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Prepping For The 360
An anonymous reader writes "The Xbox 360 launches on Tuesday, and ZDNet talks to some of the folks who are already prepping for it. John Dvorak also has commentary on the new console, and he seems to like it." From the Dvorak article: "Luckily Microsoft's Xbox 360 crew, and other game developers, are working on cool stuff that will cross over to PCs. When game developers retake their rightful place on top of the hill of progress, we'll all be better off. Needless to say, I am impressed by the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 explores new menu structures with a unique and pleasant GUI. One often-overlooked element that the Microsoft games group brings to the party is its unique GUIs that are unlike the folder/desktop metaphor that Xerox and Apple developed."
Chris Anderson also got one early and is interested in the Xboox 360 from a Long Tail perspective as a media center.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
The Xbox 360 is undoubtably a monster of a machine, and one that Microsoft naturally takes much pride in. But Microsoft is going to be in the red for a while, and they will need to make the money back. Once the gaming base gets them up and out, my guess is that major innovation will start to keep buyers away from the PS3 and Gamecube (which shouldn't be too hard-the estimated cost per cell chip is stellar (theinquirer.net) and Nintendo has an undeserved reputation as merely a "kiddy" system.) If they can do that, the 360 will profit. Microsoft will pretty much be forced to innovate, and consumers should win this battle.
Why should anyone care what Dvorak thinks? He is usually wrong in his technology predictions. He has consistantly, for the past 20 years, predicted the demise of Apple, and he hated the iPod, thinking it was a dumb idea when the first one came out. JCD is a shill for Microsoft, and not a very interesting one at that.
Reality has a liberal bias
It's called the Xbox 360 because 360 degrees is one revolution and Microsoft thinks that the Xbox 360 will revolutionize gaming, so they decided to name it that.
I don't know if the 360 can read the playlist info, but that would be even better. I doubt it (Apple wouldn't tell 'em, they'd have to reverse engineer it).
But this ability is a great little feature. It takes something that was too hard to use on the XBox (because of having to rerip my CDs) and makes it easily available.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
If you thought backwards compatibility was bad from having to download patches just to play old games and the limited selection of games actually supported, read this:
http://www.ga-forum.com/showthread.php?t=72168
It sounds like 360 backwards compatibility has turned out to be nothing more than poorly implemented ports that will require future porting to be playable.
And if that wasn't bad enough news, there are huge numbers of people reporting overheating related crashes. It sounds like all those reports of 360s constantly crashing at Walmarts were true and had nothing to do with non-final hardware.
Mixed with the poor reviews for the 360 launch lineup and system itself...
Man, I would love to hear from someone who actually wasted 500+ bucks on this disaster what the hell they were thinking.
More processing power (especially multi-core processing) and RAM is a big improvement. Unfortunately people buy systems for apparent gain, most evident in better graphics.
Personally I would like to see a GTA style game that is actually like a city, with a few hundred NPC's and cars on the streets (gridlock). Keep the engine from the xbox generation, and just add characters. Make use of those fancy multi-threaded processors. Graphics are not everything, and these multi core systems should finally have the horsepower to throw tons of characters on screen. Hopefully next-generation should be able to both.
Really, I forsee the true gaming revolution occuring when engines exist that are basically as good as they can be. In other words, graphics are a non-issue, everything is photorealistic, and improvements are seen entirely in gameplay, physics, and AI complexity.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
For once, someone who thinks like me. Yes!!!!
;-)
:-)
When I saw GTA:SA for the PS2 I was amazed at the size of the city but yes there are problems with NPCs [specially to do with how they spawn].
Things I would like to see in a GTA series
1. Limited fuel in the vehicles
2. More intelligent NPCs e.g. not just duck or run away but fight back or fetch police
3. Less obvious police. That is have them actually COME FROM SOMEWHERE and not just spawn "behind you"
4. Have cops enforce traffic laws. E.g. get caught speeding or whatever.
5. Ability to use taxis? Sometimes I don't want to drive
Tom
Dynamics like that would make the game more fun
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Excuse the potential flame-bait, but hasn't there been an inordinate number of Dvorak articles posted in the last few months? Most of us wrote him off as a puffed up windbag years ago, why has he popped into relevance at this point?
/. crowd is giving this guy FAR too much credit and FAR too many page views. Which leads me to the inevitable question - why has this article been posted by an AC?
Dvorak has a long long history (see post circa '95 above) of writing asinine articles that are just plain wrong. And I'm not talking about 'hindsight 20/20' wrong - I mean predictions which make me wonder if he's in the same industry that we all are in.
Anyway, it seems like the
With online advertising spending at an all time high (and growing at absurd rates), maybe it's time for the editors to be a little more discriminating before rewarding mediocrity with tens of thousands of impressions.
dont know if youve checked cpu prices recently but if yo stay away from the bleading edge a decent pc costs nowhere near 3 grand.
that said if i had a hdtv i would probably get an xbox360 just to dump my windows gaming partition.
Dvorak was right about that except for three important facts:
The first is that the cable companies had government protected monopolies. They stole money from TV viewers to fund internet access. I know, because I was one of them. I was a sysadmin at Clemson until I took a job with a local cable company in 1996. We knew our equipment was garbage, we knew the business plan was crap, and we knew what we were doing made no sense. We couldn't even get CNN to a TV, so we knew our Internet access would be a joke. It took a few years, but by stealing from the public, we now have a network that works somewhat well.
The second thing is that Dvorak underestimated the hatred the Bell monopolies had for the Internet. My mother worked for BellSouth corporate in Atlanta, and she had swallowed their Internet hatred kool-aid until a couple of years ago. Until recently, she honestly thought people would get bored and the Internet would just go away since that's what her employeer claimed. If, for example around here, BellSouth had hit the market hard, I would have been out of work. If BellSouth, or Hell$outh as their frustrated customers refer to them since the company doesn't seem motivated at all to sale anything, had priced ISDN reasonably, cable modems wouldn't have taken hold. In 1996, 24/7 access with one ISDN channel (64kbps) cost me $1,640 per month plus taxes for just the line usage and the Internet access was another $500 per month from MCI until I was able to get my company to run cable to my house. In no way was that reasonable for BellSouth to charge. I think we averaged eight weeks of downtime per customer per year when we started. If BellSouth would have sold ISDN access with no downtime, I don't think I'd have a job right now. I know I would have preferred 64/128 kbps access to the crap we sold.
Finally, people get addicted to speed. As he said, "Is speed really the issue?" Yes it is. Customers are strange. They know their dial-up will work 100% of the time and be cheaper, but they'll pay $576 per year for unreliable service from us. I was happy with my old dedicated 9,600bps connection in 1991 that worked all of the time, so I'm confused as hell by this issue like Dvorak also is.
This only gets worse when you start using component inputs for video and optical inputs for audio. I've got a great (but expensive) component video/digital audio switch that I've currently maxed out (GC, PS2, Xbox, DVD), and that runs into my receiver with a 2x mux for component (other side has my cable box). I'm debating whether or not I buy another switch and run that with a 360 and my cable box, but initially I'll probably just decommission my GC.
On the other hand, part of my preparation for Xbox 360 was to buy a new TV (just did that today, should have it tomorrow). My 4.5 year old CRT-based RPTV is still alive and kicking, but it doesn't do 720p (only 1080i) and it's getting up there in age (really needs another professional calibration to adjust setting drift and overscan). With the price of TVs today, I actually paid less for my new 50" DLP RPTV than I did for my old 46" CRT RPTV, and it'll last me at least for another 4.5 years (HDMI input for forward-compatibility and for use with a DVI-to-HDMI cable if I really want to use it now, 720p for optimum HD viewing until 1080p really becomes standard in the next few years, multiple component inputs for my current hardware, VGA input "just in case", and a warranty that includes bulb replacement for 5 years). I was even able to get a local store to price-match the internet! (woo!)
Going off-topic: Why DLP? Because I didn't want another CRT-based set (I'm sick of overscan and setting drift, and requiring periodic professoinal calibration to keep it in top shape), but plasma is not worth it ($4000 for 1.5 years of life, higher risk of burn-in than CRTs) and LCD is still subpar (direct-view LCDs generally won't go larger than 40" before you run into quality problems with bad pixels, rear-projection LCDs are prone to screendoor effect, black levels and contrast are terrible in comparison to DLP and CRT, and the typical life span before quality degradation sets in is around 3 years). I don't have the room for front-projection, nor do I have the ability to totally control ambient light in my TV room to optimize the front-projection viewing experience. DLP bulb-life is in the 3-5 year range depending on usage, but I've got that covered at least through the first bulb change. DLP may still be prone to rainbow effects, but the current generation of color wheels and DMD chips make this much less likely. While some people still notice, I did my research and looked at a number of different sets, and I saw no problems. Thus, it's DLP for me.
No, Apple licensed from Xerox from the start, in the way a responsible company should. Microsoft didn't, they just stole, were sued, and after several years of fighting the case, finally settled out of court. The settlement included a license. Big difference. The difference between an honest company and a dishonest one.
The typical video game console release is to build as many units as yo can and tehn stock them in key markets, usually the US and Japan only. When you sell out, your chain is empty and everyone waits until you can refill it.
MS stated they didn't want to do that, and instead are going for a total, worldwide release and are trying to distribute some units to everywhere. It'll mean essentially instant sellout in all markets, however should mean that you can perodicly get more, and that they'll be available in some capacity all over the world.
It's a somewhat risky strategy and may blow up in their face, but lacking immediate competition means it's more likely to work. What we'll probably have is a situation of nobody having a 360 (relitively speaking) but everyone knowing someone who does. That may lead to even more hype, and more desire to own the product, espically since it will be scarce initally. Given no other competitors to go to, it may work well.
We'll see.
Yeah, that was awful of him to meet with Newton and take credit for a bunch of his work.
I don't think Apple have ever been particularly secretive about the origins of the GUI -feel free to correct me if you can point to an instance where Apple have claimed to invent the GUI, as far as I can tell they only took credit for Mac OS.
Notably, there was a significant amount of apple stock transferred to Xerox PARC, who were unwilling to make a commercial product out out of the Star and Alto GUI systems, what with being a RESEARCH centre and all. Laser printing and Ethernet are other examples of now-ubiquitous technology that PARC failed to capitalise on were they "stolen" as well?
In fact, several key engineers from PARC left Apple so that they could take advantage of the opportunity to be on the team that brought the GUI to the masses.
Finally, have you ever seen what Xerox's GUI looked like? There's no more similarity between the interface of the Star and Mac GUIs than there is between DOS and UNIX, that is to say superficial resemblance only. Drop down menus, drag and drop, double-clicking and many other features that are standard fare on todays computer interfaces originated at Apple, not PARC, though quite probably from the same people.
It'd be nice if people would stick to talking about things they actually have a clue about instead of spreading nonsense about how they would like history to have been.
I suppose you think Bill Gates invented the personal computer industry and Linus Torvalds stole all the code in Linux from SCO as well.
He was a very strong Mac proponent in the early years. Recently, though, he's pretty much become a Microsoft fanboy.
Personally I don't think he's written much of anything since around the time he stopped being a Mac fanboy. That's about the time Dvorak started having to come up with 200+ articles a month for all his columns in all the magazines he wrote for. Someone who had been in the industry a long time, who knew all too well how long it took to write a single column, did the math and figured out it'd take Dvorak about 1.5 months of no-break no-sleep 7/24 work to come up with his workload for a single month.
Can you say "ghost writers" boys and girls?
BTW, the columnist who speculated on Dvorak's workload became unemployed shortly after publishing that column.