The captain sent me this link to the colony video on the 360. This five minute video is more interesting and informative than that dumb Mtv special.

The more I think about it the 'guide' is one of the coolest things coming. Just think about the possibilites here for delivering content to the TV such as movies, music, news, feeds etc. I'm not sure how they will use it in the end but the possibilities are impressive.

Link? I'm glad to see on-demand media delivery to the living room becoming a reality. It's been talked about for so long, it will be a big change when this heats up.

Paul says: Talk amongst yourselves, I'll give you a topic: XBox 360 Design Article. Discuss!

"They loved the use of chrome as an accent color."

OMG. Why is this so popular? It's gone way to far in the Apple UI too.

Beyond that, I'm glad to see design being more a part of product development. Hopefully the mass market manufacturers will finally realize this and we'll start getting some good looking stuff that's not from Apple or Sony.

I'd love to see a picture of the Xbox2 next to the Mini to get an idea of size. I've seen it next to the controller, but it's still hard to tell.

In general, I like the new design except for the chrome CD slot and the really bad XBOX font on it (which I've seen panned on other sites too).

Some screenshots.

Also, a Wired story.

Hey the link the 'proxy' comment is missing.

The screens shots are pretty cool. The most obvious thing is the lighting improvements. More reflections, shadows etc.

Xbox 360 will be backwards compatible and play Xbox games.

Interesting that they are being careful not to claim 100% compat. But I guess they are just covering the bases. I hope they pull this off, not because I need it, but mostly because I only need one console connected to my TV.

Updates on 360 backwards compat straight from a dev on that team:

Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility

Ha ha! That dude uses a Powerbook!

Yeah, check is resume. He has programmed for nearly everything.

Xbox 360's ass kicked by PS3?

Xbox 360 trumped by PS3?

Whatever. Buying 2 consoles is still cheaper than paying $900 for a high end video card. The convenient thing is that one console is concave, the other is convex... they're stackable!

Well it will be interesting to watch.
The PS2 is the current market leader and it's hardware specs are inferior to the Xbox. I guess it's going to come down to 'games' and the total experience. Clearly Xbox Live has made for the best overall online gaming experience anywhere, console or PC. MS is really building on this platform and it will really kick. We'll have to see what Sony is able to put together. Also, as for raw CPU power, I'm not convinced that the theoretical performance will be achieved in the real world. From my research on the architecture it may be hard to actually write code that will keep all those cells busy. Admittedly that is a nice problem to have. Specs aside though I guess some of the demos they have been showing are mind blowing. So far I’ve only seen part of the unreal demo and it was insane. All I’ve seen so far from the 360 have been 3 second glimpses of future games.

Yeah, I'm definitely getting the Xbox because of Live... that has completely changed the way I play video games (i.e. I actually play them now). However, if there is an awesome PS3 game that I need to have and isn't on Xbox... well, spending $300 on a second console isn't going to stop me from buying it.

More Xbox 360 vs PS3.

Sony's E3 presentation

This is almost 2 hours long! There are some amazing demos in it though. Too bad I have to watch them in low res streaming format.

Another Xbox 360 vs. PS3 Story

One thing that I found interesting about the PS3 was the two HDMI outputs. They show these being used as either one ultra wide game with two monitors or as a secondary display for stats or UI to backup the main game play. For me the there is still one Holy Grail in gaming that still has not happened. This one excites me more than flying car.. Real VR games. The main show stopper has always been the need for serious graphics power.. in STEREO. Hmmm, if the PS3 has TWO 1080 HD outputs maybe, just maybe someone could hook these up to a nice head mounted display and make this happen. I can dream anyway.

No matter which console wins, having real HD gaming in a low cost console will pretty much mean the death of PC gaming. At least for me. Resolution, performance and input device have been the top limitations quoted as a reason to play on PC over console. These new generation boxes will definitly take care of res and power. As for controller, it honestly doesn't take that long to get used to the controller for FPS games and once your over that it's smooth sailing.

One last thing, with the introduction of these two gaming platforms, people will finally have an excuse to by an HDTV.

So, how about $500 for a PS3?

Ok that is steep, but not unexpected I guess. The last price point was 299. Personally I think anything above that will be a tough sell for most. My guess is that the base 360 will be closer to the 300.00 mark (or maybe $360.00). Of course that would be without HD and with a wired controller. -But that is just a guess.

This guy works on the Xbox and wrote some comparisons to the PS3. Of course, since he has a vested interest in the Xbox and neither systems actually exist yet, you need a large grain of salt to take with it.

Well most of the talk from the PS3 presentation was the killzone video. The current opinion in the industry is that this was just a concept video, not really running on the hardware. Translation; its CG all the way. Here is a quote: "it's basically a representation of the look and feel of the game we're trying to make." Another quote hints that they aren't even up and running on real hardware yet: "it's actually hard to mimic it on our development PCs, we have to see it on the PS3 hardware itself."

So my question is do you think it is misleading for Sony to represent all this stuff as if it is real game footage? I have to give the Xbox team some credit for only showing real game footage.

Ign Interview

Wow, Jack Tretton, Sony's executive VP says in an interview that it was in game footage.

Interview with Jack Tretton

All I have to say is are you serious? The developer already said it was a 'representation'. Plus the video has cut seens in it which don't make it feel like reall game footage. It pans away from the first person view multiple times to see the scene from other angles. I doubt that would happen in the middle of a real battle in the game.
So basically I'm expecting Jack will have to put a spin on these words sometime down the line.

How much is it going to cost to play next gen games?

Well it didn't include the incremental cost of the 'extra' stuff you need to buy with consoles, such as extra controller, hard drive, high def cable, memory card etc. But if you look back at how much many of us have paid in the past to build high end PC gaming rigs that number is reasonable. The nice thing, though, is that if you do spend the money on a nice monitor and sound system, you get a lot of reuse for watching TV and movies etc.

I'm worried that they're starting to talk about $59.99 games. I predicted this would happen several years ago when you boys got enthralled with the XBox. Despite the fact that there is virtualy NO piracy on console games, the price still goes up... Goes to show that piracy is a direct market control of pricing on games. Once the threat of piracy is gone, the few large console makers can jack up prices.

The console is still the razor, and the game the blade, so I guess if the console loses $200 and it costs another $10 for each game and $50 for online service, I'll about break even with the small number of games I play. Anyway, I always take the "amount they're losing" with a chunk of rock salt.

Remember they also can make a ton of money nickel and diming you with pay content like the $%^& cell phone providers and their ringtones/background screens. I really don't like the trend of a few large game platforms controlling the channel.

You console fanboys will all wish for the days of PC gaming. You'll see. ;-)

I think it has more to do with the fact that the hardware is so powerful, that it takes legions of artists and engineers to make a game these days. The graphics and physics engines might be reusable between games and certainly between levels of the same game, but artwork doesn't scale that way. Each level requires artwork and design, and that means more people.

Last weekend I installed DosBox and played Space Quest 1 for a very enjoyable hour.

I personally would rather run the rat race of having to upgrade my console every four years or so than my video card in some giant machine that takes up a whole desk. Before the XBox, I never had enough $$ nor was I fast enough to keep the proper hardware needed on my desk. Then when I went all laptop, my PC gaming days were over (other than the classics I can run on Dosbox or virtual PC).

Doesn't having to write for a specific platform force developers to squeeze as much out of the platform as possibe? For me and my laptop enslaved ass, even with games costing $60 it makes more economical sense than playing $50 games on a $2k desktop.

The laptop factor is a good point. For me one of the main reasons keeping me from switching over to a laptop full time a few years ago was graphics power. In fact I remember searching and searching for a laptop with a good mix of graphics, size, and price before I just gave up on the graphics. In the last year 90% of my gaming was met by the Xbox. It would have been more if I didn't build a monster gaming rig just to play HL2. I bought 3 PC games in 2004. I suspect that with Xbox 360 I'll be down to 1 really cool PC games every 18 months. (I'm still waiting for Duke Nukem Forever ;)

$300 Xbox by Thanksgiving?

More here.

High definition Xbox 360 videos.

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