Posts filed under 'news'
As part of the Amazon Customer Vote deal ( cool concept by the way ), customers picked the $100 Xbox360. What should have been a nice PR move for Amazon and a good deal for 1000 customers, turned into a classic slashdot / digg effect ( crunchgear blog for details ). By that I mean an overload of traffic all trying to access the same site at the same time. Not only was the Xbox360 product page not available, but the whole Amazon.com site appeared to be down for several minutes costing the site untold revenue.
While not a remarkable event in itself — walmart.com and other sites have been down this holiday season — it is extra troubling to see Amazon go down as they are now touting their S3 platform for all kinds of services with a focus on reliability and uptime:
Built to be flexible so that protocol or functional layers can easily be added. Default download protocol is HTTP. A BitTorrent(TM) protocol interface is provided to lower costs for high-scale distribution. Additional interfaces will be added in the future.
Scalable: Amazon S3 can scale in terms of storage, request rate, and users to support an unlimited number of web-scale applications. It uses scale as an advantage: Adding nodes to the system increases, not decreases, its availability, speed, throughput, capacity, and robustness.
Failure tolerant: The system considers the failure of components to be a normal mode of operation, and continues operation with no or minimal interruption.
We’ll check back next week to see if this happens again with the next specially discounted Amazon offer. Right now the “Axion Portable DVD Player” is leading the vote :)
Technorati Tags: Xbox360, amazon, deals
November 25th, 2006
Great article up on Gamasutra tackling the question of HD and games and if the console developers have jumped in to early. They spoke to three industry experts re: twobig questions: “Are Microsoft and Sony emphasizing HDTV too much, not enough, or just enough? Has Nintendo made a mistake by not providing HDTV resolution for the Wii?”
As we reported earlier, microsoft claims that 90% of xbox360 gamers either own an HDTV or plan on purchasing one soon. So based on that data point, the gamers have spoken and they want HD.
GigaOM also has there take on it here:
“Amazingly, all three analysts are bullish on HDTV, particularly Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities (”I think HD resolution is the essential difference between this cycle and the last”) and Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies. (”I do not think the gaming industry is jumping in prematurely at all”) In my read, only Mike Wolf of ABI Research couches his bullishness with caution, saying “HDTV is a critical feature of the new generation of consoles, particularly down the road 2-3 years.”
For us xbox360 game content is already in great HD and here today, so we don’t see a reason to wait 2-3 years. But given that the gaming console has a life cycle of 4 or 5 years, it does seem odd that Nintendo elected to not include HD support in the Wii - a decision that could come back to bite them.
October 11th, 2006
several sources are now confirming two big HD updates to the Xbox 360 platform:
1) 1080p support coming soon — kinda. What does this mean ? Engadget HD breaks it down
VGA:
- HD DVD - 1080p resolution and all others
- DVD - Upscaled as high as 1080p resolution and all others
- Games - 720p games upscaled to 1080p, also supports native-1080p games in the future
Component:
- HD DVD - 1080i resolution maximum, limited by AACS
- DVD - Upscaled to 480p maximum, limited by CSS
- Games - 720p games upscaled to 1080p, also supports native-1080p games in the future
2) The much rumored HD-DVD now has a date and pricing — at least in Japan. About $180 and scheduled for Nov 22. We hope to have US pricing and dates soon.
September 23rd, 2006
The Xbox 360 community is buzzing re: next week’s big announcement from Epic. For those who’ve missed out on the early buzz, Gears of War appears to be a true next-gen title with amazing visuals, and we hope for great gameplay.
screenshots here
videos here
Mark Rein set things off by posting on Monday:
“BIG announcement coming next week! “
Gamespot followed up with a lengthy post explaining the possibilities:
This week, a new theory began circulating that Microsoft will time the release of another top Xbox 360 game to trip up the PS3’s launch. …Since Microsoft launched the Xbox, Xbox 360, and both Halo games in mid-November, many assume that Gears of War will hit stores then, especially now that the PS3 is going on sale during the time frame….This, in turn, spawned a second theory–that the announcement will be for a Gears of War demo on Xbox Live.
My money is on an Xbox Live demo. If you have any tips please send our way :)
July 25th, 2006
Joystick has a post saying that:
IT Wire in Australia has spoken with Mark Whittard, general manager of Toshiba’s Information Systems Division in Australia, about the possibility of an internal HD-DVD drive making it into next generations of the Xbox 360 before the end of the year.
More speculation than reality at this point, but given all the cluter we have in our own living rooms, it makes perfect sense to move this HD-DVD USB add-on into the actual console itself.
Here is the quote from the Toshiba GM that has everyone excited:
“The Xbox [360] is coming out with an HD-DVD player towards the end of this year. … I would imagine that there are plans in place to put an HD-DVD drive internally in future revisions of the product. They’re not speaking about it publicly at the moment but I would expect them to do that and fairly soon.”
Could be a good PR move to have that ready before the PS3 ships.
7/7/06 Update: Microsoft is flat out denying this: Cesar Menendez of the Microsoft’s Global Games Marketing Team wrote in the team’s blog:
Saw a few stories online about an Xbox 360 with a built-in HD DVD drive: not true. We have no plans to release an Xbox 360 with an internal HD DVD. What we showcased at E3 was an external HD DVD drive, and we’re sticking with that.
source
July 3rd, 2006
At gamespy, they have a nice article today titled “Do Gamers Really Need HDTV?”. Readers of this blog know the answer — YES ! — but many others are still debating the benefits of moving up to HD gaming:
The Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 both output an HD signal, and while the Wii isn’t HD, it does output a progressive scan signal which is cleaner and slightly sharper than a regular TV signal (you’ll need an enhanced definition television, EDTV, or an HDTV to use this mode though). But is the extra cost of an HD set worth it? And how much of a difference is there for games?
Adam Carpenter from Vivendi Games believes that HD is definitely needed for the upcoming generation of gaming. He says, “I think the HD element of games now is very important. It’s going to take over the gaming industry. Everything is going to be HD. It’s essential that you upgrade to that eventually. Especially with the PlayStation 3 coming out, big titles like Metal Gear Solid 4… you gotta have HD to take advantage of the technology and experience the full potential of the software.”
You can read the full article here
May 14th, 2006
according to pixelgamers.com, we can expect an update to Xbox Live dashboard within the next 2 weeks. Updates will include:
- a download manager for 6 parallel downloads in the background
- ability to download while playing a game or a demo
These two features alone will be a major upgrade, and will solve one of the biggest gripes gamers have right now — the single download that basically puts your xbox360 on hold until the download is done.
May 14th, 2006
As we reported back in April, this is now official:
This new accessory will connect to the Xbox 360 console with a USB cable, enabling it to harness the power of the Xbox 360 console for the HD video outputs and digital surround sound. As an accessory, it becomes another shining example of the flexibility of Xbox 360 designed into the console in order to grow and add new features. It’s also just one of several new accessories being announced at E3.
“There aren’t any Blu-ray players available to test, but if you compare the requirements on paper it’s going to be a wash in terms of video quality,” said Albert Penello, Director of Global Marketing at Xbox. “At Microsoft, we’ve known that for some time. But the major difference is going to be price, and all the leading indicators point to HD DVD winning.”
Let’s hope the footprint of this external drive isn’t too significant. You can read the full Microsoft announcement here
Technorati Tags: xbox360, hd-dvd
May 8th, 2006
We haven’t had a chance to test this game yet, but according to several of our readers and hardwaregeeks.com the wide aspect ratio is not properly supported in the Xbox 360 version of MLB 2K6. Hardwaregeeks.com reports that:
“HDTV users beware this game is not an HD Game and there for when played in widescreen there are stretched logos, jaggy’s and frame lag.”
If this is true, and it appears to be, it will really fly in the face of what the Xbox 360 is all about — next generation games on next generation hardware … and for our money, next generation means HD.
Technorati Tags: MLB2K6
April 20th, 2006
Not a surprise to anyone browsing the Live marketplace recently — tons of movie trailers being promoted.
Paramount has decided to join the party - and many are speculating that this effort is two-fold. 1) marketing a movie today means reaching 18-34 yr olds, and gaming is a great place to get those eyeballs, 2) it’s a marketing effort to promote future HD-DVD releases.
Item 1 makes perfect sense and is compounded by cable/tv ratings that continue to slide, especially in this younger demo.
“It hits the audience in a big way - the 12- to 34-year-old audience. That’s the sweet spot of frequent moviegoers,” said Gerry Rich, Paramount’s president of worldwide marketing. “They’re the early adopters. We think they impact and influence a lot of folks. They’re gatekeepers of what’s cool and what’s not.”
Item 2 makes some sense — although I still hold out that people rather download HD content, or rent it ( think NetFlix ), but don’t really want to own a bunch of plastic. The value is not in owning a physical good anymore, it’s in having instant access to the content, sharing with friends, tagging. mixing, etc. If anything these HD trailers will create even a greater demand for instant HD content — and microsoft should be pushing that the way iTunes did for music.
April 18th, 2006
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