Both these consoles run on the same architecture, just that they’ve customized the AMD Jaguar APU to their requirements.

Lets look at the spec chart to understand what’s under the hood.

Microsoft have basically customized their AMD Jaguar to host 12 Compute Units. Now, 1 Compute Unit = 64 Stream Processors. So 12 * 64 = 768 Shader Units/Cores/ALU whatever you want to call it.

Sony, on the other hand, have customized their AMD Jaguar to host 18 Compute Units resulting in a total of 1152 Shader Units. The “awesome” part is that this system can throughput a whopping 1.84 TFLOPS!

Second most important difference is the RAM that these two consoles are carrying. The XBox One features a DDR3 while the PlayStation 4 features a GDDR5. While some may argue about the issue of latency when it comes to certain applications – DDR3 delivers top-notch performance for daily computational applications and functions while the GDDR5 is built especially to ensure brilliant performance in Gaming.

This slight difference can tell us that Microsoft is looking to build a more unified entertainment system while Sony has developed their system to bring amazing Gaming experiences. Of course, the more important aspect is the SDK and how easy the Developers find it to access features of the underlying hardware.

Read more about The PlayStation 4 vs XBox One – Specifications on ikoGamer.

Jim Guthrie broke through the Canadian Indie Rock Scene and has tied his music to video games. The documentaries like Indie Game: The Movie and The Manor also feature his music. Takes Time is a solo album that’s coming after a decade’s footprint in the scene, hence the smart name.

“I was just sort of dragging my feet,” he says in a conversation with The Verge. “After doing all of this cool work with film and TV and video games, I’ve realized how much time you can actually spend making music when you’re home all day working on a project. It’s purely music making. When you’re in a band, or when you’re trying to do the indie rock thing, 23 hours of the day is spent trying to get to the next show, and doing soundcheck, and then you’re on stage for an hour. It seems like a lot of wasted time to me. I just realized how much more music I can actually make.”

If I do make another solo record I hope it happens a lot sooner than in ten years from now,” he says. “I just hope to do more of everything — more games, more records, more music. Whatever I can get my hands on,” he expresses.

Check out Jim Guthrie’s music on YouTube.

Read more about Sword and Sorcery Composer Jim Guthrie Releases New Album on ikoGamer.

The creators I’m talking about is this small indie game studio – SuperGiant Games. These guys rose to critical acclaim after their extremely polished work with Bastion.

If you haven’t seen or played Bastion, I’d recommend you stop right here. Please check out Bastion to understand why “Transistor” is an exciting prospect for gamers and the studio.

Popular Video Games VBlogger Total Biscuit had the chance to speak with Greg Kasavin from SuperGiant Games about Transistor. What was also more interesting is the fact that he got his hands on a what I suppose could be a “pre-alpha PAX only” build which looked gorgeously stunning!

First things first – Logan Cunningham is narrating this game too. *Take my money emotions go here*

One of the things that reminded me instantly of Bastion is the beautiful soundtrack that the game opened with. After it did that, I was taken into a completely different world. A world that SuperGiant brought with Bastion. A world that SuperGiant is bringing again with Transistor – This world is their take on SciFi and everything else you could categorize as post-modern.

There is a lot of “Art” in this game. Just looking at the world in the game shows how much “art” is going into building Transistor – also another reason why I’m looking forward to this game.

One of the most interesting aspects of the game is the unique approach to the Action-RPG setting. Transistor offers the opportunity to plan and execute actions to quickly dispatch your enemies. This pre-planned execution consumes “Action Points” (just a reference term for now).

Action Points recharge.

Like Total Biscuit says in this video, the game looks like Valkyrie Chronicles and Frozen Synapse decided to have a child.

Check out the gameplay video below and tell me what you think

Read more about Super Giant Games Transistor in Action, coming 2014 on ikoGamer.

Speaking in an interview with GamesIndustry, he said that the number of people who buy content on a F2P-model game are just about the same in number to those who actually buy boxed products.

“We want to develop the PC market quite a lot and F2P is really the way to do it,” he said.

“The advantage of F2P is that we can get revenue from countries where we couldn’t previously – places where our products were played but not bought. Now with F2P we gain revenue, which helps brands last longer.

“It’s a way to get closer to your customers, to make sure you have a revenue. On PC it’s only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it’s only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It’s around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage. The revenue we get from the people who play is more long term, so we can continue to bring content.”

Ubisoft recently arranged a bunch of F2P titles at gamescom including Anno Online, The Settlers Online, Silent Hunter Online, and Heroes of Might Heroes Online. Even one of the companies latest titles Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Online is taking advantage of the F2P model which seems to be working just fine for the moment.

What are your thoughts? Think F2P is the way to go?

Read more about Ubisoft: Piracy rules PC sector; F2P is the future on ikoGamer.

The screenshots definitely do strike at the point of nostalgia one carries with the franchise but as a game that is scheduled to come out in the foreseeable future, it somehow does not match up to the visual quality barrier that other developers in the market are trying to break.

While the older set of screenshots showed vehicles from the game, this set takes you airborne giving you a good clear look of some of the locales from high up in the sky.

Especially with the release of open-world games like Sleeping Dogs this year that brought Hong Kong to life, Rockstar might really need to up their game a bit more as far as the visuals are concerned. A great majority of the players do come from the PC and they would definitely look to reap the benefits of the superior hardware at their disposal.

Mods have always enhanced the quality of Grand Theft Auto games but I feel Rockstar needs to give a much higher default product for people to get started off on atleast. What we see in these screenshots is not good enough and that could very well be my personal preference.

Grand Theft Auto V is most likely scheduled for a release sometime in 2013 and we are all going to get it no matter what. So might as well make it a point and whine about the graphics now than compromise later.

Read more about GTA V does not look stunning visually on ikoGamer.

Although this project kicked off rumors about Valve developing a console called the Steam Box, they’ve mentioned that “The Big Picture” has nothing to do with the Valve console that was thought to be in the making. Valve has also mentioned that it would like to have computer manufacturers create their own gaming-centric machines meant to be connected to a Large screen/ HDTV.

Anyway, The Big Picture mode provides better graphics, larger fonts and a style suitable for the HDTV. It also offers support for a PC compatible gamepad for anyone who’s wishing to kick back and enjoy their games on the TV that is connected to their Personal Computers. Of course, you can still opt to use your standard keyboard and mouse.

The Big Picture will be out as a Beta for Steam users to try in September.

What is really in store for Steam users in the future? You’ll never know, but what we do know is that Linux users can expect a native Steam client on their computers. With Left 4 Dead 2 already showing better performance on Linux than Windows,  a different reality may not be too far.

Read more about Valve’s Big Picture Mode launches as Beta in September on ikoGamer.

Formerly, the UGC levels were not allowed outside the single player mode, even though the potential was limitless to let UGC creep into the co-op mode. Reportedly, Valve has also given a 75% gift voucher for Portal 2 to all current owners. It’s a good way to economically gift a copy of Portal 2 to a friend and get into the co-op action ASAP.

Portal 2 released last year in April and has received critical acclaim across all platforms and was highly praised for both single player and cooperative contents respectively.

Read more about Portal 2 | UGC Workshop Expanded to Cooperative Mode on ikoGamer.

The trailer features actual gameplay footage. God, does it look brilliant on Frostbite 2. What’s the best part about it all? It’s being made available as Free to Play!

Hit this link to head over to their site and register for the Beta.

Read more about Command and Conquer announced at Gamescom 2012, Free to Play on ikoGamer.

Listen closely and pay attention, for you’ll never know how long you’ll survive.

Read more about ZombiU Gamescom 2012 Trailer, Only Wii U and You on ikoGamer.

Okay so you’ve beaten your level now what? Well contracts can be published onto the internet to be played and rated by other players. Apparently a leader board of some kind will feature to compare player scores on each contract and across the board. Both official and unofficial tournaments were mentioned and alongside some fun IO-made contracts. Other features include a ‘best of the week’ contracts list which will feature contracts through the in-game notification system.Contracts will allow players will earn in-game currency (amount depending on performance in each individual contract), which can be used to unlock more disguises, weapons and upgrades for specific weapons.

When asked the developers said that the Hitman community helped inspire this gamemode; especially the idea of setting new conditions for completing a level. A lot of the time these conditions were not the most efficient method to finish the level but the were often more challenging and by proxy more fun.

“So, we’ve basically sat down, looked at how players took the end game of a Hitman experience and crafted new missions based on the old ones and then we built the tools to let them do this in a formalized, organized and rewarding way. It’s going to be a grand old experience seeing how much creativity the players can inject into the game once it comes out”

More information on Hitman and the Contracts gamemode along with a trailer are set to appear later in the week at GamesCon; in the mean time why not check out some of ikogamer’s other GamesCon articles.

Hitman: Absolution is out on November 20^th, 2012. (Unless it gets gakking delayed)

Source: Barcode-Society

Read more about Hitman’s new Gamemode: Contracts on ikoGamer.