Bringing Gaming Mainstream - The Xbox 360 debuts on MTV
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 12, 2005 11:18 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
HD Everywhere
The most welcome requirement of the Xbox 360? That all games must support 720p.
The Xbox 360 was undoubtedly made for HDTVs, with all games supporting 720p, you will truly be missing out without a HDTV. The support for 720p in all games is quite important as it marks the first time that a game console will have games that renders frames internally at resolutions greater than 640x480. The resolution gap between PC and console gaming has been huge, remembering that 640x480 was a resolution that PC gamers were enjoying back in the Voodoo1 days. Especially on larger TVs, the very low resolution of 640x480 is even more pronounced - but with Xbox 360 (and presumably, Sony's Playstation 3) the days of low resolution gaming on large screens is over.
The MTV special started with a 3D rendered performance of the band - The Killers. The rendered graphics of that performance were better than anything we've seen on the PC thus far, even better than what we've seen in tech demos by ATI and NVIDIA. Not surprising given the level of the GPU in the Xbox 360, there was only a short part of the performance that was 3D rendered but it was quite convincing.
In a stroke of genius, Microsoft managed to demo their first console with a minimum of 720p support on a standard definition cable channel. It looks like we'll have to wait for E3 to see the Xbox 360 in its 720p glory.
ugh...displaying a 720p game over SD cable
The rest of the games demoed looked extremely PC like, thanks to their 720p resolution. Of course we won't see the best use of the Xbox 360 hardware (in particular the physics capabilities of that 3-core PowerPC CPU) until well after the console has launched. Until then, we will most likely have to rely on fancy graphics and extensive online support as the main attractions to the new console.
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ImJacksAmygdala - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
Does the Xbox360 upscale DVD 480p to 720p or 1080i via HDMI to an HDTV?Can I surf the web with a wireless keyboard and mouse via the USB?
Can I use a MCE remote?
Can I get DD5.1 or greater for games and movies on my audio reciever?
If the answer is no to any of the above I will pass on the Xbox360 and just build a HTPC. I hope Microsoft has been paying attention what the HTPC and widescreen gaming crowds are doing.
Does anybody know the answer to these questions?
creathir - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
I suppose water cooling is hard to believe for most here in the PC world because most PC users are used to the giant tanks of water and stuff with tubes coming out the back of your machine. Water cooling in these cases is because the heat dissipation is relatively similar to that of with just air, but ya don't have to have the high RPM/giant fans that you do with air solutions... It really does make a lot of sense why they do it...- Creathir
Houdani - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
I predict that ATM will next accuse Anand of *hosting* the alleged torrent/warez site. Sheesh.So, um, ahem -- ATM, what'cha doing with those dubious files which supposedly originated from an illicit source anyhoo?
pot = black = kettle
DCstewieG - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
Why is water cooling so unbelievable? Apple is using it. And IIRC even Dreamcast was.milomnderbnder21 - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
"#15, so you're marketing a GAMING product to NON-gamers...This makes complete sense..."They know that the gamers are going to be watching all the coverage of E3 next week, or they are reading the specs online, they don't need to appeal to us on MTV. They are on there to catch the interest of the people that otherwise wouldn't be too interested. Marketers are smarter than you give them credit for.
"water cooled (I also doub't that) or not."
What, you think they are going to just straight up lie about that? Again, how stupid do you think they are? They wouldn't be so a big, rich, powerful corporation that out of nowhere broke into the console industry if they weren't smart.
I think the system looks pretty sexy, and as more coverage comes out of games and stuff I'm getting more and more excited about this, as stupid as the MTV thing was I understand it wasn't meant for me. I'm really looking forwards to what comes out of E3.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
AnandThenManIt does look very close, here's my MCE shot (ignore the file name, the MTV Guide was off yesterday for some reason but the timestamp explains all):
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/xbox360/...
As for the cores being really hot - remember that they are much simpler cores than any modern day desktop CPU, so don't assume they would eat the same amount of power. And it is also possible that IBM is using the same sort of dynamic domino logic in the Xbox 360 CPU as they did in Cell to keep power consumption down.
Take care,
Anand
blwest - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
#15, so you're marketing a GAMING product to NON-gamers...This makes complete sense...blwest - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
#8, why are you even on these forums? Go AWAY.blwest - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
By the mere fact that Microsoft associates themselves with MTV, I am NOT buying one.creathir - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
#36You need to adjust your monitor...
His capture is different from your capture.
The color differences are quite apparent.
#22
The official Microsoft specs state the following:
Overall System Floating-Point Performance:
1 teraflop
Check it out at:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/factsheet.htm
That’s where the figure comes from... it also was mentioned by J. Allard at GDC, as well as in the ourcolony.net video. Anand got it right;)
- Creathir