Xbox ONE: First Thoughts

The Xbox's specs were briefly mentioned as an 8-Core CPU, 8GB RAM, 500GB hard disk drive, Blu-ray drive (FINALLY), Wi-Fi direct, USB 3.0 and 1080p wide camera. Basically the same as PS4 but with a camera. Microsoft had shown the Xbox and the controller straight away, the X(box) is just a box and the controller is another bog standard controller. 

First of all: NO!!

What I understand from the stream, is that the new features consist of an OS that makes use of Voice Control and gestures. I am not to keen on this as people like to talk freely and move there arms without wanting a response. They also talked about the Skype features and a new peek thingy which lets you do 2 things at once. STILL NOTHING ON GAMING

It also uses Explorer, Windows 8 and etc

They then went on to talk about their TV things. Basically, a freeview box. The problem is, I Smart TV can do all this and this doesn't work well when you have a subscription box.

The first piece of gaming news was that all games run on the cloud and it is constantly online. Does this mean I don't buy discs? or don't save games locally? I don't know. They also said that the Xbox Live still costs money and it will have 300,000 servers, so some good news.

They introduced an EA Sports guy with 2 watches but the stream broke. 

The last thing they did was show of Call of Duty: Ghosts first they showed a trailer and boasted their new engine along with a dog. When they said they will show gameplay, they showed another trailer, when that ended, the stream stopped. No goodbyes, No thank yous, NOTHING

Final Thoughts: If I want a TV I will buy one, a games console is not a TV, what did you actually change in terms of gameplay?, and what makes you think this is better than the PS4?

Please comment your thoughts below. Any pro Xbox comments will face my rage

I am severely disappointed in you Xbox

Sony PS4 UK Price and Release Date Revealed. And It's Reasonably Priced!!

Prepare for some next-gen gaming, as a next-gen console will be coming later this year, the Sony PlayStation 4 is set to sell in October and according to a new report, you can get one for £300. Which is pretty awesome!!

View PS4 game trailers here

The Sun states that Sony will be launching its new console in October, which matches up with what Sony said when the console was announced last month, that it would be released before the end of the year. The launch price, however, looks to be a lot less than what Sony wanted for the PlayStation 3 when it first launched back in 2007 for a crazily priced £425. That’s a big drop, but it makes sense in a world where £99 Android consoles and the free to play businesses exist, threatening both Sony and Microsoft’s expensive consoles.

Although this is all speculation from The Sun, not the most reliable newspaper at the best of times, at this point all hints are proving it to be reliable info, and I'd be disheartened if I heard anything different later down the line. Sadly we still don’t know what the console will look like, as Sony is keeping quite about the design and some of the specifics, but we do know it’ll come with a revamped DualShock 4 with a new touch pad, stream down PlayStation games and let you brag to all your friends with that new Share function.

Will you be keeping October free in your spending calendar so you can get your hands on the PS4 or are you firmly holding out for the next-gen Xbox? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Sony PS4 to be Unveiled Tomorrow

Hey there!
Sources suggest that the PlayStation 4 is coming this month. Sony’s teasing fans to come see the “future” at an event on 20 February, and one newspaper in the US has already confirm it’ll be the next PlayStation on show. Keep reading for a look at the teaser video.

The PS4 will still use a disk drive, so not reliant on "The Cloud", and will reportedly focus on “social gaming aspects”, suggesting you’ll be able to connect with friends better while you play. 

There is a pretty unrevealing teaser video below

There are also leaks on the new controller. It appears to have a touchpad and to feature PlayStation move features. As of yet we don't know whether it will be a touchpad similar to the back of the PS Vita or an LED screen to display game features. We will find out soon. The leaked picture is on the left

Doesn't really give much away.

What are your opinions on the new controller, or can you see any revealing details in the teaser that I have missed? Please leave a comment down below!!

Next Gen Xbox Specs Leaked

Hey Guys,

VGLeaks are reporting an exclusive claim that they have the information behind the GPU that will be in the next gen Xbox, codenamed Durango. People are classifying this as a huge rumor, so keep that in mind. Until Microsoft releases any official information, we know nothing, but for those who are interested, keep reading.

"The following table describes expected performance of the Durango GPU. Bear in mind that the table is based only on hardware specifications, not on actual hardware running actual code. For many reasons, theoretical peak performance can be difficult or impossible to achieve with real-world processing loads," the 

report states. Take a look at the table below:

ESRAM

Durango has no video memory (VRAM) in the traditional sense, but the GPU does contain 32 MB of fast embedded SRAM (ESRAM). ESRAM on Durango is free from many of the restrictions that affect EDRAM on Xbox 360. Durango supports the following scenarios:

• Texturing from ESRAM
• Rendering to surfaces in main RAM
• Read back from render targets without performing a resolve (in certain cases)

The difference in throughput between ESRAM and main RAM is moderate: 102.4 GB/sec versus 68 GB/sec. The advantages of ESRAM are lower latency and lack of contention from other memory clients—for instance the CPU, I/O, and display output. Low latency is particularly important for sustaining peak performance of the color blocks (CBs) and depth blocks (DBs).

I have no idea what any of the above means.

For information on what all of this jargon means click here as I know nothing about the topic.

Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition Update

Hey Guys!


As you will most likely know, Mojang recently released Minecraft for Xbox 360. The one time I had played it at a friends house, I really struggled. There was poor lighting, poor mob AI and default skins.

Well, an update has just come out for and it has many features and fixes listed below!

Features:-

- Added Pistons & Sticky Pistons.
- Added Stackable fences.
- Added Shears – required to get wool from sheep, and to collect leaf blocks.
- TNT needs Flint and Steel or Redstone to detonate.
- Redstone wire will now connect to a repeater.
- New textures for Cobblestone and Brick.
- Added Character Skin Selector to allow players to choose their skin from the default skins, or from Downloadable Content skin packs.
- Added lighting improvements (brought forward from 1.8.2 update) and snow & rain improvements.
- Added a save file cache to improve the speed of displaying the saves list.
- Added ban list functionality to allow players to self-ban from levels they feel contain offensive content.
- Added a ban list section to the How To Play menus.
- Added an option for the host to limit online games to only players in their friends list (no friends of friends).
- Added a seed display to the level load screen (requires existing levels to be saved out again to add the display).
- Changed the tooltip display setting to in-game tooltip display, so that tooltips always display in menus.
- Added the crosshair to the list of things affected by the opacity slider.
- On using the quickselect bar, the opacity of the quickselect, tooltips, splitscreen gamertag display, and crosshair will be set to 80,
and will fade back down to the user opacity setting after 6 seconds of no quickselect bar use.
- Added some more Tips & Trivia to the loading/saving screen display.
Tutorial World changes & additions:-

- Added optional tutorial for Pistons and Redstone.
- Added a self-building bridge to the castle using Pistons.
- Added some sugar cane, cactii and clay to the world.
- Added a few other things for players to discover.

Fixes:-

- Fix for only the host being shown the pop-up when any player attempts to place lava near the spawn point.
- Fixed tooltip for Flint and Steel.
- Fix for Note blocks not showing notes.
- Fix for Leaderboard reads taking too long.
- Fix to block players re-entering a level they have been kicked from, until the level is restarted.
- Fix to stop players being able to join a game when they are not a friend of any player in the game.
- Fix for Netherracks re-appearing after being mined.
- Fix for a rare crash on entering the Nether.
- Fix for attacking enemies at a different level not damaging them.
- Fixed a problem causing some save games not to load.
- Removed Herobrine.

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Ouya Android Console Unveiled

Hey Guys,


I have been taking a break from blogging recently but my friend told me about this android console so I did my research and here is the latest on it.


So as the title give away, news has been released on an android gaming console to be named "Ouya". I have no idea where the strange name came from but it's quite catchy and easy to remember.

According to a range of sources it runs on Android and only cost $99 or in people speak, £60!! This is some cheap ass console and the company insists it will be a next level console. I have high douubs on how many hardcore gamers will ditch their Xbox's or PS3's for a droid console. My thoughts are that the games will consist of small casual games such as Minecraft.

The Ouya has specs that are on par with high-end Android phones and tablets, including a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage. It outputs 1080p video through an HDMI slot, uses Bluetooth 4.0 and USB 2.0 for connecting external devices and includes a wireless controller. All sounds very nice, but for £60 it can't be as amazing as the features suggest.


To raise money for a March 13 launch, Ouya has turned to crowd-funding site Kickstarter, where the company is taking pre-orders and other donations. Ouya hopes to raise $950,000 through the site and I give them full support. I'd love to see Google software made for my TV screen at a low price!

Unfortunately, not all games that you play on your phone will be compatible on the big screen. There will be different resolutions and the controller will have a joystick!

Ouya wants to lower the barrier for game development compared to traditional game consoles, so there are no licensing fees, and every console will include a software development kit. There's just one big rule that all developers must follow: All games must have a free-to-play element, whether it's a timed trial, a feature-locked demo or a complete experience filled with microtransactions, so no expensive games to have to waste too much money on.

We don't have any knowledge on when it will be released or a list of games but I really am looking forward to it, for once there will be tech I can afford. It's just a shame getting a TV for that price may be a different story.

So guys, what do you think? Is it worth a buy? Will you be making games? Do you think it will sell? Will Apple, Microsoft and Sony make their console's cheaper and more available to casual; gamers? Leave a comment below!

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