Great. Just freaking great.
So, Witcher 2 was the game I really built this PC for.
Now, Witcher 3's the game to really make me want to upgrade.
How fitting.
[insert foul language here]
haha yeah
Guess I'll just buy a PS4?
That game is unwinnable, man. As soon as you dive in, you get swept down the stream. There is just no good answer, since consoles are closed, restrictive and are not the same thing at all. I don't know. Maybe I'm getting fed up with the gaming scene. It's in a low point right now, I think.
Well part of it is the new generation transition. I've gotten a LOT of use out my PC with minimal upgrades (replaced a burned out video card). Shit, I only have 2GB of RAM and still on WinXP and its only in the last year or so where its gotten annoying for things not being able to run. The upgrade cycle wasnt so bad since the last console gen ran so long and no one really wanted to push PCs too hard. I think we got a little spoiled.
On the other hand, I hope its a jump and then stays level for a while. I dont want to go back to when new videocards jumped so much that you needed a new one every year or two.
That's it. You're right. This transition is rough. For now, Gen 7 remains the top console generation ever, over a year after the introduction of the 8th. Pair diminishing returns with growing pains, and the result leaves much to be desired. Add a pinch of new anticonsumer restrictions, and a dash of cheaping out (by Sony too--they use an even slower version of the same low-power mobile-tech CPU) and the stew sours by the minute.
It's not like console gamers have a choice. Once the industry shifts gears, the old gen becomes a fond memory. I have both sitting side by side, and it is disheartening to see a well-behaved mature achiever upstaged by an undisciplined brat. So far, it's mostly as I predicted. Nothing is new; it's just sharper and (sometimes) more fluid. What I did not predict are the steps backward.
(1) All I/O is appreciably slower. The bus speeds, HDD speeds and internet speeds didn't change too much, but the amount of data that has to flow quadrupled or worse. Downloading, game loading, game saving, transitions, all take their sweet time. Another fallout from this is the inadequacy of the current 500GB storage size. With games in the 20-40GB range, the space runs out quickly.
(2) Work in progress. The 7th generation was one too. It's hard to believe that an Xbox 360 from 2007 is the same hardware spec as one from 2013. Everything vastly improved, as did the games themselves. The system is functionally flawless. I can't think of a single thing about it that ruffles my feathers. Those are in the past, the RRoD in particular--which was put to bed decisively. During its lifetime, the system saw hardware overhauls, firmware overhauls, and UI overhauls. It saw disc-based gaming transition to HDD gaming, along with digital availability of nearly its entire catalog. (It never did solve the issue of multi-disc games which need disc swaps.)
The Xbox One, on the other hand has much improvement needed. It's still in its infancy, with a confusing UI, hiccups which lead to reboots, laughably limited apps like Media Player (the 360's puts it to shame), and game design still struggling to get a grip on the system's quirks and strengths. This last one is the killer. I knew games would not be much better than last gen's (just sharper and more fluid). But I did not expect them to be worse. I did not expect them to be riddled with bugs, or choke on their own I/O. I did not expect for growing pains to have so much of an impact on the top games after a full year. That's why I waited a full year. The system engineers have more work to do, and the game coders have more work to do. It's back to Square One. (Heh, there's a new name for the system.) Come on. Let's get a move on.
Idol and D, good luck with the PC scene guys. Personally, I don't find any solace there either. I think for a while, the console pains will spill over to your side of the fence as well.