X-Box Halo to have no Online Play?

Kairo

Well, well....looks like us PC owners win afterall. It's only fair, with them getting the game before us and all. But wouldn't you think that they'd try to promote its online features with X-Box biggest game for release?

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Life sucks, but does it swallow?

BlitzKrieg

looks like someone else F*cking up like the dreamcast

sega "oh we'll have internet supported games on launch.

microsoft: "yeah like he said"

po0k

True. The prime fault i can see is that it really isn't flexible enough. The PC can connect to any ISP it needs to. The consoles have to dial into one number in each country. Organising this for each individual country takes a fair bit of logistical dexterity, not to mention corporate diplomacy for the infrastructure and bandwidth. Remember Sega-Eircon's thing? Exactly.

Greenbean

It can't be ignored that when console developers have time to go into developing an online project there is huge scope for big deals with isp's - discount rates etc whatever. You can imagine the amount of hardcore online gamers that would come from the console market should it catch on - we're talking about the number of dialup accounts being similar to the saturation of phones with 16 - 30 year olds.

I reckon it could be the thing that would really drive the home internet revolution onto the next stage. Any thoughts?

Hobbes

I hear they are trying to bundle it with games which will bump the price of the X-Box up to $1200.

You could buy a good PC for that.

Although I'm sure they will have a vanilla option of the X-Box.

I won't be buying it though.

DrunkLeprachaun

What's that, £900?
Who in their right minds would pay more than £350 for a console?

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If there's one thing I hate, it's people.

Dont be at yourself

$1,200 = £1,200 roughly

Bear in mind that that's with most (if not all) of the launch titles. Nobody in their right mind would get it, obviously

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Rich dans les Dublin a Douze, c'est les poof de la grande. Magnifique.

Maiow.

entropi

Well well.....Microsoft thought it could try and better sega's attempt at online gaming from launch date...HAHAHAHAHA I'm glad coz i would never pay that sort of money for a console.....you can get a good pentium 3 pc for that nowadays, i don't think Bill thought out the pricing good enough for other markets. Well i will never buy it and hope it dies like most FADS do coz nobody is stupid enough to buy it anyway....well maybe some people are.

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That island has freedom written all over it" Sir, that's Cuba. [url="HTTP://WWW.thesimpsons.com"]look at that smithers!![/url]

Hobbes

I see a lot of the developers who signed the contracts to produce on the X-Box were allowed under the conditions that they couldn't release the same program on the PC, or at the very least it would have to have certain visual effects removed from the game (even if your 3D card can support it).

From what I gather this is pretty much what the other console companies do, just kind of funny that MS are intentionally crippling thier games for Windows PC's.

Shinji

It's not like MS will sell any fewer copies of Windows XP or Office XP or Visual Studio.NET as a result of Xbox taking over the games market over the head of the Wintel PC.


The fact is that the Xbox *is* a more powerful system than any PC you can buy right now, or will be able to buy for a couple of years - not because of the specification as such, but rather because a specification exists. Xbox coders are free to use vertex and pixel shaders, basically; PC coders have those open to them on the GeForce 3 and Radeon R200 boards, but due to the need to support hundreds of legacy cards, they simply cannot use them. Using a vertex shader on unsupported hardware would give you massive framerate cuts, while using a pixel shader on such hardware would probably see you rendering a frame every 20 seconds or so.

As to the Halo issue - yes, the lack of online play (assuming it's true) is a bit of an embarrassment for MS. It's hardly a reason to hold off for a PC version though, partially because Halo really isn't all that much cop, and mainly because I'd love to see your evidence for the actual existence of a PC version... When I spoke to Bungie at E3 I was told that the PC source base hadn't been touched in six months - basically since it became an Xbox project, then.

Hobbes

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Shinji:
When I spoke to Bungie at E3 I was told that the PC source base hadn't been touched in six months - basically since it became an Xbox project, then.</font>

Hmmm, so they lied to everyone?! They told thier public that they would ship the PC version shortly after the X-Box version. They got 87,000 signatures or something wanting it?

Personally after seeing Tribes 2 (back when it worked), and XBox only being what? 4-6 player. It's going to suck.

But your right about the legacy cards issue, but from what I gather they have been told not to add special effects into PC games even if they are able to.

Shinji

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">They told thier public that they would ship the PC version shortly after the X-Box version.</font>

Bungie is just another internal MS studio, they'll do what they're told from above. There's no "their public" to it.

Besides, when was this announcement made? If it's more than a few months old you can consider it invalid, given how much direction has changed on stuff since then...