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Xbox dvd (1 Viewer)

Adam Nixon

Second Unit
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Feb 21, 1999
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Gary -- I've got to agree on JSR:F. They've got STUNNING video of it in motion over at IGN. I'd have to say that's the best looking game I've seen for the X-box so far. A couple more of those titles and I'd even think about getting a bundle.
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Graeme Clark

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It's too bad MS is leaving us speculating on things like this at this point in the game. They should let us know what their system can and cannot do.
It's very frustrating.
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Calvin Watts III

Supporting Actor
Joined
Mar 7, 2001
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916
Well,if the X-Box DVD function does include progressive scan, and functionality for HDTV, that puts it up a few notches in my book.
( Hey, I'm gonna have one Someday
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"Never give up!!! .......... Never surrender!!!!!!!!!."
 

Morgan Jolley

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My beef isn't with MS, its with their strategy and the hardware of their console. They underpriced it, which is a bad move if nobody buys games for it (everyone is viewing it more like a HT piece than a gaming console, kinda like the Japanese launch of the PS2). There is too much in the hardware. I don't have broadband access, and don't know if I ever will. If I end up getting broadband, I don't mind paying money for a modem at that point, but I don't want one if I can't use it for a year. The DC included a browser and some special online features, none of which are in the X-Box, so you will be left with a useless ethernet adapter. The HDD could get filled very easily and is not that big (Final Fantasy X takes up 1.8 GB on the PS2 HDD, and if games do the same on the XB, plus saving games and downloads, it will fill those 8 GB very quickly).
Unfortunately, 3rd parties decided that Sony was the winner before the PS2 even launched, creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. Fortunately, there are companies like Sega & Tecmo who see that the XBox is the most powerful system and see it as the ultimate platform for expression. Others like EA see it as a home for weak PS2 & PC ports. They're the ones who dim the awesome potential of this machine.
The PS2 has great potential and could very well be the winner of the current console wars. Tecmo has only a few exclusive titles (Sega has ZERO 100% exclusive titles) and they could just be ported to the PS2 or GCN with a new title (a la DoA2:H). How is the XB the ultimate platform for expression? Most of its games were bought by MS or are going to be on other consoles anyway. Look at the PS2 games so far and look at the XB games coming out. The PS2 has more style, originality, and interesting gameplay than anything the XB has shown thus far. All of its games are stereotypical racers or FPS' or adventures. The ones that aren't stereotypical are not coming out for another year or so.
 

Dean Cooper

Supporting Actor
Joined
Oct 23, 2000
Messages
972
http://www.nintendojo.com/infocus/
Several media outlets are reporting that Sony has sent memos to developers concerning future game projects. Apparently, Sony has been feeling the heat of the graphical power of GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox and the company has now advised developers to put more development time into creating better graphics and less time in developing lengthy gameplay experiences.
As consoles get more powerful, the video game industry has transformed into a visual presentation race. Sony's recent memo to stress graphics over gameplay is just a sign of the changing times.
Sure doesn't look like Sony agrees with you.
Dean
 

Adam Nixon

Second Unit
Joined
Feb 21, 1999
Messages
334
"Unfortunately, 3rd parties decided that Sony was the winner before the PS2 even launched, creating a self-fulfilling prophesy."
Mike -- that single sentence sums up most of the feelings a lot of us have about the X-box. I think of all the consoles that one has the MOST potential BY FAR. However, with an installed base of 10 million plus BEFORE the competition even hits the shelves, Sony has a huge chunk of the market already. As such, many 3rd party developers will concentrate their efforts where they know they can make a buck -- consoles with the smaller user bases are more likely to get the ports. In this scenario, the GC does have an advantage with Nintendo's stellar rep as a game maker. They know they can offer titles that you won't find anywhere else.
Sega's strategy is fascinating -- they're not going to simply port every title across all three, some will go to the GC, some to the X-box, and some to the PS2. Jet Set Radio Future and Sega GT 2002 look to be graphical powerhouses, and will sell quite a bit of X-boxes. Microsoft is trying to build themselves a 1st party reputation, which is a great thing, but many of their developers worked on the PC and are as yet unproven on a console. There is DEFINITELY a difference in gameplay from consoles to PCs -- some genres just don't translate well to a different format.
As for the "war," I'm of the belief that Sony has already won. They've got a gigantic head start, not to mention they'll still be just as serious of a competitor with a reduced price and a huge library at the other two's respective launches.
[Edited last by Adam Nixon on August 28, 2001 at 02:33 PM]
 

Morgan Jolley

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Let me start off with this: just cause Sony wants better looking games doesn't mean they have to be short and it doesn't mean they won't have good games. A lot of games are in the works that will require beyond 20 hours of gameplay, whether they have groundbreaking graphics or not.
I love videogames (there I've said it), and I want the most powerful system to win, because that would allow for the best, prettiest, largest (more memory), communal (broadband), best sounding (5.1 realtime) games. If all the best games only show up on the inferior PS2 because of brand loyalty to a 6 year old machine, well that's just a shame.
Buy a PC. It has good games with great graphics/sound and a full HDD to fill and online included. Then again, its hundreds of dollars more than consoles. If you want a powerful system to win, then you should want a system with good games to be powerful. The X-Box might have good games (as in everything about the games is good, not just graphics) whereas Sony and Nintendo already do (Nintendo always does). The PS2 is not as weak as you think. Go and find a screenshot or two from Final Fantasy X. Maybe you should watch the trailers from Metal Gear Solid 2, or you could play the demo. The one thing about PS2 is that the games not only look great, but they play great (ICO is a game that many hail as being revolutionary in every way). I would rather have a somewhat powerful system with great games than an ultra powerful system with only a few good games.
 

Gary King

Second Unit
Joined
Apr 13, 1999
Messages
479
You can do more with calculus than you can with simple addition. The PS2 is the complicated calculus to the X-Box's addition (the PS2 is more difficult but can offer more once you know what you're doing).
I'm not going to bother reading the rest of your post, but this quote is one that caught my eye...
If anything, you've got this *totally* backwards.
About the most you can do on the PS2 is simple addition (the amount of blending modes is *seriously* limited (e.g., about the most you can do is add the frame buffer to the current pixel color, and modulate by alpha (you can't perform component-wise multiplies of the two values), which makes developing complicated lighting models extremely difficult on the PS2).
However, with clever use of texture shaders and register combiners, I am performing some pretty advanced lighting and reflection calculations (which correspond to pretty nasty integrals, if you look at the symbolic derivation).
The vertex shading capability on the PS2 is more powerful than the Xbox's in some regards; however, for the few cases where those advantages might be useful (by and large, the extra capabilities are used for physics calculations, not for vertex-level graphics operations), you can easily perform those same operations on the Pentium III's SSE unit.
 

Graeme Clark

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So to recap.
The PS2 has untapped resources which haven't been discovered because it's hard to develop for (like the Saturn), and it's 2nd generation of games coming out this fall are more creative and innovative than X-Box's 1st generation.
The X-Box will be maxed out early because it's easy to program (the same thing people were saying about the PS1 after the first years), console developers will have troubles because of it's PC architecture (even though it's easy to program for), it's 1st generation of games look pretty but won't offer great gameplay (even though none of us have played them), and MS is foolish to include features that we won't use right away, and instead should charge us more for them at a later date.
The GCN (And why is it GCN and not just GC or NGC? Game Cube Nintendo sounds stupid) is the greatest thing since sliced bread and priced to sell. It has unlimited potential and is easy to program for. Even though we'll be lucky to have 3 or 4 games to choose from in November.
There is too much in the hardware. I don't have broadband access, and don't know if I ever will. If I end up getting broadband, I don't mind paying money for a modem at that point, but I don't want one if I can't use it for a year.

If I send you the $10 this adds to the price will you stop whining about it?
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Morgan Jolley

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GCN is what Nintendo wants it to be called. There is no real reason for this, even though even PSX has an explanation.
In response to what Gary said-
I was saying that the PS2 will allow you to do more things once you know what you can do with it. The X-Box shows you everything that it can do whereas the PS2 is more complicated and allows you to do more, even though it requires more time, effort, and money to do so.
If I send you the $10 this adds to the price will you stop whining about it?
Ethernet modems that are specially designed to work with videogame consoles would cost more than $10. Remove the HDD, the ethernet, and pull out a feature or two and it could be $250. I don't mind paying $10 for a CD that makes my console able to play DVDs or enables 5.1 output in real-time, but I do mind not having a choice to buy it or not.
 

Gary King

Second Unit
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Apr 13, 1999
Messages
479
I was saying that the PS2 will allow you to do more things once you know what you can do with it. The X-Box shows you everything that it can do whereas the PS2 is more complicated and allows you to do more, even though it requires more time, effort, and money to do so.
And I'm telling you, you're wrong.
There are thousands (millions) of known graphical effects, built upon the last 25 or so years of graphics research, and performing quite a few of them boil down to solving a series of integrals, derivatives, etc.
And, given those equations, it's fairly straight-forward to break most effects up into simpler components so that they can be solved discretely.
While I haven't gone through the actual derivation, I think it can be proven that the subset of visual effects that the Xbox can perform is the union of the product space of 2-dimensional functions and linear combinations of 3-dimensional functions (that is a very, very large space). There are also some special-case higher-dimensional functions that can be tweaked, projected, reparameterized, or faked to work on the Xbox. Quite a few completely unexpected effects have already been developed for the NV20 by ingenious developers, and that trend is very likely to continue.
On the PS2, the amount of effects that can be performed is primarily linear combinations of 2-dimensional functions. You can fake some more advanced effects in special cases; however, as a general-purpose rendering architecture, it is essentially a fast Voodoo 1.
 

Dave F

Senior HTF Member
Joined
May 15, 1999
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Gary,
A very interesting post.
I love having this area here - you'd never find something like that over at GameFaqs or IGN. :)
-Dave
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DVD List
[Edited last by Dave F on August 28, 2001 at 06:12 PM]
 

Dean Cooper

Supporting Actor
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Oct 23, 2000
Messages
972
quote: I was saying that the PS2 will allow you to do more things once you know what you can do with it. The X-Box shows you everything that it can do whereas the PS2 is more complicated and allows you to do more, even though it requires more time, effort, and money to do so.[/quote]
You know, I'd rather have the developer dedicate its time making cool new games than waste its time tying to make the hardware do what they want it to. I guess its just the developer background that I have but to me the hardware is just a means to an end. I want my time to work on the vision of what I want my game to look and play like. The less time I have to spend fighting with the hardware to realize my vision the more I can add to it.
Dean
 

Ron Gilbert

Stunt Coordinator
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Jun 18, 2000
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60
Morgan, just so you know - the Xbox hard drive will not be used in the manner you described in one of your previous post. Developers will have their partitioned space that we users won't have access to (between 700mb and 2gb, I believe) to cache data, not to load an entire game on the HD. Also, game data in this partitioned spaced will not be automatically erased when the game is turned off. Instead, this space will be rotated whenever a new game is played, and the HD will retain data from previously played games for a short period of time, that time dependent on how often a particular game is played or how long between plays. What this means is that after the initial playing of a game, replaying should result in faster load times from initial bootup.
Additionally, there is a set amount of space partitioned for game saves. The remaining space is reserved for game-related downloads and WMA's ripped to the hard drive. My understanding is that WMA8, or the Xbox version of it, has better audio and compression quality than current MP3's, which should mean that the space won't fill up too quickly. Since I don't do any audio downloading, I have no idea how much space an entire CD's worth of music typically takes up. Can someone clue me in?
 

Graeme Clark

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An MP3 at 128kbps/stereo/44khz is roughly around a meg per minute.
The X-Box's second gen titles will use all available resources and the games will not push the power much after that because of its ease of use, console developers are not used to how the hardware is integrated with itself because it is more PC-like and less console-like

That statement is even more shortlighted than "The X-Box is too powerful".
People were saying the exact same thing about the PS1 when it was released, yet the developers quite topping themselves. There is no reason that this would change because it's built on PC parts.
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Morgan Jolley

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The PS1 also had its hardware changed several times. There are many incompatability issues with some of the newer PS1 games (such as Chrono Cross) on older PS1s. I doubt the XB will do the same as Sony, seeing as Sony is the only company to alter its hardware (it did it with the PS1 and PS2).
 

Dean Cooper

Supporting Actor
Joined
Oct 23, 2000
Messages
972
quote:
The PS1 also had its hardware changed several times. There are many incompatability issues with some of the newer PS1 games (such as Chrono Cross) on older PS1s. I doubt the XB will do the same as Sony, seeing as Sony is the only company to alter its hardware (it did it with the PS1 and PS2).
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The first PSX change had to do with heating problems, a problem with the CD drive mounts and changes to the I/O (less hardware to lower costs). The rest of the changes to the PSX were done only to combat the modchip and that's all. I doubt we will see much of a modchip problem with the MS or Nintendo because of the steps both companies have taken to prevent software piracy.
Dean
[Edited last by Dean Cooper on August 29, 2001 at 12:31 AM]
 

Morgan Jolley

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The PSX's firmware was changed, which means that the games will run a little differently and why some won't work. Also, the graphics never got better, it was the presentation that got better. FF games never really pushed the limits considering they had 2-D bakgrounds (as did most PSX RPGs) and there are very few games for PSX that were good, had excellent graphics, and didn't have too many jaggies. The graphics of the PSX didn't keep getting pushed.
The N64 had its graphics pushed because of the RAM cart, plus it was more difficult to make games for than some other consoles, so the games would look better and better as the generations went by. Just look at the difference from Turok to Perfect Dark.
I doubt we will see much of a modchip problem with the MS or Nintendo because of the steps both companies have taken to prevent software piracy.
Nintendo is using a new disc format to prevent piracy, but I haven't heard of anything done by MS.
 

Dean Cooper

Supporting Actor
Joined
Oct 23, 2000
Messages
972
Nintendo is using a new disc format to prevent piracy, but I haven't heard of anything done by MS.

Do you know how much it costs to buy the hardware to burn a DVD-9 if you even had access to it? LOTS, its not fool proof but its not worth the effort to overcome it. It also has a bad ass encryption on the actual disk itself too, so even if you had the right hardware, I doubt that you'd be able to copy it. Just FYI if you were interested.
Dean
 

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