Xbox 360 20 GB Price Cut "While Supplies Last" 92
Erik J sends word that the rumored price cut on the 20-GB Xbox 360 is true, sort of. The Seattle PI's coverage says: "But the reduction isn't exactly what it might have appeared. In reality, it's more like a clearance sale, designed to empty the shelves for a new Xbox 360 with three times the digital storage, at the same price as before... As widely reported in advance, Microsoft is dropping the price of the 20-gigabyte Xbox 360 to $299.99. The unexpected twist: Sales of that model will end when current supplies run out."
Core (Score:4, Interesting)
As if 20GBs are easier to make (Score:3, Interesting)
They (aka MS) clearly didn't learn from their 8GB fiasco with the original Xbox. Some of the latter Xbox models had 20GB formatted to show 8GB space (lolcatz). I am all about giving choice to the consumer but 20GB, no HDD models of the Xbox 360 are ridiculous. It's easier to get a steady supply of bigger HDDs than it is to get 20GB drives.
This is where Sony shines with the smallest disk drive on their machines being 40GB aside from the user having the ability to upgrade the 2.5" drives fairly easily. (I have both the 360 Elite and the PS3).
Re:Core (Score:4, Interesting)
Deus Ex is also an example the other way. The original if you remember, was ported to the PS2, which made very few changes to gameplay. You could even play with keyboard and mouse if you wanted to.
So don't say "console vision" because it's quite possible to do a PC to console port that keeps the gameplay but makes a few tweaks to the control scheme. Say developer vision instead. It was wrong minded developers who didn't even try hard.
Bah let me know when the XBox 360 breaks $200- (Score:3, Interesting)
It isn't even worth the $299, because I can easily get a much more powerful PC with better graphics and audio and more RAM and a much bigger hard drive for the same amount of memory with a faster CPU to boot.
What I don't like is that new games like Civilization Revolutions are being released for game consoles only and not the PC anymore. Way to go 2K, tick off all of the loyal PC users who bought Civ 4, Civ 4: Warlords, and Civ 4: Beyond the Sword, only to be shut out of the new Civilization game in favor of the XBox 360, Nintendo DS, and Playstation 3. Civilization is better played on a keyboard and mouse not a game pad. It is a thinking game of strategy and tactics, not some "shoot 'em up" high action game console video game.
So now if I want to play Civilization Revolution, the next in the Civilization series, I have to buy a more expensive game console, and when Civilization 5 comes out, no doubt I'll also be forced to buy a brand new PC with better graphics, more RAM, and a faster CPU just to be able to run it.
Thanks for the buggy bloated video games, that are basically the same game with more features added to it as the old game that played on the older systems, only now at a higher price on a new game console that also costs at least $299 to play it on for a $60 game.
It really makes me want to use Freeciv instead, even if it is only 2D graphics and doesn't have all the bells and whistles and fancy animation of the commercial version.
Re:Core (Score:3, Interesting)
Odds are the compromises were actually made on content design during the planning phase.
Look at Deus Ex vs. Deus Ex 2: Invisible War. Though DX1 came out years beforehand, it had much larger maps and many more hours of gameplay than DX2. The reason? The xBox couldn't support the DX1-style map sizes, and it was simultaneously developed for both.
Re:Core (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but back before Xbox came out, Halo's planned claim to faim was going to be a lot of evolutionary realism improvements that add up to a revolutanary change.
On the list were:
vehicles: not only playable vehicles, but ones with realistic suspensions.
General graphics improvements.
smooth envierment transitions (IIRC, you weren't supposed to *ever* see a "loading" screen, even going from outdoors to indoors) ..Vast playable world. IIRC, the entire ring was supposed to be playable. I don't remember if it was supposed to be mostly dynamically generated procedural content or not, but that seems likely given the area of the ring exceeds the area of an entire earth by a significant margin.
Some of those improvements made it into the final game, but the vastness was gone. As was the FPS-ness, and much of the graphical candy.
Re:Ya know.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you realize you're supporting SONY for being OPEN at this point?
Sony is more open on this ONE point. They allow you to use third party drives and MicroSoft does not.
The XBox has some issues but, really, they make some damned fine hardware when they want to.
Hmmm... I guess they just didn't want to when it came to the 360. However, I'll agree that their peripherals generally work well.