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Xbox 360 to have HD-DVD, Eventually
thebaboon writes "Bill Gates announced that the Xbox 360 will have an HD-DVD drive, just not for launch. From the article: "According
to the statements made by Bill Gates in Japan, Xbox 360, the new gaming console, will include HD-DVD drives. Considering that such a decision would postpone the launching date, Microsoft will equip the initial models with classic DVD drives, and only after the new HD-DVD are ready, the Xbox will incorporate them."
This will make fewer people buy the 1st gen, and instead wait for the 2nd gen. Nobody wants to have to pay for an entirely new console to get the HD-DVD functionality. Unless they somehow release an upgrade to the 1st gen boxes, this is REALLY dumb.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
... there's nothing so bright as selling a console where some users have different capabilities than others.
Potential to fragment and confuse the XBox 360 market.
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Yep, that's brilliant. Completely screw all the die-hards that buy early or pre-order machines, so they don't get a feature that'll be a major selling point a while down the road. Sounds like the wrong way to market a console to me.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Then why buy one initially, unless you can't wait a few months?
Unless they have some sort of free "upgrade" offer...
64DD, anyone?
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
1) Release 360 for Holiday Season
2) ?
3) Profit!
4) RE-Release 360 Later with HD-DVD
5) MORE Profit!
All the more reason I WON'T be getting a 360 till about a year after release. Heck, I didn't get an X-Box till about 7 months ago.
I wonder if Microsoft will make the drives swapable. That way, when the drives change, it'll be easier to cope with for the average gamer. Hope for the best?
Being funny is my sig nature.
sega cd?
Maybe they will, they probably won't. I remember the rumours about Dreamcast and it's supposed DVD drive. Even after it came out people were speculating about a possible upgrade to DVD. Remember how the PS2 HD, which wasn't packaged in, took off like a fucking rocket? Yeah, this'll be just like that except even better.
Sleep is futile.
I think MS may be hedging their bets on this one. There's still a ton of talk going on about which format to go with as the standard (HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray vs. some hybrid version). By holding off a bit, they still get to market ahead of Sony and depending on when/if a format is chosen, they can put out a drive that is supported by the 360 with a simple software update. If they put in an HD-DVD drive now, they're stuck with it (and possible a dead format).
If, on the other hand, they don't release titles on HD-DVD, then the people who pay extra for the later models that come with hd-dvd are going to be wondering why they paid extra for a pink-elephant hardware 'feature'.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Releasing the XBox without HD-DVD will permit the delivery of the games and consoles many many months before the delivery of the PS3 . And the lack of HD-DVD will negatively impact very few users - please recall that few world-wide households have HDTV - less than 1%! And about zero percent have HD-DVD discs.
Microsoft is playing second fiddle now, and it's XBox division WILL die if it doesn't improve its very disappointing numbers. Microsoft requires the advantage of delivering significantly before Sony. If it means that HD-DVD comes in as an upgrade, so be it.
Will some people want HD-DVD? Yes. But those people who can actually use the technology are in the very very distant minority.
It's just hard to generate that much data for a game. You can only develop so much content on a reasonable budget.
I'm sure, back in the '80's, people were saying similar things when you could say "We have Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt both in one cartridge! How could we possibly need more space if we can fit two games in one?"
If you build it, a developer will find a way to fill it up.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Console gamers don't give a crap about it. They want to play the games on what they think is the best console of the time. Game developers can either accept it or not publish for that platform. For them, the money is more than worth the loss of control.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
> I've written this before, but there are a million ways to fill a HD-DVD.
You mention a dozen esoteric ways to fill a HD-DVD except the obvious one:
Full motion video at 1080p
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
There is one thing we're pretty sensitive to here in the states, though- actually, much more sensitive to than the Japanese: being screwed over by being the early adopter. It's bad enough to know that HDTV prices are going to drop, which is certainly keeping a decent number of folks away from those; here we have an example of a product that not only might see superior competition released in another six months ( competition which will play all those PS2 games you have sitting around ), but definitely will be supplanted by a superior model in another 6 months. It's like buying a computer, except you don't _have_ to buy it to get your project done.
As such, if MS is worried they might not have a great supply of these things in the first 6 months, this might stem demand.
IF, on the other hand, they really want people to buy them the minute they're available, they need to spell out what the upgrade path is and make the cost known up-front. This makes me really NOT want to buy a 360. I was thinking about it before, but you know what? Maybe I'll wait until PS3s are available in the wild, and can be compared side-to-side with an Xbox 360 with HD-DVD, so I can make a more informed decision about which to buy.
An upgrade is certianly an option too, bring your box to an authorized dealer, they upgrade it, maybe for free, maybe for a small charge.
You're dreaming if you think a new HDDVD for the 360 will be a cheap option, and you're crazy if you think it's going to be free. Sorry, that's just silly to say.
It's just hard to generate that much data for a game. You can only develop so much content on a reasonable budget.
Who ever said anything about games developed on a resonable budget? Those will still be current-generation games, for the most part... this generation of console games are going to have budgets that dwarf those of many smaller movies, and are going to include lots and lots of HD movie content ( which, now that you mention it, isn't necessarily super-expensive to create, but these will be crazy-big-budget games). That'll fill up an HD-DVD real fast, all that HD video.
I think any disadvantage of having peopel wait will be compensated by being first to market.
Game console history is littered with the dead, forgotten bodies of the first-to-market. Knowing a more capable XBox will be released in 6 months or so of the original, and that games might be released that the original can't play... those are concepts that make me really NOT want to buy an Xbox. Sure, if I have plenty of cash burning a hole in my pocket, maybe... but maybe I'd sink it into a gaming PC or graphics card instead. As it is, I'm like most Americans, and I can't afford to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on every game console that comes out, just to line Microsoft's pockets... I'll be waiting and watching, looking to compare the Xbox 360 HD-DVD directly with the PS3 Blu-Ray. No, it won't be about the disc format, it'll be about the games... but even if I had been thinking I'd for sure buy the 360, I think knowing the HD-DVD version would be out within a year might make me think twice...
"Net result is the textures look more real, and properly react to the environment, they change as the light does and so on. That's actually how it's nearly always done on for high-end rendering. You don't texture map something, that won't look good, instead you use material shaders to describe the surfaces, and the engine calculates how it all looks."
Except you're wrong. Most textures in the highest resolution systems (e.g. movies, etc.) are most certainly NOT procedural. They're just extremely high-resolution texture maps (including high-resolution normal and bump maps).
Procedural textures are extremely important and useful, but there are certain effects (such as the texturing of a face - which requires coloring specific to the contours of a face, etc.) that are not viable via procedural textures but are easily accomplished with high-res textures. Your comments indicate that you don't understand the workflow involved in high-end rendering, much less games (which involve more texture mapping and less procedural texturing than film work).
"Stumble before you crawl"
You just can't render enough textures to truly account for every situation, every angle, etc
Who needs to account for every situation? The idea is that the extra capacity simply adds the ability to account for more situations.
you can't swap it off disc fast enough
Not if you naively try and load them when they are needed. But you can load them when you are close to an area of the game that uses them and dump them after you get a certain distance away from the area. Games already do this to some extent.
The tradeoff between performance and storage space has been present since the early days of computing. There's no reason to assume this new format will suddenly reach the stage where storage space can no longer possibly be used to increase performance.
I'm not saying it's impossible to fill a DVD, but doesn't seem likely.
People said the same thing about CDs.
You can add the HDD and ethernet expansions to any PS2. It's like requiring gnucon or a driving wheel for speciality games. It's been done since the NES. Welcome to 1985!
Wrong-o. The new-model PS2 cannot take the HDD expansion, thus rendering it more or less obsolete. THAT is what happens when a feature isn't built in...it gets ignored and/or abandoned.
And of the hundreds of NES games produced, how many used the light gun? Or the power pad? Of all the games produced for the PS2, what percentage use the hard drive expansion? Or the multi-tap (or whatever they called it for the PS2)?
Now what percentage of Xbox games use the hard drive? Oh wait, that's probably about 100%. What percentage include some form of networked play (either Live OR local area network)? While nowhere near 100%, I'm sure it's quite a bit higher than the PS2's.
And to not pick on the PS2 specifically, what percentage of games for the GameCube use the broadband adapter?