Day Before Launch 360 Impressions

There'll be a blizzard of launch day articles tomorrow, but in the calm before the storm we have some last minute thoughts. Gamecloud has impressions from the developers, and a pre-launch review of the system. Gamers with Jobs has impressions of the console and the launch title selection. From the Gamers with Jobs article: "The actual console is a far cry from the large, black and American design of the original Xbox. It's slim and white, it's also pretty quiet but I can only imagine that has something to do with the console's lack of a manly internal power supply. Instead, the black monster resides outside, like the ghost of what was mocking the feminine new system's lack of balls. It's ok Xbox 360, I think you're ADORABLE! Hee!"

Comments

Impressions from DEVELOPERS???

[MBCook]

"Game developers speak out"? No.

That article is pointless. While it has some info, the people in it are not developers, they are (in order): a president, a marketing guy, another marketing guy, another president, a designer, and a product manager.

Why the designer is almost there, the rest aren't even CLOSE to developers. I want DEVELOPER information. I've heard little bits (easier SDK than last time, hard to get full potential out of, etc.) but I would love some more in-depth info (that didn't get filtered through marketing to remove anything negative).

There is a bit in the article (many of them mentioned how they think they "Core System" is a terrible mistake, I agree), but there isn't that much. I think the last question of the three they ask is the worst. They ask "which games would you buy on launch day". OK. Whatever. How about "Would you buy one on launch day, and if so what would you buy with it?" That would show much more about how they feel about the system.

Are there any developers out there who would like to give us some better info on what it is like to develop for the 360 (or any next-gen console)? Good/bad/whatever? How are the tools? Run into any weird gotchas (I once heard that with the PS1 if you wanted to make a large flat surface (like a wall) you had to split it into many smaller polygons instead of 1 or 2 because the texture would look so terrible if you didn't)).

There is enough pointless hype around this launch anyway (it deserves hype, but there is still too much) without a bunch of guys from marketing pretending to be developers.

Why didn't they ask the janitor at a game company? Surely he has an opinion.

They don't even mention if the companies these people are from are working with the 360 or not. For all we know, none of these companies have anything to do with console games based on the information give (name only, so if you don't recognize it, you know nothing about them).