the be all end all video game thread

Does it really surprise anyone that the same people who designed Games for Windows and the accompanying shit UI turned out to be completely inept?

 

Speaking of Windows:

I swear I don't go looking for this stuff, it finds me.

 

You realize that your "well it doesn't affect me" bullshit attitude is a big part of why companies get away with treating their consumers like garbage right? Like you, I live in an urban area that 99% of the time has internet access and I have disposable income. But I shouldn't have to be connected to the internet to play single player, and I shouldn't lose my games if my account gets banned and my Kinect shouldn't be on all the time. I always have internet (or as you mentioned I can use my smartphone as a hotspot), I've been playing numerous online games for years and never been banned and I don't think that MS is going to spy on every one of us. But that's not the fucking point. That's like an car manufacturer saying they were going to install a breathalyzer in every vehicle and you not caring because you don't drink and drive. It's still a stupid business policy and I choose not to reward that.

So after all that, if it's exclusives that are driving the decision, well that's just personal preference. Although IMO the only one worth a damn is Titanfall, and I'm getting a bit sick of FPS' as it is. Project Spark isn't a "game" per se, and Killer Instinct? Please.

 

Any word on whether or not PS4 will be backwards compatible with PS3 and/or PS2 games?

 

They said early and often that they are no longer doing backwards compatibility for PS4. It costs too much according to them.

 

I found a more detailed explanation:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/10215-Why-the-PS4-Doesnt-Do-PS3-Games" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.escapistmagazine.com/article ... -PS3-Games</a>
On the other hand, they'll let you stream critically-acclaimed PS3 titles from the cloud. No idea which games, or how well it'll work.

 

This is why I dont buy from certain companies. So I dont play a game I would like to, there are plenty if other games I do and I still dont have time to play the ones I want so no big lose.

 

First of all, holy shit man, were you not on your Midol when you posted this? These are video game consoles that haven't even been released yet, not ethnic cleansing.

Secondly, and I can't stress this enough, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY THE CONSOLE. Everybody seems to have their minds made up already, never mind the fact that either console won't be out until November at the earliest. If the market decides it wants consoles that can play offline all the time, then Microsoft takes a pants down spanking, Sony fanboys crow about it and people like me will give no shits anyway.

You've stated that you won't give Microsoft your money. Good for you for sticking to your principles. But why are you calling my attitude bullshit just because you don't agree with it? In fact, why are people so mad over a console? You don't like it? Fine, move on. Why shit all over whomever that doesn't want to think like you do?

 

What I'm taking from this is that you don't have a rebuttal to his points...?

 

No, "you don't have to buy this" is a pretty thorough rebuttal to everything Freecorps said.

Consumer goods don't have moral imperatives. There is no such this as "should" for consumer electronics, outside of performing the tasks as specified within the advertisements/manual. They just do, or don't. And consumers act accordingly. If we like what they do, we buy it. If we don't, we don't buy it. Or, more accurately, if we don't, we spend hours writing impassioned diatribes on the internet.

There is not a single person in the entire world who has been harmed by the XBOne (well, except maybe Microsoft employees on their next employee evaluation), but there are millions who are acting like they have been, because they have a ridiculous entitled attitude. People are outraged? Sickened? Disgusted? These are the types of words that people (not necessarily here, but internet wide) have been using, as if this were child pornography. At a consumer electronic items that they do not in fact own, have given no money to, and are not in the least bit required to buy? The internet is the worst some times, and this whole attitude of "A company not pleasing me is the equivalent of shitting in my mouth" is only enabled by it.

 

Yeah, how dare people have opinions or be disappointed when the level of service they have come to expect from a company is no longer there? How dare consumers take issue when a product that is in theory designed to provide them with easy entertainment makes it hard or sometimes impossible to actually use that product for said easy entertainment? Why would people who have been loyal to something as arbitrary as a game console feel hurt pride when the company producing that console seems to be telling it's customers to fuck off?

Fuckin whiny baby internet, where people express opinions on things...

 

I must be the only one who isn't all that impressed with "The Last of Us".

Before everyone gets butthurt, yes it's a beautiful game. But it's pretty much an interactive movie.


Tell me when to press a button, have more cutscenes than gameplay, etc.



Essentially it's a skin for Uncharted.


Naughty Dog makes some beautiful games, but the gameplay is severely lacking.

 

I don't complain about how bad waffle irons are, and call waffle irons a travesty upon my consumer experience. You know why? Among other reasons, because I've never bought a waffle iron. Which is the same position that every non-consumer of the XBOne is in.

If someone had bought a console on pre-order without this information, and then it was later revealed, they would have a legitimate complaint. "Taking issue" with things you do not own and which do not materially impact you is bizarre behavior.

Feeling hurt pride in relation to consumer electronics is psychologically unhealthy. They aren't your friends or family, and neither is Microsoft Corporation. One of them is a bundle of circuit boards, and the other one is a Fortune 500 Corporation that is designed to take as much of your money as possible at the lowest cost. People don't feel this way about blenders, leafblowers, televisions, etc. Yet we accept it as normal when it is related to gaming.

I realize that this level of irrational emotional investment is old news when it comes to the console wars, but that doesn't make it not messed up. I'm increasingly not intending to buy an XBOne myself, but the level of anger is baffling.

 

Fine.

Back when the first XBox was released, and back before everybody even had broadband, the XBox had just a broadband network connection. "No 56k", Microsoft said. Some people said, "I'll play PS2 instead! They have a 56k modem and will let me play online!" Meanwhile, XBox Live is now the biggest (and IMO the best) online gaming network while PSN sits a very distant second, still wiping the egg off their faces when PSN was brought down by hackers and had credit card and account information stolen.

When the 360 came out and when flat screens weren't in every living room, they said, "The future is high definition!" People said, "Why should I have to buy a new TV to play your games? I'll go buy a Wii instead!" Meanwhile, everybody has a flat screen TV and nobody plays a Wii, except for senior citizens.

Now, with the XBox One, Microsoft said, "We're now requiring an internet connection for everything. Now that an internet connection is required, we can move computations to the cloud, allow you to share your games with people on your friend list, let you bring your game library wherever you have an XOne present, and in the interest of cutting down piracy and making our publishing partners happy, have your console check in." And it's still June. There's at least 5 months between now and release and details could change. I think it might be prudent to wait for everything to be finalized before we start metaphorically burning people at the stake.

You won't and you can turn it off.

As I said before, good for you for sticking to your principles. Of course, we never find out from your little hypothetical that said manufacturer ever did install those breathalyzers.

How nice of you to let me have a personal preference.

 

You're saying you don't see why people are upset, or you think people are using hyperbole on the internet? Because those are different things.

Sure, no one has actually bought an XBone yet, but plenty of people have bought an XBox, and an XBox 360. They've come to expect a certain standard from the companies they patronize. And they should. It's the reason those companies exist in the first place. If a new model car comes out with shitty features and fuck you pricing, I'm sure there are specific car forums that lose their shit. Well, the internet in general is one big gamer nerd forum. Disappointed expectations make sense as a source of anger to me.

You know what else isn't your friends or family, so by your definition would be "unhealthy" to show loyalty to? Sports teams.

 

Both.

Did their XBox or 360 stop working when Microsoft finished their presentation? I'm pretty sure they still own the same console they did previously.

We do expect certain standards, based on previous experience. And then, when these standards aren't met, we cease patronizing the companies. That's normal. What's silly is acting as if the company has personally wronged you when you haven't actually given them any money for the item in question. Disappointment is normal; anger is weird.

Agreed, that's a very fair comparison. And emerged for the exact same reason: these aren't rational consumer responses, they're proxies for tribal behaviors that have become outmoded in modern society.

 

I actually agree with your position on the console, but I disagree with the bolded. Consumer goods don't carry implicit moral imperatives (well, most don't. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.chickenoffset.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.chickenoffset.com/</a>). But people always make moral judgments about the consumer goods they purchase. It's proper for us to scrutinize where Nike clothes come from and make decisions about whether we want to support capitalist structures that use child labor. Some people will decide that's OK and others think it's awful, but arguing that consumer goods are fundamentally divorced from moral judgments rings false to me.

Your advice to consumers is to use their wallet to express pleasure or displeasure, but that choice is the outcome of a moral and practical reasoning process that people use to weight their preferences. You conflate the competing factors people use to make buying decisions (price, quality, origin, expediency/availability, uniqueness, free trade, then a level of branding on top of that to further distort our perceptions of those qualities). It's not buy or don't buy, it's make one of those choices based on an individually weighted rubric of those factors. That's important. Some people will buy an Xbox because they think Minority-report level gestures are sexy, and that's all that matters to them. Other people will buy a PS4 because they feel that Microsoft is compiling their dormant Kinect camera footage to build the world's best amateur pornsite, and that's all that matters to them. Both people can make purchases based on their preferences, and the best way to discover those preferences is by a lot of people raising a lot of shit when one of the big 3 console manufacturers introduces a paradigm shift for the industry.

This technology is new to most people and its implications are befuddling. I was watching the reveal with one of my friends and I said something like, "holy shit, that's so cool" when the fantasy basketball and twitter notifications popped up on the television. She just looked at me and was like, "Why would I need to read twitter while I'm watching basketball?" She just didn't have the conceptual understanding of both of the platforms, where the data comes from, and why it was exciting that we could now mix and match it to truly personalize the media we consume. For some, these highly charged emotional conversations are efforts to grapple with a new model for gaming. They are extreme because people build meaningful ties to particular companies, and they partially define themselves in relation to those brands or goods. When you use the word 'disgusted' to describe these angry gamers, I would use 'betrayed.'

As painful and sophomoric as much of this discussion on reddit and, to a lesser extent, on TiB is at times, it's necessary to unearth those buyer preferences. People who share games with their brother need to have this stuff hashed out so they can make a choice as a consumer that makes sense for them.

 

Congratulations to everyone for completely missing the point. Apparently we're not allowed to have strong opinions unless it's something important and on the level of ethnic cleansing. Music? Fuck you, shut up and enjoy it. Movies? Nope, not important. Sports? Definite fuck off since the play of overpaid athletes does not affect you personally. Not srs bsns? Then no posting!

Oh, and just as an FYI, this isn't some console specific BS. I own all three consoles (because I do this shit like a boss with my disposable income). And honestly, to be quite frank, Nintendo seems to be the only one that still remembers their product is a gaming platform first, and is suffering for it (well that and the fact they haven't released games for it). But I did take umbrage with JJ's blase attitude about Microsoft basically asking for a bunch of things they don't need, although it shouldn't surprise me since gamers a lot of times get fucked over and only complain after the fact.

What MC said is correct, and that bothers me because Sony is a corporation too. They're not making these moves out of the goodness of their hearts. They're doing it because they see it as a chance to throw MS under the bus and gain market share. Guess what happens if they don't? If the XBox by some miracle sells just as well as the PS4? Then Sony says fuck it, jumps on the DRM bandwagon, makes it so that indie game makers need a publisher, makes everything cloud based (because it does help combat piracy) and so on. Of course, a lot of DRM only screws over consumers but does nothing to the people that pirate games. But that's a whole 'nother rant, and it might show I care about something.

It should bother people that MS is doing this not because I feel entitled, but because companies follow suit to do what's best for them. Do you honestly think that Sony added that fancy Youtube upload button so you can share gameplay with your friends? No, it's so you can do their marketing for them. We are used as free testers under the guise of "beta" gaming because companies realized they don't have to pay a whole test team if we're willing to catalog bugs for them for free. Games are rushed out the door buggy as hell but we still purchase them. Games are released with crappy base content and you still pay the $50, while developers hold back DLC packs because fuck you customers. Yes, I know that has nothing to do with the current discussion, but it serves to illustrate my point that I'm under no illusion that Sony cares more than Microsoft or anything like that. It also goes to show that companies will try to get away with murder if all consumers do is shrug their shoulders, but I think we all know that.

A couple of other small points:
One thing about the Kinect article:
"But that’s just an assurance. Unless you explicitly switch Kinect off, which seems to be limited to just controlling its listening abilities, there’s no guarantee you’re not being listened on."
So we still don't know. Also, what if I don't want a Kinect? Too bad apparently. And yes, I realize that the "you don't have to buy it" argument comes into effect, but it drives the price point up.

Also, as far as the TV features, it's nice, but it shouldn't be a focal point which MS is trying to push. The 360 had similar features, but after launch, not immediately. That means that time was put into that that could've been used ironing out or improving the hardware.

tl;dr, Microsoft's practices seem to be stupid and there are plenty of games on both sides that I'll probably just get a PS4. But that's it because caring about things is stupid.

 

This is a good point. There certainly is a morality of inputs to a system. For example, were slave labor used to make one console and not another, that implies a moral imperative. And if playing XBox in some way came at the expense of another person (for example, if it involved revealing the personal information of a third party), that would also be troubling. I was definitely oversimplifying.

What I meant is that the machines themselves are not moral actors, and therefore outside of the law and non-harm towards others, there isn't rightfully a sense of what a machine "should" do. It isn't a person, with responsibilities. We buy it to perform certain functions, and it either performs them or doesn't.

Well, yes. That's obvious, although I'm not sure whether it raises to the level of important. Ultimately, who care why people buy what they buy? Perhaps there is a useful information externality to the less attentive consumer to out-of-proportion hackle-raising. That's an interesting point, and one I hadn't particularly considered.

I guess my point is that this is something that consumers should be very wary about. We don't have meaningful ties to these companies, and therefore it should set off alarm bells ringing in our heads when we act as if we do. The word 'betrayed' is an accurate description of many of the responses, but is also indicative of them problem. Betrayal requires an implicit understanding and trust, and we as consumers should always keep in mind that this trust does not, in fact, exist, at least on the other side of the transaction. We don't mean anything to them as people, and we in turn should be wary of letting them mean anything to us.