Xbox 360

[Max Webster]

This would be a good time to buy the first x-box. Alot cheaper I bet.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by sprucemoose3311
well, ile admit im talking potential and not actuality...

but 45 gigs is 4.5 times more than ten gigs, therefore i give the general advantage to ps3... which will make toast and do your taxes

And how much you willing to pay for potential . If they include Blu-Ray, I wouldn't be surprised if PS3 is $700.

[Nostromo]

Well, well, well, someone swallowed Sony's PR bull**** hook, line, and sinker

First of all, I doubt that any developer can afford to fill a 45GB blu-ray disk. They'll most likely use them fully when they'll include multiple games on a single disk.

Second, if a developer doesn't have enough room on a disk, he can always add another one... We can do it, we have the technology

[Fake Boris]

The extra space will have a real use. They'll be able to load tons of high-res, uncompressed stuff, which means less CPU cycles for decoding and faster loads.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I also wonder if PS3 will REALLY have Blu-Ray. It seems like something they'll pull at the last second. I mean this is a new DVD technology. The first Blu-Ray players will cost over $1000. Will Sony kill itself by selling uber-expensive consoles?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
The extra space will have a real use. They'll be able to load tons of high-res, uncompressed stuff, which means less CPU cycles for decoding and faster loads.

Actually it won't mean faster loads necessarily - the bottleneck could be at the drive, not the CPU.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I HAVE to share this

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8235917501

PS.. look at the winning bidder's name.

[Asher]

Originally posted by sprucemoose3311
imagine a killzone game with 45 gigs (blueray) of disk spce filled with bitmaps, lighting, and eye candy versus 10 pitiful gigs of halo (on dvd, not even hddvd)

Have you ever played a Killzone game? They're terrible games...the trailer you saw at E3 was rendered at under 5 frames per second, and sped up to look realtime.

I'm also not sure why you think there's a cap on number of discs that can be used at 1. You can have multiple discs if needed.

And the number is 25GB (single-layer) or 50GB (dual-layer) blu-ray. The other spec they don't tell you is BD-ROMs are 6.75 MB/s (at PEAK). The transfer rate of the 12x DVD-ROM in the 360 is 15.84 MB/s (at peak). The loading times are going to be atrocious on the PS3 -- what good is all of that storage when it would take you 126.42 minutes (best case, peak transfer rate) of load times?

The simple fact of the matter is the vast majority of PS3 games are going to be DVD-ROMs as well -- not only because they're literaly a tiny fraction of the price of BD-ROMs, but they're much faster.

The reason BluRay is in the PS3 is purely due to Sony's media group -- they want to push their standard down people's throats, and what better way to do that than get your players in consumers living rooms millions at a time via the playstation? BluRay will not enhance games in any way...

[Nostromo]

I HAVE to share this

I should have bought a couple of 'em and sell 'em to the highest bidder.

[Asher]

New York Times review:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/25/arts/25xbox.html

Microsoft Ups the Console Ante

By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: November 25, 2005

There is a saying in technology circles, often delivered with rueful respect, that if you give the folks at Microsoft enough chances, they will eventually deliver a compelling product. They did it with spreadsheets. They did it with Web browsers. And now, with the new Xbox 360, the Bill Gates team has delivered a legitimately excellent gaming and home media system. And there is nothing rueful about that.

Certainly, the graphics are incredibly detailed, lifelike and vivid, far beyond anything conceivable in the current generation of game consoles. Playing an Xbox 360 game can be almost like controlling a Pixar animated film or inhabiting "Band of Brothers." And that's on a regular old television. On a high-definition set, get ready for your eyes to weep.

But lush visuals were expected. There are two surprises that really make the Xbox 360 exciting, and that should deeply trouble Nintendo and Sony, the once-dominant game companies that Microsoft wants to take out like Netscape.

First, the system does a great job of elegantly harnessing the Internet to create what will soon be a global gaming community. Microsoft clearly hopes that the Xbox 360 can become the Friendster or MySpace of gaming, and it has a good chance to succeed. Connected to a cable modem or DSL line, the system even allows users to make free unlimited phone calls to other Xbox owners.

Second, and forgetting about games entirely, the Xbox 360 is the first product to truly deliver on the concept of the easy-to-use living room home-media hub. Connected to a home theater or just a TV, it plays DVD's flawlessly. Plug in a digital camera and show off your photos on the television. Plug in an iPod and listen to your music, even while playing a game. Or just put in a CD and rip the music to the unit's optional hard drive. Intimidated by a video game controller? The full version of the 360 ships with a TV-style remote control.

Serious gamers mostly shrugged at the online and home media functions as they were previewed before the system's introduction on Tuesday. It is clear now that it was impossible to grasp just how powerful and cool they were before actually using them. It is as if Microsoft has taken the famous slogan used against it by Apple in 1984 - "The computer for the rest of us" - and redirected the concept at its gaming rivals by creating a game machine for the rest of us.

The big picture is that the Xbox 360 is Microsoft's statement about the future of home technology. And it is an attractive, powerful statement.

It is also, however, an expensive statement. The full version of the 360 costs $400 and each of the marquee games costs $50 to $60. There is also a stripped-down version for $300 that does not include a hard drive, networking cable, wireless controller or headset. But the cheaper version hardly seems worth buying, especially because if you don't have a hard drive, you'll have to pay $40 for a memory card anyway. Moreover, without a hard drive you won't be able to play games you already own for the original Xbox.

In addition to the cost, the broader problem is that the system itself is a lot better than most of the games currently available to play on it. Of the games initially available for the 360, there are a handful of gems including Kameo: Elements of Power, NBA 2K6 and in particular Project Gotham Racing 3, all of which make good use of both the 360's graphics horsepower and online-community capabilities. Then there are games like Call of Duty 2 and Need For Speed: Most Wanted that have made an almost entirely successful transition from PC's or other game systems.

Unfortunately, there are many games that are plain uninspiring. The problem is particularly acute in the sports genre, which includes about half of the games currently available for the 360. It is surprising that Electronic Arts, the No. 1 game company, did not put more effort into ramping up its 360 lineup to take better advantage of the system's power. The 360 version of Madden football is at best decent, and the company clearly dropped the ball with NBA Live 06 and its FIFA soccer game.

So game publishers have a lot of catching up to do before they will be able to really harness the power and features of the Xbox 360. And that is why, unless there is a 360 game you need to play right now, there is little need for casual players to run out and buy the machine. In any case, hard-core gamers are already flocking to the system, assuring that the unit may be hard to find at retail locations through the holiday season.

But as better games come out, availability eases and prices drop, the 360 will become more and more attractive. And that is because at its best, the machine delivers entertainment experiences that are simply unlike anything possible on other systems.

I have spent more than 40 hours using the Xbox 360 over the last week. The following are some of the moments that illustrate why Microsoft has a hit on its hands.

Setting up the unit, including connecting to the Internet, was easy and intuitive. Twelve minutes after opening the box, I had created my nickname, was in a game of Quake 4 and thought, "This can't be this easy." The unit also has a full suite of parental controls (no more excuses for letting your kids play M-rated games).

Exploring the Live Arcade area, which includes shorter, more casual games that can be downloaded for less than $10, I discovered one of the seminal arcade diversions of my youth: Gauntlet. After my first game, when I saw my score on the global Top 10 high-score list, I literally started giggling. Then I started playing again.

After getting through the unnecessarily difficult introductory sequence in Kameo, I stepped into a fairy-tale garden full of butterflies, waving grass and cartoon-style characters so beautiful that a friend and I just stared at the screen for a few minutes.

I spent Sunday morning snowboarding down a glistening, shimmering mountainside in Amped 3 while the 360 streamed dub reggae from my iPod.

For now, the one game that best shows off everything the Xbox 360 is capable of is Project Gotham Racing 3, which lets you race supercars through stunningly vivid recreations of cities that include New York, London and Las Vegas. (Not only can you race online, but you can also tune into "Gotham TV" any time of the day or night and watch the best players from around the world competing against one another, live.) Screaming over the Brooklyn Bridge in my Ferrari, an opponent hot on my tail, I thought, "This is what gaming is all about."

[Asher]

Banned Xbox 360 commercial: http://www.filecabi.net/video/banned...ommercial.html

[Asher]

Some of the idle chatter in PD0 is hilarious...these two geek NPCs are talking about how they "downloaded the source code and compiled it myself"..."it's too bad the AI sucked" "there wasn't really an ending, but it sure was pretty" "why did they fail you when you shot a scientist? and why were the scientists so stupid?" on and on...obviously talking about half-life 2.

[Verto]

360 games are running 60-70 dollars at Circuit City, according to a flyer I saw today.

[Nostromo]

In Canada, they're the same price as regular Xbox titles, around 59$/69$ cdn.

[Elok]

Sorry, I'm sure this has been asked before, but why are you paying $299 for this? Or $399? Mind you, I'm not speaking from a partisan angle, I wouldn't get a PS3 either, but I've reached the point where I can no longer see any sense in encouraging the console wars. I seem to recall there were once reasons for having a console rather than just PC gaming, but...well, so much for that.