Xbox 360/Playstation 3/Revolution Thread (Part 2)

[flash9286]

Originally posted by Asher

I've seen your opinions of Xbox on this board before, so I'm going to take what you say with a grain of salt...

The (one) person I know who secured one has had no problems with it. I should have mine shortly as well.

I was at Superstore today (kind of like a Canadian Walmart, but more Grocery oriented). Anyway, I was looking for the 360 version of Call of Duty 2 (which they were sold out of), but the lady infront of me was looking for an Xbox 360 and the electronics woman told her that she probably wouldn't see any units actually in the store until after New Years (due to preorders they have yet to fill).

What opinions are those?, guess what I live in a very very small town with a very small young population those is almost nobody in my town that would want an 360 so its relatively easy to get one.

[Asher]

Originally posted by flash9286
What opinions are those?, guess what I live in a very very small town with a very small young population those is almost nobody in my town that would want an 360 so its relatively easy to get one.

And yet more than one of your friends has an Xbox 360. Funny how that works.

[flash9286]

yeah I dont know if you ever heard of a Media play but they have a thing called a reserve list

[Asher]

I'm saying it's funny that almost no one in your town wants one, yet you have several friends with them...

[Asher]

The Xbox 360 itself costs Microsoft $470US to make, plus an addition $55 for the power supply, cables, and controller -- a loss of $126 per unit. The Xenon CPU alone costs $106.

http://businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2005/tc20051122_410710.htm

The original Xbox cost $323 to make at launch.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Sava
I doubt there will be major hardware issues. As with anything like this, the people who have problems usually complain, the people who don't have issues, don't complain. Thus, the problems become overhyped and are usually blown out of proportion.

Hmm, sounds like Civ4...

[Sava]

yup...

[Asher]

http://money.cnn.com/2005/11/23/technology/personaltech/xbox.reut/index.htm

Xbox error
Microsoft receives 'isolated reports' of new game console crashing; pledges to fix or replace units.
November 23, 2005: 5:26 PM EST

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. Wednesday said some Xbox 360 owners have reported problems with the new video game console that debuted in North America earlier this week.

"We have received a few isolated reports of consoles not working as expected," Microsoft spokeswoman Molly O'Donnell told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Enthusiast Web sites, such as www.engadget.com and www.xbox-scene.com, as well as Microsoft's own Xbox Web forum carried postings from Xbox 360 owners on Wednesday reporting that some systems had crashed during regular play as well as during online game play using the Xbox Live service.

Problems included screens going black and the appearance of a variety of error messages.

"So, the Xbox 360's been available for, what, 15 minutes, and already the crash reports are streaming in," a poster on engadget said. The sites did not say how widespread the problem was.

The machine is the first of a new generation of consoles offering high-definition graphics and has been snatched up by game enthusiasts since its launch Tuesday.

O'Donnell, who declined to say how many reports the company had received, said calls represent a "very, very small fraction" of units sold. The number of calls was not unexpected, she said.

"With any launch of this magnitude, you're bound to see something happening," she said.

O'Donnell said the best way to resolve the issues is to call 1-800-4MY-XBOX for trouble shooting. If that does not solve the problem, she said, Microsoft (Research) will repair or replace the unit.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Sava
yup...

[Asher]

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2005/11/23/1924

I've been spending an hour playing Joust online with voice chat. I want to go back and tell my 8 year old self how cool the future is

While we all knew that the XBox 360 would have a lot of Arcade games available at launch, did anyone know that many of them you can play on Xbox LIVE? In the spirit of my post about the best $5 game ever, Geometry Wars, I've been spending the past few hours playing Joust online, co-op, with a friend.

There's something that's so incredibly cool about playing games like Joust, Gauntlet, and Smash TV with voice chat online against other players. I know that spending US$5 for each of these games is a little pricey, but the sheer thrill of getting the win in a good game of Joust and then being able to rub someone's nose in it over voice chat is too damn enjoyable. I'm hooked.

So far my streak of playing Arcade games more than the launch titles is still running, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what else is released for this service.

I've been spending an hour playing Joust online with voice chat. I want to go back and tell my 8 year old self how cool the future is

While we all knew that the XBox 360 would have a lot of Arcade games available at launch, did anyone know that many of them you can play on Xbox LIVE? In the spirit of my post about the best $5 game ever, Geometry Wars, I've been spending the past few hours playing Joust online, co-op, with a friend.

There's something that's so incredibly cool about playing games like Joust, Gauntlet, and Smash TV with voice chat online against other players. I know that spending US$5 for each of these games is a little pricey, but the sheer thrill of getting the win in a good game of Joust and then being able to rub someone's nose in it over voice chat is too damn enjoyable. I'm hooked.

So far my streak of playing Arcade games more than the launch titles is still running, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what else is released for this service.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2005/11/22/1914

[Asher]

http://news.com.com/Poor+GameCube+sales+zap+Nintendo/2100-1043_3-5970677.html?tag=nefd.top

Poor GameCube sales zap Nintendo
By Reuters
Published: November 24, 2005, 11:00 AM PST

TOKYO--Nintendo said its first-half operating profit plunged 51 percent as sluggish GameCube sales outweighed currency-related gains, but it kept its forecast for the full year.

Nintendo, known for games featuring characters such as Mario, Donkey Kong and Pokemon, is expected to report a decline in revenue for the full year as GameCube console and software sales taper off and as it is hurt by a price cut for its DS portable game machine, which it launched about a year ago.

The second half could get tougher as Microsoft takes the spotlight in the game industry with its new Xbox 360, the first of the next-generation game consoles.

Xbox, which launched in the United States on Tuesday, sold out at most stores in the first day. Nintendo will be the last company to roll out its newest game console, code-named "Revolution," following Sony, which plans to release its PlayStation 3 next spring.

Nintendo said last month that it believed GameCube's life was nearing an end, while margins have been hurt by hefty development costs for Revolution.

Consolidated operating profit for the April-to-September period came to 19.6 billion yen ($1.65 billion), compared with 40 billion yen a year earlier and slightly lower than its forecast of 20 billion yen, which it gave last month.

Sales fell 6.2 percent to 176.4 billion yen from 188 billion yen a year ago and compared with its own forecast of 175 billion yen.

Net profit fell to 36.63 billion yen, compared with 46.45 billion yen a year earlier and slightly higher than the company's forecast of 36 billion yen.

The company said it expected a net profit of 75 billion yen for the full year, matching market expectations according to Reuters Estimates. It posted a profit of 87.4 billion yen a year earlier.

Shares of Nintendo rose 13.2 percent in the first six months of its business year, underperforming the Nikkei average, which rose 16.3 percent.

The stock closed down 0.85 percent at 12,890 yen on the Osaka Stock Exchange ahead of the news. The Nikkei average gained 0.23 percent.

Nintendo is so done, its once cash cow of handheld gaming is slowly going to go to Sony, just like the consoles...

[Nostromo]

Those fortunate enough to score Xbox 360s at launch have now had at least 36 hours to play them (and I know there are at least a few readers who postponed other activities such as eating and sleeping to soak up as much 360 time as possible). More console-related news continues to trickle into the News Desk, so we're passing it on to you.

First up, market research firm iSuppli, best known for taking apart consumer electronics to determine how much they cost to manufacture, has disassembled an Xbox 360. The verdict? Microsoft is taking a bath on the hardware, to the tune of US$126 for each high-end Xbox 360 sold. The ATI-made graphics processing unit alone is estimated to cost US$141 (including the RAM) while the IBM Xenon CPU accounts for another US$106.

That continues the trend started by the original Xbox, which at its release sold for US$299 while costing around US$323 to make. Taking a loss on sales of its flaghship product have led Microsoft's home entertainment business unit to post steady losses, including US$391 million on sales of US$3.25 billion for FY 2005. According to Microsoft guidance, the company hopes to hit break even in 2006 and turn a profit in 2007. In order for that to happen, sales of Xbox games, accessories, and Xbox Live! subscriptions will have to make up for the hit the company is taking on each console sold. Additional relief will come as component prices drop somewhat as yields from IBM and ATI improve.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051123-5621.html

141$ US for the ATI GPU? How much that thing would cost if they sold it separately for PC's? Wouldn't it be something like 700$ or 800$? AFAIK, its more powerful than all the high end cards available now.

[Asher]

Easily. The $141 is just the component cost of the silicon, it doesn't count the R&D that needs to be offset. And in PC cards, you also have to add 256-bit memory busses ($$$) and lots of high-speed RAM ($$$) as well. The "including RAM" they're talking about is the 10MB EDRAM I think.

Xenos (the ATI GPU) has more transistors than the latest ATI and Nvidia desktop products, and it doesn't need to keep lots of transistors for performance of legacy applications either.

[Asher]

In other news: the launch titles all only use one core since they haven't had time to optimize for the others.

Similarly, almost all of the titles haven't implemented "tiling" in their graphics engines due to the fact that they're all based off engines from the previous generation (PGR3 is a suped up PGR2 engine). "Tiling" is where the game engine knows enough to partition the screen up so it fits in nicely in the 10MB EDRAM for "free" anti-aliasing and other effects. Since none of the games implement tiling, tradeoffs were made.

Many of the games don't have AA turned on, and at least one game (PGR3) is rendered internally at 1024x600 with 2x AA (which fits the whole display in the EDRAM). If you run it in 480p or 480i, it uses 4x AA.

Upcoming games will show us what the box is really capable off, once they start using all 6 threads and tiling. It'll also help when they actually use all of the new Xenos features like adaptive tesselation (truly round objects, like steering wheels in PGR3), which no known games have implemented yet.

[Asher]

By the way: Master Chief is in DOA4: