Xbox Live Now Supports Cross-Platform Multiplayer With PS4 (techcrunch.com) 105
An anonymous reader writes from an article on TechCrunch: Microsoft just announced that game developers can now create cross-platform multiplayer modes that work with other consoles and operating systems. So it means that the next Call of Duty or FIFA could feature a multiplayer mode that works with both Xbox and Playstation gamers. It just depends on developers now. Microsoft has historically restricted cross-platform play as the Xbox Live was the first successful multiplayer network for consoles. And yet, Microsoft is now lagging behind the Playstation 4 with its Xbox One. By opening up cross-platform multiplayer, Microsoft could convince late adopters to buy an Xbox One even though their friends have a PlayStation 4. It's also a way to make sure that there are enough plays for less popular games. It's unclear how developers are supposed to deal with duplicated PlayStation Network and Xbox Live screen names.
PC: Cross platform from day one (Score:1)
And you don't have to pay extra for the privilege either.
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PC: Cross platform from day one
And you don't have to pay extra for the privilege either.
The last cross-platform multiplayer experiment involving PCs that I remember was Quake III on the Dreamcast. It didn't end well.
I can compete with other PC users when I play on my PC, and I can play against other Xbox players with my Xbox. The only difference I've seen is that the Xbox users seem to be about twenty years younger than me, and seem to think that "faggot" and variations thereon are the height of wit.
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I think kb+mouse will always have the advantage but if game devs would stop making dead zones designed for senior citizens it could narrow the gap a bit.
Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd love to be able to finally silence my console retarded brother and his buddies in a true first person shooter environment. I am so tired of hearing how they think they are superior players when I can see them unable to perform movements and shots that are regular things amongst PC gamers. I've been a 1st person shooter lover and a pretty dang good player since Unreal Tournament came out and our team started having organized practices many years ago. UT offered the option for combo shots that detonated for extra bang, such as the pulse rifle and the ability to shoot the nuke flown by another team member, and we could and did regularly do it. That kind of precision is rarely seen in console games, not that there aren't some out there more than capable. Note I am not nearly as dexterous now as I was 20 years ago, and I hate console controllers so I just don't play them, but I've watched a lot of my younger brother and his friends play such and listened to them crow on about how good they are but they won't get on the PC and I don't own a either console, so my opinion 'might' be a bit slanted, and I am an old guy, so get off my lawn.
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Get $shooter released after 2010 for the PC and let your brother play on a gamepad. That will show the difference within a few seconds :D
The beauty of the PC platform is that it itself is crossplatform, i.e you can have console style gameplay on it if you want (what i do for couch purposes)
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It really depends on how they do this. On consoles, FPS games just flat out don't work without aim assist. On PC's, aim assist is typically considered cheating. If they give everybody aim assist, the console users might have a fighting chance, however if nobody has aim assist then the console users would probably quit in frustration.
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Show them you're a better player on the same format then or shut up. Cross-platform for XBox only means PS4, not PC/Mac/Linux.
There were studies done years ago when (I believe) Xbox was originally being developed, it was cross-platform with PC. There are (obvious) differences in control styles, and the PC people just destroyed the console players in every situation. That's why you don't have console/PC cross-platforms now. There are things you simply can't do with Xbox/PS that you can with a mouse/keyboard
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Fast forward to today where modern consoles have real mouse/keyboard support built in, and the game developers still won't support it because it would give an unfair advantage (see Des
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Handicapping is placing someone at an intentional disadvantage, and on consoles the exact opposite is happening.
I think it's arguable either way - e.g. Bungie "intentionally" did not support mouse/keyboard on a platform that natively supports it. As for aim assist, I consider it a crutch that is necessary just to make games playable with controllers for the average player.
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tried playing FF7: Dirge of Cerberus (FPS) with a mouse and keyboard but the movements were erratic and unstable.
Maybe your devices had issues? Or more likely you needed to tweak settings though mouse/keyboard with DoC was clunky. It's been a while but IIRC I found that it is better to use hybrid control with that game and NOT use WASD. What you do is use the dual shock to move, but the mouse to aim.
You would have found that it worked better for Tribes (though Tribes on the PS2 commits the cardinal sin of not having voice chat), UT, Deus Ex, or Half Life.
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What you do is use the dual shock to move, but the mouse to aim.
The fingers on my left hand cramp up just thinking about that.
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How so, you just hold the left half of the dual shock in your left hand. It looks something like this:
https://forum.warthunder.com/i... [warthunder.com]
On a PS3 or PS4, you can just also use the Move Navigation controller in place of the left side of the dual shock. (Because the Dual Shock 3 and Dual Shock 4 are heavier than the Dual Shock and Dual Shock 2)
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If you limit to mouse and analog side you probably have at most 6 (two bumpers and 4 mouse buttons)
.
Actually you have slightly more:
Analog stick movement
L3 button (press in stick)
L1
L2
4 d-pad directions (which can be used as buttons)
Select button
Mouse movement
mouse button left click
mouse button right click
mousewheel up
mousewheel down
mousewheel click
How well it works, depends on the game.
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Show them you're a better player on the same format then or shut up. Cross-platform for XBox only means PS4, not PC/Mac/Linux.
There were studies done years ago when (I believe) Xbox was originally being developed, it was cross-platform with PC. There are (obvious) differences in control styles, and the PC people just destroyed the console players in every situation. That's why you don't have console/PC cross-platforms now. There are things you simply can't do with Xbox/PS that you can with a mouse/keyboard on PC. It's up to the individual user to decide what they prefer more.
They may very well be superior players on console but suck on PC. You might be a pro gamer on PC but totally blow on console. There's no comparison between the two because there's no valid comparison between the two. Stick a professional swimmer against a professional sprinter on land and I guarantee there's no contest. People are trained for different situations.
Yup like jump and look around at the same time. After playing on a PC for a decade I moved to a console that my friends had and could not figure out why I was so bad until I realized I could not hit the jump button while changing where I looked. On the PC you have all the controls at your fingertips with the Console you need to make choices.
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Jump wasn't on a shoulder button? But if you cant hit jump and move the right stick, your right thumb might be a touch on the slow side. Then again, PC gamers aren't really sed to using the right thumb much.
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Agreed they're different things. I hadn't touched a modern console until a couple of years ago, used to be decent at TF in the QW days. I felt like a poorly abled fool using the controller until I played through RAGE a couple of times with no sort of aiming assist. It's still clumsy relative to KBM and I don't see cross play in FPS games working very well in the near future.
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UT? Newbie. I was honing my railgun skills playing Quake on an IPX LAN.
Get off my lawn.
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I played Wolfenstein on a 286, so I'll share my lawn with you. I did play multi-player Doom though. But that barely qualified as 3D. For me, Quake was real 3D because you had the Y-axis to work with.
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As much as I liked Quake and Quake 2, UT was my game & I played it for almost a decade regularly on my IBM mechanical keyboard with mouse nub between G & H keys. Pre-WASD, I actually crossed my wrists playing so my left hand could do the arrows while my index finger did
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Since you like FPS and the UT engine, you might consider checking out Insurgency. I just started playing it about a month ago and I really enjoy it. The game is fairly 'realistic' in that you cannot hit much of anything unless you aim down the sights, and it only takes a couple of bullets to kill someone. The learning curve is pretty steep until you figure out the maps, but once you get a handle on them it is a lot of fun.
I mention it because it is slower paced than UT and the other twitch based FPS game
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I've great memories of Lan parties. It was so much more fun frag'n someone and then hearing them yell from across the room, "NO WAY!!!" :)
Remember Zork ? or Heath kit and Tandy computers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I've been eaten by a Grue many a time
Good times...
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I have to admit that I did not play Zork until well after it was new. I do remember the Tandy computers though. They were the Radio Shack PCs. I seem to remember that they had similar hardware specs as other PCs at the time, but came with their own version of DOS.
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There are these things called USB ports, the PS2, PS3, and PS4 have them for a reason.
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Cross platform could also be between PC operating systems. Like for example on Steam doesn't care if you run Mac, Linux or Windows. If a game on steam is available on two or all of those platforms you still only have to pay for it once. And a person playing a Steam game on Mac, Linux or Windows can play with any other Steam player playing the same game in a different OS.
But yea, playing a cross platform FPS game between PC and console players is gonna suck for the console player.
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This news includes that people using Microsoft Live (lots of "PC" games do) can now play with non MS-Live players on other platforms - so, no "PC" (Windows) isn't/wasn't full cross-play.
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I'd stay far away from anything on the app store, since you'll most likely be left holding the bag in the end. Microsoft announces new platforms all the time, and abandons them just as fast when they don't immediately become dominant. The xbox being somewhat of an exception. The expedient time to adopt their new platforms is when forced too and not a moment earlier.
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That depends on "Which" console and "which" game. For PSN:
1. PS2 network play was free, except for the 2 subscription based MMO's.
2. PS3 online play is free, except for the subscription MMOs
3. PSP/Vita online play is free.
4. The PS4 is different, it depends on the game.
a. Turn based PBEM style games don't require PS+
b. F2P games where you don't buy the game don't require PS+ (examples being War Thunder, Onigiri, Warframe.
c. games where you buy the game require PS+ for online play.
Personally I consider PS+ t
Unique names (Score:2)
It's unclear how developers are supposed to deal with duplicated PlayStation Network and Xbox Live screen names.
The same way Steam does it, i.e throw out the assumption of unique names entirely.
Re:Unique names (Score:5, Interesting)
Or just handle the way Email/Jabber does. name@service
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Stop being logical, this is a FUD piece! It is IMPOSSIBLE to tell two people with the same name apart!
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Couldn't hurt to use a different font for each participating network.
Meh (Score:2)
I have the same screen name on Xbox, PSN, Steam and Origin. and it's a nice short one that's not full of dig1t55555
Re:Unique names (Score:4, Funny)
I'm pretty sure that all the PS4 player's names will just be automatically prefixed with "FAG_" on XBox Live players' screens. On PS4 player's screens, the XBL player's names will be appended with " (I'm 13)".
Assuming Sony lets them (Score:1)
That's great that Microsoft will let Xbox One games play with PS4 games, but doesn't Sony have to do the reverse? Given that it's Sony, and that the article mentions this as a potential selling point for the Xbox One, I can't see why Sony would allow it.
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Sony doesn't have any qualms about cross platforming. The only reason Elder Scrolls Online does not cross platform was because Microsoft didn't want their players playing with PS4 players. Sony was willing to do the cross platform.
open platforms (Score:2)
This nicely demonstrates the benefits of open systems, that are free of arbitrary restrictions placed to hinder competition.
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In case anyone's interested, VGChartz has recent sales figures for consoles and games. The PS4 is well ahead of XBox One and Wii U.
3DS outselling the Playstation 4 with 30 million units or over 50% but both staples are equally high ..
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The 3DS has around 5 years on the market, while the PS4 has just under two and a half. If you look at the historic performance of the 3DS, it was more or less matching the PS4 at this point in its lifespan (actually, somewhat below the PS4's current 38 million).
Plus handheld consoles historically have higher sales than home consoles anyway (unless they crash and burn). That's down to lower unit-costs and the fact that families are more likely to buy a handheld for each member who plays games, whereas they'l
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The 3DS has around 5 years on the market, while the PS4 has just under two and a half.
That's irrelevant, everything else seem to be drawn to scale but PS4 and 3DS are the same size even though the numbers are completely different on them. I don't give a rats ass about how each of them has been around, that's not what the chart are supposed to show.
the PS4 looks far more successful than the 3DS.
I don't give a fuck, the chart is lying.
The historic comparator to beat is the PS2
It's not part of this chart about how well current gen dedicated gaming gear sell though. There likely is completely different charts for how well the PS2 sold such and such time after release but this isn't
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Having done the maths quickly on the Wii-U vs PS Vita bars, it is very clear that what the chart is actually showing is unit sales divided by months on sale. That's an interesting chart, but I agree it should have been clearly labelled as such.
However, your own original post wasn't particularly clear, hence why I misinterpreted it. You might want to work on your own literacy before angrily berating others for mislabelling charts.
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It's comparing consoles to consoles and handhelds to handhelds in two separate charts.
Oh, if so it's alright, I thought it all looked like it was on the same image.
I don't think I watched (cared for) any percentages, just colored staples and number of millions.
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Which is the real reason Microsoft has started this now. Playstation is kind of in critical mass territory. There doesn't seem to be much difference between the consoles so in my mind if you want to play online games you'll just go with the most popular one. And that one ain't Microsoft this time around.
Anyway, Microsoft isn't really doing anything here. They say all kind of things, following through with them? Well, not so much. Sony is going to have to do likewise I'd imagine for this to even happen, and
Duplicate Names (Score:1)
Its a trap!! (Score:2)
Why would Sony Agree? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sony already does this. Street Fighter V is cross-platform play between PC and PS4.
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And with Final Fantasy 14 too
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The question is, now that Microsoft is allowing cross-platform games, will Square Enix make FF XIV for the Xbox One? That would make their game available on three* platforms.
* I don't count the PS3 as being another platform, just an older generation. And the Mac version isn't really a Mac version since it's an emulated port that sucks.
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Look, this is simply factually incorrect. PS4 has sold just as many consoles in 27 months as PS2 did, and PS2 went on to sell 155m units worldwide. Check the figures for yourself. [wikipedia.org] Everyone who's read the sales figures knows this, so I'm not sure which "everyone" you refer to, unless you mean the great unwashed ignorant mass you belong to.
Sony are not moving towards PC or mobile. SCE is still the most profitable arm of Sony, by a wide margin. And what do you think a "set-top media device" is other than
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If you're using something as power-hungry as a game console for Netflix, you're doing it wrong.
This might backfire on MS (Score:4, Interesting)
Dreamcast Was First... Or Was It? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Xbox Live was the first successful multiplayer network for consoles."
I'm calling bologna on that. SEGA's network, SegaNet, was the first successful multiplayer network for consoles... by a 1st-party company in all three major regions. But before that, Sega Meganet was the first successful multiplayer network for consoles... by a 1st-party company (Japan and Brazil). But before that, Xband was the first successful multiplayer network for consoles... and it worked on multiple platforms (Nintendo's SNES + SEGA's Genesis / Mega Drive).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Too little too late (Score:2)
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Anyway, I'm done with consoles - too short of a lifespan.
What do you mean by that? The generational duration has been around 5+ years for a long time now. In fact, some Slashdotters think it should be shorter. Using SCEA as an example:
PS1 September 9th, 1995 eNOS Lives!
PS2 October 26, 2000
PS3 Nov 17, 2006
PS4 November 15, 2013
That being said, maybe they're referring to the fact that XBL has more of a social side and hub interface to it, where multiplayer gaming on the Dreamcast was akin to using Gamespy on PC.
Probably, I played some pretty hefty games of SOCOM, EQOA and FFXI on the PS2 and like the Dreamcast it was more akin to Gamespy. Some PS2 games actually used Gamespy for network services, notably the Star Wars Battlefront games.
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Referrals and pro-gaming might make it worthwhile (Score:1)
What I don't know and cannot intelligently comment on are: license and royalty fees, implementation c
Re:The very first original xbox "one" is still bet (Score:5, Informative)
"because the hardware was actually leagues ahead of pc's at the time"
No it wasn't. The original XBox was a gimped 733 MHz Celeron with a modded GeForce 3 (only had specular capabilities added) and shipped in November 2001 - in a time when PCs were already using Pentium 4 (November 2000) processors and their GeForce 3 had the same power, and the GeForce 4 was literally right around the corner. PCs had typically double to triple the RAM an XBox had.
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It also had a unified memory architecture, and more importantly, it was a rock-solid, stable platform with a console mindset. You never had to worry about drivers, hardware revisions, and so on. The NVAPU was pretty cool too.
It also introduced a lot of things to the console world that are now considered standard; persistent onboard storage, built-in networking, an external ecosystem.
It's interesting how the ball keeps getting handed off between the companies. Sony ate Nintendo's lunch with the simple, ea
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"It also introduced a lot of things to the console world that are now considered standard; persistent onboard storage, built-in networking,"
Networking was done with the Dreamcast well before the XBox.
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And before the Dreamcast with the Saturn Netlink.
And even before that there was the Xband modem.
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"Microsoft ate Sony's lunch with the xbox vs the PS2"
You got that backwards. PS2 is literally the best-selling console of all time. 155+ million units sold compared to Xbox's paltry 24 million.
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Yet with less hardware, most consoles games, especially around that time, were faster, because the console OS was/is more efficient and game code was heavily optimized
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because the hardware was actually leagues ahead of pc's at the time. By allot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Retail availability
NA November 15, 2001[2]
JP February 22, 2002
AUS March 14, 2002
EU March 14, 2002"
"CPU Custom 733 MHz Intel Pentium III "Coppermine-based" processor"
"Memory 64 MB of DDR SDRAM @ 200 MHz"
"Graphics 233 MHz nVidia NV2A"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"The second version, codenamed Coppermine (Intel product code: 80526), was released on October 25, 1999, running at 500, 533, 550, 600, 650, 667, 700, and 733 MHz. From December 1999 to May 2000, Intel r