What are people's thoughts on the recent trend of consoles adopting standard x86 architecture? Sure, it makes games easier to port, but doesn't it turn them into just over-priced, non-upgradeable PCs?

Wow that looks ugly.

http://i.imgur.com/4El8l3O.jpg

It's really about what's inside, but why they insisted on even a custom HDD when they could have gone with an SSD... We've already discussed the speed at which Windows 8 boots and how much faster even it is (fast to begin with) with an SSD in it. Prices have gotten more affordable and they could have put in a 256 Gig SSD for a similar cost to the 500 Gig HDD.

I like the single 8 core processor. This could be a great box for modders to chain and make multi core multi processor untis out of them cheaper than buying the new 8 core Xeon or Itanium processors.

Yeah, sorry, but MS designing their own custom HDD brings me no comfort at all.

Have fun. I'll be beating the hell out of Paperboy, Tiger-Heli, Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers, and Final Fantasy I on my original-generation NES. You're jealous and you know it.

To Draug's point, isn't most of the content on the new Xbox going to be online anyway? You don't really even need that large of a HDD. They should at least have a SDD option available for extra $$$.

Arguably, that 8 core processor is hardly standard x86 architecture (at least not in an overpriced, non-upgradable way) as an 8 core processore now costs as much as half a current XBox 360 costs. In fact, an XBox 360 is less than $300 now and is more capable than any $300 machine I know of on the market.

I will always prefer PC gaming to gaming consoles, the graphics card on my computer is lightyears ahead of the graphics of the xbox 360 and ps3 and will probably be better then the xbox one and ps4.

The only reason I would ever consider getting a gaming console is because so many games are never released to the PC. The biggest area of that is sports games, I'm still stuck playing NHL09 because EA starting in 2010 decided they no longer wanted to release sports games for the PC.

I've got no real knowledge about this stuff, but a friend that does was telling me that the PS4 will actually be quite a few steps ahead of the new X-Box.

Discuss.

The consoles have the whole "interconnected with other console gamers on that platform around the world" thing going on. That is the one plus for them. Want to get a race going with 8 players at 2AM? No need to call and wake your friends, just go to XBox Live or Sony's equivalent and join a game running somewhere else in the world.

That said, I'm a PC player because I'm an MMO player and I feel the PC has better MMO games with the full keyboard and not the stupid button mashing joystick pushing of consoles.

I really hope the new gen. systems don't completely ignore people who like playing in the same room as their friends. Its already been taking a pretty big hit the past few years and looks like online gaming will continue to dominate but I'm sure there's a market of like minded people who feel pretty neglected.

Even sports games are neglecting their offline content which is pretty absurd. FIFA's lounge mode was one of the better and simpler additions to a sports game and was removed a couple of versions ago. If they do keep going that way, no amount of graphics will trump the fun human competition from getting a few friends around Smash Bros. etc.

Wii bowling and Wii tennis rocked! We had a Wii in the lounge/lunch area where I used to work (way back when I joined this site in fact) along with a ping pong table and a foosball table. We would have an afternoon party about once a month where we would play Wii bowling or tennis on the 60" flatscreen and have ping pong tournaments and foosball tournaments and even brought in a couple of cornhole sets (one area of the office, which was on the top floor of a really old building, had 30 foot ceilings, but we had to watch the lights that hung down from them :-) ).

I miss Wii bowling.

im playing from my wii right now

What is a "cornhole set" ?

Cornhole is a game where you toss beanbags into holes on plywood frames, it is awesome.

This is a mildly related question: If I got one of the new X-Boxes, could I get rid of cable and still get ESPN sports content? The only two things keeping our cable subscription right now are sports and my wife's love of CBS Sunday Morning.

Also if there are other ways to watch sports online or through a different gaming console I am all ears.

I never get new systems when they come out because the majority are disappointing. I do not have high hopes about the new xBox and unless I play one and find it amazing I will not be getting one. I don't care so much about the hardware as the games. Hardware doesn't matter if the games aren't made to utilize it. I hear all these fantastic new advances for systems, and yet I haven't heard of any new games that take advantage of them. Until I do I'll be sticking with the old 360, Nintendo DS, and PC for my games.

How do you get your internet, ckr? Mine is through Time Wrner Cinci, so I'd still have to have a cable subscription (I don't have a home phone, preferring to live on cell phones with Verizon's unlimited text and minutes sharing plan).

Re: cornhole. Think horseshoes with beanbags.

http://centralflorida.jdrf.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2013/03/Pro-Series-Cornhole_Classic-University-Back.jpg

I thought you could watch ESPN shows right from their website, no?

You still need internet to get to their website, no?

Yeah, but just Internet is usually cheaper than Internet and cable (at least it is for me).

I don't know if TWC even offers an internet only plan. Not that it matters to me as I enjoy the whole house DVR and On Demand with HiDef (well, what cable calls HiDef, no 1080p/25fps yet) and not having to wait for my TV shows for a day or a week or possibly never as some of them aren't carried on their respective web sites.

meh, my gf and I are happy enough watching PBS.

"Hardware doesn't matter if the games aren't made to utilize it."

That's an excellent point. Very few PS3 games actually took advantage of the PS3 HW, so what was even the point?

I have internet and cable through Comcast, they are the worst.

You need cable to use ESPN3, or at least to use all of it. Somehow it knows. I would be fine with eliminating cable and just using what's on the internet, but sometime last year ESPN 3 changed the rules (at least for me). If a subscription to XBox Live brought access to ESPN and some internet TV option (like Hulu Plus or Netflix) then I would probably spring for the console after the price comes down.

"I have internet and cable through Comcast, they are the worst. "

QFT

I should clarify, at least around here Comcast offers an internet/basic cable (essentially just local channels) for the same price as internet. In a better world of freely accessible sports (especially during football season) I would just have that.

""Hardware doesn't matter if the games aren't made to utilize it."

That's an excellent point. Very few PS3 games actually took advantage of the PS3 HW, so what was even the point?"

No...when a console initially comes out, the games don't take advantage of the hardware - who's going to spend all the dev. costs up front for unreleased hardware? As the system ages, the games improve. SO...if you don't provide good hardware for the devs down the road, they'll never develop to the good hardware.

Realistically, there are only a limited number of games/game types that will take full advantage of the hardware -- and I'll pay the cost of the hardware to play those few games. After all, I've upgraded a PC in the past for a single game...and all good PC gamers do this, and then the rest of the games catch up.

AS FOR the Xbox One being a "connected" system -- that sucks - I'll be pissed if I can't amuse myself with games with the internet goes down because my single player game requires a connection...but you can blame software pirates on this one.

But, even though they are connected, to address an early Abge point - you still want a large local hard drive to run the game from for smoother/faster play, plus your local drive can hold music/video, etc. that maybe you don't want cloud based.

I fully utilize the XBox live capacity of the XBox - we use it as the primary multi-media hub...price point on this new system will be interesting to see - because I'm not sure how much I want to pay for small, incremental performance enhancement and a new facade to get to my content.

@krellin

I agree that the HW needs to be good, but only to a point. Take the PS3 as an example. Only, say, a half-dozen games take full advantage of Sony's custom architecture. So, what was the point? Was it really worth the cost for those couple games, considering all the complications that came along with the custom architecture?


Also, I see your point about wanting a large HDD, but perhaps a medium sized internal SSD with an eSATA HDD would have been a better choice?

Yea for me at this point its entirely a price issue. If this thing costs much more then the 300 for a new 360, its just a no go. Especially given the current economic situation of the core demographic. In my opinion (intuition alone) any price above 500 is going to be awful for sales.

Abge - I'd still pay extra for better hardware. I'm a new console gamer - have the silly Wii and finally got the XBox (in part based upon a discussion you participated in a couple years ago...) and I am slipping away from PC gaming in part because of the hardware upgrade requirements to keep my games running at max settings.

But, when I fire up my XBox and put in my "high end" games that are supposed to play to the box's limits, I see jittery video, I see resolution that does not match my PC...and it frustrates the hell out of me.

Like I said, as a PC gamer, I was upgrading graphics cards, memory and then motherboard and CPU on a 2 to 3 year basis...sometimes on two machines so as to keep my wife gaming with me...and usually the hardware upgrade was targeted to a single game.

So, I've no problem with shelling out dollars for performance enhancements. What frustrates me is to buy a system that is crippled from the get go...what the point in a dev pouring effort in to matchinghardware capability if it is so limited anyway (slow loads, jittery, limited resolution...)

My dream: swapable hardware -- plug and play graphics upgrades for my XBox, for example.. Yeah....i guess I'm talking about a PC...except the XBox does function fundamentally different from a PC given it's Op sys, etc - which is good for family/kids.

I totally agree with an SSD - I *despise* spinning objects as a form of memory. And, again, it should be expandable.

what I really want is the XBox to play nicer with other content I own -- such as my music from Google play, or allow me to go to network websites and play video (which requires flash currently). I'm tired of being restricted from playing free content that is either on the net already, or which is own. Grrrr....

Yeah, you are pretty much describing a PC with an xbox controller : )

err...yeah...except I like the XBox op sys...and...yeah, like I said, I'm a PC gamer at heart.

I also wish MMORPG;s would hit the XBOX...lol....er....because I'm a PC gamer...and

but the kids love the Xbox, and no doubt I'll be an early adopter of the new one and my old one will land in the bedroom (much to the future dismay of my lovely wife...who will then see the benefits when I go to bedroom early with her so we can can chill on the couch in our skivies and continue on with our quest...lol)

By op sys, I assume you mean OS. Do you find it that much better to use than Win8? It seems like it would be a toss-up to me.

op sys - OS, yes. sorry...I'm being archaic, I guess.

Well, when I fire up my XBox, my games, media, shopping, etc are all laid out quite nice - easy to find what I want with either my controller or using voice commands. Very easy to use.

PS3 has a hideous interface.

I have a Windows 8 computer, and I like it....like-ish....not love...but it is not inherently organized as XBox 360 is. Also, as I upgraded to Win 8 on a non-touch screen laptop because i wanted to explore it, I have to say it kind of has some suckish qualities if you can't touch the screen. I'm not quite sure how well the XBox Win 8 interface will work, unless it requires me to use a Kinect sensor, which would suck in more ways than I can describe.

But Win 8 -- I have a bunch of live tiles that I can arrange as I please...and by leaving it up to me to organize, it means that it will fall towards chaos as new stuff is added.

XBox 360 "imposes" its own form of organization. forced org may be perceived as a bad thing by some...but you have to confess that their organization it automatic, it is consistent, and east to navigate.

So i see no advantage to Win 8...I don't necessarily want it (in its current form...) as the front in to my new game console / multimedia hub.

"PS3 has a hideous interface."

I'll agree with you there. My roommate has a PS3 and it's fucking awful. Xbox 360 is miles ahead of the PS3.