Video Games - dragons, lasers and zombies

[The Anti-Targ]

Mm, makes sense. I was thinking more on whether it would cover the cost outlay, but I suppose even if its not profitable in the short term, they have to do it to maintain sufficient market share so as to not be left behind and try to recoup the initial outlay in the long term.

Well there's definitely a significant cost/benefit consideration. Which is probably why there are so few pure exclusivity deals happening in relation to established IP. And indeed even with new IP from 3rd party developers. Titanfall, new IP but is on PC and Xbox. The exclusivity was just to keep it away from PS4/3, which probably wasn't all that expensive for MS at the time because the shooter crowd has traditionally been on Xbox and PC. And probably at the time the deal was made EA thought Xb one would sell similar numbers to PS4, or better, (some "analysts" were claiming the 8th gen Xbox had a solid chance of outselling PS4, but that was before the Xbox one DRM/no used games debacle), which didn't happen.

Ryse, is coming to PC. Crytek wants to bring the franchise to PS4 (not surprising really).

Dead Rising 3, now on PC and Xbox.

Rise of the Tomb Raider, almost certain to come to PC in 2016, and more than likely will also end up on PS4. The lack of a clear "will never be released on a non-Xbox console" message from MS and SE/CD strongly implies it will come to PS4 at some stage. IMO the asking price for full and permanent Xb one permanent exclusivity for this game would have been too much even for MS's deep pockets. MS can only go so far in throwing money away to try to make Xb one competetive. And with their fairly drastic measures in the last few months with price cuts, on top of the Assassin's creed bundle and other 3rd party game giveaways their margins have to be small to negative on Xb one right now.

Street Fighter 5, will co-releases on PC with cross platform play. And 80% of the Street Fighter fanbase is covered with this deal. Also there is every likelihood that Super/Ultra Street Fighter 5 will be fully multiplatform. If PC/PS4 cross platform play remains for further iterations of Street Fighter, it might effectively leave Xb one out in the cold anyway, unless MS changes its cross platform play policy.

Sqaure Enix managed to squirm its way out of exclusivity for Final Fantasy vs. XIII by killing off the name and making the game FFXV. I sure hope Sony got a refund there.

TBH I would not be surprised to see Bayonetta 2 get a PC release, because on Wii U the game is bombing hard and neither Nintendo or Platinum are going to make money off the game. I do hope for Platinum's sake that there is an exclusivity breaking clause if B2 doesn't meet certain sales targets. It undoubtedly reached quality / game critic targets, so there can be no excuses for lack of sales on that score. If Sony can co-fund SF5 and still have it release on PC at the same time as PS4, then I don;t see why Nitnendo should keep this game off PC if it will get some revenue from those sales, and at the same time not see what they thought of as a strategically important game wind up on other consoles.

The common theme to a lot of exclusivity deals these days seems to be that the console companies don't see PC as competition. The strategy is merely to keep a game off the rival consoles. And it's a way to reduce the cost of exclusivity, and of course to claim that pretty much everyone has access to a game because, at least for PS4 and Xbox, what self respecting gamer doesn't have a PC that is at least capable of playing a game on minimum settings? Well I don't yet have a PC capable of playing the most recent games on minimum settings (a la Dragon Age inquisition), but it is still good enough to play somewhat recent games. But my next PC, will have the capability to play any current game on minimum settings. I don't care about droolworthy PC visuals since I'm mostly a console guy, so I am quite happy with console quality graphics.

Hmmm I might try out Suikoden II. I've heard very good things about the series.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

This was the first RPG I ever played and I've always had really fond memories of it, too bad I don't have a PS3. I wonder what I'd think if I played it now.

It holds up really well. They seem to have fixed most of the translations issues for the render, so that's a relief.

Is the original Suikoden on there?

Yes it is. I played it over the weekend once I realized Suikoden II was coming to PSN.

Well there's definitely a significant cost/benefit consideration. Which is probably why there are so few pure exclusivity deals happening in relation to established IP. And indeed even with new IP from 3rd party developers. Titanfall, new IP but is on PC and Xbox. The exclusivity was just to keep it away from PS4/3, which probably wasn't all that expensive for MS at the time because the shooter crowd has traditionally been on Xbox and PC. And probably at the time the deal was made EA thought Xb one would sell similar numbers to PS4, or better, (some "analysts" were claiming the 8th gen Xbox had a solid chance of outselling PS4, but that was before the Xbox one DRM/no used games debacle), which didn't happen.

Ryse, is coming to PC. Crytek wants to bring the franchise to PS4 (not surprising really).

Dead Rising 3, now on PC and Xbox.

Rise of the Tomb Raider, almost certain to come to PC in 2016, and more than likely will also end up on PS4. The lack of a clear "will never be released on a non-Xbox console" message from MS and SE/CD strongly implies it will come to PS4 at some stage. IMO the asking price for full and permanent Xb one permanent exclusivity for this game would have been too much even for MS's deep pockets. MS can only go so far in throwing money away to try to make Xb one competetive. And with their fairly drastic measures in the last few months with price cuts, on top of the Assassin's creed bundle and other 3rd party game giveaways their margins have to be small to negative on Xb one right now.

Street Fighter 5, will co-releases on PC with cross platform play. And 80% of the Street Fighter fanbase is covered with this deal. Also there is every likelihood that Super/Ultra Street Fighter 5 will be fully multiplatform. If PC/PS4 cross platform play remains for further iterations of Street Fighter, it might effectively leave Xb one out in the cold anyway, unless MS changes its cross platform play policy.

Sqaure Enix managed to squirm its way out of exclusivity for Final Fantasy vs. XIII by killing off the name and making the game FFXV. I sure hope Sony got a refund there.

TBH I would not be surprised to see Bayonetta 2 get a PC release, because on Wii U the game is bombing hard and neither Nintendo or Platinum are going to make money off the game. I do hope for Platinum's sake that there is an exclusivity breaking clause if B2 doesn't meet certain sales targets. It undoubtedly reached quality / game critic targets, so there can be no excuses for lack of sales on that score. If Sony can co-fund SF5 and still have it release on PC at the same time as PS4, then I don;t see why Nitnendo should keep this game off PC if it will get some revenue from those sales, and at the same time not see what they thought of as a strategically important game wind up on other consoles.

The common theme to a lot of exclusivity deals these days seems to be that the console companies don't see PC as competition. The strategy is merely to keep a game off the rival consoles. And it's a way to reduce the cost of exclusivity, and of course to claim that pretty much everyone has access to a game because, at least for PS4 and Xbox, what self respecting gamer doesn't have a PC that is at least capable of playing a game on minimum settings? Well I don't yet have a PC capable of playing the most recent games on minimum settings (a la Dragon Age inquisition), but it is still good enough to play somewhat recent games. But my next PC, will have the capability to play any current game on minimum settings. I don't care about droolworthy PC visuals since I'm mostly a console guy, so I am quite happy with console quality graphics.

Hmmm I might try out Suikoden II. I've heard very good things about the series.

If you decide to play, I'd recommend playing the first one so that you can use data from that game in the second game.

[Jabronius Maximus]

So, an older i7 is still more powerful than a new i5?

In that case, I should be better off just going for the i7 instead of the new i5 + motherboard. I'm reluctant to go that route as after that I'm basically a case, psu and some ram away from a brand new pc when I can delay that for maybe another three years at a marginally higher cost for a cpu. Speaking of which, if you have old monitors, is there any use for them other than as an emergency backup?

Yes, an older i7 (let's say 1 generation older, like an i7-3770) will be as strong or stronger than a new i5. But it'll still be much more expensive than the i5 (and will probably cost as much as an i5 + new motherboard).

The general rule of thumb is this - when you can't play a game at the settings and resolutions that you like, then it's time for an upgrade.

Also I'd recommend going to reddit's PC building page. There is great advice there, as we're not terribly knowledgeable here lol. That's the site i used when I was putting together my current computer.

http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc

[Werthead]

The Banner Saga 2 officially announced. Sweet. The first one was excellent, definitely one of the top games of this year.

until you can't play a game at the settings and resolutions that you like, then it's time for an upgrade

Definitely. I'm still running an nVidia 550ti. People were telling me to upgrade a year ago, but I can still run almost everything at highest settings, or at worst dropping to second-highest and turning off AA (it might help I'm only rocking a single 1080p monitor though). That's a 4-year-old graphics card. I was looking for upgrade options and was rather shocked to see the logical upgrade path - the 750ti - was in fact completely not worth it. The performance increases were minimal, and in some benchmarks were worse. The 760 (still an 18-month-old card) offers a significant peformance increase back up to putting everything on maximum and the price is coming down on that to something I'd be willing to deal with, so I might go down that route.

But yeah, the days of PCs needing to be upgraded every 6 months are a long, long way behind us now.

[Migey]

Werthead, I'm using an nvidia GTX Geforce 760 and it works absolutely fine for me, runs mostly everything I want it to pretty well and I havn't even overclocked it yet. Can't run everything on maximum though. Not sure what sort of games you're playing.

That said the GTX 970 looks like way better value. For about a hundred or so more pounds you get more than double the performance, basically. Depends on what you're playing. I don't really need it now but next year for black friday when the price has dropped and deals are going I'm going to pick one up really cheap.

That said, when I got it half a year ago, the 760 was definately one of the best budget cards out there. Great performance for cost for a mid-range build.

[Werthead]

The 550 is still fine for the next few games I want to play (Elite: Dangerous being highly scalable, apparently). I'll be interested to see how it handles Shadows of Mordor though. It should handle Far Cry 4 fine - it didn't even sweat Far Cry 3, and the improvements to the engine for FC4 are apparently modest - but I suspect DA:I will be challenging. The Frostbite Engine has been pretty demanding for it. I also have no idea how it'll handle GTA5. Rockstar are totally unpredictable when it comes to optimisation. The card certainly handled Max Payne 3 without even breaking a sweat, but GTA5 will be more demanding.

It's definitely helped that 2014 has been a fairly undemanding year for major graphics powerhouse games though, and instead much bigger for Kickstarter and indie games and even ports of older games. The last few titles I played were Valkyria Chronicles, Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin, none of which are very demanding. I think the last really big games I played on the graphics front were Metro: Last Light, Rome II (which did cause problems, but only on the larger battles) and Sleeping Dogs.

[fuseprime]

It's a shame that PS4's, Xbone, and WiiU's digital libraries don't include games that were released on their previous iteration's digital libraries. I would have bought Suikoden 2 on the PS4 in a heartbeat.

[The Anti-Targ]

DayZ creator is starting a new game studio at [almost] the bottom of the world. Lucky Dunedin. Seems like Dean Hall is a ski / snowboarding fan, so Dunedin is a good place to be based.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/games/64006397/dayz-creator-to-open-dunedin-game-studio

Dean Hall, the creator of the popular zombie survival game DayZ, has announced his new Dunedin-based studio, RocketWerkz.

Hall made the announcement overnight on Twitter, also stating that he's looking for staff to join the team.

Yesterday, he listed two job openings for RocketWerkz on TradeMe, one for a Video Game Artist, and the other for a Video Game Programmer. The ads describe RocketWerkz as a "new wholly independent studio with world-wide projects currently centred out of Dunedin," that has a "focus is to make the games that we want to play."

Hall is best known for creating the DayZ mod for first-person shooter Arma II, which turned into a lifelike zombie survival game. The mod was so popular that it spawned a stand-alone version, which is currently in Early Access on Steam.

I hope he does well.

[The Anti-Targ]

It's a shame that PS4's, Xbone, and WiiU's digital libraries don't include games that were released on their previous iteration's digital libraries. I would have bought Suikoden 2 on the PS4 in a heartbeat.

Well PS4 will have something akin to that with PS Now. In theory every PS1, 2, 3, P, Vita game will be playable on PS4 via PS Now. They will also be playable on some phones, tablets and more than likely PCs too, and PS3. It will all depend on how many games they put into the PS Now library. But in the mean time I'm pretty sure you still have all bunch of PS1 classics you can buy digitally. PS4 doesn;t do CD playback at the moment, so you can't use old PS1 discs. Hopefully they'd add CD playback at some point. It's one reason (not the only one) I still have PS3 hooked up to my main TV set.

[Proudfeet]

Yes, an older i7 (let's say 1 generation older, like an i7-3770) will be as strong or stronger than a new i5. But it'll still be much more expensive than the i5 (and will probably cost as much as an i5 + new motherboard).

The general rule of thumb is this - when you can't play a game at the settings and resolutions that you like, then it's time for an upgrade.

Also I'd recommend going to reddit's PC building page. There is great advice there, as we're not terribly knowledgeable here lol. That's the site i used when I was putting together my current computer.

http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc

Thanks for the link, its very helpful and informative. I may just get the current generation of i5 and get a completely new rig next time around. Still waiting for my graphics card to arrive so I can see how it runs.

[Jasta11]

The 550 is still fine for the next few games I want to play (Elite: Dangerous being highly scalable, apparently). I'll be interested to see how it handles Shadows of Mordor though. It should handle Far Cry 4 fine - it didn't even sweat Far Cry 3, and the improvements to the engine for FC4 are apparently modest - but I suspect DA:I will be challenging. The Frostbite Engine has been pretty demanding for it. I also have no idea how it'll handle GTA5. Rockstar are totally unpredictable when it comes to optimisation. The card certainly handled Max Payne 3 without even breaking a sweat, but GTA5 will be more demanding.

It's definitely helped that 2014 has been a fairly undemanding year for major graphics powerhouse games though, and instead much bigger for Kickstarter and indie games and even ports of older games. The last few titles I played were Valkyria Chronicles, Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin, none of which are very demanding. I think the last really big games I played on the graphics front were Metro: Last Light, Rome II (which did cause problems, but only on the larger battles) and Sleeping Dogs.

In my experience, Far Cry 4 is actually more demanding than Inquisition. My six core AMD Phenom @ 2.9 GHz with ATI R7 260x card runs Inquisition with most options at High, textures at Ultra, no AA, at 30+ framerate all the time which is acceptable for me, save for dips in one very crowded area that you only need to go to twice.

FC4 by contrast has wildly inconsistent framerate with most options at High. I'm at 50ish FPS, then suddenly I drop to 20 for no apparent reason, and the driving... gosh, the pop-in and stutter makes driving an unpleasant experience. Compared to FC3, which ran swimmingly all the time on max for me, FC4 is dissapointing port-wise.

[Azzanadra]

Heh, the Witcher 3 delay came as no surprise with the whole outburst over the supposed "downgrade" in visual quality. I am kind of glad, mainly because it gives me more time to put together a nice PC for that.

[eyenon15]

Heh, the Witcher 3 delay came as no surprise with the whole outburst over the supposed "downgrade" in visual quality. I am kind of glad, mainly because it gives me more time to put together a nice PC for that.

I'm kind of glad too, I still have a backlog of games that I haven't gotten to yet. Still haven't even opened far cry 4.

I'll be on dragon age for a good while still.

Witcher will have its day in court

[Gears of the Beast]

Heh, the Witcher 3 delay came as no surprise with the whole outburst over the supposed "downgrade" in visual quality. I am kind of glad, mainly because it gives me more time to put together a nice PC for that.

That's what I was thinking too. It's probably going to require a pretty monstrous PC to run at higher settings but it'll be worth it - I have very high expectations for it.

[Rhom]

Went ahead and pulled the trigger on the Destiny expansion pass. I keep coming back to it for a quick half hour to hour of play here and there, so I figure why not?

[Crom Dubh]

The bitching over graphics always surprises me. Honestly, as long as it looks about as good as the Witcher 2, I will be content. That's still the prettiest game I've yet seen, with the most awesome of art aesthetics. My only lament being that Geralt cannot rip some of that awesome Milanese-style plate armor of the dead Temerians/Aedirnians/Kaedweni/whoever and wear it like a boss. Yes yes, I know why he doesn't. I still want it, damn it all.

[MerenthaClone]

Wert: Shadow of Mordor scales really, really well. If you ran FC3, you'll be fine on SoM.

[Ramsay B.]

Went ahead and pulled the trigger on the Destiny expansion pass. I keep coming back to it for a quick half hour to hour of play here and there, so I figure why not?

I got it also after I stopped playing for a bit. A few of my friends were playing it non-stop to try and get gear from the first raid to reach a 30 before the expansion but are kind of sour because they are selling 33 gear now. A lot of cool new weapons too but some of my favorites like Dr. Nope may be obsolete now.

[Rhom]

I got it also after I stopped playing for a bit. A few of my friends were playing it non-stop to try and get gear from the first raid to reach a 30 before the expansion but are kind of sour because they are selling 33 gear now. A lot of cool new weapons too but some of my favorites like Dr. Nope may be obsolete now.

Dr. Nope was gifted to me in the mail by Bungie a few weeks back. (Honestly, that's what got me playing again.) I was level 22 yesterday before I logged in, but after purchasing the XPac I received a new chest and legs in the mail. When I put them on they were roughly equivalent to my current gear, but after running two strikes and getting 2/3 upgrades for each I jumped to level 24.

ETA: The free PSN game for the PS4 is Injustice. I've played it here and there on a mobile phone, but never the proper console edition. I went ahead and downloaded it just in case I want to try it out later. My four year old is really into superheroes right now, but I figure the game is probably a bit complicated for him at the moment.

ETA2: Also, Dragon Quest 3 came out for the iOS this week. Picked it up last night. A lot of great memories there. My hero Kellhus has set out on his quest accompanied by Cnaiur the warrior, Maitha the priest, and Akka the mage. :lol:

[Ferrum Aeternum]

Are a lot of folks still playing Destiny? I am continually tempted to splurge on that PS4 bundle, but with the lukewarm reception the game got around here after the first month or so I haven't pulled the trigger.