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[Mooreberg]

Q: Why even offer the core package, its seems quite useless
A: great question!

enthusiastic, this one is :lol

 

[Musashi Wins!]

madden next gen+$299 core pack=joe casual laughing at you while sipping his beer.

for every casual joe doing that, I'll join with 10 other snickering ones on PS3. won't that be a stunning success?

 

[border]

J Allard (Expert):
Q: Why even offer the core package, its seems quite useless
A: the significance of this message can not be understated.

:lol :lol :lol :lol

 

[TheOMan]

And thats different from xbox how?

You're absolutely correct - it isn't much different from the original XBox (although that was not certainly how it was marketed). I'm thinking people were hoping this time around it would become *more* than a glorified memory card. That may be where some of the frustration is coming from because it seems now that MS has given up on that actually happening. Not sure I blame them though as if it were to happen, it probably would have already on the XBox.

 

[rastex]

Well he did answer my question, you can stream videos ONLY if you have a Media Center PC, you can stream MP3 and pictures with normal PCs.

Yup, also answered another one of my questions about using USB storage, unfortunately it was in the negative. But he did mention network storage but didn't say if it'd be available at launch (bah!). His response on splitting the market was pretty interesting.

 

[super-heated plasma]

Q: Why not package the Xbox 360 with only the hard drive and a wireless controller for $349.99, so that you can have one SKU


A: good question and one of the many combinations we looked at. with our research with hard core gamers, retailers, and the broader market, we felt like these two configurations were the right starting point. the great news is that the way we have desgined the system in a modular way we can easily adjust these configurations over time.

Looks like some people will get there wish sometime down the line. Still sucks not having the HDD standard though.

 

[Scott]

don't worry, your ps3 is coming. someday, they'll grace us with real videos indicative of the systems power instead of cgi.

Haven't they already done that? Hell, didn't they do that when the system was revealed? I mean, I could have sworn I was shown realtime vids from Square Enix, Epic, EA, Insomniac, Bandai, etc...

But apparently I have to still wait? Weird!

it was worth noting that the ps2 launched at $368 (in japan) with no hard drive, no online service, no mu, no wireless, no voice, no network adapter, no remote, and only support for 2 controllers.

Ah, I was wondering what "mu" meant when this bit was pasted in #ga... Reading over the rest of this, I see now that it stands for "Memory Unit," which makes it "worth nothing" that J. Allard has this bit wrong, as a memory card was included with the PS2 at the JP launch.

(Expert)? Heh.

 

[brocke]

The main loss was because MS did not own the chip design and had no control over manufacturing and pricing for the chips in the Xbox. On top of that, they did not scale the Hard Drive as time went on. 8/10GB plates were more expensive than 20GB plates at a point in time, yet they did/could do nothing, because they were stuck in a contract like R.Kelly was stuck in a closet

They sued Nvidia because they were working them over in prices
And part of the reason the Xbox could hang with the PCs (Running games from 2003 and 2004 like Doom 3) was the Hard Drive. Preloading rox.

Unfortunatly, I think this lack of backwards compatibility is really going to be a big weight holding the 360 down from potential customers jumping on. Value wise they look at both the PS3 and Rev. PS3 will have "FULL" backwards compatibility with both generations of playstation and Rev will have backwards compatibility with almost every single Nintendo game created. This alone will make the value of these two systems go up much more than the 360.

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

I missed the chat, I was on the toilet for a while, but I did get some time to think stuff over.
I've came to an astounding conclusion.

You pay $100 for a giant memory card and 25% backwards compatibility.

or

You pay $99 for a new Xbox and get a giant memory card and 100% backwards compatibility.

 

[sangreal]

and Rev will have backwards compatibility with almost every single Nintendo game created.

Repurchasing games is not backwards compatibility.

 

[DopeyFish]

I missed the chat, I was on the toilet for a while, but I did get some time to think stuff over.
I've came to an astounding conclusion.

You pay $100 for a giant memory card and 25% backwards compatibility.

or

You pay $99 for a new Xbox and get a giant memory card and 100% backwards compatibility.

backwards compatibility will be updated as quickly as possible.

 

[Musashi Wins!]

Repurchasing games is not backwards compatibility.

to say the least.

 

[polg]

Everything about 360 so far seems so rushed and with launch only several months away, why do the majority of titles look marginally better than current generation games?

thank you... I said exactly that in another thread and ppl looked at me like saying ""wtf are you talking about"

 

[Lunar Aura]

for every casual joe doing that, I'll join with 10 other snickering ones on PS3. won't that be a stunning success?

you still think sony can launch a blu ray enabled system at $299? :lol even though it will no doubt be more powerful than the 360(on paper)? think it'll have a harddrive too? :lol :lol :lol wow. just wow. with BR i dont even think a core ps3 is an option for sony financially. their shareholders are already losing patience with sony as a whole as it is. even if the system were $349 at that price it wouldnt launch until late 2006 at the earliest. i strongly believe MS is playing time as a factor in all this.

 

[Spike]

Q: Why not package the Xbox 360 with only the hard drive and a wireless controller for $349.99, so that you can have one SKU
A: good question and one of the many combinations we looked at. with our research with hard core gamers, retailers, and the broader market, we felt like these two configurations were the right starting point. the great news is that the way we have desgined the system in a modular way we can easily adjust these configurations over time.

Good. I'll just wait for the eventual release of the system with HDD and wireless controller bundle. Should be right around the time the PS3 launches...

 

[brocke]

to say the least.

There's nothing in the term backward's compatibility that suggests you will recieve that compatibility for free. And for all we know, you may not even have to repurchase the games. This is speculating, but there could be a system where you get all the Nintendo games you own validated and then available for free online. Did you really expect Nintendo to make their entire library of games available online for free?

 

[----]

Im still waiting for someone to tell me what the standard harddrive in xbox brought to the table other than slightly improved load times in some games. Developers never took advantage of it, seems to me like 99 percent of them dont give a crap if its there or not. Whats pretty funny is the hundreds of trolls flooding the chat so they can start running damage controll the instant he says anything.

From Major Nelson's site:

I e-mailed Major Nelson the day the pricing was announced about the lack of a standard hard drive and a few other things. I hope he forwards that to you. I also wanted to add some additional thoughts about the matter now that I’ve had more time to think about it.

First of all, I wanted to point out an inconsistency from something a few people posted earlier. Every Xbox 360 game will be able to play custom soundtracks even without a hard drive by utilizing an external MP3 player like an iPod.

That being said, there are other points that are still valid:

Backwards compatibility is definitely out the window without a hard drive. Game saves, patches, and the like will obviously fill up a 64MB memory unit extremely fast. I wish I had some raw numbers, but I know memory units are not Elder Scrolls, KOTOR, or Jade Empire friendly. Also, game levels such as the Halo 2 multiplayer maps will load slower every time instead of just loading slow once. I also think it’s ridiculously ignorant to say that games will faster straight from the DVD-ROM. A 12x DVD-ROM will read at 15,000 KBps (roughly 14.6 MBps) max. I think the slowest SATA Hard drives these days run 150MBps max. That is 10x the speed. I’ve even read that some SATA drives are as fast as 3Gbps (384MBps if my math is correct). What is the speed of that detachable external 20GB SATA hard drive? Given that there are six possible threads running at a time for the CPU, I don’t think pre-caching information on the HDD can really affect the frame rate of games compared to the idea of it not being there at all.

There is also one key feature the hard drive gives developers that I don’t think anyone has mentioned and it will affect gameplay. The hard drive is more important than just load times. If there is a fractured HDD install base, we will almost certainly lose persistence in game levels or some level of graphical quality if not both. From what I know the current Xbox keeps game levels persistent by saving changes to the environment such as a building being blown up, tire marks on the ground, car paint marks on a rail, a spoiler that was broken off because someone ran into the back of your car, etc. to the HDD until the gamer walked or drove back to that area in the level/racetrack (Forza). Are we to believe that the original Xbox’s 64MB of RAM is capable of storing all statistical information about a certain game and still keep Halo 2’s level of graphical fidelity and that the HDD did nothing to help achieve this? You might say that this doesn’t really mean anything because the 360 has 8x the RAM of the original, but I would ask you how much RAM do you think PC’s will use for their requirements 5 years from now? This is a console with a 5-year shelf life. How many people thought 64MB of RAM was a ton in 2001? Also remember that both the 360 and the original Xbox use the same RAM for the CPU as well as the GPU.

With the current state of the 360, there is no guaranteed swap file. Does that mean that we’ll lose those changes to the environments? What if FASA Studios made a game like MechAssault 2 on the 360 and couldn’t count on a hard drive? There are Mechs that can jump on top of buildings in game levels. Are we to expect that a building that gets crumbled will magically reappear after a certain amount of time because there isn’t enough memory to remember that particular item’s state or are we to expect that the game cannot look as good as it could have because the developer really wants the persistent features in order to keep that gameplay balanced? How many developers do you think will burden themselves with setting two different quality levels to maximize graphical fidelity for the users with a hard drive while accommodating the ones without one by downgrading the graphical quality in order to keep the persistent environments or will they just not make levels large enough to reach this barrier? Games are getting more difficult to develop and gamers want bigger, better, faster, and more of everything. Is Microsoft going to stick it to developers who will then stick it to gamers because of a few bucks at the launch of a 5-year console? You, personally said at GDC 2005 that with XNA, the only constraint to developers would be their imagination. By not having a hard drive, Microsoft is indeed constraining that imagination. Developers won’t be able to make games as beautiful as they can be or if they do, we lose our persistent/changeable environments or the levels will be smaller or they will have to make a decision to just shaft the users without a hard drive with something cut or shaft all the users because of a deadline. Also, no one will know what the final percentage of users with a HDD will be unless it’s 100% from the start. How many other ideas are there now or in the future that would require a hard drive that won’t happen because of this move?

You have a golden opportunity to straighten things out and future-proof this console and give the gamers and developers what they really want. The first generation of 360 games probably won’t suffer from any of this because it is such a leap in memory and the developers really don’t have the time to tap into its full potential. However, when they do really want to start tapping into the untapped potential of those 3 cores, they’ll hit this brick wall unless you change things now. This is a genuine advantage you have if you don’t blow it. It’s a lot easier to add more power as standard than to cut something out. On top of that, this is huge bang for the buck too since it’s detachable.

What I’d recommend is making the HDD standard in every Xbox 360 now and in all future releases. Tell developers that they can rely on a hard drive being there. You also need to let them know exactly how fast it is. Knowing that this “Ferrari” can take a sharp turn at 80mph is important and will keep them from either crashing into the wall or taking the turn at 20 just to be on the safe side. Consoles are meant to be standard hardware so the software can be optimized to that specific hardware with zero variations. As I said in my earlier e-mail to Major Nelson, the hard drive is much more than a peripheral that can be used as a big memory card. It should be an integral part of the system if only for the reasons above.

Thank you for taking the time to read this long dissertation. Please address this in the chat tomorrow. I’ll be looking forward to hearing what you have to say and basing my purchasing decision on it.

Jeff

Understand now? Basically developers are losing the ability to create persistent worlds unless they are willing to sacrifice graphics quality by using the RAM. It's a compromise. A big one in my opinion.

 

[Spike]

you still think sony can launch a blu ray enabled system at $299? :lol even though it will no doubt be more powerful than the 360(on paper)? think it'll have a harddrive too? :lol :lol :lol wow. just wow. with BR i dont even think a core ps3 is an option for sony financially. their shareholders are already losing patience with sony as a whole as it is.

Didn't they say the same thing when both the PS1 and PS2 were about to be launched?

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

And to further my quest for enlightenment, and learn how to spell the word, I've came to another conclusion.

Microsoft is going to charge you $100 for a 20GB hard drive that you can pull in and out of your 360.

Sony charged you $100 for a 40GB hard drive that was twice the size of the Xbox360 HDD, came with two games, and offered free email and chat features for Play Online.

*Waits for RE4 so it can be installed on the 40GB hard drive*

 

[border]

Didn't they say the same thing when both the PS1 and PS2 were about to be launched?

Everyone expected PS1 to match Saturn's $399 price.....and PS2 estimates were something like like $400-500.

 

[nextgeneration]

thank you... I said exactly that in another thread and ppl looked at me like saying ""wtf are you talking about"

What concerns me is that with launch just mere months away, that so many of the games are still underwhelming. People keep saying that the hardware is not done, the games are not done; but we're getting close to launch, for heavens sakes!

Yes, some of the games do look very good and are impressive, but many of them are not. As a potential buyer of 360, this is cause for concern.

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

From Major Nelson's site:



Understand now? Basically developers are losing the ability to create persistent worlds unless they are willing to sacrifice graphics quality by using the RAM. It's a compromise. A big one in my opinion.

3 words.

Rogue Galaxy ... Baby!

 

[brocke]

And to further my quest for enlightenment, and learn how to spell the word, I've came to another conclusion.

Microsoft is going to charge you $100 for a 20GB hard drive that you can pull in and out of your 360.

Sony charged you $100 for a 40GB hard drive that was twice the size of the Xbox360 HDD, came with two games, and offered free email and chat features for Play Online.

*Waits for RE4 so it can be installed on the 40GB hard drive*

Where was the logic in making the harddrive to appeal towards mainly the hardcore audience? I don't know many casuals that would carry around their hard drives to friends houses for LAN parties. Plus, I'm betting many people would be stupid enough to leave those hard drives in a hot car. They are trying to appear as if they are appealing to casuals on one level, while they completely ignore the needs of them on another. Why couldn't they just compromise.

 

[Lunar Aura]

Didn't they say the same thing when both the PS1 and PS2 were about to be launched?

and since then sonys business as a whole has been on the slide. movie business? down. TVs? HA! sonys name aint what it used to be there either. they sank billions into R&D/manufacturing for the ps3 which puts them futher into the red and you dont think all those factors of TODAY isnt gonna effect the price? its not 1994 anymore. its not 1999 anymore. Money Is A Major Issue or...MIAMI for short. :lol

 

[Musashi Wins!]

Did you really expect Nintendo to make their entire library of games available online for free?

no. there is nothing that nintendo does that ever led me to believe that these old and wildly available games would be free.

 

[TheDuce22]

From Major Nelson's site:



Understand now? Basically developers are losing the ability to create persistent worlds unless they are willing to sacrifice graphics quality by using the RAM. It's a compromise. A big one in my opinion.

So it allowed for tire marks that are saved and Halo 2 statictics, wow thats impressive. Those are 1st party games, the ones that should be truly pushing the hardware. I can totally see how a harddrive makes all the difference now.

 

[Spike]

Repurchasing games is not backwards compatibility.

You don't purchase the games one by one from my understanding.

In a interview I had read a little while ago, they plan on selling some kind of points card. Then you use the points to download which games you'd like. Not a bad idea.

Also, they said that some games would have these points cards included in them. Maybe Special Edition versions of games will include a greater valued points card as an incentive for consumers to purchase them.

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

Their shareholders are already losing patience with sony as a whole as it is.

All 90+ million of them?

 

[Lunar Aura]

What I don't understand is with launch just mere months away, that so many of the games are still underwhelming. People keep saying that the hardware is not done, the games are not done; but we're getting close to launch, for heavens sakes!

Yes, some of the games do look very good and are impressive, but many of them are not. As a potential buyer of 360, this is cause for concern.

fantavision? the bouncer? tekken tag tounament? PS2 looked like someones arsehole compared to the DC around that time and look at where the ps2 is now? #1.

 

[Musashi Wins!]

you still think sony can launch a blu ray enabled system at $299? :lol even though it will no doubt be more powerful than the 360(on paper)? think it'll have a harddrive too? :lol :lol :lol wow. just wow. with BR i dont even think a core ps3 is an option for sony financially. their shareholders are already losing patience with sony as a whole as it is. even if the system were $349 at that price it wouldnt launch until late 2006 at the earliest. i strongly believe MS is playing time as a factor in all this.

I expect that they will launch a premium system for a premium price. but that the premium system part will probably be more convincing. with software to match. I could of course be wrong, my problem is that now I'll probably wait to find out.

 

[Piepz]

All 90+ million of them?

The real number should be 45 million, because I know LOTS of people who are on their 3rd PS2 right now... (Sony quality...)

 

[Lunar Aura]

oh. MIAMI.

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

Money Is A Major Issue or...MIAMI for short. :lol

And in the case of the original Xbox 'Four Billion Dollar Loss' or... 'We Screwed Up' for short.

 

[nextgeneration]

fantavision? the bouncer? tekken tag tounament? PS2 looked like someones arsehole compared to the DC around that time and look at where the ps2 is now? #1.

True, many of the launch ps2 games weren't that impressive, either. Good point. As a gamer, I just hope that what's being displayed so far for 360 is not representative of the system's lack of power. That is my main concern right now, as the games displayed so far don't exactly instill a lot of confidence in me of a system that's supposed to be "next generation."

 

[Lunar Aura]

And in the case of the original Xbox 'Four Billion Dollar Loss' or... 'We Screwed Up' for short.

looks like MS has stayed pretty steady although volitile. not nearly the same drop that sony has shown.

 

[xsarien]

fantavision? the bouncer? tekken tag tounament? PS2 looked like someones arsehole compared to the DC around that time and look at where the ps2 is now? #1.

The difference is that every PS2 - off the shelf - played PS1 games, which were still plenty popular (and in some cases, fairly new) by the time the PS2 came out.

If you want that kind of security for your XBox games, you have to spend $100 more.

 

[border]

The real number should be 45 million, because I know LOTS of people who are on their 3rd PS2 right now... (Sony quality...)

Everybody that says this is never able to explain why the PS2 software tie ratio is the same as for every other system. If half the systems are broken then that means people would have to be buying twice as many games as owners of other systems. Doesn't seem likely.

movie business? down.

Net income from Sony pictures last year is double what it was in 2000/2001.

 

[Lunar Aura]

The difference is that every PS2 - off the shelf - played PS1 games, which were still plenty popular (and in some cases, fairly new) by the time the PS2 came out.

If you want that kind of security for your XBox games, you have to spend $100 more.

:lol :lol :lol

wtf? this has nothing to do with anything. i mean i see where you are coming from but come on. i say DVD was more a factor for sony being successful back then. not backward compatabilty. You didnt hear people saying "welp atleast i can still play my ps1 games." no. you heard them saying "well atleast i still have a cool DVD player"

due to fuzzy math. LITERALLY. do you reaaaaaaaaally think sony would be where they are financially if all was ok? its not. the charts dont lie. the shareholders dont lie.

 

[Spike]

and since then sonys business as a whole has been on the slide. movie business? down. TVs? HA! sonys name aint what it used to be there either. they sank billions into R&D/manufacturing for the ps3 which puts them futher into the red and you dont think all those factors of TODAY isnt gonna effect the price? its not 1994 anymore. its not 1999 anymore. Money Is A Major Issue or...MIAMI for short. :lol

Do you think that the Xbox360 could've launched with the system, HDD, and 1 wireless controller for $299?

Why can't the PS3 launch without a HDD for $299?

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

looks like MS has stayed pretty steady although volitile. not nearly the same drop that sony has shown.

All of Sony stock and all of Microsoft stock doesn't represent the Xbox or the PS2.

*sorry, had to make a quick edit. I thought you posted a 5 year chart of Sony but a 1 year chart of MS.*

But the point still stands becuase MS and Sony's profits don't come purely from the consoles.

Change: down 10%

 

[Spike]

looks like MS has stayed pretty steady although volitile. not nearly the same drop that sony has shown.

Try taking Windows out of the equation and let's see how well Microsoft is doing.

 

[xsarien]

wtf? this has nothing to do with anything. i mean i see where you are coming from but come on. i say DVD was more a factor for sony being successful back then. not backward compatabilty. You didnt hear people saying "welp atleast i can still play my ps1 games." no. you heard them saying "well atleast i still have a cool DVD player"

You were talking about launch games sucking, I was merely pointing out that they weren't the only games you could play on the PS2 on day 1.

 

[Lunar Aura]

eh? learn for to read charts. i posted like a 20 year chart for MS and on top of it started that they have been volitile yet steady :lol

"Why can't the PS3 launch without a HDD for $299?"

blu ray.

"Try taking Windows out of the equation and let's see how well Microsoft is doing."

who buys windows? :lol Big business keeps MS alive. not joe consumer. this is common knowledge.

"You were talking about launch games sucking, I was merely pointing out that they weren't the only games you could play on the PS2 on day 1."

my point is who is buying a 360 or a ps3 to play old games? :lol NO ONE!

 

[Scott]

looks like MS has stayed pretty steady although volitile. not nearly the same drop that sony has shown.

Um, look closely at your pictures again: one says "Millions," while the other says "Billions."

Now, looking at that, who lost (a lot) more?

 

[Spike]

:lol :lol :lol

wtf? this has nothing to do with anything. i mean i see where you are coming from but come on. i say DVD was more a factor for sony being successful back then. not backward compatabilty. You didnt hear people saying "welp atleast i can still play my ps1 games." no. you heard them saying "well atleast i still have a cool DVD player"

Exactly, except now they'll be saying "well at least I still have a cool Blu-Ray player."

 

[joaomgcd]

J Allard (Expert):
Q: Why doesn't wifi work out of the box?
A: we worked with game designers and talked to hard core gamers and asked them what their top priorities were and the bulk of our investment went into the silicon to the cpu and the gpu so we would have kick **** games. we had a fixed budget and could not do it all. in the end we had a budget and had to offer wifi as an option but we did decide to add "a" as a standard in addition to b and g. we are also compatible with existing devices already on the makret.

Why isn't anyone mentioning this? This is great news! No more 100$ wi-fi adapter if you don't want to(if I'm understanding the statement correctly).

 

[GitarooMan]

Try taking Windows out of the equation and let's see how well Microsoft is doing.

That's like saying let's take Gameboy out of the equation and let's see how well Nintendo is doing. We're lucky Microsoft has that cashcow or we'd either not be playing Xbox/Xbox360 at all or we'd be paying way more for everything.

 

[xsarien]

looks like MS has stayed pretty steady although volitile. not nearly the same drop that sony has shown.

Why don't you compare the same charts, hm?

 

[border]

due to fuzzy math. LITERALLY. do you reaaaaaaaaally think sony would be where they are financially if all was ok? its not. the charts dont lie. the shareholders dont lie.

What the hell are you talking about? Look up the numbers yourself. Sony Pictures' net income was 35.9 billion yen in 2000, and a mere 4.3 billion yen in 2001. For FY05 it is at 63.9 billion yen. All the charts in the world won't change that.

Don't talk out of your ass just because you know how to type "SNE" into Yahoo Finance.

 

[Mooreberg]

That's like saying let's take Gameboy out of the equation and let's see how well Nintendo is doing. We're lucky Microsoft has that cashcow or we'd either not be playing Xbox/Xbox360 at all or we'd be paying way more for everything.

How much higher were you expecting the pricing to go on a 20GB hard drive? :lol