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Microsoft fires the first shot in the "NEXT" generation.... - Page 161

post #4801 of 5617
3/12/13 at 12:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony1 View Post

On various forums, I keep seeing people mentioing a potential Crackdown 3 for Infinity launch. Man, I hope MS has something like that coming for us smile.gif
That would be pretty cool, the crackdown games were fun. I've heard on a couple sites that MS has several studios quietly working on exclusive stuff for the launch, but we will see if that's true. Over the last couple of weeks, I have been spending more and more time on the 360 and less time on my PS3, and am really thinking that I will just move on to the next Xbox unless MS really screws it up. I don't see them doing that, so I am ready for the console announcement.
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post #4802 of 5617
3/13/13 at 9:22pm
Thread Starter 
Anybody think that the Sim City disaster will affect Microsofts always online plans ?
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post #4803 of 5617
3/14/13 at 4:01am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony1 View Post

Anybody think that the Sim City disaster will affect Microsofts always online plans ?

Nah....keep in mind that 70 something percent of xboxes are already online - it doesn't take much server capacity to just check in. It's the games themselves that cause the worry, although given how often these launch disasters happen, I'm sure they've already considered the implications every which way.
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post #4804 of 5617
3/14/13 at 7:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bd2003 View Post

Nah....keep in mind that 70 something percent of xboxes are already online - it doesn't take much server capacity to just check in. It's the games themselves that cause the worry, although given how often these launch disasters happen, I'm sure they've already considered the implications every which way.

Kind of like the RROD issue? Big companies are not always good at planning...
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post #4805 of 5617
3/15/13 at 3:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ThumperII View Post

Kind of like the RROD issue? Big companies are not always good at planning...

I don't disagree with you, but its not like the RROD. It's just a matter of having enough server capacity, its something they can fix within days if they underestimate. XBL has occasional hiccups, usually around peak times like Xmas. There are plenty of examples of big games that launch just fine - call of duty or halo rarely has an issue at launch, and those are much bigger games than simcity. MS has a decent track record here, and the always online check simply isn't a huge burden on servers.

The games that fail tend to be the ones that are heavily reliant on servers to run the actual game - WoW, BF3, Diablo and Simcity are all like that. If more games go that route, then we may see more launch disasters, but they'll also become more experienced in managing it.
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post #4806 of 5617
3/15/13 at 12:08pm
Have you ever work for a fortune 500 company? I have worked for 2 and do not share your optimism. It becomes a cost to benefit and so far they have not seen the costs to be worth while. I have also watched huge amounts of learned knowledge walk out a revolving door for various reasons over the years. Don't assume that a corporation retains learnings for any length of time. In the end, it always comes down to individuals.
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post #4807 of 5617
3/17/13 at 6:18pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ThumperII View Post

Have you ever work for a fortune 500 company? I have worked for 2 and do not share your optimism. It becomes a cost to benefit and so far they have not seen the costs to be worth while. I have also watched huge amounts of learned knowledge walk out a revolving door for various reasons over the years. Don't assume that a corporation retains learnings for any length of time. In the end, it always comes down to individuals.

this ^^ you would be shocked at the way some large corp. take a very long time to change..
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post #4808 of 5617
3/18/13 at 12:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bd2003 View Post

The games that fail tend to be the ones that are heavily reliant on servers to run the actual game - WoW, BF3, Diablo and Simcity are all like that. If more games go that route, then we may see more launch disasters, but they'll also become more experienced in managing it.

Apparently, Simcity only uses servers for messages and things that are not actually required for the game to run. It's almost completely arbitrary. I am standing by the position that if it is not officially an MMO of some sort, a game should be able to be played offline. I am not investing $60+ in anything that I can't play if I don't have a connection, as I do not want to be subject to the whims of a company deciding to retire the servers or even just going out of business. I understand that a business has a right to go with their chosen business model on a given product. I am not choosing not to support those products. This stuff costs too much to be reduced to a glorified brick if my internet is bugging out.
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post #4809 of 5617
3/18/13 at 1:34pm
I think that does a disservice to what was trying to be accomplished with simcity...

read this:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/simcity-one-week-later-time-doesnt-heal-all-wounds/
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post #4810 of 5617
3/19/13 at 12:01pm
Quote:
The biggest single change of the new game is that it’s supposed to make this model more personal, modeling every citizen individually. Each Sim has a name. They live in a particular building, and they work in a particular location. They commute back and forth between these specific places. You can follow them around. They can be the victim of a crime, or fall ill, or break their leg.

1. Or at least, that's the theory. It turns out that that level of modeling was so hard to do that Maxis didn't do it. The publicity and promotion that the company has done, touting its "agent model" that simulates each citizen, would lead you to believe this is how it worked. But it turns out, that's only an approximation. Instead of being individuals with defined jobs and homes, the Sims are just dumb automata. Each morning, they wander the street until they hit a building with an open job. Each night, they drive until they find a home with an empty bed, then they move in.

2. Worse, Sims get confused incredibly easily. One might start out walking to a job, but if that job gets filled while he’s on the way, he’ll continue walking. He'll never decide "Gosh, I have to walk further now; I guess I'd better get on a bus." He'll just walk all day long and then complain he can't find a job. To top it all off, it appears that at some point the game even stops creating these dumb agents, inflating the population statistics to make it seem like there are more citizens than are actually modeled, leading to endless complaints from employers that they can't get enough staff in any large city.

This is just sad.
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post #4811 of 5617
3/19/13 at 12:07pm
What is the big draw of playing the Sims? I could never see why someone would be excited to "play" it.
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post #4812 of 5617
3/19/13 at 12:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by americangunner View Post

What is the big draw of playing the Sims? I could never see why someone would be excited to "play" it.

a lot of people don't get Minecraft either. but it's right up there as the most online-played game on Xbox Live. second only to BLOPs2. to each his own.
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post #4813 of 5617
3/19/13 at 10:01pm
ahhh... the stupidity of gamers... more lame phishing attempts.

http://majornelson.com/2013/03/13/feel-free-to-pass-this-along-to-your-friends/

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post #4814 of 5617
3/19/13 at 10:54pm
Those scams are all over Facebook as well, They keep recommending them to me...
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post #4815 of 5617
3/20/13 at 7:02am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Antiochus View Post

This is just sad.

I'm not sure it's as much sad as the inevitable reality that it is really tough to model just a few independent agents, let alone tens of thousands, and all on a basic consumer PC.

The thing is, I am pretty sure the game is working as designed, papers and presentations on the game's tech early on described it as it works in-game. I thought it would be what Ars Technica was talking about, but upon second thought, it would be completely revolutionary and mind-blowing if they pulled it off.

The problem is that the old games didn't even try so you can just kind of accept the hand-waving in their models, here they did try so it's easy to see where it breaks down...
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post #4816 of 5617
3/20/13 at 7:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by number1laing View Post

I'm not sure it's as much sad as the inevitable reality that it is really tough to model just a few independent agents, let alone tens of thousands, and all on a basic consumer PC.

The thing is, I am pretty sure the game is working as designed, papers and presentations on the game's tech early on described it as it works in-game. I thought it would be what Ars Technica was talking about, but upon second thought, it would be completely revolutionary and mind-blowing if they pulled it off.



The problem is that the old games didn't even try so you can just kind of accept the hand-waving in their models, here they did try so it's easy to see where it breaks down...

Eh.

A lot of the behavior is very simple coding, which leads me to belive they were horribly understaffed and horribly underbrained. Traffic for instance is royally messed up and takes a simple "shortest route" algorithm which causes entire sections of cities to not be utilized correctly.

Even with undefined agents, you could code things better to spread them out, take account of heavy usage systems and use underutilized ones, and give different systems like city services priority and specifity. Go look at some youtubes, Simcity is an amature programmers mess!

They really, really phoned it in on this one. Either through incompetence or perhapse even overworked protest.
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post #4817 of 5617
3/20/13 at 8:06am
Quote:
Originally Posted by number1laing View Post

I'm not sure it's as much sad as the inevitable reality that it is really tough to model just a few independent agents, let alone tens of thousands, and all on a basic consumer PC.

The thing is, I am pretty sure the game is working as designed, papers and presentations on the game's tech early on described it as it works in-game. I thought it would be what Ars Technica was talking about, but upon second thought, it would be completely revolutionary and mind-blowing if they pulled it off.

The problem is that the old games didn't even try so you can just kind of accept the hand-waving in their models, here they did try so it's easy to see where it breaks down...

The thing about that is, one of the reasons the game is supposedly always online is so they can perform calculations and help reduce the burden on my consumer PC. They are not even doing that for the most part.

Having workers go to a different job every day and a different home every night is just retarded and you should probably get out of the city simulation business if you can't get something like that right. Add in the traffic issue and what do you really have? Just a pretty screen saver that allows you to choose some buildings.
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post #4818 of 5617
3/20/13 at 8:15am
I can see why they do that with agents, as the amount of data to keep track of would probably be a issue. But how they went about dealing with the agents in the final game is hilarious.


They basiscally just queue up everything and its FIFO. There was no attempt to model it after real or random actions to atleast make it appear as organic, which would have been disappointing after hearing the concept, but fine in gameplay.

Anyways, goes back to my thought that CODs success has killed a generation of AI and behavior game programmers. Skills have been lost!
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post #4819 of 5617
3/20/13 at 9:07am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Antiochus View Post

The thing about that is, one of the reasons the game is supposedly always online is so they can perform calculations and help reduce the burden on my consumer PC. They are not even doing that for the most part.

Well, the game doesn't do that. If you thought the server issues were bad, think about what would happen if those calculations were being run in the cloud for millions of users.

I don't own SimCity and I have no intention of owning it. I got really excited about the idea of a city filled with autonomous and independent agents and the emergent gameplay that could come from that. Problem is they couldn't figure it out and I doubt they ever had the resources to figure it out. Like I said, if they did figure it out, this would have ended up being a revolutionary piece of software.
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post #4820 of 5617
3/20/13 at 9:35am
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Major-News-Sites-Duped-By-Fake-Xbox-720-Rumors-51781.html

"It's all about being first,"

"To get such news out (whether you believe it or not) before any other publication does, will guarantee you page impressions, and that all-important advertising revenue. Gaming 'journalism' is completely broken.

"By tagging a post with 'rumour', most writers/editors believe they can get away with spreading false information for their own benefits. They are the only ones to gain from such practices, whilst the gaming fans end up with speculation and, sometimes, outright lies."

"This was a bit of an experiment to see just how easy it is to get a fake story taken seriously. And it is shockingly easy in the games industry."
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post #4821 of 5617
3/20/13 at 10:29am
well, gamers are desperate for news. so they'll believe anything they read.
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post #4822 of 5617
3/20/13 at 11:13am
New, old rumour: no optical drive.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57575362-75/next-xbox-wont-support-optical-drive-game-playback-report/
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post #4823 of 5617
3/20/13 at 11:52am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ultracat View Post

New, old rumour: no optical drive.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57575362-75/next-xbox-wont-support-optical-drive-game-playback-report/
You should read the article. It doesn't say there won't be an optical drive, just that games won't be played. They will be fully installed onto the hard drive.
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post #4824 of 5617
3/20/13 at 12:19pm
bluray drives are still too slow.
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post #4825 of 5617
3/21/13 at 10:57pm
Thread Starter 
all the recent rumors around MS seem to be more on the negative side of things. Lot's of people worried about the whole always online thing. Other people are worried about this new rumor that all games MUST be installed. For some people, that automatically translates to no used games, but I don't see why folks are jumping to that conclusion. You can install games to the 360 hard drive, and you can still play used games. They aren't mutually exclusive. For some reason, people seem to think that this time, you won't be required to have the disc in the tray every time you want to play a different game. Because of this, games will be tied directly to the gamertag, or perhaps locked to the console in general.


At a certain point, you have to wonder when Microsoft is going to want to do a bit of damage control in regards to all these rumors that seem to be a wee bit on the negative side.


On the one hand, they have their whole shebang planned for late April, and I'm guessing they want to stick to that, but you'd think they would want to squash some of these pesky rumors, and brush away this underlining negativity that seems to be bubbling below the surface. Maybe they need to leak a screenshot of a big game, or maybe a grainy, low rez leaked pic of the controller.
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post #4826 of 5617
3/21/13 at 11:57pm
if you're not ready to announce, you're not ready. simple as that.

there's really no point to trying to squash any rumor. trying to squash rumors doesn't do anything. people believe what they want to believe. that's why they say not to say anything before its time. some people construe that as guilt but in reality, it's what you do. making proclamations doesn't quell the rumors. all it does is bring attention to the rumors and lend validity to the rumors.
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post #4827 of 5617
3/22/13 at 7:47am
Yeah, damage control on a product that doesn't even exist yet is not worth it. After all, if you have to explain, you've already lost in the PR world.

Better to come out, do their thing, and gauge the reaction and plan from there. Bad rumors and dread will mean nothing if they come out and show a console with offline capability, plays used discs, and has a BD drive that plays movies (watch, they will). A lot of these rumors are just gamer fears, or gamers incorrect views on how advanced they think the industry is.

Go back in this thread and look at all the people thinking there's going to be digital distribution only, without bothering to explain how that works in a world wide market, let alone within the construct of US internet infrastructure, ISP limitations, and a still heavily relied upon retail channel. The pure technology might be there, but everything else is not and it's not something you just do.
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post #4828 of 5617
3/22/13 at 7:57am
Funny the always connected thing just makes me think that if they decide to do a DVR type service with system they could do something with that. Not to mention always connected they could do things with system and the surface tablets. The whole doom and gloom aspect of the always connected and installing games is kind of funny in a way. I'll be curious as to what MS announces what they do for the system.
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post #4829 of 5617
3/22/13 at 8:31am
i think what is tough right now is there is really nothing positive coming out about the "720" and for most people where there is that much smoke there must at least be a little bit of fire.. just like people said there was no way that guy was selling a legit dev. kit and the next thing the fbi is knocking on the guys door so it was legit... at this point i think if they say they can play used games it will be from the massive backlash from the rumors... right now it seems like the PS4 is everything people want so it is going to be an uphill battle if the 720 has more limitations (no used games, always online, etc..).
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post #4830 of 5617
3/22/13 at 9:24am
Why can't there be a console that is designed to be always connected to perform non game activities but does not require a connection to play games? If they truly plan to create a media hub for the living room, it needs to be always connected to compete over the next decade but there is no reason that playing games would have to require a connection for those people that were looking for a game machine only.

I think something else people forget is that the retail channel is also needed for marketing to pull in the less hardcore gamers. Not many casual gamers log in here to check out the latest games, they often find out from the display at Target or other retail outlet. They are then hit with a bevy of marketing material and the actual game they can pick up on the spot. This is called multichannel selling and is still done for CDs even though downloads are prevalent, because it adds profit.
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