I got a new XBox 360

[Ninot]

I'm kinda suprised Agathon hasn't said anything about Macs in here.

[Nostromo]

I'll be interested to see how Prey runs on the system. The demo is out for it.

It runs poorly by all accounts. Another crappy port, like Quake 4.

[Nostromo]

I'm kinda suprised Agathon hasn't said anything about Macs in here.

Why should he? He has a 360, IRC.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
I'll be interested to see how Prey runs on the system. The demo is out for it. Bioshock should push the hardware a little further than the first tier of games.

Though it may be a year or so before we see the games that can really show off the system.

Prey isn't that impressive -- the demo is out on XBL Marketplace BTW.

It's another Doom3 engine port by a non-elite gaming company, so it's not that great.

Almost all of the games coming out right now aren't close to showing what it can do. Stuff based on the Unreal Engine 3.0 (like Bioshock, Splinter Cell, and a billion other titles) are not using lots of the major features of the 360 such as the 10MB 256GB/s eDRAM for framebuffer work. No title yet has touched the 250 MTriangles/second tesselator on Xenos, etc. Not to mention they're still making games with unified shaders for the first time ever, it's a big learning curve.

I would say after this holiday season we'll see some spectacular games actually developed from the ground up for the Xbox 360. Amusingly, these games will be the ones going toe-to-toe with the PS3's first games where the developers there will take a year (or two or three, Cell is a complicated beast) before they can start getting to do the real interesting stuff.

PGR3, while gorgeous, is a rather rushed port of the PGR2 engine from Xbox 1 bumped up in a higher resolution with more shader effects. They actually only had 2 months with actual Xenos (graphics chip) hardware to work with before its release, so it's nowhere near the capabilities.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Ninot
I'm kinda suprised Agathon hasn't said anything about Macs in here.

His new line is: "Macs for PC work, Xbox 360 for gaming".

The rest of the world says: "PC for PC work and gaming and media centres, Xbox 360 for gaming and media centre extenders".

[Asher]

Forza Motorsport 2 is due out this holiday season and is supposed to look spectacular. The public trailer shown at E3 was prerendered 'cause the team lead thinks E3 demos are a waste of time.

But from closed-door media impressions, it's said to run at 60 frames per second with full-out high dynamic range lighting (HDR) and 4x full-scene anti-aliasing (FSAA), while pushing obscene amounts of polygons we've not come close to on the Xbox 360, or PS3 games shown, or PC games. It's one of the first "from the ground up, designed for Xbox 360" game engines.

No screenshots yet, though.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Oh well, the PC demo for Prey was fun, IMO. Though I'd like to see Bioshock... maybe Halo 3 will be able to go into the stuff that most developers are still trying to figure out right now.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Btw, I know this isn't pushing the X360's hardware, but speaking of great graphics (Virtua Tennis 3):







Wow... almost looks like you aren't even seeing pictures of a game (except for the info boxes).

[Al B. Sure!]

I'll buy one when Madden 07 comes out... that should be great.

[Imran Siddiqui]

So in about a month then, Speer?

[Al B. Sure!]

August 15th... With my 120 hour check, I should easily afford it... too bad i'll be playing on a regular tv and not an HD but oh well.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I think I'll skip Madden. I'll get NCAA instead. Then wait until the fall.

[Al B. Sure!]

I think I'll skip Madden.

BLAH?! thats that nonsense that playing FIFA does to you! how could you skip Madden?!

[Agathon]

Originally posted by reds4ever

And don't tell me Hagler was robbed against Leonard? He lost the first four rounds of a twelve round fight.....he was in trouble from the start.

I wouldn't say that. I just like Hagler as a boxer and as a person. He got away from the sport with his money and his marbles – a rare achievement.

Oddly enough Alan Minter walked into the pub I was working in one day.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
BLAH?! thats that nonsense that playing FIFA does to you! how could you skip Madden?!

I've skipped Madden for over 5 years now (well probably more, I don't remember the last Madden game I've owned).

Why would I continue to spend $50 on a roster update and minor improvement in functions? I'll just wait until there is some reason to actually buy it.

I did buy NCAA '03 for the original XBox, but I like the graphical updates in this version, and of course, no beating the number of teams.