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New Version of Xbox 360 Rumoured
Carlo Becchi writes "According to Engadget a new version of the Xbox 360 is on the way. The next version of the console is codenamed 'Zephyr', and sports a bigger disk (120 Gb), better manufacturing process (65nm) and HDMI digital out up to 1080p. From the article: 'The 120GB drive may or may not come bundled with the kit, we don't yet know, just as we also don't yet know how much a Zephyr 360 is going to run (we imagine it'll go for the same price as currently so they can keep up a little on their expanding margin).'" It should be pointed out at this point the whole story is a fairly convincing photo and leaks from 'a source'. Take with a grain of salt.
Will it come with a built-in HD-DVD drive, or will I still be expected to pay $200 for that add-on?
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I know they'll sell like hotcakes then. Especially if they smelled like hot cakes!
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For the current Pro model? Maybe making it the core system... So everybody gets a HDD... I hope this happens soon...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
They're just trying to win Wired's 2007 Vaporware Awards. They figure if they leak it now they have a whole year to build it up. It's good marketing
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
1) How is HDMI raising the bar? The 360 can already do 1080p now without it.
2) Blu-Ray support is equivilent to HD-DVD support. The 360 wins here since you have the option of buying it or not.
3) HD by default is also advantage-360. Many people buy consoles without the need of downloading large amounts of movies/music/demos.
4) PS3 games over Wifi are horrible. There is a noticable lag difference vs ethernet.
5) Dual layer DVD's can hold near 10 gigs. PC games have been outputting at "1080p" like resolutions for years without requiring 10 gigs. If Gears of War can fit on a 10 gig disc, then any game in this generation of consoles can.
MS presents the Xbox 361: The Do-Over Edition
as long as they offer a 120gb upgrade for older 360s that would be fine with me. there are currently hacks out that let you use any HD of any size, but the MS firmware drivers have hardcoded 20GB limits in them, so even if you hook up a 500GB hard drive, it only can use 20GB. with this coming update, you should then be able to use your own drive up to 120GB. (you can't put movies or demos on any media drives you connect, only the main drive)
I swear the FAA calls me every time I turn on my 360 to play a game. A couple of times, seismologists have dropped in to see what was going on.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
"The PS3 raised the bar by including HDMI, blu-ray support, a hard disk by default, wi-fi and some other bits and pieces."
While Nintendo did just the opposite by not including many of those features. Despite that, the Wii is doing extremely well, for a number of reasons, including:
a) Price. Wii is less than half the price of the PS3. A Dodge Neon is devoid of features compared to a Cadillac, yet the Neon sells extremely well. (Well, sold, I believe the Neon has now been replaced by the Caliber? I haven't looked at their offerings recently.) Not everyone wants a Cadillac, and so a manufacturer doesn't necessarily need to make Cadillacs.
b) Focus on gameplay rather than whiz-bang oooh-shiny features that don't necessarily improve gameplay at all.
How well compared to PS3 or 360 is currently impossible to tell, since the Wii is the only of the three systems still limited in sales by availability. (which, in and of itself, is a good sign for the Wii).
PS3 didn't raise the bar in any way with those features, since the Wii has proven that those features are not necessary in any way for a given console to succeed.
The Core will most likely always remain available, because it is always good to have an entry level system to offer those who don't have $12938921704123 to spend on their consoles or have the money but are not willing to spend it on such purchases. (Such as myself, I have yet to buy a console that cost more than $150 for the system, and yes, that means I'm usually playing the previous generation but I have no problem with that. Used games are cheap, and I have better things to spend my money on.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Okay.
HDMI=DRM! Sony has got to love it. DVI would be a better choice. Still I will give you that having HDMI is a nice option as long as long as it is just an option.
blue-ray=DRM! So does HD-DVD but I don't want to pay for them in a console. They are not yet needed for games and one or the other is going to fail in the market place. If not we will all end up with dual format players or both will fail.
I think Sony hasn't so much raised the bar as much as dug a hole.
Standard hard drive and wi-fi are both nice but not exactly mandatory for a game console. I still expect to see a 360 that is also a PVR and support for the Zune.
Of course part of me has a feeling that some people at Microsoft have looked long and hard at bit torrent and are going to include a secure P2P client in the 360 so that they can use them as a low cost file distribution network.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
That "number of game developers" was really just one. Bethesda (the guys who made Oblivion) voiced concerns about fitting Oblivion onto a DVD-9 disc well before the 360 ever shipped. Sure enough, they were able to make it fit. Anyway, it's too late to make a change now. If Microsoft were to allow games to ship on HD-DVD, they'd be alienating their already existing user base (which is at somewhere above 6-7 million now, if not even higher). Microsoft does listen to developers (Epic and Gears of War was the reason Microsoft put 512MB of RAM into the box instead of the initially-planned 256MB), but when the console is already out there's not a whole lot you can do anymore until the next generation.
To which Microsoft can reply, "Just use your Wii graphic assets, since you're still going to ship there on a DVD-9. People will still buy it anyway, because you have a lock on the NFL license."
No, that just makes sense with the 360's current approach to media. It's an endpoint, not a provider. If you want to fill your Zune, do it from the PC where the Xbox is getting its info as well (you're not ripping CDs or vids directly to your 360, are you? That'd be dumb!). While it would be neat to be able to move Xbox Marketplace bits directly over to a Zune, that's a rather small scenario since the marketplace is more about games (XBLA), downloads for games, and demos. In fact the only thing I could see you moving to your Zune from Xbox Marketplace would be trailers (full TV shows and videos I'd expect to be DRMed to prevent that). Then again, trailers are in 480p or 720p format which means you'd either have to transcode them to put them on the Zune or Microsoft would have to offer lower resolution trailers.
Maybe future updates to 360 and Zune will make them work better. In the meantime, the 360's "normal" mode of connectivity with any media player (iPod, PlaysForSure devices, and I assume Zune) is read-only, which makes since given the lack of storage capacity on the 360.
Actually, I think it's the other way around. Microsoft's head start in the market (or its lesser specs in comparison to PS3, take your pick) has made the 360 the platform of choice for multi-platform developers. EA will never come to Microsoft and say, "We're not going to do Madden unless you give us HD-DVD." They're going to go to Sony and say, "Too bad we can't take full advantage of all that Blu-Ray space, but we have to work on the 360 as well and you two are close enough (unlike the Wii) that you get to be the Xbox of this generation and have all the crappy ports."
Because it's not "needless". Microsoft made the decision to go with DVD-9 for the 360, so that's what the developers get to use. Microsoft can't make the switch to HD-DVD unless they're willing to replace the drives of 7+ million 360 customers for free. That's never going to happen, so you suck it up and live with it. The 360 may end up with multi-disk games, or lower texture resolutions, or more compression artifacts, or what have you, but switching to HD-DVD is simply not a viable solution for the 360.
The only thing confirmed in all these rumors is that Microsoft is changing to a smaller CPU die (65nm I think), which will put out less heat.
In theory with less heat being put out, they can put in a quieter fan at the same time and turn the thing into a console rather then a jet engine.
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