backtop

Print E-mail del.icio.us 101 comment(s) - last by ok630.. on Apr 22 at 1:42 AM
Microsoft says HD DVD for Xbox 360 is still enjoyable

With Peter Moore gone to EA Sports, Microsoft Game Studios corporate VP Shane Kim is now one of the more public figures behind the Xbox 360. Speaking to GameDaily, Kim answered several questions regarding the current state of the Xbox 360 business.

The black eye on the Xbox 360’s reputation is the apparent fragility of the hardware. Early units were especially prone to the “Red Ring of Death,” indicating a hardware failure. Microsoft has since made numerous revisions to the Xbox 360 hardware, and is backing up all consoles with a 3-year warranty against the defect.

“We certainly regret the issues that some customers have experienced with Xbox 360, which is why we took the step of extending our warranty to an unprecedented three years,” said Kim. “However, we feel very confident in the quality of the consoles that we are producing, and our hardware experience and talent continue to grow.”

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said earlier this year that the company now has a commitment to make the Xbox 360 “the most reliable video game box out there.”

The frequent occurrence of users having to send away their consoles for refurbishment also introduced a completely new problem – DRM issues from downloaded Xbox Live Arcade games. The problem has only recently been resolved, Kim explained. “This process will only require you to connect to Xbox LIVE once to download the content again. Once you follow this process, you should be able to play previously downloaded content whether you are signed into Xbox Live or not.”

While Xbox Live has become a crucial fixture in Xbox 360 gaming, Microsoft has yet to convince PC gamers to fully adopt the service. “We are continually investing resources in both Games for Windows and the Xbox 360. PC gamers are moving more and more online so you'll see us invest more in this space moving ahead,” said Kim. “You'll see our service on Windows continue to evolve just as Xbox LIVE has incorporated new functionality over time.”

The Xbox 360 console was a popular HD DVD player thanks to its relatively affordable add-on drive. Those who jumped into the format, however, are now left with a dead end piece of hardware due to Toshiba’s surrender of HD DVD.

Kim, however, still has many great things to say about the HD DVD peripheral: “While it is unfortunate that HD DVD was discontinued, there is still enjoyment to be had from your Xbox 360 HD DVD Player. You can take this as an opportunity to build out your movie collection! There are around 500 HD DVD movies to choose from and many at great deals, so there is a fair amount of content for HD DVD on the market.”

“It also is a terrific DVD player and it allows you to have game discs and movie discs, whether HD DVD or DVD, within the console at one time. The HD DVD player also adds two additional USB ports to your console,” concluded Kim.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
Ridiculous...
By Enoch2001 on 4/17/2008 10:47:37 AM , Rating: 3
Microsoft has their head buried in the sand. Just freak'n release a BlueRay drive for the 360 and call it a day. They'll need *something* to compete with the PS3's high-def movie capability and supporting a dead format with no more movies in release is not an intelligent business decision.




RE: Ridiculous...
By PAPutzback on 4/17/08, Rating: 0
RE: Ridiculous...
By masher2 (blog) on 4/17/2008 1:18:58 PM , Rating: 5
> "Noone at MS can deny the PS3 look like something you'd want to see in your rack "

Not in my rack. Its curved design isn't stackable, and it lacks a proper front control panel for one.


RE: Ridiculous...
By AlphaVirus on 4/17/2008 1:46:27 PM , Rating: 2
They have "game console stackers" available for purchase for less than $30.
It can be used for the 360 if you dont want heat problems, for the PS3 if the object is too unstable on the curved surface, and the Wii if the object is larger than a cd case.

A quick google search "PS3 Horizontal System Stacker"
pulls up this for $20
http://www.madcatz.com/Default.asp?Page=328&


RE: Ridiculous...
By theflux on 4/17/2008 1:46:37 PM , Rating: 2
Wait, you actually stack things on top of your 360? What do you stack on top of the HD DVD add-on? What do you stack on top of your Wii?


RE: Ridiculous...
By whirabomber on 4/18/2008 6:06:12 AM , Rating: 2
I have my HD DVD sitting on top of my 360, which could easily have room for a Wii, too as there is plenty of space. Just don't cover those cooling vents, though. I use my HD DVD player to stack games and movies my lazy backside hasn't put away yet.

MS can impress us by patching the HD DVD player to allow the use of audio CDs - right now you get a polite message to stick the audio CD somewhere else as the HD DVD player won't play it.


RE: Ridiculous...
By theflux on 4/18/2008 12:59:53 PM , Rating: 2
Ok, but see you are stacking an add-on on top of the console. The PS3 requires no such add-on, and therefore no need to stack. When people say "stackable" they usually are trying to imply that they can't load the 360 down with a receiver and a DVD player or some other nonsense.


RE: Ridiculous...
By deeznuts on 4/17/2008 2:35:46 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Not in my rack. Its curved design isn't stackable, and it lacks a proper front control panel for one.


For every stack, there is one component on top. Don't need to be a genius to figure out which one to put on top.


RE: Ridiculous...
By theflux on 4/17/2008 4:59:21 PM , Rating: 1
Every person I've ever met that complained about the PS3 not being stackable had a 360 with nothing stacked on top of it. It's just one of those things that some people pick for lack of a real reason.


RE: Ridiculous...
By elmikethemike on 4/17/2008 7:26:42 PM , Rating: 2
lol

The folks at DT post the Sony news without spin, but certainly love to comment on it.

Yours is about the dumbest thing I've ever read.


RE: Ridiculous...
By ajfink on 4/17/2008 10:10:39 PM , Rating: 1
I bought a PS3 two days ago (already own an Xbox 360 - with the HD-DVD add-on) and those damn curves make it impossible to stack with anything.

I wouldn't doubt Sony doing that on purpose...grawr.

The thing is a folding beast, though. I'd consider picking up PS3s with broken optical drives if they didn't still sell for $150.


RE: Ridiculous...
By omnicronx on 4/17/08, Rating: 0
RE: Ridiculous...
By Homerboy on 4/17/2008 11:07:50 AM , Rating: 5
I completely enjoy my 360 for gaming solely... however I have to disagree with you. The 360 is certainly touted by MS to be an entertainment unit. That was the ENTIRE intent of the box. That is why they heavily promote its streaming video ability, why they (did) heavily promote the HD-DVD drive.

Don't try to fool yourself otherwise.


RE: Ridiculous...
By omnicronx on 4/17/2008 11:18:54 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
however I have to disagree with you.

Exactly.. you disagree with me, obviously Microsoft and their huge marketing team disagrees with you. Thanks for proving my point.

It was also pretty obvious Microsoft could care less if either Next-Gen high def format won, looking at their business plan you can pretty much see they are focusing on digital downloads.

Sure they added MCE capabilities, and I find them very useful, but it is still a gaming console first, MCE machine second. Sony's cell processor is not suited for games either, Microsofts GPU is faster and better optimized than the PS3's cell powered RSX.


RE: Ridiculous...
By omnicronx on 4/17/08, Rating: 0
RE: Ridiculous...
By afkrotch on 4/17/2008 12:24:58 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Exactly.. you disagree with me, obviously Microsoft and their huge marketing team disagrees with you. Thanks for proving my point.


www.xbox.com

Looks to me their huge marketing team disagrees with you.

quote:
It was also pretty obvious Microsoft could care less if either Next-Gen high def format won, looking at their business plan you can pretty much see they are focusing on digital downloads.


Yes, that's why Microsoft was heavily supporting HD-DVD, but not Blu-ray.

quote:
Sure they added MCE capabilities, and I find them very useful, but it is still a gaming console first, MCE machine second. Sony's cell processor is not suited for games either, Microsofts GPU is faster and better optimized than the PS3's cell powered RSX.


Oh dear god, you don't even understand the console's hardware.

The PS3 is powered by a Cell proc and an Nvidia RSX gpu. Xbox 360 is powered by a IBM Xenon proc and ATI Xenos GPU.


RE: Ridiculous...
By omnicronx on 4/17/08, Rating: 0
RE: Ridiculous...
By Fallen Kell on 4/18/2008 1:26:22 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Thanks for the lesson! Using the words Cell powered was a bad choice of words. My point still stands though, the Xenos unified architecture, is more effiecient, more backwards compatible, easier to code for and is overall a better GPU. This makes it a better suited gaming machine, thanks though for once again nitpicking on the fine details, and bringing this thread off topic.


Do we need to get into the debate here? Lets remember the facts. The Xenos was the pre-cursor to the R600. It can do 500million polygons per second, and 10 floating point operations per clock (or approx 5 billion per second (in theory remember)).

The RSX is based on the G70 chips, and can draw 1 billion polygons per second (note twice as many as the Xenos), and 27 Floating point operations per pixel shader pipe per cycle (with 24 pipes), for 648 per cycle, and 356 billion per second (again in theory). We do know in fact that the PS3 is able to perform 2 terraflops when combined with the Cell processors (or 2,000,000,000,000).

Might it be easier to program for a unified shader? Maybe, but then again, programmers have only been programming on them for 3 years now, while there have been over 10 years experience programming on a non-unified architectures. You also need to remember the bottle-necks that ATI's first generation unified shader product had on the PC (which is based on the Xenos, which also probably suffers the same bottleneck), of not having enough shader units that could perform a floating point operation (since not all of them could). And this makes sense from the numbers of only being capable of doing 10 floating point operations per cycle, when in fact it has 48 stream processors.... Again, the same bottleneck which caused the ATI R600 which had 320 stream processors to be outperformed by the Nvidia G80 which only had 128....


RE: Ridiculous...
By Reclaimer77 on 4/17/08, Rating: -1