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Xbox 360, PS3 & Revolution - the next hardware generation

  
  

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Mister Six, whom all the girls
15:14 / 14.06.05
If this is not appropriate for this section, feel free to delete, I just figured I'd try to get the ball rolling as it were.

As an X-Box user I've invested quite a bundle into my system. I have most to all of the big games X-Box has released. I like it a lot. When I heard about a new system way way back I was quite pleased... until I heard it will not be reverse compatible.

But we will have wireless controllers, a possible camera and some sort of insanely unique interface that will cause me to pull a TRON muscle as I watch my life dwindle down the green hole in my living room.

So anyone have any news or things to add about X-Box 360 or indeed the Nintendo Revolution or PS3??
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
15:32 / 14.06.05
- Everyone's going HD. Except Nintendo.

- Xbox 360 will use emulation to play Xbox games (wow kids, doesn't that sound totally not confusing or shit!) with any DVDs over a single layer needing special patches.

- Revolution will launch last, be the cheapest and possibly be the least powerful. It will be able to emulate any previous Nintendo system prior to the Gamecube in software and has Hardware support for Gamecube games. It's the one I want. DS will be able to interface with it, wirelessly.

- PS3's pad looks like a hunk of shit. Xbox 360's pad looks like a logical evolution of the S-Controller, moving the Black and White buttons to the shoulders (just above the analog trigs) and puts the start and back buttons in the middle. Nobody has a clue as to what the big N's new pad is going to look like, but they're promising some kind of big new feature.

That's all I can think of, off the top of my head.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
15:34 / 14.06.05
We've a client in recording all the v/o for the launch games.

Other than that I know nothing.
 
 
Mister Six, whom all the girls
15:37 / 14.06.05
Thanks for the news. I just knew there some Lithers out there with the scoop on things.

As far as Nintendo, they've been weird in the past as well. I did some promo work for them for the Gamecube and at the time DVD playability was seen as necessary. Not to Nintendo it wasn't! They said they were all about gaming, not playing movies.

They'll do fine on name recognition alone, I figure. I read somewhere their new conroller might be a touchpad with no buttons at all allowing their users to define the layout on their own. That ring any bells?
 
 
Spatula Clarke
16:11 / 14.06.05
The Revolution touchscreen rumour's been doing the rounds ever since the specs for the DS came out. I'd be utterly amazed if it came to pass - that technology works on the DS because you can immediately see how your actions will affect events on the top screen, but when the screen is a few feet away from you and the controller not within your field of vision things suddenly become a lot less intuitive. Nintendo are all for things being as accessible as possible - this doesn't fit. Maybe the controller will incorporate a touchscreen for things like menus, but I seriously doubt that it'll be the main gig.

HDTV support doesn't make the slightest difference to the overwhelming majority of punters. Microsoft are supporting it because they've become used to having the most impressive technology available in the console market and making a point of that in their publicity material, and they don't want to miss out on that trick. The PS3 will support it because Sony don't want Microsoft getting one over on them, but also because Sony make HDTVs.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
16:14 / 14.06.05
Nintendo have always dragged their feet in terms of power - the SNES was pretty much the only time they ever jockied for the "biggest willy" award, and since then they seem to be happier letting the demands of the software boys guide them - the N64 was a platform for 3D worlds, which one speed cd drives couldn't do very well. As for the lack of DVD, look at the price of the cube vs. the price of PS2. They're a small company keeping pace with coporate giants, and they'll outlive cockroaches.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:15 / 14.06.05
Ahem. If this thread is going to contain spoilers about the upcoming consoles, could it be mentioned in the thread title?

Only kidding.

The Nintendo switch is interesting - they had previously been adamant that they were not in the business of producing anything other than games machines. Personally, I don't see the issue - a DVD player costs about £20, after all - but it's quite a perceptual shift. I'm wondering, also, if media-equipped (and hackable) games consoles are going to start impacting on Microsoft's plans to move the PC into the living room - if you already have a TV, and have something that plays DVDs and CDs under the telly, with a hard drive humming away inside it, why bother? In fact, if you can also access the Internet on it, is there any leisure incentive to own a PC at all for the average user?
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
16:21 / 14.06.05
Ah, but Microsoft are selling those PCs. They're called Xboxes. They used Sega to test the market (to a certain extent) with and now they're throwing tons of money at that area of the market to open it up. Sony are twigging on, too - Ken Kataguri has expressed a stupid and annoying reluctance to call a spade a spade and insists the PS3 is an "entertainment supercomputer". The hard drive isn't being sold with it, but when it comes, it's going to come with Linux. So they say.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
16:21 / 14.06.05
You can't browse the 'Net on the current consoles, though. Well, you can on the Dreamcast, but doing so is a bit of a hassle and quite expensive since Sega shut down the servers.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
16:27 / 14.06.05
You have to have a dialup ISP, don't you? I remember using that for a while when I fucked up my dad's PC.

The Xbox didn't have any of that stuff because Microsoft didn't want ANY kind of PC taint involved with it while they were getting a foothold - no mice for Halo or keyboards for RPGs.

Of course, now they have a foot in the door...
 
 
Mister Six, whom all the girls
16:45 / 14.06.05
So, any news on specific games or gameplay demos?

I've heard of 'Gears of War' and 'Condemned' coming out very soon and some sort of Perfect Dark Zero (all for X-Box 360).

Has anyone seen the system in action? As it's still VERY early in the game (as it were) for PS3 and Nintendo, I guess that applies just to the X-Box 360, but... I recall hearing about MTV showcasing the new system with Hobbits... well the actors who played Hobbits in the LOTR films a few weeks back.

Anyone see it?
 
 
agvvv
00:50 / 15.06.05
Which one is everyone getting anyway? Got my eyes on the xbox so far. I mean, the games are getting better and better(hell, microsoft signed a deal with square enix) and its just so.. hightech.. You can stick all kinds of things in it!
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
01:12 / 15.06.05
Revolution. Cheap as hell, ROMS, Nintendo class, DS compatible out of the box. It's gonna be sweet.
 
 
*
01:37 / 15.06.05
Elder Scrolls IV was originally planned for PC, X-Box 360, and PS3, but it looks like they've decided against releasing it for PS3. It should be out this winter. I'm looking forward to it. The screenshots for X-Box look brilliant.
 
 
diz
06:31 / 15.06.05
I'm wondering, also, if media-equipped (and hackable) games consoles are going to start impacting on Microsoft's plans to move the PC into the living room - if you already have a TV, and have something that plays DVDs and CDs under the telly, with a hard drive humming away inside it, why bother? In fact, if you can also access the Internet on it, is there any leisure incentive to own a PC at all for the average user?

Ah, but Microsoft are selling those PCs. They're called Xboxes.

exactly. they're just going to keep adding features and compatibility until the XBox is essentially a PC by another name.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
11:31 / 19.07.05
Dudley: You have to have a dialup ISP, don't you? I remember using that for a while when I fucked up my dad's PC.

If you lived in Europe then yeah, that was the only option while the console was still a going concern. Nowadays, though, you have to try and find a DC broadband modem, and they're not cheap.

Haus: The Nintendo switch is interesting - they had previously been adamant that they were not in the business of producing anything other than games machines. Personally, I don't see the issue - a DVD player costs about £20, after all - but it's quite a perceptual shift.

I've never been entirely convinced by Nitnendo's "it's a games machine and that's all it is" statements regarding the Cube's lack of DVD compatibility. I think it's more a combination of them wanting to retain ultimate control over the games that are released on their consoles and concerns about software piracy - both very much traditional Nintendo issues. Going with a dedicated, exclusive format ensures that publishers have to go to them in order to get the games pressed (or whatever the term is) and that it's all but impossible for yr everyday console owners to copy anything.

Problem this gen being that the format they plumped for began showing its limitations very early on. The exclusive remake of Resident Evil was a seriously important release for them not too long after the console came out, but it already demonstrated the relative lack of space on Cube discs by not being able to fit on one. So there's that concern this time around, but combined with that is the issue of cost. It's got to be relatively cheap to go for DVD as your format, and Nintendo recently have been all about the cheapness of their hardware. Those are the main things influencing this decision, I think - disc space and price.
 
 
rising and revolving
15:07 / 19.07.05
I think it's more a combination of them wanting to retain ultimate control over the games that are released on their consoles and concerns about software piracy - both very much traditional Nintendo issues.

Absolutely agreed on the second. As for the first, just wanted to point out that format is irrelevant to control over game released - for all consoles, there's only one waya to get your game released, and that's with the explicit permission of the hardware manufacturer.

Well, barring weird bootleg situations that don't really count as a full release. It's not format dependent, it's contract/legality/encryption dependant.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
15:55 / 19.07.05
Ah, yeah. I was thinking more along the lines of the situation we had with the N64, where publishers were having to give Nintendo even more money, because they were the only company they could go to in order to get the game carts created and assembled, instead of just having to have the content of the games passed as with Sega and Sony - I presume that it's a similar situation with Cube discs, given their format-exclusive nature.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
04:56 / 30.07.05
So the 360's not reverse-compatible but you CAN emulate to run the old games? Will this involve complicated stuff, or just running some emu software? Cos I've got my eye on the 360, but I have a whole bunch of Box games which I'd like to still be able to use without having both consoles knocking about the place.
 
 
The Strobe
07:19 / 30.07.05
It should be transparent, Stoatie. You put an Xbox disc in, it runs - it's just that they way it'll run it is through emulation and not through equivalent hardware. They're not guaranteeing everything will work, either - but patches are probably going to be downloadable.

Basically, we know it runs Halo 2, so it'll probably run a fair amount. It won't require faffing with emus on your part, though.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
10:35 / 21.10.05
A few short weeks away from release, it's looking like Microsoft have fudged this badly, no? Still no official announcement on whether or not their two biggest hitters - Project Gotham 3 and Perfect Dark Zero - are going to be available with the machine at launch. A stretching of the term 'launch window' that's so desperate it renders it meaningless. Still no information as to which original Xbox games will run on it.

Then the Ghost Recon stuff. The one game that's really wowed people when footage has been shown, and it turns out that Ubisoft weren't exactly telling the truth about the footage they'd released being "in-game". When an actual in-game video is released, it looks a mess - still detailed, but with a terrible frame rate and a weird ghosting effect put in place as an attempt to mask the jerkiness.

*Then* you find out about the demo pods that they'll be putting into stores in the US, and it turns out that pretty much all you can do with them is watch video footage of games, not play them. And there's not even any video of Perfect Dark Zero on them - Christ, how far behind must Rare be on that?

It's not looking too promising, is it?
 
 
rising and revolving
12:24 / 21.10.05
Whole things looking a bit grim. Oblivion is another 'highly awaited' that doesn't really seem to be firing up to hit the actual launch window.

I don't know that I've *ever* seen this much attrition amongst launch titles. There are a whole bunch that (from speaking to other developers) were on the slate to be possible launch games, but realised there was no way that could happen well before any announcements were made. I'd say there's probably another 10-20 games that were in the original launch consideration that never had a hope of getting there, so haven't been mentioned.

Now, that *might* mean we see some decent titles in the 3-6 months after release. The question is, will that be enough to save them?

People just seem to be having a hell of a time managing with the processor layout. This really hasn't been helped by the architecture being different between dev kit iterations. Most developers have only semi-recently got their hands on final kits, only to find the speed things run dropping by 50%+

Now, this isn't entirely MS's fault - the speed loss is due to people not using the hardware effectively. Mind you, that's sort of hard to do when you don't have it - programming for specs on paper is hard. I suspect that's why we're seeing this shift in quality of footage people are showing. What was running well on the very juicy first dev kits ain't running so hot on the final hardware - the big question is, do people have time to optimise for the new kit?

I suspect the answer is no - reoptimising midstream is hard, very hard. I see this being a major strike against MS in this round - the first generation of games won't look next-gen at all. Splinter Cell 3 on X-Box looks much better than anything I'm seeing here. I think after a year we'll see games that have been developed from scratch to take advantage of the hardware, and it'll look more like the expectations people have had ... by then it could well be too late, however.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
14:52 / 21.10.05
That sounds like almost the exact opposite of how I've always been led to believe this sort of thing happens. Isn't it normally the case that dev kits underestimate the power of the final hardware and developers find themselves rushing to add stuff that they didn't previously believe they'd be able to include? Or is that just a tale the gaming media tells us to keep us warm at nights?

I just find the whole thing very odd. With the Xbox, Microsoft appeared to have paid a lot of attention to Sega's antics with the Dreamcast and decided to use some of that as a model for the console and peripherals. Online out of the box, an official pad that was virtually identical to the DC's (hell, the huge logo sits right in the place that was used for the VMU screen on the Sega console's pads, which is as good an indication as any that they didn't spend much time coming up with their own design).

I've even wondered if Sega didn't have some hand in the design of teh Xbox themselves. I mean, they had Gates all over the DC's launch, going on about how it was a great collaboration between the two companies, and they did gift most of their highest profile franchises to the Xbox fairly soon after its release.

But then Microsoft start thinking about a successor to their machine and end up making some of the exact same mistakes that Sega made - the main one being releasing early to try and beat Sony to the punch. I've never been able to see the sense behind that. They risk pissing off loyal customers by retiring the Xbox too early. They fumble the launch by not having enough (any?) high profile titles to go with it, potentially pissing off those pre-order customers who were expecting to be able to buy something other than an EA Sports title with their new console.

It's almost like they're trying to commit commercial suicide. They'vebuilt up more than enough support this generation to allow them to hold back the release until nearer the same date as the PS2 and still come out with a very healthy share of the market, so to rush the release smacks of a total lack of self-confidence. I've said elsewhere, another company would delay the launch until they could get at least one of their important titles out with it - Nintendo have done that in the past, and there's no way they're going to release the Rev without a Mario ready to roll - so why can't Microsoft?

Scared, presumably, of looking like idiots. That's more likely to happen if you bring out a machine without a single game worth playing on it, though.
 
 
rising and revolving
15:03 / 21.10.05
That sounds like almost the exact opposite of how I've always been led to believe this sort of thing happens. Isn't it normally the case that dev kits underestimate the power of the final hardware and developers find themselves rushing to add stuff that they didn't previously believe they'd be able to include? Or is that just a tale the gaming media tells us to keep us warm at nights?

Depends on which dev kits and at which stage of development. There's an arguement that the final silicone IS faster than the dev kits in the case of the 360. The real problem is that's it's faster in completely different ways - and much slower at the very straightforward stuff. That's where it's a kicker.

I'm sure that we'll see games down the line that do take advantage of everything the 360 has to offer - but it's going to be a while. Really, what we're looking out for are the games which started in development now - with the ability to build their architecture around the actual 360, rather than a theory as to what it will be.

And yeah, MS look to have fumbled seriously. The thing is, the last gen battle seemed to go to Sony due to them being first to market[1] and MS have looked at that and decided they're not going to lose round two by being late again.

I also strongly suspect that internal politics inside MS have resulted in the whole launch being fumbled due to no-one *really* knowing what they want to achieve. See also the two configurations at launch. Some departments want to "own the home entertainment multimedia center of the future" and some want to make a game machine for the hardcore. These two directions are pulling them apart, as near as I can tell.

Will they pick up their game in the 12 months before Sony and Nintendo launch, that's the big question. Being first in the next gen is a big plus - it gives time to sort things out and provide a unified front. I think people forget how average the PS2 launch titles were.

[1] The fact that they launched w/ a DVD player and a cost roughly similar to most DVD player just as DVD uptake went insane has much, much, more to do with this if you ask me.
 
 
Axolotl
15:22 / 21.10.05
R&R: Your comment about the DVD player really rings true. Not being a hardcore gamer, the PS2's ability to play DVDs was a major reason for upgrading as far as I was concerned.
Also I guess the fact that it was backwards compatible with my PS1 games, though in the end I hardly ever went back to them.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
15:33 / 21.10.05
The thing is, the last gen battle seemed to go to Sony due to them being first to market[1] and MS have looked at that and decided they're not going to lose round two by being late again.

That's where the Sega thing comes in again, though. The Dreamcast was the first of the current gen of machines to hit store shelves - I know it's largely seen as an anomaly now, but at the time it was a Sega/Sony battle, with Microsoft not even in the picture. The PS2 was second to launch and was, for a short period of time, in direct competition with it.

It's partly the Sony name that carries weight here - DVD compatibility is important, sure, but I'm not sure if that was confirmed for the PS2 when the DC dropped. There's also the issue of public perception - if one machine is coming out six months later than the other, then surely the later one will be more powerful and you might as well hold onto your cash until then?

That's maybe the odd thing here - that a company of Microsoft's size and stature, with that amount of money to spend, don't seem to have any awareness of hardware launches before they came along, or don't have anybody analysing how these things have played out in the past.

It's just very weird.

Phox> That's another point. Backwards compatibility isn't of massive importance to a lot of people, but it does increase potential sales. You've got places like Game doing trade-in deals where you give them your old Xbox and they give you thrity quid off the price of a 360 - well, who's going to do that if there's no guarantee that they won't also end up having to get rid of a whole pile of games because they won't work on the new console? I've heard a lot of people sying how they're on a self-imposed new Xbox games ban, not having the first clue whether or not they'll still be able to play them in four weeks.

It also sells the machine to the more casual market. If you look at the Playstation, you can make a decent claim that parents are happy to continue buying Sony product because they know that it doesn't really matter if they can't afford the latest machine for their kids - they can carry on buying them PS1 games, or get them that cheap PS1 as a fill-in until they can afford the PS2, and they'll still be able to get use out of them in the future. It's yet another area that I think Microsoft have managed to muff up a bit.

I can't believe how much of a turnaround I've done on the 360 in the last couple of months...
 
 
rising and revolving
16:14 / 21.10.05
The Dreamcast was the first of the current gen of machines to hit store shelves

That really depends on how you look at things, and isn't so true in the US market. It's impossible to understand how MS respond unless you look at the behaviour in the US market rather than the global.
 
 
rising and revolving
16:17 / 21.10.05
It's partly the Sony name that carries weight here - DVD compatibility is important, sure, but I'm not sure if that was confirmed for the PS2 when the DC dropped.

Just to clarify - I don't think DVD compatibility has anything to do with the failure of the Dreamcast at all. I think it has everything to do with there being over 90 million PS2's in the market.
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
19:38 / 11.11.05
Well, I know I'll be in line for my 360. PGR3 will be in stores next Tuesday, which is my certified must buy. I played CoD2 and Kong on a kiosk and while Kong was very unimpressive, CoD2 was startlingly good looking and, more importantly, playing. You're not just getting sumptuous visual detail, but more importantly, interactive detail. I wish I liked WWII shooters more. I might still pick it up at some point regardless.

It looks like PD0 is set to disappoint but I wasn't looking forward to it anyway. It's looking almost identical to the PS2 launch where the game I wanted most, SSX, flew under everyone's radar and ended up being the undisputed star of the lineup. Same will most likely happen for PGR3. I believe I've gone into this elsewhere, but I am so much more interested in the interface advances than graphical sumptuousness.

A small example:
You can have four simultaneous chats online at once, acting as four phone lines would. I'm playing a chum in PGR3 and another friend goes online playing Madden. I pull up the dashboard, still racing, and switch that chat, tell him, "Yo, give me five minutes" and I'm back in PGR3.

Also, the integration of XBLive with the Xbox.com is phenomenal. Every forum has GamerTags instead of avatars. One click and you can see exactly what game they're playing if they haven't blocked it (like, you don't want your boss to know why you're "home sick") to an insane level of detail (Playing NBA Live 06 Knicks v Pacers, 56-67), another click on their owned 360 games and you can compare your achievements to theirs.

Like me!

Honestly, tooling around the XB forums and seeing my paltry GamerTag with no games, no stars, no rep, has done quite a bit to increase my need for a ThreeSix.

Also, I love the ad campaign. Jump rope, water baloon fights, really lovely approach.

And don't even get me started on the wonder that is GothamTV. So, hopefully I'll see a few of you on there. Or maybe just on Halo 2, which I will be enjoying in sumptuous 720p. FINALLY.
 
 
Triplets
19:48 / 11.11.05
Ben, can you expand your abbreviations a little bit more. I had to go and search just to figure out what your 1st paragraph was talking about.
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
19:54 / 11.11.05
My bad!
PGR3: Project Gotham Racing 3
CoD2: Call of Duty 2
PD0: Perfect Dark Zero
XBL: Xbox Live

I think that's all of them.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
11:44 / 12.11.05
Project Gotham 3 really isn't flying under the radar, Ben. It's the one 360 launch game (maybe, depending on whose definition of 'launch' you agree with) that the gaming press are masturbating over furiously and the gaming fora are talking about.

The 360 backwards compatibility list has been revealed.

Not only does it not currently support a huge number of critically-acclaimed games and instead focus on things that have been *mauled* by the press (I honestly can't get over the fact that they'd go to the effort of ensuring that BMX XXX works), it also overlooks some massively popular games and series. Burnout? Dead or Alive? Oddworld? Splinter Cell? All missing.

Barbie's Horse Adventures? Present.
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
12:44 / 12.11.05
Yeah, the backwards compatibility list is atrocious, knocking out a good 80% of my library, but it's not really worth trading in the olde system anyway. So I'll keep it around for the occasional bout of, say, all my games.

Still undeterred in my massive enthusiasm for what is, IMHO, the iMac G5 of gaming systems. Not without its problems and annoyances, but easily the most streamlined and interfacedly advanced console out there. Man, I'm even psyched for Xbox Live Arcade. Joust, online multiplayer. Texas Hold 'Em, online multiplayer. Whoopee!
 
 
Yotsuba & Benjamin!
13:21 / 12.11.05
Also, this is just a first swipe at Backwards Comp and the shittier games have apparently just been carried over by default because they share the same setup of the clutch games like Halo.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
21:44 / 12.11.05
I just had it pointed out to me elsewhere that the reason they've made Amped compatible, but not its online sequel, is because Amped 3 is a launch title. Same for The most recent EA Sports games, same for Project Gotham 2, same for Dead or Alive: Ultimate, and so on.

Can see a situation arising where modders hack into the hardware and figure out that these games will work fine on it with remarkably little effort. Maybe I'm wrong - maybe I'm letting my growing pessimism about the console take me into conspiarcy theory territory - but when games that are on that list share an engine with games that aren't, I find it a little worrying that the serious gaming press aren't asking more questions about the whole deal.
 
  

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