Just imagine all those processor cores with 280Gig of Ram just sitting there... Amazing. I predict 16Gig on a desktop will be pretty common by this time next year. PC Gaming may make a comeback...
@ Montrealien
The issue isn't DD itself. Sure, DDs are great. But MS is saying, becasue DD is more profitable for us, we're refusing to give anyone choosing our platform Choice. We're forcing them to accept lower quality DDs today with the promise of maybe it'll get better to the exclusion of better quality alternatives that are here today (Bluray, 1080p, Dolby-TrueHD, Dolby-Master Audio).
It's almost a matter of principal. It's not in the interest of consumers t...
Lemme see you get an Xbox Live! Marketplace download onto a thumb drive and take it to your friends house and play it? Not going to happen.
You also have to address the losses. Loss of Audio quality and bonus features.
If you could download at full audio & video fidelity, with features (this is possible but file sizes would be even larger), and no DRM there would be no issue here. No DRM means I can buy it from Live! Marketplace, and take it off the Xbox, and...
I'll meet you half way, physical removable media will never die.
@crck
Your statement is incomplete, you can get a 320G for that price for a PS3. For your Xbox 360, your just Sheet outta luck.
I did buy the 120G @$179, had no choice. I bought a 160G for my PS3 for $100. Sony is not my favorite company by any stretch, but MS is making them look better everyday. In the longrun, you never win screwing the customer. Never.
Just one more and I'm done...
If one more MS exec issues a statement against Discs and Bluray in particular, I'm withdrawing my support. I'm going to forfeit all of the games, XBLA games, and movies I've purchased and sell my Xbox.
Microsoft is punishing the consumer to take the cheapest route to the highest profits while not delivering value to the consumer. Not supporting an HD device and advanced HD audio formats is just wrong. Their bottom line is bigger if ...
I haven't had a problem with connecting since the major outage in Dec either. But several areas are still slow but this fix won't effect that.
Marketplace is still very slow bringing up images and item descriptions. Slowes on images. Connecting to Game store is also slow for me. I can usually buy a movie or game before all the pictures show up. But generally it's fine.
I do find that manually entering your IP settings speeds up initial sign-on but not much else....
Actually the movie DRM is tied to your console motherboard. Can't just take your hard drive and pop it into another Xbox and watch your movies. That includes TV Shows purchased.
I don't think it's stupidity, it's selfishness/greed. I think MS is hurting the consumer for profit. Don't get me wrong, Xbox and XBLA have given us many hours of enjoyment and XBLA has become a VOIP gateway to some relatives who live in other States.
But MS chose to go for low cost/penetration by shunning HD. That's why no built-in HDDVD (which is what killed it) and no BluRay. It's cheaper and more profitable for them to do DD only. Especially since to watch a movie twice (ou...
@Shadow
I hear ya. I have 25 XBLA games and worry about an hd crash & redownloading. I've had trouble recovering once already, had to call customer service. Also, what happens if you cut broadband to save money? I'm hoping WipeoutHD will have media but it looks like PSN DL only. Of course this is a minor issue.
Another thing, I had 2-360s at one time, and I took my HD to the other to watch on big screen when company was over, I keept getting DRM errors that thought t...
This will not be much of an issue once Sony releases firmware supporting Dolby Master Audio or bitstream passthrough (probably not possible on current machiens). They can raise the price as much as they want, there will be no reason to buy a dedicated player for more than $399.
People don't notice the difference between 5.1 and 7.1 because almost no one actually has 7.1 and there's not much difference with regards to fidelity, only a new surround position at same fidelity that actually carries few effects. 7.1 is really just a way to unnecessarily sell an extra pair of surrond speakers if you ask me, adds very minimal value in my opinion.
However, there is an experience changing, very noticeable difference between the sonic fidelity and dynamic range ...
Pretty soon the downloadable content will be full HD thanks to DOCSIS 3.0 and 160Mbs download speed. That's probably less than 2 years away. Twin Cities willg get it this year. Still, mass penetration won't be for 5-10 years and ISPs will most likely tier the bandwidth, or price it so high that there won't be mass adoption for some time. But the bandwidth will come and d/l's will be full HD. probably with DTS or 5.1, not TrueHD or Master Audio.
The real issues is ownership and ...
Not everyone is into simulation. I personally find them boring, rather just get in my own car. Of course there are millions of GT simulation fans, there are also millions looking for a good arcade racer. I'm not buying GT because it's not my thing, but I will definitely buy this game, unless a better arcade racer comes out first.
Sony confirms their first Windows Mobile Smartphone. I'm buying one as soon as they're availble. FINALLY! http://www.n4g.com/industry...
How valuable it is depends on the game, music and duration. For all night online poker, the repetitive music in Texas Hold 'em is good for about 30 seconds. It's nice to play with your own tunes playing.
More atmospheric games like Gears or Resistance probably don't need it. Hours of driving around in Burnout, yea, I want my own tunes.
One of my all-time favorite movies, Predator, is releasing on Bluray this month, got it pre-ordered. The specs show the only 5.1 audio being Dobly-HD Master Audio. Here's hoping 2.3 finally adds Dolby-HD MA decoding or bitstream output. The domination will then be complete....
"I ain't got time to bleed..."
I also grant you bubbles for being open-minded. I will also concede that while broad patents have been issued, that was not the original intent of the patent office. They should be tied to specific technical implementations. They are really for "inventions." Many are calling for an overhaul of the Patent Office because of this.
Broad patents stifle innovation and ultimately the consumer suffers. Take the Eolas patent claim. Their broad patent would cover embedded Flas...
Most likely they have a trademark on the specific combination of colors as used in their logo.
The trend is toward simplification and MS still seems to be adding complexity to the UI. Where's the advanced 3D UI Vista was supposed to sport?
Notification icon setting still get lost in Vista ... I think some in Microsoft's UI division gets it, some of the prototype UIs look awesome. But Microsoft has so many enterprise applicaiton the like to tie into, it keeps everythign complex. In otherwords, they're so big they keep tripping over their own feet.
We shall ...