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The Future of Microsoft Gaming
Ars Technica has an interview up with Matt Lee, a software developer in Microsoft's Xbox division. He's got a lot to say on the subject of the future of MGS gaming. He touches briefly on Xbox Live, Games for Windows, and the powerhouse that is the 360. From the article: "The tessellator in the Xbox 360 GPU is indeed a very powerful piece of hardware, and you're right--most games have yet to take advantage of this. I think you'll see more titles use it in the future. As for procedurally generated worlds, I believe the biggest obstacle to overcome is how to design and build the content for such a system--it can be quite a departure from today's art pipelines. Game studios will figure it out though--it's crucial to generating and delivering ever larger worlds without having to exponentially grow the size of the art team."
I do have to say that Microsoft's plan for gaming interCONNECTIVITY is quite impressive. Their press conference at E3 really demonstrated how cool connecting a Vista PC to a 360 to a Cell Phone could actually be. The portability of the GamerTag is truly awesome, but I'm still not sure if it will be enough to take the #1 spot from Sony. (Wii is in a class all its own.)
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Well, the 360 is designed to eventually break-even or even make money, which the Xbox was not. So, Microsoft will not be as pressed to get the Xbox 3/720/Next/whatever out in another 4 years. And if all goes well (poorly, that is) with the PS3, Microsoft will be in a much more comfortable position and not have to fight for first-mover status like they did with the 360.
That said, even during the Xbox's four years, you could visibly see developers making advancements in technology. A good example is Halo vs. Halo 2. Not only did things get shinier/bumpier (adding more detail through bump mapping techniques rather than geometry), they also were able to render in widescreen while the original didn't. If you compare Project: Gotham Racing to PGR 2, you'll see similar changes -- better trackside textures and models, better textures all around, better car models and environment maps, etc. And then compare PGR2 to Forza, and you'll see even more differences (though some are under the covers, such as the 4-wheel independent suspension physics simulation used in Forza, compared to the standard of Pacejka's Magic Formula). It's certainly not as much of an improvement as we saw through the life of the Playstation (compare Final Fantasy VII to Final Fantasy IX), but it's still there and once would expect similar advances on the 360 as developers get used to the technology.