I agree.
Everyone loves to diss them, but nobody knows any details yet.
I was called by them for a potential job a few months back regarding testing. I questioned them about how they think the company will do, and the guy told me they are after the crowd that has turned console from PC, but still want the big screen and big sound experience. They will have top of the line hardware, and it looks like they may have some decent games as well. Yes I said MAY, still to be seen. But the guy I talked to dropped the name "Halo PC" when comparing Halo game experienced vs. xbox. Of course that didn't sell me at the time because all I thought was how much halo2 is going to own.
Of course it may have been a strategic move on their part to delay, and not take on halo2 and xbox, to give that time to blow over. Who knows.
There is the ability in some titles to run dedicated servers on your xbox. Yes this means you'd have to have a second xbox to play on your own server, but at least if you've got decent upload speed you can run a smooth server this way.
Honestly, my xbox live experience has been 99% lag free, I am really impressed how smoothly all the games run and how seamless online play is. I remember having my doubts before live came out, how it would work without dedicated servers, but my concerns lasted about 12ms. The first time I rev'ed up my bike in motogp and took off with a crowd of 16 bikes roaring next to me, I was hooked. I don't know how 32 or 64 could be any more exciting actually. 16 is about right.
And I can't freaking wait until Halo2, holy crap talk about national take-a-day-off holiday, which BTW does support 16 players (they think), which I think is about right also.
My.02
Gran Tarismo is old news, nobody that owns an xbox cares. Spend an hour playing PGR2, TOCA 2, or Rallisport Challenge 2 on xbox live, then tell me all about Gran Turismo, I dare you.
When given the choice between xbox and PC version of a game, more than likely the xbox version has DD5.1 support out of the box, and possibly xbox live. Doom3 has both, so it is a no brainer for me to get the xbox version, not to mention the fact I can play it on my 61" big screen also. In order for me to be able to play the PC version of doom3, I would have to spend easily $1000 on upgrading my 1.2ghz athlon and GF2 card to get an equal experience. Remember, coding for consoles allows them to optimize a lot more and squeeze out all the horsepower they can.
>so worrying about backwards compatibility is a >non-issue....
The issue of backward compatibility is for people who have never owned and xbox before, and could pick from the entire xbox library as well as new xbox2 titles. So I believe it is an issue...although not a huge one.
I would recommend xbox live, and Unreal Championship or any of the many online FPS games (RTCW, Rainbow6 3, Ghost recon are all excellent). You don't have to worry about cheating (to my knowledge, at least I haven't noticed any), and it seems like you are usually on with a couple other novices.
And if you like racing I highly recommend Project Gotham Racing 2, which is xbox live enabled.
I must have freeze framed that tit shot a dozen times trying to figure out if she was wearing a pasty.
BTW, why are they making such a big deal about it? She was indeed wearing a pasty, so isn't she legal?
>if you split a 16:9 screen you don't get two 4:3 images
Not necessarily, depends on the game. PGR2 has widescreen split-screen multiplayer support that puts a couple 4:3 screens side by side. They use empty space at the top and bottom. Other games like SSX tricky have a sidebyside mode but do not bother clamping the ratio, they just used the screen that was available.
I have had a 61" widescreen and have played my xbox on it since launch, and have not had any hint of burn-in. I know this would probably depend on brand, calibration etc. I did calibrate mine, and found that out of the box the contrast was set WAY too bright. After calibration the image looks 100% better with half the contrast. Brightness was set quite high also.
I also recommend calibrating if you get a projection TV.
I think one way a small company can compete is to off their game up for anyone to play, and adopt a shareware model of distribution, much the same way id did for the original doom. Everyone had access to the first few levels of doom, and soon everyone was hooked and had to have the full version which they bought from id. Of course this would only work if the game as innovative and addictive.
Slashdot Mirror
AMEN
Like he said, he's not particularly worried about a lot of people playing it, it's those that do leaking plot details. Read the post.
I agree. Everyone loves to diss them, but nobody knows any details yet. I was called by them for a potential job a few months back regarding testing. I questioned them about how they think the company will do, and the guy told me they are after the crowd that has turned console from PC, but still want the big screen and big sound experience. They will have top of the line hardware, and it looks like they may have some decent games as well. Yes I said MAY, still to be seen. But the guy I talked to dropped the name "Halo PC" when comparing Halo game experienced vs. xbox. Of course that didn't sell me at the time because all I thought was how much halo2 is going to own. Of course it may have been a strategic move on their part to delay, and not take on halo2 and xbox, to give that time to blow over. Who knows.
There is the ability in some titles to run dedicated servers on your xbox. Yes this means you'd have to have a second xbox to play on your own server, but at least if you've got decent upload speed you can run a smooth server this way. Honestly, my xbox live experience has been 99% lag free, I am really impressed how smoothly all the games run and how seamless online play is. I remember having my doubts before live came out, how it would work without dedicated servers, but my concerns lasted about 12ms. The first time I rev'ed up my bike in motogp and took off with a crowd of 16 bikes roaring next to me, I was hooked. I don't know how 32 or 64 could be any more exciting actually. 16 is about right. And I can't freaking wait until Halo2, holy crap talk about national take-a-day-off holiday, which BTW does support 16 players (they think), which I think is about right also. My .02
Gran Tarismo is old news, nobody that owns an xbox cares. Spend an hour playing PGR2, TOCA 2, or Rallisport Challenge 2 on xbox live, then tell me all about Gran Turismo, I dare you.
When given the choice between xbox and PC version of a game, more than likely the xbox version has DD5.1 support out of the box, and possibly xbox live. Doom3 has both, so it is a no brainer for me to get the xbox version, not to mention the fact I can play it on my 61" big screen also. In order for me to be able to play the PC version of doom3, I would have to spend easily $1000 on upgrading my 1.2ghz athlon and GF2 card to get an equal experience. Remember, coding for consoles allows them to optimize a lot more and squeeze out all the horsepower they can.
>so worrying about backwards compatibility is a >non-issue.... The issue of backward compatibility is for people who have never owned and xbox before, and could pick from the entire xbox library as well as new xbox2 titles. So I believe it is an issue...although not a huge one.
Maybe the co-op is over xbox live? Can anyone confirm this?
They didn't really make it clear if the it is split screen co-op or over xbox live...
I would recommend xbox live, and Unreal Championship or any of the many online FPS games (RTCW, Rainbow6 3, Ghost recon are all excellent). You don't have to worry about cheating (to my knowledge, at least I haven't noticed any), and it seems like you are usually on with a couple other novices. And if you like racing I highly recommend Project Gotham Racing 2, which is xbox live enabled.
Rest assured, MS is working hard on an emulated solution. If not by launch, sometime after.
I must have freeze framed that tit shot a dozen times trying to figure out if she was wearing a pasty. BTW, why are they making such a big deal about it? She was indeed wearing a pasty, so isn't she legal?
>if you split a 16:9 screen you don't get two 4:3 images Not necessarily, depends on the game. PGR2 has widescreen split-screen multiplayer support that puts a couple 4:3 screens side by side. They use empty space at the top and bottom. Other games like SSX tricky have a sidebyside mode but do not bother clamping the ratio, they just used the screen that was available. I have had a 61" widescreen and have played my xbox on it since launch, and have not had any hint of burn-in. I know this would probably depend on brand, calibration etc. I did calibrate mine, and found that out of the box the contrast was set WAY too bright. After calibration the image looks 100% better with half the contrast. Brightness was set quite high also. I also recommend calibrating if you get a projection TV.
I think one way a small company can compete is to off their game up for anyone to play, and adopt a shareware model of distribution, much the same way id did for the original doom. Everyone had access to the first few levels of doom, and soon everyone was hooked and had to have the full version which they bought from id. Of course this would only work if the game as innovative and addictive.