descender wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 17:51:

The issue is that MS and Sony are greedy fucks.
They no longer wanted to sell the hardware at a loss. They wanted to earn money from each console sale from day one so they put extra cheap and crappy parts inside.

Just think about that again for like... 2 seconds...

Those greedy fucks running a for-profit business! The nerve!

That argument is arguably moot anyway, because the PS4 and XBox One were originally sold at a tiny profit, meaning their basically permanent price drops result in them selling at a loss after the initial release window. Of course the manufacturing costs may have come down a bit, but I don't know how certain that is. At the very least, we know that both consoles were sold at a very small profit during their release windows, which at least for the Xbox One, was not where the bulk of the sales came from. The Xbox One started selling after the price drop around Black Friday 2014.

Console costs

PS4 at Gamestop

Xbox One at Gamestop

That's Gamestop too, hardly the cheapest price around.

descender wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 20:06:
CJ, as usual you miss the point.

They didn't want to sell the consoles at a loss in the past, they had to (the X360 was profitable after ~2 years anyway) in order to grow their market. Now they have millions of customers who will actually pay what it actually costs to make one of the consoles. They also could because they were also selling you more profitable games and peripherals. The gaming market has changed significantly since. Sony/MS may not even be able to sell it at a loss anymore since they don't produce nearly the quantity of games they used to and those games cost considerably more to produce than they used to.

Wait, the premise was a discussion about the weak hardware. My point is that MS and Sony deliberately chose to go with pretty weak hardware to keep the cost low and to be able to sell each individual unit at cost or even at a small profit initially.

I am convinced that we would have considerably more powerful consoles if MS and Sony would have gone with the old fashioned business model of selling individual units at a loss initially.
For example, if the consoles would have been powered by the equivalent of a desktop i5-2500K at 4.x GHz and a powerful dedicated AMD or nVidia GPU.

Sure, being fixated on a $499 price target, they would have made a loss per unit (initially) if they would have gone with more powerful hardware but as with the last console gen this would have only been a temporary thing.

It was therefore -IMHO- short-sighted and "greedy" that they went for weak hardware and an instant gratification profit model.

I am convinced that better hardware would have served not only them but the entire gaming industry better in the long run and that Sony and MS would have likely made a higher gross profit over the course of the entire console generation in spite of the early losses per unit. There would have been a completely different momentum from the start, i.e. much more enthusiasm from gamers and publishers if the new gen would have performed better.

I'm not blaming them for wanting to make a profit. I'm blaming them for being short-sighted and wanting to make a quick buck profit when making losses initially to make even more profit in the long run would have been the more reasonable thing to do.
But too late now... now we're stuck with this inferior crap for the next five years or so *sigh*...

CJ, sigh...

They didn't want to sell the consoles at a loss in the past, they basically had to (the X360 was profitable after ~2 years anyway) in order to produce something that was remotely capable of competing with PC graphics at the time that anyone could afford. The gaming and hardware markets have changed pretty significantly since. They blew up their market and stole all of the great gaming developers. The hardware they released dwarfs their previous product and they now have a stranglehold on developers advancing gaming technology due to their sheer volume of customers so they really don't have to care how it compares to the PC for a few years...

Those fucking "greedy bastards" won this war a decade ago.

This new console generation was never going to mean anything more to PC gamers than the next stumbling block of technology that we have to wait on. I can't believe anyone here would have expected anything different to happen. It didn't actually matter what hardware they put in the new consoles, it was going to be outclassed in every way on PC within a year anyway. They could have sold a $1000 console for $300 and you'd still be making this same exact complaint within a year.

This comment was edited on Oct 29, 2015, 20:43.

nin wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 14:20:

Agent.X7 wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 14:05:
Almost guarateed that Sony assigns Uncharted to another developer. The people who made Golden Abyss did a fantastic job, and there are more stories from Drake's past they can tell.

So they own the IP, and not ND (honestly don't know, I'm asking)? I know the mobile was an outside dev, but I didn't know if that was something ND cooked up, or sony?

Honestly, at this point, I want to see another Last of Us (which they basically say is coming), minus Joel and Ellie.

Oh, they own the IP because they own Naughty Dog. That's why you'll never see ND games on another platform. Also why ND got away with saying they weren't working on an HD re-release of Uncharted, even though everyone knew it was coming. Sony assigned it to someone else, so technically ND wasn't lying.

I just hope to see a PS4 version of Golden Abyss someday.

descender wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 17:51:

The issue is that MS and Sony are greedy fucks.
They no longer wanted to sell the hardware at a loss. They wanted to earn money from each console sale from day one so they put extra cheap and crappy parts inside.

Just think about that again for like... 2 seconds...

Those greedy fucks running a for-profit business! The nerve!

You do realize how the console business worked in the past, right? Or are you a 12 year old trying to sound smart after his first economy class at school?

The issue is that MS and Sony are greedy fucks.
They no longer wanted to sell the hardware at a loss. They wanted to earn money from each console sale from day one so they put extra cheap and crappy parts inside.

Just think about that again for like... 2 seconds...

Those greedy fucks running a for-profit business! The nerve!

jdreyer wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 13:31:

Verno wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 11:33:
I don't think backwards compatibility matters that much at this point. It was just a convenient press bullet point for Microsoft who desperately needed some positive news coverage. The next gen console libraries are getting fairly fleshed out and interest in the feature tends to taper off outside of the launch periods. Many of the popular games have HD remasters/etc anyway.

Three words Verno: Red, Dead, and Redemption. In that order.

Why Rockstar isn't doing an HD release of that is beyond comprehension. Literally just upgrade the graphics and port it to Xbone and PS4. They'd sell 12 million copies.

Ozmodan wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 16:52:
Exactly. Moving to the Intel cpus was a no brainer.

What Intel CPUs? Both the Xbone and the PS4 are "powered" (and we have to use that term very loosely here) by weak-ass AMD advanced calculator APUs.

No new Cell CPU was definitely the only reasonable move on Sony's part. IBM sold off their chip making division so there was no one to really provide any R&D and knowhow for a new Cell processor anyway. And just because devs somehow got used to the PS3 Cell architecture does not mean they liked it. I'm sure that devs are very happy with the nearly unified console architecture of the current gen.

The issue with the weak hardware inside the Xbone and PS4 is not an issue of x86 vs. Cell. The issue is that MS and Sony are greedy fucks.
They no longer wanted to sell the hardware at a loss. They wanted to earn money from each console sale from day one so they put extra cheap and crappy parts inside.
If they would have stuck to the old model where you sell the hardware at a loss and subsidize via game sales then they could have easily put better CPU and GPU power inside.

Only backwards compatibility I want and expect is for PSN titles like PS1 classics. If a Sony console can't play Castlevania on it, it's worthless.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 13:30:

Razumen wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 10:59:
I wonder if Sony kind of shot themselves in the foot by switching architectures again? Sure the Cell had it's issues, but developers were getting used to working with it, and if they improved the design they could've had an even better performing console than the XB1 that might have actually been capable of supporting PS3 games.

They would have had to pay for the development cost of a new cell processor. That's 100s of millions of dollars, and there's no guarantee that it would be faster than x86 architecture which has had billions poured into its development over the years. Also, Sony originally developed the cell proc along with IBM and Toshiba, neither of whom really ended up doing anything with it. Finding partners this time around would probably prove pretty difficult.

Oh I think it definitely would've been faster, but you're right, going with the x86 processor was definitely cheaper, and more developer friendly.

As far as I know they're still developing the Cell processor (Though they discontinued the 32 APU variant) but its future lies in the commercial realm where it's strengths are more applicable, not with consoles.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 13:30:

Razumen wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 10:59:
I wonder if Sony kind of shot themselves in the foot by switching architectures again? Sure the Cell had it's issues, but developers were getting used to working with it, and if they improved the design they could've had an even better performing console than the XB1 that might have actually been capable of supporting PS3 games.

They would have had to pay for the development cost of a new cell processor. That's 100s of millions of dollars, and there's no guarantee that it would be faster than x86 architecture which has had billions poured into its development over the years. Also, Sony originally developed the cell proc along with IBM and Toshiba, neither of whom really ended up doing anything with it. Finding partners this time around would probably prove pretty difficult.

Exactly. Moving to the Intel cpus was a no brainer. The xbox would have kicked their butt in performance unless they dumped a lot of money into the PS3 architecture. So they saved a lot of money and got a box that is better than the xbox.

Agent.X7 wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 14:05:
Almost guarateed that Sony assigns Uncharted to another developer. The people who made Golden Abyss did a fantastic job, and there are more stories from Drake's past they can tell.

So they own the IP, and not ND (honestly don't know, I'm asking)? I know the mobile was an outside dev, but I didn't know if that was something ND cooked up, or sony?

Honestly, at this point, I want to see another Last of Us (which they basically say is coming), minus Joel and Ellie.

Almost guarateed that Sony assigns Uncharted to another developer. The people who made Golden Abyss did a fantastic job, and there are more stories from Drake's past they can tell.

Microsoft expects a 'pretty massive migration' of Xbox 360 gamers to Xbox One PS4 this holiday.

This headline has been modified to reflect actual Microsoft opinion on the matter.

Verno wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 11:33:
I don't think backwards compatibility matters that much at this point. It was just a convenient press bullet point for Microsoft who desperately needed some positive news coverage. The next gen console libraries are getting fairly fleshed out and interest in the feature tends to taper off outside of the launch periods. Many of the popular games have HD remasters/etc anyway.

Three words Verno: Red, Dead, and Redemption. In that order.

Razumen wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 10:59:
I wonder if Sony kind of shot themselves in the foot by switching architectures again? Sure the Cell had it's issues, but developers were getting used to working with it, and if they improved the design they could've had an even better performing console than the XB1 that might have actually been capable of supporting PS3 games.

They would have had to pay for the development cost of a new cell processor. That's 100s of millions of dollars, and there's no guarantee that it would be faster than x86 architecture which has had billions poured into its development over the years. Also, Sony originally developed the cell proc along with IBM and Toshiba, neither of whom really ended up doing anything with it. Finding partners this time around would probably prove pretty difficult.

Suckage wrote on Oct 29, 2015, 10:32:
How incompetent must Sony engineers be? It's impossible to change PSN regional settings and user names on account of engineering issues. Yet it's perfectly feasible on competing platforms.

I know. Why the hell do those idiots still have jobs? Every machine already has it's own personal ID number. Changing a variable like a name should be child's play for any competent programmer. Griefer goes griefing. Gets banned by X amount of people. Changes name but it doesn't matter because the machine ID is still the same. How hard is that?

I don't think backwards compatibility matters that much at this point. It was just a convenient press bullet point for Microsoft who desperately needed some positive news coverage. The next gen console libraries are getting fairly fleshed out and interest in the feature tends to taper off outside of the launch periods. Many of the popular games have HD remasters/etc anyway.

I wonder if Sony kind of shot themselves in the foot by switching architectures again? Sure the Cell had it's issues, but developers were getting used to working with it, and if they improved the design they could've had an even better performing console than the XB1 that might have actually been capable of supporting PS3 games.

The way it's going, I think the PS4 will break 100 million.