The sad thing is, the Wii U hardware is able to play Gamecube games natively (in Wii Mode); there's just no support for it at a software/OS level and the disc drive isn't able to handle the smaller physical discs. Homebrew projects like Nintendon't have proven this.

Nintendo is fairly obtuse when it comes to VC releases, however. Just because it makes sense (GBA on 3DS, SNES on 3DS, GC on Wii U) doesn't mean it'll happen. I was honestly surprised that they finally got around to bringing N64 games to the Wii U.

The main argument against GC games would be the controller compatibility, but it's just a small issue. The Gamecube had pressure-sensitive analog L and R buttons, whereas the Wii U has plain old digital L/R/zL/zR buttons. For many games, this isn't used at all, but some games (such as Super Mario Sunshine) actually take advantage of these analog triggers and they would not work right on the Wii U Gamepad/Pro Controller. The obvious solution to this is the Smash Bros Gamecube Controller adapter, but they are extremely hard to find and I can see Nintendo scrapping the whole GC VC idea over something as simple as requiring a special adapter and older controller to play some games. They may also not like the fact that requiring the GC adapter would mean that the games couldn't be played with the Gamepad alone. Granted, there's precedent of allowing such game-specific controller requirements in the Wii era (some games support the Wii mote, some games need the Classic/GC controllers), but when we're talkiing about Nintendo and business decisions, logic and prior precedent aren't generally applicable.

Tomba! This series needs a sequel/remake/revival. Unfortunately the development studio (WhoopeeCamp) went bankrupt, but I believe Sony still owns the rights (they published the games) and one of the creators has a new studio now.

Those games were absolutely amazing (though the first one was much better in my opinion.)

Thanks for all the advice. I recently asked my dad why he never bothered to install the 64 bit OS to begin with, and he said that some of the drivers for my hardware were not available for 64 bit OS. I did a quick search on my motherboard ( GIGABYTE EP45-UD3L) and found 64 bit drivers. Could I be missing something? Also, based on what I've read, it seems that I need to open up a new partition to install another OS. Once I do so, will I still be able to access content from the hard drives, or will it be like a clean install?genius2365

Sounds like he was thinking of or was put-off by Windows XP 64-bit.  The driver support for that was TERRIBLE, but that's not the case for Vista/7/8 64-bit.  For those that didn't know much about the subject at the time, there was a general mentality of "64-bit sucks for drivers" going around.  Might be a case of that.  Either that or you have some special proprietary hardware sitting on one of your PCI/PCIe slots (maybe like an old TV capture card or something) where the manufacturer never wrote a 64-bit WDM certified driver for it.

You won't be able to do an in-place Windows upgrade to a 64-bit edition from a 32-bit, but as previously suggested, either carve out a partition on your hard drive or install a second hard drive and dual-boot your computer with Windows 7 64-bit.  Windows 7 has a 30-day grace period before it forces you to enter a key and activate, and even after that it'll still work without activation but just nag you about activating when you boot up and turn your wallpaper black for another 60 days or so.  More than enough time for the beta.

[QUOTE="blue_hazy_basic"][QUOTE="sandeep410"]We will play them on windows. Worst thread ever.sandeep410

What's the point of the PS4/Xbox One? They won't play your PS3/Xbox 360 games and you'll only be able to play games made specifically for them, so obviously they're pointless since they're not backwards compatible.

It would be some kind of witchcraft to say, use your old system/OS to play old games.  Why, that's unheard-of!  You'd be burned at the stake!  Of course, every game that existed up until this point must be relinquished when your platform or OS changes, or else you must reject the new platform in favor of your legacy software.  It's clearly impossible to have both.

Your past games wont be transfered to steam os bec it was build for windows  and not for linux.

Some of the valve games like TF2 and L4d will be ported by valve while other definetely wont port it unless valve pays them to do it.

 

So if you decides to go for steamos bec games would definetely run smoother on it you would either have to

A> Install both windows and Steamos on your pc. But you would still need to restart pc everytime for switch.

B> Install on a seperate hardware which means we would need to spend 300$ or more for new hardware.

Why would i buy a new hardware for playing same games when i can just buy a xbox or PS4 and play lots of different games.

 

So what benefit we as a PC gamer has going with steamOS

sandeep410

I see no problem with either solution.  If developers make games for SteamOS going forward, I'd simply make a SteamOS computer when I do my next full-build upgrade and use my old hardware to run Windows games I already own.

If I require newer hardware for both, I'd dualboot.  Switching between operating systems is no different to me than the effort of turning off one console, swtching the tv input and turning another console one would be for a consolite.

I can see a benefit to this, but also fear some major downsides.

Here's some areas for concern:

1) My first concern is that it's designed "for the livingroom".  Does this mean that if I were to install it on a normal gaming PC hooked up to a normal keyboard/mouse/monitor on a normal desk that I would get some half-baked super-zoomed-in low-dpi experience?  I hope that Valve will have a "desktop" and "tv" mode that caters to each setup type, akin to regular Steam vs big picture.

2) While I don't see them doing so, will Valve only permit games purchased through Steam to run on the platform?  Are they going to treat this OS like a consoles' interface that can only run "singed" code, or will they keep the open-ness of Linux and treat it like a normal OS that just happens to have the Steam client built-in as a core OS feature/service?

3) This OS could cause platform fragmentation for PC game development, leading to developers needing to split their time and resources making two PC versions of the same game (in addition to the two console versions they're likely already making) causing the overall product to suffer.  Either that, or they will need to pick-and-choose which OS they will support and either go Windows or SteamOS, effectively cutting off a portion of their PC audience who runs the platform that's getting snubbed.

4) Streaming games is well and good as a temporary solution, but Valve will absolutely need to find a way to get Windows apps to run natively or efficiently through emulation if they hope for this to be succedssful.  Nobody's going to want to dump their back-catalogue of Windows games... This isn't a console where you can just dump everything that came before and start anew every 5-7 years.  If people can't run Windows/DirectX games, they won't want to budge.  The WINE project would be a good place to start for Windows emulation, but through such emulation you won't get anywhere near the performance you would by just running the game natively on Windows.

5) Drivers, drivers, drivers.  Unless Valve has some plan to work with major gaming hardware manufacturers, specifically Nvidia and AMD, to entice them to develop better Linux drivers (or unless Valve can make their own that work well for the various hardware out there) this won't really take off.  NVidia's linux support is absolutely atrocious and AMD sucks at making drivers for ANY platform (though their Windows offerings aren't as terrible as of late.)  Hardware support has always been a pet peeve of mine with Linux, and I REFUSE to compile my own damn third party driver when the manufacturer should have made a decent one out of the gate.

There are some upsides to this though:

1) A dedicated gaming OS would be more efficient than Windows at running games natively developed for it.  Valve has hinted to as much on their teaser page that they've seen such results.  They can still make it a fully-fledged OS with all the bells and whistles of a Windows-class OS and ger such performance if they priortize the OS' processes and services properly to give the running game and its dependencies priortiy when a game is being played.

2) The streaming can be useful... in some cases.  Personally, I plan to upgrade my current rig and use my old parts to build a HTPC for the livingroom to act as a media player and couch-gaming solution with Big Picture Mode.  The streaming would allow me to use my new rig for processing the games and the older crappier hardware for displaying/control of the game to ensure that I don't have to take a huge graphical/performance hit when I game from the livingroom.  Not that my old hardware is -that- bad, but I could run games on high/max in both setups instead of just at my desk.

3) Having a free OS to throw on there instead of having to buy another copy of Windows or cheat the Microsoft automatic Activation/grace period to let me activate my current copy of Win7 twice helps a lot too.

I've never known Falcom to make a bad game.  I'm a huge fan of the Ys series, and I picked up Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky for the PSP, though I haven't started it yet.  I'd definitely get this when/if it gets localized.  XSeed has a great working realtionship with Falcom and they've brought over almost every Falcom game this gen, so fingers crossed...

I'd just like some way to play my UMD PSP games on this thing.  I never buy digital games over PSN if a physical copy is available, and as such I got completely shafted by the Vita's lack of a UMD drive.  There's some PSP games I wouldn't mind playing on my TV, but the PSP slim's TV-out was downright awful and I couldn't deal with the disproportioned, extremely small, letterboxed picture I was presented in the middle of my screen.

My PSP slim is also getting long in the tooth, so if this thing can play UMD games, I'm sold.  Doesn't look like it can though... Probably another horrid PSN-only abomination.

Sony:

PS3 mistakes:

• PS3 launch price
• PS3 "cell" processor - contributed to the expensive initial price and made the system very hard to program for
• Removing PS3 backwards compatibility with PS2 games.  it was possible to emulate the PS2 without the hardware support, as proved by the MGS4 special edition, so they could have reduced cost AND kept backwards compatibility
• Removing "other OS" support from PS3
• PSN outsge. Not directly their fault for launching thwe attack, but it was their poor security standards and pitiful response that allowed it to take place caused the biggest problems getting things working again

PSP mistakes:

• PSP slim's extremely poor video output implementation (extreme letterboxing on EVERY display, improper proportions, inability to output games in 480i)
• PSP Go
• Not implementing backwards compatibility into the PS Vita (for anything that wasn't bought through PSN).  They could have made a UMD drive accessory or something...
• Lack of support for PS Vita in both software and marketing
• 3G Vita.  Let's face it, it's useless to release a second, more expensive SKU that requires you to source and subscribe to a second data plan or an expensive "data sharing" plan with your wireless carrier when you could instead just enable a WiFi hotspot on your phone and connect your Vita to it

Nintendo:

Wii mistakes:

• Using old last-gen-at-the-time tech to power the Wii
• Not supporting HD resolutions on the Wii (likely due to its outdated tech)
• The name Wii (though I've since been desensitized to it, I used to think it was it was stupid.)
• AA battery powered controller in an age of Li-Ion batteries being standard
• Shifting to a casual focus in the middle of the Wii era and sending their traditional fanbase adrift
• Lack of analog control on the original DS (and its same-generation spinoffs)
• Only supporting WEP encryption on the original DS/DS Lite (when WPA was already becomming pretty much standard)

GBA/DS/3DS mistakes:

• The Nintendo WiFi Connection.  Worst online service ever. It was link playing against bots, except the bots were controlled elsewhere by humans that you had no means of interacting with.
• Not releasing Mother 3 in North America (I still hate you, Reggie!)
• The poor placement of the 3DS' D-pad (should be swapped with the circle pad)
• Lack of a built-in second circle pad on ALL 3DS models
• The 2DS (I'm speculating...)

Wii U mistakes:

• Not learning from their Wii mistakes and using old will-be-last-gen-in-a-few-months hardware to power the Wii U
• Trying to copy the tablet fat and making an expensive tablet controller that killed the system's price point (the reason why its predecessor sold well) for very little gain
• Lack of first party support for Wii U
• Lack of proper marketing for Wii U
• No effort to entice third party developers (the outdated tech/tablet are likely contributing to their lackluster support)

Microsoft:

Xbox 360 mistakes:

• Xbox Live Gold paywall for EVERYTHING
• patch fees for developers
• New Xbox Experience, spotlight ads, avatars, etc
• AA battery powered controller in an age of Li-Ion batteries being standard
• charging for an expensive rechargabe controller battery that should be standard
• No built-in WiFi, charging $100 for a proprietary USB WiFi adapter

Xbox One:

• Everything to do with the reveal/announcements... too long to write

Windows/PC mistakes:

• Games for Windows Live.
• Not bringing most of their first-party games to PC, or if they do, trying to use them to force OS upgrades (ie Halo 2)
• Windows 8 UI (underlying OS is good, UI was poorly implemented for non-touch devices)
• Windows Server 2012 using Windows 8 UI (Makes NO sense to have a damn tablet interface on a corporate server!!!)