Quoting: TheBossUpdated the article to show our new shiny webcam tripod.

lol - wonderful!

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Quoting: RichieEBYep

Excellent. Then this is a nobrainer.

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Can't wait for this to arrive, the first game was a total blast on the ps3.

But is it confirmed cross platform multiplayer support?

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Quoting: EikeAs you obviously asked all of them, who am I to diagree.

It's not me - it's statistics. Fallout 4 shipped twenty million retail copies the first 24 hours after release. GTA has so far sold fifty million retail copies world wide. And this is not including the digital sales - only physical copies.

Point is, those are the franchises a platform must offer. Those are the games that push machines. The indies are a nice bonus, but that's all they are.

Quoting: EikeBut I personally would like to have both - AAA and lots of games including many indie pearls.

Indies are everywhere, man. Absolutely everywhere, including iPads, smartphones and of course both the PS4 and Xbone. There's no reason to purchase anything in particular to get to them. An "indie console" is not gonna sell. I'm sorry but it won't. Look at that budget Android-based console that were kickstarted a while ago - "Ouya". Gems, plenty of them, but no flagships. It flopped, to put it gently.

Quoting: EikeI still find the fact impressive - more games at start than the last consoles have after nine years.
And no, these are also not all AAA games.

I got 178 titles on my Steam account - a whopping 139 of them runs on Linux. For an old Linux fan that's surreal to see listed.

... But it's only half the story. I've only purchased Linux titles the last two years. And thus missed out on GTAV, Fallout 4, Witcher 3, Dragon Age Inquisition, Watch_Dogs... All titles it really pains to miss out on. I'd pay for them TWICE if I had to - heck slap a pricetag three times as high for the Linux version and I'd shell out in an instant.
Sure, I've got plenty to spend time on. And titles like Xcom, Borderlands 2, and Dying Light has really saved the day for me. But man... I really really hate missing out on those games. Had I not been a Linux nuthead, I'd not even consider a platform without them. But I am, so I hardheadedly put my money where my mouth is. :)

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyNo apps for Netflix and similar webby multimedia stuff. That's something well within Valve's power to fix, they should get on it.

Indeed they should. That'd make me get a Steam machine instead of a Chromecast this xmas.

Quoting: EikeWhile I still find it hard to believe, Steam Machines had more titles on launch day than Xbox 360 or PS3 have today (according to Wikipedia's numbers)...

I'm sorry, but those numbers means zero - nill - nothing for the console customers.
Franchises like Fallout, GTA, Assassins Creed, Call Of Duty, Battlefront, Mass Effect: That's what matters. And not one hundred thousand indie games can make up for that: They don't mean squat.

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This is just so cool. This is a big part of why I love the Linux community, really.

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Quoting: TheBossNo, it's not a fair comparison, for one they are a completely different genre of games ;)

... And the budgets for catering alone is guaranteed to surpass the entire production cost of this MMO. :D

The comparison above was of course just to state the insane distance between mobile and PC gpus. But I could have made a more sober comparison:
Take the Trine games, or even the rather modest looking Torchlight games. The graphics in this game could easily have been like those. But it's not. Why? Smartphones. That's why. And imo, that's just not cool.

Quoting: KelsI find the top screenshot provided by Beamboom MUCH more appealing to the eye, and would rather play that than the photorealistic shot. So that's a thing.

Kels, I'm not talking about photo realism here or the artistic expression. I talk about the technical aspect - sheer polygon count. Shadows. Details of textures. The rendered result.
They could have kept the artistic expression but it could have looked so endlessly much better if mobiles was out of the picture. The Trine games are good examples of cartoonish, colourful artwork that looks just flat out stunning. Gorgeous animations, smooth and beautiful execution.

Also, the gameplay takes a huge hit in these situations. Why are the attacks in this game just a question of clicking on the enemies in this game, with very limited mechanics? Obviously because of mobile phone considerations. The mobiles are not just restricting the visuals, but just as much the mechanics. And that's not cool in my book!

Quoting: TheBossHonestly, I think you're going way overboard on this game based on its graphics. That must keep you away from quite a number of games to try.

Hey - beggars can't be choosers, right? :)
One thing is small games you'll spend a handful of hours in. I can appreciate simplified aesthetics (and mechanics) there. They are like short films. Another thing altogether is a MMO where you are expected to invest hundreds of hours. That's a huge trilogy, to continue the comparison. Then the visuals and acting are really starting to count, imo.

But it's not just about the graphics, it's about the mechanics too. Overall the exact same complaints we formerly did about the consoles "dumbing down" the games, can be applied ten-folds when it comes to smartphones as the limiting factor.

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I'm no graphics whore myself, but how can we feel good about this;



... knowing it could have looked like something closer to this,



... had it not been for f'ing smartphones?

It's not a fair comparison on any account of course. A tiny indie company can never produce Battlefront and we know it. But still.
To end where I began in my first post: We thought we had it bad when we felt the consoles held us back. But now we settle with games that could just as well have been played on a friggin' iPad?

These are tough times, comrades.

;)

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Quoting: TheBoss

Quoting: BeamboomThere was a time when PC gamers complained about games being console ports. Today we have to live with friggin mobile phone ports.

This is not a mobile port, it is a fully cross-platform game. They are developing on all at the same time.

Technically you are right, and I guess the same can be said about most of the console "ports" to PC as well - most of them were developed during the same timespan, planned for all platforms during design and development.

But the problem is that these cross-platform developments logically have to relate to the bottlenecks of the weakest platform. Like the consoles and their controllers, limiting the complexity of the interaction. Or here, with the mobile phones and the extreme limitations of their touch screens. You mention this yourself in the article. And now we've not even mentioned the limited processor and graphic capacities of the mobiles.
I mean... Look at it. Come on. It looks like something from the Playstation 2 era - and it's not even pushing the PS2. Nobody shall come here and tell me that the PC version don't suffer from having to squeeze the game to make it fit through the tiny little peghole that is the mobile phone.

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There was a time when PC gamers complained about games being console ports. Today we have to live with friggin mobile phone ports.

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