Who's planning on getting an Xbox 360?

[Gurm]

Microsoft has a platform that is based on and/or similar to a majority of shipping computers on the market. Anyone with any experience writing Windows code should be able to make a game work on an XBox.

You'd think so... so why are there so few good XBox games? And from what I've heard the XBox 360 will be a MISERY to code for.

[GT98]

You'd think so... so why are there so few good XBox games? And from what I've heard the XBox 360 will be a MISERY to code for.

Heard the same about the PS3...even more so with Cell processor..

Then again all programmers have been bitching about multicore processors with the next gen processors and how much of a bitch they are to code for.

[DGhost]

Heard the same about the PS3...even more so with Cell processor..

Then again all programmers have been bitching about multicore processors with the next gen processors and how much of a bitch they are to code for.

Microsoft has been talking about multithreading for years. You would probably be suprised how much code in XP is multithreaded. unfortunately, there is still quite a bit of important stuff that wasn't.

anyways. multithreading isn't that bad of a thing. what i've been hearing more bitches about is the fact that the individual cores of the XB360 processor are strictly in-order execution cores with very minimal/poor branch prediction. the processors are, despite that, apparently capable of executing two adjacent and non-dependant instructions simultaniously. because it is lacking out of order execution it makes it's multithreading support very... twitchy. don't get me wrong - it is definately an efficent way of doing it, but it is definately not nearly as advanced as the P4 where they can easily be abstracted out to look like different processors. it kinda makes for a really funky processor architecture where the only way to hit peak performance is to have lots of smaller threads doing the execution. definately more of a finer grained approach to everything.

The Cell processor is almost like taking that idea to an extreme. of course, the fact that the SPE's on the Cell processor don't even support branch predicition at all makes it that much harder to get high performance out of. great for video decoding and even rendering, but it is definately going to have issues in other areas.

Gurm - "so few good XBox games"? coming from what standpoint? personally, I think that the gaming industry in general has been having an incredably shitty several years, with the consoles catching the brunt of it. there are really no good games on either of them. I mean, seriously... how many ****ing Medal of Honor games do you need?

that being said - any big name game is going to be available on both XBox and PS2, and it usually looks better on the XBox. outside of that...

[GT98]

I know that the head developer over at Valve was bitching about the mutli-processor issue with Xbox360 and PS3. From the way I took it seemed more like a bitchfest about learing how to do something new. instead of doing the true and tried method of just programming for a single CPU. Also add in the additional time that it takes to port it over to either system and that spells more work for less $$$.

You have to figure a single CPU running at 3.2GHz and a R520 in it has to be able to some really good shit when it comes to Grphx, esp without the additional overhead that PC has. Now add in two more CPU's and you could have a hell of a machine...at least in my limited knowelege.

[Gurm]

Gurm - "so few good XBox games"? coming from what standpoint? personally, I think that the gaming industry in general has been having an incredably shitty several years, with the consoles catching the brunt of it. there are really no good games on either of them. I mean, seriously... how many ****ing Medal of Honor games do you need?

The best games, bar none, are on the Gamecube. For sheer playability you can't beat Zelda. Twilight Princess is probably my only "must own this" game that SHOULD have been out for the Christmas season.

On the PS2 we've got the Jak games, which I love... Dark Cloud... Final Fantasy... the Ratchet games... Sly Cooper, and the list goes on. On the XBox you have some fighting games, some sports games, and Halo. Whoopee!

Oh yes, and KOTOR1/2, which are out for the PC.

I get a lot of play time out of my PS2. When I had an XBox available to me, I used it exclusively as a media center. Not for gaming.

[schmosef]

I'm not into platformers so much.

I couldn't stand Jak I or Ratchet I. I have the others in the series too but I haven't gotten around to trying them yet. I hope that they're better.

No doubt, Nintendo makes some excellent games. But I'm not a Zelda or Mario fan.

I own both an XBox and a PS2. I could easily pickup a GameCube but there hasn't been anything I really wanted to play yet.

I've been happiest with my XBox. The ability to play @ HD resolutions has been sweet! M$ has the best online strategy too. And the Live experience is just getting better.

[Gurm]

"The Live experience is just getting better..."

Really? I played, via broadband, Unreal Tournament for the XBox. Not only was it horrifyingly inferior in EVERY WAY to the PC version, there were few good games going and they were all limited to 8 people. EIGHT PEOPLE? When's the last time you played a team-based FPS online with only EIGHT PLAYERS?

Christ, even Halo is better online for the PC, despite Gearbox doing everything in their power to make Halo for the PC suck donkey nuts.

---------------

As for some of your other points:

Jak... Jak 2 and 3 are TOTALLY different from Jak & Daxter. At first I didn't like them so much, but they grew on me. Much different style of gameplay. Very "open ended" with big worlds.

The original Ratchet ... the controls were a bit clunky, but it DID grow on me after a while, and "Going Commando" was really quite good. Haven't gotten around to "Up Your Arsenal" yet. It's on my list of "games I can play while staying up with the baby next month".

[DGhost]

I never played UT for the XBox. why? because UT on the computer was a mediocre experience to begin with, and most definately not worth picking up on the XBox.

Halo 2 is a perfect example of how XBox Live support should be in games. Black Hawk Down is also getting to be very popular. MechAssault 2 is more than decent. I ca


as far as those games on the PS2... I honestly didn't think anyone actually played them. heh.

Lego Star Wars was about the closest to a kids game I've heard people talk about. and that was actually quite fun in a rather disturbing way.

[schmosef]

I was walking through the mall near my condo today and I stopped by the EB where my pre-order was taken. I wanted to see if they had a demo unit on display and they did.

Call of Duty was playing and it looked really good.

It's gonna be awesome when I have it hooked up to my 57" HDTV.

[GT98]

Did they give you an ETA when you supposed to get it? I got a call from Gamestop to expect mine after Christmas I picked up the recharging unit and a face plate for it today at Target.

[Elie]

I stopped by Future Shop where the same game was being demo'd on the XBOX 360, with an LCD HD screen, and it looked AMAZING!!!!!

me buying one as soon as the price goes down a bit

[schmosef]

The guy told me that they're expecting a shipment sometime between the 6th and the 10th.

...

The standard demo unit has a Samsung HDTV, their M$'s official partner, that's probably what you saw. The colour was vibrant and the image was sharp. CoD2 looks life a tough game.

The reviews for it and PDZ are very good.

Speculation is that the price wont come down until next holiday season. The PS3 is expected to be more expensive than the 360 so M$ wont need to try to undercut them at the PS3 launch. They're already losing money on each unit sold so I doubt that they'll drop the price until they are able to bring the costs down.

Word is that M$ is planning to release Halo 3 on the same day as the PS3 to piss off Sony.

[Nowhere]

/me doesn't worry about Xbox, still a lot of great games for PS1 left to play through (once I'll resurrect my console...while it is good for certain types of usage, they are dangerous - for example when somebody spills something on it )

[DGhost]

honestly, i noticed two reasons why the XBox 360 looks excellent in stores right now.

1) HDTV output. the HD out support on the XB360 is significantly improved. combine that with demo units that are both very sharp and very bright, it gives a great end user experience in stores. excellent use of marketing cash.

2) faster GPU means better frame rates at higher resolutions. HDTV support is fluid for the demo games. this, combined with an excess of normal maps, make call of duty 2 look incredable compared with previous XBox and PS2 games.

personally, CoD2 didn't look too impressive from a graphics or art standpoint. it was purdy because of the above two reasons, not because of the way the game was made. in fact, the game would probably only rank as "average" in my book if it was run on a PC.

[schmosef]

Did they give you an ETA when you supposed to get it? I got a call from Gamestop to expect mine after Christmas I picked up the recharging unit and a face plate for it today at Target.

That ETA you heard seems to assume a standard delay for second shipment of a new console. According to M$, they're shipping less units but will be making a shipment each week, unlike in the past when second shipments usually happened weeks or months after the first.

It'll be kind of ironic if M$ ships quantities based on their new distribution model but the frequency is based on the old model.