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360 w/Internal HD-DVD, XFire Denied 49

Posted by Zonk from the so-many-rumours-so-little-time dept.
More clarifications and rumours on the next-gen front today. Eurogamer is reporting that a new version of the 360 may have an internal HD-DVD drive, despite protestations they're doing no such thing from Microsoft. Supposedly Taiwanese manufacturers are being selected for the new version of the console. On the Sony front, they deny that XFire will play an integral role in the PS3's online strategy. Despite the report at 1up yesterday, Sony Online Entertainment is claiming XFire will only be used in some of their titles in a deal separate from the PlayStation Network. From that article: "'We can confirm that Sony Online Entertainment is in talks with Viacom and Xfire for a single, specific PS3 game,' said a spokesperson for Sony in a statement to 1Up. 'However, there are no announcements at this time regarding any discussions between SCEA, Viacom and Xfire,' continued the statement." Which is to say, there may be in the future but they don't want to talk about it now.
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360 w/Internal HD-DVD, XFire Denied More

360 w/Internal HD-DVD, XFire Denied

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  • Sony Online Entertainment is claiming XFire will only be used in some of their titles in a deal separate from the Playstation Network.
    So if the Playstation Network handles all of the things Xbox Live does "feature for feature". and select titles will make use of the XFire service... Why? If the Playstation Network already does match making, friends lists, chatting etc. then why would you need to stack XFire on top of it?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Qzukk ( 229616 )
      If the Playstation Network already does match making, friends lists, chatting etc. then why would you need to stack XFire on top of it?

      Cross-platform support with a title on the PC? I hear that Sony runs one or two tiny MMOs that nobody's ever heard of.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by XaXXon ( 202882 )
        There can be only one [worldofwarcraft.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by grumbel ( 592662 )
        Cross-platform support with a title on the PC? I hear that Sony runs one or two tiny MMOs that nobody's ever heard of.

        Ok, I don't know what exactly XFire does, but doesn't on MMO game by its nature doesn't need match-making and stuff like that because all of those actions can take place in the game world itself, not in some lobby-chat window thing that XFire provides?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by snuf23 ( 182335 )
          Xfire is an IM client that has some gaming specific features. It is more useful for things like online RTS and FPS. For example you can see that your friend is currently playing Battlefield 2. You can then launch the game from Xfire and connect to the server he is playing on rather than manually find it.
          Xfire IMs can also be viewed and responded to from within a game rather than needing to alt-tab out to the desktop. SO if it's time for that WoW raid and healer #3 is busy messing around in BF2 you can send
      • Except according to the the article, the game that will be using XFire is "Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom" which as far as I can tell is a PS3 exclusive. And correct me if I'm wrong but Sony's "tiny MMOs" use a different service altogether called PlayOnline... why would they throw XFire into the mix. That makes 3 separate online services running on the same machine. It hardly sounds like a "unified" solution.

        This is beside the point that the new Playstation Network is supposed to be unified a cross-platfor
      • "Cross-platform support with a title on the PC?"

        Please let this be true, and please let them implement it on a major FPS release.

        It just might finally shut up the "why play games on a PC when there are consoles?" crowd.
      • I have to ask... Which ones are the "tiny" ones? ;-)

        EverQuest
        EverQuest 2
        Star Wars Galaxies
        PlanetSide
        The Matrix Online
        Other unnamed ones that I don't recall
    • Has anyone actually seen this Playstation Network yet? Last I had heard they promised services equal to XBox Live, but had not produced any examples.
  • ... is a no brainer. If Microsoft doesn't do it, it's silly. However, they need to be careful, and also possibly keep producing some version of the Xbox360 WITHOUT the drive IF cost is going to be significantly different. Some people just aren't interested.
  • MS:
    "We want our sales to continue and not drop off while people wait for the next release."

    Sony:
    "Why would we want something that is in place and works? It's a PS3, 3!!!!!, with a 3 on the end. Pretty cool huh?"
    • "Why would we want something that is in place and works? It's a PS3, 3!!!!!, with a 3 on the end. Pretty cool huh?"

      Yea, everyone else is still stuck on their first version of 2.

  • Xbox 360 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AcidLacedPenguiN ( 835552 ) on Wednesday September 13, 2006 @01:54PM (#16097614)
    With the news about the HD/DVD hybrid discs from yesterday, it might not be such a bad idea to do the internal HD-DVD drive. They could then leave it up to game devs to support HD, Non-HD, or both. Assuming that most game devs aren't handicapped, they'll probably opt for using that DVD/HD combo so that those of us with regular DVD drives, can play the same games as those with the HD-DVD drives (and maybe those of us with non-HD will also be allowed to read the text in their games too!)
    • They can't let game developers use the HD-DVD features at all, at least not anytime soon. The prospect of gamer backlash is just too great. The only way it could possibly work is if a) the new version was, say, $100-150 more expensive than the DVD version (an addition of about 75% the price of the HD-DVD addon), b) the HD-DVD addon worked with any such HD-DVD games, AND c) they wait at least 2 years after HD-DVD addon release before turning game developers loose with HD-DVD versions of games. At that poi
      • They can't let game developers use the HD-DVD features at all, at least not anytime soon. The prospect of gamer backlash is just too great.

        Unless Microsoft uses Toshiba's new three-layer HD-DVD format [eetimes.com] with two DVD-ROM layers (for Xbox 360) and one HD layer (for additional content on the Xbox 360 Hi-Def).

        • I believe that even that would be a mistake (again, at least early on in the life of the HD-DVD addon). Unless that extra content consisted entirely of non-game material, like interviews with developers and such, it would end up being the same problem: Two versions of the same game that people who paid $300 and up for their console couldn't access without spending more money. I don't believe that the consolidation of the two versions into one disc would help at all in ameliorating the discontent of peopl
          • Two versions of the same game that people who paid $300 and up for their console couldn't access without spending more money.

            Didn't stop Nintendo from making dual-mode games that work in the monochrome Game Boy and have extra features on Game Boy Color.


    • They could then leave it up to game devs to support HD, Non-HD, or both.
      This is the worst idea I've ever heard. The whole idea behind a console is control over your platform, and a single target. Any differences SHOULD NOT AFFECT GAMES, otherwise, you're just a Console-Wannabe Windows PC. :\

      You're going to alienate your original fanbase, because eventually, guess what's going to happen? Devs are gonna get lazy and won't want to support both.

      No, it'll purely for the use of Movies. Period. I don't think Micro

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by grumbel ( 592662 )

        This is the worst idea I've ever heard. The whole idea behind a console is control over your platform, and a single target. Any differences SHOULD NOT AFFECT GAMES, otherwise, you're just a Console-Wannabe Windows PC.

        This is actually nothing new, if you had an MemoryPack on the N64 some games could run at a higher resolution, if you had a rumble pack you got rumble and similar stuff. Not having those items didn't stop you from playing those games (well, actually it did with some later games).

        Anyway, as

      • I was implying that with the new Toshiba 3-layer HD-DVDs which can have either 2 layers of regular DVD (~8.5gb) and one layer of HD-DVD(~35gb) or 2 layers of HD-DVD(~70gb) and one layer of regular DVD (~4.7gb) the game developers could say, put the regular game on the regular DVD layer(s) (with only regular definition textures and CGI/FMVs) and then maybe put the ultra high resolution textures and CGI/FMVs on the HD-DVD layers. Then the game could say, look at what model you have (the regular DVD, or the HD

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DingerX ( 847589 )
      Yeah, I dunno. developers be damned. > 4 gigs of content is expensive. Most of that is gonna be Full motion video and stuff. I don't see a problem with releasing a hybrid disc, with the useless junk on the HD part, and offering promo downloads and what have you. Run that for a couple years, then towards the end of the cycle, "forget" about the DVD-only boxes. It works for Apple; it'll work for Microsoft.
    • Yeah, I still don't have any idea what was going on in that game. Thankfully, they put arrows at the top of your screen, and the main plot items were always on the top.
  • It's much better than a mandatory high definition drive in the PS3. If the PS3 had a $350 version of the PS3 with a regular DVD-ROM and a Blu-Ray version costing $600, I think a lot of the complaints about price would go away. Even if the Xbox 360 with HD-DVD is $500 or $600, you don't have to buy that version.

    I wouldn't want to get one of the formats until I purchased a 1080p TV, which will be no time soon. It seems that a lot of early adopters have been burned by purchases of 720p and 1080i TVs. So if
    • it's not the same ms said that no game will use hd-dvd but ps3 game can use it.
    • How is that people could have been "burned" by a significant increase in visual quality (over NTSC) that is fully compatible with HD hardware? I could see where people without DVI/HDMI (w/HDCP) might feel burned at some point down the road, but having 720p/1080i versus 1080p isn't a huge disadvantage given that such displays are [currently] fully compatible with Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, Xbox 360, PS3, etc. It would be like saying someone was "burned" when they bought a 1280x1024 screen for their PC because 1600x1
      • People have been burned by HD TV purchases because:
        A) There's a lack of available HD content, and you generally have to pay extra to get the HD channels from your TV provider and
        B) The majority of television, which is non-HD, will often look worse on an HD TV than on a standard TV because of the increased screen size and resolution.
        • Okay, those would be reasons to feel burned by HDTV in general, not reasons to feel burned for buying 720p/1080i versus buying 1080p.
    • Except that the PS3 will be using Blu-Ray disks as the standard media for games. The Xbox 360 will only use the HDDVD drive to play movies and games will still be stuck with the 9GB disks.

      So unless you are planning on getting any HDDVD movies I'd definately get the 360 with the standard drive.

  • ...I heard "QUAD DENIED" in my head. Hehehehe...

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