Re: The Games Hangout Thread -2013 E3 Edition-
Well yes the casual gamers are not the most profitable in a long term, they're not the ones who will follow game licences and keep buying.
Sony made a great punch to Microsoft with his no DRM policy and technical restriction but if we put aside that, the PS4 itself doesn't have a lot of arguments in its favor gamewise in the E3 compared to the Xbox One. Remember that the welcome of this console has been...frigid, MS policy saved the PS4's image for now.
I don't know if I think that's true. I mean, I think if it came down to what games people wanted the most out of this E3 Destiny and The Witcher 3 have to be the winners there. None of the console exclusives really hit it out of the park, at least I didn't think they did.
So I don't think MS saved Sony's image so much as it did demolish their own. Sony benefited a bit from being the company that stood up and said what consumers have been thinking for several months but really what Xbox One did was hurt itself.
So Nintendo ? It seems that the company is the main looser of the event, right ? Even the Zelda game producer is worrying :
http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/13/nintendo-eiji-aonuma-interview-zelda-wii-u-e3/
I think Nintendo did the right thing. If they had tried to do a stage show it would have come across as sad. As things are they can't compete with the next gen consoles and they have to know that. They aren't even in the console wars right now.
Which they can get away with since they are crushing the handheld gaming wars.
---------- Post added at 01:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:43 PM ----------
The used game thing will be pretty difficult to strip since they will have to remove the mandatory installs and allowing gamers to download the disc to their system. Also, I'm sure they already have some agreements in place with the "select retailers" they were planning on allowing to sell pre-owned games, if MS went back on their policies and removed this restriction then I'm sure these retailers will have something to say about it since their share of the market will be dramatically reduced. Also, whatever agreements they may have had with publishers for exclusive content may be jeopardized too. It's definitely possible for them to remove it, but it's already a bit late for that to be given much consideration and unless if the X1 sells much less than the PS4, I don't see them changing their policies.
I think they could probably manage it. All games needing to install isn't necessarily fully related to DRM. A lot of games this gen need to install as well.
The big issue is the way offline games are linked to user accounts and while it would be a pain in the ass. I think that could be dealt with.
As for cloud computing, they can implement a settings system as with PC games. I.e. if you're connected to the internet and you're signed up to whatever service the cloud computing will require, then you can play on high settings, whilst if you don't then you have to play on normal. Though the difference in the settings will have to be in features which can deal with the very high latency of cloud computing.
Yeah you might be right about that. But I know when I heard a interview with the creator of TitanFall he was saying how integral it is with the game. As pretty much all of the npc's are running on it. Now I suppose that might not be true for all games but it might already be heavily tied in with single player games.
Price-wise, they can always release a SKU which doesn't include the kinect, It will mean reduced third-party support but they can make up for it with their own developers.
Like gats said Kinetic is a requirement so they can't but even beyond that I bet the console itself is has things about that make it more expensive.
This is just my guess work but when I look at the Xbone versus the PS4 I notice a few things that could make it pricier to produce.
#1 Is the custom GPU.
Custom often means more expensive. Sony just went with one by AMD. AMD is great at producing GPU's on the cheap. This was a mistake Sony made last gen with the PS3.
#2 Is the RAM
Now this will take a little explanation since the DDR5 RAM of the PS4 is almost certainly more expensive than the Xbone's DDR3 but it's rumored that the DDR5 has a lower power draw. That efficiency could help lower the cost of the power source and explain why the PS4 ended up smaller too.
#3 Is the proprietary hard drive.
This is probably the biggest one. Making a custom hard drive is bound to be vastly more expense than just allowing the console to use a common laptop sized hard drive like the PS4 does.
