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XBOX 360 Final Thoughts

I know there are a lot of 360 threads already, but I wanted to note these main topics that were discussed in articles concerning the MTV show and unveiling.

1) According to the article on Tom's Hardware, the basic version will have a 20GB hard drive AND be backwards compatible, which can be upgraded later.

2) The price will remain $299 for the basic version, due for Christmas release in November, as Bill Gates would like to keep it in price range for everybody.

3) The wireless controllers can be charged via USB in the front or the back of the 360, so no need to keep purchasing new batteries.

4) The USB ports in the front can be used to plug in wired controllers.

5) It will have internal wireless for connectivity to a wireless router.

6) The memory units are for saving games ans transferring files between 360's.

7) Through the USB port in the back of the 360, you will be able to plug a camera in and view pictures through the 360, as well as an MP3 player

After watching Microsoft shooting themselves in both feet on MTV, I got pretty low expectations for the 360. Especially with those HORRIBLE Perfect Dark 0 screenshots on 1UP. That game is supposed to be a launch title? Laughable.

The only game that looks "next gen" is Ghost Recon. You can find some screens online. It will take a lot of pretty videos to impress me now.

I kept telling everyone that the next-gen systems aren't gonna look any better than the 3D Mark 2005 benchmarking program. Graphics for the next-gen systems are here already...that's what most people don't get. Will the graphics be good? Hell yeah, but they're not gonna be a massive jump like PS1 to PS2. Later down the road there WILL be a huge graphics jump however.

-Lasereth

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lasereth

I'm going to put it a little closer... the machine won't hit its graphic stride at launch. People are just getting to push the hardware now and by that I mean like a grocery cart push, later in the lifecycle we'll see more incredible effects as they push the "limits" of the hardware.

Exactly. Compare what we have now (RE4, Halo 2, GTA:SA) to what we started with (DOA2, 4x4 Evo) for an idea of what things will be like at the end of the cycle for this gen consoles.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoganSnake

Are you aware that those screens of PD0 were of the game running on ALPHA dev. kits? It was only using 2 of the 3 CPUs, and a regular ATI X800/X850 series of graphics card (Where as the final GPU for the Xbox 360 will be more powerful than ATI's current top-of-the-line graphics card, the X850.)

Quote:

Xbox 360's GPU is based on ATI's next-generation graphics chip, putting it at least one generation beyond its current X850 card for PCs.

The GPU runs at 500MHz and features 48 shader units, which are not directly comparable to traditional pixel pipelines. Rather than having pixel and vertex shaders work as separated elements like on current PC video cards, each shader unit can perform either pixel or vertex shading as necessary. This allows the system to move performance to where it's needed, either for more effects or more raw geometry rendering.

Basically, it's fast as all hell.

The Xbox 360 make's use of a shared memory architecture. That means that the system's 512MB of RAM will be used for graphics and texture memory as well as things like sound, animation source and of course, the actual game code itself.

While the majority of the graphics data will be housed in the shared system RAM, like textures and the like, the video framebuffer will use NEC's dedicated embedded DRAM technology. Long story short, by embedding the framebuffer RAM directly onto the graphics chip, Xbox 360 will be able to perform post-processing features much more quickly, like anti-aliasing and motion blur. The Xbox 360 has 10MB of embedded DRAM.

Quoted from http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/608/608394p3.html

Dark Sector trailer runs on a year old technology. It looks leagues better than PD0 which is supposed to be a launch title. You're saying that in the next few months they will update character models from 5,000 polys (Leon Kennedy on GC is 10,000 polys), sharpen textures, add tons of detail, and get frame rate up from UNDER 20 fps? Okay, we'll se.

Seeing the games in hi-def is going to be truly amazing.