Gamers demand CoD: Black Ops money back Growing numbers of groaning gamers have signed an online petition to demand a full refund for the PS3 version of Call of Duty: Black Ops. Despite the fact that Sony's console is able to outperform Microsoft's Xbox 360, the PS3 version of Black Ops allegedly comprises "sub-par graphics, buggy software and less [sic] features" …
http://www.develop-online.net/news/35319/Sony-regrets-PS3-problems-but-has-Moved-on
So, more of a pig to code (which Sony admit) on but its getting easier.
Also, for online there was better, wider, coherent libraries for online development for XBL rather than PSN making it substantially easier to code for this requirement (I dont know if this is still the case).
Power wise
I believe I remember reading that raw polygon creation Xbox 360 wins but given all the clever stuff in the CELL processor (PS3) means it should always be able to do more onscreen than the 360 can manage, which at the end of the day is what counts.
Apologies for slightly less than definite response but given the level of fanboi feeling on the matter its very difficult to find any 'facts'. A lot of the stuff out there is about as reasonable as a Tea Party activist on Obama.
Fact it is not.
Yoda, I must stop talking like.
A properly-coded app running on the PS3 will beat the socks off the 360. No-one is clustering PS3s together for number crunching.
Problem is, since Sony lost so many of their exclusives, most apps are cross-platform, and the more complex PS3 platform can be a real pain in the ass in cases like that. Sometimes it just comes down to which platform the developers favour. FF XIII was better on PS3, this is better on Xbox.
The Cell chip in the PS3 has six active processors, plus one for the OS, running at the same clock speed as the XBox's Tri-core Xenon (which also have to run its OS). That gives it s little over twice the processing power. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that the PS3's hardware is also a hell of a lot more reliable than the XBox's, although I am told the newer model doesn't fail quite so often as it once did.
A turbo charged 2.0l petrol engined Mitsubishi Evo can out perform a 6l yank muscle car- straight comparisons are meaningless in terms of numbers.
If you read the almost endless Digital Foundry comparisons on Eurogamer.net, you'll see there are a tiny handful of multiformat games that run better on the PS3 than the Xbox 360. And that from a site that loves Sony (and even runs a paid for Sony sponsored site). Empirical evidence rather than hardware theory rules the day.
The 360 may be tri core, but they are all 2 thread cores, with the PS3 having 6 single thread cores, which I believe it has to surrender 1 on demand if the system decides it wants more power, plus both take a slice of memory, I dont see how this is twice the processing power, but given the local memory to each spu it most certainly has the upper hand by a good margin if coded for specifically, but gfx wise the RSX is the poorer cousin I believe and has no scaler chip, all in all its pretty level pegging with the 360 being more flexible and the ps3 demanding total attention but if well treated will shine, but it seems most corperate game houses just see $$ and rush crap out.
anyhow, its nice to see the Sony boys whine about being held back after the Xbox 1 got such a raw deal with rushed PS2 ports last time, but I think we all want the best effort possible, they spend millions on the whole thing then rush the final leg when the accountants get itchy feet :(
Can't you see who is pulling the strings of this petition?
Microsoft are desperate to keep people believing that the Xbox is still relevant, and go to extrement lengths to achieve this, including creating bogus petitions and then letting their army of fools propagate it.
Having played both versions of the game, BOTH are flawed, and the PS3 looks and playes considerably better on occasion.
The only geniune gripe a PS3 owner should have, is why are we allowing Microsoft's system to hold back the PS3 games. This is WHY I main stick to PS3 exclusives, which vastly outclass anything availble on other systems.
"The only geniune gripe a PS3 owner should have, is why are we allowing Microsoft's system to hold back the PS3 games"
How do Microsoft back PS3 games by being superior on the Xbox 360 in this case?
"and the PS3 looks and playes considerably better on occasion."
How many occasions?
Every so often? Most of the time? Rarely?
You shot yourself in the foot and missed mate, maybe you used the PS3 for that?
"Treyarch have allegedly failed to deliver promised features, which include online split-screen functionality"
My housemate just bought this for his PS3 and we were playing split-screen online last night. We did play team deathmatch, so maybe it's the only area it's available, but split-screen online gaming is certainly available for the PS3
But on XBOX you can play with 2 LIVE accounts.
This was a feature until the last minute on PS3 (as mentioned by ACTIVISION's official rep on the Sony Boards) but it was pulled about 1 week before release.
It means that on XBOX you can both earn XP and COD Points for your /Own/ account.
PS3 already has this dual account feature on other games (Resistance 2), so it is capable of it.
Having played it, it's rubbish. It's just a slightly more advanced platform game. You have to follow the "mission" religously or you get killed. There is far too much cut scening and bits of playable cut scene where you run along for a minute and don't interact and then more cut scene, then more game. If I wanted to sit and watch cut scenes, I'd get a DVD.
Virtually no "physics" in interacting with scenery etc...
A big step backwards in gaming IMHO.
I shall be waiting for Crysis 2.
A lot of games are coded to the lowest common denominators meaning PS3 users lose out on anything that will also be released on xbox, and then of course some software houses code specifically for the xbox witht he PS3 as an afterthought port.
It is a shame that even if you didn't buy one the Xbox still fecks up your gaming experience.
The Amiga was held back by the Atari ST's inferior hardware spec, particularly with regards to visuals. Cross-platform games made minimal use of things like the blitter and copper, let alone gorgeous features like PAL overscan. So glad there was a lot more to the platform than mere games...
"A lot of games are coded to the lowest common denominators"
Indeed. Which unfortunately seems to be a large part of why FPS gameplay and online features on the PC have taken several steps backwards in the last few years on big releases in order to allow the consoles join the party.
I did prefer the general feel of MW2 multiplayer (until it got overrun with cheaters). If they had just given us that with dedi servers (as a PC player) I would have been happy. 10 years ago it would have been a patch. I don't understand how the engine looks worse and runs significantly worse on my PC than MW2 (hardly a high-spec system any more, but quad-core + HD5770 shouldn't be struggling with it I would have thought). Regardless of IWs sins, they did wonderful things with that engine.
I heard the PC game is a console port and plays like a dog with technical issues as well. So can we have a petition to just get the game redone?
And the PC version was never included in the price drops, it is always console which just don't do FPS like a PC.
And while we are at it, can we have one for Fallout - New Vegas which many forums (Steam, the fallout wiki) indicated is unplayable for many (including me) based on 'factional' hatreds that appear despite how you play the game, making it uncompletable for you and conversational dead ends or missing options that you need to finish.
Just to confirm - the PC version kicks ass. I have played all three versions and can confirm the PC version is by far the best. Smoother, crisper and faster. Sure I got an overclockers PC but credit wheres it due - the port is a good one. I have found no bugs.
So good, i thought it was originally for a PC - is that not the case? MoH 2010 was also extraordinarily good on the PC. Before I bought my PS3, i tested various games on both the Xbox and PS3 with PS3 continually coming up trumps - and I still think the Xbox looks like it something from the Early Learning Centre. My PS3 is my media centre and the PC is my gaming world. Maybe that will change - I was impressed with that new motion sensor kit for Xbox - something from Microsoft that actually works! But for the moment am sticking with what works.
PCs will always win with FPS - FPS was born on PCs but the marketing machines of the likes of Sony and Microsoft will eventually win out unfortunately.
Beer: cos I drink to all dev teams on all platforms allowing me to shoot shit.
...due to DRM and locking games to accounts.
We don't often get demos, so we can't try before we buy, (unless we do something illegal) and of course we can't trade the games in either due to DRM. At least console gamers can trade in their copies and get some money back if they're not happy with them.
When PC gamers buy a game like this which is completely broken for over a week after release we are stuffed.
There really needs to be better consumer protection for this. Companies shouldn't be able to get away with a no refunds policy when games are so obviously broken or of poor quality.
I bet a lot of those people moaned and signed boycotts against Modern Warfare 2, then bought it. They'll probably buy the Black Ops DLC
They'll be there at the launch of the next Call of Duty.
These folks don't seem to understand that once Activision, like any company, has your money, they don't much care what you think.
Most uneducated post of the week.
PS3 has faster transfer speeds, faster bus speeds (25Gbit/sec) and better graphics.
Of course, don't take my word for it, check the specs.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=42157
http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/gaming/expressway-to-your-skull
"The bus between the Cell and the PS3’s memory will achieve a peak data-transfer rate, or bandwidth, of 25.6 gigabytes per second. That’s about five standard DVDs per second—more than double what a high-end PC equipped with today’s fastest memory system can deliver. Meanwhile, the bus connecting the Cell to the graphics chip will move data at 35 GB/s, or about five to 10 times what you can get with today’s best PC-bus technology."
Looks like you fell for Microsoft's FUD. Just like all the shills signing this petition..
I'm probably the least qualified person to post a comment here, as I own neither a PS3 nor an XBox 360, but I recall the following info from the various hardware comparisons of the two machines:
1. The PS3 has higher memory bandwidth
2. The XBox 360 has more video RAM
This means that writing games for the XBox 360 is similar to the situation with PCs: you send all your texture maps, etc to the graphics memory at the start, then let the graphics card get on with doing its thing.
With the PS3, however, you keep all the texture maps in regular memory and just shuttle them to the graphics card's memory on demand.
Early PS3 games tried to shoe-horn all the graphics into the limited VRAM and the result was rubbish looking games (relatively, speaking).
This is also the reason why multi-platform games need to be tailored to each system. Sadly, it is often the case that the PS3 loses out because the Xbox 360 and PC architectures are so similar, they are what the software is architectured for. The companies then don't spend enough time making the necessary low-level program logic changes to get the most out of the PS3.
As you correctly stated, you have to design to suit the hardware, and a large pipe means you grab it when you need it. With the HDD option in every PS3, a game can reliably pull data off a drive faster( than it could off the removable media) every so often and probably do the rolling texture update so there is no loading screen for levels. The Xbox 360 sounds like it has to use a slower media (the dvd disk) to read from. Yes, it can be all stored in video memory up front as it has more room, but that sounds like there will be lengthy loading screens.
The PS3 is infinitely more powerful system than the Xbox, but you have to code it in a streaming texture way.
Take a look at the exclusives, GT5, Killzone2, Uncharted 2 they make even the best Xbox games look like crap..
This is why I buy platform exclusives almost exclusively. Until developers start to take advantage of the kit in my PS3, then why should I spend my money in their direction, when I have much better exclusives that raise the bar.
The PC games scene is dying on its arse, and has been for years.
Not hard to see why when the price of a top-end graphics card will bag you a 360 AND a PS3. You keep your mouse and your wsad. I'll use the controller that's designed FOR games rather than spreadsheets thanks.
A real 'gamer' (whoever that is...) just wants to pop the disc in and start playing, not piss around with hardware, drivers and patches. I've wasted a good chunk of my life maintaining PCs when I could have been having fun. Sod. That.
/ Having said all that, Minecraft is f*#king awesome! :D
> The PC games scene is dying on its arse, and has been for years.
I can't disagreee with that - but that's probably down to cheap and easily available consoles and games rather than any failing in PCs.
>Not hard to see why when the price of a top-end graphics card will bag you a 360 AND
> a PS3. You keep your mouse and your wsad. I'll use the controller that's designed FOR
> games rather than spreadsheets thanks.
So , my graphics card cost my £90 and outperforms both consoles.....
> A real 'gamer' (whoever that is...) just wants to pop the disc in and start playing, not
> piss around with hardware, drivers and patches. I've wasted a good chunk of my life
> maintaining PCs when I could have been having fun. Sod. That.
No, a teenager with no money and little interest in computers just want to pop a disc. Sure play fifa20xx, or Grand theft whatever with a gamepad, but a fps without WASD and keyboard is just silly (a little like attempting to play a flight sim without a joystick). Incidentally, I've never had to 'piss' around with drivers and patches to make my system work either.
>/ Having said all that, Minecraft is f*#king awesome! :D
Can' t comment on Minecraft - but anyone who thinks that auto-aim gamepads on online games with 8 players is awesome, has obviously never played on 64 player servers where aiming skill counts :) (Smiley, not to mean friendliness, but to imply you're an idiot).
PS move have changed that.
as a PC gamer, I had to move to the console because I _always_ get the game running in its _highest_ setting from the start (without playing with the setting or upgrading). My 3 years old console can play the latest games without any type of upgrade, I can't say the same about the PC. The only thing that keep me coming back to the PC is the WASD and the mouse. PS Move have changed that, the only problem with it is the lag between my hand movement and the action on the screen. Once this is fixed (hopefully with a firmware) i don't think I'll play games on the PC.
My PC is newer then either my PS3 or Xbox360 (and far more expansive), yet I still have to reduce the setting when I lunch a game so that the graphics won't be slow, and the level won't take 5 minutes to load.
sorry mate, the PC is dieing for gaming.
Seriously, I can't understand this whole "the graphics aren't that good" complaints when quite clearly they're perfectly okay. There may well be other games out there with more realistic graphics, but who cares, that is never the important part, if it was, no one would have played games 5 years ago, let alone 20. The important part of a game is the game itself, which Black Ops has no right trying to claim. It is a semi-interactive movie, and a poor movie at best. I 'played' this game from start to finish and at no point did I ever feel like I was in control, mainly because I wasn't. The 'game' far too often puts you somewhere only for you to take a few steps before it takes control again, or pushes one of the many pre-scripted events in your face, quite often moving your charatcer from the point you are actually occupying to the point where the game needs you to be in order to continue the movie. I'd go to the cinema if I want to watch a film, I bought Black Ops because I wanted to play a game. Wish I could get my money back on my disagreement of what constitutes a game... Oh, and being a PC gamer, I felt the mandatory requirement to have a Steam account AND an active internet connection to even install the game was disgusting - especially as I purchased the game on DVDRom and had all the content I needed without an internet connection. I won't go into the hassle I had making the installer stop trying to download the game I had inside my DVD drive and how it took FOUR HOURS to get it up and running because the Steam servers were busy.......
I have to run my PS3 from wifi (that or go under the floorboards and run cat 5) and during MW2 I'd sometimes get the error that I'd lost connection (the network unplugged symbol).
I've had the same in COD-BO but instead of being dropped out the lobby, everyone returns to the lobby with me. Which says its not my connection to the net but a game server problem that never appeared with the MW2
I was forever hearing how painful the sony dev kit was. Microsoft made a system which was just like a souped up pc, and gave lots of useful docs and example code. They knew they were going to have to win people over from the Sony behemoth and so they made it as easy as possible for devs to code their kit. Sony on the other hand seemed to thing they were god's gift and I don't think they even provided docs in english for a month or two after we got the kit. The platform is heavily parallel and rather than make it an easy transition, the docs just were not there. That's why the Xbox leads on so many titles, it's just so much simpler to write code for. The cost of developing titles is such you need to do multiplatform most of the time, and from a dev standpoint MS wins hands down.
My PS3 outperforms my mate's Xbox any day. Not that hard when his Xbox won't even start because of the ring of death, lol.
Seriously though, I won't be buying Black Ops or the new MOH game simply because they're overpriced for what I like playing. Would much rather buy an old copy of Assassin's Creed and play that (I want single player games on my PS3, if I want to play multiplayer I have a PC for that). If I'm putting the game down because I've finished it within a week then it's not worth buying. Plus multiplayer COD is just too frustrating as a casual player, sorry but I have no interest in seeing just how many times I'm going to die because I don't have the latest hacked version of the game that allows me to own every player on the server, or because everyone else has put several hundred hours into getting all the unlocked content that allows you to shoot round corners/see through walls/ fire bullets through concrete etc....
The person who said the PC version was best was clearly lucky. Only one person of the many I know who bought BO on PC actually plays it now. He gets an 'acceptable' frame rate on his high spec PC. I and everyone else I know finds it completely unplayable. I've played single player for about 2 hours (mostly trying performance tweaks) and multi-player about the same. It's a slideshow which grinds to a halt when anyone fires at you. The game wakes up about 10 seconds later with me dead. Changing the settings makes no difference. The game is 100% useless to me.
However, I'm still playing Modern Warfare 2 and it's as smooth as silk (very rarely dips below the capped 91fps) with high settings (not extra textures though as they are still bugged).
PC owners should be the ones getting their money back, not PS3 owners who have a perfectly usable product.
Richard, you are absolutely right. I changed my old 8800GT to a GTX460 , added another 2GB RAM , disabled every startup but this game just sucks big time. Like you said : MW2 has no problems at all. Never changed one setting. I am on 50mbits fiber and have sub 30ms pings on foreign servers .( i'm from Belgium). Luckely we have a strong consumer protection over here and a refund is possible.
PS3 owner here. Game is fine. Odd slow down every few hours of game play when playing ground war - apart from that its totally fine.
Each console has its strengths and weaknesses.
I'd never get on with an xbox as I couldn't stand to PAY to play on another persons xbox. (no dedicated servers). Same as PSN - but at least its free!
I must be the 'other' person who doesn't have any problems with the game on PC, other than it being a turd of a game. None of the much publicised lag problems or graphic glitching, or anything in fact, hit my PC and I don't think there is anything special about 4GB RAM, 2.9GHz i3 clocked to 4GHz and a GTX460 all running under Windows 7? I've seen people with far superior hardware complaining the game is unplayable, yet it never once so much as slowed on mine. Still a dog of an awful pile of rubbish. Maybe having it not work is a blessing.
Paris... because she wouldn't complain of lags.
Well, it's sort of working for me now, but it still lags, especially at the start of matches, and I've got a custom built i5 760 with a GTX 460 that I put together myself.
However there are many others who are still having major lag problems, and some users have reported that the new patch makes it worse, not better.
This is the only game I've ever bought that I wish I could have had a refund for. On launch it was an unplayable lagfest - in single player! Seriously,it had multiplayer style lag in a single player game. On a machine that can run Crysis at max detail at around 50-60fps.
It looks like the lag on the PC was a combination of several different problems, only some of which have been fixed. Initially it was probably overloaded backend servers, but then it was also due to CPU optimisations, and the general consensus now is the remaining lag problems are a sound issue, as turning off the sound fixes it completely. Except of course you have no sound.
If you look at the people who have signed the petition, 99% of them are moaning about issues that either a) don't exist or b) down to their slow internet connections, or incorrectly routed connections
The issues are with both consoles, so why isnt this petition for the x-box version too? if anything i've heard of more problems with the x-box version than the PS3 one
This stinks of microsoft propaganda
"In less than 24 hours, over 2000 people have signed the petition."
Any idiot can "sign" an on-line petition, so these 2000 people... versus how many sales of the game? Is this number statistically significant?
Here. I'll help you. "Day one sales for Black Ops totaled 5.6 million copies or $360 million dollars." [source: http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/23252/Call-of-Duty-Black-Ops-Sales-Top-360-Million/] So on the first day ALONE it shifted 5,600,000 copies. Versus 2000 whinges. Now let's be real generous and assume the number of whingers is 5,600 and that nobody else has bought the game (easier maths, see), well that would be 0.001% of people who bought the game are freaking out and want their money back. If you add in reality (less whinge, more sales), the number just keeps getting smaller.
So. Seems to me like a way for the 360 people to bash the PS3, and no doubt in a month or two the PS3 crowd will bash back. Over... um... a displeased 0.001% (or less). Statistically unimportant. I bet in offices around the world today, more than 0.001% of coffee machines were on the blink. I know mine was - coffee's no damn use without a cup... :-(
I suffer from dyscalculia, so... yeah... I screwed up. I've upvoted you accordingly. Thanks for calling me on it.
The correct figure, after way more effort than would be justified to a normal person, is (I hope!) 0.01%. This, still, justifies the "rant". I say rant in scare quotes as it wasn't so much a rant as a bit of perspective. Is it really justified to shout TWO THOUSAND GAMERS think CoD:BO was crap and THEY WANT THEIR MONEY BACK? Where does this two thousand sit against the opening day sales? Vanishingly small, perhaps fueled more by the relative simplicity of an on-line petition than anything else. As I said, I bet more coffee machines were broken.
That's not to say "go away", because their opinion is no more or less valid than anybody else's, and they obviously didn't think much of the game, but to take a hundredth of a percentage point (have I got that one right?) and turn it into a big story... is a bit Daily Mail.
ROFL!
A group of my friends have just come back from DreamHack 2010 in Sweden with more than PC 10,000 gamers taking part from all over the world. That's an awful lot of people shipping their PC's around the globe for a gaming LAN. Does that sound like something that's dying?!
I can't imagine 50 console kiddies turning up for a LAN with their 360's / PS3's ...
ref xbox holding back ps3. well, many games are now using all the dvd so are cutting stuff out. more storage would mean a better game in these circumstances.
also, you will find that M$ limit the number of patches, where sony do not. this means games like fifa are limited by xbox patch limitations (of course if EA made a bloody game that didnt need 10 patches it might help!)
to my understanding ps3 has more raw power and better audio, but the xbox has more RAM and a better gfx card. sony exclusives always look amazing (GT5 is stunning in 1080p) and drakes fortune is also amazing.
to be honest you would have to be an idiot to play FPS games on a console anyway. they are 10x better on a PC with vastly superior gfx, multiplayer and also often a lot more people on a server.
@"A real "gamer" would use a PC, WSAD and a mouse ... The article should be entitled "teenage boys have a tantrum about COD :p" - nah - real gamers move all the keys around. why limit yourself to the far left of the keyboard? ESFD is much better - gives you a whole extra set of keys that are easily accessible.
@"The PC games scene is dying on its arse, and has been for years.
Not hard to see why when the price of a top-end graphics card will bag you a 360 AND a PS3. You keep your mouse and your wsad. I'll use the controller that's designed FOR games rather than spreadsheets thanks." - see previous comment. pc - upto 64 player servers. consoles limit it to 20! even bad company 2 had many more people on PC servers playing. vastly superior gfx and a much better multiplayer system. dont get me wrong. consoles are great for football, tomb raider style and racing games. until consoles get a bit more powerful and can use a better controller (the best console fpser would still get hammered by an average mouse user) they will always be crap for FPS
"until consoles get a bit more powerful and can use a better controller (the best console fpser would still get hammered by an average mouse user)"
There is a reason games don't allow cross platform multiplayer, and it's not all political. Console controllers are just not accurate enough to be used for FPS games... So the games are tweaked to account for this, with larger hitboxes, auto-aim etc. Some things like running speed are also tweaked.
Also, you do not need an insane graphics card on a pc to play these games, you need one purely for max settings. The console versions will not be running at anything like this level, 1080p is a low resolution for high end pc systems! if you are happy to use medium settings (even 720p if you can stand going that low!), you will be able to run it on all sorts of hardware. Pc hardware is more powerful, but more variable, so the software is much more customisable to compensate. This quality is all pre-set on consoles though, as they are all the same, it most certainly isn't pre-set to max!
Seems to me that all recent major FPS titles have promised much and delivered little. Releasing new titles every ~12-24 months was never going to be a sustainable practice. Not least because of the immediate shortcomings in quality and experience, even with capable hardware.
I'm not suggesting developers take so long developing that hordes of long-loyal customers jump ship through lack of interest (a la NovaLogic), but stop taking the piss out of the people who ultimately pay your wages. We should be over the immediate network issues which befall every latest and greatest by now. And how about some serious investment into anti-cheat tech?
I'd much rather wait an extra 6-12 months for a tried and tested product, than be forced to conclude I've wasted my money within 6-12 days of play.
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