Captain Tuttle
Member
Yeah, maybe. I remember people laughing at MS when they only included an ethernet port on the original Xbox saying that they were dismissing all of the people with dial up at the time (a significant number btw).
VGLeaks: First look as Durango XDK (always connected, kinect required, must install)
- Thread starter DieH@rd
- Start date
Yeah, maybe. I remember people laughing at MS when they only included an ethernet port on the original Xbox saying that they were dismissing all of the people with dial up at the time (a significant number btw).
BlastProcessing
Member
When I buy a game disc, I own that disc. If I sell it to Gamestop, they own that disc. Gamestop is not making money on content that isn't theirs, they are simply purchasing a good at one price and selling it at a higher price. This is profitable to them because of the environment that publishers choose to create.
All of this is done in accordance with the First Sale Doctrine. Once publishers make the initial sale of a piece of media they no longer have claim to it.
There are 3 parties involved here, the publishers, Gamestop, and consumers. Publishers don't just get to take rights away from consumers to get a more "fair" deal out of Gamestop. Gamestop is a 3 billion dollar company. Activision alone has a market cap. of 15 billion. Video Games are a 78 billion dollar industry. An industry that has its most explosive growth alongside of Gamestop's dominance of the used game industry.
People have had the right to resale media for 600 years and things have clipped along nicely. But now, for this one giant industry, at this one particular time, all of this is now somehow unacceptable?
Beer Monkey
Member
There's a difference between saying that online gaming is rapidly transitioning to broadband and saying that if you want to play single-player games, ever, you should have broadband.
Hell, most people I knew who bought an Xbox 1 never took it online and didn't give a shit, and wouldn't have if it had an analog modem either.
Edge's rumors were 1 and 2. Edge is speculating that by default always online means no used games. I'm not interested in getting an xbox (Sony and Nintendo are more attractive for first party content) but let's just wait and see if 3 turns out to be true. You can have an always online functionality that doesn't prevent used games.
And it creates liquidity. Gamestop is a necessary evil. But some people really do believe that piss is rainwater.
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
Which is the problem. There's no reason MS has to charge for Live at this point.
Except for the billions of revenue it generates.
BlastProcessing
Member
I hope you are right, but I read the Edge rumor differently. Edge also had PS4 info; we definitely know that the PS4 is always online. So why would Edge assume always online meant two different things? If Edge is jumping to conclusions why didn't they jump to a similar conclusion for PS4?
The specifically mention Activation Codes which makes me believe they have a source that specifically mentioned that. I very much hope they are wrong.
Alx
Member
That's why I was suggesting a solution that wouldn't remove Gamestop from the equation, while adding some control to the second hand market.
Like the poster I initially quoted said, the big difference with modern media compared to books or cars that we're used to buy second hand, is that they don't age. A second-hand book or car is cheaper, but it's also of lesser quality, and the more it goes from one user to another, the more that value decrease.
But a second hand game is as good as new, and provides the exact same experience to 2, 5, 10 consecutive users. Unlike used books or cars, they are in direct competition with their new counterpart (which is also why they are sold at a barely lower price)
That's why the idea I suggested is simulating a decay of the medium. You can sell it, but its value will decrease with the sale.
You have to be realistic, if publishers feel threatened by second-hand sales, they will take measures against it. They already do, with online pass, exclusive DLC that you can download once, ... so instead of letting the user pay through such actions, or hoping for a return to "the good old days" that will never happen, it's more reasonable to find a solution that wouldn't sacrifice anybody.
Mr.Wreckless
Banned
Yeah they have no reason to charge other than the fact that they are a for profit company and Live brings in a tremendous amount of money for them.
Sometimes I think you guys forget these companies are about making money.
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
It'd do that without the sub fee too.
I'm under no obligation to cheer on a company gouging me while taking my picture to sell to advertisers with their add on I never wanted.
Miles Quaritch
Member
Because they possibly misunderstood what always connected actually meant? Or perhaps the person who relayed the information misunderstood and so relayed information that wasn't entirely accurate?
Miles Quaritch
Member
Gamestop aren't going anywhere, they will start to sell activation codes/licence keys along with the games.
Then we should be having that discussing rather than what some people are doing which is taking the decisions MSFT and publishers might be making and then working from that conclusion to how their actions are justified. Even if people are responding with more emotion than necessary; their negative sentiment is well justified. Yet all we have are people equating falsely other hardware with a home console. If games media is unique then it should be treated as such.
Mr.Wreckless
Banned
It wouldn't bring in as much money without the subscription fee.
Who said anything about cheering? You said you saw no reason for the to charge for live. Increased profits is a pretty good reason.
I don't care about Gamestop. Selling activation codes does not empower the consumer like the ability to sell back a product -- and buy a new one.
BlastProcessing
Member
A goods value is determined by demand, not by it's condition. I have 80 year old books that are worth considerably more than when they were new. Combine that with the fact that used disks do become damaged and this is not a good angle to approach this from.
Publishers make money buy selling something of value. Currently, that part of that value comes from the fact that a game can be resold, lent, traded, collected, and played on multiple consoles with absolutely no friction. If publishers remove that value they are selling something worth considerably less for, presumably, the same amount. This is a pretty shortsighted approach.
The whole point of a free market is to maximize the value of goods through trade. It is the most efficient system we have to create and distribute goods. Destroying that to make a few extra bucks in the short term would have some pretty ugly repercussions.
Alx
Member
Could we please stop that kind of paranoid claim ? What would an advertiser do with your picture ? Nobody cares about your face or mine.
It's not the cameras you should be afraid of.
That's why I was suggesting a solution that, through the possibility of selling a game once, would keep the value of the new game. It would decrease the value of the second-hand game though, since that one couldn't be sold again, but that's the point. Because let's be honest, the damage on a used disk is usually unnoticeable (or you're not buying the right used games). The problem of second-hand digital media is that there is no decrease in quality.
Miles Quaritch
Member
True, but this is the natural evolution of online passes. Online passes have slowly gone beyond their initial remit to locking off access to single player content, when this happened, it was obvious what the next step would be - locking of large portions of content if the game was bought used.
I feel there will be alternatives, both will begin to offer more aggressive and competitive pricing for new releases via their respective online stores/marketplace. This, along with the news that you can play a game as its downloading suggests both are attempting to move towards a purely digital future, not dissimilar to what we see on smartphones/tablets/steam.
After all, developers/publishers apparently make the same amount of money from a game sold for $30 digitally as they do from a game sold for $60 in stores.
Remove the need for physical media, prices go down (one hopes), the need for liquidity in the market isn't as big a necessity as it is now.
Gamestop can still continue to function, selling digital codes, subscriptions, hardware, etc.
Except the current environment will still have both physical and digital media -- meaning MSFT and Sony would not need their digital catalogues to be competitive. I can currently pick up new games from Amazon cheaper than on PSN. And I could then resell that disc. Assumption is a motherfucker. I don't think we will see a drop in prices because unlike Steam there is not yet an impetus to competitively price titles. It's because titles aren't seen as uniquely digital with the savings passed on, but simply digital versions of fully priced retail discs. And even then there are debates about how digital games are treated in Europe. Plus all the other arguments about bandwidth and so forth.
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
That's debatable. Is burying services that could act as a system selling point behind a paywall actually good business? Wouldn't more users online doing stuff with games etc straight out of the box lead to more ad revenue opportunism?
Yeah. The fact they're actively doing this already = paranoid claim. I'm speculating wildly aren't I?
Grampa Simpson
Banned
The fun thing here is that MS doesn't need to block used games, it just provides a new step in preventing piracy.
They offer a framework to publishers to allow games to check in at startup to see if they've been licensed to this user. If they have, then the game starts fine. If not, then it prompts the user to hold up their registration code to the Kinect Camera (this will be a QR Code) to be scanned in. Once this has happened, the game will start as normal. Additionally, with this new piracy protection, there will be no need to have the disc in the drive. As long as the user is logged in properly, they can be verified at startup.
They offer a framework to publishers to allow games to check in at startup to see if they've been licensed to this user. If they have, then the game starts fine. If not, then it prompts the user to hold up their registration code to the Kinect Camera (this will be a QR Code) to be scanned in. Once this has happened, the game will start as normal. Additionally, with this new piracy protection, there will be no need to have the disc in the drive. As long as the user is logged in properly, they can be verified at startup.
BlastProcessing
Member
How is any of that a fun thing? The current piracy methods on the 360 or PS3 would also circumvent a new QR code based system. Once pirates have the ability to write to the firmware they could just bypass the activation in the same way that pirated copies of Photoshop or Windows bypass activation.
Such a system would not appreciably slow down piracy and would simply add an annoying hoop for legitimate customers to jump through.
Grampa Simpson
Banned
Exactly. But the 95% of people who aren't going to crack open their consoles, can't trade games because of it. Publishers like neither, but if they can get rid of one, they will.
soul creator
Member
if there was like a cheap 3G connection built into each Xbox (solely used for the one-time activations in case it's offline, not normal Xbox Live stuff), and some kind of "master key" that a retailer like Gamestop could use to "restore" every disc to its default, then...maybe.
BlastProcessing
Member
And we are just stuck yelling at the Cloud.
Green Yoshi
Member
Sure, but a portion of the value when you buy a title is its resale. If they wanted to provide the same value per dollar, they'd have to cut price. Games at 49.99?
Ironchef3500
Banned
Grampa Simpson
Banned
Or not buying it. Some of us won't, but maybe enough will to make it worth it to them.
And of course, MS only provides the framework for it. It's not their fault that the EA, Activision, and Bethesda/Zenimax all think it's a great idea to use it.
For you maybe, but I'm pretty sure that EA and Activision don't think you need that value. In fact they're doing you a favor - if you could trade that back in they'd have to charge you $69.99 per game.
Come on, iPad is doing just fine and you need an Internet connection to download anything on to it. We're in 2013. Microsoft isn't going to be chasing the market of Luddites who haven't even got broadband - they're hardly going to be big money spenders.
Alx
Member
No they're not, because it's illegal in most countries, and actually worthless. What they're selling is your gender, age, location, maybe e-mail, your gamings habits, the games you play, the apps you downloaded, the movies you watched... but not your picture.
Because I'll say it once more : nobody - cares - about - your - face. It has no marketing value. Do you have a fidelity card in any shop ? Did they ask for a picture when they made it ? No, because they don't care. Have you ever participated to a marketing study, either online, at home or in the street ? Did they ask if they could take your picture ? They didn't, because they don't care.
Advertisers need measurable information, and personal accounts provide them all they need. That's why people afraid of cameras are paranoid (and blind) in my opinion, they focus on them out of fear for privacy, while they willfully disclose all their real private information without a second thought.
Beer Monkey
Member
Because iPad had an existing market based on transferable physical games and transitioned away from it?
Because iPad sells mostly $60 games?
Apples and oranges, my friend.
Miles Quaritch
Member
Remember when some thought SuperDaE was merely trolling?
Bah, why didn't he post some pictures of the NUI?
Linky
AMD launches Radeon 7790: Meet the Xbox 720′s GPU
It’s no coincidence that Bonaire answers some of the questions we had after the Xbox Durango GPU leak early last month. According to VGLeaks’ data, Durango’s front end was capable of issuing up to two primitives per clock like Tahiti and Pitcairn, but the memory bandwidth figures pointed to a 128-bit bus. Now we have Bonaire — a 128-bit GPU that merges those two capabilities in a single part.
Spinning a new GCN part for Microsoft allows for a smaller die, lower manufacturing costs, and explains why AMD CEO Rory Read calls AMD’s console SoC’s “semi-custom” designs. It makes no sense for AMD to build and launch another GCN part just to hit a market target — but it makes a lot of sense for a cash-strapped company to design a new GPU that can target multiple markets simultaneously.
That said, the hypothesized Durango GPU isn’t a perfect match for the HD 7790. Durango has 12 CUs for a total of 768 cores instead of the 14 CUs (896 cores) that the HD 7790 has. Clock speeds are also lower, at an estimated 800MHz. The 102GB of bandwidth between Durango’s GPU and its 32MB ESRAM cache is a clean fit if we assume a 1600MHz cache clock and a 128-bit bus.
The Radeon 7790 anchor’s AMD’s low end
Overall performance data on the 7790 is quite good, but price-wise, this card could clash with the HD 7850. At $149, 2GB cards based on Pitcairn are available for ~$180, and they offer significantly improved memory bandwidth as well as a modest increase in fill rate compared to the 7770/7790. The 7790 should compete nicely against Nvidia’s current Kepler lineup in that segment, though Team Green won’t leave this space empty for long if it needs to hit back.
It would be nice to see a wider memory interface, but the HD 7790 delivers 20-40% more performance than the HD 7970 for a 35% increase in price ($110 as compared to $149). It’s a much better card than AMD’s previous offering in this space, and it should compare much more favorably to previous GPUs like the HD 6850. This is a better-balanced GPU, period.
AMD launches Radeon 7790: Meet the Xbox 720′s GPU
It’s no coincidence that Bonaire answers some of the questions we had after the Xbox Durango GPU leak early last month. According to VGLeaks’ data, Durango’s front end was capable of issuing up to two primitives per clock like Tahiti and Pitcairn, but the memory bandwidth figures pointed to a 128-bit bus. Now we have Bonaire — a 128-bit GPU that merges those two capabilities in a single part.
Spinning a new GCN part for Microsoft allows for a smaller die, lower manufacturing costs, and explains why AMD CEO Rory Read calls AMD’s console SoC’s “semi-custom” designs. It makes no sense for AMD to build and launch another GCN part just to hit a market target — but it makes a lot of sense for a cash-strapped company to design a new GPU that can target multiple markets simultaneously.
That said, the hypothesized Durango GPU isn’t a perfect match for the HD 7790. Durango has 12 CUs for a total of 768 cores instead of the 14 CUs (896 cores) that the HD 7790 has. Clock speeds are also lower, at an estimated 800MHz. The 102GB of bandwidth between Durango’s GPU and its 32MB ESRAM cache is a clean fit if we assume a 1600MHz cache clock and a 128-bit bus.
The Radeon 7790 anchor’s AMD’s low end
Overall performance data on the 7790 is quite good, but price-wise, this card could clash with the HD 7850. At $149, 2GB cards based on Pitcairn are available for ~$180, and they offer significantly improved memory bandwidth as well as a modest increase in fill rate compared to the 7770/7790. The 7790 should compete nicely against Nvidia’s current Kepler lineup in that segment, though Team Green won’t leave this space empty for long if it needs to hit back.
It would be nice to see a wider memory interface, but the HD 7790 delivers 20-40% more performance than the HD 7970 for a 35% increase in price ($110 as compared to $149). It’s a much better card than AMD’s previous offering in this space, and it should compare much more favorably to previous GPUs like the HD 6850. This is a better-balanced GPU, period.
I guess they mean 7770?
Performance benchmarks indicate that the Radeon 7790 is 20-40% faster than the HD 7770 and much better competition for the Nvidia GTX 650. AMD has made much of the fact that the 7790 supports SLI configurations and up to six displays (actual number of supported displays will depend on which connection options board vendors support). AMD has also improved its overclocking technology (PowerTune); the system introduced on Bonaire is programmed with eight potential states, rather than the four that previous HD 7000 cards offered.
This is from the first page.
You are right bro
But is this any good???
Performance benchmarks indicate that the Radeon 7790 is 20-40% faster than the HD 7770 and much better competition for the Nvidia GTX 650. AMD has made much of the fact that the 7790 supports SLI configurations and up to six displays (actual number of supported displays will depend on which connection options board vendors support). AMD has also improved its overclocking technology (PowerTune); the system introduced on Bonaire is programmed with eight potential states, rather than the four that previous HD 7000 cards offered.
This is from the first page.
You are right bro
But is this any good???
Still a bit behind PS4 but I don't think it matters.
RSX was behind the x360 GPU and that did not matter either.
All gamers will be happy I guess.
specialguy
Banned
Performance benchmarks indicate that the Radeon 7790 is 20-40% faster than the HD 7770 and much better competition for the Nvidia GTX 650. AMD has made much of the fact that the 7790 supports SLI configurations and up to six displays (actual number of supported displays will depend on which connection options board vendors support). AMD has also improved its overclocking technology (PowerTune); the system introduced on Bonaire is programmed with eight potential states, rather than the four that previous HD 7000 cards offered.
This is from the first page.
You are right bro
But is this any good???
Umm, what does that even mean???
It performs about like a 7850, so, low to middle range for PC (I'd say mid range in the overall pantheon including older cards)
That extremetech article is kinda nonsense btw. He doesnt even seem aware Durango should have DDR3 and a 256 bus, rather than GDDR5/128 as he assumes.
I do think it's "interesting" both Bonaire and X720 GPU do two prims/clk, whereas Cape Verde does 1. This could imply a link.
Its werid that the beta dev kits with the final Durango GPU silicon, came out a couple months ago, when is this card expected to hit retail?.
I don't think attaching a game to an account negates second hand sales. It makes it a little more convoluted, but certainly doable. For DD games, MS could implement a system where you could "trade" games directly through their online service towards another game. For retail games, Gamestop could have a system set up to remove activations of the game once they get a trade in. Making it available for sale again.
EDIT: Another aspect of the DD service that could be implemented is that publishers could either allow their game to be purchased via traded funds or not. This gives them some options, but it would also test what liquidity does to game sales. Would games with this not allowed have lower sales on average than games with it allowed?
What dos the sentence you bold it mean?
I asked if this gpu is good, for a next gent console.
Miles Quaritch
Member
Quite a bit of info there, seems new thread worthy.
specialguy
Banned
it's as good as whats in ps4 mostly, so yes.
it depends what you mean tho. those hoping for a 680 or 7970 would be disappointed.
like a week and a half, basically very soon.