Oh, get off your arrogant "everyone not as good as me sucks and ought to stop playing" high horse.
People like you piss me off on Live. Not because they're good, but because they have no fucking clue how to be a decent person and scream and insult everyone they beat and let them know what a damn "n00b" they are. You have no clue how to be a graceful winner.
Letting everyone know how much better you are then the pros for the game must make you feel really important, doesn't it?
The "pros" were 30's in team slayer (on xbox live). Me and my friends usually sit around 30, but often are modded or just f'ing around. You could tell how they played they were only okay.
The "pros" happen to be the two best Halo 2 players inside all of Microsoft. Other than their first match, they had no problems with any of the games.
Yeah, they're not the best people out there at the game, but they sure as hell aren't just "OK". If they're just "OK", then 90% of the people who play regularly must suck horribly at the game.
While PAX itself was decent, what really made it very exciting for me was the opportunity to hang around with friends from out of town in such a gaming-oriented setting. If I had been by myself, I would have done very little.
Instead, I was there a little on Friday, most of the day Saturday, and would have spent all day Sunday there too if I could have, because it was a great place to be with those friends.
Re:kudo's
on
PAX05 Writeup
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have a batch of PAX pics available. I focused more on my clanmates who were there, but some of them should give a good feel for how things were.
I've seen emails to Xbox lists here at Microsoft where some of the devs have said that they will not have new executables, but be doing standard emu. Suprising they would be giving contradictory messages... are you sure you've seen a quote directly from someone at MS about them doing so, or were they articles that claimed it minus quotes?
From the J Allard interview that was just posted here on Slashdot:
J Allard (Expert): Another one from mail: What about backward compatibility in the core system?
J Allard (Expert): because we didn't abstract storage in the first generation xbox back compat will require a hard drive. the good news is that the core system owners can upgrade if they deside to update at a later date.
Actually, feedback left doesn't go to Bungie, but to Xbox Live itself, to be combined with feedback from other games.
And yes, the feedback does get noticed, and actions are taken against people who get significant amounts. Heck, I think if someone gets ENOUGH feedback quickly enough, that there might even be automated methods to handle it.
The reason for that is that the Xbox didn't abstract the storage device, so all the games are written as if there's always a hard drive there - so there has to be one to play them.
I believe that will not be any games out there that require use of the HD. And it may well be that there won't be any games that use it whatsoever, and it's limited to storing downloadable content, save games, music, etc.
In other words, getting rid of the advantage it presented in the first Xbox, and instead emulating Sony's wildly successful PS2 HD strategy.
I get the impression that the 360's HD won't offer the same speed as the one in the Xbox, meaning that using it for gameplay just isn't going to work out nearly as well. The 360's HD doesn't appear to be designed for games to use during play.
If you have the charging kit and battery pack, you can just connect the charger to the controller and keep playing. The battery will charge while you play (albeit at a slower pace than if you weren't playing).
The original Xbox does have such a cache on the HD, so it would make sense that the 360 would also have one if the HD is present.
And all the other things you mention (except perhaps the 'hibernate') will definitely make use of the HD. In fact, I doubt non-HD owners will be able to make use of downloadable content.
I still hate that they're doing this. They went from a HD that everyone could depend on being there, with the first Xbox, to something that's as useful as the PS2 HD (i.e. a waste of money and hardware).
They've taken it away from the few developers that made use of it. (it's how Halo 2 avoided load times, and I'm sure Halo 3 won't have such a nice feature now)
I'm sorry. I guess there's something wrong about the fact that I have some actual knowledge about the system, and have been sharing it with people to correct misperceptions and the like.
I'll go back to acting like the rest of the Slashdot crowd and rant and rave with made-up facts about subjects I know nothing about. Will that help? Perhaps if I foam at the mouth in the post, and use the terms 'M$' and 'Evil Empire'?
Yeah, I should know better than to respond to trolls...
The controllers come with a cable that hooks to the USB port. This cable will let you play wired instead of wireless if you want, and can be attached during play if the batteries lose their charge - you don't have to quit playing.
BTW, there will also be rechargable battery packs available, so that you don't have to keep buying batteries. And judging by how long the Wavebird lasted on just one battery, I wouldn't expect them to use a lot of batteries either.
That's the best part of Slashdot! The people here are so intelligent that they know more about every subject than the people who actually create/work with/develop those items for a living.
For example, imagine a security hole is found in your product. Don't worry, the 13-year old slashdotter who's entire coding experience in writing "hello world" in VB will explain why the entire staff of the company whose product it was in has no clue about security.
But there are plenty of trolls out there who know they have no clue and just make stuff up anyway.
Read comments made by clueless readers, most who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, as they make up random reasons to insult Microsoft to be part of the "cool Slashdot crowd".
Remember that Sony owned the rights to everything they used in their previous consoles. Microsoft, on the other hand, used chips from Nvidia that they aren't going to be using in the 360, and they can't just toss in there to make things compatible easily.
So what are they doing? Writing an emulator. They are doing MORE work to get backward compatibility than Sony has to do - and they're doing it. I just played Halo 2 on a 360 yesterday. 100% emulated, not a single speed issue anywhere. It's really a technically impressive feat, and it's being done NOW.
Given that I'll be able to play my old games on it, with new and better controllers, and experience a much improved Xbox Live, and with the games I've seen are coming, I know for a fact I'm getting a 360.
Anyways, we all know that Xenon and Cell suck - Anandtech had an article on it but that article was mysteriously removed from the website, no doubt because of Sony or MS putting (legal?) pressure on them. Luckily, you can read it here.
Actually, the article was pulled from the site because it was full of inaccuracies, and was just, in general, crap. I've seen the parts about the article regarding the 360 torn apart completely, internally, by people who actually know about and helped create the thing. People who were very upset to see something they've worked on get blasted with repeated falsehoods.
Everything I've heard implies that the 360 won't come in a HD-less version, because you will have games using it - and I don't mean using it like the PS2 uses it.
It's just removable so that you can haul your save games, music, purchased content, etc - over to another 360.
Dude, I hear that failing to buy a 360 will cause your Xbox to explode. I read it on some gaming site somewhere, so surely it's the truth, right?
Remember, this isn't an official line, it's what IGN has decided for themselves. You can choose to believe it, just don't assume it's actually how things are going to be.
I plan on putting my Xbox away (or taking it into my office or something), and putting the 360 in the entertainment center. Then playing all of my Xbox games with my chill-colored wireless controllers, and taking advantage of all the new features on Xbox Live.
I don't want to have two consoles there that I have to switch between, and I don't want to have to switch network cables back and forth to whichever console I want to play on.
My first console purchase this generation was a GameCube - I didn't even get an Xbox until January. I held off at first because it was a MS product, and even after ending up working at MS, I still skipped over it. Then I played a couple games at a friend's house, and picked one up - I've barely touched any other console since then. I may well have already logged more time on it then my GameCube - and Xbox Live has gone a long way toward keeping me playing a lot.
I've had the opportunity to see the 360 in action, and even got to play around with one just a couple days ago. (Perks of working a MS and knowing people on the Xbox team) I am so getting a 360 right away, and I am very excited about it. Everything I have seen tells me they've learned a lot from what's happened with the first Xbox, and the new one is definitely going to be more impressive.
I suspect the Xbox team knows they don't need to beat Sony (as much as I'm sure they want to), but to just close the gap substantially. I don't see how that could NOT happen. A team full of gamers trying to create the best gaming machine they can? Seems like the ideal way to do things!
It's been done - though you don't necessarily need a modchip to edit the game data in that way, as the recent problems with hacked map content for Halo 2 demonstrated.
It's also funny you mentioned the Strategic Commander for FPS games, since it was designed for strategy games and wouldn't work very well at all (from the reviews I read) for FPS gaming... they do have the Dual Strike for FPS games, but although it is an interesting take on aiming, I'm not sure how well it would work. The reviews I read of the strategic commander also said the buttons were too close together, and he felt he had to jam his fingers to hit them.
I doubt anyone reviewing the SC for FPS games gave it enough time. It took me about a full weekend of play to get to the point I was comfortable with it, but once I got to that point, it was definitely better than the KB and more intuitive. And I don't get the buttons being "too close together" - they sat right under my fingers so that I didn't even have to move them at all to have the buttons, and it was much more comfortable than a keyboard ever was.
I almost quit playing on Live for the same reason. I had some fun playing in Matchmade games against random people, but with the percentage of idiots out there, and the lack of being able to keep a good team for team games, I was losing interest.
Then I got the gamertags of a few other people here at work, and started playing with them, and their friends. Before long, I had a couple dozen people on on friends list, and growing. Then I ended up in a game with one of the girls from PMS, and I joined it, and found more and more friends through there, too. Last time I looked, I had over 70 people on my friends list, and then a couple hundred in my clan - so I never have problems finding people to play with.
All this, and none of my friends in real life play on Live. It's just about getting the right people to seed your friends list.:)
(BTW, if you ever do decide to play Halo 2 or Forza online, feel free to send me a friend request - PMS GibGirl)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, get off your arrogant "everyone not as good as me sucks and ought to stop playing" high horse.
People like you piss me off on Live. Not because they're good, but because they have no fucking clue how to be a decent person and scream and insult everyone they beat and let them know what a damn "n00b" they are. You have no clue how to be a graceful winner.
Letting everyone know how much better you are then the pros for the game must make you feel really important, doesn't it?
The "pros" were 30's in team slayer (on xbox live). Me and my friends usually sit around 30, but often are modded or just f'ing around. You could tell how they played they were only okay.
The "pros" happen to be the two best Halo 2 players inside all of Microsoft. Other than their first match, they had no problems with any of the games.
Yeah, they're not the best people out there at the game, but they sure as hell aren't just "OK". If they're just "OK", then 90% of the people who play regularly must suck horribly at the game.
While PAX itself was decent, what really made it very exciting for me was the opportunity to hang around with friends from out of town in such a gaming-oriented setting. If I had been by myself, I would have done very little.
Instead, I was there a little on Friday, most of the day Saturday, and would have spent all day Sunday there too if I could have, because it was a great place to be with those friends.
I have a batch of PAX pics available. I focused more on my clanmates who were there, but some of them should give a good feel for how things were.
I've seen emails to Xbox lists here at Microsoft where some of the devs have said that they will not have new executables, but be doing standard emu. Suprising they would be giving contradictory messages... are you sure you've seen a quote directly from someone at MS about them doing so, or were they articles that claimed it minus quotes?
From the J Allard interview that was just posted here on Slashdot:
J Allard (Expert): Another one from mail: What about backward compatibility in the core system?
J Allard (Expert): because we didn't abstract storage in the first generation xbox back compat will require a hard drive. the good news is that the core system owners can upgrade if they deside to update at a later date.
Actually, feedback left doesn't go to Bungie, but to Xbox Live itself, to be combined with feedback from other games.
And yes, the feedback does get noticed, and actions are taken against people who get significant amounts. Heck, I think if someone gets ENOUGH feedback quickly enough, that there might even be automated methods to handle it.
Nope, completely wrong.
The reason for that is that the Xbox didn't abstract the storage device, so all the games are written as if there's always a hard drive there - so there has to be one to play them.
I believe that will not be any games out there that require use of the HD. And it may well be that there won't be any games that use it whatsoever, and it's limited to storing downloadable content, save games, music, etc.
In other words, getting rid of the advantage it presented in the first Xbox, and instead emulating Sony's wildly successful PS2 HD strategy.
I get the impression that the 360's HD won't offer the same speed as the one in the Xbox, meaning that using it for gameplay just isn't going to work out nearly as well. The 360's HD doesn't appear to be designed for games to use during play.
It's more "Loading" screens for all of us...
If you have the charging kit and battery pack, you can just connect the charger to the controller and keep playing. The battery will charge while you play (albeit at a slower pace than if you weren't playing).
The original Xbox does have such a cache on the HD, so it would make sense that the 360 would also have one if the HD is present.
And all the other things you mention (except perhaps the 'hibernate') will definitely make use of the HD. In fact, I doubt non-HD owners will be able to make use of downloadable content.
I still hate that they're doing this. They went from a HD that everyone could depend on being there, with the first Xbox, to something that's as useful as the PS2 HD (i.e. a waste of money and hardware).
They've taken it away from the few developers that made use of it. (it's how Halo 2 avoided load times, and I'm sure Halo 3 won't have such a nice feature now)
I'm sorry. I guess there's something wrong about the fact that I have some actual knowledge about the system, and have been sharing it with people to correct misperceptions and the like.
I'll go back to acting like the rest of the Slashdot crowd and rant and rave with made-up facts about subjects I know nothing about. Will that help? Perhaps if I foam at the mouth in the post, and use the terms 'M$' and 'Evil Empire'?
Yeah, I should know better than to respond to trolls...
Sorry, wireless is not mandatory on your 360.
The controllers come with a cable that hooks to the USB port. This cable will let you play wired instead of wireless if you want, and can be attached during play if the batteries lose their charge - you don't have to quit playing.
BTW, there will also be rechargable battery packs available, so that you don't have to keep buying batteries. And judging by how long the Wavebird lasted on just one battery, I wouldn't expect them to use a lot of batteries either.
That's the best part of Slashdot! The people here are so intelligent that they know more about every subject than the people who actually create/work with/develop those items for a living.
For example, imagine a security hole is found in your product. Don't worry, the 13-year old slashdotter who's entire coding experience in writing "hello world" in VB will explain why the entire staff of the company whose product it was in has no clue about security.
But there are plenty of trolls out there who know they have no clue and just make stuff up anyway.
Then after that...
Slashdot Readers Make Up Microsoft Insults
Read comments made by clueless readers, most who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, as they make up random reasons to insult Microsoft to be part of the "cool Slashdot crowd".
Remember that Sony owned the rights to everything they used in their previous consoles. Microsoft, on the other hand, used chips from Nvidia that they aren't going to be using in the 360, and they can't just toss in there to make things compatible easily.
So what are they doing? Writing an emulator. They are doing MORE work to get backward compatibility than Sony has to do - and they're doing it. I just played Halo 2 on a 360 yesterday. 100% emulated, not a single speed issue anywhere. It's really a technically impressive feat, and it's being done NOW.
Given that I'll be able to play my old games on it, with new and better controllers, and experience a much improved Xbox Live, and with the games I've seen are coming, I know for a fact I'm getting a 360.
Anyways, we all know that Xenon and Cell suck - Anandtech had an article on it but that article was mysteriously removed from the website, no doubt because of Sony or MS putting (legal?) pressure on them. Luckily, you can read it here.
Actually, the article was pulled from the site because it was full of inaccuracies, and was just, in general, crap. I've seen the parts about the article regarding the 360 torn apart completely, internally, by people who actually know about and helped create the thing. People who were very upset to see something they've worked on get blasted with repeated falsehoods.
Everything I've heard implies that the 360 won't come in a HD-less version, because you will have games using it - and I don't mean using it like the PS2 uses it.
It's just removable so that you can haul your save games, music, purchased content, etc - over to another 360.
Dude, I hear that failing to buy a 360 will cause your Xbox to explode. I read it on some gaming site somewhere, so surely it's the truth, right?
Remember, this isn't an official line, it's what IGN has decided for themselves. You can choose to believe it, just don't assume it's actually how things are going to be.
I plan on putting my Xbox away (or taking it into my office or something), and putting the 360 in the entertainment center. Then playing all of my Xbox games with my chill-colored wireless controllers, and taking advantage of all the new features on Xbox Live.
I don't want to have two consoles there that I have to switch between, and I don't want to have to switch network cables back and forth to whichever console I want to play on.
My first console purchase this generation was a GameCube - I didn't even get an Xbox until January. I held off at first because it was a MS product, and even after ending up working at MS, I still skipped over it. Then I played a couple games at a friend's house, and picked one up - I've barely touched any other console since then. I may well have already logged more time on it then my GameCube - and Xbox Live has gone a long way toward keeping me playing a lot.
I've had the opportunity to see the 360 in action, and even got to play around with one just a couple days ago. (Perks of working a MS and knowing people on the Xbox team) I am so getting a 360 right away, and I am very excited about it. Everything I have seen tells me they've learned a lot from what's happened with the first Xbox, and the new one is definitely going to be more impressive.
I suspect the Xbox team knows they don't need to beat Sony (as much as I'm sure they want to), but to just close the gap substantially. I don't see how that could NOT happen. A team full of gamers trying to create the best gaming machine they can? Seems like the ideal way to do things!
Activate modchip.
Change game data stored on HD.
Deactivate modchip.
It's been done - though you don't necessarily need a modchip to edit the game data in that way, as the recent problems with hacked map content for Halo 2 demonstrated.
It's also funny you mentioned the Strategic Commander for FPS games, since it was designed for strategy games and wouldn't work very well at all (from the reviews I read) for FPS gaming... they do have the Dual Strike for FPS games, but although it is an interesting take on aiming, I'm not sure how well it would work. The reviews I read of the strategic commander also said the buttons were too close together, and he felt he had to jam his fingers to hit them.
I doubt anyone reviewing the SC for FPS games gave it enough time. It took me about a full weekend of play to get to the point I was comfortable with it, but once I got to that point, it was definitely better than the KB and more intuitive. And I don't get the buttons being "too close together" - they sat right under my fingers so that I didn't even have to move them at all to have the buttons, and it was much more comfortable than a keyboard ever was.
I almost quit playing on Live for the same reason. I had some fun playing in Matchmade games against random people, but with the percentage of idiots out there, and the lack of being able to keep a good team for team games, I was losing interest.
:)
Then I got the gamertags of a few other people here at work, and started playing with them, and their friends. Before long, I had a couple dozen people on on friends list, and growing. Then I ended up in a game with one of the girls from PMS, and I joined it, and found more and more friends through there, too. Last time I looked, I had over 70 people on my friends list, and then a couple hundred in my clan - so I never have problems finding people to play with.
All this, and none of my friends in real life play on Live. It's just about getting the right people to seed your friends list.
(BTW, if you ever do decide to play Halo 2 or Forza online, feel free to send me a friend request - PMS GibGirl)