The Specrum and cassettes! That takes me back! My first computer was an Amstrad CPC464, ten-twenty minutes loading a game on cassette (my parents couldn't afford to fork out for the Amstrad with that new-fangled floppy-disc drive!). Think I still got it in my ex's mum's attic, with a shed load of games, including both the Aliens games, and the Alien one.

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Weyland Yutani Corp. Bio-Weapons Division - "Superior Weapons through Superior Genetics"

Now if PCs were still at the level of a Spectrum 48K, or even a 386, THEN perhaps I'd be interested in an X-Box ONE... !!

But back to topic - So much in my life is custom-tailored, custom-built, scratch-built, etc that I am used to getting exactly what I want that does what I want how I want it. So to have to conform to a single console when I can have all kinds of stuff in a PC case seems kinda backward.

...And then got "Read Error B" after suffering 15 minutes of EEEeeeeeOOOOOrrrEEEEEeeeeeORRRRRKSSSSKSKKSKSKSKSKSK

And the colour telly modulator that doubled as a space heater- how the hell did something that allowed a computer to display on a TV screen suck so much power and get toasty hot!?

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2nd Lt Jon "Jaylo" Lopez
A11/TQ1.0.72144E1
USCM Quality Assurance Division- Aerospace and Space Products- Earth
"Checklists Save Lives- No Service Stations at 30,000ft"

Have you guys heard that 'they' can now sence how your feeling by monitoring how you effect your wi-fi signal??!!

Apparently it's what the Xbox one does, not using the camera at all.

I can't get the page to load to post a link but it's on the BBC news site.

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AKA: Simon

That's a lot of apparently, considering that the BBC news article specifically pitches it as "simpler, cheaper alternative to Microsoft's camera-based Kinect", and the draft research paper isn't even finished and is due to be officially published at the end of August.

Everything I've read on various forums at the moment equates to 'that' moment on rolling news that make me turn the screen off: Let me explain 'that' moment:

Something newsworthy has happened.
The anchor in the studio gives you the headline then cuts to the reporter 'live on the scene'
The reporter is stood in a non-descript location in the same general geographic vicinity as the newsworthy event.
The reporter spends a total of 5 minutes telling you what little facts they know.
Then 'that' moment happens- the anchor begins questioning the reporter about the incident

What we then get is 15-90 minutes of wild speculation as two people who don't know more than they've already been told build castles in the air.....That ain't news, CNN/BBC 24/Fox etc

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2nd Lt Jon "Jaylo" Lopez
A11/TQ1.0.72144E1
USCM Quality Assurance Division- Aerospace and Space Products- Earth
"Checklists Save Lives- No Service Stations at 30,000ft"

Time to stop speculating and deal with what is actually happening, then. Microsoft have laid out the policies on connection, sharing and trading games.

http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/main

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A11/TQ1.0.32150E1 Murphy, J - Covert recording headcam. There is no flashing red light when you are on Kona-Cam
Weyland-Yutani: Their projects are intentionally full of bugs. Avoid!

Hmm the game lending/selling part is a tad confusing to me.
So you can play other peoples games via cloud, does that mean you and group of friends could just buy 2-3 different games each and you'd be able to access a decent libary of games you haven't even paid for?
Seems a bit odd...

I'm not liking the the 24hr maximum play time without an internet conection, what happens if your broadband connection is broke or you've moved house and your waiting for the ISP to connect you??

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AKA: Simon

You could tether your smartphone do log-in. Bit stuffed if you need to download 20gb of game, or updates, or DLC, though.

You can have 10 people associated with your account, but only 1 other can be playing games from your library at any time from another console.

Would be great for me and my wife. She can share in my gold account credentials and we can play Minecraft together. Oh, wait, 360 games don't work...

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A11/TQ1.0.32150E1 Murphy, J - Covert recording headcam. There is no flashing red light when you are on Kona-Cam
Weyland-Yutani: Their projects are intentionally full of bugs. Avoid!

Or you can just get a PC.
There have been incidents of the occasional PC game that "requires continual and uninterrupted high-speed internet access to play, or you risk catastrophic failure of your entire country's infrastructure and must repurchase the game and all DLC (several times over because our payment processing system is crap) before you can play ever again" sort of games... We usually told them to go frak themselves and/or just hacked the files to enable offline play, kinda like we already did for the NO-CD fix.

Woody, I've got a PC. I do artwork on a PC. I'm currently planning on transplanting the components into a HTPC and putting it under the TV, running steam in big picture mode alongside XBMC.

But, I get chewed out because I've installed a application which changes the way the PC behaves, or the drivers are causing a crash while I'm away.

I work away from home. I can't be humping a big tower PC, monitor, keyboard up and down the country just because I want to play during the week. And jeeze the cost of a gaming laptop! And you are still compromising on the performance.

PCs are a great, all purpose tool that can perform a great deal. If you put the effort in.

And when you are away the whole week from the love of your life, the last thing you want to be doing is spending your weekend together sorting the PC.

There is a lot of mileage in something that just works.

And joypads are great :p

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A11/TQ1.0.32150E1 Murphy, J - Covert recording headcam. There is no flashing red light when you are on Kona-Cam
Weyland-Yutani: Their projects are intentionally full of bugs. Avoid!

Don't let anyone fiddle with it, then!!
Claire learned this after I spent a week telling her off for putting flippin' iTunes on mine


You have a car?
Even if not, I'd LOVE to assemble you a rig in something like a CoolerMaster-Storm Trooper case with a fookin' solid carry-handle and a large flatscreen mounted in the right side panel. You can get a padded LAN-party cover for it with pockets that would hold power cable, normal keyboard, mouse and a few other bits too. Heck, I could even put wheels and a luggage handle on it... OK, getting a little carried away, but I like the idea. Might even see about doing myself one, once I've bought a new bike!

But if not a PC or Lappy, do you carry around a console, controller, 42" HD flatscreeny thing and all the other gubbins? Or one of them Nintendo DS things?
If the former, I assume you stay over somewhere with a suitable TV already?


Exactly - Take the PC with, so you can work on/enjoy it in peace, away from requests to walk the dogs, take out the trash, cook dinner, come downstairs and watch some cute kitten on TV, etc etc!!


Evil, evil things... I get RSI (Repetitive Strain, not Roberts Space Industry) from using them. I can never find a comfy grip position and the sticks aren't precise enough for me. I also forget what the buttons do and which ones are where!

On the PC side I think people are forgetting the costs. Yes a quality pc will out play the PS3 and the 360 but it will cost a whole bunch of wonga more. Some of the good graphics cards are £900 quid just on there own.


Any looks like the PS4 is cheaper, not 'always on' and you get to play secondhand games !

No brainer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22850409

Depends what you consider 'quality' and how much 'a whole bunch' is...
I could never justify dropping £400 on something that just plays games and has roughly the same amount of functionality as my £40 mobile phone.

Yes, an absolute top notch gaming rig will indeed cost thousands, but if you're dropping £900 on a GPU, then you're likely playing around in some ridiculously serious custom territory and laughing yourself silly over the X-One's specs anyway. You also likely have too much money!

Most people won't need that level of kit. You could drop £2,600 on an NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPU, but a £90 Radeon 6950 off the 'Bay will do you just fine for almost every game currently in existence.
Just like a GSX1300R will cost more than the 600 Bandit it outperforms, or a Bugatti Veyron over the Golf R32. But you can do comfortably better just with a FJ1200 or a Vauxhall VXR8. I don't really know that much about cars, but I believe that analogy holds up...

The new X-Box One will cost £450 odd, apparently.
For about that price even someone like me could whack together a reasonable gaming rig from 2nd hand parts that would match the X-One's reported specs.

Also, one word: OVERCLOCKING!!!

Consoles are fine for the intended casual/social/sofa-based/party play markets, those who don't want to feck about with computery geekery stuff or those who are happy using their console within it's limitations, with the easier portability advantage (for those like Jon ).
Heck, even Claire has a Nintendo Wii thing downstairs, although that never really took off. It's also a cultural thing - For example, gaming PCs in Japan are much less prevalent than over here, which is why the likes of Nintendo and Konami don't cater for the PC market (even though the dev doesn't cost them anything!). But consoles will always be the lesser platforms, unless PC gaming becomes so expensive and uncatered for that it ceases.

To me, the console is pretty much a microwave oven, compared to a proper wood braai fire. The former is designed for people to just come home, switch it on and get the job done within certain limitations. The latter requires a bit of understanding, skill & experience (all of which can be gleaned from just playing around with it) and a degree of tweaking, but gives unmatched results and can do a lot more besides.

If you twist my arm, the PS4 would win as it's less restrictive (offline play, 2nd hand games, backwards compatability, etc) but even then I'd be looking for a modding forum to see what I could do to change stuff around.

I would call him out and ask if he has a microwave oven, and how much its used compared with anything that runs on wood - but Woody is someone I could imagine NOT owning a microwave ...

Personally, I'm not a big gamer but I've got a pretty warm PC that could be called a "gaming PC" (it has a top i7, 32GB RAM and a GTX680). I play some games on it, but still use my Xbox 360 when I do feel like games ...

I might get a PS4 after a while when the game lineup is fixed.

Hey, I don't mind being called.

I myself have never owned a microwave.
As it happens, Claire did just buy herself a brand new and stylish mini-microwave, but that's because the old dull-green one was actually rusting from disuse!!

She uses it occasionally, more than the Nintendo Wii or the toaster in fact (which are both in the garage, covered in dust), but I don't use it at all and since she brought the old one into the relationship with her, I don't regard it as mine or anything to do with me.

The main reasons I'm not out every evening cooking over a wood firepit is that I'm "not allowed to rip up the lawn", suitable wood is "expensive these days" and the Le Creuset kitchen sets were damned expensive so I'm gonna get some serious use out of them!
But I always love a decent braai and do my best with the half-drum barbecue thing we have.

So yeah - X-Box... Microwave... If it's your thing, fair enough.

No thoughts on this Steam console, then?

Slight change of subject, but very relevant I feel...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8 ... ata_player

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Si vis pacem, para bellum
SFC Steve "Fireball" Parsons - A08/TQ1.0.52150E1
69th Regt. 1st Batt. Homers Heroes

How do you remember what all the key controls are for in PC games then? Surely that's no different?

e.g. One control for multiformat shooter;

Gamepad: X button for grenades.

PC keyboard: X key for grenades.

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Steve
Corporal in 69th Regt. 1st Batt. Homer’s Heroes.

"I'd like to die at the age of 80 in my own bed, with a belly full of wine and a girl's mouth around my c**k."

It really does depend what you know, I've known a few PC gamers with about 20 keys set up for a game who can't handle a joypad!

Following the negative press Microsoft got, Sony are rubbing the salt in the wounds now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA

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Weyland Yutani Corp. Bio-Weapons Division - "Superior Weapons through Superior Genetics"

That was my point; it's just familiarity with one system, not that one is better than the other.

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Steve
Corporal in 69th Regt. 1st Batt. Homer’s Heroes.

"I'd like to die at the age of 80 in my own bed, with a belly full of wine and a girl's mouth around my c**k."

I get you now!

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Weyland Yutani Corp. Bio-Weapons Division - "Superior Weapons through Superior Genetics"

^ Ja, this (except I use up to 49 keys).

Having grown up with Nintendo systems and not gotten properly into PC gaming until quite recently, I should be better with controllers. I've played NES, SNES, N64, Gameboy, PS1, 2 and 3 over a period of about 17 years, yet NEVER got the hang of them. Took me about a month of WASD play on keyboard before I was considered competent.

On the PC *I* choose which buttons do what on my keyboard. The movement is down to my fingers, which have far superior fine motor skills (insofar as my knackered hands go) than my thumbs and I have five digits with one on each button, rather than one lumphammer thumb covering four, which gives me a faster response time than on a controller. Thumbs are for SPACE, ALT and my three nearside mouse buttons.

lol. I hate to break it to the braintrust at Micro$oft, but not "every Xbox (One) owner" has a stable or reliable internet connection. Maybe people who live in London, Tokyo, LA, New York or other metroplexes do, but not everyone. A local buddy of mine is borderline broke after paying for his apartment rent, and he hasn't had broadband for like 4-5 months now.

So, if he owned a "One" he'd be S.O.L., after paying $500 for a shiny new console.

What if you're a gamer in a rural setting? They exist. In fact, the manager of our local Gamestop is one. She's not going to leave her home just to move to town to have a reliable broadband connection speed. That's a pretty unrealistic expectation.

Yes, these may be extreme examples. But it also shows that M$ really didn't do their due diligence when they came up with some of their "exciting new features" for their nextgen system.

I'm a big xbox fan, having owned 2 original systems, and 2 360's (One of which I still play on a regular basis), but honestly, their new approach is really making me reconsider and think about the PS4.

Russ

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"A writer needs a pen, a painter a brush, and a filmmaker an army." - Orson Wells.

http://www.rookscastle.com
http://www.alchemyarms.com

That's not their concern. You just have to buy their stuff with your money. What you do with it (illegal stuff aside) is outside their care.


Yep... but again, not their concern. Just buy all the stuffs!!

The vast majority of people this is aimed at will live in high-connectivity urban areas. Much of the West is kinda behind in that, actually. Places like Japan and even Holland have so much internets and free wi-fi that you can walk around the streets without losing a single bar of signal. Here if you simply cross to the wrong side of the High Street, you're dead to the world!


That'd be me. We don't even get gas or sewer connection out here. No busses or trains, either...
To be fair, my broadband is getting better. I get about 1meg on my "up to 24meg" line, even though my SP states an expected 4-5meg. Most games still laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag, though.


That's probably why Sony kicked their arse at E3!!
I read an account of it that read like a report of Henry Cooper boxing against Britney Spears!!
It sounded very exciting - If the article is to be believed, Sony pretty much walked on, slammed MS left, right and centre and beat their product to a pulp, before doing a demeaning goal celebration dance. Then, just before they left the stage, the words, "FINISH HIM!!" appeared above the stage and Sony scored a flawless victory when they turned round and said, "Oh, and ours is a hundred bucks cheaper"!

I did love Sony's 'How To Share Your Games' video, though!!


Not the first time MS has utterly fluffed things up... But with Windows 8 also sounding like a pile of shit, even with a touchscreen system and the Windows Phone being generally regarded as the worst of the Smartphone platforms, things are looking a little dire.

I would be interested to know what made the X-Boxes so much more popular than other consoles, though...

Woody which PC manufacturing company do you work for ?