E3 2005 - Xbox 360 Movie Collection
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Here is another batch of Xbox 360 movies, available for download in hi-res versions.
Press 'read more' to see footage from
Demonik,
Kameo
Elements of Power,
Dead Rising,
Frame City Killer
and more.
Enjoy :)
A nice collection of Xbox 360 E3 movies has been gathered together by gamershell and posted up for download, just the thing you need to dust of that unbearable anticipation and cool you down for a few hours at least.
http://www.gamershell.com/news/22279.html
Video game wars - SONY Playstation 3 vs. Xbox 360
In the battle for the living room, Sony and Microsoft debuted their visions of the next-generation in home entertainment. Microsoft delivered the first blow with a televised MTV reveal to debut the Xbox 360. While Sony waited until a press conference at E3 to unravel the next Playstation 3. Both camps played a big numbers game as to which was the more powerful platform. But Sony's specs and demonstration fired a mighty blow to the perception of Xbox 360's top technology.
Microsoft reiterated its strategy for the Xbox 360 at E3. Attendees at the company's press conference received several welcome announcements, like backwards compatibility for top Xbox titles, and a development deal with Japanese publisher Square Enix for Final Fantasy XI on Xbox 360. Still, the leaks of information had drained long ago and there was nothing left to reveal about the 360 other than a free face plate to people who attended the press conference.
Sony kept all information about the next Playstation under tight Saran Wrap. No leaks, no information, and optimism kept the buzz afloat, as the company pumped waves of specs, tech demos, and works in progress to a packed studio space at Sony Pictures Studios. The crowd was floored by technical demonstrations that were manipulated in real time to establish the first-impressions of the Playstation 3. From Alfred Molina's rendered face to an Eye Toy demonstration that manipulated water in virtual reality, the audience was shocked. The reaction was exactly what Sony had hoped to evoke and it made the Xbox 360 looked like last generation before it hit the first retail store.
That's not to say that there wasn't some controversy to Sony's demonstrations. After the show, it was revealed that several technology demos were rendered by computer graphics studios. The Playstation 3 itself also looked like a mammoth the size of the original Xbox. The awkward batarang controller also received more than a few scoffs. Still, Epic Games' demo representing two-months of work on the Playstation 3 hardware was enough to make any skeptics eat their words.
Microsoft did gain the advantage in one big gaming area - Xbox Live. Sony did not present any viable solution to online gaming nor touch on plans for a budding community to compete with the monstrous 2 million subscribers for Xbox Live. That's not to say that Sony can't build one, and with built-in Wi-Fi there will most likely be an out-of-box service.
Microsoft also had several playable Xbox 360 titles at the show, including Sega's excellent Full Auto, and EA's swerving Need for Speed Most Wanted. Still, neither were good representatives of what the 360 hardware is capable of, nor a leap in gameplay.
Sony had acheived what it had set out do at E3 - make the Xbox 360 look like a minor leap in graphics technology. An unfair plight being that the company only displayed demos and not real software. But with the reputation of the Playstation and Playstation 2 behind it, we can believe that the company will render its promises into reality.
Microsoft www.xbox360.com website is live now
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Microsoft Xbox 360 Intro - Microsoft Xbox 360 review - Video Game Consoles
Microsoft finally unveiled its new game console to the world in a splashy television special broadcast on MTV Thursday night, confirming many rumors and leaks that had kept gaming fans buzzing for months, but leaving many specifics unanswered.
Upside: The new Xbox is notably smaller and more curvaceous than its brutish predecessor. The front panel is dominated by an oversize power button, but the look and feel can be customized with a variety of interchangeable faceplates. Furthermore, the Xbox 360 can be mounted vertically or horizontally, à la the PlayStation 2.
Under the hood, the Xbox 360 is a formidable piece of hardware. In addition to an IBM PowerPC-based CPU running at 3.2GHz and half a gigabyte of RAM, the 360 sports a customized ATI graphics processor capable of advanced antialiasing and shader effects. What that technical jargon means, in practice, is that new Xbox will have the processing power to deliver true 720p and 1080i wide-screen HDTV images for all of its games (by contrast, most games for the original Xbox maxed out at a DVD-level 480p). Multichannel surround sound is also standard, and the 360 natively supports up to four wireless controllers to cut down on cable clutter.
The success of the current generation of Xbox Live has led Microsoft to expand and enhance the next generation of the broadband online service. It will now be available in Silver and Gold tiers, with the former offering limited functionality to all Xbox 360 users, and the latter continuing the premium services Xbox Live users currently enjoy. But the big step up is the Xbox Live Marketplace, which will serve as an online launch platform for downloading value-added content, such as new demos, levels, maps, and skins.
Perhaps most interesting is the litany of Xbox 360's nongaming capabilities. Its built-in ability to serve as a Media Center Extender will let users stream digital video, audio, and photos from networked PCs running Windows XP Media Center Edition. Microsoft is also promising the "ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras, and Windows XP-based PCs." Furthermore, the company is touting a video camera attachment, which presumably connects to one of the Xbox 360's three USB 2.0 ports, but it's unclear whether it is intended as a videoconferencing-style Webcam or an EyeToy-like gaming accessory--or both.
Downside: The Xbox 360 certainly offers a universe of potential--but the devil's in the details. Microsoft still hasn't confirmed bundling details and pricing, so we don't know if the detachable 20GB hard drive will ship with all Xbox 360s or be available only as an upgrade. Widely leaked photos, meanwhile, have shown Xbox Live headsets and a DVD-style remote control--both of which required an additional purchase for the current Xbox. The same questions apply to the wireless controllers, wireless networking options (the company says it's Wi-Fi ready, but doesn't provide details), and even connectivity details. Will high-def output require an add-on accessory, as with the original Xbox, and will it be a component or HDMI connection? Similarly, Xbox Live Marketplace sounds cool, until you realize that there's no guarantee that those levels, maps, and skins will be free.
More importantly, is the Xbox 360 already obsolete? That's the take you'll likely hear from Sony. The 360 uses the aging DVD format, while Sony's PlayStation 3 employs next-generation Blu-ray discs, which are capable of storing several times more data than standard DVDs and can play back high-definition movies as well.
An even bigger question may be, is Microsoft overreaching? One key to the success of the original Xbox was that it was (and is) a great gaming machine. Yes, the Xbox 360's enhanced media features sound intriguing, but will they simply amount to bloatware that prevents the console from reaching its true gaming potential? Who wants to play MP3s on a game console, for instance, if it means living with the possibility of a Windows-style blue screen of death in the middle of a Halo death match?
Finally, Microsoft has remained mum on whether the 360 is backward compatible with the current Xbox. Halo 2 addicts may very well need to keep Big Black in the entertainment rack for the foreseeable future.
Outlook: Now that the curtain is up on the Xbox 360, you're likely to hear a string of questions, from the watercooler to the financial pages: Is the Xbox 360 a bold new direction or a yawn-inducing retread? The most powerful gaming console ever or a sad second fiddle to the latest from Sony and Nintendo? The ultimate home entertainment device or a watered-down jack-of-all-trades? But there's really only one question that matters to the legion of fans who will be considering whether to plunk down hundreds of dollars on a new Xbox 360: What about the games? The MTV special showed brief glimpses of some impressive-looking titles: Madden NFL 06, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Gears of War, Ghost Recon 3, Quake 4, and Call of Duty 2. All of them are likely examples of the sort of must-have third-party titles that will look better on the 360 than on any of the previous-generation consoles (PS2, GameCube, and the original Xbox). But Microsoft also needs to deliver top-caliber exclusives--such as the much-anticipated Perfect Dark Zero--that will help draw fans to its new console, just as past Xbox-only games (Halo, Jade Empire, Ninja Gaiden) made the original a favorite. If Microsoft can make good on that potential, the Xbox 360 could be an all-around hit, regardless of what Sony and Nintendo have waiting in the wings.
More Xbox 360 Rumors
We have been keeping you up to date on the latest Xbox 360° rumors as they appear, but this one takes the cake. Claiming they have an inside source, Kotaku has revealed more Xbox 360° details. If they are right, the next Xbox will certainly look a lot better looking than the first – it will be a sleek silver set top worthy of being a countertop display, have curves instead of angles, and will be able to stand upright much like the PS2.
Its side will have an oversized back-lit power button, nicnamed “The Ring of Light”. This Xbox will also be easy to customize with the use of colorful designer face plates that simply pop on and off. Even the dashboard will be customizable to fit each user’s unique taste. Kotaku was even able to confirm some of the inner workings of the Xbox 360°.
The console will feature high definition audio/video, include wireless controllers, and will come in two packages – one with an internal hard drive and another without the hard drive. According to Kotaku’s source, Microsoft has not been able to achieve backward compatible functionality on its next box - but they are working on making it happen. This information confirms some rumors that we have been informing you about, but we must stress that this information has to be considered a rumor until official confirmation is made public by Microsoft. Until that day comes, we can drool over these details
Engadget is reporting that the XBOX 360 will indeed have wireless controllers (a rumor first reported by The Inquirer, I think) and an optional top-mounting hard drive. Of course, this leads everyone to speculate that there will be two models: one with a hard drive (and maybe PVR functionality) and one without (that will be cheaper). Many of the comments on the Engadget story say that MS is making a mistake by not including a hard drive on all models.
I think that the hard drive is an unnecessary expense considering that the current XBOX hard drive is nothing more than a really big memory card. The XBOX 360 will supposedly use a 1GB flash drive, so game saves should be covered. If I can get an XBOX without a hard drive that is relatively inexpensive, then I'm OK without the hard drive.
The bigger question that I want answered (and maybe it has been) is about backwards compatibility. See, if they make the XBOX 360 play XBOX games, then I think a lot of people with go ahead and hack their XBOX (I know I will).
The only reason I haven't done it yet is because I don't want to lose the ability to play games if I screw it up. If the XBOX 360 will play your old games, then there really isn't any reason not to hack the XBOX once the 360 is released.
Xbox 360 specs revealed
A 20GB hard drive, high-def game support and a 500MHz ATI graphics processor: Glimpse the Xbox 360's system performance specifications as provided by Microsoft.
Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
• Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
• Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total
• VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total
• 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
• 1 MB L2 cache
CPU Game Math Performance
• 9 billion dot product operations per second
Custom ATI Graphics Processor
• 500MHz processor
• 10 MB of embedded DRAM
• 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines
• Unified shader architecture
Polygon Performance
• 500 million triangles per second
Pixel Fill Rate
• 16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA
Shader Performance
• 48 billion shader operations per second
Memory
• 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM
• 700 MHz of DDR
• Unified memory architecture
Memory Bandwidth • 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
• 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
• 21.6 GB/s front-side bus
Overall System Floating-Point Performance
• 1 teraflop
Storage
• Detachable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive
• 12x dual-layer DVD-ROM
• Memory Unit support starting at 64 MB
I/O
• Support for up to four wireless game controllers
• Three USB 2.0 ports
• Two memory unit slots
Optimized for Online
• Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features with broadband service, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, gamer profile for digital identity, and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies or listening to music
• Built-in Ethernet port
• Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g
• Video camera ready
Digital Media Support
• Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD
• Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PCs
• Ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive • Custom playlists in every game
• Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
• Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers
High-Definition Game Support
• All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing
• Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported
Audio
• Multichannel surround sound output
• Supports 48KHz 16-bit audio
• 320 independent decompression channels
• 32-bit audio processing
• Over 256 audio channels
System Orientation
• Stands vertically or horizontally
Customizable Face Plates
• Interchangeable to personalize the console
Xbox 360's coming-out party - Latest Pics, Reviews, Games
The redesigned Xbox 360 pales in comparison to the darker original. The new case is the work of San Francisco-based Astro Studios and Japanese design house Hers Experimental Design Laboratory.
Gamers will be able to attach interchangeable faces to the Xbox 360, allowing them to customize the look of their consoles. They'll also be able to change the look of the software menus.
Xbox 360 offers a removable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive for game saves, file downloads, and storage of pictures, music and movies. A player will be able to take games and other media saved on his or her hard drive to a friend's house.
Slots for memory cards are located on the front of the console. Cards will be available in 64MB sizes, although the removable hard drive can usually serve the same function as a memory card.
