but if Microsoft manages to sell even one of those glorified webcams for $149, that alone would be quite an achievement of product marketing.
Can't speak for others but, looking at the big games, such statements appear to be true.
Big 360 games like Forza 3, Alan Wake, and Gears of War 1 & 2, etc... all used plenty of bull-shots. The actual games fell far short of expectations.
PS3 games like GT5, Uncharted 2, and God of War 3, on the other hand, actually look better in-game, thanks to amazing post-processing and dynamic effects, than the screen-shots released by the developers. KZ2 used ...
Hard to believe that so many of those effects are dynamic but they are. Amazing.
The amount of unneccesary polygon detail they put in to that building and the flying craft is is simply mind-boggling. Who is even going to notice all that detail except so many other developers who are going to hang their heads in shame?
It's as if they're just showing off the power of their engine just because they can.
Incredible stuff.
Gamespot did mention increased, or at least more noticeable, aliasing. However, this is not a limitation of processing power as much as it is of bandwidth/memory.
The rendering of twice as many frames per second as KZ2 without any noticeable loss of detail remains a miracle of coding that remains unexplained.
Because jaggies are much more disturbing in 3D and those who played it didn't mention it as a problem.
A greater concern would simply be simply rendering two frames in the same amount of time as they used to render one.
The first and most obvious roadblock would be shader limitations. I'd be very surprised if they hadn't already maxed out the RSX in KZ2.
There must be something they're doing with the Cell to help the RSX outp...
since they took out the 3D processor last year and moved 3D processing to the Xbox360 CPU.
How much does a webcam go for these days?
How they did it without a noticeable drop in resolution would be interesting to find out.
Read this 2001 CNET interview with the head of the Xbox Division, Seamus Blackley (since resigned):
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1...
QUOTE:
Numerous game developers have complained that market leader Sony made its new PlayStation 2 console so difficult to program that current games harness only a fraction of its power.
"One of the basic premises of the X...
Simply compare this playable environment with any thing else.
http://gradly.net/wp-conten...
Unmatched scale. Simply gushing with shaders. It's obscenely detailed.
Now we find out that KZ3 looks better than KZ2 and is playable in 3D. 3D requires rendering twice as many frames per second!
In other words, they not only improved on KZ2 ...
not Sony. The Sony comment was from some over-excited journalist and then spread by Xbox fanboys on forums.
Google solves all problems.
Go read the first major interview for the first Xbox. They promised Toy Story graphics.
Depth of field would blur the not just background textures but background geometry (shapes of buildings/objects) as well but the background geometry is very clearly defined.
It's just low res textures.
You wrote:
<<that's why the majority of multiplats sell better on the 360, because they represent a narrow segment of the population. By that logic, the PS3 represents an even smaller segment>>
Try again Jimmy. Those games you're talking about actually prove my point because the largely target the so-called "hard-core" gamer who's known as a big spender on games. Nearly all 360 owners are of that one type while PS3 owners a...
What Microsoft removed from Natal was the more powerful processor that did the motion sensing calculations and instead moved those calculations onto the 360's own CPU.
So what's left of Natal is just a USB powered Audio/Video receiver, in other words, a USB webcam.
And yes, the Xbox brand is not a universal brand like Nintendo or Sony. The software sales are very revealing. The sales by genre show that most XBox360 end-users represent a narrow segme...
Online music services aren't doing so well and never have.
Lots of hype.
No results.
Same with Netflix type services. They'll grow a bit then plateau once they hit a brick wall called reality.
Seems all these people are drinking the same cool-aid.
Considering the fact that they removed the internal processor last year, it's now nothing more than a USB video/audio capture device.
$149 is pretty steep for, what's essentially, a webcam. Maybe it comes bundled with a bunch of games.
What Microsoft should do, if they ever want to get out of last place, is a $199 Bundle that's Natal Webcam + Arcade + Something like Wii Sports.
The problem is that the Xbox brand is only appealing...
Anyone surprised?
There's a surprising lack of specular highlights on the weapons as well.
that the Xbox failed to fulfill it's mission.
The mission was to take over the living room.
The first Xbox was unable to compete with the PS2, while the second one, the 360, despite having a full year without any competition, being the beneficiary of various costly bribes to developers, and other hijinks that only Microsoft had the sheer wealth to do, failed to establish itself ahead of the Wii and PS3. As a result, it's got less than 28% marketshare...
They made a body mold but then, rather than casting a life-like replica of her body from the mold then painting the replica, they simply painted the outside of the mold itself.
Why would they do such a thing?