360 w/Internal HD-DVD, XFire Denied 49
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.
wait... why? (Score:2)
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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.
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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?
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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
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This is beside the point that the new Playstation Network is supposed to be unified a cross-platfor
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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.
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http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?s
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EverQuest
EverQuest 2
Star Wars Galaxies
PlanetSide
The Matrix Online
Other unnamed ones that I don't recall
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360 w/ Internal HD-DVD (Score:2)
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To translate for MS and Sony... (Score:2)
"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?"
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Yea, everyone else is still stuck on their first version of 2.
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Xbox 360 (Score:4, Insightful)
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Three-layer disc (Score:2)
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).
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Precedent: Game Boy Color dual-mode games (Score:2)
Didn't stop Nintendo from making dual-mode games that work in the monochrome Game Boy and have extra features on Game Boy Color.
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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
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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
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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
Bending the 720p rules (Score:2)
Yeah, and then some game for Xbox 360 (was it Project Gotham Racing 3?) ran at 600p and scaled up to 720p in high-definition mode.
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I like the idea of an optional drive (Score:1)
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
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Re:burned by HD (Score:1)
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.
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So unless you are planning on getting any HDDVD movies I'd definately get the 360 with the standard drive.
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What the hell are you babbling about? Sure, it'd be nice to have 4x that much EDRAM so you didn't need to do predicative tiling, but it's not "very botched"... I certainly don't see a "jaggy fiasco"
When I Read "XFire Denied"... (Score:2)