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XBox (Games) Businesses

EA's Plans for Xbox 2 25

Posted by Zonk from the not-a-lot-of-sense-here dept.
GamesIndustry.biz has news of EA's Xbox 2 plans for 2005, adding additional weight to the likelyhood of a new console by the end of the year. Oddly, the story states that the games in the works for the new console will also be developed for the current iteration of the Xbox. This may partially confirm the lack of backwards compatibility discussed previously on Slashdot and seems to pit Microsoft's new console against the old one for sales dollars.
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EA's Plans for Xbox 2 More

EA's Plans for Xbox 2

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  • You know, as soon as I read the headline, I had a picture of a Gary Larson-esque viking ship with a bunch of XBoxes in the little seats where the rowers sit.

    Monday... it makes the mind do stupid things.
  • Lack of backwards compatibility? Come on, the Xbox 2 will be more powerful than the first, so why wouldn't it be able to play the old games? I remember Playstation making the same games for 1 & 2 at the same time, and it helped them keep their older console generation buying new games. They just weren't as shiny. I think I'll be able to play my copy of Halo 2 on Xbox 2. At least I hope so.
    • Exactly. That's probably one of the dumbest statements I've read in the teasers. The real reason they're going to make new games for both Xbox and Xbox 2 is that, (here's a shocker) not everyone is going to buy an Xbox 2 at launch. Imagine that! The thing'll probably be $300-400 at launch, possibly more if they think they can get away with it, and I know I'm not going to buy it untill a couple of price drops happen.
    • X-Box 2 WILL be more powerful than the current machine. But, while I agree that the article uses terrible logic, there is still a big question mark with regard to backwards compatibility.

      X-Box 2 will use a PowerPC derivative for its CPU. X-Box uses a Pentium. X-Box 2 will use ATI graphics, X-Box uses nVidia. While there may be some backwards compatibility built in using some form of emulation, I highly doubt that it will be 100% accurate or 100% reliable. I don't actually expect the next X-Box to be backwa
      • But have comodity PC processors and graphics chips advanced to the point where they can emulate different architectures from just 4 years ago, even when in an optimized configuration? The answer is probably not. The Xbox2 seems to be a continuation and extension of the current design and architecture paradigms, so a drastic break away compared to previous performance is most unlikely.

        Compare this to the drastic architectural shifts regarding the architecture used in the PS3. Like the guy says in the art

  • Disagree with the logic here (Score:5, Informative)

    by hal2814 ( 725639 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @11:57AM (#11456780)
    "Oddly, the story states that the games in the works for the new console will also be developed for the current iteration of the Xbox. This may partially confirm the lack of backwards compatibility discussed previously on Slashdot and seems to pit Microsoft's new console against the old one for sales dollars."

    Maybe not. You can actually get a copy of Madden 2005 for the original Playstation, even though PS2 is backwards compatable. I would imagine that EA is betting that there will still be a signifigant portion of XBox owners who will not own an XBox2 any time soon and they'd like to continue to make money off of XBox owners.

  • What's so odd there? (Score:4, Informative)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Monday January 24, 2005 @11:57AM (#11456790)
    Oddly, the story states that the games in the works for the new console will also be developed for the current iteration of the Xbox. This may partially confirm the lack of backwards compatibility discussed previously

    That seems to me more like a strategy to deal with the lack of forwards compatability of the original Xbox. For the same reason, EA still develops their new titles for the original Playstation and for the PS2.

  • Parent is correct (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LilSerf ( 580945 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @12:05PM (#11456911)
    Most of the EA Sports line was still being released on PS1 up until a year ago or so. There's nothing "odd" about it. EA would be stupid to disregard the huge pre-install base and solely pursue the new console owners. Likewise, EA would be stupid to just release an XBox version and say "use your backward compatibility" to XBox2 owners. Those with new consoles will want games that actually push their hardware.

    Gradually the previous generation's support will diminish, just like the PS1 games gradually became little more than roster updates and had no new-feature-similarity to their PS2 cousins.

  • "adding additional weight"? (Score:5, Funny)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 ) on Monday January 24, 2005 @12:26PM (#11457224) Homepage
    Sounds just like what the xbox was missing.
  • adding additional weight to the likelyhood of a new console

    Hey, Additional weight.
  • Microsoft can easily refuse to permit certain games from showing up on the X-Box. With any of the consoles, you cannot release a game for that console unless the owners of that platform decide to permit it.

    The only thing preventing Microsoft from stopping EA's plan of releasing on X-Box and X-Box 2 is the possible fear of alienating a game publisher that has become too big to ignore.

    END COMMUNICATION
    • In the console market, Microsoft needs EA more than EA needs Microsoft.
  • I think what's more interesting is that EA seems to be supporting the Xbox2 slightly more than they did the Xbox1. EA was slow to support the first Xbox, and they did so begrudgingly. The article states that none of the EA-Xbox2 titles are exclusive, but if they're better looking (and one owns an Xbox2) why would one not buy the Xbox2 version? What will really show EA's hand will be whether they release any PS3 exclusive titles or not.

    Their attitude is more cautious, but it seems that the industry is w

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