Console Gaming: Current & Future Holiday Purchases

But how the system handled the storages for game installation? Using steam, you choose the games storage globally. On Android (the old version) you install the game and move it later after installation. On PC direct install, you are prompted to choose the folder for installation.
The default install drive is a system setting; you can choose between internal or any external attached.. New downloads install to whichever is the default first and you can move it after if you wish.
 
I'm wondering how the system would react if a game is downloaded digitally to the main drive, you then fill up the main drive and add an external. Following that, you purchase and download DLC for that game that is on the main drive but the DLC now resides on the external?

I'm assuming that would cause problems and you'd have to move them around to get them both on the same drive, correct? Or can the system seamlessly access both drives simultaneously?
 
Generally DLC changes the executable and many other files and you are updating the "core" of the game content. It will all want to exist in the same location most likely. I would imagine you'd get a warning that the install drive has insufficient space and you'd be asked to move or delete something.
 
How do patches work on the console can you save the patches for when you re install a game ?
and how long will the servers hosting the patches stay online?
If you re install a game from very early in the life of the last gen consoles are the patches still available?
 
So, I got my One last night and set it up. I was able to get in on the $329 refurbished Real Xbox deal at the MS, and with my Arcade 360 trade in bringing $100 off, it was a pretty good deal. One, Kinect, digital Ryse, digital Dance Central Spotlight, free game of choice (I chose MCC), plus used the Target $30 off GTA V when trading in 360 GTA V to grab that as well. So it was less than $248 (damn California taxes), to get everything plus another $30 for the GTA V upgrade.

Pretty good deal. I was planning on buying the extended warranty for the refurb for $70 to extend it from 90 days to 90 days + 1 year, but as it turns out all these refurbs are coming with warranties until the end of February 2016, anyway. So there's no need. Everything is working perfectly so far, and there isn't so much as a scratch anywhere on the system.

I did find it rather interesting that the box itself has a black ring around the top of the green box that is printed with the words "Refurbished" in English, Spanish and French. This isn't a sticker that is slapped on top of the normal packaging, it's printed into the cardboard box just like the picture of the console. That means, of course, that MS had enough consoles to refurbish that they actually printed special packaging for them - like they'd do for a special bundle or something. I know there were some optical drive failures and that out of balance fans had been causing fan noise that were generating returns, but I had no idea they had enough problems to print entirely new boxes.
 
Loving Fantasia Music Evolved. So glad I got a Kinect.
My wife is really getting into it...and that's just the tutorials. She is already talking about party sessions with the game as a focal point of the entertainment.
 
I am sure we can build one for you? ;) That form factor is rather hard to hit though, I did a mini-Itx not long ago and it still sits around the size of three stacks of A4 paper.
Well I've seen attempts, overall the outcomes were a lot less sexy / not worth the hassle imo. Nvidia has ~500$ set-up described somewhere on their website, it is not that different, yet it doesn't include the pad+receiver, Windows, form factor is bigger, etc.
That things is incredibly tiny, and yet it is not noisy either, I would trade that small amount of extra power one could get from going with AMD parts for the huge saving in heat/power consumption, impact on noise and most likely form factors.

Really it is a good set-up, some harsh reviews just goes on showing how ignorant and opinionated some reviewers are, that things is priced lower than some Brix gaming set-up without the pitfall (power, heat, noise).

I hope it starts a trend, I want to see more desktop built with laptop parts, geeks are fine with it but I find less and less "average" people that are fine with the form factor/utility ratio of those decade old tower design, even for gaming purpose. If MSFT want to move desktop (and so Windows) to customers they better encourage that type of initiatives (even if it competes with the One).
 
I'm confident it will play games well enough for the length of that generation of console, especially with directx12 launch ahead.

Well enough is a bit subjective though. I believe it won't be able to match the console versions on some upcoming games. It has too many limitations. It will do many things fine, but future proof is a huge question mark imo.

This is basically one of the first so called Steam machines, others will be coming as well and perhaps some of them will have slightly better features. nVidia should soon launch a new mobile chip between GM107 and GM204, which would offer very good performance and low power consumption, that chip with 4GB of video memory, 8GB of system memory and some entry level quad core chip would be a lot better and should work very well in a small form factor case and it wouldn't have to be too expensive.
 
That hardware outperforms the ps4 and xb1 in some games.
As for limitations, everything is limited, that range of GPU matched with that level ofcpu looks like a good balance, obviously more power would be better but it comes at price.
I would not underestimate Intel core i3 @3GHz performances against the 1.6GHz jaguar cores in abroad set of tasks. Serial performances are extremely relevant to a huge back catalog of still relevant games, it is also great for emulators.
No competition between the GPU and CPU for bandwidth.
Good enough for me is console quality +/- which I'm confident it will deliver it does already.
Nvidia hardware comes with bonuses: geforce experience, streaming to others devices, overall the high standard in the industry for software support.
 
All I need is Geometry Wars 3 to keep me warm this Christmas. That- and spending the holidays in Phuket will be warm anyway ;p
 
That hardware outperforms the ps4 and xb1 in some games.
As for limitations, everything is limited, that range of GPU matched with that level ofcpu looks like a good balance, obviously more power would be better but it comes at price.
I would not underestimate Intel core i3 @3GHz performances against the 1.6GHz jaguar cores in abroad set of tasks. Serial performances are extremely relevant to a huge back catalog of still relevant games, it is also great for emulators.
No competition between the GPU and CPU for bandwidth.
Good enough for me is console quality +/- which I'm confident it will deliver it does already.

The GPU performance and IPC on that i3 are pretty good, but only 2 cores even with hyperthreading will run in to problems, these i3s already struggle on some games and it will only get worse. I believe that if you run a random set of tasks on it, it'll look favourable against the console CPUs, but console optimized games 1-2 years from now?... I personally would strongly recommend paying more for a quad, if Alienware doesn't have a good option for that today, someone else will soon enough. Broadwell based chips are just around the corner and their power characteristics should please you. It is a pity that Intel isn't facing too much of a competition these days...but maybe AMD will have some better solutions again too.

It just isn't a good idea to equip a gaming PC with less memory than what's in the consoles, that entry level box has 6GB in total and only 2GB for the GPU. Games are starting to need 3GB at 1080p already and we are just one year into the current gen of consoles. This box imo is good for many things, including playing most of current and older games (which there are many like you said), but for future proofing, there are some serious question marks.

More on topic. I've purchased PS4 and Xbox One during the fall. I built a new air cooled gaming PC with 4770k and a GTX 980 for the living room running silent overclocked under full load, much quieter than my PS4. :) My seating distance is a bit further now, so I don't need 4k at the moment. I got a 55" Sony W805 for gaming and TV viewing and kept the VPL-HW55ES projector for movies and some games. Both have very low input lag and the W805 has a VA-panel, very good black levels.
I got a Chromebox and have it in the kitchen for browsing and have some video running while making food. I think I'm done making purchases until Oculus comes out or I see some dirt cheap deal on Wii U + Mario Kart.
 
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Will participate in PS 20th event for getting the right to buy 20th edition ps4.

Already have a ps4 but it seems a good semi-investment. Even better if I win then somebody already waiting on Sony store to buy it off me at premium :p
 
The GPU performance and IPC on that i3 are pretty good, but only 2 cores even with hyperthreading will run in to problems, these i3s already struggle on some games and it will only get worse. I believe that if you run a random set of tasks on it, it'll look favourable against the console CPUs, but console optimized games 1-2 years from now?... I personally would strongly recommend paying more for a quad, if Alienware doesn't have a good option for that today, someone else will soon enough. Broadwell based chips are just around the corner and their power characteristics should please you. It is a pity that Intel isn't facing too much of a competition these days...but maybe AMD will have some better solutions again too.
The last core i3 (haswell) does great at running games, obviously more of the same core is better (and available by the way) but it comes at a premium. Such a CPU would hold the performances of a high end card though how much a bottleneck it is for a low-mid range GPU as the GTX 750 Ti? Not much or enough for to see the system has imbalanced.
As for AMD offering, till their new arch I expect nothing from them that could fit the requirements of a tiny box as the Alpha or any other gaming HTPC.
It just isn't a good idea to equip a gaming PC with less memory than what's in the consoles, that entry level box has 6GB in total and only 2GB for the GPU. Games are starting to need 3GB at 1080p already and we are just one year into the current gen of consoles. This box imo is good for many things, including playing most of current and older games (which there are many like you said), but for future proofing, there are some serious question marks.
Imo the consoles set the bar quite high and I've few worries on the topic. At some point PC shipped with huge amount of RAM, since RAM prices have gone up OEM are now more reasonable, there are also a lot of low end devices that ship with super low (too low) amount of ram.
I think a couple of years ago RAM was real cheap and 8GB was a given in a lot of PC conf whether or not it was necessary. ANyway if it turns out bothering, it is upgradable.

More on topic. I've purchased PS4 and Xbox One during the fall. I built a new air cooled gaming PC with 4770k and a GTX 980 for the living room running silent overclocked under full load, much quieter than my PS4. :) My seating distance is a bit further now, so I don't need 4k at the moment. I got a 55" Sony W805 for gaming and TV viewing and kept the VPL-HW55ES projector for movies and some games. Both have very low input lag and the W805 has a VA-panel, very good black levels.
I got a Chromebox and have it in the kitchen for browsing and have some video running while making food. I think I'm done making purchases until Oculus comes out or I see some dirt cheap deal on Wii U + Mario Kart.
Indeed you have quite some gear at home, wish I had that type of buying power. I do get your pov in the context, the Alpha wrt to hardware is ok but not a "console" as far as bang for bucks are concerned, neither it is fit as a entry level high end gaming PC.
Like anything not high end (which includes consoles imo) it is a bag of tradeoffs, I think Alienware did good overall (hardware, peripherals).
I don't think I would trade the core i3 for an i5 and the gtx750 ti for gtx 650 ti for the example.

Future proofing comes at a price, the Alpha GPU is better or at least as good as what in consoles and other parts are upgradable (CPU, RAM, HDD). The thing is that I'm already stretching my-self wrt budget with the Alpha.
 
Indeed you have quite some gear at home, wish I had that type of buying power. I do get your pov in the context, the Alpha wrt to hardware is ok but not a "console" as far as bang for bucks are concerned, neither it is fit as a entry level high end gaming PC.
Like anything not high end (which includes consoles imo) it is a bag of tradeoffs, I think Alienware did good overall (hardware, peripherals).
I don't think I would trade the core i3 for an i5 and the gtx750 ti for gtx 650 ti for the example.

I want to clarify that my purchasing power isn't really anything special, but I'm probably willing to go further than average person in optimizing expenses and thus have little extra to put on things I see value in :) Also I sold two watercooled GPUs which funded the 980, new case and the motherboard entirely and still got some left over. PS4 and especially the One was a great bargain. The rest of the PC gear was recycled from my old rig.
 
Well I've seen attempts, overall the outcomes were a lot less sexy / not worth the hassle imo. Nvidia has ~500$ set-up described somewhere on their website, it is not that different, yet it doesn't include the pad+receiver, Windows, form factor is bigger, etc.
That things is incredibly tiny, and yet it is not noisy either, I would trade that small amount of extra power one could get from going with AMD parts for the huge saving in heat/power consumption, impact on noise and most likely form factors.

Really it is a good set-up, some harsh reviews just goes on showing how ignorant and opinionated some reviewers are, that things is priced lower than some Brix gaming set-up without the pitfall (power, heat, noise).

I hope it starts a trend, I want to see more desktop built with laptop parts, geeks are fine with it but I find less and less "average" people that are fine with the form factor/utility ratio of those decade old tower design, even for gaming purpose. If MSFT want to move desktop (and so Windows) to customers they better encourage that type of initiatives (even if it competes with the One).

I am not sure what form factor my main PC is, I built it into my desk, or rather I built my desk around my mobo. So the first picture was my old mobo after 5-years of running - the desk has filtration directly under the intake fans. Rather large filter area, just some washable stuff from the home improvement store but it works rather well. Next pics are upgrade - http://1drv.ms/1yJBIMw A bit off-topic sure, but I am looking to add another HDD this holiday season. ;) Crazy to think I only have 2tb worth of mixed drives, and now that is nothing.
 
I am not sure what form factor my main PC is, I built it into my desk, or rather I built my desk around my mobo. So the first picture was my old mobo after 5-years of running - the desk has filtration directly under the intake fans. Rather large filter area, just some washable stuff from the home improvement store but it works rather well. Next pics are upgrade - http://1drv.ms/1yJBIMw A bit off-topic sure, but I am looking to add another HDD this holiday season. ;) Crazy to think I only have 2tb worth of mixed drives, and now that is nothing.
Great set-up :) I was thinking something alike but with some guitar stuffs I have.
 
Kid saved up most of the needed money for the WII U, so that will be purchased along with Mario Kart or Mario , (to be determined). Under the tree there will be the LEGO City game for the same Machine, the XBOX One will be disconnected for now and the WII U will take it´s place for the time being. Besides that, there is no games on the buying list, i have enough with Destiny and GTA5.. and a bunch of others.. and i will get Access to the Nintendo universe!
 
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