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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segagenesis - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
I dont think the Silver/Gold tier service will discourage modding, most people who have the current x-box modded either *dont care* about X-Box Live or just use another unmodded one just for that purpose. However, I doubt it (360) will be modded for at least several years."community-created content, and more to the detachable Xbox 360 hard drive" this is to be seen, how will the community create content for something they cant mess with :P
JNo - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
Hate to big up the competition and and appear that am disrepecting Anandtech but check out tomshardware for lots of very interesting extra info made possible by the fact that they got to interview Mr Henshaw at MS. Think my current modded xbox is awesome and simply can't wait till this one is modded....Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
AnandThenManThe screenshots were from my own capture of the show - I've got the original file on my MCE machine if you're interested in more proof :)
Take care,
Anand
CurtOien - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
"Can't wait for the XBox cluster to top the supercomputer chart now :)"It will be a waste if these aren't used for some type of distributed computing when they are not playing games.
Cdeck - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
i believe there is an error in your article, a reference to 1 teraflop.ms's little web wmv about the xbox 360 stated one trillion instructions per second, not a teraflop. we must assume they counted everything, including ati's video instruction count. a 333 gflop proc only exists in star trek.
the writer did a good job extracting what little info this mtv thingy had. i never saw it.
i agree with #19. if i can plug a keyboard into the xbox or ps3, i am throwing my pc in the trash.
Bonesdad - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
continual PC upgrades sure...you think this is the be all and end all of the XBox? You will be buying another new model in 2 years.Jalf - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
Hang on, I'm pretty sure the Dreamcast also internally rendered at higher resolution (which is why you got higher res by using their VGA adapter).So not the first console to do it... But still neat. ;)
InuYasha - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
i think i'll spend my upgrading money for XBox360 and PS3 instead of my PC from now on...BenSkywalker - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
"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."While it is true that it will be the first time games are always rendered at higher then 480p standard(which isn't 640x480 btw) there are current XBox titles running 1080i-
http://www.hdtvpub.com/productdb/games/index.cfm
May not be a huge list, but XB360 certainly won't be the first time games run higher then 480p(this list does NOT include upsacled games).
AnandThenMan - Friday, May 13, 2005 - link
KristopherKubicki I saw some screenshots of the event, they were from some warez group named Loki. The screenshots were exactly the same rez, quality, colour, everything. It's from the same torrent. I have no problem with it but I am surprised that Anandtech would seek out and use such material considering the torrent very likely came for a warez site.As for the MTV event, it was horrible. Useless is a better word.The Xbox 360 looks like it could be performance monster!