The X-Box 360

[Gilwen]

I thought so too. The article I saw had MS stating that they didn't think that the format would be widely adopted or something like that. If I find the article I"ll post a link.

Gil

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

Their not supporting HD-DVD is pretty strange, considering their whole presentation on Monday started off talking about this being the "HD age".

MS is taking sides in the Blue Ray HD-DVD format wars that going to be on the ugly side of VCR Beta wars of long ago. (There's is no set standard yet.)

 

[TwistedBishop]

Right, I think most people expected MS to back HD-DVD, since Sony was doing Blu-Ray. That they decided to skip the new DVD formats all together, while selling the Xbox 360 as part of the "HD Age" doesn't make any sense to me. If the 360 is to become a centerpiece in our entertainment centers, you really need it to play the new dvds.

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

Right, I think most people expected MS to back HD-DVD, since Sony was doing Blu-Ray. That they decided to skip the new DVD formats all together, while selling the Xbox 360 as part of the "HD Age" doesn't make any sense to me. If the 360 is to become a centerpiece in our entertainment centers, you really need it to play the new dvds.

Its still some time away... When is this new format going to become the new standard? (5-7 years?)

And the dive could be replaced, etc... To me it makes no sense to support the unknown right now...

Sony sees it the other way around cause Blue Ray is there creation.

 

[Allanon]

Sales of the GBA versions of these games and collections of Sonic and Megaman would seem to indicate otherwise. I can assure you, my son thinks the old Megaman games are awesome, for example. It's all a matter of pricepoints, really: if you could pay $2.50 to play a copy of Majora's Mask on your Revolution, would you do it? I think most folks would. Imagine if they decide to release games never seen on US shores, too. I think this is a real potential win for Nintendo.

Sure your example sounds alluring... it's also baseless speculating. Sure $2,50 sounds great for a great game like Majora's Mask (you do know which game to pick for your example), but what if it's $5,00 for something like Cobra Triangle, or Paperboy? Doesn't look that alluring to me.

Also the fact that something sells on the GBA, a completely different platform from the revolution isn't that good of an argument. For the moment the possibility of downloading games from the Nintendo Nes/Snes library is a good feature for the Revolution but it's hardly a killer deal.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I thought so too. The article I saw had MS stating that they didn't think that the format would be widely adopted or something like that. If I find the article I"ll post a link.

Gil

I read something where it said the new DVD format drives were too new, and too high cost.

 

[Vocenoctum]

My main problem is still the Router thing. Why can't MS put a pass-through (like modems have for phone lines) in the system?

 

[drothgery]

Couple things to note here (obRepeatedDisclaimer: I'm in the Xbox camp with the current generation, though I own all three consoles, and really think going down the massively parallel CPU route was a dumb move for both Sony and Microsoft; if I had a handy few hundred million dollars, I think I'd launch the DaveBox -- a bit less capable than the PS3 and Xbox 360, but with a much more normal architecture, so developers will be up to speed on the thing before 2008)...

1) Apparently, if you figure things the same way for both consoles, the capabilities of the two systems are very close (in terms of CPU and GPU). The Xbox 360 is much better at integer math; the PS3 is better at floating point.

2) Microsoft went with standard DVDs as the storage media for Xbox 360 because there certainly won't be a winner in the next-gen format wars by this fall, they can't use Blu-Ray without paying royalties to Sony (and unlike Sony, have no real interest in promoting the format), and very few Xbox games used more than 3GB (about 1/3rd of a single-sided, double-layer DVD). It's likely that any game that needs more storage could simply be put on multiple DVDs; multi-CD games weren't really a problem on the PlayStation (or on the PC, in the time window where installing a 5-CD game to your hard drive was impractical).

In recent interviews, Microsoft higher-ups have said there's a good chance that they'll do a version with next-gen (HD-DVD or Blu-Ray) playback capability later (once it's clear they won't be doing the equivalent of including a Beta VCR), though games will still be standard DVDs.

3) Sony's PS3 demos at E3 are mostly pre-rendered (even if they're trying to imply otherwise); Microsoft's Xbox 360 demos are mostly actual games running on alpha dev kits (modified dual-G5 Power Macs with Radeon X850XT cards, which are roughly 1/3rd the performance -- for gaming -- of a real Xbox 360).

 

[Allanon]

1) Apparently, if you figure things the same way for both consoles, the capabilities of the two systems are very close (in terms of CPU and GPU). The Xbox 360 is much better at integer math; the PS3 is better at floating point.

Mmm, from what piece of evidence is this conclusion drawn? I'm not saying it's false, but taking into account the facts about the cell posted on Anandtech and a boatload of other techsites I'm not sure this statement is true. The GPU part at the least isn't, from the released information of both parties the PS3's GPU is more powerfull than the Xbox 360's.

3) Sony's PS3 demos at E3 are mostly pre-rendered (even if they're trying to imply otherwise); Microsoft's Xbox 360 demos are mostly actual games running on alpha dev kits (modified dual-G5 Power Macs with Radeon X850XT cards, which are roughly 1/3rd the performance -- for gaming -- of a real Xbox 360).

Then again the running demo's from the presentation were run on actual Xbox360 hardware. It's the demo's running at the Xbox360 stands which are 1/3rd performance. The developers even admitted in tuning down their games (for example no Anti-Aliasing) for those demo's. So in the end, it's the normal smoke and mirrors from both sides of the fence. Actual performance will remain shrouded in mystery as long as real working consoles aren't available.

 

[drothgery]

Mmm, from what piece of evidence is this conclusion drawn? I'm not saying it's false, but taking into account the facts about the cell posted on Anandtech and a boatload of other techsites I'm not sure this statement is true. The GPU part at the least isn't, from the released information of both parties the PS3's GPU is more powerfull than the Xbox 360's.

The big thing here is that Sony's adding pixel and vertex shaders when they get their "2 teraflop" number, and so producing numbers that aren't reasonably comprable to the Xbox 360's unified shader architecture.

It's also true that Sony's announced some completely useless features (Really, who would ever game on two 16:9 displays? Even if you could afford it, wouldn't you just buy one bigger TV instead? And since virtually no 1080p TVs exist, supporting 1080p seems kind of silly.).