No hype?

A few things I'd like to point out about systems (in general)
1. In the beginning, everything is all hype. You may have fun with a system, but it wears down after a bit.
2. The price is always high at launch, and (I believe) has been steadily increasing for each generation of console released.
3. Games get better (much better: God of War) after time has passed, and the "launch titles" are using no where near the limit of a console's power.
So keep cool. And wait for Halo 3. Then be happy. I will.

While it's true the launch games are almost always not even close to the full potential, I think that's becoming less true in the current generation due to the less hardware involved trend. With NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. you really had to learn to get every ounce of power out of it directly. But with Xbox and Xbox 360 no doubt, there's really not much that can be done in that way. I mean maybe some drivers and other libraries would get a bit better..

I agree with your general idea though, the beginning is always filled with hype cause otherwise it wouldn't have enough substance to draw people in. But you know I'm annoyed by undeserved hype.

I understand. Maybe it would've been better (more deserving) if the companies didn't care so much about cold hard cash than entertaining the people. We might have had some better launch titles that would have had a reason to gather hype over. But no, throw in a couple of lame an-inch-over-xbox graphics and a chunk of new memory and hope people like what they're emptying their bank accounts over.
But I can't wait till Halo 3. And they better make it, lest I walketh up to their el presidente and kick him in the stones.

Note: It is a good thing to point out that the XBox 360 would probably drop a hundred off the price before the PS3 comes out anyhoot. But, really, I just love the way /\/\$ ripped off all these licenses this time around. I'm hoping it pays off, in entertainment of course.

Its not so much that the games are bad, just that they've been out already.
Quake 4 has been out on the PC for about a month already.
Call of Duty 2 has been out on the PC as well.
King Kong is a multi platform game that shipped on every system the same day.
Need For Speed Most Wanted was out a couple weeks ealier on the other systems.
All the sports games are on others systems already.
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland has been out about a month already as well
You can see where I'm going. So far, its really only Amped 3, Kameo, PGR3, and Perfect Dark Zero that are the 360 only titles. (Condemned, if you count that its not on PC yet) And none have garnered much enthusiasm from the public. Wheres the hype for these four games. In fact I didn't even hear anything what so ever on Amped 3. When Xbox came out, thats all I heard about was Halo Halo Halo. I hear more people wanting to by 50 Cent: Bulletproof then I do these 4 games. Maybe its just the area I live in.:laughing:

It doesn't really matter. Not many people will have an Xbox 360 by the end of this year. I doubt my area will see a total greater than 100 before Christmas.

I was suppossed to have one by now, but they screwed up the shipping so I won't get it until Monday. Bah. I was looking forward to playing with it over the long weekend, but whatever. I got PGR3 which looks really good and has been selling out around here. I also preordered Kameo but haven't heard back from EB yet. If they haven't called me by Monday I'll have to call them and find out what's going on.

You all assume that the 360 is as simple to design for as a computer. You're forgetting that the 360 is a 3 core system. To take full advantage of its power, applications have to run 3 threads concurrently, which isn't exactly a simple task. With time the quality will improve.

I don't think that the 360 will be very good, personally I think it might be a big flop like the sega dreamcast, well maybe not that bad but y'all get the idea, maybe?

I read a story today about how people are claiming their X-Bo 360s are crashing on them: (http://games.slashdot.org/games/05/11/23/138200.shtml) I wonder if its true, and how widespread these issues are. I know if I bought an X-Box 360 and had the system crash on me, I'd be really pissed.

Cloral wrote:I also preordered Kameo...

You're forgetting that the 360 is a 3 core system. To take full advantage of its power, applications have to run 3 threads concurrently, which isn't exactly a simple task.

I played the Kameo demo, and thought it was pretty fun.

As for the Xbox, yeah. Thats why I can't even imagine what Sony was thinking with the Cell processor and the PS3. I think the Xbox 360 though will do quite well. Its got that mass market appeal.

http://cube.ign.com/articles/670/670078p1.html

This is really biased (and kind of funny) but this was something I didn't know:

4. True Backward Compatibility
Microsoft calls Xbox 360 a backward compatible console, but that's not entirely true. The fact is, hundreds of Xbox games -- like The Chronicles of Riddick -- cannot yet be played on the company's latest machine. This is unfortunate because it means that 360 buyers will need to hold onto their original Xbox systems to play many older offerings, which is not ideal, particularly for minimalists who'd prefer to avoid clutter in their living rooms.

That's pretty shitty. If that were the case on PS2 you know people would have bitched at Sony about it (granted some games had minor compatibility issues but I don't recall any of them being major or unplayable).

From what I have read, backwards compatibility on the X-Box 360 works via emulation. You basically have to connect to X-Box live to download the software needed play each original X-Box game.

I haven't read how well it works, but these are the games that will be backwards compatible at first:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibilitygameslist.htm

I'm sure as time goes by, more games will be compatible. The initial backwards compatibility list for Japan looks pretty grim though:
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/news/story.php?sid=6139921 (only about 12 games)

Well, since everyone gets a Silver membership, we should be able to at least download those for free, which means as long as you have a broadband connection or a lot of time, backwards compatibility won't be trouble. I wonder if you copied the software to a PC you could play them on... nevermind.
(I saw Halo/Halo2/Halo2Exp before I actually saw them. Heh. I'm obsessed.)
How many games actually came out on the XBox? That about sums up my list... At least, the crap ones were thrown out.

laughing1989 wrote:Well, since everyone gets a Silver membership, we should be able to at least download those for free, which means as long as you have a broadband connection or a lot of time, backwards compatibility won't be trouble. I wonder if you copied the software to a PC you could play them on... nevermind.
(I saw Halo/Halo2/Halo2Exp before I actually saw them. Heh. I'm obsessed.)
How many games actually came out on the XBox? That about sums up my list... At least, the crap ones were thrown out.

You mean everyone that pays an extra $100 for the full system. And keeps their live subscription renewed.

laughing1989 wrote:At least, the crap ones were thrown out.

Warlock, if you buy the $300 core system or the $400 system, you still get a subscription to Xbox Live Silver. Silver is the free version. You can't play games online with this, but you do have access to downloadable content, which includes updated version of the emulator software. You have to have Xbox Live Gold to be able to play games online, and this is the version that you have to pay for. If you have Live now through Xbox, then you can transfer yourself over to Gold. Here is a comparison to show what each service offers

http://features.teamxbox.com/xbox/1147/Xbox-360-Software-and-Services-Features/p1

There are still some things that don't make sense to me. Like the friend list. Why do you need a friend list in Silver if you can't even play games online. Whats the point of friends? Whats the point in being able to invite friends to play with you then? Some of this stuff is added in the Silver subscription, but makes no sense.

Grasshopper wrote:Well, I wouldn't exactly say that Blinx 2, Drake, and Toxic Grind are good.

Warlock, if you buy the $300 core system or the $400 system, you still get a subscription to Xbox Live Silver. Silver is the free version. You can't play games online with this, but you do have access to downloadable content, which includes updated version of the emulator software.

True, but you need the hard drive to store the emulator software, and that only comes with the premium system. (unless of course the X-Box 360 has some internal memory or memory cards are big enough to store the data)

vegeta1215 wrote:True, but you need the hard drive to store the emulator software, and that only comes with the premium system. (unless of course the X-Box 360 has some internal memory or memory cards are big enough to store the data)

My point stands :P

Ah, well, anyone who is excited about the system will get the big one. And anyone who is trying to save money will get the core system, probably thinking that the price difference is significantly more important than the features offered by the big one, when in actuallity you do indeed get a better deal with the big one. Buying a wireless controller, and XBox Live communicator/headset, an internal harddrive, and whatever else they have after buying the core system would cost a bundle more than just buying the big one.
But money is everything, and I'm a teenager. So I really don't know what I'm talking about.

oh, I see your point Warlock. I just thought you didn't know how Xbox Live work, so I was trying to explain it. 😊

Grasshopper wrote:oh, I see your point Warlock. I just thought you didn't know how Xbox Live work, so I was trying to explain it. 😊

Well I didn't exactly but if you need the harddrive to download the emulation software to you are still stuck with the expensive model or shelling out the cash for the hard drive which pretty much puts you at the exact same price range (but with MUCH less)

By the way, they say for the emulation software for Xbox 1 games, you can burn that to a CD-R and install it that way. So you won't need Xbox Live and a connection with the Xbox itself.

And I forgot about that Cloral. Now that I think about it, it wouldn't surprise me if most the launch titles didn't use all 3 cpu cores much, and definitely not to the max.