Xbox 360 to use HD-DVD... eventually

[kuyu]

Bill Gates announced in Japan this week that M$ would eventually utilize Toshiba's HD-DVD format in future xbox 360's. The logistics of this development were not specified, however the general consensus seems to be that the "new" drives will only allow for HD movie playback and not 25 gigabyte games. That is, all future 360 games will use the current DVD-9 format.

As is widely known, Sony will use their proprietary Blu-Ray disc technology in the PS3. While Blu-Ray boasts higher capacity than HD-DVD it also requires new stamping equipment, while the latter can be produced on existing DVD production equipment. As such, film studios are evenly split on which format they will support in the future. Can anyone say VHS vs BetaMax?

Depending on how M$ plays this out, it could mean disaster for the xbox 360 from day one. We cannot be expected to re-buy the 360 only a year after launch. Also, I'm not sure why the ability to playback high-def content is mutually exclusive from HD-DVD based games.

Perhaps if there is some sort of trade-in program, where a DVD-9 Xbox 360 can be traded in for a HD-DVD 360 then this will be a non-issue. Just go to EB and swap your harddrive to a new unit, and let M$ refurb your old 360 with the new drive.

[GFLPraxis]

Huh. I coulda sworn I remember reading an interview where Bill Gates said they'd do that...
Months ago.

Anyway, I heard of this a few days ago as well. Before people go insane (I saw people going absolutely nuts on other boards, with reactions like "That means if I buy an XBox 360 I won't be able to play later games?!? That's crap!" etc), just to clarify; the GAMES will continue to ship on multiple DVD's. They're just adding HD-DVD for movie playback. Microsoft has specified this.


The PS3 gets to use Blu-ray for movies AND games. The XBox 360 will have to use DVD for games and HD-DVD for movies.

[pdpfilms]

Anyway, I heard of this a few days ago as well. Before people go insane (I saw people going absolutely nuts on other boards, with reactions like "That means if I buy an XBox 360 I won't be able to play later games?!? That's crap!" etc), just to clarify; the GAMES will continue to ship on multiple DVD's. They're just adding HD-DVD for movie playback. Microsoft has specified this.

MULTIPLE DVD's?? How is this possible? Would you temporarily install games to the HDD?

[Phat_Pat]

MULTIPLE DVD's?? How is this possible? Would you temporarily install games to the HDD?
GC did it a for a few games.

Half the game is on 1 disc half on another.

Once you get to the part which needs the new disc you just pop it in...

[msbsound]

MULTIPLE DVD's?? How is this possible? Would you temporarily install games to the HDD?


I know that the PS1 used this technique with almost all of it's rpgs later on. Granted they were CDs, but principle is the same.

As the previous poster stated, the game just prompts you to put the second disc in at a level load, or some other, hopefully, convenient time.

[RandomDeadHead]

Sony shipping Blu-ray drives in every PS3 will most defiantly drive the market towards blu-ray technology. There are a lot of households that use their PS2's as their main dvd player, myself included. The fact that the PS3 will have blu-ray right of the bat will have a huge impact on the adoption of the technology. Almost instantly the installed user base of blu-ray owners will be gigantic. This will play heavily on the movie industries decision of witch format to support, do you support the technology that people are inadvertently buying by the millions,(initial ps3 sales) or do you wait until consumers go out of their way to buy a stand alone HD-dvd player? The biggest sales spike for the new gaming consoles will be in the first year, millions will have purchased Blu-ray equipped PS3's while none will have purchased a Xbox 360 with HD-DVD(due to unavailability)
IMHO, Microsofts delay with HD-DVD adoption will hurt sales of the Xbox 360, and most likely severely delay the adoption or even kill the HD-DVD standard.
OTOH, this is 2005 for gods sake, who the hell wants to flip/change disks, to me this sounds like a step in the wrong direction. Come on Microsoft, your an American company, you know that we fat lazy Americans don't want to pry our lazy asses of the couch to flip/change a disc.

This may just be a battle the Goliath Microsoft will actually loose.

[GFLPraxis]

MULTIPLE DVD's?? How is this possible? Would you temporarily install games to the HDD?

The GameCube has one game like this (RE4)...in the old days I had a PC game called Klingon Academy that worked like that.

The extra disks had all the levels on them, so you beat maybe half the game and it asks you to put in the second disk to continue.

Klingon Academy came on 6 disks.

[jdechko]

There are also several more that use 2 discs that GFLPraxis didn't mention. SplinterCell Chaos Theory uses 2 disks, as well as MGS:Twin Snakes. Anyway, its mostly the cutscenes that take up the space on the disks. I really think that it is a dumb move for Microsoft, and they're going to lose money on each unit they sell... Just like the XBox. I truly hope that this slip up means that Blu-Ray will come out ahead. I also hope that the Revolution's DVD player expansion is Blu-Ray compatible.

[msbsound]

Saw an article on this yesterday. There are internal links in her blog entry to the original articles. While I wasn't planning on getting an xbox or a playstation until the year or two later price drop, the price of games seems to keep going up. I am sure the development cost is sky high in comparison to current games, but you have to imagine that eventually you are pricing a lot of people out on these systems.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6280628.html?tag=blog

[~Shard~]

MULTIPLE DVD's?? How is this possible? Would you temporarily install games to the HDD?

Many platforms have already been doing this, even back to before there were DVDs. FFVII and MGS on my PS1 has multiple discs, and if you want to go way back, Wasteland had 4 5-1/4" discs on my Apple //e! :eek: :cool:

[GFLPraxis]

There are also several more that use 2 discs that GFLPraxis didn't mention. SplinterCell Chaos Theory uses 2 disks, as well as MGS:Twin Snakes. Anyway, its mostly the cutscenes that take up the space on the disks. I really think that it is a dumb move for Microsoft, and they're going to lose money on each unit they sell... Just like the XBox. I truly hope that this slip up means that Blu-Ray will come out ahead. I also hope that the Revolution's DVD player expansion is Blu-Ray compatible.

Why is it important that Blu-ray is ahead?

I've seen Mac fans all of a sudden diving into the Blu-ray camp since Apple announced that they are supporting Blu-ray, but Apple announced support for HD-DVD *LONG* before Blu-ray.

Personally, I think HD-DVD is a better solution for a game console. Why? The price/storage ratio. For the PRICE, HD-DVD gets the best storage. DVD is too little storage, Blu-ray is too expensive. HD-DVD will get up to 60 GB (they already have working tri-layer 45 GB disks), which is plenty, and it costs far less than Blu-ray.

Blu-ray is better for storage for a computer, but for a console, the lower priced solution means the rest of the hardware can be better...

[GFLPraxis]

Saw an article on this yesterday. There are internal links in her blog entry to the original articles. While I wasn't planning on getting an xbox or a playstation until the year or two later price drop, the price of games seems to keep going up. I am sure the development cost is sky high in comparison to current games, but you have to imagine that eventually you are pricing a lot of people out on these systems.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6280628.html?tag=blog


some interesting MSN convos I had about porting games...

Ace Pace-I have done HAB proud says:
asking again, did you get my message about the next gen consoles?

Praxis says:
hm, was it a pm?

Ace Pace-I have done HAB proud says:
no, was a message, I was talking with a Xbox360 programmer about programming for it

Praxis says:
how long ago was this?

Ace Pace-I have done HAB proud says:
1 hour...

Praxis says:
nope, that's weird

Ace Pace-I have done HAB proud says:
I can summerise

Ace Pace-I have done HAB proud says:
basicly, due to In-order core, the fact each core is VASTLY slower then the earlier cores, porting is a hell of a problem.

Praxis says:
porting from what is a problem?

Ace Pace-I have done HAB proud says:
porting from the Xbox.

Praxis says:
porting from PC games? Porting from other consoles? Porting old XBox games?

Praxis says:
thought so

Praxis says:
that's what I figured. You can only use one of the cores for emulation, and since each core is extremely slow, you're stuck

Ace Pace-I have done HAB proud says:
porting both from PC and Xbox. also, you can't cross develop, 2 core PC, 3 In order cores Xbox, 6/1 core Cell. all require vast work

Ace Pace-I have done HAB proud says:
also, spageti code, which survived the Xbox, will die here, even with alot of RAM and a fast GPU, in order is just too slow with spageti

...


Ace Pace-I h: I talked it over alot today with the
programmer, and one of the things bringing people to the
PS3 is the fact they can more easily port to PS3 from PC
because of the UE3 engine(cheaper for those working with
Sony)

Another interesting point.

Previously:

PC: Single or dual processors (out of order), heavy OS overhead, traditional graphics card.

XBox: Single OOO processor, traditional graphics card

GameCube: Single OOO processor (big endian), traditional graphics card

PS2: Emotion Engine.


Now:

PC: Single or dual core (out-of-order), heavy OS overhead. Traditional graphics card.

XBox 360: 3 in order cores with two hardware threads each (meaning, programmers need to program for SIX in order cores), never-before-seen GPU with unified shader architectures and embedded DRAM, requiring new programming techniques.

Playstation 3: One in order core with two hardware threads, seven mini-processors that only do floating point, don't have branching support or access to the cache, and a traditional GPU (developers have to program a lot differently for the Cell, writing different types of code for the seven SPE's than for the main core).

Revolution: Something else.


Porting will be a lot harder, meaning, a lot of exclusive games.

[pdpfilms]

Yeah, i guess i could've figured that out myself...

I don't remember Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory having multiple discs (at least for xbox). Was that on the plastation or PC?

[GFLPraxis]

Or maybe the GameCube version?

Dunno, never played Splinter Cell.

[wide]

The PS2's DVD player is crap...hope the sony will be able to play DVDs too.

[~Shard~]

The PS2's DVD player is crap...hope the sony will be able to play DVDs too.

I have heard this comment from Day One (I bought my PS2 the day it was released!) yet over the past 5 years, (or whatever it's been now), I have never had one problem whatsoever playing any DVD on my PS2. Guess I must be one of the lucky ones!

[RandomDeadHead]

I have heard this comment from Day One (I bought my PS2 the day it was released!) yet over the past 5 years, (or whatever it's been now), I have never had one problem whatsoever playing any DVD on my PS2. Guess I must be one of the lucky ones!

The real problem is that the whole Playstation is crap. The dvd playback is fine IMO, not the best, but more than acceptable. But the playstation its self is one big steaming hunk of ****. I have owned 5 PS1's, and am on my 4th PS3. I love them to death, but their quality is abominable.

[Xeem]

Perhaps if there is some sort of trade-in program, where a DVD-9 Xbox 360 can be traded in for a HD-DVD 360 then this will be a non-issue. Just go to EB and swap your harddrive to a new unit, and let M$ refurb your old 360 with the new drive.

Microsoft has hinted that the built in DVD drive will be easily user replaceable; I'm guessing you'll have to buy your own HD-DVD drives when they become necessary.

[Xeem]

The real problem is that the whole Playstation is crap. The dvd playback is fine IMO, not the best, but more than acceptable. But the playstation its self is one big steaming hunk of ****. I have owned 5 PS1's, and am on my 4th PS3. I love them to death, but their quality is abominable.

I don't own a PS2, but most friends of mine have gone through at least 2.

[~Shard~]

The real problem is that the whole Playstation is crap. The dvd playback is fine IMO, not the best, but more than acceptable. But the playstation its self is one big steaming hunk of ****. I have owned 5 PS1's, and am on my 4th PS3. I love them to death, but their quality is abominable.

Yikes, sorry to hear about your misfortune! I guess I am one of the lucky ones then, as I have not had one issue with my PS2 since the day I bought it.

[kuyu]

I'm on my second PS2 and my second xbox.

I'm going to be hesistant to upgrade my xbox 360 to HD-DVD simply because of the media, not the drive. No one wants to end up with another betamax player.

I bought an HDTV last week primarily for the next-gen consoles. Regular DVD's look very good over component connection, so I imagine these new discs (on either format) will look stunning. We all need to remember that a picture is only as good as its source. Until Hollywood switches to 1080-line digital cameras, we will still only see upconverted films.

This may have already happened, I'm not sure though. For instance, Star Wars II looks amazing, but the Godfather has some grainy artifacts because of the source. In fact, I'd wager that the Godfather will look worse if its upconverted. That is, the DVD of old movies will look better than the Blu-ray/HD-DVD version of older films. Kind of like how old records sound better than the remastered CD counterparts. I know for a fact that Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here sounds a lot better on vinyl than on CD, because the source recording was analog from the start.

So we've got 720p, 1080i, 1080p(holy grail of HD), blu-ray, HD-DVD, HDMI-HDCP, DVI-HDCP, component RGB, up-conversion, and down-conversion. I wonder why adoption of HD isn't going as fast as some had hoped? Also, I've noticed that tons of people on the boards are quick to jump on the blu-ray or HD-DVD bandwagon, but the poll last week clearly showed that only 1 in 3 of us have a TV capable of even displaying high-def video. For those 2 in 3, it doesn't really matter what console plays what movies. You'll only use the DVD compatibility anyway.

I still think it's dumb not to ship 360 games on some kind of high density discs, however.

[bigandy]

No one wants to end up with another betamax player.

i tell you, i'm bloody glad i still had my player lying about because a friend running a film company had to get hold of one in a rush to get some footage from some tapes... he bought it from me for nearly £500 (almost $1000)!

go me!

[Dagless]

my 2p

Blu-ray is a pump. it costs more and is less compatible with existing technology. its funny how people assume that the PS3 will do as well as the PS2 this time around, its also funny that the PS3 will sway the entire market towards Blu-ray. i severely doubt that.

my guess is that it will come down to price. HD-DVD being the cheapest; the public will go for that. its pretty naive to think otherwise as its been the way since... well ever. sure technical folk and us Macrumor people will want the better quality and have price as our lowest deciding factor but for non-tech people; its price. if the Gamecube had a built in DVD player it would likely have been the most popular console right now, what with its extremely cheap price tag. it probably wont matter what super-companies support which format; price will be the deciding factor.
only reason the people i know have Xbox's is for occasional gaming and frequent DVD playing. nobody i know has a PS2 now (probably because they used the console as a DVD player rather than games, couple that with the PS2's dreary DVD function).

its good to see the 360 using a HD-DVD drive in the future though. i think without that the 360 would have crashed and burned, in the UK at least (where sports games dont sell that much). not that i'm going to get one unless there is an absolute killer title, ie. a decent Halo.

and about the cores; my guess is that all/most multi-console games will be programmed for the Rev originally. Its meant to be easier than the Cube to program, and with Xbox 360 and PS3 going in the opposite direction i'd say that the future Tony Hawks, Timesplitters etc. will be made for the rev and branched out there. like it seems to be with the PS2 at the moment.
no matter what or how many CPU's Nintendo use... if its easier than the Cube then its going to be a popular machine for developers.

[JediL1]

RaggedJimmi,

The 6 major studios are split evenly between the two so we have to look at device manufacturers.

On HD DVD is Toshiba, NEC, and Sanyo.

Blu-Ray is made up of Sony, Hewlett Packard, JVC, Samsung, Panasonic, LG, Dell, Apple and Phillips.

When people go to Best Buy and see all the major brands of home theater equipment with Blu-Ray support and only a few HD-DVD players, who are they gonna choose? Not to mention, Sony, HP, Dell and Apple building Blu-Ray into their computers and into Playstation 3.

My 2p is that Blu-Ray will crush HD-DVD.

[~Shard~]

Better technology doesn't matter. Price and availability/early adoption matter. Just look at VHS vs. Beta. :cool:

[Dagless]

Better technology doesn't matter. Price and availability/early adoption matter. Just look at VHS vs. Beta. :cool:

its not even early adoption thats will decide the market. think about it. think about your neighbours, your parents, guy down the road, guy in the shopping queue, guy infront of you in the Toyota. they just want something cheap and good. there is no more criteria.

now we can all sit and say "well Sony and Apple are using it so it must win!" but really, 90% of people out there dont really give a damn what they buy so long as its cheap and works. look at TV DVD-recorders, i dont know anyone with one yet but as soon as they drop below the VCR price range they will sell like hot cakes.

also Sanyo, NEC and Toshiba aren't exactly top of the line. they're very common brands, and very cheap. *thinks back to my first Sanyo TV :D

i dont know what Best Buy is, but here the public usually go to Tesco which sell cheap electronics, hell, in the UK all supermarkets stock cheap electronics.

[GFLPraxis]

now we can all sit and say "well Sony and Apple are using it so it must win!" but really, 90% of people out there dont really give a damn what they buy so long as its cheap and works.

Not to mention that Apple is supporting HD-DVD as well.

[~Shard~]

its not even early adoption thats will decide the market. think about it. think about your neighbours, your parents, guy down the road, guy in the shopping queue, guy infront of you in the Toyota. they just want something cheap and good. there is no more criteria.

now we can all sit and say "well Sony and Apple are using it so it must win!" but really, 90% of people out there dont really give a damn what they buy so long as its cheap and works. look at TV DVD-recorders, i dont know anyone with one yet but as soon as they drop below the VCR price range they will sell like hot cakes.

...



Fair enough - I just meant that if a lot of people jump on the bandwagon and a "movement" gains momentum, it could have an impact. I'm thinking a la VHS, where it became so popular and so many people started purchasing it, that it helped lead to the downfall of Beta (along with other factors too of course.)