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xbox 360

posted in games by jon on 2005-05-18

continuing with my own e3 coverage, some thoughts on microsofts new console. The "inhale" look just doesn't do it for me; I'm not even sure what I don't like about it, but I suspect it's mostly to do with oreintation: I just don't get the fixation with making game consoles look like cheap taiwanese pc mods. Look at your entertainment center. See any vertical slots? me neither.2. The new ui looks pretty well done. it looks like a ripoff of ea's silver look....but well done nonetheless.3. I think Microsoft is missing the boat badly by not including a blu-ray drive. I realize that would put them in the somewhat interesting position of using a technology that sony is heavily involved in, but i think that hd-dvd is coming sooner rather than later, and I think blu-ray is going to be the standard. As it stands now, microsoft is in the even more awkward position of pumping the "hi-def era" with lo-def dvd technology. Furthermore, when you also consider how hard they're pushing their box as some sort of living room entertainment hub, the lack of a next-gen media standard is a glaring omission.4. Xbox live. I can't speak too well to this because I'm something of an anomoly: a hard core gamer with broadband who couldn't care less about online gaming. This is one trend, like the whole cell phone craze that, so far at least, has passed me by.

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on ps3

posted in games by jon on 2005-05-16

I've spent the last few hours with 20 tabs open in safari, hammering on the refresh button like a madman, squeezing out every ouce of news on the ps3.First impressions:1. surely that's not really the controller. I've gotta think it will be reworked in the year before launch; it's a little avant garde for a final design. To be honest, it looks as if it was thrown together at the last minute so that sony could show something to rain on microsoft's parade.2. performance numbers are impressive; and probably meaningless. It will probably come down to which is harder for developers to take full advantage of: the unfamiliar architecture of the cell, or the multiple cores of the xbox.3. bluetooth. 7 controllers. that just rules.4. multiple gigabit ethernet: I wonder what this will be used for; if it's really for building ad-hoc clusters of cell enabled devices, color me impressed.5. blu-ray: potentially very, very smart. I used my ps2 as a dvd player for a long time. It makes it alot easier to justify a purchase of several hundred dollars when you get two new technologies for the price of one. Depending on how the DVD format war goes, this could decide the console war.6. new rule for console makers. screenshots that don't show actual gameplat are hereby banned; nobody cares what the next generation of pre-rendered cinemas will look like.

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