The HD Era Begins - 360 Fnazzle

[Mazy]

Interesting that noone has started a topic about this yet. Although I'm not terribly excited about it then Im still getting on for the European launch on next friday. So whos getting one, and why?

[ctswin]

When they actually get some interesting games

ofcourse, that should be IF, i don't like HALO so that's out.. if they managed to snap up exclusive rights to MGS, GTA, PES etc..

regarding the HD, too much focus on something A LOT of people don't have. theres (afaik) no hd service in the uk yet and when it comes it'll be severly limited. i think ninty have made the right call on this round

also i think i'm in a minority tha doesn't need AA on all the games stick AF up and that's prettier

[ReNo]

I think that the 360 and PS3 have plenty of power to manage both AA and AF, thank god

Mazy, I hate you. You aren't even excited, yet you still get one at launch. I can't wait until I'm an employed and earning citizen as opposed to skint and scrounging student I'd love one for PGR3, Condemned, Amped 3 and DOA4, not to mention half a dozen other later games that tickle my fancy. I've had all the current gen systems for a while now so not been limited in what games I can buy, but I will be for at least a year now, which is gonna be painful. At least when I finally get one I'll have dozens of tempting games instead of a handful...which maybe isn't such a good thing.

I guess that means I voted "when they actually get some interesting games", but that decision isn't made by choice

[Kosmo]

I'm not that excited about the Xenon launch. As I'm broke so I'll have to wait before I can get it anyway, so I'm just going straight to Revolution.

Aside from Oblivion that is for PC and DOA4 there just isn't anything that interests me enough to keep my attenttion up from day to day.

As for what comes to HD, well it's nice feature for those who have HD tv, but I don't think that people will change their TVs just for some console, maybe when they start airing HDTV quality programming and HDDVD/Buray comes. I don't think it's complete waste of resources, but I don't think that Revolution is going to lose anything without HDTV support.

[Mazy]

Aye, HD hasnt broken through here either, but it wont be long before it will. That said then it does seem like they're out pretty early with it (I'll probably regret saying that in a year or so ).

Regarding exclusive games then I think Mass Effect from Bioware is enough reason for me to get one, given that they dont go KOTOR on us and port it for the PC. Halo 3? Really liked the first one but the second one sorta lost me.

They really have a problem with big titles on the horizon, most of the interesting ones are coming for the PC as well.

[ctswin]

I think that the 360 and PS3 have plenty of power to manage both AA and AF, thank god

For a while, yes. Developers will probably want to drop it to push the graphics a little bit more in its dying days. Rather have pretty games with no AA than not so pretty with AA, even if it does have the power.

still rather drop the AA requirement completely though

[Kosmo]

The HD support is the one thing I have been thinking about.

Xenon and PS3 are both very powerful machines, there is no doubt about it. Revolution has been criticized because Nintendo has said that Revolution has less power thatn Xenon or PS3, while that may be true on the hardware side, I'm pretty confident that Revolution can afchieve comparable graphics since it has the advantage of lower resolution.

All HD games to be specced HD, need to be atleast 1280x720 resolution, which compared to 640x480 and 768x576 is resource heavy to the machine. Also, if it's true that ALL games support the higher 1080i/p resolutions the machines have to have alot juice to push the 1920x1080 resolutions, again compared to standard PAL and NTSC resolutions, is a major resource hog.

So Revolution might not have as impressive hardware as Xenon and PS3 has, but I'm fairly confident that Revolution players (AND the people who play Xenon and PS3 games on a ragular TV) don't miss on anything so spectacular.

Also, I'd like to add this. I was going through the first releases for Xenon and watching the screenshots and I am fairly sure that the quality of the graphics is lower than what they have been showing to us from Call of Duty 2, Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo and other games for the last 3 months or so. Sure, most of the videos and screens have been shown on a PC or some development platform, and some videos have been prerendered. But the quality loss is there. Were they just bullshitting us or what is going on?

[skdr]

I want the new xbox, but the games are so ridicilously expensive!

[FrieChamp]

I was almost certain that I will purchase one right at the start like one month ago, but right now I think I will a little bit until there is a really good game for it out there.

[zeOx]

....Also, if it's true that ALL games support the higher 1080i/p resolutions the machines have to have alot juice to push the 1920x1080 resolutions....

I don't know about the PS3, but that's not the case with the 360. The 360 runs all games in 720p natively, and scales them up or down to fit the resolution.

[KungFuSquirrel]

Mine should be arriving today... we got a nice order deal for being developers on it. Still roughly the same price, but got a few extras included for the hard drive version. Probably wouldn't have gotten one until the frenzy settled down otherwise.

Played the Kameo demo here at work; really enjoyed that... already picked up that and PDZ, and I'm planning on snagging Kong for this platform and Condemned at some point as well. Pretty solid launch as far as titles and variety as far as I'm concerned.

What should be nice is some of the titles that got delayed from launch hitting early next year in what is usually that void of nothingness. Would love to see more titles make their way out in the early part of the year.

[Mazy]

Getting PGR3 and Kong for sure. Based on Gamespots review then Im getting Perfect Dark Zero too. Might pick up Condemded if the other games runs out too fast.

[Minos]

apparently, it would cost around 4 thousand bucks if microsoft released it in Brazil

[Pericolos0]

There is nothing absolutely revolutionary or amazing that is drawing me to the xbox360 so no.

Only console i'm really interested in is the revolution :/

[Izuno]

well...the games certainly look better than xbox games. the levels can be a bit larger in shooters (for example)...

Fro the 360 launch, as with most console launches, it's all about eye candy and whizbang features. As for gameplay, well, more graphics horsepower and the like can yield a more immersive gameplay experience which you can argue means better games. But how much better are the new games? This is the age old question we ask ourselves with any new console.

Any Madden players here try Madden 06 on 360 yet? The game should still sell a ton just because of the marketing muscle and the fact that it's the only licensed NFL game franchise (gg, EA). But how much new gameplay innovation is made possible by having a more powerful console? I'm guessing not much. But sure, if it looks like a lot prettier, than may be wha the mass Football gamer market really latches on to whether they admit it or not...and hence by the game.

.....so the question we really need to know is: how much do graphics matter to the various segments of the core<-->casual gamer spectrum?