Microsoft conference

steviec

Well just finished watching that and it was comfortably the most impressive showing.

Loved the bit with the tattoo.. I completely expected boring Halo 3 announcement and almost jumped out of my seat when he showed the GTA 4 logo... The reaction in the theatre was similar. Although he was clever with his words, if its coming to both 360 and PS3 I'll have a lot of thinking to do about which to get. The PS3 controller would be an advantage but downloadable content is a really strong counter measure! But Playstation has really just lost its strongest selling point. It is a pity we won't see an entire blu ray disc full of GTA content now though.

Aside from that though the whole conference was a solid stream of good news. The Gears of War demo at the start looks great. I've spent the last year ignoring it as a boring Halo clone, but it actually looks like so much more with a good agile character with lots of moves and great atmosphere. Then the xbox live announcements were great, a lot of classics there and some great points made about independent developers. Live Arcade has been a huge part of xbox 360, far more than I think anyone predicted.

Many other great looking games, good to hear about Fable 2 and Forza 2. Fable was good and I hope Lionhead have it in them to really follow up on their promise for once. Forza looked great and I loved the ideas about integration with Windows. I'm a big Gran Turismo fan but with what they've shown of next gen so far it could be left standing.

evad_lhorg

CiaranC wrote:

There are no plans for games on hd-dvd afaik.

no chance of me buyin that then. theyll be runnin out of space on discs in a year.

Ciaran500

I doubt it.

flogen

evad_lhorg wrote:

no chance of me buyin that then. theyll be runnin out of space on discs in a year.

I'm not going to buy into either format for a long while, at the point that 1) they're at a good price point, 2) there is an obvious victor and 3) it can offer me something more than DVD (As in when I have a HDTV and it actually makes a difference).

Anyone gotten any pics of the player? Haven't watched the vid yet and would like to see how it looks and where it could sit on the machine.

Smellyirishman

It's shaped almost like a hardback book, with the look of a mini-360.

{EDIT} My MS stream is still up, so I am trying to get a shot for you (although there must be one somewhere already!) but I can't just printscreen the gamespot stream (Just get a black window where video should be). Anyone got any ideas?

Here is a rough idea...

Smellyirishman

After some actual digging (very little tbh :-)) here it is!

Standing By the 360
Wired up, flat
Rear end

flogen

Many thanks smellyirishman, I would have expected it to fit onto the console, mind you... kinda surprised it didn't (they eluded to it being able to slot into the HDD port when it was first announced)

So what's all that on the back; power lead... are the two usb ports?

Smellyirishman

Yeah, its pretty obtrusive in my opinion, looks about the same size as a wii. The only reason I would get one of these is if one of the bigger games (GTA...) was to require it. I am pretty sure they stated that it would not be a requirement for any games but the same was said about the HDD. I imagine most games will just go multi-disc if needed though.

Still, if you have the space it would be a fairly handy addition to any home cinema type setups, or a decent HDTV setup.

flogen

I wonder if MS will eventually go back on their word regarding HDDVD games; maybe if the addon sold amazingly well, but I doubt it will.

Yeah, if you already had an xbox and wanted to get a HD player then it would probably be a lot cheaper than your basic standalone player, but if you didn't you'd be better getting a dedicated player for HDDVD movies; shame they didn't take the opportunity to have an LCD display on the addon, perhaps behind a flap or something... that always annoyed me about watching DVD's on the xbox or ps2

Stephen

Damn you microsoft, now I want to buy a 360

monkeyfudge

You don't really need a HD-Disc for games. An 8 GB DVD is more than enough really... what usually takes up a lot of space is pre-rendered scenes, and with more and more sequences being rendered in game now, those sort of pre-rendered scenes are a thing of the past.

Oblivion only needed a single DVD... and that would be a lot bigger than most games that will come out.

CatInABox

One thing I like about it is the fact that you can connect the wireless connecter to it, daisy chaining it. I was worried that I'd have a cable coming out the front if I wanted to have both connected.

With regard to the blu-ray vs dvd thing, they are going to stick with dvds mainly because it makes financial sense for them. A game on two or three dvds will still be cheaper than a single HD DVD disk or blu-ray disk. This is why most pc games that come out on more than two disks are still on cds, usually with a Special Collectors edition on Dvd. To be honest, it doesn't bother me in anyway.

On a side note, what does bother me is that E3 every year occurs during my exams. Why the hell couldn't they leave it for another month, then I could waste time without feeling guilty about it.

GrumPy

Anyone know were you can download all the vids, for free, in decent quality?

monkeyfudge

Irish GrumPy wrote:

Anyone know were you can download all the vids, for free, in decent quality?

Well most of the 360 trailers are available on Xbox Live... but the download speeds are stupidly slow.

GrumPy

monkeyfudge wrote:

Well most of the 360 trailers are available on Xbox Live... but the download speeds are stupidly slow.

yeah, but it would be nice to have are the pres conferences on the pc - rather than streaming them in sh!t quality any time i wanna rewatch parts.

evad_lhorg

gamespot. you can download em all there

Smellyirishman

monkeyfudge wrote:

Oblivion only needed a single DVD... and that would be a lot bigger than most games that will come out.

Good point Mr.Fudge.

CatInABox wrote:

On a side note, what does bother me is that E3 every year occurs during my exams. Why the hell couldn't they leave it for another month, then I could waste time without feeling guilty about it.

Why couldn't they have it a month earlier!! But seriously, at least having it now gives us somethin' to do while we skip study!

monument

flogen wrote:

Anyone gotten any pics of the player? Haven't watched the vid yet and would like to see how it looks and where it could sit on the machine.

http://www.gamestoaster.com/photos/e3_2006/144.html

(woops, did not see the reply to flogen's post)

projectmayhem

monkeyfudge wrote:

You don't really need a HD-Disc for games. An 8 GB DVD is more than enough really... what usually takes up a lot of space is pre-rendered scenes, and with more and more sequences being rendered in game now, those sort of pre-rendered scenes are a thing of the past.

Oblivion only needed a single DVD... and that would be a lot bigger than most games that will come out.

sony made a good point about blu-ray (same idea for HD-DVD games) and why it's good for games, past the obvious "more textures, ai" etc... you can have all of the languages and regional settings on 1 disc... and launch it worldwide. then, all you have to do is tinker with settings before playing your game, and you're good to go. that's a huge benefit. wether it's worth the long delay and price of ps3 is something we'll have to see...

Ciaran500

But I doubt Studio's are going to delay a game so they can translate it while they could already have it out in some parts of the world.

And games with the main European languages (english, french, spanish, german and italian) on one disc is already common place.

monkeyfudge

Fairly good point.... I do see a benefit in being able to select the original Japanese on a lot of titles as usually the voice acting in the translations is horrible... I'm looking at you Forbidden Siren!

projectmayhem

Ciaran500 wrote:

But I doubt Studio's are going to delay a game so they can translate it while they could already have it out in some parts of the world.

And games with the main European languages (english, french, spanish, german and italian) on one disc is already common place.

given ps3 at least is region free (maybe microsoft will follow suit with hd-dvd), it'd be cheaper to hold off for a while to get all the translations done and release the exact same disc everywhere

kaimera

omfg.

Gears of War looks amazing. Much better vid than halo3 and a proper gameplay vid unlike mgs4.

GrumPy

kaimera wrote:

omfg.

Gears of War looks amazing. Much better vid than halo3 and a proper gameplay vid unlike mgs4.

indeed, the microsoft con - was clearly the most impressive. Would have been nive to get a date, and price on the hd-dvd drive though, and nothing from valve (read on eurogamer a while ago that valve were in talks with ms or something)

flogen

projectmayhem wrote:

given ps3 at least is region free (maybe microsoft will follow suit with hd-dvd), it'd be cheaper to hold off for a while to get all the translations done and release the exact same disc everywhere

I don't think the HDDVD will have any effect on it tbh, given that it's seperate to the games (and from what I understand the ps3 is region free for games, not movies).
I think the region locking on most consoles is on the disc, if ms wanted to they could drop regions on games from now on without making any changes to the HW, or maybe a firmware update at most.

astrofool

Its up to the publisher to make games region free or not. A good few 360 games are region free already (I think ridge racer is for example). This will be the same on PS3 and 360. I'd assume that the decision would be based as to whether the game will be relased in other territories (japanese games).

Game companies are weird though. Nintendo will probably make the Europe Wii (hee hee) use square discs so people can't import.

flogen

astrofool wrote:

Its up to the publisher to make games region free or not. A good few 360 games are region free already (I think ridge racer is for example). This will be the same on PS3 and 360. I'd assume that the decision would be based as to whether the game will be relased in other territories (japanese games).

Game companies are weird though. Nintendo will probably make the Europe Wii (hee hee) use square discs so people can't import.

Yeah, I wish Nintendo would bite the bullet and make region free games; for the second generation their home console will be neat and small, perfect for travelling with; it works well for the DS/GBA... why not?!!

BFassassin

i missed the conference but is there any videos worth watching

Vyse

Anybody else get the feeling that MS are holding back one or two titles to announce just before the PS3 launch? Having read the interview with Team Ninja on Xbox360.ign.com I'd be suprised if Ninja Gaiden 2 isn't going to head to the system. I wouldn't be the least bit suprised if it was annouced around sept/ oct (when will X06 be?)

flogen

Vyse wrote:

Anybody else get the feeling that MS are holding back one or two titles to announce just before the PS3 launch? Having read the interview with Team Ninja on Xbox360.ign.com I'd be suprised if Ninja Gaiden 2 isn't going to head to the system. I wouldn't be the least bit suprised if it was annouced around sept/ oct (when will X06 be?)

Good point; last years X05 was on in October, so that would be a nice time to take the wind out of sony's sails, but while a game like Ninja Gaiden would be a good one, I think they'd need something like Halo 3 (as in, a solid date and playable demo which was very impressive) to distract people from buying.. tbh the only way MS could do serious damage to the ps3 launch (besides trying to have a steady supply of hw and big selection of sw) is by launching Halo 3 and/or GTA4 on the same day as the PS3 and that aint gonna happen!