@louixiii: Agreed, I think it looks good. FPS would be my main concern. Unless you are very familiar with and used to PC gaming, you aren't going to fret too much about lower shadow resolution, textures, draw distances, etc. But frame rates can be a big annoyance for anyone. It looked like briefly in that chopper scene of the video (about 0:40) the PS4 dropped below 30fps for a couple of seconds. Not sure how prevalent that is in-game.
@LesserAngel: Also, different people have different definitions of what they consider a "top-of-the-line" graphics card. I would bet a GTX 970 (~$325) would handle this fine at 1080p and 60fps on high or ultra. But that isn't top of the line, technically. You have the GTX 980 (~$500), GTX 980 TI (~$650), and a GTX Titan (~$1050), which are all higher up, but complete overkill when gaming at 1080p, in my opinion.
@skiggy34: Here is the cheapest gaming PC build which will run pretty much anything on the market at 1080p@60fps. You can go cheaper and still beat a PS4, but the improvement won't be as noticeable, I don't think. Note that if you don't have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc., you would need to add those in to this price. Good luck! http://pcpartpicker.com/user/TheRedCow/saved/CKqtt6
@joshrmeyer: Yea the game won't look much different at those prices. And there is practically no one running a $5000 gaming PC. But you are right that there wouldn't be much difference. But there are two big jumps in PC gaming you could make that would need drastically more powerful hardware: use a higher resolution monitor (play at 1440p or even 2160p (4K), and get a monitor which refreshes faster than 60Hz (so you can play at 120fps or 144fps instead of 60fps). Trying to game at 1440p with settings maxed out will be hard to get 100+fps unless you are rocking a build that is like $2000+. And just buying a monitor that has 1440p@144Hz is going to cost you $650+.
Regarding the $400 build, someone made a build with a 750Ti for about $450 which outperforms an Xbox One. I can't say exactly how it would perform with this game, but I would imagine it can compete. But consoles do have their advantages in that you get a lot of bang for your buck, with obvious simplicity of use.
@joshrmeyer: This link is from a discussion about the Oculus Rift that got brought up on reddit. This PC build is pretty much as low of a price as you can go for top-of-the-line graphics (a GTX 970 is ~3.5X the power of the PS4 GPU). You can go much lower and still beat a PS4 (like with a 760 or maybe even a 950), but those aren't quite going to be maxing out graphics at 60fps and 1080p on AAA games. http://pcpartpicker.com/user/TheRedCow/saved/CKqtt6
@nervedamaged: That would be the entry price, yes. But I think it is important to note that this first round of sales are really not aimed at the market of people who are just getting into PC gaming. There will be a people here and there who just have money to waste and will dive nose first into VR, spending $2000 to get a full setup ready. But the majority of people buying these right now are going to have to be (and are expected to be) those who already have powerful gaming computers and are at the forefront of high-end gaming. It is not going to be a 'general public' kind of device for another year or two.
@jb34304: I agree it isn't innovative, but it is certainly well-appreciated and useful. There are occasional games that I never finished on 360 or never got around to playing that will now be available to me to go back and try, usually at a higher frame rate than they would have played at originally.
And as you said, from a business perspective, it quickly and easily bumps the size of their Xbox One library to make it more attractive to a casual buyer. Can play old games (as they get added to the BC list) and has increased functionality at a reasonable price (since prices of the console have sort of plummeted after removing Kinect).
I think it is great, but I wouldn't get hopes too high on Sony for the near future. Making a stable emulator that is acceptably rock-solid for a first-party release is pretty hard and a lot of man-hours. Maybe we'll see it down the line, but at best I'd expect it to pop up as an announcement at next year's E3 or later.
I am just waiting on some back-end functionality that will put out performance more similar to what we all got used to in the 360. I think the Nov 12 NXOE update will do just that. I don't think many people can strongly argue that the 360 wasn't better than the PS3.
Microsoft had a big advantage coming into this generation, regardless of how close sales were globally (Sony gets drastically more sales in the East, which skews things). If the focus coming into this generation was more on gaming (where it should be) and if they released a game system with identical hardware to the PS4, then the game lineup and software capabilities of the Xbox One would easily make it the more attractive console, definitely in the USA, and potentially in Europe as well. They really just shot themselves in the foot to start out this generation.
So they have admitted that they screwed up and admitted that it is an uphill and possibly impossible battle to try to outsell the PS4 at this point. But they are doing well in terms of giving their customers a great product. Especially after the NXOE update, I really don't think many people will look at the two consoles and see PS4 as a significantly superior option. They've caught up in terms of public perception and satisfaction. They are just too far behind in sales. Not the worst thing in the world, really.
@stevie456 Unfortunately the way I see it will be further segregation of the PC community. It is already the case that due to a wide range of computer specs and the inevitable openness of PCs, it's tough at times for the community to pull together, and it can be outright daunting for someone new to PC gaming to know where to begin.
Through adding another operating system to the mix, and with it likely a whole new slew of programs for everyday tasks (gaming and non-gaming), it may make things even more difficult.
For instance, playing with friends and being able to catch up through chat is probably the funnest part of gaming for me. On my Xbox, I have to simply hop in an xbox live party and it couldn't be simpler. On PC, I have one group of friends that use TeamSpeak, one group that uses Mumble, and another that uses Ventrilo. If I have a friend that is going to be playing with me for the first time, there can be a lot of hassle setting all of that up. And I have to do it all over again if we play with a group that uses a different program.
Don't get me wrong, I love PC gaming, but I don't necessarily think that increasing the quantity of options is always a good thing. I think a better way of growing the PC community would be to make a hardware product like this that does not rely on a new OS, and instead uses an interface and software that anyone familiar with a computer can use (i.e. Windows). Maybe it will be more intuitive than I imagine, but what kind of person jumping ship from consoles will be comfortable going straight to a Linux operating system?
Well, this got unbelievably long and drawn out.
TL;DR The PC community is complicated and this may just make it more complicated.
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