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The Next-Gen Odd Couple
1up.com is running a lengthy piece talking to Microsoft VP J. Allard and Sony Computers of America President Kaz Hirai about what exactly the 'next generation' of consoles are about. The article is informative and varied, with talk about Xbox Live, the launch of the Xbox and PSX, and what past efforts from Sony and Microsoft will mean as the newest front in the console war heats up. From the article: "OPM: What are the benefits of being first to market, much like the Dreamcast was? What are the pitfalls? JA: Good question. I'd say one of the pitfalls from a competitive point of view is that you don't know what the other guys are doing, and to be frank, the guys over at Sony have been very good at not telling anyone what they're doing. It's tough to tell where they're going with the PS3. The other tough thing is that you're under the microscope [when you're first]. [Sony] shows two movies and a product that you can't touch behind a piece of glass, and that's what you get to write about on them."
I haven't noticed anything revolutionary with this new xbox 360. If anything you might call it evolutionary with enhanced graphics but aside from that the games don't appear to be any different from the long line of games that preceded them.
Incremental improvements in graphics and storage, or steps toward immersion. I have a 360, and thus far I am pretty impressed.
Take Call of Duty. Just looking at it, at first glance, it doesn't seem a whole lot better (Toshiba 27" standard def set circa 2003) than say Brothers in Arms on the original Xbox. Then when you actually play it, it has something most other WWII games lack, a sense of immersion. The particle effects really help with this. The battlefield is chaotic, grenades and bullets kick up snow, dirt, mud, and the smoke grenades are wonderful. The friendly NPC's talk, constantly. Sometimes everything else is just so loud, you can't really make out what they are saying. The surround sound is used to great effect to bring you onto the battlefield. It feels like a battle, not a group of polygons shooting at some other polygons.
There are also tons of characters on screen. I remember a Medal of Honor for the Xbox, the opening was a very well done and immersive D-Day invasion, with stuff going on all around you. Hardly any enemies, and only lasted a minute or two. Call of Duty feels like that all the way through, except while the enviroment is active with particle effects and explosions, there are also 15-30 enemies in front of you, and a bunch of Allies fighting beside you. In most WWII games it has inevitably felt like you were one man taking on the entire German army. Call of Duty has you pinned as a member of a unit.
A friend of mine came over after I got my 360 to check it out. We've been playing games together since the NES. Fired up Call of Duty, he took the first level. The vehicle he was in was attacked, he looks, and over the hill in front of him comes, I'd say 35 or so enemies, in formation. His response, holy shit, it's the whole German army. Throws a grenade, then attempts to shoot all of them with his rifle. He's dead a few seconds later. Eventually he realized he should throw a smoke grenade, then retreat to where the rest of the friendlies are and fight from cover. In short, a hell of a lot more immersive than the last generation.
This generation should be about parallel processing are way toward immersion. Hopefully some developer will come along and realize that graphically, this generation should be an incremental upgrade (whatever you can do with that fancy new GPU). The focus should be on using these multi-core processors to up the ante in physics and AI processing, and adding a bunch of characters to the screen. GTA isn't much of a city with 4 cars and 6 people on the streets. Multiply both of those numbers by 20-40 and we may start to have something truly next generation.
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