The unofficial xbox 360 unveiling thread

[theWacoKid]

Thought I'd start this so everything about this winds up in one thread instead of a dozen. Gamespot has some impressions of the unveiling. You can read the full text at GS, but here are some highlights or lowlights if you will.

Greg Kasavin.

Then I take a step back, and I realize I know little or nothing about the games for this thing that's coming out in November. What I've seen of the games thus far has me almost completely unimpressed. So I know there's going to be a lot of work that needs to be done in the coming months, because, after all, I don't plan on buying an Xbox 360 just because it looks nice.

I'm happy with the current generation of games. It will take a lot more for Microsoft to convince me that the Xbox 360 represents the next generation of gaming, even though I admit the company's done a great job of building up a lot of excitement over its new machine.

Jeff Gerstmann

What games can we expect to see on the Xbox 360? So far it seems likely that we'll see Madden and another Perfect Dark game. So, let me get this straight. For your all-new mind-busting game console, you have...a football game and a sci-fi-themed first-person shooter. You don't say. Will someone please make a World War II-themed first-person shooter, too? And 20 different racing games that randomly fall into either the "sim" or "arcade" categories? OK, not to needlessly sound pessimistic, but my real point is that this is a new console, and I'd like to see something totally world-shattering. Something that actually ushers in a new era in gaming. Will the Xbox 360 be up to the task? Or will we just be playing the same games with better graphics and 64 players online instead of just 16? That's the real question. All of the console's integrated and standardized features will certainly make the act of playing a game much, much smoother, and hopefully we'll see some game developers take some interesting chances this time around.

Also, I'm still not geting whether its b/c or not? There seem to be a lot of unanswered questions.

[joquito]

These comments could have been said about the launch of the Xbox or PS2. Outside of online gaming, The Xbox and PS2 didn't offer anything other than better graphics the generation, yet I feel this generation easily is the highest point in gaming history. Nonetheless we were only offered the same genre of games we play previously just with better graphics.

[slade]

If you live in Canada, the special will air on CTV tonight at 12:30 am.

[theWacoKid]

Well, did some more reading. Every xbox is supposed to come with a detachable 20 gig HD. The controllers retain the two triggers and add two buttons, so its very similar to current design. They feature a detachable battery pack.

It doesn't look good for b/c. IGN has mentioned the difficulty of implementing it due to hardware differences, and with slade's bit on cutting off nvidia, I think b/c is out of the question. IGN mentioned sotware emulation, but I have a hard time seeing that. If there's no mention about b/c now, it ain't happening.

Looks like the current xbox was just a beta test and MS is ready, willing and eager to throw the baby out with the bathwater and move on.

On the good side, 512 megs of ram, the 3 cpu architecture, 20 gig detachable HD and wireless controllers. Bad side, where's the games and what's going to sell the system, no B/C in sight, and MS looks ready to kill off the xbox. Unknowns? Price? $299? I'd be suprised. If it is, they're back to losing some serious money on each console sold, maybe that's why they're anxious to kill off the current xbox, two consoles bleeding red ink would be tough to handle.

MS has a site for xbox 360, wild guess the url. No info just pics.

[slade]

A detachable harddrive? LOL, that'll usher in a new era of console droppage arguments.

[Jupiter_x]

If you live in Canada, the special will air on CTV tonight at 12:30 am.

Are you from Canada? So am I, I live in the GTA!......Wait....No Nevermind...I...uh...I live in Hyrule...OK? :D

[slade]

I live in the GTA too. Mississauga.

[Fivespot]

Check out this link for a list of the XBOX 360 specs!

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/factsheet.htm

Xbox 360 System Performance Specifications

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total
VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total
128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance 9 billion dot product operations per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor 10 MB of embedded DRAM
48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines
Unified shader architecture

Polygon Performance 500 million triangles per second

Pixel Fill Rate 16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA

Shader Performance 48 billion shader operations per second

Memory 512 MB of 700 MHz GDDR3 RAM
Unified memory architecture

Memory Bandwidth 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
21.6 GB/s front-side bus

Overall System Floating-Point Performance 1 teraflop

Storage Detachable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive
12x dual-layer DVD-ROM
Memory Unit support starting at 64 MB

I/O Support for up to four wireless game controllers
Three USB 2.0 ports
Two memory unit slots

Optimized for Online Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features with broadband service, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, gamer profile for digital identity, and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies, or listening to music
Built-in Ethernet port
Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g
Video camera ready

Digital Media Support Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD • Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PCs
Ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive
Custom playlists in every game
Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers

High-Definition Game Support All games supported at 16:9, 720p, and 1080i, anti-aliasing
Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported

Audio Multi-channel surround sound output
Supports 48KHz 16-bit audio
320 independent decompression channels
32-bit audio processing
Over 256 audio channels

System Orientation Stands vertically or horizontally

Customizable Face Plates Interchangeable to personalize the console




Availability: Holiday 2005

#########

The information contained in this fact sheet relates to a prerelease product that may be substantially modified before its first commercial release. Accordingly, the information may not accurately describe or reflect the product when first commercially released. This fact sheet is provided for informational purposes only, and Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the fact sheet or the information contained in it.

[theWacoKid]

Xbox live service will be two tiered, silver and gold. Silver is supposed to be free. Looks like MS has wised up somewhat and realize that part of their low penetration rate with xbox live was a lot of people going, why pay for a service I probably won't use much. On top of which, if MS is going to soak customers with micro transactions you need to get them on your service and the best to do that is to not charge some bogus fee for minimal service.

Current subscribers will be transferred over to 360.

[Jupiter_x]

I live in the GTA too. Mississauga.

Mississauga? Cool, Square One baby! Coolest mall Evar!...I hear that there is this Super Mall in Vaughn, right next to Wonderland?!?

I am moving to Hamilton soon, buying a house, my old stomping grounds!

[Mochan]

yet I feel this generation easily is the highest point in gaming history.

I remember getting that feeling back when the FamiCom came out to kick the crud out of my Atari. Then MegaDrive came out to kick my FamiCom's balls, then SNES, then Dreamcast, they all seemed like the highest points in gaming history!

[theWacoKid]

Allright, apparently that free silver service is useless, you can't play any multiplayer games on it, what a rip. I should have known better, we're talking MS here.

[slade]

I saw the special last night. This was MS's attempt to steal hype away from the PS3? Remember that they announced this because Sony said that they would hold their Pre E3 press conference before MS. As a vehicle for generating hype among gamers, their efforts diserve an F. Funniest part of the whole thing was when they asked the Rare guy, how many polygons the characters in Perfect Dark have and he said 5,000. Oooooo, how impressive considering that RE4 alone allocates 10,000 polygons for Leon and the villagers. Forget about X-box 1.5, right now it's looking like X-box 0.5.

EDIT: The only games whose looks are worth mentioning is Madden 06 and Gears of War. Everything else just looked like crap.

[Mochan]

Funniest part of the whole thing was when they asked the Rare guy, how many polygons the characters in Perfect Dark have and he said 5,000.

What's this, 4D-Boxing? LOL

(I wonder if anyone here will get the reference?)

[theWacoKid]

I saw the special last night. This was MS's attempt to steal hype away from the PS3? Remember that they announced this because Sony said that they would hold their Pre E3 press conference before MS. As a vehicle for generating hype among gamers, their efforts diserve an F. Funniest part of the whole thing was when they asked the Rare guy, how many polygons the characters in Perfect Dark have and he said 5,000. Oooooo, how impressive considering that RE4 alone allocates 10,000 polygons for Leon and the villagers. Forget about X-box 1.5, right now it's looking like X-box 0.5.

EDIT: The only games whose looks are worth mentioning is Madden 06 and Gears of War. Everything else just looked like crap.

I knew the MTV thing would be bad, I didn't realize how bad. MS hiring a bunch of celebs and would be celebs to jump around and act excited was about as phony baloney as it gets. They were paid to act impressed. The clips they ran were so short they were virtually worthless. A tony hawk game, racing games, more fps games, sports games. This is a revolution in gaming?! How, these are the exact same games xbots are currently playing. People shouldn't be suprised or shocked when its revealed that PD0 is a mulitplayer game only. This game doesn't look killer app one bit. MS gets the win for tackiest marketing award and a heaping helping of cheez. A truly dreadful, embaressing unveiling looking to appeal to the lcd factor out there.

Madden 06's clips are not actual gameplay, those aren't gameplay angles, sorry. They might be replays but you don't play a football game from those angles. You just don't.

[tekbit]

Yeah the whole MTV special was a complete and utter joke. It was essentially a 30 minute commercial....and not even so much to market the 360 but more so to market MTV shows...I mean, was the "Pimp my Xbox" bit really necessary??? And I love the part when the guy actually got to interview some of the developers and we all thought we would finally get some info...and then they pretended like they were overwhelmed by all his incredibly difficult questions :rolleyes: . This was probably the worst unveiling ever. Maybe it was naive of me to expect anything more from MS.

[mandark]

I knew the MTV thing would be bad, I didn't realize how bad. MS hiring a bunch of celebs and would be celebs to jump around and act excited was about as phony baloney as it gets. They were paid to act impressed. The clips they ran were so short they were virtually worthless. A tony hawk game, racing games, more fps games, sports games. This is a revolution in gaming?! How, these are the exact same games xbots are currently playing. People shouldn't be suprised or shocked when its revealed that PD0 is a mulitplayer game only. This game doesn't look killer app one bit. MS gets the win for tackiest marketing award and a heaping helping of cheez. A truly dreadful, embaressing unveiling looking to appeal to the lcd factor out there.

Madden 06's clips are not actual gameplay, those aren't gameplay angles, sorry. They might be replays but you don't play a football game from those angles. You just don't.
I'm glad I missed that MTV "special". I actually completely forgot about until this morning. But after reading what most of you have said about it I actually feel better. That game between Seattle and SanAntonio was great!

[Rogue Bounty Hunter]

Every xbox is supposed to come with a detachable 20 gig HD.


That's good news. I definitely wouldn't want to get a new Xbox with no HD, but why is the thing detachable?

Allright, apparently that free silver service is useless, you can't play any multiplayer games on it, what a rip. I should have known better, we're talking MS here.

It's not too bad. The silver service is probably going to be used for any game downloads that non-Xbox Live gamers wouldn't have access to.

[theWacoKid]

It's not too bad. The silver service is probably going to be used for any game downloads that non-Xbox Live gamers wouldn't have access to.

Precisely, its to soak everybody with those micro transactions. To me, its such tacky marketing, though, silver, gold service. Gold service, please!

[Horngreen]

Allright, apparently that free silver service is useless, you can't play any multiplayer games on it, what a rip. I should have known better, we're talking MS here.

LOL what the hell do you expect? If you could play online with the Silver service what would be the point of Gold? Do some research before you *****.

[Jupiter_x]

People shouldn't be suprised or shocked when its revealed that PD0 is a mulitplayer game only.

It seems M$ and Xbox are hell bent on Multiplayer! I am soooooooooo sick of everything being multiplayer...Everything! SINGLE PLAYER GAMES PLEASE!...wait.....PS3 and REV will have plenty, ignore that! :D
I don't hate multiplayer games but c'mon already, enough pimping this stuff like its the be all end all! These Celebs were saying (in regards to PD0 Multiplayer) they haven't had this much fun for a long time! Long Time? Huh?:confused: Lest we forget? What about the recently released Halo 2? or Unreal Champ, or Splinter Cell Chaos Theory! I was simply shaking my head after seing this show!

[Renzatic Gear]

What's this, 4D-Boxing? LOL

(I wonder if anyone here will get the reference?)
OLOL I DO!

5000 polys is actually pretty healthy for a character model.

[Mochan]

Yeah, considering that 4D boxing probably had what? 15 polys per charachter model? :)

[Mochan]

It seems M$ and Xbox are hell bent on Multiplayer! I am soooooooooo sick of everything being multiplayer...Everything!

This is not surprising, since the lasting appeal in PC games is due to multiplayer. A lot of the most popular PC games float on multiplayer, and XBox games do tend to take after PC games.

Another thing to consider is that MS is probably aiming to make money off the XBox Live subscriptions, if they lose cash on the hardware they can make up for it eventually with monthly Live payments.

But yes, I too tend to prefer single player. I do like playing mutliplayer games, too (haven't played UT2K4 with Renz and the boys in a while, though!) but my heart still belongs to singleplayer. Guess it's because I'm not much of a team player. :) Oblivion, Stalker, SRW Alpha 3, where are you!!!