Oh shoot this is huge:

"Much was made of the emphasis on Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service to offset the processing load on the console's five billion local transistors. "There are a growing number of transistors in the cloud that you can move the loads onto,” says Microsoft software expert Boyd Multerer. "So over time, your box gets more powerful. We move loads into the cloud to free up resources on the box."

Microsoft will have more than 300,000 servers in its data centers dedicated to the Xbox One, with the ability to expand."

Which means your system would have to be always online and in the distant future when these servers were switched off those specific games would not run.

edgecrusher said:

So not enough of a difference to matter, but the PS4 probably has a slight edge?

Spec analysis: Durango vs. Orbis

Digital Foundry on what the recent leaks mean and how the next-gen Xbox and PlayStation compare.

"On paper, Orbis looks like the tighter, more powerful, more games-focused design. With Durango, the astonishing lengths to which Microsoft has gone to accommodate 8GB of RAM adds further weight to the hypothesis that its plans for the Xbox hardware extend beyond gaming, that it wants the hardware to form a next-gen media centre. The question is to what extent its non-gaming plans impact on the processing resources available to developers..."

More at the link.

Gamasutra on Xbox One :

At the opening of Microsoft's Xbox One reveal, my first thought was that I feel old: An amped movie trailer soundtrack accompanies the pan-out on the big Reveal Tent on the company's campus, and I couldn't be gladder not to be there: No wristband, no ambling in line for logo lanyards and pounding sizzle reel, no obligatory applause for yet another annual lime green laser light show. Other people are excited about this, probably. I'm not. I'm become the jaded cynic, destroyer of dreams.

Yet by the end of the console event, I sat disoriented, feeling like I'd seen one of the Big Three take a hard left into a past decade, a fictional privileged nation where everyone owns a giant television they want to talk to, where they entertain themselves with high-end fictional simulations of football season and futuristic, nebulous wars abroad. Where we supposedly want whole-body play. Where the fantasy is that all our living rooms are big enough for that.

Seems the Jaguar CPU cores are confirmed:

"That SoC contains both the CPU and GPU, as well as embedded ESRAM; the first two components are based on an AMD design, and custom-built into an SoC with embedded ESRAM. That CPU is based on the Jaguar design from AMD, with eight cores and a 4MB L2 cache, while the GPU is of the D3D11.1 (with extensions) variety, Baker told us."

So it's basically the same as PS4 with a few less shader cores on the GPU and slower RAM.

Crysis 1 on my PC looks better than that honestly so this jump we are getting in console graphics is kind of comical. Especially when people say what the Wii U can do isn't enough next to the other new consoles. None of them are blowing down barriers. Maybe with time?

edgecrusher said:

Crysis 1 on my PC looks better than that honestly so this jump we are getting in console graphics is kind of comical. Especially when people say what the Wii U can do isn't enough next to the other new consoles. None of them are blowing down barriers. Maybe with time?

Crysis 1 looks better than COD jungle?

?

Here is BF4's jungle

GAF:

Couldn't you be a huge douche with XBone? Like if someone is playing a game couldn't you just walk into the room and say "Xbox-TV" or "Xbox-off" and it would turn off/go to TV when someone else is playing it? I see a lot of lost friendships with this console.

Microsoft is taking a hammering looking around at the media and message boards. I find it kind of pathetic the way we collectively overzelously rag on some things. At the end of the day it will likely play and get most of the same games PS4 will and the games will look and play as good. The reveal's focus on sports and tv does not mean that that is all there is to the machine. It reminds me of the year of Wii Fit and Wii Music at E3, we knew there were other games, they just chose not to highlight them on stage.

Sure I'm finding a lot to laugh at today, but there has to come a point where we look past to joke and give credit where it's due. I want to see the price and what MS is going to do about this game install licence issue. If they make it more palatable okay. If not.... yikes.

gamingeek said:

Microsoft is taking a hammering looking around at the media and message boards. I find it kind of pathetic the way we collectively overzelously rag on some things. At the end of the day it will likely play and get most of the same games PS4 will and the games will look and play as good. The reveal's focus on sports and tv does not mean that that is all there is to the machine. It reminds me of the year of Wii Fit and Wii Music at E3, we knew there were other games, they just chose not to highlight them on stage.

Sure I'm finding a lot to laugh at today, but there has to come a point where we look past to joke and give credit where it's due. I want to see the price and what MS is going to do about this game install licence issue. If they make it more palatable okay. If not.... yikes.

I think its just that people are getting sick of companies not having GAMING as the complete focus of their GAMES CONSOLES. Especially at a reveal of a machine for the 1st time...to not just focus totally on what got you here in the first place?

Time for Wii U rumours

Rumor: Sources claim info on the Sega/Nintendo alliance

According to what a source close to Nintendo revealed to Sonic Paradise, the third exclusive game will be a racing game. This fits with the recent rumours coming from a month old twitter conversation between Steve Lycett of Sumo Digital and some of our reporters: Ryan Bloom and myself, Andrea Gil, in where Steve Lycett teases about the possibility of seeing a racing game who mixes Sonic and other companies characters, clearly Nintendo ones after the exclusivity deal made public a few days ago. But, as our sources says, this one might not be the same Steve Lycett was teasing.

This game is not a Sonic & All Stars Racing new instalment, neither it is a Mario Kart Vs Sonic All Stars Racing game. If fact, our source says it’s not even sure its a kart racer, but its a racing game from the Sonic series for sure. It’s being made with the idea of taking Mario Kart’s U place until it gets released, next 2014, as this new Sonic racer would be released later this year in it’s place, around Christmas time. According to the source, this racing game will feature Nintendo characters along with Sonic ones.

According to all those information, our bet goes to a new Sonic Riders instalment, since it’s not a kart racer, although it’s a racing game, coming from the Sonic series and Sonic only, and it has seen guest characters from other series before, like Nights or Billy Hatcher. We will have to wait until a later date for the official reveal, proving this source is legit.

But our info is not only about this third game. We also have some information about Sonic Lost Words. According to our source, this is a main series game, and similar to Sonic Colors ” As it updates the saga with new abilities, worlds, and characters“, according to the source words, as we can expect to see some sort of gimmick similar to the Wisps on Sonic Colors. The source also claims this game is ” Something huge“.

All those games are being developed by SEGA, although they have Nintendo’s support and collaboration. Nintendo and SEGA are also in talks for more collaborations outside of the Sonic series, so we should expect more interesting exclusive Sega/Nintendo games in the future.

Last, but not least, the source also talked about the presence of SEGA characters at the next Super Smash Bros. game. According to it, Sonic will make a comeback, and Bayonetta will join the cast as one of the newcomers of this game. More info was revealed about Super Smash Bros, that we will reveal at a later report exclusively about Nintendo.

And:

RUMOR: Sources claim on Nintendo’s future lineup

Nintendo will be holding up on a few titles until the end of this year. Those will be Game & Wario, Pikmin 3, Wii Fit U, Wonderful 101, Wii Party U, Zelda Wind Waker and Mario, who will be shown and playable at E3 for Wii U, and Animal Crossing, Mario & Luigi, Mario Golf, Pokémon, Mario Party and Zelda for the 3DS.

Nintendo’s launch window has been modified, and titles that should have been released this Christmas will go to 2014. That’s what happened to Yoshi’s Yarn game, it has been delayed to 2014 since Nintendo will make 2014 the “Yoshi’s year”, in a similar way they had made 2013 Luigi’s Year.

The next 3D Mario game for Wii U won’t be a Galaxy game, but it will take some titbits of it to make a full open world platformer. It will make an intensive use of the touch screen for some game mechanics.

There is a 3DS Kirby game in development, but it won’t be shown in some time. The same with a Metroid 3DS game, it has been on development for some time but we won’t see it soon. I can personally corroborate this last one, since I personally got the same info from a Nintendo rep on Metroid 3DS back on 2011.

It’s unknown who is developing this game, but the same source claims Retro Studios is working in two games at the moment. One of them will be huge , it will in fact be revealed in a Nintendo Direct event, after E3, but it won’t be released until late 2014, as this is the big bet of Nintendo for the upcoming year, along with Smash Bros. It’s a shooting game, from an already known IP. In this game, you will be able to scan scenery with the Wii U Gamepad and use the Wii U Gamepad Touch Screen to control your spaceship. The game is looking really good, graphically wise, one of the most advanced graphics you’re going to see in Wii U. The other game is said to be a smaller game, similar to what Donkey Kong Country Return was. It might be this one Metroid 3DS?

Mario Kart U will be presented at E3, the game will be very online focused, with lots of Miiverse and Communities options. Missions will make a comeback, and they will add some sort of achievements system to the game too. It will be released in 2014

There will be a teaser for Bayonetta 2 at the E3 too, and a Yoshi’s Island 3 teaser. They will also show a pretty shocking teaser for Smash Bros U/3DS. The game will feature sightly different gameplay than older instalments of the Smash Bros series. The 3DS version will be very different to the W ii U one, content wise. There will be a few newcomer characters shown at the teaser: Little Mac, Takamaru, Tom Nook, Palutena, Dark Pit ( the source says he is not sure if it’s a transformation for Pit like Zelda/Sheik or a standalone character), and Bayonetta.

There will be other games, smaller ones. Nintendo is working in a new IP of a genre Nintendo has not much experience with. Not much was disclosed about this besides that. There will be other games, like a new Project Zero game for Wii U. Already revealed ones like Shin Megami Tensei Vs Fire Emblem, Zelda, and X will take some time still. The one we might be seeing sooner is X, who will be released at 2014 first half in Japan.

Last, but not least, 2014 will be a slow year for Nintendo 3DS, in favour of pushing up the Wii U catalogue and sales in a similar way they’ve done with 3DS this year. Third parties will not change too much on their treat with Nintendo, although there will be a few important multiplatform games who will be at Nintendo consoles too. One of them will be a really important third party IP who will turn exclusive to Nintendo in a similar way of Bayonetta 2 did. It will also create loads of drama like the Sega’s witch exclusivity deal did. The source has not disclosed if this IP is coming from the Sega X Nintendo deal or not.

Too much to be true? All of it is plausible.

So:

• Bayonetta style 3rd party exclusive that will shock people
• Fatal Frame Wii U
• Retro working on Wii U and 3DS Metroid
• Sonic and Mario Racing game, not kart though
• 3DS Kirby
• Full open world Mario platformer with intensive touch screen use
• New IP in a genre Nintendo not familiar with
• Smash Bros U and 3DS very different in content - Bayonetta and Sonic featuring
• X at E3
• Mario Kart online focused 2014 release
• 2014 Wii U focused like this year was 3DS focused

On negativity GG.

Big picture I look at the specs and see that the xbox is basically the same as the PS4. So they are two generic gaming pc's crammed into boxes.

From there I add and subtract, and I see nothing to positively differentiate the xbox. Nothing. Controller seems nice, but then so does the new dualshock.

On twitter, in forums, on podcasts, I have seen or heard no positive comment about the xboxone yet.  Somehow MS went FUBAR, and they had all this time to get it right.  It doesn't necessarily make me want a PS4 more, it certainly makes the U look better (if only it could get some unique third party games like the Wii), and it makes my gaming PC look like the best decision I've made in five years.

The third console curse lives on.

gamingeek said:

Next gens biggest threat: apathy?

Yup. I give a big meh to basically everything I have seen.

gamingeek said:

"From there I add and subtract, and I see nothing to positively differentiate the xbox." If Xbone was shown first you could say similar stuff about the PS4, maybe?

But news just in that the PS4 GPU has more shader cores which puts the graphics card as 50% better. Togther with the unified higher speed RAM PS4 outclasses Xbox one, especially given how Xbone is going to have a huge OS footprint. Graphics whores will not let this lie.

Yeah but I will.  For my purposes they are the same.  And no, the xbone has way more negative, I just don't want to get into every little detail right now, I'll save that for the next podcast.  There are three deal killers right off the bat for me with the XB though.

aspro said:

And no, the xbone has way more negative.

Yeah, seriously.

Last gen people wanted Wii60 now it's WiiS4. Because I guess you get the most powerful machine with the cheapest weakest machine and together they complement each other with enough exclusives etc. Xbox One is caught in the middle somewhere - at least in perception.