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Xbox 360 Blue-Ray Support, Achievement Addiction
Fibonasty_Sequence wrote to mention a piece on Gamespy looking into the Achievement addiction that the 360 can provoke in gamers. Playing games with specific goals in mind can be lots of fun. In related news, these heady post-launch days have seen a lot of rumors that need to be sorted out. One that keeps turning up is the possible support of the Blue-Ray standard by the 360. From that article: "Microsoft clearly - and very understandably - doesn't want to risk lumbering Xbox 360 with an internal drive format consumers don't want, and while it's favouring HD DVD by announcing an external drive that can read that disc format, it wants to ensure it's free to support the BD if it has to."
for the 360 if it is not to be relegated to the junk pile within 18 mos. I spoke with 2 major US dvd manufacturers in southern california yesterday who have both phased out the pre-press operations for the hd-dvd format and are concentrating almost solely on Blu-ray. However MS wants to support Blu-ray - they need to do it...soon, too.
This is slightly off topic, but it's something I've had on my mind.
Is anyone really THAT excited over high definition DVD? I mean... my progressive scan DVD player going into my DLP HDTV looks impressive as it is. I'd go as far as saying that anamorphic DVDs look just as good as watching a tv show in high definition.
Standard definition to High def for tv broadcasts is a huge jump... I couldn't go back. But, I really don't see how there can be as big a jump from DVD to HD DVD/Blue Ray when in my eyes, anamorphic DVDs look fairly high def already.
Therefore... When I do eventually buy a next gen system (Well, I'll be buying Revolution, but I may purchase PS3 or Xbox360 eventually once they drop in price) it won't be for its ability to play HD DVDs... that's just an added perk that I may or may not use. I don't really see these systems defining which will be the "winner" in the high def DVD debate.
We'll see, I guess.
Achievements and scores on the 360 are the real "next-gen" feature of the XBox 360.
Forget the graphics (although they're great) and forget the other much-touted features of the 360 - achievements and high scores take that old-school high score competitiveness from yesterday's old-school arcades and make them relevant once again!
This is great for someone like me - a guy in his early 30's who doesn't have many gamer friends anymore and certainly none on XBL - because it brings back that arcade competitiveness right to my living room: enhancing replayability, upping the tension factor, and generally just making the games more fun. Whoever decided to make integrated Live and Achievements mandatory for all XBox 360 games was a genius.