Xbox One

[DinnerX]

And this is why im happy i had preordered both...even after all the bull that was said to me....

but YOU are KILLING video games FOREVER!!!1!

single handedly right? lol

single handedly!

I do still stand by what I said about the xbox one being part of a larger problem, but looking at it now, I said it too harshly and for that I am sorry. I have spent so much time studying these issues, and how they connect, I forget how insignificant any particular one may seem to people.

[MrPopo]

I, for one, look forward to the day when I can be plugged into the Matrix and cared for 24/7.

[ExedExes]

Good for them for actually listening to the fans - if they hadn't made these changes, Sony would have enjoyed a complete rout for this generation.

A part of me wanted to see them go on and be all stubborn about not changing to see how poor their sales would be.

Also I would say sixth gen to seventh gen was a way bigger "feeling" step than this current transition. It basically feels like seventh gen part 2 to me more than a true new generation of gaming.

Well said. I see it as that too.

[TheRev]

I, for one, look forward to the day when I can be plugged into the Matrix and cared for 24/7.

You'll have to wait for this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89gqKJ1AtWA

[Cronozilla]

who remembers being super impressed by a new generation of consoles in the past?

I nearly shat myself when I first saw PlayStation in action.

Also I would say sixth gen to seventh gen was a way bigger "feeling" step than this current transition. It basically feels like seventh gen part 2 to me more than a true new generation of gaming.

I remember the first time I saw Genesis, SNES, 3DO, N64, PlayStation, GameCube and PS2 ... every single one blew me away. I would have murdered for a SNES when I was a kid. I didn't get one for YEARS. That system looked like games were playable cartoons to me.

It's true. One of my biggest gripes with the Xbox One was actually that there's very little change to the controller. It shows that they have no intention of pushing any sort of alteration to the game experiences ... just supporting what we already did, but maybe it looks better and you have online processing. That's not particularly exciting.

A touch pad on your controller, a second screen built in ... those are different interesting kinds of environments you could see something that you didn't even know you wanted ... but from the get-go ... that Xbox One controller is saying to me, "We don't want to change anything ... except how you pay us ... but not really loljk;P"

I think EVERY generation, really, has had that moment when you finally see everything in action and it clicks and my jaw drops ... the only time that didn't happen was ... this coming generation ... and this last generation.

[AppleQueso]

I think the issue with this last generation has been the fact that gameplay hasn't really benefited much from the increase in processing horsepower. Sure, we have better graphics, but that doesn't really account for much. We basically have games with support for way more enemies on screen now and open world games with even bigger open worlds, and that's about it. There are games that have done cool things with the whole online aspect, but that's not necessarily tied to the horsepower of the console itself.

N64/Ps1/Saturn gave us fully polygonal 3D as standard. Dreamcast/Ps2/Gamecube/Xbox gave us giant, full 3D, seamless open worlds in the form of stuff like GTA III, Spider-Man 2, Wind Waker (well not really an "open" world in that sense, but you get the idea) etc that would've never been possible on previous gen tech. This gen... ?

Not that I haven't enjoyed lots of current gen games, it's just hard to get excited about new hardware, especially when current hardware seems perfectly adequate for the gameplay I'm enjoying.

[Cronozilla]

I do feel like this generation games like Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Borderlands and Super Mario Galaxy were genuinely new experiences and things that really could not have been done before.

Mario Galaxy could have been possible before, technically speaking. They used the polygon surface normals to figure out gravity instead of doing giant world calculations ... so that might have been potentially doable even on N64 ... though ... without enough polygons on the ground ... it wouldn't have worked well at all

Assassin's Creed that really wasn't possible from a technological standpoint. The way the parkour worked, the amount of context sensitivity required with the world and even the amount of animations. Not to mention the collision calculations.

Uncharted ... specifically 2 ... was absolutely not possible on earlier hardware. There is no way to create environments where the camera can seamlessly move from external to internal with no loading and actually having objects move in the world hierarchically was a really big deal too.

Obviously ... Crysis not remotely possible before ... but that really was all graphics ... it didn't inhibit the gameplay at all. These other games, these technological advancements are what made them possible. Crysis came out a few years earlier it was called Chrome.

I do agree that there just weren't enough games taking advantage of the advancements that were there to really make something new. Maybe Dead Rising too. But it really is a short list ... the big thing this gen was reviving the past.

[dsheinem]

the big thing this gen was reviving the past.

There were more than just engine/graphics enhancements in this past gen. Most obviously, there were a lot of popular and successful motion and/or camera enabled games this last generation that didn't exist before. In addition, the level of online socialization in games didn't exist (on consoles) before and this was often integrated into games in compelling ways. Trophies/Achievements were new and shaped game design in some ways. The PSN/XBLA/WiiWare stores brought a lot of experimental, smaller, cheaper games that really didn't exist in previous generations. So I think to suggest that the last gen was primarily "reviving the past" is a bit unfair. There was a clear evolution - perhaps even a bigger one than from PS1>PS2/N64>GCN/SAT>DC.

As much as I am generally disinterested in Kinect so far, I think its mandatory inclusion in the Xbox One system purchase will turn out to be a wise decision for MS as it really opens up design possibilities for titles that are exclusives. As with the Wii's motion controls, good developers will find ways to use the camera in a way that isn't gimmicky or tacked on, but that introduce new and compelling. I expect the same will be true of Sony's on controller touch pad.

[AppleQueso]

the big thing this gen was reviving the past.

There were more than just engine/graphics enhancements in this past gen. Most obviously, there were a lot of popular and successful motion and/or camera enabled games this last generation that didn't exist before. In addition, the level of online socialization in games didn't exist (on consoles) before and this was often integrated into games in compelling ways. Trophies/Achievements were new and shaped game design in some ways. The PSN/XBLA/WiiWare stores brought a lot of experimental, smaller, cheaper games that really didn't exist in previous generations. So I think to suggest that the last gen was primarily "reviving the past" is a bit unfair. There was a clear evolution - perhaps even a bigger one than from PS1>PS2/N64>GCN/SAT>DC.

As much as I am generally disinterested in Kinect so far, I think its mandatory inclusion in the Xbox One system purchase will turn out to be a wise decision for MS as it really opens up design possibilities for titles that are exclusives. As with the Wii's motion controls, good developers will find ways to use the camera in a way that isn't gimmicky or tacked on, but that introduce new and compelling. I expect the same will be true of Sony's on controller touch pad.

This is a fair point, but I think it's worth noting that most of this doesn't need extra power under the hood to work.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the more recent advances in game design are because of the structures supporting these consoles, and not the power of the consoles themselves. That's why, despite the fact that I'm sure I'll play a lot of really fantastic games, I'm not super interested in what the next generation has to offer as a whole. At least not yet.

[Gunstar Green]

I think EVERY generation, really, has had that moment when you finally see everything in action and it clicks and my jaw drops ... the only time that didn't happen was ... this coming generation ... and this last generation.

I can remember the moments when a new video game system made me go "wow." For the Genesis it was watching Sonic zip around the screen. For the super Nintendo it was that giant Bullet Bill in one of the opening levels of Super Mario World.

For the N64 it was moving Mario around in a full 3D space and playing Star Fox 64 for the first time which illustrated just how much of a leap over the Super Nintendo this new system was.

I don't remember being too thrilled about the Saturn or PlayStation. I was becoming a PC gamer at the time so their 3D offerings impressed me less. For dedicated console gamers though I'm sure it was huge.

For the Dreamcast it was seeing Crazy Taxi in action and being overwhelmed once more by how far 3D had come.

And there-in lies the problem. Graphics have gotten as good as they really need to and even as they improve the differences are far more insignificant looking to the average person compared to past strides in development. The new generations really don't have quite as tangible a difference as the old ones which makes it feel like the upgrade is only incremental even if it's not.

I think that's part of the reason this past generation held on for so long.