beaten by seconds!

We sat in on a roundtable style interview for Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare today with PopCap Producer Brian Lindley. Much of the discussion within was centered around topics that will inform our review of the game, though there were a few stats and newsworthy items brought up.

As we know so many of you like to get into the gritty numbers for the newest batch of consoles, we took notes when another member of the press asked Lindley about the resolution and FPS for Garden Warfare on the Xbox One. Lindley initially explained that the game definitely runs at 60FPS on the Xbox One. He was a bit shaky on the resolution, but he said he knew that it outputted at 1080p.

Internally, what the Xbox One actually runs the game at, he wasn’t sure. That’s the bit in the interview when we heard a series of taps on a keyboard.

When questions ended and the handler from EA asked Lindley if he had anything to add to the conversation, Lindley offered that he received clarification from the dev team regarding what resolution Garden Warfare runs at on the Xbox One.

Lindley found, “after sending a quick note” to his team, that the game is “actually internally at 900p.” He added, again, that he could confirm that point for us.

I also asked Lindley about plans to release the game’s soundtrack for consumers; it’s one of the lesser talked about high points of the package so far. Lindley explained that he wasn’t sure what the plan was yet for distributing the music, though they definitely want to release it down the line.

That’s when the PR handler cut in and offered that EA will be giving out codes for the full soundtrack to EA Insiders on Tuesday, the day of launch. If you’ve liked the sound of this game so far, you might want to take heed then.

We’ll be reviewing Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare soon, so stay tuned.

http://www.technobuffalo.com/2014/02/21/plants-vs-zombies-garden-warfare-runs-at-900p-60fps-on-xbox-one/

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It's not really even funny anymore. When games you just *assume* to be 1080p can't hit 1080p...well...oh well. Hopefully it'll do better when tools improve. Or...something.

Tried the demo. Doesn't appear to be a game for me. Spamming 2 attack moves and jump wasn't what I was expecting, but maybe there's more to it.

Giving it more development time won't guarantee a better product.

343i, for example, could have half a decade to develop a Halo game and it won't ever be as good as a Bungie halo game.

Hopefully the team working on Gears will do a good job. Maybe they can make it better than Epic, who IMO weakened the series with its entries after Gears 1. But adding more development time is certainly not a guarantor of that.

Damn what a flop. Fortunately, I don't make my buying decisions based on a single publication or gaming website.

IGN - 90

Joystiq - 80

Eurogamer - 70 (which is a solid score from those guys)

GameTrailers - 91

Destructoid - 100

Polygon - 85

Game Informer - 93

GamesRadar - 80

That's enough positive energy mostly saying the same thing to let me know that this is a fucking fantastic game if DK games are my thing. At the end of the day, GS's score doesn't mean shit, and if in real life you use this website as anything more than for just another opinion to add to other professional reviews and opinions of your friends and forum posters to collectively help you make a decision, you're doing life wrong. Gamespot reviews should not be the singular source you use for anything. Except Gamespot forum ownage, of course.

1.) Microsoft has let everyone down by developing Kinect 2 and not building a great game that highlights how it can be useful in core games for core gamers. Kinect Sports isn't it. If you're going to ask people to pay $500 for a GAMING console, +$100 of which is for a motion tracking camera, show us why and how GAMERS benefit. Skype and UI navigation are NOT enough. Worst part is that there has been no piece of software shown or rumored to be in development that in any way utilizes this camera for gaming beyond sports and fitness. Sorry, that's not acceptable for a $100 pack-in.

2.) If they weren't going to seriously step up their game with Kinect 2's gaming software, they could have launched at $399 or launched at $449 with a more powerful piece of hardware than Sony. Let that sink in as we boot our mostly 720p games for the next 7 years.

3.) The hand gesture thing interrupting TV happened to me just last night. I was watching House of Cards on Netflix and was eating a sandwich. I froze like, "wtf is that?" with my fork still next to my mouth. I moved to put my hand down and Kinect interpreted that as me asking it to move forward on the show's timeline 30 minutes and start there. It shouldn't happen, period. Author isn't the only one.

4.) I haven't had the same problems the author had with Kinect's voice controls. Usually if Kinect fails to get a command right, it's because I'm simply not speaking loud enough to be heard over the volume of the TV (or I'm just not loud enough in general). When I speak up, Kinect is at probably 99% for me. There is some real wonkiness with the voice controls, though. It's not always clear when you have to say "Xbox..." before issuing the next command. Like, sometimes when it says it's listening (after saying Xbox), you want to say something that would ordinarily require you to put it in the listening mode before saying the rest like, "volume up" or "go back". You always can't and I think that's something they should look at simplifying. That said, if I'm not gaming, my controller isn't on. I can navigate everything perfectly fine with the voice controls and do so daily.

The only time voice control failed me was for the Super Bowl. It couldn't figure out what "Super Bowl XCIIV" or whatever the roman numerals were. I tried everything. Saying the letters, the number of the Superbowl...couldn't get it to recognize I wanted to watch that show on that channel. I also couldn't get it to just turn to the name of the channel. I'm not sure if there's a way to just tell it to go to a channel number, but that was the only time.

All that said...

I still like Kinect 2.0. It's a nice piece of technology and I love getting around my Xbox One using voice controls now that I know almost all of the commands. It still has some usability issues to work out and hopefully they will be addressed. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with it. But none of that changes the fact that it is inexcusable (disastrous, really) that they could neither create nor encourage the creation of a high-quality game that justifies its existence and forced inclusion in a GAMING system's box, for a premium price. If you can't think of and create a compelling gaming experience using your unique peripheral, how can you expect anyone else to, Microsoft? No, Kinect Sports isn't good enough. Not even slightly. And as a result, Microsoft is endanger of losing the market share they spent so much time and effort growing over the last 12 years. And you'd better believe they can lose it 2x as fast as they got it. Ask Nintendo and Sony, both of whom have lost massive amounts of their player base do to similar poor decisions made at the hardware design phase. Market share is hard to build, but very fuckin easy to lose.

I give Microsoft until E3 to demonstrate to the world why Kinect 2.0 is in every Xbox One box and why it's a must-have for gamers (other than streaming on Twitch). If they can't make that argument well enough for us all to be convinced (well those of us who are manticores), expect a Kinectless Xbox One at a lower price before Autumn.

Curious thread. Aren't all but 2 or 3 PS4 games out or scheduled for release 1080p?

Honestly. It's like saying, "I bought a BMW...the on-board Navigation and UI just kept making me want to look at it with its album art and pretty nav software and heads-up display...so I sent it back and picked up a Ford Focus. That Nav was just too distracting."

Yep, it's really the Xbox *family* of systems. Even the damn PR title is deceitful.

Welp. GGWP, MS. Not sure where they go from here. I assume they'll wait for the March numbers (which will include Titanfall sales boosts) before they decide if they need to drop prices. But in the end, they'll need to drop the prices to compete. The PS4 is simply the better proposition for the gamer who can only afford one console right now. Objectively better performance, straight-forward UI, $100 cheaper, better library of free software by way of PS+.

It's just the truth of the matter. Sony has won the PR and hardware battle, period. How Microsoft adjusts their pricing and strategy going forward will determine if they compete adaquately and admirably for the next 6 or 7 years, or if they get blown out of the fuckin water. I think they latest they can announce a price drop is at E3 when they officially present Halo 2 Anniversary. Later than that and they may lose any opportunity to regain a larger piece of the mindshare of gamers and marketshare that comes with it.