I will say that being able to play online with friends does make it all more than worthwhile, even when taking into account all the cheaters. I've blown entire evenings in Halo, playing with groups of people I know, custom game after custom game.
The key to having a good Xbox Live online experience is friends! Get your friends list built up so that you have people you enjoy playing with online, and you'll never want to go back to single player again.
The SC had 8 buttons on the top, and 6 of those had your fingers sitting directly on top of them, so you don't have to move to press them. The three on the side for your thumb are shift buttons for the main top 6 - meaning that you have essentially 26 buttons at your fingertips.
I never played a FPS where I had to program all the buttons - and I even had various "taunt" macros to use, along with the standard communication ones for CTF games. My FPS play improved significantly when going from the KB to the SC. Heck, I've used it for any game that has keyboard shortcuts - I STILL have the muscle memory from playing countless hours of Diablo II with it.
That's only if you want the HD-DVD to watch movies. There's no way games are going to come out on HD-DVD, since they'd be restricting the people that could possibly buy them. I suppose there's a chance they could release in both formats, one with a little extra FMV or bonus movies or something, but that's all the gaming benefit you may get from the new drive.
It's justification for upgrading for only a small portion of people. The rest of us will wait until one of the next gen optical formats becomes standard, then buy a regular player.
Well, I just hope you have to wait a LONG TIME to get your 360 then.
The moment we get a modchip for the 360, then the floodgates open for the obnoxious little teenage brats who can now cheat all over Xbox Live and rejoice in their anti-social behavior as they ruin countless other peoples' gaming experiences.
Which is why I harbor a special hatred for creators and producers of cheating chips. Good to know you support online game cheating.
Yeah, because jamming your fingers together on a keyboard and trying to hit the keys on a large field of identical keys is a much better gaming experience than playing on something designed expressly for playing games.
While the mouse makes a lot of sense for aiming, using the keyboard is makeshift and very far from ideal. I actually bought another controller to use for PC FPS games - a Microsoft Strategic Commander - because a keyboard is SO INCREDIBLY FAR from a good controller for such games.
The fact is that Microsoft made a HUGE mistake for not including HD-DVD. They know it, and Sony is shoving it down their throat (as they should). Microsoft is now seeing the effect of this, and has to counter it somehow. I am sure it killed Gates to say what he did, but he had no choice. Now to Microosft's advantage they will get out a console before this Chrismass, and that "could" be huge. Time will tell.
I don't think it's a big mistake at all. First, with so few games taking advantage of all the space on DVDs now, it seems like there will be a minimal advantage for having a next-gen format in the PS3. An advantage that may well be offset by what appears to be a significant cost increase in the console. Sony's been clear that the PS3 is going to be expensive, and in the console space, price is a big deal. It may not be a big deal to gamers who are used to paying $300+ for just a video card for their computer, but there's a big segment of the console market that does care a LOT about console price.
Second, is Blu-Ray or HD-DVD going to be the winning format for the next generation of optical storage? Who knows? Both have backers, but I don't see a lot of buy-in from the public for either right now. I know I really don't care which is the eventual format to go with, I just want to see one become the standard.
Besides, I won't be suprised if Sony does drop Blu-Ray from the PS3 before ship, since they're already shedding features like they did with the PS2. It's all smoke-and-mirrors hype in an attempt to get people to pay more attention to their offering. They wouldn't announce dropping it until very close to PS3 release though, since by then anyone who's waited will continue to wait for the PS3 instead of getting a 360 instead.
I'm definitely expecting the 360 to be a much bigger success than the first Xbox, regardless of the fact that the PS3 will likely still come out ahead in this generation. I know there's already a good number of gaming stores that have sold out their first expected shipment of 360s, and some that have even done the same for their second.
Also, whenever you see an interface described as "fast", that's code for "slow, but faster than we thought it'd be given all the crap we've loaded on." Ideally an interface for a game console is so fast that its speed doesn't need describing one way or another. You just don't even think about it. It should be assumed that a game console interface is fast enough to not even be noticed - why would it be otherwise? So this is really not encouraging - it's the opposite, in fact.
You haven't yet seen it in action then. I have, and yes, 'fast' is an appropriate term. From watching live demos of it, I find it looks better, moves faster, and is more functional than ANY of the interfaces on the current gen of consoles.
And they have put so much effort into it because it's not going to be just something you rarely use, like in today's consoles, but much more relevant to regular 360 use. You'll always be able to pull it up - whether during a game, a movie, or watching live TV through the media extender.
If you're not hooked up to live, then you probably won't need the interface much at all, If you do connect to live, then it's a much different story.
I'm waiting for the RL Thundercats movie to be made, starring a bunch of unfunny former SNL people, and done as a pathetic farce that nobody wants to see. That's just the sort of thing Hollywood is convinced people want for some reason.
OMG! You mean a journalist misquoted someone and twisted things to create a more interesting story then there actually was? Wow!
Ok, sarcasm aside, it sucks that they'd do that, even if it is typical. It's rather unfair to you, and makes you sound like you're spitting out the same stuff we've been hearing over and over again. I don't get why a journalist would essentially just re-write a new version of the same articles we've been reading forever. Yeah, we've heard women play The Sims, we know that people are upset with the portrayl of women as sex object in most games, etc, etc. DON'T JUST TELL US AGAIN, people! Sounds like anything new and interesting that you said, they just tossed in the trash.
Thanks for updating on here on what you actually said...:)
I have one EA game - Burnout 3. It goes through Live to get onto the EA servers. And gawd, is that obnoxious. First of all, because their severs are meant only for online play, it means the rest of the game is completely Live-unaware. I can't see my friends list when I'm playing single player, and I can't get game invites. Besides, that, the setup they use for getting into games is more obnoxious and more amateur, and after playing other games on Live, I just have no interest fighting their crap to play online.
You may see it as Microsoft locking people into working with their infrastructure. I see it as Microsoft trying to provide a consistent experience to all Live subscribers. And I'd rather play a game that uses the Live system properly, instead of doing it all through their own servers.
It makes it a lot easier to play with your friends... you don't have to talk over IM and figure out a server, only to find out there's not space for everyone, or deal with all that. It's also simpler to just add someone to your friends list there, and you can see what they're playing.
It's not like it's set up to automatically match you up with friends. It would be nice to have an option to do that though...
It's called play on a team with friends, and let the idiots bug the other teams.:) Friends lists are the only way that anything other than the rumble playlists are really playable.
(BTW, my gt is "PMS GibGirl" if you need more folks for your friends list... just make sure to include a voice message)
I think the bigger advantage for Microsoft in this case is the fact they have a generation's worth of head start. They already HAVE an online system, they've already discovered some unanticipated issues to resolve in the next version of Live, and they've got a whole team of people working on Live who also play regularly (I know, cause I've played with them a lot), so have firsthand experience with what can be improved and what works.
Sony and Nintendo don't have that experience, so they'll need to make some of the same mistakes with their first gen online service.
My opinion is that the server browser became obsolete with the release of Halo 2. The matchmaking and party system done there is just so advanced, compared to the server browser, which was state-of-the-art when Quake came out - that long ago.
I could see server browsers being added deeper in menus, something accessible for those people who really care for playing only on a specific server. However, there needs to be a means for someone to get into games a lot more quickly and without having to pick through a list of servers where half are already full, others are configured in a way you don't watn to play, others just suck. Halo 2's rankings and matchmaking enable me to play against people online in less than a minute, and make it likely that the people I'm playing against are comparible in skill level.
There isn't one PC game out there that I'm aware of that's anything NEAR as user-friendly and quick to get you into a game.
Halo 2's matchmaking should be treated as the STARTING POINT for all online games from now on. Server brosers are now just as modern tech as having to select the IRQ your soundcard is on, and creating boot disks to make certain you have enough Extended Memory available.
Yeah, more people play PS2 online. But in an environment where each company sets up their own servers, and each is set up differently, and you need accounts for each game server, and the whole thing is very fractured and ad-hoc.
Xbox Live gives a complete, integrated system. I can play one game, see who on my friends list is playing in other games, and send game invites to them. The Xbox 360 is going to add a HELL of a lot more to the experience, also.
Yes, there are plenty of games that offer free online. But think about it - $50 a YEAR? How much is that, really? Cable in most places costs more, and that's the price of one game. Besides, with the libraries the 360 is putting together, EVERY game will be Live-enabled at almost no cost to the developers. So even if the game has no online content, you'll still be connected and accessible to your friends, can pause to get messages or have voice chat - and there's all sorts of new stuff coming.
Compared to all the other online games I've played, I'm much more impressed with what Xbox Live offers.
I don't know the details of that yet. But I suspect it will be something like locking people out of certain zones, for example, based on criterial. If you're swearing and cussing enough to get feedback, they may ban you from the "Family" zone very quickly, much more quickly than is done now.
And BTW, feedback on Live, even now, does have an effect. It does not disappear into some black hole or/dev/null or the such.
Well, two of the new features in the next iteration of Live will take care of this.
Item #1 is the creation of "zones". My understand is that the "family" zone will have a very low tolerance for verbal abuse - so the people who do that will soon find themselves unable to play in that zone.
Item #2 is the gamer ratings. You rate gamers you come up against, and the ones that consistently trash talk and abuse other people are going to watch their ratings go down. You should also be able to avoid those at the bottom of the ratings, and not have to play against them.
They've realized that this has been a bigger issue than they expected, so more resources are going to go to addressing this problem.
Additionally, if you're into online gaming, Sony STILL hasn't announced their gameplan in that area; Live is probably one of the few things Microsoft got REALLY right with the first gen Xbox.
If you think they got it right with the first Xbox, then wait until you see the new Xbox Live that's coming out with the 360. I've seen so much about it, actually seen the thing running, seen some of the support things coming with it - this is the #1 thing that's got me so interested in picking up a 360.
In general, the game is about you controlling a "prince" who has to replace all the stars in the sky. He does this by rolling around a "Katamari", which objects stick to. When you start out, you've got a 1 cm tall Katamari, and you're rolling over thumbtacks and coins. As you collect items, the Katamari gets bigger, and can pick up bigger items. So the mouse that was chasing you around and knocking items off your Katamari eventually finds itself PART of the Katamari.
And the great part is that the items don't just disappear into the Katamari - they're all quite visible on the outside, and actually affect how the Katamari rolls. Grab a pencil, and suddenly it doesn't roll well at all in the direction of the pencil, and you need to roll a different way to even it out.
The later stages are really fun - you can start off rolling items sitting under the car next to a house, to rolling over items around the car, to rolling up the pets, then the owner of the house, then the car itself, then the house.
Ummm, people played Perfect Dark Zero on the Alpha dev kits for the whole MTV special (which was pretty bad, the only part I cared about was seeing the girls who run my clan on there). Multiple other people have played actual games on those dev kits.
And I've seen actual games running on an actual 360. No canned stuff. And I've seen both Alpha and Beta dev kits up close. I've watched other stuff running on the hardware too.
As an aside, what should society (the school, the church, the congress) do for those kids whose parents shirk their responsibility to do so? I don't disagree that parents SHOULD teach their children such things, but it's obvious that not all of them can/want to do so.
You mean the George Foreman Grill PS3 with the patented boomerang controllers? My GAWD, is that thing ugly.
I've seen the 360 up close, I've held the console and the controller, and I can't see how it could be considered uglier than the PS3. Yes, it's possible for something to be uglier than the PS3 (look at the original Xbox), but it sure ain't the 360.
And the Revolution is sleek, simple, and forgettable.
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I will say that being able to play online with friends does make it all more than worthwhile, even when taking into account all the cheaters. I've blown entire evenings in Halo, playing with groups of people I know, custom game after custom game.
The key to having a good Xbox Live online experience is friends! Get your friends list built up so that you have people you enjoy playing with online, and you'll never want to go back to single player again.
The SC had 8 buttons on the top, and 6 of those had your fingers sitting directly on top of them, so you don't have to move to press them. The three on the side for your thumb are shift buttons for the main top 6 - meaning that you have essentially 26 buttons at your fingertips.
I never played a FPS where I had to program all the buttons - and I even had various "taunt" macros to use, along with the standard communication ones for CTF games. My FPS play improved significantly when going from the KB to the SC. Heck, I've used it for any game that has keyboard shortcuts - I STILL have the muscle memory from playing countless hours of Diablo II with it.
That's only if you want the HD-DVD to watch movies. There's no way games are going to come out on HD-DVD, since they'd be restricting the people that could possibly buy them. I suppose there's a chance they could release in both formats, one with a little extra FMV or bonus movies or something, but that's all the gaming benefit you may get from the new drive.
It's justification for upgrading for only a small portion of people. The rest of us will wait until one of the next gen optical formats becomes standard, then buy a regular player.
Well, I just hope you have to wait a LONG TIME to get your 360 then.
The moment we get a modchip for the 360, then the floodgates open for the obnoxious little teenage brats who can now cheat all over Xbox Live and rejoice in their anti-social behavior as they ruin countless other peoples' gaming experiences.
Which is why I harbor a special hatred for creators and producers of cheating chips. Good to know you support online game cheating.
Yeah, because jamming your fingers together on a keyboard and trying to hit the keys on a large field of identical keys is a much better gaming experience than playing on something designed expressly for playing games.
While the mouse makes a lot of sense for aiming, using the keyboard is makeshift and very far from ideal. I actually bought another controller to use for PC FPS games - a Microsoft Strategic Commander - because a keyboard is SO INCREDIBLY FAR from a good controller for such games.
The fact is that Microsoft made a HUGE mistake for not including HD-DVD. They know it, and Sony is shoving it down their throat (as they should). Microsoft is now seeing the effect of this, and has to counter it somehow. I am sure it killed Gates to say what he did, but he had no choice. Now to Microosft's advantage they will get out a console before this Chrismass, and that "could" be huge. Time will tell.
I don't think it's a big mistake at all. First, with so few games taking advantage of all the space on DVDs now, it seems like there will be a minimal advantage for having a next-gen format in the PS3. An advantage that may well be offset by what appears to be a significant cost increase in the console. Sony's been clear that the PS3 is going to be expensive, and in the console space, price is a big deal. It may not be a big deal to gamers who are used to paying $300+ for just a video card for their computer, but there's a big segment of the console market that does care a LOT about console price.
Second, is Blu-Ray or HD-DVD going to be the winning format for the next generation of optical storage? Who knows? Both have backers, but I don't see a lot of buy-in from the public for either right now. I know I really don't care which is the eventual format to go with, I just want to see one become the standard.
Besides, I won't be suprised if Sony does drop Blu-Ray from the PS3 before ship, since they're already shedding features like they did with the PS2. It's all smoke-and-mirrors hype in an attempt to get people to pay more attention to their offering. They wouldn't announce dropping it until very close to PS3 release though, since by then anyone who's waited will continue to wait for the PS3 instead of getting a 360 instead.
I'm definitely expecting the 360 to be a much bigger success than the first Xbox, regardless of the fact that the PS3 will likely still come out ahead in this generation. I know there's already a good number of gaming stores that have sold out their first expected shipment of 360s, and some that have even done the same for their second.
Also, whenever you see an interface described as "fast", that's code for "slow, but faster than we thought it'd be given all the crap we've loaded on." Ideally an interface for a game console is so fast that its speed doesn't need describing one way or another. You just don't even think about it. It should be assumed that a game console interface is fast enough to not even be noticed - why would it be otherwise? So this is really not encouraging - it's the opposite, in fact.
You haven't yet seen it in action then. I have, and yes, 'fast' is an appropriate term. From watching live demos of it, I find it looks better, moves faster, and is more functional than ANY of the interfaces on the current gen of consoles.
And they have put so much effort into it because it's not going to be just something you rarely use, like in today's consoles, but much more relevant to regular 360 use. You'll always be able to pull it up - whether during a game, a movie, or watching live TV through the media extender.
If you're not hooked up to live, then you probably won't need the interface much at all, If you do connect to live, then it's a much different story.
Yep, it is... and he used to play Halo 2, though it appears he hasn't played on Live since the beginning of January.
It's spelled "clique"...
I'm waiting for the RL Thundercats movie to be made, starring a bunch of unfunny former SNL people, and done as a pathetic farce that nobody wants to see. That's just the sort of thing Hollywood is convinced people want for some reason.
OMG! You mean a journalist misquoted someone and twisted things to create a more interesting story then there actually was? Wow!
:)
Ok, sarcasm aside, it sucks that they'd do that, even if it is typical. It's rather unfair to you, and makes you sound like you're spitting out the same stuff we've been hearing over and over again. I don't get why a journalist would essentially just re-write a new version of the same articles we've been reading forever. Yeah, we've heard women play The Sims, we know that people are upset with the portrayl of women as sex object in most games, etc, etc. DON'T JUST TELL US AGAIN, people! Sounds like anything new and interesting that you said, they just tossed in the trash.
Thanks for updating on here on what you actually said...
I definitely have to disagree there.
I have one EA game - Burnout 3. It goes through Live to get onto the EA servers. And gawd, is that obnoxious. First of all, because their severs are meant only for online play, it means the rest of the game is completely Live-unaware. I can't see my friends list when I'm playing single player, and I can't get game invites. Besides, that, the setup they use for getting into games is more obnoxious and more amateur, and after playing other games on Live, I just have no interest fighting their crap to play online.
You may see it as Microsoft locking people into working with their infrastructure. I see it as Microsoft trying to provide a consistent experience to all Live subscribers. And I'd rather play a game that uses the Live system properly, instead of doing it all through their own servers.
It makes it a lot easier to play with your friends... you don't have to talk over IM and figure out a server, only to find out there's not space for everyone, or deal with all that. It's also simpler to just add someone to your friends list there, and you can see what they're playing.
It's not like it's set up to automatically match you up with friends. It would be nice to have an option to do that though...
It's called play on a team with friends, and let the idiots bug the other teams. :) Friends lists are the only way that anything other than the rumble playlists are really playable.
(BTW, my gt is "PMS GibGirl" if you need more folks for your friends list... just make sure to include a voice message)
I think the bigger advantage for Microsoft in this case is the fact they have a generation's worth of head start. They already HAVE an online system, they've already discovered some unanticipated issues to resolve in the next version of Live, and they've got a whole team of people working on Live who also play regularly (I know, cause I've played with them a lot), so have firsthand experience with what can be improved and what works.
Sony and Nintendo don't have that experience, so they'll need to make some of the same mistakes with their first gen online service.
My opinion is that the server browser became obsolete with the release of Halo 2. The matchmaking and party system done there is just so advanced, compared to the server browser, which was state-of-the-art when Quake came out - that long ago.
I could see server browsers being added deeper in menus, something accessible for those people who really care for playing only on a specific server. However, there needs to be a means for someone to get into games a lot more quickly and without having to pick through a list of servers where half are already full, others are configured in a way you don't watn to play, others just suck. Halo 2's rankings and matchmaking enable me to play against people online in less than a minute, and make it likely that the people I'm playing against are comparible in skill level.
There isn't one PC game out there that I'm aware of that's anything NEAR as user-friendly and quick to get you into a game.
Halo 2's matchmaking should be treated as the STARTING POINT for all online games from now on. Server brosers are now just as modern tech as having to select the IRQ your soundcard is on, and creating boot disks to make certain you have enough Extended Memory available.
Yeah, more people play PS2 online. But in an environment where each company sets up their own servers, and each is set up differently, and you need accounts for each game server, and the whole thing is very fractured and ad-hoc.
Xbox Live gives a complete, integrated system. I can play one game, see who on my friends list is playing in other games, and send game invites to them. The Xbox 360 is going to add a HELL of a lot more to the experience, also.
Yes, there are plenty of games that offer free online. But think about it - $50 a YEAR? How much is that, really? Cable in most places costs more, and that's the price of one game. Besides, with the libraries the 360 is putting together, EVERY game will be Live-enabled at almost no cost to the developers. So even if the game has no online content, you'll still be connected and accessible to your friends, can pause to get messages or have voice chat - and there's all sorts of new stuff coming.
Compared to all the other online games I've played, I'm much more impressed with what Xbox Live offers.
I don't know the details of that yet. But I suspect it will be something like locking people out of certain zones, for example, based on criterial. If you're swearing and cussing enough to get feedback, they may ban you from the "Family" zone very quickly, much more quickly than is done now.
/dev/null or the such.
And BTW, feedback on Live, even now, does have an effect. It does not disappear into some black hole or
Well, two of the new features in the next iteration of Live will take care of this.
Item #1 is the creation of "zones". My understand is that the "family" zone will have a very low tolerance for verbal abuse - so the people who do that will soon find themselves unable to play in that zone.
Item #2 is the gamer ratings. You rate gamers you come up against, and the ones that consistently trash talk and abuse other people are going to watch their ratings go down. You should also be able to avoid those at the bottom of the ratings, and not have to play against them.
They've realized that this has been a bigger issue than they expected, so more resources are going to go to addressing this problem.
Additionally, if you're into online gaming, Sony STILL hasn't announced their gameplan in that area; Live is probably one of the few things Microsoft got REALLY right with the first gen Xbox.
If you think they got it right with the first Xbox, then wait until you see the new Xbox Live that's coming out with the 360. I've seen so much about it, actually seen the thing running, seen some of the support things coming with it - this is the #1 thing that's got me so interested in picking up a 360.
Find out more about the original here.
In general, the game is about you controlling a "prince" who has to replace all the stars in the sky. He does this by rolling around a "Katamari", which objects stick to. When you start out, you've got a 1 cm tall Katamari, and you're rolling over thumbtacks and coins. As you collect items, the Katamari gets bigger, and can pick up bigger items. So the mouse that was chasing you around and knocking items off your Katamari eventually finds itself PART of the Katamari.
And the great part is that the items don't just disappear into the Katamari - they're all quite visible on the outside, and actually affect how the Katamari rolls. Grab a pencil, and suddenly it doesn't roll well at all in the direction of the pencil, and you need to roll a different way to even it out.
The later stages are really fun - you can start off rolling items sitting under the car next to a house, to rolling over items around the car, to rolling up the pets, then the owner of the house, then the car itself, then the house.
It really is an amazing game.
Ummm, people played Perfect Dark Zero on the Alpha dev kits for the whole MTV special (which was pretty bad, the only part I cared about was seeing the girls who run my clan on there). Multiple other people have played actual games on those dev kits.
And I've seen actual games running on an actual 360. No canned stuff. And I've seen both Alpha and Beta dev kits up close. I've watched other stuff running on the hardware too.
Second the games shown on the systems were fucking pre-rendered crap that wasn't even running on the console. Whoopty fucking doo.
You mean, other than the 360 games that were running on Alpha dev kits at E3? At least one system was showing actual games...
As an aside, what should society (the school, the church, the congress) do for those kids whose parents shirk their responsibility to do so? I don't disagree that parents SHOULD teach their children such things, but it's obvious that not all of them can/want to do so.
You mean the George Foreman Grill PS3 with the patented boomerang controllers? My GAWD, is that thing ugly.
I've seen the 360 up close, I've held the console and the controller, and I can't see how it could be considered uglier than the PS3. Yes, it's possible for something to be uglier than the PS3 (look at the original Xbox), but it sure ain't the 360.
And the Revolution is sleek, simple, and forgettable.
I diagrammed sentences back in school. In a public school, for that matter. And I'm only 30.