Gizmodo: Fans of driving games traditionally either had to put up with filmsy wheels that made racing less convenient than using the standard analog stick controllers. With the Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel from Microsoft, lousy first party racing accessories are a thing of the past.

In all honesty, this was the best racing experience we’ve ever had.

and a solid endorsement from Techie Musings with a few complaints I hope get addressed in the next version:

The wheel feels very solid and “real” - when you hold it, you feel like you can throw it around and it has a satisfying length of travel (270 degrees)…. all in all, if you’re into driving games, this is highly recommended.

Technorati Tags: Xbox360, Racing Wheel

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

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.

I’ve had the Sony Bravia 40″ LCD for a few months now, and wanted to share my impressions of it, specifically while using the Xbox 360. While the newer XBR2 and XBR3 are just starting to ship, now might be the perfect time to get a good deal on the original XBR1. According to nextag you can see the price dropping throughout the last few months, and is now in the sub $2k range:

I won’t go through all the specs, but here are the highlights:

The good:
- 720p resolution means pixel perfect matching with todays Xbox 360 games. There is a 1080p upgrade coming soon to the Xbox360, but we believe that it will be focused more on HD-DVD usage than on games.
- The TV’s UI is easy, and keeps all the proper presets for my games. I had to bump up the brightness a bit compared to normal TV watching as some games appeared a bit dark with the default settings.
- No ghosting at all. This was a concern with any LCD, and this one is spec’d at 8ms and so far so good. With my gamefly rental subscription, I’ve played over 20 games so far, and nearly every demo on Live — and have yet to come across a problem.
- Games look realistic and sharp. For those coming from PC games this is a welcome feature. The Plasma setups I’ve seen with Xbox360 seem softer and less sharp.
- Non Xbox360, but still cool: 1366 x 768 resolution means that my photos — when viewed via USB port or via Xbox 360 Windows Media Connect — look great and in proportion. Makes for great slideshows on the big screen.

The bad:
- only one HDMI port. The newer XBR series fixed this with 3 ports, but something to consider

The ugly:
- only wish it was 50″ :)

Summary: A great TV for movies, watching A-Rod choke in pressure situations ( sorry couldn’t resist ! ), and most importantly Xbox 360 games.

I give this TV a rating of 9/10. It would have been a 10 with more than 1 HDMI port.

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.

Gamasutra has a great write-up, so instead of trying to summarize here, just click over and read for yourself — very cool stuff.

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 :)

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

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

- 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.