peteer01

http://gamerant.com/...ay-benk-122999/ Do want. (My two questions for all of you are in the poll)

http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/bittorrent-gaming-piracy-dropped-in-2011-1051313 Piracy going down? Not a big change, to be sure, but I thought the article might be relevant here.

This is true. I can vouch first hand for the generosity of some PXOD members.

Not sure about PS3, but I'm pretty sure the 360 version will upscale pretty much anything to 1080p. I know a lot of games are actually running at resolutions like 960x540 and then upscaling that to either 1080p or 720p depending on what you've got the console settings set to. So, while I could be wrong, I'm +90% sure that if you were recording the 360's output when you're playing on a console set to output 1080p, it's sending 1920x1080 frames to the TV, thanks to a physical scaling chip in the console. If either console is actually rendering at less than 720p, then the image is being upscaled either way, and the higher resolution might not make a big difference, but if either/both consoles are rendering at 720p, those images would have an even bigger quality gap upscaled to 1080p compared to a PC actually rendering each frame at 1080p. Anyway, to Ethan's point: I'm not sure what it is about Fallout New Vegas specifically...maybe I've just played on the 360 long enough, with enough hours on Fallout 3, that it looks dated because I've seen it before or because it looks like what I've been looking at for the last 6 years...but New Vegas's graphics definitely bug me for some reason. It probably helps to consider that the last few games I've been playing are SSFIV (which wouldn't really benefit nearly as much from increased visual fidelity), LEGO Batman (play it with my son, and the game looks how it's supposed to look), Sonic's Genesis collection (again, looks how it should) and MW3 (which you would think would fall into the "looks like it has for the last six years" category...but is a better looking game than most 360 games, including New Vegas.)

FWIW, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection was pretty well done, I thought. It's pretty much the only time I haven't bought a retro gaming compellation and not immediately thought, "Why didn't I just get an emulator and download some ROMs?"

Yes you did. Sorry, my brain is overloaded getting ready for all the TLAs I'll need for my next Cisco exam, so my alphabet soup goggles locked in on GSM, since right now acronyms are important. If any of you can't figure out, TLA is defined below. But even if you don't know, you can figure out it pretty easily:

I like those comparisons, but I'd really like to see 1920 x 1080 instead of 1,280 x 720, since I'm going to be gaming on a 1080p monitor, and had been gaming on a 1080p projector and TV (current TV in the states is only 720p). (I guess that's a roundabout way of me saying that I expect the visual differences to be more pronounced at 1080p than at 720p, although you can definitely tell which one is PC in those. )

That's what I was kind of afraid of, and finding it hard to articulate. Both computers are running Win 7, but one's running Win 7 Pro and the other's running Win 7 Home Premium. I'm also not 100% sure, but my user name (and the user data folder) should be the same on both computer...but if it wasn't, would that possibly cause issues with a save? You mean this one? I had no idea what GSM meant, but I searched for it on the site, and found that article. Sounds fantastic, as it also solves my concerns about SSD space being eaten up by large games I won't play much, while wanted other games on the SSD. (Maybe move games to the HDD after I beat them if I don't plan on playing them again?) Haven't tried it yet...but it sounds like a great idea. Anyone have any experience using this regularly? (Especially if you've taken advantage of the SSD Steam Spreader function! Also, how is Dropbox? I'm usually against relying on the cloud, but solely as a free back up for save files, I could see that being an acceptably good idea.)

Yeah, ironically, they were smart enough to figure out a system that allowed people to revalidate their Live purchases on a new system, but weren't able to follow that same "unvalidate, then allow user to revalidate" process for saves. Maybe they just wanted to sell more HDD transfer kits? Not that an HDD transfer kit worked for what I had in mind for my data. (I'm still not using cloud storage at all on the 360. Not sure if it would have been a good idea with two 360s, but now that I'm down to one, I don't really have any compelling reason to try it out.) In retrospect, I should never have tried to save time by initially moving everything from the MU to the USB. Simply loading up and then saving a few save files on the USB drive, and proving that I could successfully move one file onto a new 360 before trying to do the whole thing at once would have been far more prudent. Just typing that makes me miss my old RAID 5 NAS. Maybe, when HDD prices come down, I'll buy four cheap drives and set them up RAID 5 in my gaming PC. Right now all my photos are on a USB drive, and I only have a few dozen digital photos from 2001-2004 (pulled from e-mails) because I know first hand that storing important stuff on one, and only one, drive is a bad idea. (All my photos are on flickr as well [all 20,677 of them], but I'm not sure how reasonable getting them back onto a disk would be if something happened to that drive.)

Probably a silly question, and I can look into the details of how to do it if it's reasonably easy to do, but I wanted ask how tough/easy it is to transfer saved games between different computers, and whether or not it depends on the game. Basically, I have some games that I want to start playing that I can play on my current laptop, but I have enough games to keep me busy that if transferring saves is a pain in the butt, I can stick with games that I don't really care about the save files until I start gaming on my gaming PC. Does anyone have a good answer for this? Does it depend on the game? Does Steam make things more or less complicated? Will it matter that I'm moving from one motherboard/OS/etc to another? Can I save directly to a USB thumb drive or network drive and then load off that same drive from another computer, simply logging into Steam on that computer? (As you can see, I have enough questions to not even know exactly where to start, that's why I'm coming to you guys for help. )

I should clarify: having played it on PC, it doesn't look all that much better to me. The biggest increase in graphical quality came from the ability to have AA and AF. I mean sure, if you look at them side by side PC looks quite a bit better than the console version, but Gamebryo just doesn't look all that great anyway so without a direct comparison the difference isn't super apparent. Qualifier: I haven't played it since April, so I don't know how mods have advanced since then, but at the time I was playing it with upgraded textures and normal maps and everything. Again, it looks better, but it still doesn't look fantastic so the difference isn't super apparent without a direct comparison. Yeah, I'm definitely going to take advantage of some of the mods for the Bethesda games. They already look impressive for Skyrim, so I'm sure there's a good number of polished improvements for New Vegas as well. Even if everything else were the same though, rendering at 1080p with AA and AF and playing without loading times (or close enough) with an SSD would be improvements that I would hope are noticeable enough. Anyone have any first hand experience with both? (Faiblesse?)

Whoa! p4 hooked me up with HL2! Thank you! You guys are awesome! Maybe I should just mention, off hand, that I also want a pony? (OK, just in case, that's a joke. Ponies are probably pretty expensive, and we're living in an apartment...besides, it's too cold outside for a horse up here. So yeah, no pony please. But seriously, a huge thank you to Ethan and p4!)

Do we have this for 2012? I plan on beating some games in the not too distant future.

I'm showing Half-Life 2 as being $4.99, down from $9.99...did I miss the chance to pick it up for $2.49? Or is it basically going to be $4.99 now or $4.99 with my 50% off Valve coupon? (I know I may kick myself for having missed some of these sales, especially Skyrim for $41.99...)

http://www.xpgamesav...es-to-xbox-360/ Fallout 3, Oblivion n Skyrim too iirc. Oh, awesome! That does it...I see Fallout: New Vegas on sale for $5 on PC again, I'm jumping on it!

I couldn't copy some of the data, I could only move it. I was selling my main Japanese 360 (with the HDD and all my save data) with the intention of moving as many files as I could to both my 4GB Japanese 360 and my Kinect Bundle new U.S. 360 I'd just gotten. So I moved everything to the thumb drive, with the intention of copying what I could from there, and keeping the move-only files on the thumb drive to move between the two. I don't know if the problem happened while copying, or if it happened when I plugged the thumb drive into my new 360, but at some point between trying to "move all" and trying to access the information on the U.S. slim 360, something happened, and the U.S. 360 only gave me the option to format the thumb drive to use with my 360. The thumb drive failed every 360 attempt to format after that...it'd work on a PC, but the 360 wouldn't let me format it. (I could try, but during the testing process it did before formatting, it'd come back saying the device didn't meet the requirements) I did follow up with the maker (Buffalo) and they actually were pretty awesome about overnighting me a replacement after I sent them the busted one, and the new one (exact same model) did work with no problems...but that didn't make me feel any better about losing all my data. TL;DR: It actually seems like the thumb drive was to blame for the data loss...but that wouldn't have ever been a problem if I was able to keep using my MU to go back and forth between consoles. I suspect that some of the pre-installed programs on the flash drive may have been to blame. It was a while ago, so I don't remember if I plugged the USB drive into my PC before or after I first tried to access the data on my new 360, but I remember being surprised when I plugged it in to my PC to try to see/copy/rescue the data some autoplay programs wanted to run that shouldn't have even been on the drive after formatting. (They would always show up on the drive, even after formatting. The drive I got to replace it did not have these programs, possibly because I complained about them when doing the RMA)

Kind of wishing I bought New Vegas at $5. (Only kind of) I was thinking to myself that if there was a way to bring my save file over from my 360, I would have, and then I thought I'd ask to be sure...there is no way to get save data from a 360 HDD and load that save data on the PC version of the game, right? (I'm pretty sure there's not, I just want to be sure.) That game *must* really benefit from a decent gaming PC graphically, and the mods alone would add $5 worth of life to the game..but I can't see myself getting excited about playing through the first half of the game again. (Which is suspiciously free of *anything* of value, including bent tin cans and empty bottles...except for things with red text, because my wasteland wanderer doesn't steal.) I'd have to look, but I bet I have at least a few dozen hours of gameplay in FO:NV. I've done a lot of side quests, exploring and trash collecting, so I don't think I'm close to done, but I can't bring myself to consider selling the game or playing it again. (I have a friend at work who belongs to that GameStop club or whatever the paid membership with trade in bonuses is, and I have a lot of 360 games I'm probably going to trade in in hopes of getting a nice PC mouse, or maybe a nice keyboard and/or Skyrim. Hm. What to do...)

Yeah, that used to work. It doesn't anymore? I actually disliked it when they got rid of MUs, as I used that to bring my account between multiple 360s in my old house. Then I got a new 360, so I bought and formatted a USB thumb drive for just that purpose, which lead to losing all my save data. I'm back down to only one 360, as I sold my Japanese one before I moved, but my Xbox Live account, which was made in Japan because that's where I was living when I bought the 360, can't be converted to a U.S. account, no way, no how. It sounds stupid, but that's actually a reasonable chunk of the impetus to change to PC gaming. I had to sell my Japanese 360 games (or bring my Japanese 360 with me as well) because of region locking. I would have gladly held on to these, but instead those games were sold to people who might have bought new copies if I hadn't sold them because of being unable to use them I have to either jump through huge hoops to keep my Japanese account at Gold, or start a new US account if I want to game online. I'd have to rebuild my (full) friend list, give up all my achievement and juggle between accounts if I want to keep using my save files from my current account. In short, Microsoft's decision to region lock their software and not allowing people who move from one country to another to bring their gamer tag with them were business decisions they made that will probably mean 2011 was the last year I purchase a game for 360. I purchased +50 new retail games and +50 marketplace download purchases, three consoles and a lot of accessories/controllers, but now I'm probably going to game pretty much exclusively on PC, at least until the new consoles come out. Sorry, this is slightly off topic from the original purpose of the thread, but I thought it might be interesting and relevant enough to be worth sharing.

So, the last few days of Steam sales have broken my resolve. I now own, but have not yet played: