MattyP

Well I guess its different... This is obviously aimed at a niche market - most people use their mobile phones for gaming these days. Arguably Nintendos market in the pure handheld sector is wavering a bit hence the Switch which combines both home and handheld. Not really sure why this exists... the crank is a bit of a ill thought out gimmick IMHO its bound to get knocked or broken when dropped a few times... would have though a dial would have been a better choice for a pocket device. Also greyscale screen... Anyway perhaps in 30 years time they will be worth a bit of money as I don't think they will sell a heap of these....

To add. My PC having 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD drive that would boot the thing in seconds. A processor having six internal processors running at over 3GHz...Oh an the whole thing costing less than a 120MHz Pentium machine with 16MB of RAM that I used in my final year of my Uni course.... PC gaming hardware is insane these days.. so much disposable storage, memory and processing power for so little money. Incredible.

It is indeed sad. Although for me Sega always made the top arcade games with the hydraulic cabinets etc.

Indeed.

The ability to play OutRun as good as the arcade game, handheld on a Nintendo Switch. Given that I started with Chequered Flag on the 48K ZX Spectrum - car games in general would have blown me away. Forza Horizon 4 for example. Although download times have now replaced loading times..

Not sure if its how its going... personally its been suiting me and how I play at the moment. Time is my currency and have little of it to play the latest stuff so just resort to GamePass for the odd game of something. My youngest son is busy playing Fortnite and he doesn't even look at anything else. When he does its other FTP games. I think if you look at the bigger picture things like GamePass and FTP games are much more attractive to parents as its a steady drip of outlay and the children get plenty to play rather than spending say £200 on 4 AAA games over a year. £50 per gaming hit is harder to find than £8 a month for say game pass. A FTP game is free of course and you can easily drip the odd bit of money into it for the children (pocket money prices). The publishers/devs are happy as its a constant revenue stream ditto for the sub services. And those who a playing now with the most time to spare are the children.... so they will grow up with these models in place. Anyway.... guessing they'll be a mix of everything anyway. Just expect FTP/sub based gaming to be the more popular options.

That's the thing factoring in inflation... Still more than I want to spend on gaming these days personally.

Decided to go digital only a couple of months back. Just buy things in the sales. Happy to be behind the curve in terms of new releases. To be fair though hardly bought anything - in fact only Dangerous Driving. What with Games With Gold, GamePass etc just no need. With the popularity of Fortnite and other FTP games - subscription services like GamePass think the way I consume games has completely changed. Not sure I'll ever buy a AAA game again.... Guessing the youngsters now will expect the way Fortnite works is pretty normal... Be interesting to see where all this goes. Going forward I'm interested to see where Google go with Stadia. As for the next gen of traditional consoles have to say not really interested. Well other than where I will get to play the next instalment of Mario...

Indeed... In the end MS don't just make games consoles its another thing they do. Sure *shock* Sony will use MS Windows / Office in their business too... Sony will just be another client to MS using its Azure services - just like companies choose different broadband suppliers etc. Use Azure here for a few things - its very slick and works well.

Guess so. Surprised they haven't come up with an equivalent of GamePass yet although guessing they are probably currently looking into it!

Well choice is good isn't it? No one is forcing anyone to buy anything (including PS+). Also sure there are plenty of games on EA Access that don't need online modes to play? The value of games offered with PS+ is dependant whether they appeal to you or not? One month maybe better than others. Personally don't bother with PS+ because I never play online and and don't need anymore games to play I think the main reason Sony are allowing EA Access on is to give more choice to gamers and have something else to go up against MS with GamePass.

Love this... "This rumor stems from dataminers pouring through the source code for Forza Street. In the source code, the Switch is specifically mentioned multiple times. Now we're trying to verify that the source code actually comes from the game." Most C++/C/C# source code will have multiple Switch statements... so perhaps rumours have spread from that? Not only that the line " Now we're trying to verify that the source code actually comes from the game" hmmmm the internet eh...

Not sure where gaming can really go at the moment. VR is one road but not 100% convinced this will be the future. Its interesting though and I'll looking to see where Sony go with this and the next iteration of the Playstation. With games in general I'd like to see some tangible difference to what we had before some new gameplay elements that haven't been shown before. I know this is a big ask from the devs as really where could you go? Other than VR perhaps? Smarter AI? Destructible environments that change the gameplay, challenges and strategy as you play? Really don't know. Recently being playing games that are 10+ years old and enjoying them more than newer games... Seems to been a lot more innovation back in the PS2/Xbox;/GC days and as each successive gen has come out since IMHO its been more evolutionary not revolutionary. Guess with the PS2 gen this is where 3D graphics finally got to a stage where they looked reasonably good and new gaming concepts were developed because of the new hardware. For example PS2 brought us EyeToy, Buzz etc. Guess the PS4 made VR tech affordable to the masses - so there is that. This is why to a degree not overly enthusiastic about the upcoming gen. I just don't to see a shinier Gears of War, Halo, Forza. Want to see something new. Think the next gen is where I'll finally jump into VR depending on what experiences are offered with that and the new tech.

Indeed. Find it all a bit tedious to be honest. The manufacturers love it as it gets the hype up for their new machines. The new consoles will be like getting a PC upgrade this time - shinier graphics and CPU/GPU updates to support them. Given the bounds of what console manufactures get to work with in terms of costs the upgrades won't be that significant either. If you look at PC GPUs and CPUs and their pricing well you aren't going to get anywhere near the top end of £400-500. So the new consoles will be around mid-level gaming PC specs now. Well that is where my expectation is set anyway. Personally don't really care about the actual hardware anymore just interested to see new experiences they will bring. Shame there isn't much news on those.

Played TLG for an hour or so late last year (picked it up in a sale). It was then that I realised still hadn't finished SotC so thought I'd wait until I had! I know they aren't connected well I don't think they are. So looking forward to getting stuck into that next.