XBOX One

[narcolepsy 581]

eurogamer notes from a friend who was there

I went to Eurogamer yesterday and thought I'd share my thoughts with you guys.

Overall, the event was.... thoroughly underwhelming, to be honest.

Yes, it's for the public and yes, it's probably more geared to console gamers than PC gamers. And they're likely to enjoy queueing to see the latest games on the latest consoles. If you're a PC gamer, though, the wow of the graphics was nothing new. I guess it's good that PC and consoles can produce equally good games, but it does detract from the feeling that this is meant to be something better.

Most of the PS4 games were not running on PS4 - there were dummy consoles and the controller wires ran out to the back, presumably to a PC. War Thunder (running on such a PC) had horrible physics and my friend said it doesn't run anything like his Steam version. The only game we played on the PS4 itself (with the exception perhaps of a pointless Snake-like drawing demo) was DriveClub, a special 2 lap challenge version. For a game that's weeks away from release, it played horribly. It kept lagging (whenever an event happened like an on-screen message, it froze for a second). I got a fraction of a wheel off the track and span several times, as did my friend who is much more into his driving games. And somehow, I managed to get my car on two wheels, climbing up a wall, by merely going towards the wall! I was not impressed. That said, the controller felt like a vast improvement.

The Xbox One looked nice, quite bulky but nice. The controller was nice, quite comfortable. The sticks feel a bit looser than the 360 sticks. However, Forza was not an impressive title to demonstrate with. It looked like a 360 game - like the last Forza. I think the day one pack-in titles are terrible choices - FIFA I guess I can understand to tempt the sports fans, but it doesn't interest me in the slightest. Forza would have been my choice, but after seeing that, I'd rather save my money. Maybe I'll get one when the price has dropped but it's vastly overpriced at the moment. I'd rather put that money towards a nice PC. Incidentally, Gran Turismo 6 looked a lot like Forza. I wasn't overwhelmed, but it's probably a title I'd pick up when it comes down in price, as I like the series (well, I did the earlier titles, anyway).

A lot of the games were rehashes. It's depressing that the video games industry is leaning towards just churning out sequel after sequel. To be honest, I loved my GoldenEye, Counter:Strike, Unreal Tournament, Call of Duty etc. but I'm getting bored of the whole genre now. There's only so much shooting people that I can take before it gets boring. Oh look, new COD - it has somewhat different areas and some new guns! Yawn.

That said, some of the titles that impressed me the most were nothing new per se, but they were done well. The likes of Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8 and the Zelda titles looked good. My friend was trying to get me to pre-order the last Xbox One in his shop on the train up there. Another friend was trying to tempt me towards the PS4. After what I saw yesterday, I think I'll be leaning towards.... Wii U.

I saw Fable Anniversary, the Holiday 2013 build. It was very buggy, but it does show promise. Well hey, Fable was great anyway... remastering it can't be bad! It's somewhat surprising that they're releasing it on 360, though... although from one point of view, nice that all the games are on one platform. Maybe that'll lead to a re-remastering in future!

Ryse is supposed to be good, but I didn't get to see it as the queue was HUGE. Which brings me to another point - overall organization.

For anyone who has been to a trade-only show in the past, this was poorly executed. There could have been more stuff there. There certainly could have been more freebies. When it's actually a public show with people paying, you'd hope for freebies. And Gamestars Live was an EXCELLENT public show. This just seemed smaller and not as well organized. You had to queue for EVERYTHING. I'm pretty sure they geared it towards you having to buy a full weekend pass for more money.

Microsoft had a competition to win prizes, such as an Xbox One. You got a card given to you at whatever game you chose to preview, stamped. It has ten games on it, you can get a stamp for each game. The more stamps you get, the more chance you have of winning. Sounds good, right? Well, actually - no! Firstly, you have to queue a good hour to see each game, plus the time playing it. Yesterday was 10 hours long, although our tickets only got us in for the last five hours. Which makes it impossible to get many stamps in a day. Furthermore, the draws are made on the hour, every hour. And you have to have handed your card in to enter. So you have to decide whether to just enter, or try to build those points up. Plus you have to actually be there to hear the prize draw and redeem it. So basically, you have to spend two days on the Microsoft stands queueing to be able to enter the draw on the third day! Some of the Microsoft stands were open, so you could see the screens, but others (e.g. Ryse, Fable) were in a room.

Sony had a slightly better system, in that they made you queue to enter their area. There was a giant screen showing demos and behind the scenes stuff (including a video showing developers working on Little Big Planet) to keep you entertained in the queue, but it was a lot of standing around with nowhere to sit. I think possibly Microsoft had a line for those with disabilities, as some people in wheelchairs and crutches went ahead of us from a small adjacent line. I don't think Sony had that facility, but I could be wrong. The queue was in the usual snaking barriers. A nice feature was three PS Vita stations at each end, allowing you to try out some games. However, they were a bad choice of games for a moving queue as they had long load times... I didn't get to actually play anything! They then had a PS4 in a cabinet on the last corner to ooh and aah over. On the final straight, you got handed a lanyard and two tickets - each being redeemable for one game from a list. Sounded disappointing that we were being limited, but I think that may have been for the challenge games. There were still pods that you could play other titles on, so it was quite good. You had to re-queue for the 18+ area, though.

They really need to do something to cut down the queues - perhaps have more going on so there would be shorter queues, at least for some games. And, considering we don't really have trade events over here any more, they should have made one day dedicated to press and trade only. In fact, yesterday WAS originally press only, but I think they opened it up when tickets sold out. And, as I said, there really should have been more freebies. I came out with a Turtle Beach bracelet. I saw some people with posters. And a few had Fable t-shirts - God knows how they got those. I overheard a Microsoft representative on the Fable stand say "we've given out our quota for today" so maybe he was talking about t-shirts and they gave them out early.

Overall, I wasn't that impressed with the event, or the titles coming out. I was more impressed with the stuff coming out for the older consoles (Fable and the Nintendo stuff) than anything. Bit sad, really. Oh, and the Oculus Rift was very interesting... particularly in conjunction with the Virtuality-esque OMNI treadmill! I didn't get to see the VRX iMotion up close, but it looked good from the top floor!

should I X-post into the xbox 360 thread?

[DuPz0r 5361]

"Xbox 720".

Xbox One games in the first quarter of release to be running at 720p 30fps... Whereas all PS4 games are running at 1080p. What's up with that? Either they were meant to be released on xbox 360 and got ported last minute to jump platforms, or they are really struggling to make this next gen console powerful enough. I would have thought 60fps at 720p would be a breeze by now.

Dead Rising 'One, isn't even on any other platforms and is still regulated at 720p 30fps...

[Brian 972]

I don't really see the big deal with 60fps since the human eye can't see difference beyond 30 fps.

[Ku Zi Mu 1194]

Mine can...

[Santiago 64]

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Microsoft has failed so much. It's like give me one good reason to buy an Xbox One over the PS4.

Though I'm all about that rich nigga life.

[Qdeathstar 1763]

They were advertising it could to skype on tv last night. But holy fuck, just about every tv out in 2013 can do skype.

[Santiago 64]

Not just in 2013, my TV from '78 runs Skype

Hell, Super Mario from '98 had moving fish AI.

[narcolepsy 581]

I don't really see the big deal with 60fps since the human eye can't see difference beyond 30 fps.

Absolute conjecture made up by console gamers as a reason that they don't need PC's.

The Hobbit is plain evidence that it's nothing more than bong water.

[Qdeathstar 1763]

Hm, well, i dont notice stutter in 30 fps games so....

And as far as your link, i think you get a much larger return off of polygon increases and resolution (sd vs hd vs 4k) than frame rate.

[Brian 972]

I play on PC and still don't notice the difference in FPS...

and I have a great system.

[Santiago 64]

I think you need a monitor with a higher Hz to notice the difference.

[Brian 972]

Monitor has nothing to do with it. All my monitors and tvs have higher than 120 refresh rate.

[narcolepsy 581]

You don't need anything to notice a difference in FPS. 30 is significantly more choppy than 60.

This is just one thing I can't agree with, and the fact it's going to be 30 fps seems more like lazy developers to me. This isn't a case of it being underpowered [a glance at the specs tells me this can do far more than 30fps].

Ran a google search and all I can find is these: http://www.digitalsp...n-xbox-one.html

Which states it's because:

Bridge explained that if the frame rate was any lower, the game would respond more slowly to players' input.

"We have to be locked because it's about the feel of combat," he said.

"You've got to have that predictability of button presses."

which kinda seems like maybe QTE or something was too fast for players? That said at the same time Capcom are just lazy these days and even their PC games are locked to 30fps all too often.

This: http://uk.ign.com/ar...s4-and-xbox-one

Were apparently players preferred motion blur [what the fuck man, this is a game I had a special interest in and motion blur sux]

Aswell as a few others but those were general shovelware [Kinect lets play with grandma edition etc] and oddly Watch Dogs which runs at 30 on both PS4 and Xbox One [makes sense, that game is going to be an early boundary pusher for both consoles].

Is there an article detailing the blanket on all games?

tl;dr 30 FPS is unacceptable.

[Qdeathstar 1763]

Meh. I'd rather have a large map than 60 fps

[narcolepsy 581]

You can have both on your PC.

[Qdeathstar 1763]

Not for any major release. PC games are constrained by consoles.

[Brian 972]

First gameplay comparison I've seen, and I have to say all though the difference isn't major Xbox looks slightly better

Also, I can not tell a single difference in FPS.

[narcolepsy 581]

Not for any major release. PC games are constrained by consoles.

Yeah in that regard it really does suck. Bully scholarship edition is locked to 30fps and gets buggy when unlocked with a mod. I find a lot of games I've played arent like that thankfully.

First gameplay comparison I've seen, and I have to say all though the difference isn't major Xbox looks slightly better

Also, I can not tell a single difference in FPS.

You can't tell a difference... when YouTube will re-encode any video to 30fps. This is why any xFPS vs xFPS videos on YouTube don't look any different.

[Rob 1390]

I can't really see a difference from current gen console graphics. But this video feels bias towards ps4. They looked like they picked better lighting times for the ps4 video.

[BlackSox9 448]

You don't need anything to notice a difference in FPS. 30 is significantly more choppy than 60.

This is just one thing I can't agree with, and the fact it's going to be 30 fps seems more like lazy developers to me. This isn't a case of it being underpowered [a glance at the specs tells me this can do far more than 30fps].

Ran a google search and all I can find is these: http://www.digitalsp...n-xbox-one.html

Which states it's because:

Bridge explained that if the frame rate was any lower, the game would respond more slowly to players' input.

"We have to be locked because it's about the feel of combat," he said.

"You've got to have that predictability of button presses."

which kinda seems like maybe QTE or something was too fast for players? That said at the same time Capcom are just lazy these days and even their PC games are locked to 30fps all too often.

This: http://uk.ign.com/ar...s4-and-xbox-one

Were apparently players preferred motion blur [what the fuck man, this is a game I had a special interest in and motion blur sux]

Aswell as a few others but those were general shovelware [Kinect lets play with grandma edition etc] and oddly Watch Dogs which runs at 30 on both PS4 and Xbox One [makes sense, that game is going to be an early boundary pusher for both consoles].

Is there an article detailing the blanket on all games?

tl;dr 30 FPS is unacceptable.

You're not trying to blame the Game Developers for the Xbone's weak hardware, are you?

The reduced specs for pretty much all of the Xbox One's games ( a lot of them are 720p Upscaled to 1080 & only at 30 FPS ) is a joke. Especially when Microsoft expects you to pay $100 more for it's System.

Xbox One Games Vs PlayStation 4 Games

Xbox One's Resolution & Frame Rates ~

COD Ghosts - 720p Upscaled to 1080p - 60 FPS

Battlefield 4 - 720p Upscaled to 1080p - 60 FPS

Dead Rising 3 - 720p Upscaled to 1080p - 30 FPS

Ryse: Son of Rome - 900p Upscaled to 1080p - 30 FPS

PlayStation 4's Resolution and Frame Rates ~

COD Ghosts - Native 1080p - 60 FPS

Killzone Shadow Fall - Single Player - Native 1080p - 30 FPS ~ Multiplayer - Native 1080p - 60 FPS

Battlefield 4 - 900p Upscaled to 1080p - 60 FPS

Assassin's Creed 4 - Native 1080p - 60 FPS

Thief - Native 1080p - 60 FPS

http://www.google.co...XD7LgiMLv7jhggg

And for those of you that say that there is no visual difference between 720p and 1080p, just remember that 1080p has more than twice the number of pixels compared too 720p. Here's a comparison of the resolutions ~

I can't believe that anyone is still supporting Microsoft's bullshit. The Xbox One is a good all-in-one entertainment system but a poor gaming system. The games for Xbone have the same resolution as they do on the Xbox 360, which is pathetic. I mean if it can't output Native 1080p for the games that we have now, how is it going to cope with bigger and more ambitious games in the future ( Witcher 3/ MGS 5/ Fallout 4? ).

[Rob 1390]

Regardless of all that data I didn't read. At this point most people are going to just buy the console they feel comfortable with. I will buy a ps4 through brand loyalty. Because to my mind the differences between the two consoles is negligible.

[GunSmith 2452]

I don't think there was any graphical difference to speak of between this gen and the next one.

[narcolepsy 581]

Lazy development, shitty hardware whatever it is, I just won't defend it. There is no reason you should have to play with a meager 30fps. I think 60 is fairly shitty too sooo...

[Brian 972]

People have already lined up in anticipation of Xbox One in the city (NYC). I really can not wait until I can see side by side reviews and comparisons.

[Brian 972]

It has dropped, already have a side by side, but it's in German.