aspro said:

Someone tell me which Need for Speed games are the good ones for this gen (like from the last 4 years).

I promise to make a list and not ask ever again.

I only played and reviewed Most Wanted U, some gamers tell me the other versions have bullshit gate protected content and it asks you to connect to EA servers every five minutes to unlock a track/car/dlc.

Foolz said:

This is all the same hyperbole we've heard before about 3D and motion controls and virtual reality. And the same reaction to people pointing this out remains as well (yeah, but it's different this time: I've used those gimmicky pieces of crap; this is the real deal).

This doesn't mean the Occulus Rift won't be revolutionary, but everything said about it thus far has been said before about nothing important time and time again as people get excited over nothing.

I love  3D and motion controls and virtual reality, but they have to be accessible in price terms and supported too. If the rift isn't near £140 or less I won't touch it. I'm also worried about how they handle camera turning, anyone who's tried a game that relies on gyroscopes knows that unless there is some kind of bounding box implementation you come to a stop when turning 180. Unless the rift expects you to be standing or something.

Having worked on other hardware consoles, I suppose that we were rather spoilt by having mature toolchains that integrated nicely with our development environment. Wii U on the other hand seemed to be trying at every turn to make it difficult to compile and run any code. Nintendo had provided an integration of their development tools into Visual Studio - the de facto standard for development - but it didn't work, not even close.

So they're comparing working on a new incomplete, pre-launch console with 7 years of experience on older consoles. Nice.

The Criterion interview put the early ports into perspective:

"The difference with Wii U was that when we first started out, getting the graphics and GPU to run at an acceptable frame-rate was a real struggle. The hardware was always there, it was always capable. Nintendo gave us a lot of support - support which helps people who are doing cross-platform development actually get the GPU running to the kind of rate we've got it at now. We benefited by not quite being there for launch - we got a lot of that support that wasn't there at day one... the tools, everything."

"So, I think you've got one group of people who walked away, you've got some other people who just dived in and tried and thought, 'Ah... it's not kind of there,' but not many people have done what we've done, which is to sit down and look at where it's weaker and why, but also see where it's stronger and leverage that. It's a different kind of chip and it's not fair to look at its clock-speed and other consoles' clock-speed and compare them as numbers that are relevant. It's not a relevant comparison to make when you have processors that are so divergent. It's apples and oranges."

It's possible. It's work. You have to think about it and put time and craft and effort and whatever else into it but you have to do that for everything that's worth doing in this business... I think people should either go all-in or not bother."

Well, Revengeance certainly makes a first impression.

robio said:

I have become a sad and pathetic Minecraft junkie. What the hell happened to me? I used to be kind of cool!

Well, you haven't become completely un-cool until you buy this shirt:

Iga_Bobovic said:

aspro said:

Iga_Bobovic said:

Can someone explain to me what so revolutionairy about Oculus Rift? We have seen virtual reality headsets for decades now.

Apparently it actually works.  I know this is insufficient, but Vader will probably be able to help out.  I think it comes down to higher resolution on smaller screens combined with accelarometers, combined with everything being cheaper.

The next one, (none of this is for the consumer market yet) involves using a Kinect-like sensor, which complicates things, but makes for a better experience.

I honestly do think this is just "3D" all over again, in that people wanting to believe are believing, when really it's just as broken as the lat attempts, but as Vader said, the reactions people are having to the Rift appear to be legitimately revolutionary.

Yeah I get that, but this seems more like a evolution than a revolution. It is the same, but technically much better. There was already a headset with motion sensing on the PC. You could for example turn around and look at your rear view window when driving! I can also see this becoming the next step in e-conference, besides gaming. But it seems it is slowly evolving there instead of a sudden revolution.  

aspro said:

Plus Carmack.

When was the last time when Carmack was relevant?

If the rift works as it seems too it may be an evolution on concepts but it can start a revolution of virtual content. Soon there will be virtual vacations, conferences as you mentioned. The ability to virtually visit famous places. Eventually it gets to the point where you can virtually experience almost anything. What happens when the virtual world and the real world becomes indistiguishable.

Now back to the rift itself, for gaming it seems to be the biggest wow leap since games went to 3D gameplay. There is a huge difference playing say a horror game from the confort of your home, on your chair, in a your room watching it a TV screen a few feet away. What happens when your entire world is inserted into the game, no room, no TV, according to your eyes you are inside the game. Its a different experience all together.

Dvader said:

Yikes that developer Wii U story. For 3rd party the Wii U is basically done. The next few years are going to be ugly.

Its been ugly since day 1....but I still greatly enjoy the console.

edgecrusher said:

Its been ugly since day 1....but I still greatly enjoy the console.

Oh yeah, I will enjoy all the Nintendo games and the few 3rd party stuff. Still it will be a failure for nintendo and it didnt have to be. Expect a new console by 2016.

And Iwata will step down.

Dvader said:

Yikes that developer Wii U story. For 3rd party the Wii U is basically done. The next few years are going to be ugly.

Yep but that story should be renamed: Developing a Wii U Launch game - it specifically talks about a 2012 pre-launch period when the tools were bad and devkits were changing. Things have changed since then, probably fairly soon after launch as Criterion said:

"The difference with Wii U was that when we first started out, getting the graphics and GPU to run at an acceptable frame-rate was a real struggle. The hardware was always there, it was always capable. Nintendo gave us a lot of support - support which helps people who are doing cross-platform development actually get the GPU running to the kind of rate we've got it at now. We benefited by not quite being there for launch - we got a lot of that support that wasn't there at day one... the tools, everything."

But everyone bailed on the system either after one game or not even producing a single game. How is that right?

Ravenprose said:

I wonder who will replace Iwata when he does step down? Don Mattrick?

Based on the amount of time I've spent in different internet forums devoted to video games, I believe I am infinitely qualified for the job.

Ravenprose said:

I wonder who will replace Iwata when he does step down? Don Mattrick?

Nester