Death of the gaming console?

Hello everyone, a lifelong xbox user but recently have been put off with the constant delays in connectivity to the gaming community. PC's don't seem to suffer the same fate or delays that we have to put up with. Is it time to jump ship and leave the console
and go strait for PC's? Unfortunately, Xbox hasn't been very responsive in addressing the issues, although they have no problem taking my money. Your thoughts?

:)

 

Food For Thought

[quote user="Covert Affairs"]

Competitive gaming = Death to gaming

[/quote]

I lol'd you mean Mainstream gaming = death to gaming.

I have utterly lost my draw to my console gaming due to the lack of comptive gaming compared to the pc.

(Funfact: I don't like MLG)

 

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Ladies and gentlemen! I give you.... The death of video gaming!

 

Is it worth going straight to the PC? The grass may seem greener but the PC has its own set of problems.

For a start the buy in for a decent system is higher than for a console. I know there are a lot of budget gaming builds on YouTube but the ones that can game at acceptable quality are almost exclusively made with used parts. Now that isn't an issue for the
most part but when something does go wrong there is no warranty to fall back on most of the time.

You don't get the benefits of physical media. Oh sure you can go into a store and buy a PC game off the shelf, though finding a store that has a PC section can be an effort in futility, or buy from an online store but you still have to activate them through
an online service. Plus you can't trade the games in if you want to put some cash toward a new title.

Those are a couple of things for you to think on. The PC is a great gaming platform but it really isn't for everyone.

 

When you say "constant delays in connectivity to the gaming community", what exactly is the problem you're having? Do you mean you can't connect with friends or matchmaking isn't working? If that's the case, then it isn't the console's fault but that of
your ISP.

Not quite sure why you're sounding a death knell for consoles, and/or considering that PC is a better option. I've been playing exclusively on consoles since 1993, and back in the day - pre the internet age - I had to rely on print media (ie, magazines)
to fuel my excitement from month to month. Even though I've never owned a PC (nor ever will), I nevertheless made it a habit to keep track of gaming developments across the board - which meant picking up a monthly copy of PC Powerplay (a specialist publication
printed in Australia).

Fast forward to 2018, and I've just done a spring clean of my storage cabinets. Straight into the recycling bin was a stack of PC Powerplay maazines because it now seems the death knell has tolled for print media! That's right, after 270 issues, this magazine
can no longer support a MONTHLY publishing schedule. It will now appear every 2-3 months... by which time any 'current' information will be out of date.

By comparison, both of the current consoles have "official" publications which are still going strong (coupled with multiplatform magazines that I source from England). I've never been more enthused and excited to be part of the console scene.

 

I understand the problem you are highlighting. To understand the issue fully first we must ask the correct questions. What is microsoft's (XBOX's) main goal and priorities? Ans: Data farming, in partnership with bing, cortana, and
who knows, any other company or government they partner with that has an intrest about 'users' 'activity' 'online'. The second goal is making as much money and profits as possible to sustain the 'evolution' of the 'internet' and 'technology'. This generates
'equity' which fuels 'economy' and activly achieves 'economic growth' which I can aggree with as long as certain conditions are met as to our welfare. This is called a 'regime'. At the very least this is a political agenda that makes our gaming a non priority
but more a means to achieve their goals. So what we have is a low cost product sold to us at high price for the purpose of political priorities, and the only reason anything changes is if their goals will not be sustainable because the majority of 'users'
stop using the 'service' because the conditions are causing a negative effect. There's alot more to the story but I will refrain from stating the multiple other sides of the story as some are extreme and I don't want to be assassinated. There's more to the
world than meets the eye and 'it's' been happening for millenniums and nothing will change except how the goal is achieved. I would like to see a better tomorrow but first everyone has to be on the same page, its just the fact that we are all not reading the
same book. If you understand my metaphors it doesn't matter what platform you pick as long as you pick one. (rofl).

 

It's the fault partially on Microsoft's servers for Xbox Live. But it's not always easy for them to maintain.

I have Vodafone NZ high speed internet. 100mb/s download and 10mb/s upload. Now that's fairly good internet. And Vodafone is like the worlds biggest ISP. They even service Australia and NZ so they're not just solely an American provider. I also live in a
large major city of NZ too.

I definitely have noticed that XBL connections ESPECIALLY on Xbox One can be poor at several times. Especially in Minecraft. Minecraft Xbox 360 had less problems in my experience.

The reason why PC is better is because with PC, you connect directly with the game/service provider's servers, not like consoles including PS4 and Xbox One, where every online thing you want to do must go through a switchboard online provider, which is Xbox
Live or Play Station Network. Microsoft did help improve connections for commonwealth countries on the other side of the world such as NZ and Australia, by building two data centres in Australia, but the issue still pursuits.

An issue is our planet is vastly huge. That's why many of us can't have like 1ms ping. And Vodafone said my ping between my address and their servers is like only 27ms thingy. Where as Xbox it averages 150-230ms. In fact I got an Xbox One dashboard notification
saying "your network is good, but there's an issue on our end".

It's matters which for most part are out of yourself, your ISP, and the manufacturer, and the Internet Infrastructure which runs worldwide.

Yes PC is most better with connection since it doesn't have to go through any switchboard like XBL and PSN. I now game on PC since I have a high end custom desktop PC. But I'm not ditching my over 100 friends (full friends, not followers). And I've had a
blast on Xbox 360 met heaps of kids and adults in games. And it also has good social media features too, including txt and voice messaging, party and game chat, and it doesn't get viruses. And offers a bit of simplicity compared to PC gaming (a simplified
controller compared with PC keyboard and mouse, no system requirements to worry about where as on PC, this game requires...... that game requires this machine to run well..... I also have an Xbox One X console and still have my perfectly working Xbox 360 Slim
250GB console from when I joined Xbox.

 

Unfortunately it's mostly out of the following peoples control.

- yourself

- your ISP

- Microsoft and their XBL servers switchboard. You CAN'T do anything online if and when XBL goes down. As EVERYTHING goes through XBL.

- The Internet Infrastructure

- The millions of other people using the Internet Infrastructure worldwide.

 

What size tinfoil hat do you wear?

 

I'm so lucky Cortana isn't available in my commonwealth country called New Zealand. So I don't have the data farming thingy issue that comes with it since Microsoft is using the excuse 'can't understand or hard to transcribe NZ English which is the same
as UK English without the funny and cute accent, and US English not quite as rough as US English. But English is English. Well, it is available but I have to change my voice audio or privacy settings or locality to UK/US in order to use it. Not sure if even
Australia has the FULL features of Cortana like in the US. Cause last time I checked two years ago, they didn't either. Probably couldn't understand "goodaye mate" (which I like). Good thing about being a NZ citizen is you can live work and school for as long
as you want in Aussie without requiring a VISA or permit like other countries.

If you think there are no privacy laws, depends on which country you live in. Over the past month, people all over the world have filed a class action lawsuit against Facebook. Watch YouTube videos of the US and Singapore governments. You go Singapore. And
even the UK government too. Some commonwealth countries have a thing called Human Rights, your Right to Privacy which overrides what a contract says because no contract can override a law, and a thing called a "Privacy Act". Australia has one, so does NZ.
In fact the NZ government has been involved with Facebook too.

If an American provides a service to my country and says your laws don't apply, that's incorrect. We could just turn around and say your American contract doesn't apply because this isn't America, NZ or Australian laws apply, or whichever country you live
in. As Australia puts it: "Guarantees which cannot be excluded by any contract". That's why people get away with longer warranties than the 90 day warranty from an American company. 12 months on Elite controller in NZ/AU/UK. If an American company has a single
office or single staff member working over here, they are bound by whatever country laws they are residing in. Just like when you visit a different country. Just because you belong to another country, while in that foreign country, you are bound by their laws
until you leave and return to the protection of your country. Microsoft knows this in their terms of service, applicable law, if you live outside the US, your countries laws govern the interpretation of the contract. Microsoft NZ and Microsoft Australia (yes,
they have offices here) are thus also bound by AUS and NZ law too. And these countries have Supreme Courts too.

Microsoft Support is actually really good. NZ addresses, phone numbers, emails, chat, etc, and you get the support within 1 hour, 24 hours at worst. Facebook management and support is shocking! No support at all - no chat, no phone numbers, only the US HQ
address, no email addresses, and they take 10 days if you're lucky to reply to you. Let alone their SMS verification system is appalling (where a company sends a verification code to your smartphone). Microsoft/Apple/Google/Yahoo!/ANZ/Sony etc I can receive
INSTANT SMS's from them. Vodafone NZ says it's an issue on their side! Their Support is "fill in the appropriate form and wait X business days for a response. We view case by case, we can't multitask and oh boy we have over 2 billion users. Yeah it will be
a while....

So I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss MS. Cause they're A LOT better than that. They have millions of users, and can still get back to countries on the other side of the world within 24 hours. I've been with Xbox for 7 years. Granted I'm less interested
in Xbox than I was last year. I forked out NZ$3K for my first custom high end gaming PC almost 2 years ago and play The Sims 4, Cities Skylines, Planet Coaster, and am looking forward to Jurassic World Evolution coming out in the next 8 weeks. But I've made
some good friends and have had a fair amount of fun on Xbox 360. Reason I like consoles is simplicity and good social media features. Party chat, voice/text/picture messaging, video chat, no system requirements, keyboards and mouse are more complicated than
a controller cause it's one vs. two devices, too many, and there are far less buttons on a controller which has two toggle sticks that act as your mouse. That simplicity is what I like. But the processor performance (which makes your life more convenient)
from a PC is good too. And I have noticed in NZ and Australia, PC games are slightly cheaper than console games. So that's a bonus too.

Consoles are good for people on a budget or who are kids or students or young or parents. Cause the device is cheaper and is better than a PC equivalent priced the same, since HP./Dell/ASUS/Apple/Sony/Toshiba/etc are selling laptops
in that price range with only integrated graphics (Intel HD, AMD low clocked 1.1 and 2.0Ghz CPU/APU's) thinking that a 1990's 5400RPM HDD is adequate for starting up, shutting down, loading and saving, v.s SSD's which only take 8 seconds to boot a PC compared
with a PC with a mechanical HDD which averages 2-3 minutes to boot up, and think 8GB DDR3L (surprised they're still in circulation) is good. There's two companies in NZ that let you choose from any of their pre-built systems or let you choose what you want
for your PC (case, processor, etc) and THEY will build it FOR YOU and ship it too you. I did this in mid 2016 and have an i7 high end processor, an EVGA GTX 1070 which is one year into it's 3 year manufacturer warranty, HyperX DDR4 16GB RAM which has like
a 10 year or life time manufacturer warranty, and a 1TB Samsung SSD which is one year into it's 3 year manufacturer warranty. And the best thing about living in NZ/AUS is if those components fail, I can return to the retailer since they are obliged by consumer
rights over here to sort out a solution, saving us a lot of hassle dealing with the manufacturer. A good thing about custom PC's is it has far greater customization options that you may want, compared with any PC manufacturer (eg. HP). I like HP is they're
well serviced in Australasia. And in my life so far, I'm not familiar with Dell (heard they have worst support than HP), ASUS etc. I have a white laptop, yes, WHITE, me so happy, not boring black. Though it has a 6th gen i5 processor, it's weaker at gaming
than even I'd say an Xbox 360 lol (definitely than an Xbox One original). It's only dual core, but gasp, it has a dedicated GPU!! It's only an AMD R7 M360. Well at least it's something compared to Intel HD 520. Not to mention a 5400RPM HDD. And with the amount
of updates we get these days from companies, most of them want us to reboot the PC. That takes forever, so does installing. Where as updates and rebooting on my custom desktop can be done with a click of a finger, install and reboot (only a few seconds needed
for that). I wasn't into getting Facebook but people I think just get it anyway as it appears to be popular and the most obvious and simple way to express yourself? But I don't put much on there.

Well I've written a lot. What happens when you get a bit bored and it's the weekend.

Products and Services we use in our life have their PRO's and CONS. Companies have different ways of dealing with support and management of it. Some are pretty good at it, sometimes they fall short, and others, I think you know who from my post, need to
get their act together (starts with an F). Well at least that company doesn't have any of my bank (ANZ) details and they'll never get it cause I have a pretty good bank and they'll reverse any transaction that isn't authorized by me. In fact that's one thing
I'm very proud that's at least ONE thing they don't know about me. Usually they're supposed to know everything about you. That's what some companies try and do.

Whenever I buy something from MS, I get it straight away, and they have good support for when I need it. If something you want to buy doesn't look like it will be much benefit for you, don't buy it.

 

It must be huge, I mean how else can he avoid being assassinated? if the snipers can only see a huge tinfoil hat then they cant shoot him.

 

I'd throw down wires and electrocute him.

Assassination ideas aside PC gaming does have its advantages but console gaming also has its advantages. People just need to decide, if they are only going to get one gaming platform, which offers them the best experience. What works for one person might not
work for another.

 

Completely agree, I work all day, 5 days a week with a computer, the last thing I want to do is get home and start playing a game on a computer. I just want to sit on my couch, crack open a cold beer and play a game or two. Don't want hassles of drivers,
settings, updates, cheaters, hackers etc. etc.

 

You still get hackers on Xbox too. I've had my fair share too. On Xbox 360, COD BO2 zombies, I met a hacker which modded the gameplay somehow so I backed out of that multiplayer game. And in Minecraft, where one of my best friends had an Australian friend
who was able to kill any mob with a single hit of a cookie in survival mode, however she deleted that Australian player even though he's a good builder. And also being able to download worlds on Minecraft Xbox 360. Also there's an Xbox Live Party chat glitch
on Xbox 360 where friends can keep on joining your party even when it's on Invite Only. That's also why one of my friends deleted him because he was getting on her nerves. Xbox 360 isn't irrelevant because it uses XBL just as Xbox One does.

Consoles also have another advantage too. NO VIRUSES. And given the state of the internet infrastructure, you don't need to do naughty things to get a virus threat detection on your computer. Fact. I've been surfing normal pages and sometimes have got a
detection. That's how unsafe the internet is. I have AVG paid subscription on my laptop and desktop custom high end gaming pc. It offers more better features than the free version which is limited because once you give a company some money, they lift all the
restrictive stuff from their software.

 

It's old advice but if you ever find yourself in a modded lobby on the Xbox 360 it is better to power off your console than to back out of that lobby.

This is because backing out of a lobby will more often than not trigger an autosave of your stats, now if they've been altered all that modded information is now saved and you're not going to be able to get rid of it. Powering off the console however means
that information is gone and unlikely to have been saved to your profile.

I've been using computers for over 20 years and have never been infected with a virus. I actually wonder what some people do to get hit with them so often.