Post by Eorl @ 10:23am 04/01/15 | 10 Comments
The discovery was made thanks to an Xbox One SDK which was published publicly earlier this week by hackers, claiming they did so in the name of "creativity and research." Digital Foundry peaked inside and found that Microsoft has recently enabled access to an additional core, of which the Xbox One has eight total.
Digital Foundry noted that originally, the Xbox One reserved two full cores for running its background operating system (as does the PlayStation 4.) In the latest SDK, developers may access "50 to 80 percent of a seventh core," they report.
This "may partly explain why a small amount of multi-platform titles released during Q4 2014 may have possessed performance advantages over their PS4 counterparts in certain scenarios," Digital Foundry said.
Of course such extra power comes at cost. Games can't use custom voice commands, and some functions of the Kinect 2.0 sensor are disabled. Accessing the seventh core also is risky because system-related voice commands can take up half of its capability, overriding whatever else has been assigned there.
You can read more at the Digital Foundry link, which goes into detail as to what access to the seventh core may have for future games.
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Posted 12:34pm 04/1/15
How many users are going to want to go "xbox, turn on pornhub" while playing a game?
When did consoles stop being so easy to use to play games on? which was what made them attractive in the first place.
Now they record movies, show you TV shows, make phone calls.
S***, might as well just buy a PC and get all the features, without any of the s*** performance of a crippled black box under the tv.
Posted 08:53pm 04/1/15
Posted 01:38pm 06/1/15
gatescores? Your console dies but for a short period of time you get uber hacks or something.Posted 02:20pm 06/1/15
Because consoles are a much better designed lounge room experience. Steam via BIg Picture etc. is getting there, but has a long way to go.
The other thing is that console games are built using the lounge experience in mind, while PC games are designed to be played via kb+mouse at a desk.
For example, Diablo 3 plays amazingly well as a co-op lounge room game, to the point where I actually think it may be the best form of the game that has been released. There are a few niggles that come with sharing the screen with up to 4 people (like inventory and shop putting other players into pause mode) but the social experience of playing a hack and slash lounge room game more than makes up for that.
You just couldn't have that experience if you plugged your PC into the TV and loaded up diablo.
Posted 04:14pm 06/1/15
Posted 03:25pm 06/1/15
Posted 04:02pm 06/1/15
I haven't played D3 on console, but yeah I agree with what Hoggy was saying, that sort of experience seems much more the realm of consoles than PCs. Closest I've come to that sort of party game, social experience on PC recently is that Mount Your Friends game, which after a few beers is pretty insanely hilarious fun I must admit.
Posted 04:39pm 06/1/15
The only way to have a lounge room experience with diablo on PC is to buy 4 copies and have a LAN party ... via the internet. You still can't easily sell an online-only game for consoles so offline support is there too, something we were assured was not possible in d3 which turned out to be complete bulls*** and lies.
The form factor for a console enforces and encourages a particular type of game design while PC is another. Often its just not a case of plugging in your controller, though lots of console ports on the PC do work well for this and things like Steam's Big Picture are making inroads, but the form factor for the platform is desk-based. Using kb+mouse on the lounge just sucks. Period.
PC is an amazing gaming platform that does lots of things very well, but its not the suppository of all things gaming. Consoles do certain things very well.
Posted 09:28am 08/1/15
The port is done amazingly well and doesn't lose any quality. The performance is top notch and there's no noticeable delays in playing with loading screens, etc. The experience of sitting back on the couch in front of a big TV is vastly superior to sitting in front of the PC. It feels like a more natural fit for an ARPG to be on a console than PC.
Posted 10:39am 08/1/15
Blizzard really did do a great job on diablo for consoles. Apprentice mode is the tits, I decided to reroll a level 1 monk as we had 2 mages in the house and just jumped into the current level 20 game no problem, collecting loot for my level etc. and contributing to fights just like every one else, especially once my skill set opened up.