Bnet doesn't make any attempt to solve the social aspect. If bnet also throws people who can't finish the 1p campaign into a game with a top ranked person, their matchmaking system is broken as well. As I've said, these are solvable problems. Bnet, from what you describe, has not solved them -- hence your poor experience.
err... does that mean the majority of your games end in a draw?
No, it means that I ended up somewhere in the middle of the rankings.
If we have time for games, it mostly offline and we don't crave online play very much, I wish it weren't so myself. Finding good friendly Warcraft 3 matches is hard since all my friends don't play (well, some do but just not against me). I still play bnet, but without the social aspect it's nto as fun.
Again, all things that a good online service takes care of for you. You should spend no time "looking" for a good game -- a good online service ought to just give you one. A good line service also builds a social aspect into it, forming a community of players.
*shrug* As I said before, I think these are solvable problems.
It's the addition of a monthly payment that you have to keep up with that's the problem. Every few months I usually have the money for a used $20 game, but sometimes I don't. If I had had a monthly bill for XBox Live, I might not be able to buy any more games, and I'ld have to worry about another bill every month I have to make sure gets paid. I think my situation is the kind of situation grandparent poster was talking about.
You don't have to pay a monthly bill. They offer a yearly subscription. They even sell these gift-card like thingies with a code on them at stores that can be used to pay for the subscription. Let it lapse, and Live just doesn't work any more...
If PS3 has Blu-Ray, and XBox doesn't have HD-DVD, then Blu-Ray will become the established standard. Millions of people will buy the PS3 pretty much irregardless of what they do, which will give Blu-Ray a very good base to work with.
If Sony is the only company making Blu-ray drives, and the only company stamping out discs with movies, it won't be the established standard. The fact that Sony controls the IP is leading to a ton of resistance in the industry, as companies generally don't like giving money directly to their competition.
That's not to say that blu-ray doesn't have a chance; it will definately be interesting to see how it plays out. But it certainly isn't as simple as you seem to think it is.
I haven't heard of that problem. I have about 65 PS1 games, and I've never had any problems with the PS2 playing any of them. What games do you have problems with?
One of the Mortal Kombat games would crashes sometimes; can't remember which one it was. I want to say 3, but that doesn't sound right...
One of the Street Fighter games had a similar problem.
FF VII -- game crashes
Final Fantasy Anthology (when playing FFV) -- game would crash attempting to save sometimes.
Crono Cross -- game itself played fine, but the game was unable to read saves, and any attempt to save a game would fail, corrupting everything on the memory card (I was less than happy about that).
Actually, at the time DVD was a new standard and it was competeing with Super VCD's. In asia VCD are still common. The PS2 was often bought as a cheap DVD player for a format that was new. In a very similiar way Blu-ray is.
I don't have any knowledge of "Super VCD's", nor how people perceived that format, so I can't counter your arguement. Given my lack of knowledge of the existance of that format, however, I would suggest that it probably wasn't well supported in the first place...
The problem with online play is the same with PC's as they are with Live, the relative skill level of people are low, and people don't like to lose. MMORPG's do alright because skill isn't such a huge factor, but see how many people play Warcraft 3 in ladder compared to how many play in usemaps. It's about 20% of the players play ladder, the rest play use map settings. The appeal of online play is playing against people, the draw back is unless you've played online a bit everyone will be better then you. Most people would prefer to play offline. There just isn't any appeal to losing, and they dont' want to develope their skill. It's nto like cable. Cable (television or internet) doesn't require you to do anythign but pay. It will reach a saturation point of 10-20% of console gamers, and unless they come out with a full proof way of skill matching, it will peak there. even with good matching, many just don't see a need to go online.
It isn't that people don't like to lose. They just don't like to get the living crap beat out of them. They want a challenge, and a reasonable chance of winning against their opponent. In other words, they want to play a fun match, not one where they are merely a target.
This is actually where a well-designed online service comes into play, as you've noted, and if you'd seen much of what they've got planned for live on the xbox 360 you'd see how they are attempting to address this problem (it looks very interesting; we'll see how well they pull it off).
Hell, just look at what they did for matchmaking on Halo2. It is a sneak peak at how it should be done. Nearly every game I play is challenging and fun. I rarely lose, and I rarely win, but it is always a blast because the people I'm playing against are roughly at my skill level. Every now and then you'll get a game where someone kicks everyone elses' arse, and those aren't particularly enjoyable, which goes to prove my point above. But those are the exception rather than the rule, and those people quickly "advance" to a level where they are being matched against people near their skill level.
I don't find any of the arguements you've posed particularly convincing, as I feel that your arguements "dooming" online play are all solvable. I suspect you feel the exact opposite, so I doubt there is much more light we can shed on the topic.
Because back in the day when IE first came out, websites would put up a page saying "You must use Netscape to view this site" if the UA string didn't have Mozilla in it.
Your numbers betray you, indeed it grows but most people are content with offlien play
People used to say the same thing about cable. Look where it's at now. Once people try online gaming, they're hooked. If you assume an even distribution of gamers for Xbox & PS2 are interested in online gaming, then this would yield a significant increase in market share and initial sales for the Xbox360.
little under half of them cannot pay anything a month
If they can't afford $50, they can't afford to purchase a single video game, and they certainly can't afford a console. Oh wait, their parents bought them that stuff? Gee, I wonder what else fits in the xmas stocking...
But when it came out, it was the cheapest (or close to) thing in Japan that played DVD's. You are forgetting when the machiens firts came out $500 for a panasonic DVd player was par for the course, for the same price you could get a PS2. Thats why PS2 has such a huge install base and that's why sony waited until blu-ray to make the PS3. Their gambling on a similiar effect.
There is a difference this time around: Blu-ray isn't "the" established standard. People aren't going to be purchasing them because they want both a next gen movie format + game box -- they don't know which format will come on top. This means that only people who are convinced that blu-ray will come out on top will consider this a good deal.
You also have a GPU whose instruction sets and design are IP of a company that wants nothing to do with the box. They could just obstract it back into pure Direct X and nto the xbox variant but they will nee dgame specific hacks.
Have you ever run an emulator? Generally every game varies, some are 100% other have graphic glitches ect.. The PS2 incorporated the PS1 chip as a IO processor and it even had glitches. Now a 100% software solution is possible, but you need unique software hacks for a lot of games.
Exactly right. No solution will be 100% compatible, which is why you didn't see absurd statements about the xbox 360 being 100% compatible with the xbox (and why I scoff every time Sony claims 100% backwards compatibility, because it is a baldfaced lie). They're targeting as many games as possible, starting with the most popular games and working their way down the list. It is certainly an accomplishable goal, unlike your previous statement where you said it would be impossible.
I doubt that the compatibility will be near the 100% level, but I'd be willing to bet that they hit 80%. And personally, I could give a crap if "Bob's adventures in peanut land" works if the games I want to play don't (this was the problem with the PS2... half of my [admitedly small] PS1 library didn't work right on the PS2).
And if MS is going to be Backwards compatable they would have trumpetted it as a feature. I hear very little buzz about that.
They announced it at E3. What else do you expect them to be doing at this point?
Interesting, I'd never heard of those. From your description it sounds like they arranged the lasers statically, relative to each other to increase streaming speed (ie: probably no independent control of the heads was possible). It would definately allow it to read data 7 times faster than a normal drive. Do you know what its seek times were like?
The Jaguar wasn't a first mover. 3D0 was first mover for that generation. (not that it really changes the impact of the statement you were making...:))
The only item I didn't address was the 7 controllers. This isn't a selling feature for me. Four controllers is more than I need actually, as I rarely need more than two. It doesn't seem like something very useful. Hell, how do you get 7 people sitting on the couch?:p The xbox360 only supports 4 controllers, but it also supports 4 wireless headsets in addition to those controllers. THAT is something usable.
Support for 1080p is pointless; games can't use it. The GPU doesn't have the bandwidth required to render at that resolution. Additionally, it is incredibly difficult to find a screen that takes 1080p as an input. I know I certainly won't be owning one in the next 5 years.
Ditto for the dual display. Honestly, I'm expecting the second display port to be dropped before release.
I wouldn't consider the processor in the PS3 a technological advantage, nor something that Sony has a clear edge on. In practice you'll find that one has an advantage in certain areas, while another has an advantage in others. We'll have to wait until we can compare games to see which one comes out on top.
Regarding the RAM, both systems ship with the same amount of RAM. The PS3 ships with a segmented configurating, giving half of it available to the GPU and half to the CPU. The Xbox360 has a unified architecture; the GPU and CPU share the available ram. The configuration in the PS3 gives a bit more bandwidth to the GPU and CPU, but this advantage is negated by the 10mb of "eDram" they stuck on the GPU (ie: the GPU in the xbox 360 doesn't have as much bandwidth available to render a scene, but it also doesn't require as much bandwidth either).
I can't see Sony increasing the amount of ram they ship with on the unit. The cost of producing a single unit has got to be making the accountants nervous already...
The one thing I'm certain of: the next year (ie: until 7/06) is going to be a great year for gamers. The last time I got this excited about consoles was when the replacements for the snes started debuting.
Microsoft has said that it will be "selectively compatible," which is to say, it will play Halo and maybe the game you are trying to play. Anyone in the emulation scene can tell you that almost emulated is a nice way of saying not done. Of course, they will have time to finish the emulation later, but that doesn't help early adopters out.
They're getting the most popular games to work first and working their way down the list. I have a feeling that people are going to be rather surprised by this particular feature, but when you consider what it is they're emulating (essentially a very low-power PC by today's standards) it isn't what I would call an impossible goal. I would certainly enjoy working on a project like that. The trickest part will be emulating the GPU; supposedly the guy in charge of the emulation does some nifty tricks to translate the shader programs used on the nvidia chip to something the ati chip understands, with additional magic somewhere in between.
I'm not sure I see why feature is in quotations. If HD-DVD catches on and Blu-Ray doesn't (which I expect will happen), The PS3 will still have 10X the storage capacity of the Xbox. That's a pretty huge advantage. I think you'll quickly see games being ported from the PS3 chafing at the smaller size.
The only game I've ever played that didn't fit on a single dvd was Myst Revelation; it shipped on 2 single layer dvd's. It installed 6 gigs of data. Perhaps my perceptions are incorrect, but I've never seen games push storage requirements as much as a Myst game, and if they can get a game to fit in under 8 gigs, I don't see how it will be a huge limiting factor for next gen games. The few games that exceed that size can "deal" with using multiple discs. This was much more common when games were on cd, though I haven't played a multi-dvd game this generation (doesn't mean they don't exist, but I certainly haven't seen one). If I had to swap a disc every 10 minutes I'd have an issue, but after 20+ hours of play it isn't a big deal.
I really don't want to deal with Microsoft's bloody detailed and occasionally contradictory requirements around Live, nor implementing the buggar in a way that's consistent with the look and feel of a different game
Yeah, that whole "consistent positive user experience" thing can be a real bitch...:)
The "media center" stuff appears to be a red herring, if for no other reason than you will need to be sharing your folders over a wireless network, and you should under no circumstances ever share your folders over a wireless network.
Actually, you should never share folders with sensative data over a wireless network. If you don't care about someone else poking through your stuff, it doesn't matter.
I must say, as a developer the one feature that I would want in a piece of hardware more than any other would be true random multi-streaming through multiple lasers.
You aren't the first person I've heard of asking for a feature like that. Unfortunately, this is a requirement driven purely by the console industry (pc's wouldn't support it, nor would dvd players; they don't need it) which means it will never happen. Not enough benefit to offset the development costs.
As a side note, one of the benefits of sticking with a normal DVD drive instead of a next-gen drive is faster seek/access times, which helps solve part of the problem you're complaining about.
There is a rumor that they will ship a budget version of the console without a drive at some point in the future, but it is just rumor at this point. Personally, I don't see that happening -- the hard drive is too much of an essential component of the next generation live service they're touting.
Neither machines specs have been nailed down. The PS3 will come out after the xbox 360, which means 100% that in many areas it will be technically better. If we can see it or not is another issue. Your speculating that sony won't responde at all to anything Microsoft does.
By 4-6 months. The major specs have already been announced. Devs are playing with alpha hardware. There won't be any revolutionary changes to the core components in the system. The processor and GPU are tapped out. The only thing I can think of that they can easily change is the amount of on-board memory, but that would drive the cost up even further -- I can't see them doing that.
So... what else can they change that really makes much of an impact?
Yes, this is speculation. However, it isn't baseless speculation.
Live is great. However the vast majority of Xbox owners aren't on live. So while it's great, online gamign is not that much of an attraction, expecially pay for play online.
1.4 million subscribers... 20 million consoles. Yeah, 7% definately isn't the vast majority. But it is definately a significant number. The rate at which that number is growing is also not something that should be ignored.
Online play isn't an attraction? The entire MMORPG genre is based around that entire concept! Online play adds rediculous replay value to good games, so from my perspective it is well worth it. I've been a fan of online play since I first played Subspace, and am convinced that any console without a good online service will have a limited future.
In college everyone loved playing networked games. It was easy to do, with every computer on a LAN. But without that kind of setup, network play is difficult to organize. A good online service adds the pieces necessary for that kind of gameplay.
I'm willing to pay $50/year for that kind of service. The way I look at it, in the end I actually come out ahead; I buy fewer games and play them longer.
Again your speculating, blu-ray may be worth he 100$, DVD was worth the 100$ for the PS2. You might have the same phenomenon where everybody grabs one as a cheap blu-ray player. Like all the japanese did for the PS2.
This is something I don't get... why the hell would you use a game console like this? The DVD player for the PS2 was the most god-aweful thing I'd ever used. The video quality wasn't great either. I don't know how bad the xbox's player was, but I'm sure it wasn't anything special.
I buy a game console to play games, not to watch movies. If you want an all-in-one unit, great. But as a feature for games, I'll pass; it isn't worth $100 to have a checkbox on a featurelist and more in-game fmv.
you would have to be an idiot to beleive they can swing Backwards capatability with a different GPU and CPU
Now look who's "speculating". You forgot about the different sound subsystem.
They've got a triple core PPC processor clocked 4-5 times higher than the celeron in the original Xbox. They've got more memory. More bandwidth. And much more powerful hardware on the graphics side. Backwards compat through emulation and dynamic recompilation is entirely possible; just look at VPC on a Mac -- current macs can certainly exceed the performance of a 700mhz celeron via Virtual PC. Of course, in the end only time will tell.
It doesn't exist yet (drives and media aren't available yet). Additionally, games don't need friggin 50gb of space, and access times on first gen games will be deadly slow. Finally, hardware costs and media are drastically more expensive.
I've heard a few rumors that say backwards compatibility won't be there
It will be. I heard a rumor that the PS3's explodes the 3rd time you turned it on. Basing buying decisions on rumor and inuendo is dumb.
So is $300 worth the price of admission? Considering that the PS3 is expected to launch for $400 or more and include more next-gen bells and whistles
The only technical "feature" the PS3 has over the xbox is the blu-ray drive. And personally, I'm not convinced it is an advantage yet (it'll be worthless if HD-DVD catches on and Blu-ray doesn't). Sony has the buzzwords down, but if both consoles implement the feature correctly the experience doesn't change (it doesn't matter how the wireless controllers communicate, if they both work wirelessly; it doesn't matter if a unit can output 1080p if no games can render effectively at that resolution; etc).
The xbox has a built in hard drive, which the PS3 lacks. 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. Finally, the "media center" components are supposed to be able to stream music off of your computer (so you can create custom soundtracks while playing your game).
Personally, if I'm looking at the $100 tradeoff, Sony isn't a winner. Blu-ray isn't worth an extra $100 to me. Factor in needing to purchase some storage device to store your save games, and it looks even worse.
What would prevent a spammer or phisher from creating the necessary setup to pass verification
Nothing. Until all mail from that sender gets marked as spam. Then they have to use a different domain, which adds an actual cost to sending spam. Additionally, there are only so many domains that "look" like paypal....
Being able to verify the sender makes it possible to filter spam much more accurately.
If you had read the article, you would have discovered that they wanted to make it so the whole case could be skinned, but it cost too much. While I agree it would be cool, would you be willing to pay an extra $40 for the ability to change the case? I wouldn't...
Given that Microsoft always releases its patches on the 2nd Tuesday of the month (nicknamed "patch Tuesday"), I'd say it isn't a new stratedgy. Or at the very least, it isn't a new Microsoft stratedgy...:p
1) I'm not saying it isn't a good idea, but I think it is dumb that everyone is constantly ripping the xbox (and only the xbox) for not being rackable when no-one else has done it either.
Making it rackable forces you to sacrafice a number of desirable features, the biggest being portability -- everyone complains about how large the xbox is; to be stackable in your entertainment center, it has to be even larger. If they do that, you can forget about it fitting in your backpack. Additionally, you HAVE to have space setup in your entertainment center to hold the box; it would be too large to store next to it. There are additional cooling considerations you have to account for. And it generally makes the unit more expensive.
2) Yes, it was smaller than most av equipment. The depth was about right, but the width was way off.
Its fine that you don't like it, but I get tired of seeing endless posts about how fugly it is compared to xyz, when xyz is so ugly it makes me want to barf.:p
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They set the level 1 bar too high if someone who hasn't picked up the game before gets the living crap beat out of them by someone "stuck" at level 1.
Bnet doesn't make any attempt to solve the social aspect. If bnet also throws people who can't finish the 1p campaign into a game with a top ranked person, their matchmaking system is broken as well. As I've said, these are solvable problems. Bnet, from what you describe, has not solved them -- hence your poor experience.
err... does that mean the majority of your games end in a draw?
No, it means that I ended up somewhere in the middle of the rankings.
If we have time for games, it mostly offline and we don't crave online play very much, I wish it weren't so myself. Finding good friendly Warcraft 3 matches is hard since all my friends don't play (well, some do but just not against me). I still play bnet, but without the social aspect it's nto as fun.
Again, all things that a good online service takes care of for you. You should spend no time "looking" for a good game -- a good online service ought to just give you one. A good line service also builds a social aspect into it, forming a community of players.
*shrug* As I said before, I think these are solvable problems.
Err, that would be "neither", not "either" ... Ooops. :)
I would exactly say either of them did it particularly well ...
It's the addition of a monthly payment that you have to keep up with that's the problem. Every few months I usually have the money for a used $20 game, but sometimes I don't. If I had had a monthly bill for XBox Live, I might not be able to buy any more games, and I'ld have to worry about another bill every month I have to make sure gets paid. I think my situation is the kind of situation grandparent poster was talking about.
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You don't have to pay a monthly bill. They offer a yearly subscription. They even sell these gift-card like thingies with a code on them at stores that can be used to pay for the subscription. Let it lapse, and Live just doesn't work any more
If PS3 has Blu-Ray, and XBox doesn't have HD-DVD, then Blu-Ray will become the established standard. Millions of people will buy the PS3 pretty much irregardless of what they do, which will give Blu-Ray a very good base to work with.
If Sony is the only company making Blu-ray drives, and the only company stamping out discs with movies, it won't be the established standard. The fact that Sony controls the IP is leading to a ton of resistance in the industry, as companies generally don't like giving money directly to their competition.
That's not to say that blu-ray doesn't have a chance; it will definately be interesting to see how it plays out. But it certainly isn't as simple as you seem to think it is.
I haven't heard of that problem. I have about 65 PS1 games, and I've never had any problems with the PS2 playing any of them. What games do you have problems with?
One of the Mortal Kombat games would crashes sometimes; can't remember which one it was. I want to say 3, but that doesn't sound right...
One of the Street Fighter games had a similar problem.
FF VII -- game crashes
Final Fantasy Anthology (when playing FFV) -- game would crash attempting to save sometimes.
Crono Cross -- game itself played fine, but the game was unable to read saves, and any attempt to save a game would fail, corrupting everything on the memory card (I was less than happy about that).
Actually, at the time DVD was a new standard and it was competeing with Super VCD's. In asia VCD are still common. The PS2 was often bought as a cheap DVD player for a format that was new. In a very similiar way Blu-ray is.
...
I don't have any knowledge of "Super VCD's", nor how people perceived that format, so I can't counter your arguement. Given my lack of knowledge of the existance of that format, however, I would suggest that it probably wasn't well supported in the first place
The problem with online play is the same with PC's as they are with Live, the relative skill level of people are low, and people don't like to lose. MMORPG's do alright because skill isn't such a huge factor, but see how many people play Warcraft 3 in ladder compared to how many play in usemaps. It's about 20% of the players play ladder, the rest play use map settings. The appeal of online play is playing against people, the draw back is unless you've played online a bit everyone will be better then you. Most people would prefer to play offline. There just isn't any appeal to losing, and they dont' want to develope their skill. It's nto like cable. Cable (television or internet) doesn't require you to do anythign but pay. It will reach a saturation point of 10-20% of console gamers, and unless they come out with a full proof way of skill matching, it will peak there. even with good matching, many just don't see a need to go online.
It isn't that people don't like to lose. They just don't like to get the living crap beat out of them. They want a challenge, and a reasonable chance of winning against their opponent. In other words, they want to play a fun match, not one where they are merely a target.
This is actually where a well-designed online service comes into play, as you've noted, and if you'd seen much of what they've got planned for live on the xbox 360 you'd see how they are attempting to address this problem (it looks very interesting; we'll see how well they pull it off).
Hell, just look at what they did for matchmaking on Halo2. It is a sneak peak at how it should be done. Nearly every game I play is challenging and fun. I rarely lose, and I rarely win, but it is always a blast because the people I'm playing against are roughly at my skill level. Every now and then you'll get a game where someone kicks everyone elses' arse, and those aren't particularly enjoyable, which goes to prove my point above. But those are the exception rather than the rule, and those people quickly "advance" to a level where they are being matched against people near their skill level.
I don't find any of the arguements you've posed particularly convincing, as I feel that your arguements "dooming" online play are all solvable. I suspect you feel the exact opposite, so I doubt there is much more light we can shed on the topic.
Because back in the day when IE first came out, websites would put up a page saying "You must use Netscape to view this site" if the UA string didn't have Mozilla in it.
Your numbers betray you, indeed it grows but most people are content with offlien play
People used to say the same thing about cable. Look where it's at now. Once people try online gaming, they're hooked. If you assume an even distribution of gamers for Xbox & PS2 are interested in online gaming, then this would yield a significant increase in market share and initial sales for the Xbox360.
little under half of them cannot pay anything a month
If they can't afford $50, they can't afford to purchase a single video game, and they certainly can't afford a console. Oh wait, their parents bought them that stuff? Gee, I wonder what else fits in the xmas stocking
But when it came out, it was the cheapest (or close to) thing in Japan that played DVD's. You are forgetting when the machiens firts came out $500 for a panasonic DVd player was par for the course, for the same price you could get a PS2. Thats why PS2 has such a huge install base and that's why sony waited until blu-ray to make the PS3. Their gambling on a similiar effect.
There is a difference this time around: Blu-ray isn't "the" established standard. People aren't going to be purchasing them because they want both a next gen movie format + game box -- they don't know which format will come on top. This means that only people who are convinced that blu-ray will come out on top will consider this a good deal.
You also have a GPU whose instruction sets and design are IP of a company that wants nothing to do with the box. They could just obstract it back into pure Direct X and nto the xbox variant but they will nee dgame specific hacks.
Microsoft made announcment awhile back about having licensed the appropriate IP. In fact, you can read about it here: http://www.gamepro.com/microsoft/xbox360/games/ne
Have you ever run an emulator? Generally every game varies, some are 100% other have graphic glitches ect.. The PS2 incorporated the PS1 chip as a IO processor and it even had glitches. Now a 100% software solution is possible, but you need unique software hacks for a lot of games.
Exactly right. No solution will be 100% compatible, which is why you didn't see absurd statements about the xbox 360 being 100% compatible with the xbox (and why I scoff every time Sony claims 100% backwards compatibility, because it is a baldfaced lie). They're targeting as many games as possible, starting with the most popular games and working their way down the list. It is certainly an accomplishable goal, unlike your previous statement where you said it would be impossible.
But don't take my word for it; you can read what the guy actually making it work has to say about it: http://www.qbrundage.com/michaelb/pubs/essays/xbo
You can also read a few more details about how they plan on performing the emulation here: http://www.ga-forum.com/showthread.php?t=50574
I doubt that the compatibility will be near the 100% level, but I'd be willing to bet that they hit 80%. And personally, I could give a crap if "Bob's adventures in peanut land" works if the games I want to play don't (this was the problem with the PS2
And if MS is going to be Backwards compatable they would have trumpetted it as a feature. I hear very little buzz about that.
They announced it at E3. What else do you expect them to be doing at this point?
Interesting, I'd never heard of those. From your description it sounds like they arranged the lasers statically, relative to each other to increase streaming speed (ie: probably no independent control of the heads was possible). It would definately allow it to read data 7 times faster than a normal drive. Do you know what its seek times were like?
The Jaguar wasn't a first mover. 3D0 was first mover for that generation. (not that it really changes the impact of the statement you were making ... :))
Nope, just the troll that typed your message.
I did address most of what you mentioned.
:p The xbox360 only supports 4 controllers, but it also supports 4 wireless headsets in addition to those controllers. THAT is something usable.
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The only item I didn't address was the 7 controllers. This isn't a selling feature for me. Four controllers is more than I need actually, as I rarely need more than two. It doesn't seem like something very useful. Hell, how do you get 7 people sitting on the couch?
Support for 1080p is pointless; games can't use it. The GPU doesn't have the bandwidth required to render at that resolution. Additionally, it is incredibly difficult to find a screen that takes 1080p as an input. I know I certainly won't be owning one in the next 5 years.
Ditto for the dual display. Honestly, I'm expecting the second display port to be dropped before release.
I wouldn't consider the processor in the PS3 a technological advantage, nor something that Sony has a clear edge on. In practice you'll find that one has an advantage in certain areas, while another has an advantage in others. We'll have to wait until we can compare games to see which one comes out on top.
Regarding the RAM, both systems ship with the same amount of RAM. The PS3 ships with a segmented configurating, giving half of it available to the GPU and half to the CPU. The Xbox360 has a unified architecture; the GPU and CPU share the available ram. The configuration in the PS3 gives a bit more bandwidth to the GPU and CPU, but this advantage is negated by the 10mb of "eDram" they stuck on the GPU (ie: the GPU in the xbox 360 doesn't have as much bandwidth available to render a scene, but it also doesn't require as much bandwidth either).
I can't see Sony increasing the amount of ram they ship with on the unit. The cost of producing a single unit has got to be making the accountants nervous already
The one thing I'm certain of: the next year (ie: until 7/06) is going to be a great year for gamers. The last time I got this excited about consoles was when the replacements for the snes started debuting.
Microsoft has said that it will be "selectively compatible," which is to say, it will play Halo and maybe the game you are trying to play. Anyone in the emulation scene can tell you that almost emulated is a nice way of saying not done. Of course, they will have time to finish the emulation later, but that doesn't help early adopters out.
... :)
They're getting the most popular games to work first and working their way down the list. I have a feeling that people are going to be rather surprised by this particular feature, but when you consider what it is they're emulating (essentially a very low-power PC by today's standards) it isn't what I would call an impossible goal. I would certainly enjoy working on a project like that. The trickest part will be emulating the GPU; supposedly the guy in charge of the emulation does some nifty tricks to translate the shader programs used on the nvidia chip to something the ati chip understands, with additional magic somewhere in between.
I'm not sure I see why feature is in quotations. If HD-DVD catches on and Blu-Ray doesn't (which I expect will happen), The PS3 will still have 10X the storage capacity of the Xbox. That's a pretty huge advantage. I think you'll quickly see games being ported from the PS3 chafing at the smaller size.
The only game I've ever played that didn't fit on a single dvd was Myst Revelation; it shipped on 2 single layer dvd's. It installed 6 gigs of data. Perhaps my perceptions are incorrect, but I've never seen games push storage requirements as much as a Myst game, and if they can get a game to fit in under 8 gigs, I don't see how it will be a huge limiting factor for next gen games. The few games that exceed that size can "deal" with using multiple discs. This was much more common when games were on cd, though I haven't played a multi-dvd game this generation (doesn't mean they don't exist, but I certainly haven't seen one). If I had to swap a disc every 10 minutes I'd have an issue, but after 20+ hours of play it isn't a big deal.
I really don't want to deal with Microsoft's bloody detailed and occasionally contradictory requirements around Live, nor implementing the buggar in a way that's consistent with the look and feel of a different game
Yeah, that whole "consistent positive user experience" thing can be a real bitch
The "media center" stuff appears to be a red herring, if for no other reason than you will need to be sharing your folders over a wireless network, and you should under no circumstances ever share your folders over a wireless network.
Actually, you should never share folders with sensative data over a wireless network. If you don't care about someone else poking through your stuff, it doesn't matter.
I must say, as a developer the one feature that I would want in a piece of hardware more than any other would be true random multi-streaming through multiple lasers.
You aren't the first person I've heard of asking for a feature like that. Unfortunately, this is a requirement driven purely by the console industry (pc's wouldn't support it, nor would dvd players; they don't need it) which means it will never happen. Not enough benefit to offset the development costs.
As a side note, one of the benefits of sticking with a normal DVD drive instead of a next-gen drive is faster seek/access times, which helps solve part of the problem you're complaining about.
Read http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/factsheet.htm. The version they are shipping in November comes with a 20gb detachable drive.
There is a rumor that they will ship a budget version of the console without a drive at some point in the future, but it is just rumor at this point. Personally, I don't see that happening -- the hard drive is too much of an essential component of the next generation live service they're touting.
Neither machines specs have been nailed down. The PS3 will come out after the xbox 360, which means 100% that in many areas it will be technically better. If we can see it or not is another issue. Your speculating that sony won't responde at all to anything Microsoft does.
... what else can they change that really makes much of an impact?
... 20 million consoles. Yeah, 7% definately isn't the vast majority. But it is definately a significant number. The rate at which that number is growing is also not something that should be ignored.
... why the hell would you use a game console like this? The DVD player for the PS2 was the most god-aweful thing I'd ever used. The video quality wasn't great either. I don't know how bad the xbox's player was, but I'm sure it wasn't anything special.
By 4-6 months. The major specs have already been announced. Devs are playing with alpha hardware. There won't be any revolutionary changes to the core components in the system. The processor and GPU are tapped out. The only thing I can think of that they can easily change is the amount of on-board memory, but that would drive the cost up even further -- I can't see them doing that.
So
Yes, this is speculation. However, it isn't baseless speculation.
Live is great. However the vast majority of Xbox owners aren't on live. So while it's great, online gamign is not that much of an attraction, expecially pay for play online.
1.4 million subscribers
Online play isn't an attraction? The entire MMORPG genre is based around that entire concept! Online play adds rediculous replay value to good games, so from my perspective it is well worth it. I've been a fan of online play since I first played Subspace, and am convinced that any console without a good online service will have a limited future.
In college everyone loved playing networked games. It was easy to do, with every computer on a LAN. But without that kind of setup, network play is difficult to organize. A good online service adds the pieces necessary for that kind of gameplay.
I'm willing to pay $50/year for that kind of service. The way I look at it, in the end I actually come out ahead; I buy fewer games and play them longer.
Again your speculating, blu-ray may be worth he 100$, DVD was worth the 100$ for the PS2. You might have the same phenomenon where everybody grabs one as a cheap blu-ray player. Like all the japanese did for the PS2.
This is something I don't get
I buy a game console to play games, not to watch movies. If you want an all-in-one unit, great. But as a feature for games, I'll pass; it isn't worth $100 to have a checkbox on a featurelist and more in-game fmv.
you would have to be an idiot to beleive they can swing Backwards capatability with a different GPU and CPU
Now look who's "speculating". You forgot about the different sound subsystem.
They've got a triple core PPC processor clocked 4-5 times higher than the celeron in the original Xbox. They've got more memory. More bandwidth. And much more powerful hardware on the graphics side. Backwards compat through emulation and dynamic recompilation is entirely possible; just look at VPC on a Mac -- current macs can certainly exceed the performance of a 700mhz celeron via Virtual PC. Of course, in the end only time will tell.
The Xbox 360 DOES come with a harddrive. I was intending to compare the PS3 and the Xbox 360, but thanks for pointing out my typo.
What makes you think that Direct X on Windows wasn't v1?
Really? I like how you countered my arguement with ... nothing.
Where's the next-gen media format support?
It doesn't exist yet (drives and media aren't available yet). Additionally, games don't need friggin 50gb of space, and access times on first gen games will be deadly slow. Finally, hardware costs and media are drastically more expensive.
I've heard a few rumors that say backwards compatibility won't be there
It will be. I heard a rumor that the PS3's explodes the 3rd time you turned it on. Basing buying decisions on rumor and inuendo is dumb.
So is $300 worth the price of admission?
Considering that the PS3 is expected to launch for $400 or more and include more next-gen bells and whistles
The only technical "feature" the PS3 has over the xbox is the blu-ray drive. And personally, I'm not convinced it is an advantage yet (it'll be worthless if HD-DVD catches on and Blu-ray doesn't). Sony has the buzzwords down, but if both consoles implement the feature correctly the experience doesn't change (it doesn't matter how the wireless controllers communicate, if they both work wirelessly; it doesn't matter if a unit can output 1080p if no games can render effectively at that resolution; etc).
The xbox has a built in hard drive, which the PS3 lacks. 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. Finally, the "media center" components are supposed to be able to stream music off of your computer (so you can create custom soundtracks while playing your game).
Personally, if I'm looking at the $100 tradeoff, Sony isn't a winner. Blu-ray isn't worth an extra $100 to me. Factor in needing to purchase some storage device to store your save games, and it looks even worse.
What would prevent a spammer or phisher from creating the necessary setup to pass verification
....
Nothing. Until all mail from that sender gets marked as spam. Then they have to use a different domain, which adds an actual cost to sending spam. Additionally, there are only so many domains that "look" like paypal
Being able to verify the sender makes it possible to filter spam much more accurately.
If you had read the article, you would have discovered that they wanted to make it so the whole case could be skinned, but it cost too much. While I agree it would be cool, would you be willing to pay an extra $40 for the ability to change the case? I wouldn't...
Given that Microsoft always releases its patches on the 2nd Tuesday of the month (nicknamed "patch Tuesday"), I'd say it isn't a new stratedgy. Or at the very least, it isn't a new Microsoft stratedgy ... :p
MS didn't do the design themselves, which is why TFA is an interview of a person who works at the company that DID do the design.
1) I'm not saying it isn't a good idea, but I think it is dumb that everyone is constantly ripping the xbox (and only the xbox) for not being rackable when no-one else has done it either.
:p
Making it rackable forces you to sacrafice a number of desirable features, the biggest being portability -- everyone complains about how large the xbox is; to be stackable in your entertainment center, it has to be even larger. If they do that, you can forget about it fitting in your backpack. Additionally, you HAVE to have space setup in your entertainment center to hold the box; it would be too large to store next to it. There are additional cooling considerations you have to account for. And it generally makes the unit more expensive.
2) Yes, it was smaller than most av equipment. The depth was about right, but the width was way off.
Its fine that you don't like it, but I get tired of seeing endless posts about how fugly it is compared to xyz, when xyz is so ugly it makes me want to barf.