Xbox Founding Engineer Says Apple TV Could Destroy Console Gaming with Third-Party Apps

[APlotdevice]

Originally Posted by tbrinkma

The XBox 360 uses standard DVDs for its games. By comparison the TV has roughly twice the storage space of that DVD built in,

The Xbox 360 supports dual-layer discs. Meaning that each one can hold about eight gigabytes. And also keep in mind that a lot of newer 360 games come on multiple discs.

and has a standard USB micro port on the back which could (if Apple decided to enable it) be used to attach any standard USB drive for game storage.

I'm afraid that would not work. Most USB ports come in two varieties (not counting form factor): host and client. A host can plug into a client and obviously vice versa. However a host cannot plug directly into another host, nor can a client plug into another client. The port on the back of the AppleTV 2 and 3 is of the latter variety. Meaning that it cannot accept other client devices like hard drives.

Note: there is a standard called USB OTG (On The Go) which provides a single port that can alternate between the roles of host and client, but the AppleTV does not have the hardware to support this.

[B777Forevar]

Originally Posted by Fatalbert

I was always a huge fan of Nintendo, but I don't think they deserve to make hardware anymore.

I have to disagree. I'd hate to see Nintendo go third party. If anything Nintendo should only make handhelds. They always make top notch handhelds, and the 3DS even though it had a rocky start, is on a steamroll now with it's 2013 lineup.

[Fatalbert]

Originally Posted by B777Forevar

I have to disagree. I'd hate to see Nintendo go third party. If anything Nintendo should only make handhelds. They always make top notch handhelds, and the 3DS even though it had a rocky start, is on a steamroll now with it's 2013 lineup.

The 3DS is decent, but they need to realize that not everyone loves using a WiiMote with a Wii. Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros are more enjoyable than the rest just because you can use a GameCube controller. So either scrap the Wii or let people use regular controllers if they want for most of the games.

[Bill Killer]

Many of you people are clearly delusional about Apple's ability to kill Nintendo.

The Wii U is a dud of a system because nobody wants to play a video game on a big screen using a touchpad, as it makes the rest of the controller clunky. However, the Wii was a monumental success for the company.

[APlotdevice]

Originally Posted by Fatalbert

The 3DS is decent, but they need to realize that not everyone loves using a WiiMote with a Wii. Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros are more enjoyable than the rest just because you can use a GameCube controller. So either scrap the Wii or let people use regular controllers if they want for most of the games.

Umm, you're a bit behind. the Wii U doesn't use motion controllers as its primary control method.

(Which is unfortunate IMO... The motion control technology could have been improved tremendously with a whole new system. Skyward Sword could have been just the start of the conventional gamepad's complete obsolesces.)

[iSayuSay]

Originally Posted by guzhogi

You do realize Grand Theft Auto is available as an iPad app? https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gran...479662730?mt=8

I've never played it on any platform so I can't compare the quality, nor do I know how much it cost to develop, but it does exist on iPads.

Yep. A PC games from 2003 finally comes for iPad on 2012.

R u for real? It's not even in the same exact graphic level with high end PC at the time.

Let alone GTA V, port GTA IV (yep, 5 years old game) into AppStore and see how well it handles with all the glory.

----------

Originally Posted by LagunaSol

Yes, I'm sure it's beyond Apple's capabilities to come up with a multi-button Bluetooth controller. That's space-age technology right there.

And still for such a stone age and dead simple technology, Apple is not capable of doing that so far.

[Kobayagi]

Originally Posted by akdj

Battlefield is available on iOS...if one is interested

J

True, but can you compare it to a AAA title like Battlefield 3? I don't think people will pick a ATV over a PlayStation or Xbox for games in their living room. Those games are too simple and repetitive to keep people interested, besides you can play them on your iPod, iPhone and iPad, no idea why you'd want to play them on your tv.

[Bill Killer]

Originally Posted by iSayuSay

Yep. A PC games from 2003 finally comes for iPad on 2012.

R u for real? It's not even in the same exact graphic level with high end PC at the time.

Let alone GTA V, port GTA IV (yep, 5 years old game) into AppStore and see how well it handles with all the glory.[COLOR="#808080"]

Not just that, but without a controller, the game is simply awful to control and handle.

[diamond.g]

Originally Posted by Bill Killer

Many of you people are clearly delusional about Apple's ability to kill Nintendo.

The Wii U is a dud of a system because nobody wants to play a video game on a big screen using a touchpad, as it makes the rest of the controller clunky. However, the Wii was a monumental success for the company.

Which I find funny, because if you believe some folks here while the Wii U is horrible with it's tablet screen as a controller an AppleTV with the same style input would crush home consoles as we know it...

[Bill Killer]

Originally Posted by diamond.g

Which I find funny, because if you believe some folks here while the Wii U is horrible with it's tablet screen as a controller an AppleTV with the same style input would crush home consoles as we know it...

I'm with you. I don't understand the appeal of a touch-based home console, unless it's a complementary device in addition to a standard controller.

I've played GTA with an Xbox/PS3 controller, as well as GTA with an iPad. There is no competition in terms of quality of play which one is better.

[tbrinkma]

Originally Posted by diamond.g

What about compared to the PS3?

Well, compared to the PS3, which uses Blu-Ray discs for it's games, the TV has significantly less storage on board. But, that could still be worked around with a USB drive, if Apple enabled that use for the on-board port. (Assuming it has the proper class of USB controller. If not, one could be added, but that would restrict the new storage capabilities to a new hardware revision.)

Then again, if the games are stored in your iTunes library, a reasonably fast network connection would still allow games to load as fast as (or faster than) most optical media can manage.

[diamond.g]

Originally Posted by tbrinkma

Well, compared to the PS3, which uses Blu-Ray discs for it's games, the TV has significantly less storage on board. But, that could still be worked around with a USB drive, if Apple enabled that use for the on-board port. (Assuming it has the proper class of USB controller. If not, one could be added, but that would restrict the new storage capabilities to a new hardware revision.)

Then again, if the games are stored in your iTunes library, a reasonably fast network connection would still allow games to load as fast as (or faster than) most optical media can manage.

You still have problems of games being multigigs in size with little to no FMV (or CGI) in it. For example, Darksiders is free through PS+ as a digital download. It is ~10GB in size. Super Street Fighter 4 Turbo plus online edition (meh) is a 18GB download (though it does have lots of CGI/FMV in it). iNfamous was around 10GB or so.
I am a little bit skeptical about streaming games off the cloud. OnLive tried and pretty much failed.

And if Apple allows external storage to be used with these games, how are they going to prevent the rampant piracy that will happen if the system uses iOS for it's base OS? Are they going to ban you from online play or connecting to their storefront like MS/Sony does (if they detect you have a modded system)?

[Exhale]

Originally Posted by cirus

with ION2 uses a D525 atom processor at 1.8 ghz. This is slower than the atom z2760 in the samsung. And its much clearly better than the z2760 indicating the cpu is not the bottleneck (its more than 3 times as fast so the cpu is nowhere near bottlenecking the gpu). I will note that those are different (Cataclysm vs MOP) but I doubt that fps would drop by 70%. Toms also takes the benchmarks at the same spot.
The GMA 4500 netbook uses the core 2 duo SU3700 which is faster than the atom. The first netbook is the same notebook running integrated graphics vs the ION 2, clearly a large increase there.

Congratulations. You posted benchmarks where all external players are disabled, and tests are strictly done using a point A to point B flightpath test. Yes, that is not CPU intensive.

The fact that you don't realize this displays alarmingly poor understanding of what demands what.

You also posted Toms Hardware, which WoW fansites long ago made an explicit point of not using because they've repeatedly proven themselves completely inept at making proper benchmarks for it.

I suggest you read up on MMO-Champion. They've got far more comprehensive and useful hardware evaluations for WoW than Tom's Hardware does.

[cirus]

Originally Posted by Exhale

Congratulations. You posted benchmarks where all external players are disabled, and tests are strictly done using a point A to point B flightpath test. Yes, that is not CPU intensive.

The fact that you don't realize this displays alarmingly poor understanding of what demands what.

You also posted Toms Hardware, which WoW fansites long ago made an explicit point of not using because they've repeatedly proven themselves completely inept at making proper benchmarks for it.

I suggest you read up on MMO-Champion. They've got far more comprehensive and useful hardware evaluations for WoW than Tom's Hardware does.

I mentioned the benchmarks are different but did forget to say that they were not cpu intensive. I'm sorry for not mentioning this.

You don't seem to be realizing what I'm saying. The atom 2760 is about 1/4 the power of a ULV i5. In a situation where the game is cpu limited you would expect the atom to get roughly 1/4 the fps. However in this situation when you so strongly pointed out is not cpu limited the atom is getting about 1/10 the fps that the ulv i5 is getting. This large difference can be attributed to the gpu which is weaker proportionally to the cpu of the atom than the hd4000 is to the i5 ulv cpu performance. If both those tests were cpu bound then the atom would be doing much better. It is not. For the atom to show signs of cpu bottlenecking, it would need a gpu that was more than twice as fast. This means that situations have to be very very cpu heavy for the emphasis to shift from a gpu bottleneck to a cpu bottleneck. The ULV I would guess is rarely if ever bottlenecked by the cpu in wow (and probably never in any other game) meaning that since the atom needs roughly 2.5 times more gpu power to be bottlenecked by the cpu it probably is never.

Also taking the i5 ULV at 768p, it gets around 80 fps. Say we are in the middle of a heavy fight and are cpu bottlenecked down to 30 fps (around 40% of normal fps). Would the atom notice any drop in performance? No, because the atom is still gpu bottlenecked (1/4 the power of the i5 ULV =0.25 x 30 = 7.5 fps) when the atom gets gets 7.3 fps under ideal conditions the gpu is holding it back. It should be getting 7.5 fps in the raid (cpu wise) when it will be getting less (probably around 5 fps because the gpu will also be stressed more in the raid from spell effects, etc). The problem with the atom 2760 is not its cpu performance, its its lackluster gpu. Many reviews have said this. The imagination gpu packaged with the atom is a single core design. If it was a dual or quad you might see some cpu bottlenecking.