Disclaimer: Before I say my piece and get torn by either side, I come from a neutral gaming background owning every system I could coax from my parents/afford by myself.
There always have been and there always will be small but vocal groups of fanbases who will mercilessly defend their favoured platform even when it's neither in their intetests as a consumer or backed by any sense or logic.
Never has this been more noticeable or less understandable in my gaming life at the age of 24 with the opening months of this new console generation.
When the Xbox 360 had already been on the market for around a year and the Playstation 3 launched, there was a noticeable but not game breaking difference in multiplatform game. Regardless of how small or large, a difference is a difference and brand loyalists were quick to kick in rival owners faces. As the generation wore on, differences still persisted, but on a much smaller scale and less frequently. Even so, The Lens Of Truth was all the rage. Some textures being better here, more vibrant colours there and slightly sharper or darker shadows in between. These differences were of deemed important enough to have heated debates over and for fanboys to cling onto regardless of how trivial some aspects of some titles were.
But as the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 systems had their day in the sun and got to kick back for a while with the Xbox One and Playstation 4 taking the limelight, all of that changed almost immediately.
Straight out of the gate the next gen machines were under great observation for differences, some of which surprisingly large given the early stage of the systems and supposed near identical features and hardware.
The first shots fired were from the Activision camp with COD Ghosts revealed to be at native 1080p on the PS4 while the Xbox, commonly seen as the embodiment of the COD franchise, ran at an upscaled 720p. There was more to come, AC4 Black Flag ran at an upscaled 900p vs PS4's native 1080p, BF4 running upscaled 720p vs PS4's upscaled 900p. Even when the Xbox One was running the same resolution as PS4 , it paid the price in the performance department running at almost twice the framerate on the PS4.
The problem doesn't appear to be a launch problem either with the majority of most future AAA titles running at an inferior upscaled 720p vs PS4's native 1080p. Titles including Watch Dogs, The Witcher 3, Thief, MGS Ground Zeroes and a few others to date being revealed as falling under this criteria.
My problem here doesn't specifically lie with the resolutions and framerates themselves. As a gamer I find it highly unlikely that if I owned only an Xbox one I'd find myself playing COD and thinking "this is fun and all... I just wish it was NATIVE 1080p". If the experience is fundamentally the same and you don't have a PS4 or capable gaming PC for comparision, it's unlikely you'll notice anything at all. But that only covers those who already own a system and can't afford the other.
My main problem is that a fanbase feverishly kicked up such a fuss, and shout and screamed from the highest rooftops of the internet that foliage being sharper, shadows being more detailed or a washed out texture was a HUGE deal. But now that the shoe is on the other foot, but this time with legit, massive differences of DOUBLE the pixel count in alot of huge titles? It's suddenly "all about the gameplay" or "I dont play graphics, I play games". Some people either need to just make up their minds and enjoy what they have or just keep quiet, because that vocal minority bring an entire fanbase into disrepute.
If your sitting on your PC or at the store with the money to purchase one system, forget brands or "loyalty" which a faceless corporation could give a flying rats ass about, the natural choice is to buy the thing that gives you the most bang for your buck. So with a system that is $100 more expensive and performs anywhere between slightly worse to TWICE as bad, what is there left to defend? It's a losing game.
Either own as many platforms as you can and get the best of both worlds, or be happy with what you have and stop making fools of yourselves over indefensible fact.
This rant would have been aimed at any party who pulled this crap. Next gen I could and will write this rant if Sony, Nintendo or whoever else might exist then go down this road too.
The friendly folks over at Razer recently sent us their full size Kishi Ultra mobile gaming controller, and this thing didn't disappoint.
VGChartz's Mark Nielsen: "Upon finally finishing Devil May Cry 5 recently - after it spent several years on my “I’ll play that soon” list - I considered giving it a fittingly-named Late Look article. However, considering that this was indeed the final piece I was missing in the DMC puzzle, I decided to instead take this opportunity to take a look back at the entirety of this genre-defining series and rank the entries. What also made this a particularly tempting notion was that while most high-profile series have developed fairly evenly over time, with a few bumps on the road, the history of Devil May Cry has, at least in my eyes, been an absolute roller coaster, with everything from total disasters to action game gold."
Me leaving it out should be telling of my thoughts on it. Better than 2 as a DMC game.
Still a good game though.
3,1,4,5 to me, never played 2. 5 gameplay is amazing but level design was really disappointing to me, just a bunch of plain arenas, the story felt like a worse written rehash of the 3rd and the charater models looked weird ( specially the ladies ). Another problem with 5 was that there was not enough content for 3 charaters so I could never really familiarize with any of them
2.
Dmc.
4.
5.
1.
3.
God DMC2 was an awful game.
And in case this isn't obvious it goes worst to best
Order changes depending on your focus. I tend to focus on gameplay/fun factor, so...
5, 3, 1, 4, 2.
I really didn't like 4 but commend Dante's weapon diversity. The retreading of old ground was pretty unacceptable to me.
But even then... Still more enjoyable than 2 for me
TSA go hands on with the beta for Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road, but how is the game transitioning to the post-stylus era?
Having been a gamer for almost as long as you have been alive, it certainly isn't anything new (the console war) but what is new here is (I think) a reaction to the previous generation. PS fans were constantly derided for the "inferior grafix" although the 1st party titles looked remarkable.
This was often attributed to "gimping" titles that were believed to equal but could have been better on the PS3, at least graphically. (To me) it was all a wash, but it did make me wonder if developers were deliberately making games equal instead of just making the best game for the console they were deving for, which is what was happening in the SNES/Genesis era.
The fact that last gen was such a ridiculous battle of "equals," the development of games was bottlenecked by these policies. Games were not allowed to reach their full potential.
Now, with no install base, developers were free to maximize the settings on games for each system. Right now, that means the PS4 is displaying better graphics on almost the exact same games.
I think that many fans of Sony's system are feeling vindicated and want to take a jab right back at all the fanboyist behavior for that Xbot hatred of last gen.
N4G was not immune to this as the great fanboy wars raged across this site. It was insane.
There is one more problem this generation though. And that is sales. I think you missed this in your post. The sales of one console vs another was a big deal last generation. And quite often (and erroneously) the PS3 is claimed to have "failed" or "lost" by Xbox fanboys, when in reality it came in 2nd to the Wii in overall sales.
This generation is not starting well for Xbox1. This isn't fanboyism, but reality. We now know that the PS3 is outselling the Xbox1. Last week it was by almost 10,000 units, the week before, by 5500. The PS3 is still selling at a measured clip. What has happened is that sales for the Xbox1 have dwindled while the PS4 has skyrocketed.
What does that mean for gamers? It means more games in the future for that system. It means developers are going to look to the PS4 system first, which leads to your point about resolution and framerates: if the PS4 version is the lead platform, the Xbox1 games will need to be downgraded in graphical quality.
oh how the tables have turned. now you have the microsoft defense force that's so hypocritical. during 7th gen some reviewers gave ps3 versions of games lower scores for lower resolutions and had worse graphics than the 360 version.the xbox fanboys and the media made a huge deal about multiplats having a better framerate and resolution on the 360 and now from these the same people we hear resolution doesn't matter, who cares about graphics,1080p is not better than 720, I play games not names, its the drivers there not up to date, I cant tell the difference between 720p and 1080p, and there is no difference between upscaled and native.
Fanboys are always going to be fanboys, so I'm not very bothered by fanboys flip-flopping on this issue.
What disturbs me is seeing executives and journalists and big-wigs in the industry flip-flopping. Microsoft loved to tout their "superior multiplats" next gen but now they're hush. Journalists loved to point out a 20-pixel difference but 720p vs 1080p? Who can tell the difference?
It really exposes a lot of people in the industry.
Talk about hypocrisy. Remember all those Lens of Truth Head2 heads we used to get for EVERY SINGLE MULTIPLAT GAME?
I just went over to have a look thinking the LoT site had folded or something. No, its still there. The only next gen comparison I found on the head2head page was Battlefield.
I guess they did one and figured this gen was going to be a wash so they just stopped doing them. Hows that for just telling the truth?
We got 7 years of "George Foreman grill" "Overpriced internet ready Blu-ray player" "Expensive Toaster" "Failstation 3" etc etc
But just 3 months of "Xbone" and "720p" and the xdrones are all crying and want it to stop.
We will......in 6 years 9 months!
How's the taste of that medicine?