Microsoft fires the first shot in the "NEXT" generation.... - Page 91

A controller shell could be a neat complement to a cheap standalone controller. They could probably make one thats literally compatible with every iPhone/iTouch ever made - that gets you a touchscreen, battery, mic, camera and wireless for free. Between iDevices and stock controllers you could pull together a ton of controllers easily and have some epic game nights with friends. Depending on the game you might not even need a shell.

The difference between this and the WiiU is that its theoretically priced way more reasonably ($100 consoles, $20 controller shells, $50 controllers) and is about a billion times more compelling on just about every level. The only thing it can't do is play the newest mario or zelda game...and that might change before this decade is out.

I was thinking an upgraded soc that could be replaced and provide enhanced performance. (imagine a chip allowing 1080p 60fps Skyrim)

Yup, we're talking about how there's been a dramatic shift to retro/indy/simple gaming over in the PS4 thread. So far none of the console makers have found a way to really strike at the market, one that's only getting bigger. Then you look at the semi-open app stores of Apple and Android. Makes you wonder why MS/Sony doesn't have similar platforms for their consoles and the console marketplaces where people can be both creative and bring in a profit by making new ideas.

A mix of user created and traditional content delivery is really the future. Being a content delivery platform, and not a just a AAA gaming console.

There's a lot of money to be had from profit sharing and offering user created content. Doesn't mean a consoles has to be completely open source, but they should find a way to offer cheap development suites to anyone that wants and have areas for user creations where they take a %. I read somewhere just to patch a Indy game costs $40k on XBL. Android and Apple, people just upload their newest version of the software.

Sony is very, very stupid, especially since they just launched the vita.

Imagine the synergy between a user content marketplace to rival tablets and the PS3/Vita? I do, but shortsighted Sony didn't. Instead they're striving for a micro demographic of hard gamers in an already relatively small handheld market with an outrageously priced device. It worked in the past, but it's not going to work anymore.

Honestly, the next systems are not going to be about the best GFX, the newest controller, and the craziest new IP. They're going to be trying to broaden the market, much like Nintendo did. But in a way that is feasible for the length of the product (Wii was a fad). Synergy between their other devices and trying to somehow work their way into the tablet market is also going to be key.

Imagine downloading a game from XBL marketplace, syncing it with your XBL marketplace on a tablet, and having all the data interchangeable. Saves, scores, ect. Same with movies, music, ect. Being able to access other data, ect. You could even have games where the AAA portion is on the console, but you "play" related minigames and tasks on tablets that work towards goals in the main game via a mobile device.

Lots of places to go with synergy, web 2.0, and the emerging markets of casual gamers. And that's really where the money is.

Well, it's obvious why they don't exist on the current consoles - because cheap indie games undermine the value of the more expensive high production offerings. There will always be room for both, but I honestly dunno how well they can coexist on the same platform.

I don't think the industry is going to move in one single direction. There just needs to be a clear vision as they break out into niches. Sony carving out the high end portable might be too small a niche, but having the best high end home system could work fine for the PS4. Apple can easily steal the family friendly and low cost niche from Nintendo, as well as be a haven for indies. MS's strength is in online services - XBL is way ahead of everyone else, but I dunno how well that carries into the next gen if they're facing threats from below with apple and above from Sony.

Of course that's a whole lot of assumptions, but I think we're going to see a lot more differentiation between platforms as they start releasing over the next 2-3 years.

there are thousands of cheap indie games in the XBLIG section that range from $1 to $3, and people aren't buying them. people keep buying the same XBLIG games over and over again.

You can get Avatar Chess for 80 points. Head Shot 2 is a hidden gem. Avatar Ninja 2. Beat Hazard was a shmup that uses your own music (it can use your MP3s on your local network from your desktop PC). And that's just off the top of my head of my games that no one is playing (refuse to list the popular ones, some of which I have no clue why they're popular other than including the word zombie in their title).

Lots of games have online/local multiplayer. tons of shooters. Lots of fabulous games with cool sound/graphics like Lumi started on XBLIG but didn't get discovered until ported to iOS.

You hear XBLIG developers crying for the ability to include achievements, but come on! That's a sad indictment on gamers if gamers need achievements to consider playing a game. But the sad part is, that's often true! I know gamers who can quickly identify whether a game has easy or hard achievements.

As for platform convergence, that's already happening for Microsoft and Sony. Microsoft has already demoed games where people on Windows Phone can play with people on Xbox 360. Sony's doing the same with the PS3 and PS Vita.

Well, XBLIG is basically a ghetto. It's almost impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff in it, and honestly it seems like the average quality of game you'd find in the top 100 on iOS is of a way higher quality than most of the garbage there. You can tell MS really doesn't want XBLIG to really succeed.

Apple has been really good about how democratic the featured stuff on the iOS app store is, like they couldnt care less whether or not it's made by a multinational corporation or some random dude. They have some work to do regarding clones and the same games dominating the top 100 month after month, but those are solvable problems.

just because you don't browse the XBLIG marketplace, don't pretend to know it.

There is more BAD iOS games than the entire XBLIG marketplace put together. In fact, if you look at the ratio or proportion of good to bad games in XBLIG, it compares quite favorably to iOS. There's just a sheer volume to iOS games. Sure, if you look at hard numbers, there's more top quality iOS games than XBLIG games but there's far far far more bad titles in terms of sheer numbers in iOS.

Oh look, a Tim Tebow game on iOS...



XBLIG is probably the most democratic platform. Microsoft doesn't manage it (in fact, they keep it away with a stick). XBLIG is community managed and run. Anybody can make games for it, and it's the community that determines what is appropriate and inappropriate.

If you're having a hard time finding good games on XBLIG, you should visit some dedicated XBLIG web sites.

Thats all that really matters to me. Who cares if theres like 100,000 iOS games if 99,000 are crap...that still leaves a HUGE number of really good games.

I guess XBLIG is pure democracy, because theres no real filter, but that has a dark side. I browse through XBLIG and I see a bunch of minecraft clones and bad zombie games, and just terrible, terrible production values almost all the way through. Im sure there are gems in there, but they're really hard to find within the store itself. The good stuff is really easy to find on iOS. MS just dumps them all in the corner, but at least iOS makes some effort to curate them within the store.

But that's the problem right there. It's not the quality or quantity of the games. It's having to visit a site dedicated to pointing out what you might enjoy.

That sort of points to the issue that the games are being overlooked. The question is why. I'm not sure it's that entirely demographics of the consumer base either.

rumors about valve..
http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/03/...am-box-console

Very exciting if true. Valve is not to be written off or trifled with. Potentially we have a 5 way race here (Nintendo, ms, sony, apple, valve). This is going to get ugly (and by ugly, I mean awesome for gamers).

Valve all the way. This is no console but a standardized PC benchmark that all games will be optimized around. This is what I have been waiting for.

I don't see how a dedicated Steam box would cause any change sort of change in what happens over the next few years if it is true. All it is offering is what I already get on my computer in front me with the same specs. What would be the benefit for a Steam Box? Vs what gamers are already getting with their PCs?

My guess? It's going to have a "Microsoft Media Server" style "Couch" Interface and a common architecture. So that way Acer could launch their own Steam Box, etc, etc.....a common set of components to 'console-ize' PC's to at least some form of common denominator.

Since they said an Nvidia GPU and an i7 was part of the spec I'm guessing they are shooting for a standardized 30/60fps 1080p type of benchmark for all PC games based on that hardware......

Honestly though, unless it has some sort of Streaming component, like how that...uh...I forget its name....the one that runs the games on the servers and updates you in real time with nearly no lag, that one, I would think it would have something like that canned into it as well......otherwise, yeah, you're talking about "HTPC 2.0".....maybe with a better, larger interface for couch interaction.

Onlive(which was also claimed to be some game changer in the past) is what I think this MIGHT compete with but beyond that it is just sounding like a pre-configured computer with Steam as the logo. HTPC 2.0 that is hardly a game changer IMO.

If they get the user experience right and it's as hassle free as a console, it's a whole different story. Right now PC gaming on a TV/couch is a PITA. They get that right, and I might jump back into PC gaming again.

more info... on valve console
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/03/03/ru...d-with-custom/

^^^ This.

Gaming on the PC from the couch is still a brutal experience out of the box. I think Windows 8 may have accounting for this.....I'd love to be able to use a windows tablet to mirror the display on the screen and be able to launch games and apps that way, but with the PC doing the crunching not the tablet. I wonder if that is part of the integration that Windows 8 allows since its supposed to be cross platform. Turn your phone or tablet into a virtual keyboard/mouse/controller....

Onlive would be availible on this box. It is still a pc after all.

Nice and Compact if this is a proof of concept box.

To you nothing. To developers it be a god send to have the standardized specs that this would be, and not having to worry on dev'ing for a billion different combinations of hardware and and competing with other software.

Honestly, this would be a game changer.

Remember all that talk about Indy and retro gaming, of the open app market, ect?

Valve has long been promoting it. Valve also is very in tune to trying out different pricing models, and selling in volume ($5 buck game? You can't play it on ur current hardware but @ $5 you buy anyways for when you can!) rather than arbitrarily high price points that don't correlate to maximum profit always.

Sony and MS better be thinking about these questions going into next gen, or they very easily can be burned if they're not looking at the successes of Google, Apple and Nintendo.

From the sounds of the Valve rumors, they're on page with consumer trends. MS and sony, who knows...

Just just because there's a pc disguised as a console, pc game makers aren't going to keep pushing technology? Ridiculous! There will forever be a tech spec race, and plenty of developers pushing the boundaries to distinguish their products. The Valve box is simply their attempt at giving console owners another option.

Who here thinks pc game makers are going to develop strictly only to the specs of the Valve box?

Looking at what many PC studios have done over the past five years, I don't think you're right. It's simply too cost prohibitive to do anything more than give PC games a moderate framerate and texture boost. Very few PC studios can really be called "PC studios" anymore (BioWare, Epic, Infinity Ward, Crytech, etc). And many who still do both are having issues with keeping their PC versions at the cutting edge.

Consoles and PCs are becoming more and more indistinguishable, and in the next gen (whatever that actually looks like), they'll be even less distinguishable. If Valve is doing this, their timing couldn't be more perfect, and most PC developers would welcome it with open arms. It'd be cheaper; it'd have a larger audience; it'd save time/money in QA; and so on, and so on.

It'll help massively to have a target spec. That way devs can for example specifically tune their game to target something like 30fps with 4xAA at 1920x1080. Anyone who bought the steam box would know theyd get an adequate experience without guesswork. But because it's an open platform, people can always upgrade and see some benefit.

I look forward to a Steam certified box because:
- They already have a start on the online community base.
- The rate of change for PC components is higher than the consoles.
- The rate of change for APIs is higher than consoles (Think of DX9 versus DX10 then DX11).
- The more competition the better.
- One less box to hook up to my TV, receiver, Astro mixamp, etc.
- PC game prices seem to decline quicker than console prices.
- Easier to upgrade components in the future.
- The PC is a more multi-purpose tool than the xbox.
- As a grandparent, I am more likely to purchase a PC versus an Xbox for the grandkids.
- Larger installed base so that new peripherals like headsets are more likely



The wired or wireless controller is just as easy to use with a PC as it is with an Xbox 360. As I am using the controller, it really doesn't matter whether the signal is going to the xbox 360 or the PC.

The controller itself is but....you can't launch or buy a game with it, sometimes can't even configure a game. You always need to fall back on a mouse/kb at some point, and that's where it fails and the user experience becomes ******. Also, some really high profile games (mass effect 3 even) don't support it.

Everything needs to happen with just a controller, just like consoles, for this to work.

Not at all, but it's becoming a niche market. The trend has been, and continues to be, Dev'ing to the least common denominator and then adding in bells and whistles for the PC crowd if there is time and money and profit to be had.

Hell, there's still calls of the consolebastardification of BF3 on the PC....

The Dev's are already there. Having a target / standard PC, with a brand like Valve, no licensing fees and tied into the steam marketplace from the get go is very, very appealing.

I also think there's an argument to be made that having one single PC spec that you guarantee to run on vs others that you won't offer support will allow Dev's to better focus their resources, and provide better experiences. PC gaming is a chore for both gamers and dev support when things don't go as planned, or variable not accounted for.

Or a Checkbox in the system menu setup:

[]Find games with KBM input only
[]Find games with controller input only
[]Find games with all inputs

Honestly, the huge move from the PC market to console gaming is somewhat hardcore gamers that were sick of sitting in their computer rooms. Many tried moving HTPC boxes into their living rooms when it became feasible, but it's also crap to play a game KBM on a couch. MS and Sony have tried movement tracking peripherals, but i'm not sure thats the experience ex-PC gamers are looking for.

If Valve (or MS/Sony for that matter) can find a way to give the precision and feel of KBM gaming, but in a comfortable way in the living room.... end of line.

Get a hardcore rts working on a couch setup (controller or something new) and we would be 90% there. FPS games work on consoles, but require a lot of behind the scenes aids to work right...

Halo Wars was a decent attempt but the game was so simple and WAY too easy. (beat the ai on the highest setting (3v3) after just a few hours of playing)

Not always, but sometimes. Regardless, if Valve is successful enough, developers will work harder to make their games controller friendly. Many newer PC games are controller friendly. All part of the "console-ification" trend.

Nor is it that difficult or expensive to have a wireless mouse and keyboard. I have an HTPC setup in my living room and just keep a wireless kb/m in an end table next to my viewing spot. Pretty easy. And generally all you need for everyday navigation is a mouse. A basic touchpad/mouse and controller combo would be good enough for 99% of everyday use for a media/gaming focused PC. Add virtual keyboard functionality (like on most phones), and you'd be 100% set. Not hard. Seeing how the Wii U and Vita/PS3 combo are already moving in that direction, Valve would just be meeting them halfway.

I'm also assuming that a Steam console would use a Steam-like UI, so there wouldn't be any real need for a keyboard. The intent wouldn't be a desktop or laptop replacement. Merely a gaming/media PC.