Xbox 360???

Peteee

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000040031285/

They are saying it'll be out by late 2005 'in time for the christmas season' in europe no less!

It also wont come with a HD-DVD or Blu_Ray drive, instead sticking with DVD's??

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000243030781/

Dont know if any of this is true, although see also here http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21121

Xbox 360 sounds like the Nintendo Revolution, and as for it using only DVD's some dude posted on engadget this:

'hmm ,can you name 3 consoles that were released with an antiquated storage system? Dreamcast ( the system which led to the demise of segas console business), n64 ( which saw big n lose its dominance to sony) and the game cube, which allowed n to drop even father to both sony and ms. How will the xbox 360 be a media center if it lacks a blue ray or hd drive. Has ms forgotten what sold so many x boxes and ps2 was its dual use as both a console and dvd player?'

If this is true i'd say its a mistake, one of the reasons i wanted a ps2 was to use it as a DVD player, and since GT4 pushed about 9 gigs onto one disc, then its high time for next gen storage!

Rew

Im waiting for solid details on all 3. Sould all be laid out and on the table by May (E3). Sony are previewing the PS3 in the next month or 2.

flogen

I'd be surprised if that was true, but saying that there have been many rumours regarding the xbox 2 which suggest MS going backwards rather than forwards in the name of cost cutting, the lack of a HD being one such rumour.

I'm with Rew on waiting for solid information at E3, and after the impact the DS has had on me I'll be keen to see the Revolution too...

flogen

Rew

Yeah im very intrested in the Revolution. The Gamecube is a far better machine then the PS2 and deseved to do better then it has. As soon as my time frees up im def getting a Cube me thinks.

projectmayhem

the more i read about the revolution and the ps3 the more i smile. the more i read about the xbox (whatever they decide to call it) the more i wonder what the point of it is. now that you say hd-dvd might not be supported, xbox really will struggle against sony's blu-ray discs...

Rew

Whats the story with the Revolution media? I heard its backwards compatible with the existing GC Mini-DVD's.

Ciaran500

Its all rumours going around about the Revolution at the moment. I don't think Ninty have released any info.

monument

I think the big N said that they will be showing / taking about it in some way or another, they just don’t want to give away too much.

steviec

The Gamecube doesn't use antiquated media does it? I thought it used the discs it does for two reasons - to combat piracy and to reduce load times - and it's worked fairly well on both counts.

With regard to blu-ray, I read somewhere it was because Sony are one of the main developers of blu-ray discs and Microsoft don't want to contribute to that, could be completely wrong mind you. I'm not entirely sure it'll be that big a problem, DVDs are comfortably big enough for most software at the moment, I know games are gonna get bigger but they can always come on 2 discs if they need to. Not very sure about the philosophy of the new X-Box in general though, they seem to be cutting a lot out. And being the most powerful console is just about the only thing XBox has going for it.
With the Playstation "faster than 10 pentiums" 3 and the Nintendo "Its not a console its an experience" Revolution, it seems like we're heading towards 3 very different machines. If what's being said about the Cell is even remotely true, it seems impossible for the other two to touch it for performance, the Revolution will make up for that by being Nintendo, but I just don't see what the X-Box has to give...

Of course this is all mostly based on speculation, we'll probably have to wait till May for a good idea of what the machines are really capable of.

Matt Simis

There are multiple approached to HD-DVD. One of the competing standards, Microsofts WMV-HD HD-DVD, the only one with titles released (afaik) uses standard DVDs, so XB2 could and most likely will support "HD-DVD" using standard DVDs..


Matt

cregser

Well I've read that the Nintendo Revolution is NOT backwards compatible. Apparently backwards compatibility would limit Nintendo in what they're trying to achieve. Whatever that means.

The PS3 looks interesting. I don't know what to expect from Xbox360. With the leaks of the early schematics a few months ago I don't know if Xbox are falling apart at the seems or trying to put Sony into a false sense of security.

The one I'm most interested in is Revolution.

projectmayhem

steviec wrote:

With regard to blu-ray, I read somewhere it was because Sony are one of the main developers of blu-ray discs and Microsoft don't want to contribute to that, could be completely wrong mind you. I'm not entirely sure it'll be that big a problem, DVDs are comfortably big enough for most software at the moment, I know games are gonna get bigger but they can always come on 2 discs if they need to.

microsoft can't get into blu-ray because blu-ray is sony technology. it wouldn't look very good. but hd-dvd is sufficient... if they use it.

as for the whole "2 dvds will work" comment, i disagree. blu-ray has about 25gigs or so worth of space, more then 2 dvd's (almost as much as 3), and can operate on up to 9 layers. impressive, but probably means nothing if they can just use 2 dvds. but look at the likes of gta and gt4, they simply cannot expand their games without extra space, and it's an awful lot easier and cheaper to produce one disc, rather then 2. and think of when the ps3 comes to the end of it's cycle, will they require 3 discs?

Ciaran500

Matt Simis wrote:

There are multiple approached to HD-DVD. One of the competing standards, Microsofts WMV-HD HD-DVD, the only one with titles released (afaik) uses standard DVDs, so XB2 could and most likely will support "HD-DVD" using standard DVDs.

I don't think Microsoft will release the Xbox 2 without a HD-DVD drive. Especially considering there trying to get the WMV-HD format off the ground. I don't know why people are complaining about the Xbox 2 specs already as nothing offical has been released. Most of the info available comes from leaked documents or companies working with Microsoft.

flogen

Ciaran500 wrote:

I don't think Microsoft will release the Xbox 2 without a HD-DVD drive. Especially considering there trying to get the WMV-HD format off the ground. I don't know why people are complaining about the Xbox 2 specs already as nothing offical has been released. Most of the info available comes from leaked documents or companies working with Microsoft.

true, everything we know is just rumour.
As far as the three machines going in three different directions, it does seem that way. Gates has hinted towards the xbox2 being more of a media centre, while the ps3 is likely to be more of the same, just with better specs. The revolution, well, I don't know what to expect there but I'm sure it will be something more than a straight-forward sucessor to the GC (that's all that Ninty have said on it, that it's not just better graphics and specs).

Once again I'm probably going to avoid Sony, unless they show me something amazing, I just have a problem with a company producing the same tired format and doing so well out of it. I'd like to get an xb2, but if it isn't backwards compatible, and if even some of these rumours are true that is less and less likely to happen.

Nintendo have my full attention now, even if the xb2 is a media centre, it's not really anything new to a PC user.

flogen

Rew

Iv seen mention of 3 X-Box flavours going from normal consol, then pc/consol, then consol/media centre. The media centre wont be released for 6 months to a year after the initial release. Thats old info though...