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Are the 360 Launch Titles Actually Next-Gen?
An anonymous reader writes "1UP has a feature up entitled 'Is This Really The HD Era?' The article begs the question: How many of the games ported to the Xbox 360 (12 of the 18 launch titles were ports) are truly next gen, and how many are just trying to cash in on the hype of the new console? There are some interesting conclusions, but best are the quotes from Peter Moore explaining the HD Era throughout the whole thing: 'Next generation games will combine unprecedented audio and visual experiences to create worlds that are beyond real and they'll deliver storylines and game play so compelling that it will feel like living a lucid dream.' Right."
I think just about everyone who has done some research could of realised this without looking at this article, although it does introduce some new complaints (Such as Quake 4 being utterly unplayable, didnt know that). It seems that even though microsoft tried to release some great games for there launch, they just ended up with a bunch of ports and a few decent games. Sadly its been toted as one of the best launches to console date, but this is only because most of the games released for it arnt new at all.
But the article speaks truth, 12 ported games where nearly all of them dont add a reason (and even take some gameplay away) to add a 10 dollar price tag. Hopefully they can actually release some decent games (or atleast decent ports) or there is going to be some rough tides ahead for microsoft.
It's a known fact that "First Gen" titles usually don't take full advantage of the hardware. It takes a couple years or more to develop a title, so the devs haven't had enough time with the hardware to maximize it's potential. Same thing will happen with the PS3. It's not news.
Well... obviously they are ports, not new games specially designed for it.
Interesting to note, 50% of the games are (EA) sports games.
This should read: 'Next generation games could blahblahblah...'
Fact of the matter is it will be a while before titles actually start looking and - more importantly - playing like true 'next generation' games most of us imagine. Is the power there in this next round of consoles? I think it is, there is definitely a lot of potential, but it's still a ways off. Developers will have to learn the platform and its nuances, and they will also have to create all that higher detailed art and better audio, just because you can render a bazillion pixels doesn't mean the pictures are automatically prettier, someone has to create all the high-res art first. Additionally gameplay itself, AI, multiple paths to completion etc are better supported with these consoles but it will take time for game designers to figure out how to take advantage of all that. And just as importantly, publishers are going to have to give those developers the leeway and the opportunity to take chances with new gaming experiences that push the boundaries of gameplay as well as the system. There's a lot of potential in this new round of consoles, but I think it will take a few years before it really feels like next-gen.
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As the console and the games exist today, they are by definition not next-gen. They are this-gen.
Jak & Daxter struck me as very well done, much more so than most of the steaming piles of EA crap and sequel orgies.
Super turbo turkey puncher 3!
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Are any games ever "Next Gen"? If you ignore pre-3d platforms and concentrate on any from the PSX1/N64/Saturn/PC-with-decent-3d-card onwards, which game can't be ported to any other console without losing more than the odd polygon, or slightly smaller levels? Battlefield2 for the latest PC would play the same on a PSX, wouldn't it? Halo could be adequately ported to the N64, no?
Good gaming is about gameplay, and I don't see that being something that is improved with a few more polygons or an even-uglier-than-last-generation joypad. Perhaps with a 10,000X faster CPU we'll be able to have vaguely interesting AI from non-player characters rather than the useless or scripted crap we have today, but given that the best games are multi(human)player enabled anyway, who cares?
Come on now. Are the X-Box 360 titles truly "next gen?" Depends on what your definition of "next gen" is.
Improved graphics? Sure as hell.
Improved gameplay? Wellll... no. Consider that, of what are widely considered to be the two best non-sports games, one is a sequel to an N64 game, and the other was shown at previous E3s in an N64 incarnation. One could thus say, indeed, that the best X-Box 360 games are last gen.
But by the definition of improved gameplay, just how many games are next gen from their era? Not a whole lot. Indeed, the games with the most engaging gameplay (I'm thinking most especially of Katamari) seem to be those that purposely recall previous generations.
People often forget that the XBox is only 4 years old and was a pretty spiffy piece of hardware when it was released; performed in a similar range to a 1GHz+ Pentium 4 and Geforce 4 (much better than it's [similar to] Geforce 3 and Celeron would have you expect). The jump from XBox to XBox 360 is pretty meh because the XBox is still a decent machine; I suspect that the PS3 will look all that more impressive because it will be a year newer than the XBox 360 and be compared against a system that is a year older than the XBox.
Other factors are that developers are going to produce the level of visual effects that they can afford; no one is going to put 5-10 Million behind a game (Gun, King-Kong, etc.) when porting it to a system with a small userbase in order to make a couple early adopters feel better about their purchace.
Charging $10 more is simply because Microsoft has allowed the publishers to do so. Publishers (pretty much) abide by the price range that the console manufacturer sets for them, Microsoft put it in the 49.99-59.99 range so they choose ther price at 59.99 (most likely because, with the small user base, they need the extra money to recover porting costs.
No, it does not.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
That is raising the question. Just remember, 99.98% of the time you want to use "beg the question", you probably need to use "raise the question". Thank you.
"The article begs the question: How many of the games ported to the Xbox 360"
It does not beg any question. It might raise a question though.
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Considering that games on the PC tend to be intended to run at 1024x768 or above(1280x1024 or 1600x1200 are very common), that's the video level people want to see from a HD title. I don't think we will see this quality video for quite a while yet. Improved textures are easy enough to implement, but that doesn't mean that the graphics or feel of a game has improved much.
Now, companies CAN prepare well in advance for next generation computers and equipment by developing well beyond the current abilities of the consoles. Make it so the models use 5 million polygons each in the design of the game. Who cares that the game runs at 3 frames per second on current equipment. Then the developer can scale down the number of polygons in order to make it run on the target system. Rebuild for the next console, and porting will at least provide the graphics improvements people look for. A game like Jade Empire could be re-released with an XBOX 360 version with improved graphics if the original game was intended to be that much better than the original Xbox could handle.
The killer for me is HD. I have an HDTV, and the XBox 360 games look beautiful on it.
If you take away the HD advantage (ie, hook the XBox 360 up to a standard TV) then yeah, there's nothing advanced about the current generation of games. But on a good TV, nothing compares.
I've been very fortunate to be one of the few to experience the 360 from its nov.22nd launch! Let it be known that this is one nice piece of hardware and should be rewarded simply for its sleek design and grade A wireless controller! On the subject matter of are these Next GEneration Games or not, I would have to say NO even though I love XBOX! Im pretty sure that we will start seeing what we want after a year or two but it should not come as a surprise to anyone that these early but still nice looking games are not true next-gen games! I think we should all just be happy that MS raised the bar on what to expect in the future of gaming, and if it had been up to Sony or Nintendo the next-gen may have only been XBOX one status visuals or who knows! Why don't we talk about this more often I mean what do you guys think the future of games would have been if it were just Nintendo and Sony? My belief is that for one the Nex-gen would not of started until 2008 or even 10, and on top of that online gaming would have only been for PC's and the gaming industry would just suck raw meat balls! Let's just give it some time and all be happy were experiencing the new generation now instead of later and I mean years later!
PS1 had... FFVII which is really second generation since it came out almost 2 years after the PS1 did. PS2 had... SSX, a good looking fun game but hardly took advantage of the hardware. Xbox had Halo and even the most supportive fanboys generally agree that the game wasn't quite finished let alone polished (The Library level anyone? All that backtracking through old levels?). Xbox360 has 2 PC ports (Call of Duty 2 and Quake 4), yet another subpar FPS (Perfect Dark Zero) and another wave of EA Sports games.
It takes a couple of generations of games for the full potential to be unlocked, but first-gen titles are considered "showcases" for what is to come. The PS2 launched with SSX, Ridge Racer V, and a bunch of other titles that made people lust after the little machine. The Xbox ping pong videos were completely lickable. Mario 64 was light years ahead of the 16 bit era, as was Ridge Racer 1. NFL and NBA 2K on the Dreamcast were shocking. Panzeer Dragoon on the Saturn was light years ahead of the Genesis. Super Mario World on the SNES and Altered Beast on the Genesis both blew away the 8-bit offerings of the time.
This is the first system launch that I've ever heard of where people are seriously questioning whether or not this is any better than the previous generation. Microsoft has the unfortunate position of both having the last-released current generation system and the earliest-released next one, so that the inevitable comparisons won't find much gulf. But still... wow us now!
Even Fantavision on the PS2 showed off the system's power. Remember being stunned by the realistic water in Wave Racer? It looks like there was a rush to get the X360 into people's hands, and none of the potential of the system have been tapped. At least, I hope that is what happened. There just isn't much to get excited about currently besides potential, and potential as a satisfying gameplay experience doesn't last very long.
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Everyone loves says "games aren't about graphics!" but this article is nothing but.
i like it when fellow slashdotters understand the real meaning of phrases...congrats!!!!
The thing which concerns me is that instead of just moving on with building the true next generation titles, some shops (EA I'm looking at you) seem to be content with re-writing existing titles again just for the 360 unit.
I was just reading an article about how EA is converting Burnout Revenge over to Xbox 360 format. Keep in mind this is a very recent title, and I would have expected an Xbox backwards-compatiblity "profile" for this game. EA seem to think people should buy it all over again. To me, this not undermines the whole backwards-compatible angle of the 360 (it shouldn't carry the Xbox name if it can't handle the Xbox games), but smells of extreme laziness on the part of the developer. A re-hash instead of a new gameplay, very this-gen instead of next. But you can bet it'll be sold at a new-game price.
It's these kind of things which make me, and I'm sure others, wait until next year to see what the competition brings.
{ - Generic Guy - }
"Next generation games will combine unprecedented audio and visual experiences to create worlds that are beyond real and they'll deliver storylines and game play so compelling that it will feel like living a lucid dream."
Hmmm... Oh yeah... I have a game here that says something very similar on the back. You know, along the lines of "unprecedented video and audio" and "beyond real" and "live the game". It's for the Commodore 64... on a casette.
It didn't live up to the hype then... I doubt this will now. It was, however... quite fun to play. Quick controls, good game progression, easy to learn, annoying music. Hmmm... I need to go dig something out of the basement again.
Blah blah blah better graphics blah blah.
Is there an Intel Twain-class chip in the 360 that'll offer hardware acceleration to game storylines? I hadn't heard about that feature, the one that offers support for a full megaGaiman's worth of plot processing with integrated character development support.
Or maybe the 360 won't do one single damn thing to help developers offer us better plotlines or story. Or gameplay, for that matter; feel free to count all the games that took the move to true physics engines and gave us truly novel gameplay experiences with them. Don't worry, I'll wait.
Any game designer that really wants to be Neil Gaiman when they grow up, or Sid Meier or Peter Molyneux for that matter, has already noticed that there's no place for them on the cutting edge of console development. That area is well and truly the domain of the very large, the very rich, and the very branded.
There's good gameplay and good story on consoles, but it's nothing the console makers are doing. And the 360 isn't doing anything except escalating the price of doing business on a console, pushing more creative thinkers onto other platforms.
After all, the XBox 360 is not "next generation" any more, it's "current generation" now.
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Face it, developers only have a few months to really get a title ready for a new game console's release.
Even though they may have had development kits long before the actual hardware is ready, generally you have to be very conservative when releasing a new title for new hardware. You never know if specs will change, and if you focus too much on optimizing on the development platform, you may find the game unstable or unplayable on the release hardware. Developers were probably only given 3 - 6 months tops to actually test and tweak their games on the actual Xbox360 hardware, this is not enough time to truely create a game that takes advantage of everything the new console can offer.
2nd gen games for any new console are the ones developed entirely with the new hardware. These games are designed from the ground up to be optimized to run on actual release hardware. Game developers can then take months and even years to perfect a game on the system hardware, thus not cutting corners by trying to release a game in time of the game console release. 2nd gen games also benefit from the experience (and mistakes) made while developing the first round of games.
It isn't surprising that release titles are generally ports of previous-generation games, albeit with improved graphics and some showy features. But then, many release games are typically sports, 3rd person shooters and racing games because they are easy to develop quickly and generally never really need a lot of system specs to look good.
I would wait about 6 months for truely amazing games to be released for the Xbox360, I think the pre-holiday release was rushed, and game developers probably would have enjoyed at least 2 - 4 months of extra time to make their games really shine (instead of crashing).
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
But Gun looks like a PS2 game -- at best! There are moments when its vaguely reminiscent of the N64. What on earth is with the low-poly stuff???
I bought three titles when I got my 360: Gun, Condemned and Perfect Dark. All in all I have to say that Condemned is far and away the winner -- a very, very nice job by Monolith. Perfect Dark I give a low B, and Gun I give an F -- not for gameplay, but for the absolutely miserable job they did visually.
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Actually, I've played-seen small parts of 3 games: PGR3, Call of Duty 2, and King Kong (1).
PGR3: Now, this one I played on a HD projector with surround sound. Multiplayer looks OK, but when you do cockpit mode on single player, it becomes immersive. And I mean immersive. When my friend was driving through a small arch, and didn't take into account that he was sitting on the right of the car, not the left (it was an Atom 300), he hit the edge of the arch. Both of us, fairly hardcore 10+ year gamers, jumped back in our seats. 'nuff said.
Call of Duty 2: Played at the Wal-mart kiosk when waiting in line. I stood next to a locked door, and one of my AI allies started to kick it down. One kick...two kicks...he gets shot full of lead from behind the closed door, his blood turning my screen a smoky red, splinters of the door flying past my face. Holy crap, that was freaking immersive.
King Kong: There's a section of the game where you're two buds have to get a big wooden door open, and a T-rex is coming. You have to lure the T-rex away from them. You have no weapon. You walk about 6 miles per hour, the T-rex 7. There is an arch and some wall sections, and a cliff and some boulders. Otherwise, it's in the open. This thing is stomping toward you, roaring, with a pretty good musical score in the background. It was then that I noticed my heart was beating faster. And this was watching some kid play at the Target kiosk.
I'm no M$ fanboy, but this console should not be dismissed so easily. Especially if you're trying to judge it by the first round of games. Remember, it's a big learning curve with multiple processors. The 2nd round of games this summer and the 3rd round next fall (Halo 3) will be a more accurate measure of the system. Not that I have one. I got 4 and I'm selling them all. I'll buy one after the price cut and Halo 3 comes out.
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First Person Shooter -- probably a mistake
This is a trend that caused me to lose interest in console gaming. Pretty happy with my DS now, especially for the 2D GBA platformers and shooters. And thank god for the PC and the eclectic selection of games available.
The article mentioned that some of the games had new features, and felt more immersive. But that should be expected with any version of any new game, no matter whether the graphics have tripple the resolution. I don't really see pixel-pushing as a revolutionary step, the way the PS was. It's just an upgrade.