Sacred Citadel for XBLA.

God Mode - pulled down the demo - not impressed. It's Treyarch's zombies meets Serious Sam MP only gameplay ... it feels a lot like Too Human - as in, no soul.

USB3 is backwards compatible.

If you're going to plan on keeping the PC there, look at HTPC cases - and remember, don't cheap out on the power supply unit.

The only outdated was your "facts" in my response - hence why I let it sit as-is. There isn't anything in there that is incorrect.

TiLT, I don't consider you a Sony fanboy, and I understand your part of the world sees more PS3 players than 360 players. I also agree that both online stores are cumbersome and need revamping, and that the PSN has come a long way.

If I still had my PS3 and it was my primary console, I'd probably have a PSN+ account given the free games. MS has just started pushing the "bargain bin" type benefits for gold customers, and if Sony weren't doing that already, I doubt they'd do it (although dev pressure may help as they'd rather sell old products and have an injection of players on their games, keeping them relevant).

[... (click link for full message - I'm not stripping this out to lose original context) ]
Having said that, I sure hope Microsoft has an ace up their sleeve, because right now I can't see anything about the Durango to convince me that I need one in addition to the PS4.

From this I can gather that you've made your decision to buy a PS4, based solely on your PS3 experience and a couple of videos that you've seen. PS4 isn't even fully revealed and you're in. Cool. Nothing wrong with that. You don't need much convincing - you've already committed yourself, in your mind to be a PS4 owner.

I, on the other hand, had a different PS3 experience, and I found it lacking. I was annoyed with the stripping of features as it aged, and the violation of my personal info based on an old apache build is inexcusable. inFamous wasn't enough to fix that, though I didn't mind playing through it the second time around. It should also be noted that I have at least two dozen game licenses on PSN, including Flower (which I loved) and Journey (which was good-but-not-great). Having friends on both platforms, I'd not cry to jump from one to the other - but Sony has to work for it. So far, better graphics are what I expect all around. It was also good for me to have the current gen consoles for review purposes.

The Durango, on the other hand, may well win this because of the features it brings. With the possibility of illumiroom, the "I'm your PVR" and Kinect 2.0 (with facial movement recognition and digit representation), assuming BC for all my Xbox titles, there is something other than pink-glowie-controller-motion involved. I'd love to see a Steel Battalion game that didn't suck. I'd love to have more immersion, but not lose out on using controllers where it makes sense. I don't want to jump around my livingroom the whole time, but I certainly don't mind my kids doing so (he loves the Kinect Party and Fruit Ninja).

And I still haven't made up my mind. Sony has failed to impress me yet, and MS hasn't said anything. All the rumblings and rumours were just that. Whether the rumblings caused the rumours to become invalid is speculation. BC, always on, twitter responses - interesting, but not grounded in fact - merely speculation. I'm not asking people to discuss it, but don't expect me to chase down every rumour when I'm not looking for a wild-eyed glimpse based on what someone who is unwilling or unable to reveal themselves, is willing to say on the Internet. You think devs don't have biases either?

TL;DR? My motivation in this thread is to get information that isn't hear-say. I see this thread update, and I come in hoping to get _news_. That's all.

The one thing to consider is putting the money, which you don't have, into a 2GB card. "affordable" is relative, but since the new consoles will likely push this boundary on the GPU, future-proofing would certainly fall there.

Mind you, I have a Q9300 (intel core quad - ~4 yrs old) 8GB of RAM and a 240GB Samsung 840 drive powering an old (and possibly faulty) Nvidia 460 - and it works just fine for all I need it to.

Careful about USB3.0 though...

once you get used to it, you'll throw out all your USB2.0 disks/memory sticks.

Yeahhh, that's a hornet's nest you don't want to poke. The whole country is a paranoid armed camp. They could roll over Seoul in a matter of hours.

Please. They will not risk Canada's wrath. 

But in all seriousness, don't take away from SK's military capability. It's far more advanced and capable than NKs...but sheer numbers? Yeah you may be right.

The RCMP have been notified - you've been tagged. Avoid trips to the Great White North - we have plenty of feral beavers that will strike you down.

http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2013/04/zombieland-the-series-trailer-arrives-from-amazon.html

There was a season two?

FTFY.

Purge, you should actually read the rumors

I've made my point - I've watched trailers of movies where clips never make it to final product.
Developers have been given direction, and that isn't final gospel. It's ... rumour?

What I find the funniest is that this is coming from a person who clearly has no interest in the product. What was your motivation in this thread again?

I stay at home and pout all day

me too, just not with as much income

I back in the saddle....kinda. Felt depressed since I retired so I got up off my ass a few weeks ago.

From 0500-0700 teach Marines and soldiers who fail at CWSQ.

Part of the wounded warrior program, driving them to their specialty appointments off post.

And my favorite part of my day is preparing high school kids (those who have already signed up for the delayed entry program) for boot camp.

That's pretty awesome of you.

If I can ask, feel free to ignore, how can you afford not to work, save a ton of money? Good disability?

All my deployments since 1994 went straight to the bank or paid off debts.  Also medically retired with close to 19 years active duty means benefits for life for myself and family. It also doesn't hurt that my wife has a decent paying job here in Georgia, combined with the low cost of living means I can live comfortably and not work unless I want to.  Just bought a house and just 1 monthly retirement check covers the mortgage/utilities for two months.

Plus, if the bank comes up to his house (on the right side of him), he'll just go pew-pew-pew on 'em. If they come up on his bad side, he'll figure that the voices have now turned from officer-chatter to financial commercials.

Done 

This.

Chemistry and Radiation Protection Tech at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant (DCPP).

Black Mesa?

Thanks!

That sucks, Ron. Glad Laura is past the problems and is recovering - and I'm really sorry to hear about the kick in the nuts.

Sounds like you can't win for losing.

See, and this is where I think it's a DEV kit VS. Final Product thing. MS caches credentials in *all* of their products. Hell, 360 cloud saves cache and sync (as long as you're signed in to the gold account and using it).

With dev kits showing up on ebay etc. (and I've stated this before), the always on function is a target state, and (using the OSI model to explain) the applications should be designed to assume the transport layer and below should be available. How the systems actually handle it is a question of economics, and I don't see all this assumption as a compelling reason to get worked up.

See, more than 20% of North American homes don't have Internet access, and of the 80% that do, not all of them are on broadband / reliable. This is their strongest market. And perception of your product as compared to competition is key. Right now there are no products, and they're no where near release yet.

Giving up (at best) 20% of your market a pretty big advantage they'd be handing over to Sony - there is no reason to want your dev kits to be available "offline", and since the development of applications only goes down to the session layer (which makes sense) they'd want a powered-on dev kit to be constantly online. Perhaps they have on/offline dev kits queued up for the announcement, or they *are* considering possibly doing the worst thing possible - but if Sony could back off from the Batarang, I can't see that this would be any less able to change.

Our sources are all the same - "unnamed" and "close to the product". None from MS. Right now everyone is talking about it. They're getting press without doing anything.

What's going to happen if they announce the worst? The market is prepared. If there is an offline mode? Backpedaling or original design, they lose nothing. But now you've been following the product closely. Hrm. Seems like a much more direct form of the viral Halo2 marketing.  As long as they aren't pressed to announce it, I don't think they honestly need to worry. We've all given them enough info to steer this in the direction the market wants. : shrug : That's where all this gnashing of teeth is a waste of energy.

I keep checking this thread looking for something concrete. I probably won't stop.

If my game drops when my Internet does (and it's not an online game ) I'd probably not sign up for it. Considering sometimes I bring my console to the lake (for those dreary/rainy days, or in the winter), I would not want to be at the whim of rural internet connectivity.

I want to play DMC, I want to play Tomb Raider, and I want to play BI.

Too bad I don't have the time at the moment. I'm hoping that crap slows down at work soon. :sigh:

RAW is two-player, same console only IIRC. It's a cross between Gauntlet and Baldurs Gate (storyline is standard fare).

A little rough, but worth playing if you've got room on the couch.

I get what you're saying, and it's not like I'd put it past any organization including MS to screw over offline users / used game markets - but my point is while the developers are reporting (anonymously) what they've been told, it's what they've been told - and they don't have all the info on the new product line either.

Consider the build and development of an OS - you operate above the application layer - the lower layers are generally unimportant to layfolk, as the functions from below are presented upwards. As a developer, you have interest in what you have to work with and may develop in the top several layers, you're not going to be dabbling in the OS proper. When MS tells them "always on" it means that it's your target state. How the dev kits handle a possible "feature" of offline mode is unimportant in the development in the app, esp. considering the product final specs may not even be decided yet.

I know that jump is a long one, but at this point there is not one shred of concrete evidence telling us what the hardware will ACTUALLY do. We know how dev kits may react - this is by no means a complete feature set.

Same as the zebra stripe controllers, MS seems to be constricting the information leak, and since MS's stance has always been that they don't comment on rumor and speculation, I think that delaying the announcement is more a brave front than an indictment of their upcoming plans.

They totally could be pulling a Sony, and trying to  uniformly piss off every single gamer out there with a product launch that aims to shoot itself in the foot over and over (PS3, mind you) - the market will decide whether that is truly the case - but without a bullet list of features and foibles, it's all speculation and neither console has yet earned my hard-earned gaming dollar.

Getting all up in arms means people are already invested in the product that isn't out yet - and that seems all kinds of "cart-before-horse" to me.

Yeah, but I'm talking more about people who've actively canceled their account.

I pay the money solely because the handful of people I do enjoy playing online with prefer the 360.  If not for them, I'd have canceled quite some time ago.

This. Frankly, I went out for dinner and the three of us rang a bill up twice my live account. That was _one_ nice meal.

I'll cancel when I'm done. I wouldn't mind if they told me who was no longer subscribed so I could thin my friends list.

So, no news then, right? More rumours and speculation? The term "always on" applies to a lot of things.

My TV, for instance, is always on (otherwise, how do you expect the remote to "power on" a TV with no electricity?

Unless you've been deliberately avoiding information about this issue, you'll know that "always on" is essentially just what the media says to sum up the issue for headlines. The rumors are very specific about this being a requirement for the console to be always connected to Microsoft's servers to work, and that a disconnection longer then 3 minutes will freeze the system and bring up a connection helper.

I've deliberately avoided looking into rumours - they are just that.

They'll announce what they'll announce. IF always-on means always online, I'm not sure that's a dealbreaker for me. If the people I regularly game with see it as such, that might sway me. Also, if there is no "elected offline" mode so I can take the console to the cabin (etc) where Internet isn't always available, these would be things to consider.

The problem is "always on" on a dev kit, or always on - as a target state for my console are two different things. MS may be testing the waters, so if someone wants to go hoarse screaming about having an always-on connection, go right ahead.

BC was deal-breaker too, back in the day. Kinect is apparently also an unwanted thing.

I dunno though - if Kinect is full-on accurate, and comes with illumiroom, I'll be all over that like white on rice.

When the pending announcement is over with, I will decide if it's what I want. Frankly, the PS4 hasn't impressed me enough - I may just switch over to PC gaming if the new consoles don't offer anything worthwhile. I have this "must-have" requirement where there are games, and peripherals, that compel me to want to buy it.

If it means I stick with my 360 as a zombie-killing machine and occasional XBLA title platform, so be it. I'm not invested in this, both financially or emotionally.

Also, lines like this: "essentially just what the media says to sum up the issue for headlines" - they can say what they want - the rumours are getting *them* business. There is no counterpoint to the value proposition - IE why would MS do this? What benefits does it offer? You really think MS is just going to try and sink their own ship on a feature/function that has no market potential?

Seems to me like arguing that is a big waste of time. Wake up this thread when there's something noteworthy to post.

So, no news then, right? More rumours and speculation? The term "always on" applies to a lot of things.

My TV, for instance, is always on (otherwise, how do you expect the remote to "power on" a TV with no electricity?

I'm not sure what reported PS4 pre-orders have to do with the success of competing with an unannounced product. I mean, from the PS3 pre-order supply, it's likely a shwackload of people preordering to sell them and turn a profit. No surprise there.

There is no unified multiplayer platform that even comes close to the features, up time and simplicity of XBL Gold. For 3.00 per month it's a no brainer.

But if you're not using it, no reason to pay for it.

+1.

Battleblock Theater, BLOPS Zombies (no doubt).


Hrm. Other than that, perhaps some Borderlands 2 and Super House of Dead Ninjas - if I get any time away from work.

He kept the cynic out of being a critic.

RIP.

Which cartoons had death and violence? Really? Have you seen Bambi? Or Dumbo? Where were Snow White's real parents? I don't think Gaston survived his Nestea plunge from the top of the Beast's castle. These sorts of scenes and themes can help to expose children to the darker sides of our lives and society,

He cited kids shows. Not movies.

You're standing IN the soapbox, friend. That is semantics. Up is a movie from Disney, the crux of the argument is violence / perceived danger and kids being able to watch it.

I *VIVIDLY* remember Ironhide being snuffed out in Transformers (the movie). Until that scene, there was never any risk from those silly glowing shots from either side - and that's two seasons in.

Bugs Bunny is all about violence, even if it doesn't show consequence. Hell, in TS3, the bad guy doesn't even die - he just ends up as a garbage truck mascot.

What do you think of The Lion King  - you know, where the uncle kills Simba's father (aka his brother) in cold blood? Little Mermaid had the witch skewered by a sunken ship (little girl movie, right?).

I choose not to expose my kid to certain films (mostly ones that feature horrid behaviour during his developmental cycle). That doesn't mean I'm disillusioned to the fact that violence in childrens entertainment has existed well before "Disney Went Off The Rails".

Cripes, Rescuers Down Under had the same psychopath - as did Cruella DeVille who wanted to make coats out of puppies. The list goes on.

[tiger spiders]

Repurposing thread:

New giant tarantula:

A new type of tarantula about the size of your face has been found in northern Sri Lanka. Scientists found the spiders — with a leg span up to 8 inches across — living in trees and the old doctor’s quarters of a hospital in Mankulam.

Covered in beautiful, ornate markings, the spiders belong to the genus Poecilotheria, known as “Pokies” for short. These are the tiger spiders, an arboreal group indigenous to India and Sri Lanka that are known for being colorful, fast, and venomous. As a group, the spiders are related to a class of South American tarantula that includes the Goliath bird-eater, the world’s largest.

Oh Kato ... I tawt I taw a puddy tat!

I find it funny that of all the games I miss, very few of them begin with "Star Wars".

No, DF2: Jedi Knight, I still love you.

Sorry, Disney is already on board with dancing stormtroopers.

That video depicts a white man in a black suit voiced by a black man in Michael Jackson's role. How appropriately confusing.

I pull other peoples nose-hair out, you know, as a hobby.

Professionally, I work for one of Canada's largest insurance companies (GWL) as a "Senior FileNet Server Support Analyst". Basically, I'm the guardrail between tipsy developers and total. product. failure.

FileNet? It's now an IBM product. Think Sharepoint, except better.

I am working at this very moment, having had a server CPU allocated to an Oracle back-end DB server fail to work.
So they're cleaning that up, and then I get to start everything up and test to make sure it all still works.

Go team.

I'd be tempted to do it to get my spare 60GB SSD in play.

How much were you looking for it?

Was in the beta for Battleblock Theater.

Thinking about giving it a go.

Keep in mind, the game is very co-op-y

I rewatch the entire series and the movie every year.  I own dvd AND blu ray editions of both as well.  I think it's safe to say I adore Firefly.  Rarely does a show come along with a cast that shares that insane amount of chemistry.  When it's also so well produced, acted and written, you get magic. 

It's tragic that audiences didn't respond in overwhelming numbers during its run.   

I feel the same way about Better Off Ted.

So I sold my 80GB PS3 (non-BC) on kijiji the day before yesterday.
One controller, HDMI and composite cables, Nyko charger with 2 plugs, and 4 games (Burnout Paradise, God of War 1 &2, God of War 3, Neir)
got $160 for it, still have my BT remote, a second controller (using it on my PC or giving it to my bro).

Socking that money away for either the Durango or the PS4 later this year.

The Wii still gets use with my son (not getting a WiiU - not a good value proposition for me).

So... how many of you are planning on moving next-gen on day 1?

Since this is coming from Randy I'm guessing that in the end we'll find out the PS4 is not really a console but a piece of toast.

it was a very good piece of toast though.

Which may, or may not scream obscenities at you while exploding into a pile of viscous fluid and sprouting a small volcano of money and ammo.

People's exhibit No 438936091 in the case "Today's music has gone downhill" vs "These kids today"

too bad they didn't include the names on the list on the left.  would have made it easier to round them up for that new rocket to the sun trip. 

You actually take that "infographic" seriously? Comparing a pop song to a rock symphony? You'd get the same extreme difference in writing quality if you took an 80s pop song and compared it to a modern rock symphony too, but in the other direction. It's a very clear case of apples vs oranges.

Or an orapple.

Hilarious!

Just Cause 2 - $3 
http://store.steampowered.com/app/8190/

HIGHLY recommended. Fantastic fun.