (so thats cables and faffing about plugging it in and out / using up a USB port / and whatever or for the wireless ones you need to buy a connection box to allow them to connect)

I *do* play games on my PC - and will probably play more on there since its so cheap to build up a massive steam library of great stuff (and when my 360 is no longer around I will still have COD on the PC) but I want a console for console gaming.

What are you on about, then?


Why aren't you sticking with a PS3, then?

..., then?

I'm suggesting he only wants a specced out PC to play the latest military shooter. If he was so into, say, the indie scene he probably wouldn't give two fucks to play Dear Esta 2 on an old PC and we'd all be spared his blathering on about the virtues of PC's. Everyone gets it. We got it a long time ago. How many times can he restate the same thing but this time in even more words?

Lots, I'd imagine.

I'd struggle to stick with a PS3, as I've never owned one.

Unfortunately, the end of the console lifecycle means that not many games come out for it. Simple as that.

I'm sorry but yes they are when you figure graphics cards routinely are marketed for £300+
Likewise new processors etc.

Put in that perspective £349 for a ps4 is very reasonable