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Hardcore PC gamer buys console

As a PC gamer, would you buy a console to play online with your console friends?


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qubit

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Or maybe because the Playstation 4 is damn good.
I wouldn't describe it as "damn good". I've got Rainbow Six Siege on the PC too and it plays way better on that. The framerate on the PS4 frequently drops to 30fps without the possibly of adjusting quality settings to improve it, which totally sucks, frankly. The overall experience with it is pleasant enough though and it's not overly noisy while playing games or watching a Blu-ray, which is a big improvement over the original hardware version. This is the second version.

It's probably correct to call it the best out of the consoles, but I haven't physically played around with the Xbox One to compare, however. My mate (the pestering one) has both and thinks the PS4 is better and I trust his judgement on that.
 

FordGT90Concept

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Xbox One is more about home theater than gaming. The reverse is true of PlayStation.

I mean, Windows 10 can't even DVR by itself anymore; but if you buy an Xbox One and hook it up to your satellite/cable, you can stream the recordings from the Xbox One. How pathetic is that? It should be the other way around. Microsoft clearly has its priorities turned around where Sony does not.
 

FireFox

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I don't know why Microsoft still continue wasting money building Xbox:D
:nutkick:Xbox
 
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Or maybe because the Playstation 4 is damn good.

Ehhhh not really. Every time the PS4 lags on Rocket League because of a tiny puff of smoke from an explosion it makes me giggle. I mean, this game is so not demanding that with one Titan X and my CPU at stock I hit the new frame cap of 250fps, and when I screw with the config file to get even better quality with cinematic 4k with extra AA I still don't budge from the frame cap. I mean this is Unreal Engine 3 stuff and it lags on a small explosion. Then the LoD and frame drops in Destiny is kinda laughable, on top of the fact that they have an artificial limit to internet speeds even on a cable.

Don't get me wrong, I'm having a blast playing with my buds literally every day now, but I wouldn't say the console is damn good. Especially if you're used to a PC experience. It's just a console and everybody will find the flaws. Some will purposely look for them, some will just come across them and laugh it off like me. I don't regret my purchase at all, but even I laugh at my best friend who's so PCMR he gives me shit anytime he thinks I'm on the PS4. Yet I sit here saying at least I'm putting my money to use, instead of having 3 Titan X's, a 5960x, 32GB of Dominator Plat 32000, 950pro, eVGA X99 Classi, and the new 9Q Swift just for Facebook and Youtube.

Edited for ninja posts ahead of me.

Edit2: I'll also mention my CronusMAX works so much better on the PS4 and Destiny than it did on Halo with the Xbox.
 

FordGT90Concept

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I don't know why Microsoft still continue wasting money building Xbox:D
:nutkick:Xbox
Don't get me wrong, the Xbox One is a great home theater console but it's only an okay game console.
 
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Don't get me wrong, the Xbox One is a great home theater console but it's only an okay game console.
I find it hilarious how slow even the menu system is.

Does anybody know if there are significant gains to putting an SSD in the PS4? It helped quite a bit on the Xbox.
 
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Xbox One is more about home theater than gaming. The reverse is true of PlayStation.

I mean, Windows 10 can't even DVR by itself anymore; but if you buy an Xbox One and hook it up to your satellite/cable, you can stream the recordings from the Xbox One. How pathetic is that? It should be the other way around. Microsoft clearly has its priorities turned around where Sony does not.

Microsoft dropped the messaging on Kinect and the DVR/TV features.
 

qubit

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Had it for a bit over a week, so here's my experiences with my shiny new PS4 so far. Note this is not any kind of formal review, just my blatherings about my impressions of it.

First off, I got the wrong flipping colour! smh The black one looks very smart, but the Glacier White looked really nice on Amazon, so I plumped for that instead. Opened the box and it turns out that it's a bit of a boring looking light grey. Well, I couldn't be bothered to return it just for that and get the black one, so I did the only sensible thing a nerdy geek like me could do: I named it Fugly. That's the machine name, the way Windows does it and now I'm happy with it. Incidently, the controller looks nice in this colour, so it's not all bad. I also got the official Sony vertical stand for it at the same time (£15) so it can take up the minimum amount of space. It's a bit wobbly on the stand though, no matter how much I tighten it, which I think should be a bit better.

So, what's it like for gaming? Graphics quality is not bad for integrated graphics and generally looks nice. I've only tried Rainbow Six Siege on it at the moment though and don't plan on getting a whole slew of games for it, as it's primarily intended as a tool for playing online with my friends, so the only games I'll buy are for playing with them and perhaps an exclusive or two over time.

It can sometimes run the game at 60fps, but it tends to hit 30fps rather more often than I'd like, which is rubbish, but useable. Interestingly, vsync is switchable in the game's settings. The mouse look panning issue on an fps game is fairly awful and really screws up my aim, but I'm learning to work around it a bit now I've gotten used to it. The controller feels nice in my hands, well made and the controls are all very positive.

I was able to create a PSN account (with some hassle, more later) and play online with my friends. However, after a while, I kept getting removed (kicked) all the time when trying to connect to a server. A bit of research showed that this turned out to be due to NAT type 3, which is restrictive for a PS4. Lots of advice around the internet about opening various firewall ports, but in one of them it said to enable UPNP as well so I tried that only which fixed the problem completely - no open ports required. I'm sure I've read about security issues with UPNP, so I'll have to look into this later. It now shows NAT type 2 which is perfectly fine.

It was comforting to see that this "no hassle" zero configuration that is supposed to be a console's big advantage was absent! Yep, for some reason, trying to log in at www.playstation.com is a real crapshoot for my new account, with it usually giving me an error message or the web page just not loading (tried three different browsers) but did log in just fine at www.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com. Dunno why, as my friends can log in ok. I might try creating a new account and seeing what happens. Still getting a login error today, more than a week later.

The PS4 has a "10 foot" TV interface as you might expect, which is mostly quite intuitive and quite slick. Of course, it's a complete Sony closed walled garden in terms of content, so you can't go elsewhere if you don't like the way it works or the prices. It's got a fair number of configuration options too, which was a pleasant surprise and navigating the PlayStation Store was easy, but it's nowhere near as fully featured and slick as the Steam platform. The prices are another matter though. For example, The Last of Us Remastered is £19 on Amazon, but a whopping £55 in the PS Store! Price gouging much? Needless to say, I'll buy it from Amazon if I want this game or borrow it off a friend. I can also trade in a disc, but not on a PS Store game. The downside is that the disc must be in the drive while the game is being played, but that's not too bad.

Unsurprisingly, it plays Blu-rays very well. There's little mechanical noise (sounds really cheap and rattly on inject/eject) and the picture quality is perfect, with no skipping. I was all fingers and thumbs at first on trying to use the controller as a remote control since nothing is marked, but I've got the hang of it now after referring to the onscreen button legends for a while. It works well, but the speed options are weird. Forward goes 1.5x, 30x, 60x and 120x. Massive jumps, rather than the more sensible jumps found on every other player out there. Still, it's useable like this.

A PlayStation Plus paid subscription is actually required for any kind of synchronous online play that isn't a simple turn-based game, which sucks balls frankly. One doesn't have to do this on a PC for the exact same connectivity. At least there's the option for a 14-day free trial, which I've taken.

I enjoyed playing with my mates (the primary reason for buying it) and we're all using a voice headset which really makes the difference, but I did die an awful lot, especially due to the aim issue. I might buy one of those PC gaming style accessories for it, or a mouse and keyboard adapter, but they're all awfully expensive at around £60-80 or more. This looks like a classic example of deliberate product lock-in since with the two front USB ports, there's no technical reason that a standard keyboard and mouse couldn't work on it.


My verdict: A decent gaming PC with a high end graphics card and decent CPU really blows it away on performance and isn't a closed walled garden, but it's still quite nice to use, play games on and watch TV on (discs and online catch-up services). Still less hassle to get going and maintain than a PC, but you'll pay for the privilege in terms of performance and money spent on the games. PC gamers should only buy it if they have a specific and compelling reason - such as that pestering friend!

Points rating: 6/10
 
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The problem with the latest generation of consoles is that they are trying to be jack of all trades and ultimately become mediocre at everything.
 
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Had it for a bit over a week, so here's my experiences with my shiny new PS4 so far. Note this is not any kind of formal review, just my blatherings about my impressions of it.

First off, I got the wrong flipping colour! smh The black one looks very smart, but the Glacier White looked really nice on Amazon, so I plumped for that instead. Opened the box and it turns out that it's a bit of a boring looking light grey. Well, I couldn't be bothered to return it just for that and get the black one, so I did the only sensible thing a nerdy geek like me could do: I named it Fugly. That's the machine name, the way Windows does it and now I'm happy with it. Incidently, the controller looks nice in this colour, so it's not all bad. I also got the official Sony vertical stand for it at the same time (£15) so it can take up the minimum amount of space. It's a bit wobbly on the stand though, no matter how much I tighten it, which I think should be a bit better.

So, what's it like for gaming? Graphics quality is not bad for integrated graphics and generally looks nice. I've only tried Rainbow Six Siege on it at the moment though and don't plan on getting a whole slew of games for it, as it's primarily intended as a tool for playing online with my friends, so the only games I'll buy are for playing with them and perhaps an exclusive or two over time.

It can sometimes run the game at 60fps, but it tends to hit 30fps rather more often than I'd like, which is rubbish, but useable. Interestingly, vsync is switchable in the game's settings. The mouse look panning issue on an fps game is fairly awful and really screws up my aim, but I'm learning to work around it a bit now I've gotten used to it. The controller feels nice in my hands, well made and the controls are all very positive.

I was able to create a PSN account (with some hassle, more later) and play online with my friends. However, after a while, I kept getting removed (kicked) all the time when trying to connect to a server. A bit of research showed that this turned out to be due to NAT type 3, which is restrictive for a PS4. Lots of advice around the internet about opening various firewall ports, but in one of them it said to enable UPNP as well so I tried that only which fixed the problem completely - no open ports required. I'm sure I've read about security issues with UPNP, so I'll have to look into this later. It now shows NAT type 2 which is perfectly fine.

It was comforting to see that this "no hassle" zero configuration that is supposed to be a console's big advantage was absent! Yep, for some reason, trying to log in at www.playstation.com is a real crapshoot for my new account, with it usually giving me an error message or the web page just not loading (tried three different browsers) but did log in just fine at www.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com. Dunno why, as my friends can log in ok. I might try creating a new account and seeing what happens. Still getting a login error today, more than a week later.

The PS4 has a "10 foot" TV interface as you might expect, which is mostly quite intuitive and quite slick. Of course, it's a complete Sony closed walled garden in terms of content, so you can't go elsewhere if you don't like the way it works or the prices. It's got a fair number of configuration options too, which was a pleasant surprise and navigating the PlayStation Store was easy, but it's nowhere near as fully featured and slick as the Steam platform. The prices are another matter though. For example, The Last of Us Remastered is £19 on Amazon, but a whopping £55 in the PS Store! Price gouging much? Needless to say, I'll buy it from Amazon if I want this game or borrow it off a friend. I can also trade in a disc, but not on a PS Store game. The downside is that the disc must be in the drive while the game is being played, but that's not too bad.

Unsurprisingly, it plays Blu-rays very well. There's little mechanical noise (sounds really cheap and rattly on inject/eject) and the picture quality is perfect, with no skipping. I was all fingers and thumbs at first on trying to use the controller as a remote control since nothing is marked, but I've got the hang of it now after referring to the onscreen button legends for a while. It works well, but the speed options are weird. Forward goes 1.5x, 30x, 60x and 120x. Massive jumps, rather than the more sensible jumps found on every other player out there. Still, it's useable like this.

A PlayStation Plus paid subscription is actually required for any kind of synchronous online play that isn't a simple turn-based game, which sucks balls frankly. One doesn't have to do this on a PC for the exact same connectivity. At least there's the option for a 14-day free trial, which I've taken.

I enjoyed playing with my mates (the primary reason for buying it) and we're all using a voice headset which really makes the difference, but I did die an awful lot, especially due to the aim issue. I might buy one of those PC gaming style accessories for it, or a mouse and keyboard adapter, but they're all awfully expensive at around £60-80 or more. This looks like a classic example of deliberate product lock-in since with the two front USB ports, there's no technical reason that a standard keyboard and mouse couldn't work on it.


My verdict: A decent gaming PC with a high end graphics card and decent CPU really blows it away on performance and isn't a closed walled garden, but it's still quite nice to use, play games on and watch TV on (discs and online catch-up services). Still less hassle to get going and maintain than a PC, but you'll pay for the privilege in terms of performance and money spent on the games. PC gamers should only buy it if they have a specific and compelling reason - such as that pestering friend!

Points rating: 6/10


PSN Plus is like the birchbox (box of beauty products that come in the mail once a month). you subscribe and get free games each month. it's worth the subscription.
 
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CAPSLOCKSTUCK

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Had it for a bit over a week, so here's my experiences with my shiny new PS4 so far. Note this is not any kind of formal review, just my blatherings about my impressions of it.

First off, I got the wrong flipping colour! smh The black one looks very smart, but the Glacier White looked really nice on Amazon, so I plumped for that instead. Opened the box and it turns out that it's a bit of a boring looking light grey. Well, I couldn't be bothered to return it just for that and get the black one, so I did the only sensible thing a nerdy geek like me could do: I named it Fugly. That's the machine name, the way Windows does it and now I'm happy with it. Incidently, the controller looks nice in this colour, so it's not all bad. I also got the official Sony vertical stand for it at the same time (£15) so it can take up the minimum amount of space. It's a bit wobbly on the stand though, no matter how much I tighten it, which I think should be a bit better.

So, what's it like for gaming? Graphics quality is not bad for integrated graphics and generally looks nice. I've only tried Rainbow Six Siege on it at the moment though and don't plan on getting a whole slew of games for it, as it's primarily intended as a tool for playing online with my friends, so the only games I'll buy are for playing with them and perhaps an exclusive or two over time.

It can sometimes run the game at 60fps, but it tends to hit 30fps rather more often than I'd like, which is rubbish, but useable. Interestingly, vsync is switchable in the game's settings. The mouse look panning issue on an fps game is fairly awful and really screws up my aim, but I'm learning to work around it a bit now I've gotten used to it. The controller feels nice in my hands, well made and the controls are all very positive.

I was able to create a PSN account (with some hassle, more later) and play online with my friends. However, after a while, I kept getting removed (kicked) all the time when trying to connect to a server. A bit of research showed that this turned out to be due to NAT type 3, which is restrictive for a PS4. Lots of advice around the internet about opening various firewall ports, but in one of them it said to enable UPNP as well so I tried that only which fixed the problem completely - no open ports required. I'm sure I've read about security issues with UPNP, so I'll have to look into this later. It now shows NAT type 2 which is perfectly fine.

It was comforting to see that this "no hassle" zero configuration that is supposed to be a console's big advantage was absent! Yep, for some reason, trying to log in at www.playstation.com is a real crapshoot for my new account, with it usually giving me an error message or the web page just not loading (tried three different browsers) but did log in just fine at www.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com. Dunno why, as my friends can log in ok. I might try creating a new account and seeing what happens. Still getting a login error today, more than a week later.

The PS4 has a "10 foot" TV interface as you might expect, which is mostly quite intuitive and quite slick. Of course, it's a complete Sony closed walled garden in terms of content, so you can't go elsewhere if you don't like the way it works or the prices. It's got a fair number of configuration options too, which was a pleasant surprise and navigating the PlayStation Store was easy, but it's nowhere near as fully featured and slick as the Steam platform. The prices are another matter though. For example, The Last of Us Remastered is £19 on Amazon, but a whopping £55 in the PS Store! Price gouging much? Needless to say, I'll buy it from Amazon if I want this game or borrow it off a friend. I can also trade in a disc, but not on a PS Store game. The downside is that the disc must be in the drive while the game is being played, but that's not too bad.

Unsurprisingly, it plays Blu-rays very well. There's little mechanical noise (sounds really cheap and rattly on inject/eject) and the picture quality is perfect, with no skipping. I was all fingers and thumbs at first on trying to use the controller as a remote control since nothing is marked, but I've got the hang of it now after referring to the onscreen button legends for a while. It works well, but the speed options are weird. Forward goes 1.5x, 30x, 60x and 120x. Massive jumps, rather than the more sensible jumps found on every other player out there. Still, it's useable like this.

A PlayStation Plus paid subscription is actually required for any kind of synchronous online play that isn't a simple turn-based game, which sucks balls frankly. One doesn't have to do this on a PC for the exact same connectivity. At least there's the option for a 14-day free trial, which I've taken.

I enjoyed playing with my mates (the primary reason for buying it) and we're all using a voice headset which really makes the difference, but I did die an awful lot, especially due to the aim issue. I might buy one of those PC gaming style accessories for it, or a mouse and keyboard adapter, but they're all awfully expensive at around £60-80 or more. This looks like a classic example of deliberate product lock-in since with the two front USB ports, there's no technical reason that a standard keyboard and mouse couldn't work on it.


My verdict: A decent gaming PC with a high end graphics card and decent CPU really blows it away on performance and isn't a closed walled garden, but it's still quite nice to use, play games on and watch TV on (discs and online catch-up services). Still less hassle to get going and maintain than a PC, but you'll pay for the privilege in terms of performance and money spent on the games. PC gamers should only buy it if they have a specific and compelling reason - such as that pestering friend!

Points rating: 6/10



Nice write up about a shit machine. 10/10.....:)
 
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Assassin's Creed has always been multiplatform so why would that change now?

AC as in Ace Combat. Pre-dates AssCreed by well over a decade. They did port that disaster Assault Horizon over, but their next title is a sequel to AC6 (2007). I just hope it comes to PC, because then there really is little reason to be interested in consoles for me.
 
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Played my PS4 and Destiny all weekend, didn't even touch the PC not even for Rocket League. Money well spent.
 
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Played my PS4 and Destiny all weekend, didn't even touch the PC not even for Rocket League. Money well spent.
it would cool to get the steam os on it.. not sure if anyone has tried yet
 
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Deleted member 67555

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Been playing Rock Band, Destiny and CoD BO3 and I'm enjoying the hell out of it...
Paid for a 1 year subscription to plus...wishing they would offer a 1 year for Now...that is my only complaint..
 
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it would cool to get the steam os on it.. not sure if anyone has tried yet
If I find a cheap PS4 on CL that doesn't come with a HDD or something I might try it one day.
 

qubit

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Just tried playing a CD in the PS4, but it just chugged a few times and gave up with an error message. Same thing with another one.

Turns out it doesn't support CDs - a standard they co-developed with Philips! That sucks. :shadedshu: Here's the page in the official manual that confirms it.

http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps4/videos/videodisc.html
 
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Yeah, that one reason I have not bother with a PS4 to replace one of my PS3s. I like to use them as music players and movie players. So no playing CDs is a big turn off.

Plus the price of a used one is still up there. I got both my two PS3s for under $200 ea.
 

Kanan

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Just tried playing a CD in the PS4, but it just chugged a few times and gave up with an error message. Same thing with another one.

Turns out it doesn't support CDs - a standard they co-developed with Philips! That sucks. :shadedshu: Here's the page in the official manual that confirms it.

http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps4/videos/videodisc.html
Wow that's bad, even if CDs are "out". :laugh: PC > consoles. yadayadayada

edit: PS. the Xbox One can play CDs. I guess it's simply not programmed in the firmware of the PS4.
 
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but you can copy cd's onto a usb.. cars got that shish now too
 

FordGT90Concept

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Sony created the RedBook standard. Sony created the audio CD. They abandoned it probably to save manufacturing costs because the LASER wave length is completely different from Bluray. Can it play DVDs? Can it play Audio DVDs?
 
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Its a tough question, and overall I would lean towards no, due to my love of PC gaming and the freedom I have with it, but at the same time if there were a game I really loved that was Console only and it were a really good team game..... I would.


Other than that consoles can suck my rooster
 

Kanan

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Sony created the RedBook standard. Sony created the audio CD. They abandoned it probably to save manufacturing costs because the LASER wave length is completely different from Bluray. Can it play DVDs? Can it play Audio DVDs?
Thought of that too. Seems it's a software/firmware problem, because it must have both lasers, like here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/BluRayLaser.JPG
It would need both lasers to read DVDs, and it can. But it can't read CDs, most likely because it lacks the software to do it, or the firmware isn't programmed for CDs. Btw. as already mentioned the Xbox One can read CDs.
 

FordGT90Concept

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If it were just software (which Sony literally owns), CDs would work. It's definitely hardware:
CD: 780 nm (infrared)
DVD: 650 nm (red)
Bluray: 405 nm (violet)

The LASER in the PS4 is probably only capable of 405-650 nm where the LASER in Xbox One is capable of 405-780 nm. The Wii's LASER was only capable of 650 nm.

Even if eliminating CD saved them just $1 per unit, that would already amount to over $30 million in savings judging by PS4's sales. On the other hand, Xbox One being a home theater console couldn't axe CD support because that's something users may want to use. Microsoft deemed CD support a priority where Sony did not.

Even though all these consoles support DVD LASERs, DVD Audio and Video playback is spotty because they have to license hardware MPEG-2 decoding since they lack the hardware to do it in software. The Wii didn't have the license which is why it was strictly GameCube and Wii DVDs.
 
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Just use Media Player to play your music from a USB drive...

Then you can have a game disc in your PS4 and play your music. You can store more music on your USB drive anyway so its the best all around solution. I still buy CDs for sound quality and I don't play music directly off the CD even on the PC. Rip it, store it, play it.
- Supported formats
 
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