Console RAGE

[stickytape]

RAGE is due for release next year.

As I understand, RAGE requires 1tb of HDD space, and even the latest Xbox has only a quarter of that capacity; it seems a major brick wall in console gaming is it's lack of capacity for consumers to upgrade in hardware. So what will this generation of game mean for consoles in the future? Will everyone have to keep buying yet another Xbox or PS3, and what of portability and performance? With fresh, state-of-the-art hardware released on PC ALL the time, how and why does console manage to keep up? Or is PC gaming and console not at competition at all?

And yes, unfortunately I know about the market: I see how comparatively slim those PC-game shelves are.

All Hail ID

[skier]

as a generalization the best console is nowhere near the graphical quality of even a midrange PC and never will be. the PC is a separate market entirely and games are often coded for both, but basically console games are coded designed and laid out for console, sometimes they are ported for PC, but it depends how lazy the coders are (GRAND THEFT AUTO I'M LOOKING AT YOU) for the graphical or gameplay quality on PC. games originally released on PC will always look better than console counterparts.

Console developers have set hardware specifications that they are working with, so they just optimize and optimize until there's nowhere left to go, at which point you have the new generation of hardware. this is similar to PC gaming, though for PC it occurs on a ~6-12 month cycle, not a ~4 year cycle so developers have a lot more options for what they want to support or what they want the game to look like which makes it harder on the dev's. for console you basically had DX8 for PS1, DX9 for PS2 and DX10 for PS3, wheras PC and PC hardware has been on DX11 for the past year (since november) obviously they can't stay on the same level for long because you have to take account performance of the hardware (playing Metro 2033 at high settings on a 8400GS wouldn't work very well, just as metro at max PC settings would be ~5fps on a PS3). Sadly the game Dev's are limited by what hardware Microsoft and SONY throws out to them, and they have to make it a consistent 45-60FPS on that aging hardware.


and there is no way that A console game would have a 1TB HDD space requirement, at least not for 4-5 years on a PS4 or maybe even PS5. as that would mean you would have to have 5+TB of total space which currently does not exist, for one... since when do console games even REQUIRE hard drive space for anything other than save files anyway?


/unorganized rambling I have a vague knowledge of, summary: games originally released on PC will always look better than console counterparts.

[Sttm]

They have showed off the Rage engine running on an iPhone 4. It is extremely scalable. It might take 2 DVDs or possibly more for the XBox 360, while only requiring the 1 BluRay for PS3. But that is the only storage issue that I have read of.

There is absolutely no way it will take up a TB. It is simply impossible.

I dont buy PC games off a store shelve, I buy them off Steam and I think that is how PC gaming is going to thrive. Steam lets you reinstall infinite amount of times, it auto updates, it has built in social, they have price specials every day; and I have hit download speeds over 7MB/s; which allows me to download a game like Mass Effect 2 and have it installed in less time then to actually drive out to Best Buy, walk to the back, find the game, wait through check out, drive home, open it up, and install it off the disc.

[stickytape]

Of course; console reads from disc. PSX was a long time ago for me, indeed. I just hope PC gaming continues to be viable and maintains the edge when it come to quality gaming. I can't say I know that many PC gamers - It was serious research just to figure out what graphics cards I should buy.

console games are coded designed and laid out for console, sometimes they are ported for PC, but it depends how lazy the coders are (GRAND THEFT AUTO I'M LOOKING AT YOU)

I was warned about some bad ports made regarding console-2-PC games; laziness and/or greed, apparently. I was enormously $#!+ed off when I bragged about buying Dead Space on PC only to find that there were DPI and V-sync issues, and no fixes. In my Console PC Cold War, I was forced to admit the Xbox version was better. No matter; my mate was forced to admit he has spent up to $2000 worth of busted Xbox. Ah-Ha, eat my snickers bar, Paulie. Victory is forever mine!

I dont buy PC games off a store shelve, I buy them off Steam and I think that is how PC gaming is going to thrive

Here In Australia? It's likely faster driving to the damn shop. Our Internet is one sorry state of affairs. Never the less, personally I prefer to buy the game off the shelf anyway. Buying the package means having the genuine or limited article in your collection, as one would a DVD or Book, it keeps as backup, can be traded, and it's nice & shinny. I use to regard Steam as yet one more security checkpoint in the our "user friendly" installation process, but I find it does offer convenient services.

[skier]

Here In Australia? It's likely faster driving to the damn shop. Our Internet is one sorry state of affairs. Never the less, personally I prefer to buy the game off the shelf anyway. Buying the package means having the genuine or limited article in your collection, as one would a DVD or Book, it keeps as backup, can be traded, and it's nice & shinny. I use to regard Steam as yet one more security checkpoint in the our "user friendly" installation process, but I find it does offer convenient services.

steam has servers all over the globe, I personally download from a server in Iceland because it isn't loaded with american user downloads during product releases or major updates, and it consistently maxes my connection of a whopping 180KBps and I live with using steam-only just fine. i load up every game I own on a 1TB storage drive(internal) so I never even have to reinstall a single game, I can keep every setting, every downloaded map or skin. just have to make a link to the steam .exe when I reinstall windows and i'm good to go

[bubba]

All a saw was RAGE blah blah needs 1TB of drive space blah blah blah

W.T.F. does a game need 1TB for.

Went looking and all I saw in Google was this thread and one other pointing at Techtree.com (never heard of them)

"An uncompressed copy of Rage is about 1TB in size." http://www.techtree.com/India/Reviews/R ... 698-2.html

[Sttm]

Here In Australia? It's likely faster driving to the damn shop. Our Internet is one sorry state of affairs. Never the less, personally I prefer to buy the game off the shelf anyway. Buying the package means having the genuine or limited article in your collection, as one would a DVD or Book, it keeps as backup, can be traded, and it's nice & shinny. I use to regard Steam as yet one more security checkpoint in the our "user friendly" installation process, but I find it does offer convenient services.

I do not think I ever traded a pc game. These days its like every game I get I play online and anyone who I would trade the game to would already have it because I am playing online with them. The one game I have played in a long time without a multiplayer component is Mass Effect 2, and I only bought it because it was on sale on Steam for $19.99; but then I ended up truly loving it and sinking over 120 hours into it. Something that just would not happen to me in a store, It would not occur to me to browse through and find something on sale.

A physical copy just means clutter for me and time to find it and open it. I would rather have all media on a hard drive that is instantly accessed from multiple computers across my network. And all my books on a Kindle, that allows me to remove book cases in my room and just have 1 small little tablet sitting on my desk. I do not fear that I would need a physical back up, that steam would die, and I'd be forever incapable of playing; to me that is as likely as me simply losing the disc.

Of course this all depends on your internet service and a year ago when I was still using 6 mbps dsl I could not fathom not buying a game at a store because Id have to wait hours to install it, and hours again if I had to reinstall.

But then I got 50mbps Comcast cable, and now I buy games online all the time, because well it only takes ~25 minutes to download and install; and it is user friendly. I dont have to download patches or work through an installshield wizard; just click install on steam and it does it and keeps it updated.

I recently reinstalled Windows, and as I was installing photoshop, after effects, maya, 3ds max, Zbrush, and a lot of other software off discs and having to enter the serial numbers and do the activations I was wishing they could make it as easy as steam, where I just installed steam, and clicked once on every game on my account and it just did it.

[bubba]

LOL 50mbps.. I'm still rocking 1.5DSL in the boondocks I live in. I buy stuff off steam, fire it up to DL and go to bed its done in the morning. If I have to reinstall the whole shabang I take it to work and stick it in the corner to chug away, even then its bonded T1 pair for a whopping 3mbps.

[skier]

LOL 50mbps.. I'm still rocking 1.5DSL in the boondocks I live in. I buy stuff off steam, fire it up to DL and go to bed its done in the morning. If I have to reinstall the whole shabang I take it to work and stick it in the corner to chug away, even then its bonded T1 pair for a whopping 3mbps.

yup. when I had to download Grand theft auto I did it over the weekend, most other games will do overnight, or into the next day, still wouldn't ever do it any other way.