I just read the USA Today, and I read the online version and they had this to report about the Xbox 360.

So the question is which one is everyone going to get? The $399 version, or the $299 version. I know which one my wife will want me to get.

It looks like the $399 is the better value with everything that you get. If you get the $299 and then want to upgrade, the wireless controller is $49, the hard drive is $99, etc.

Still no official word on the backwards compatibility but the article does mention that you will need the hard drive to do it.

There should be an announcement in the next couple weeks as to when the Xbox 360 will be released.

I just got this article today in my IGN update. At first I was under the impression that “Prey” was only going to be available for the PC. Then I went to gametrailers.com to see if I could find any more gameplay footage (because, man, was I intrigued). I didn’t find any extra footage but I did discover that it will be published for PC and 360! Woot! Check out the article and the movies (you will need a pretty fast connection to do so).

Finally, a ground breaking game built on the Doom3 engine. The combat looks fast paced and tight, the story sounds very intriguing, the graphics are breathtaking and the gameplay is totally unique. Prey is definitely on my list. Wow.

I just read an article about another video game that has politicians stepping in and trying to prevent it from being released. The New York Senator, Charles Schumer, wants to ban the upcoming game “25 to Life�.

For those not familiar with this game you have the ability to choose either a gang and recruit people, or you could choose to be the police. When you are with the gang you go around doing whatever it is that gangs do. Namely robbing, looting, and killing police officers that stand in your way. On the police officer side you defend the city and stop the gangs from doing their evil deeds, arresting them, using excessive force, killing if necessary.
So what is the problem? Sounds like it could be a fun game. Well apparently the Senator doesn’t like the idea of people being able to kill cops in a video game. He says that if the game is released people are going to just start killing cops in real life because they saw it in the game. He goes on to say that the cop killing gameplay is “sickening� and “offends all sensibilities�

Two things, one, doesn’t the Senator have more important matters to attend to? Two, if the Senator did his homework the game just isn’t about killing cops. You can be the cops to stop the gangs. Why aren’t police stations everywhere worried about their job enrollment going up? We all know that everyone who plays the game from the viewpoint of the cops is going to go out and join the local police force and start taking the law into their own hands (that last part was sarcasm, incase you missed it).

I can’t even get into how many games there are where you play as the good guy upholding the law and bad guys try to kill you. That is the element in every game. Good versus evil. Someone has to win. Maybe the Senator would like a game where the two sides could sit down together and talk and negotiate. If they came out with that Senator Charles Schumer would be the first in line at midnight waiting for his copy of the game.

This post is about the Halo Movie Project. I put it here in the General Section since we are talking about a movie, not a game.

I just got the new Official Xbox Magazine and they had an article on the Halo Movie. Talks and negotiations are moving along slowly. There are very few details, here is what we know:

Unfortunately not a lot of movie studios are excited about the project. Here are Microsoft’s demands according to the June 10th New York Times. Microsoft demanded $10 million for the rights to the film, cast and director approval, 15% of gross box office, a production budget of no less than $75 million (that’s before hiring a director and actors), and they want creative control over filming, topped off with 60 first class plane tickets to shuttle Microsoft representitives to the film’s premiere.

On June 6th Microsoft sent out actors dressed in full Master Chief gear to deliver movie scripts to all of the movie studios. While the studio executives read the scripts the Master Chiefs stood there watching the executives every movements. When they were done reading the Master Chiefs took back the scripts and then left in place a movie proposal. Could you imagine that, reading a script nervously as a group of Master Chiefs stares at you. After all of that only Fox and Universal are interested in the project and now everyone is in the negotiating talks.

Microsoft says that they want to be so involved because they do not want the movie to suck. They do not want the movie to be a different idea than what they have already put in place through the games. By being involved they can be assured that the movie will be what they and all of the fans want.

So, who wrote the scipt for the Halo Movie? None other than Alex Garland. He was rumored to be paid around $1 Million to write it. So, who is Alex Garland? Well, he was born in London, England in 1970. He is a writer and on the Internet Movie Database website he currently has five films to his name: The Beach, 28 Days Later, The Tesseract, Sunshine, and then Halo. I don’t know about you but I haven’t seen any of these movies so I don’t know how good of a job he might do.

As for the Official Xbox Magazine, they put together a list of people who they could see as being Master Chief. Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Viggo Mortensen. I will leave that discussion up to someone else for a different time.

This just boils my blood. I, for one, do not own GTA or any of it’s sequals. I’ve never even played one. Why? Because I know what the games are about! I don’t want to play that kind of game…not my taste. My first friggin’ clue was the fact that the name of the game is Grand Theft Auto!

So here comes innocent little Florence, buying the game for her grandson and then appalled because of the content. It’s not like the game came in a black box with no labelling!

This is exactly the kind of ignorant behavior from parents that I was talking about in the post about Senator Clinton’s actions. Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.

In the words of Einstein: “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”

Wow.

Steven Johnson, writing an editorial for the L.A. Times, really hit the nail on the head when he wrote this article. The way the government is pursuing this video game controversy is parodied quite nicely by this quick witted fellow. Gotta love that last line!

Here’s the things I’m going to pre-order for the launch of the Xbox 360:

• Xbox 360
• Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion
• Wireless Adapter
• Play and Charge Unit
• Whatever cables are appropriate - I’m not clear on the distinction between the VGA and Component cables - the VGA says that you need it for HD, but then you can also do HD via Component. Sounds like someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Might have to wait for the official product annoucment on these…
• Second Controller
• Maybe Ghost Recon 3

How about YOU?

The package contents for the Xbox 360 have been revealed. The one feature that I have been most eagerly awaiting - the one that’s kept me sitting on the edge of my seat chewing my fingernails - seems to be less cool then I was hoping. Still gonna buy it all? Sure - but it won’t be as useful - that’s for sure.

Wireless connectivity - that’s where it’s at. People are willing to look over its speed deficiency because it’s so darn effortless. Your original Xbox connects to the network via a 100 Mb/s cable - 100 million bits per second. 802.11b, the standard wireless connection protocol, runs at 11 Mb/s. Yeah - 90% slower, but we still don’t care - we don’t have to muck with cables. The newer 802.11g standard, which the Xbox 360 supports, as well as most all new cards and peripherals, runs at 54 Mb/s - now that’s cool. The best of both worlds, practically!

I was so looking forward to being able to take my Xbox 360 and projector to a friends house, plugging them into each other, and into power, and being able to join in on the Halo parties. No network cables, no controller cables - just power and data. Sigh.

Why am I so down? Because the wireless adapter is OPTIONAL. That’s why. OPTIONAL. It doesn’t work out-of-the-box. That’s as good as nonexistant in big groups. You’ll invite people to a LAN party, and they’ll say:

“Uh. Where do I plug in? Wh…. why are you looking at me that way? Hey, that’s my 360! Hey SToP NOwooooo pleaSe!!

[CRUNCH]

…and we’ll be JUSTIFIED because it’s THEIR fault that we have to dig out a network switch and string SIXTEEN OR MORE cables all over the house just to get everybody to play in the game that was working fine BEFORE THEY GOT HERE!!

Now, I have a network card in my PC, and can’t wait to pump music wirelessly to the Xbox 360 and have it come out through the nice speakers around the TV, as opposed to through the underpowered, old-n-busted speakers next to my computer. Obviously, I’m going to get the adapter. But why should my friends get it? Because of the every-other-month LAN party we throw down? It’s gonna cost like $40 - is everybody really going to buy it?

Yes. At least, it’ll be required for our LAN parties, anyway. I just don’t want to deal with cables any more. I oppose them for ethical, moral, economic, and personal reasons. They’re evil - EEEEEEEEVVVIILLLLLL. This little gadget is a major part of the XBox 360 for me, since the group I run with prefers System Link to Xbox Live (26 year-olds to 14-year olds any day, but that’s a subject for another entry). I consider NOT buying the adapter to be like kissing with one lip: you’ve bought half of the Xbox 360. You’ve got pants with only one leg. You’ve loaded only one barrel in a double-barrelled shotgun. Did the Doom marine ever do that? No. And neither should you.

$40 in exchange for simple set up, peace of mind, freedom from tripping over cables, and a happier wife (nobody hates cables running over and through living room furniture more than her)? Sign me up. And I’m hoping you all are going to sign up, too. Otherwise, there’s going to be trouble.

P.S. As an aside, It’s never actually been confirmed that the Xbox 360 will do System Link via the wireless connection, right? Please, someone tell me that it can. Anyone.

PS3 will probably not ship with a hard drive. Well, THAT’ll drive the price down.

The following is an excerpt from a comments section found in engadget.com. The topic was “which of the three consoles will you buy.” The topic went south real quick and became yet another flame war as to which console will be better. Kyle Egbert, apparently a software developer, put in his 2 cents, which I thought appropriate for our quaint discussions, although considering those of us who frequent this place, I doubt there will be much dissention from his post. Nevertheless, for your reading pleasure, I offer the following:

Posted May 29, 2005, 7:50 PM ET by Kyle Egbert
I have personally looked into all the aspects of all the consoles and I am a software developer, so I do know some other aspects of each console.

For ease, I will ignore the Nintendo Revolution for now. They need to release some more information about their console before I can comment on it…

First off, both systems will be awesome and blow the minds off gamers and game developers. Although I personally prefer the XBOX 360’s look, I know many people prefer the PS3.

An interesting side note: (From what I have read…)The PS2 did well in Japan and the asian countries because it was small. Not to be stereotypical, but asians love small-type gadgets and they live in smaller housing. It will be interesting to see how the some-what smaller XBOX 360 performs here against the noticably larger PS3.

I think that the PS3 specs are somewhat overblown. Remember that before the PS2 came out, Sony promised that it would be able to render Toy Story in real time. Also, even thought the Cell processor may have 1.8TF of streaming floating point calculations, most games don’t benefit from it. (Please forgive my numbers if they are off, but they should be somewhat close.) 87.5 percent of the Cell processor is dedicated to streaming floating point calculations. When you anylize the best games today, you notice that only about 10-15% of the game time is floating point calculation, while only about half of that is streaming floating point.

Also, it is foolish to use blue laser technologies for the generation of gaming. The most requested thing from developers for the next versions of consoles were quicker disc seek times and faster reading. By using new blue laser technologies, you instantly loose the seek time performance because the disc size is so big. Also, if it gets any bit damaged (much easier on a higher density disc), the read errors increase and then you lose performance. Lastly, the third major request from game developers was a lower price. By using a (now unfinished) blue laser technology, you can instantly add about $100 to the price (remember how much DVD drives cost when they came out). XBOX 1 games used dual layer DVDs, but 90% of the games would fit on a single layer disc, so there isn’t much need for more storage.

Both systems are not dirrectly compairable because of the new technology (Cell vs 3 Core PPC, ATI vs nVIDIA), so lets try to assume that they are about equal. The reason that XBOX 360 games will look great in the future will be because of their new (patented) “Procedural Synthesis” technology. Basically, this makes games look much better and much quicker to develop by using code instead of art. I will quickly try to describe it here, but there is a full article on it here(http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360-1.ars?978…). Lets say you were trying to make a great looking forest. In cheap games, developers make one tree and copy it a hundred times to make a forest. In good games, developers hire an army of computer artists to hand make trees to put in the forest. In the XBOX 360 world, you make code to generate the tree and the XBOX 360 will automatically create each tree differently. This saves memmory space because all the trees’ vertex points don’t need to be saved, making the game render faster and look better with less memmory needed.

Lets also use “Procedural Synthesis” for another problem. I know you have seen games where something is suppost to be circular, but instead it is a polygon. This is because the computer artist is not able to make a circle because all objects are made with triangles. Also, the artist needs to think about how long it takes to render a good circle. Well with a fake-circle (polygon based) there is much memmory taken up by storing each triangle’s vertexes on the circle. In XBOX 360, an artist is able to create a “circle” without having to worry about performance because the XBOX 360 will intelligently render the circle to the best it can without lag. This produces a better looking circle with faster performance because very little memmory needs to be used to define the circle.

Also, regular gamers don’t really care to the specific performance specs of the system, it is the games and accessories. At E3, Sony said that their PS3 was running on stage at full performance, so don’t expect the games/technical previews to look much better. On the other hand, the XBOX 360 hardware was only working 25-40%, so expect big jumps in performance and graphics by launch. I think that the technical topics of the systems are too overblown and what will ultimately determine the success of the platform will be the games. With Microsoft taking a lead with “Procedural Synthesis”, more games will be developed quicker with better graphics. Software is a major topic that isn’t being discussed and since I am from a developer’s point of view, I can safely say that XBOX 360 should provide ample competition to PS3.

Now, for my market analysis, I believe that the XBOX 360 will tie or overtake the PS3. Remember that system performance is not a major factor in market share, so I am looking at the business decisions for my analysis. When the XBOX 360 is released, people will be so amazed that they’ll buy the system. Being first is a great advantage. Also, XBOX 360 (from my knowledge) should be less in cost than PS3. People expect PS3 to be between $400-500. It shouldn’t be the normal $300, because Sony said at their E3 launch that it would be more than the usual amount. Microsoft promised developers to be around $300 at launch, so it should be in ballpark. (I think it would be funny if they sold XBOX 360 at a price of $360) Lastly, since the Dev-Kits for XBOX 360 have been out for a much longer time, there should be many more games for 360 at launch than PS3. Microsoft said 25-40 games would be released at launch with another 180 games already in development for release in 2006.

If I might say one last thing… If you would ask any gamer if they would like backwards compatibility, they’d say yes. But seriously, how many PS1 games did you play on PS2? Most people would say not very many. If they did play any PS1 games, it would only be the best ones. XBOX 360 will be backwards compatible for all popular games, so this shouldn’t be an issue.

Just for your knowledge, I have not altered any of the information and I am only giving my best professional opinion with the most accepted facts about the consoles. In the end, all gamers have benefited from the competition from Microsoft and Sony.

Thanks for reading! I would love to hear your comments (kyleegbert@hotmail.com).

Kyle Egbert

*There was one response to his missive that was a bland retort (IMO), it is about 2 post below his but I have not incuded here. Feel free to look it up at engadet.com, at your own leisure.

Release date and price revealed. Yay! Xbox 360, here we come!

I’ve been reading many articles over the last few days talking about the hardware capabilities and intentions of the new gaming consoles on the horizon. As I’ve read more and more, the touted abilities of the PS3 seem to be waning. Unbelievably, they just posted an interview where they say this: “We haven’t been creating our [past] PlayStations for the sake of games… The PS3 isn’t designed to lean towards games.” Holy cow - did I miss something?

My intention with this post is to collect all of the articles that talk about the Xbox360’s hardware, and the fight it’s going to have with Big N and Sony. Below, you’ll find links to these articles.

The PS3 isn’t a video game machine. Yegads - I heard the screaming of a million Sony fanboys, and then it was silenced. Check out the great posts in that Slashdot article - people aren’t pleased.

Inside the Xbox360. Deep, techinical, long. IBM’s processor and supporting hardware laid bare. I needed every class of my CS degree (which I earn in 2.5 weeks, BTW) to get everything in here. A thing of beauty.

What OS is under the hood. Invesitgative journalism and speculation about the embedded Operating System running programs on the Xbox360.

Xbox360 Dashboard. Pix of the internal dashboard program. Make sure you click on the slideshow link to see the images!

Non-technical comparison of posted stats. A good read on who’s got more of what in the Xbox360 vs. PS3 arena.

Microsoft’s rebuttal to Sony’s PS3 specs. A fascinating article talking about why the PS3 is not what it E3 seems to have been saying about it. A must-read - even more interesting when compared with the “PS3 don’t do games” article above!

Xbox: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

I want this game. Now.