Saw the 360 performing live

HomunQlus

As I went home yesterday, I passed by an Smyth's superstore here in the Dublin city centre. They have an XBox 360 on display.

A little fella was playing with it, and "Call Of Duty 2" was in as a Pre-Release-Demo. And what can I say?

This thing failed to impress on all areas.

- Graphics look like my older PC when I was playing in high resolution
- No interesting or stunning effects

Controller lays nice in the hand, but has nothing new or innovative. The console looks nice, but I couldn't find much more to it.

This thing costs 499 Euro - this is extreme! The console is not worth that. Maybe 249. If ever.

Bottom line is, that I've seen what I needed to see, and that was enough for me not to buy this.

I'll wait for the PS3.

That's my opinion.

Just wanted to share it with you. I'm not saying the console is bad or crap, I'm just saying what I think. Please don't get me wrong guys...

CiDeRmAn

Played the machine myself the other day.
Gave it a good 20 minutes of my time and reckon the machine is well worth the money.
As for the money, perhaps you should get your facts right, its €400 for the pack with hard drive and other accessories and €299 as just a core system, not too far off your ideal price of €249.
And of the subject of price, if you imagine the PS3 is going to be anything like as affordable you have another thing coming, just look at comments by the head of Sony regarding how deep gamers will have to dig to afford the new console.
PS3 will not be available here til the end of 06, maybe even delayed til 07, so don't get your hopes up too soon.
Maybe if you had played it instead of watching someone else you may have got a more objective opinion.
But then it is only your opinion.

I suggest you await PGR3 or Perfect Dark Zero, or the actual release versions of the Demos shown before you make your mind, as you have in such haste.

Retr0gamer

The fact that I can play CoD2 on my PC with a better control scheme does nothing for me.

kaimera

solid argument Retro. :v:

KTRIC

The thing alot of people are forgetting is that these are demo games. Most demo games are not actual representations of the finished product. I really don't thing it's a valid argument to compare a console to a pc, it's a different type of gaming.

kaisersose77

Most of the ppl giving out about the xbox360 usually finish with something like " just wait for the ps3" so its not hard to guess what they are a fan of usually (when you have seen absolutely nothing apart from some cgi and it could cost much more than the xbox360). Not everyone has these top of the range pc's with amazing graphics cards so some of these games mightnt look the best to pc owners but they might look amazing for a non-pc owner. On every forum I find it funny that ppl have cancelled their preorders for the 360 after seeing a COD2 for a few minutes as its not "visually impressive".I wouldnt expect every new game to look amazing since some of the games will be coming out on other consoles at the same time so the developers might not put much effort into the 360 game. But the games will get better as time goes on and they learn more about the console.

IrishMike

The price of the 360 is fairly high 400 euro for the hd pack but as far as i
remember wasnt that the price of the original xbox when it came out ?
price will come down around the release of the ps3 to try and screw sony
as for the ps3 price is rumoured to be in the 400-500 dollar bracket with the
price expected closer to 400 (was in wall street journal yesterday i think -
dont ask i was bored in an airport !)
The thing is the ps3 has blu ray dvds which are huge and gigabit ethernet
connections and a better graphics card, thats the reason people are
saying to hold off until it comes out. me ill buy the xbox at the cheaper price
when the ps3 comes out and get the ps3 a couple months later
bill gates is saying the 360 is to last for 6-8 years as a platform
cant imagine gettin a pc gaming rig for 400 and lasting that long to be honest

steviec

Hmm considering the xbox lasted a whole 3 years I wouldn't feel that confident in Bill Gates assurances this one will last twice as long.

The 300/400 price is pretty reasonable though, no dearer than the xbox, ps2, ps1 and considering inflation thats an achievement.

selephonic

Well one way to extend the life of the machine would be to limit what developers can squeeze out of it, by keeping some programming elements secret or something, letting them out gradually so that the most impressive games only arrive towards the end of the consoles life. What a conspiracy!! I must be paranoid.

There's always upgrades I suppose.

iregk

Actually graphically as in the graphics card, the 360 and ps3 are about neck and neck so the ps3 does not have a much better graphics card that suggested. So far from what I've seen the 360 is a real living thing, the ps3 is following in with sony form and being all smoke and mirrors so far. The latest id heard was €500+ and that was from Sony themselves.

Also the original xbox was not 3 years, it has been out for 4 (not that thats a huge difference)

projectmayhem

CiDeRmAn wrote:

PS3 will not be available here til the end of 06, maybe even delayed til 07, so don't get your hopes up too soon.
Maybe if you had played it instead of watching someone else you may have got a more objective opinion.

you know about the ps3 release date before sony?

and most people who've played those demo's (yes i know, they're just demo's, but demo's are there to show off a machine) have said it's not that great.

like retro said, no point in getting it when the pc is so superior. not until halo anyway

HomunQlus

iregk wrote:

Actually graphically as in the graphics card, the 360 and ps3 are about neck and neck so the ps3 does not have a much better graphics card that suggested. So far from what I've seen the 360 is a real living thing, the ps3 is following in with sony form and being all smoke and mirrors so far. The latest id heard was €500+ and that was from Sony themselves.

Also the original xbox was not 3 years, it has been out for 4 (not that thats a huge difference)

The graphic card thing may be true, however, for all of those who gonna buy or already have a 360 - the PS3 has double the capacity on floating point operations. While the 360 does 1 Teraflop, the PS3 does more than 2 teraflops. I'd say the pricing of 500 Euro would be reasonable.

Wikipedia - XBox 360:

Overall System Floating-Point Performance

* 115 GFLOPS theoretical peak performance for CPU
* 1 TFLOPS theoretical peak performance of CPU and GPU combined


Wikipedia - PlayStation 3:

218 GFLOPS (billion floating point operations per second)


Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playstation_3#Hardware_specifications
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBox_360#Hardware_specifications

Clank

HomunQlus wrote:

The graphic card thing may be true, however, for all of those who gonna buy or already have a 360 - the PS3 has double the capacity on floating point operations. While the 360 does 1 Teraflop, the PS3 does more than 2 teraflops. I'd say the pricing of 500 Euro would be reasonable.

Wikipedia - XBox 360:

Overall System Floating-Point Performance

* 115 GFLOPS theoretical peak performance for CPU
* 1 TFLOPS theoretical peak performance of CPU and GPU combined


Wikipedia - PlayStation 3:

218 GFLOPS (billion floating point operations per second)


Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playstation_3#Hardware_specifications
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBox_360#Hardware_specifications

So you think the average person in the street will say, "Well its €100 more expensive but....it does a whole nother teraflop"

Quball15

Just wanted to mention that in Japan, where i am currently living...the Xbox 360 is only around 300 euro including the hard drive and accessories....Ireland really do get ripped up the arse!

I think it looks cool...but not sure if ill be getting one myself.

HomunQlus

Clank wrote:

So you think the average person in the street will say, "Well its €100 more expensive but....it does a whole nother teraflop"

The extra teraflop is well worth the money - to me it is.

Ciaran500

HomunQlus wrote:

The extra teraflop is well worth the money - to me it is.

Why?

What have you seen to say that an extra teraflop on the PS3 is worth more? Its just the usual spin Sony put on any information.

iregk

Can guarantee when the ps3 comes out it will be no where near that! Either that or Sony has as usual added up a lot of figures to make the main one look better. Its kind of like what they did for the ps2 back in the pre launch day. Went on claiming they had pushed the gpu to a certain speed, people were raving about it, what they never told you was that it burned out in 15seconds!!! On release actual figures were so much lower!

I'm sorry maybe im just sceptical, maybe i may be proved wrong by the ps3 and if so I will hold my hand up and say yeah I was wrong. But up to now I'm tired of Sony's bull, I've been burnt before and am not going back to the fire as quickly this time.

dave oc

Im sick of reading about people who see/play cod2, are not impressed and go and cancel their pre order. Cod2 is not the best looking game out at launch, just wait to and pg3, kameo or pdz on a demo pod or look around the web for screens/clips and you'll see more of what the 360 is capable of.

Cod2 amoung others are jus xbox games ported to the 360 that try to make people believe they are next-gen.....

CiDeRmAn

As was said, any arguement that starts mentioning the PS3 is a crock as the release date is so far away, and I can guess this because of past performance of Sony with their console releases, as for the price of the 360, its very reasonable give how much the next gen has always cost consumers or are most of you too young to remember digging deep for your Megadrives, Snes', Playstations and Saturns?
The PS3 will have to compete, as the 360 will, with the PC in terms of sheer power but it must be said, so far the original Xbox can do a good job with some clever programing, see FarCry Instincts and Doom3 as examples.
The PC maybe a powerful games system but only, it seems, if you want to play FPSs, stratwegy and simulators, for all manner of other types of game you have had to look to the consoles first.
Specs quoting on machines is another pointless exercise, missing the reason we own these machines in the first place, the games.
Maybe Retrogamer is right, if COD2 doesn't convince him he needs a 360 then so be it, but there is nothing to say he will be any more convinced by the PS3, and whatever titles emerge for that, at least at the mo you can go out and have a play on a 360 and make up your mind, don't be a sad git and give approval to a games system whose games are still nothing but vapourware, nebulous objects of desire that may bear little resemblence to the finished titles, and may turn out to be nothing but code running on a high end PC, fooling the vacant minded spec freak, dazzling them with stories of flops, cells and HD drives.

iregk

So very well said Ciderman. Id love to see an end to all this, PS3 is gonna blow 360 away because it has a Cell!!!!! ouhhhhhhh.....

40coats

HomunQlus wrote:

The extra teraflop is well worth the money - to me it is.

They really are very good at marketing, I've got to give them that.

HomunQlus

Ciaran500 wrote:

Why?

What have you seen to say that an extra teraflop on the PS3 is worth more? Its just the usual spin Sony put on any information.

I have seen screenshots and videos. All looked better to me than the 360.

However, if Sony is implementing this protection that no used games can be played etc., I might consider buying an XBox 360, I might.

CiDeRmAn

You might? But don't the games matter in the end?
Don't put the demos available to heart, they always sex them up, both companies do, remember the stuff around the time of the last next gen launches? The Old man demo on the PS2 and the chick and the giant robot demo on the xbox? nothing was ever released that had anything like the visual fidelity of either.
That said the actual games were arguably better than we could of hoped for, Ico, Halo1/2, GT4, PGR2 and so on. The sort of goodies waiting to be created by truely gifted developers are just beyond our reach at the mo. One can hardly predict what we may be playing 12 months hence, I mean who would have predicted the watchword in videogame racing would have been a series of games called Burnout? Or that Fable and Kotor would redefine console RPGs? Or that Halo would have shaken up a stale genre with much needed fresh ideas? The future is just as bright now.
So don't go saying "360=crap", you close the door on a possible future library of titles, I mean who really wants to play Killzone2 over Halo3, but then I wil certainly be buying both Sony and Nintendos next console offerings too, regardless of what the demos look like, haven't been disappointed by any of them yet.