THQ Dissolved; Rumored PS4 and Xbox 720 Specs

[Jake]

The Death of THQ

If you read my article a couple weeks ago, The Good, the Bad, and the Fat Guy, you would know that THQ hasn't been doing too well lately. Well, things certainly haven't, er... Improved. THQ is officially dead, and they have begun selling off their IPs. Here's what has been determined so far...

[*]Sega purchased Relic for $26.6 million.

[*]Kock Media purchased Volition and Metro for $22.3 million and $5.8 million respectively.

[*]Crytek bought Homefront for $500,000. (A fair pair-up, if I do say so myself.)

[*]Take 2 purchased Evolve for $10.8 million.

[*]Ubisoft bought Montreal for $2.5 million and South Park for $3.265 million.

As for the employees, it's believed that they will continue to work for the publishers that now own these IPs. With the gaming industry as unpredictable as it is, though, many of them are liable to be laid off. I wish them the best of luck wherever they end up.

Potential PS3 and 360 Specs Leaked

Most people predicted that the next generation consoles will come out this holiday, and this only reinforces suspicions. There are rumored specs for the next Xbox - or as I like to call it, the "Nextbox" - and the upcoming PlayStation 4. Here are the rumored PS4 specs...

[*]System Memory: 8GB

[*]Video Memory: 2.2 GB

[*]CPU: 4x Dual-Core AMD64 "Bulldozer" (8x cores)

[*]GPU: AMD R10xx

[*]Ports: 4x USB 3.0, 2x Ethernet

[*]Drive: Blu-Ray (duh)

[*]HDD: 160GB

[*]Audio Output: HDMI & Optical, 2.0, 5.1 & 7.1 channels

Now, for the "Nextbox"...

[*]Processor: 8-core 1.6GHz processor

[*]RAM: 8GB DDR3

[*]GPU: 800MHz

[*]Drive: 6x Blu-Ray

...Annnd that's all that's been rumored thus far. Unfortunately, no pictures have been released hinting at the appearance of either console. Stay tuned!

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

Despite the exciting next-gen rumors, we still have much more content to be released on this current generation. One such example is the Dragon's Dogma expansion pack, "Dark Arisen." Dragon's Dogma was considered one of the greatest games of 2012; it showed that, contrary to popular belief, Capcom was NOT as evil as Activision. It was my personal GotY, so I can't wait for the expansion.

Dark Arisen will take your party to Bitterblack Isle, where you will encounter all sorts of new and powerful monsters. In fact, there are 25 new monsters in total. There will also be new weapons and armor, although that should be expected from an RPG expansion. You will even unlock an extra level in the skill trees. I can't wait to see what these do. In the vanilla game, your strongest spells summoned earthquakes, meteor showers, and tornadoes! How much more powerful can you get? Only time will tell.

It's releasing on April 23rd in the same fashion as Dragon Age: Awakening. It will be on a disk or on digital download, and it will cost $39.99.

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[David]

I really chuckled at "Nextbox." I might have to adopt using that. "Xbox 720" sounds completely ridiculous (yes, more-so than the 360 which is bad enough). Why must all systems with good names (Dreamcast) fail?

 

Also, I read that Turtle Rock, the developer of Evolve, tried to acquire their game for 250k, yet were outbid by Take 2's $10.8 million. Kind of sad if they have to stop developing it.

[Jake]

Thanks for adding all that extra info about price with THQ. I almost feel a bit lazy that I didn't add it myself, and it's information that's almost necessary to the story.

[Fergal]

Don't see why the hell we'd need 8 cores for, games on PC that use 4 cores don't even use them suffiently. On top of that, I really thought the specs might be somewhat better, and again let PC take the lead as usual. GPU and CPU are pretty slow, so I'm guessing graphics won't be an awful upgrade, atleast for the "Nextbox" anyway - ridiculous name.

[David]

Don't see why the hell we'd need 8 cores for, games on PC that use 4 cores don't even use them suffiently. On top of that, I really thought the specs might be somewhat better, and again let PC take the lead as usual. GPU and CPU are pretty slow, so I'm guessing graphics won't be an awful upgrade, atleast for the "Nextbox" anyway - ridiculous name.

 

I think the success of the Wii is really going to lead to consoles being a  more casual, for-the-masses option. I know they already were "casual" compared to high-end PC's, but I think this is going to be increasingly apparent next-gen. With that said, the specs of consoles don't really need to be as high as PC's; they are going to be extremely optimized for their sole purpose - running games.

[Fergal]

I think the success of the Wii is really going to lead to consoles being a  more casual, for-the-masses option. I know they already were "casual" compared to high-end PC's, but I think this is going to be increasingly apparent next-gen. With that said, the specs of consoles don't really need to be as high as PC's; they are going to be extremely optimized for their sole purpose - running games.

 

Yes, but I think they could cut back on the 8 cores, to 4 and just have a faster processor and GPU. Regardless, it's not going to cost near as much as having an Intel processor, so they could easily kick up the speed without costing too much. Guess that would require more power though.

 

That being said, of course they don't need the specs of high-end gaming PC's, but if it's not going to be close, why bother? The PS3 and Xbox 360 are already at that level. The graphics cards are faster than before, but on the other hand, I don't think the Xbox/Nextbox CPU specs are right at all.

 

Anyway, if I don't get a PS4 for free/discount, I doubt I'll bother with either. Currently starting to build a high-end gaming PC, gonna cost me over €1000.