This.

The tech specs for the PS4 are impressive (i.e. use of DDR5), but the embedded memory will help with "the flow of traffic."

It also all depends on the software developers and how they utilize the hardware. The reason a lot of games looked better on the 360 compared to the PS3 were due to the ease of writing for the hardware. That shouldn't be an issue as the PS4 has moved away from the traditional Sony gaming architecture.

Anyone find the exact dimensions of the console anywhere?
How many years before we can expect the slim version?

So if I want to play 360 Kinect games and XO Kinect games, I gotta have these two bulky things on top of my TV?

Yes, there is no BC and 360 accessories will not work on the XO.

I'm not that mad. As far as I can tell, the only way this new console changes my life is that I can't borrow a game from a friend.

That's different. The way I read it was you were miffed about these things but slept on it and now don't care.

Well, yeah. I mean yesterday I was disappointed in the presentation and was somewhat mad about whatever the hell is going on with used games, as well as the lack of backwards compatibility. That was a kneejerk reaction. Today I don't really care. I'll buy games on sale if it comes to it, but I'm not going to play a Wii U or something... how silly.

Do you really believe this?

You know where Grandparent's go to get games for the grandkids? Gamestop or places like it. They always push the used games on them. This will works its way around.

It usually wasn't "look better" it was more, it tended to be ran better.

Would this kill the rental market as well?

I would imagine so.

Yes, I would imagine Gamefly, Family Video, and the like are all sweating bullets right now. Not just Gamestop.

If rentals and used games are out in the next generation I'll definitely wait for a review for all games and then probably purchase 4-6 games a year total. 60 bucks is to steep to take a chance on, and a couple industry guys were saying that 70 might be the new price point for games.

I guess I shouldn't care, I just want a console that plays games. I don't need all this TV and social media crap. Can't they just sell a dumbed down version that just plays games?

I like a lot of the ideas on the new Xbox but the "game activation" thing sounds like a giant clusterfuck waiting to happen. I'm interested to see how Gaikai on the PS4 pans out.

There's absolutely no reason why rentals couldn't sell temporary licenses like iTunes does for movies.

Now, would there be any need for a B&M to provide a disc-as-key? Sure because bandwidth is a critical issue.

Microsoft, as well as the publishers, would love to be able to track rentals with those keys. I don't see it being any different since you'll need a disc. Don't return it and Gamefly or wherever charges you for the disc. The change in the rental market might necessitate that Microsoft or the publishers set the timeframe for those rental keys.

Likely? No. But definitely within the realm of possibility.

I also see "digital rentals" being a thing soon. Say bye-bye to Gamefly and hello to xTunes

Again all this is needlessly complicated. Lets take a game console and make it as hard as possible to play a game.

No doubt, but there is also a strong argument to be made that sales and rentals should be better tracked. How can we bitch about the state of television ratings because Nielsen doesn't track our viewing habits but then bitch because publishers and developers want to have it be reversed?

I don't rent. I don't buy used. I don't sell.

I pay for the experiences I want. I reward the studios that are in line with my tastes.

Not everyone does directly. Why shouldn't those secondary sales and rentals be monetized to those in a position to continue the "series"?

I wouldn't mind if they offered, say, a 3 or 5 day temporary license for $20, and any time during the period of the license you can spend an additional $40 to unlock the full game.

But that would also have to be for downloads. No way am I going to bother with a B&M store on top of all of that.

$5 - $8 max, $20 is insane.

I could see them doing $2 per day, $10 for 5 days. And then you can pay $50 to get the permanent license.

Something else occurred to me. I don't play online with my PS3 at all, so I'm not entirely sure about the details on the big outage a couple years back, but they pretty much had to shut PSN down for a month, right? If the XO requires you to be online once every 24 hours to maintain playability of your games, I'm assuming that type of scenario would just turn the console into a brick for a month, or am I missing something?

They're still ironing that aspect out, I imagine when all is said and done it'll be once every 30 days like every other thing with the term "cloud" around it.

Plus there are multiple aspects to "online", I'm sure it isn't a single point of failure at this point in time.

I forgot, the games on the 360 ran and looked better. My bad. The only major, cross-platform game I could think of that got the same performance on either console was Battlefield 3. That ran at 1280×720 and 30 FPS on either unit. Most games got better resolution and better performance on the 360 (like every single Call of Duty game).

The difference between Microsoft and Sony is Microsoft knows better. The entire PSN debacle clearly showed Sony had no idea what it was doing in regards to running a competent network, but also encrypting customer's data. Obviously, Sony is in a far better place now, but that type of incident shouldn't happen again on any platform.

Makes sense. I rented a movie (sure, it was free but still ) on my 360 the other day, and I had 14 days to start watching it, and once I started it I had 24 hours to finish it. You could have the same concept with different time periods for non-disc-based games.