Possible Xbox 360 Price/Release date +Retail Box+more game screens/clips

Recently, it has been reported that Wal-mart leaked the price/release date of the Xbox 360 with some posters (for those who check out Digg, you may already know the story). Nothing's confirmed, AFAIK, but the numbers make sense. The leaks details are....

$299 and November 4th. Not really surprising. Here's some links about the story:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050802-5159.html
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25076

Also, there's a picture of the retail box on the internet that you guys can check out:
http://www.xbox365.com/gdb/images/GGGruGdPLG04221653/Xbox_360_104_250.jpg

I know, it is a little stupid to break down the retail box of a console, but there's nothing else to do. It has been a little slow lately. But with ~3 months to go for the Xbox 360 (according to the "leak"), I'm still hoping things pick up.

Here's some candy for you guys:

Call of Duty 2 screens (X360 version)
http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1138/full-res/1123102699.jpg
http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1138/full-res/1123102697.jpg

Gears of War clip (from G4TV show during the weekend):
http://files.filefront.com/GoW_Video/;3977763;;/fileinfo.html

 

Nothing new that I know of, although I admit I'm don't usually search for any new information on this matter. Last I recall, if you want to actually open up the box, this may be a problem since I believe the box will be sealed in a way to prevent this (open it up, screw up the hardware). I'm not sure on that though since I read about that ages ago.

I supposed I can guess on some things though. For the pirates out there, I believe the games will be using improved security procedures to help prevent piracy (something like 2GB of the 9GB DVD's will be dedicated to the security features). I don't know too much on the specifics on that though. Also, I'm still trying to figure out the HD. If Microsoft includes it but only allows it to store pics, movies, music, etc., and not game data, then that may help stop piracy as well (and some hacks as well). That seems to be a little extreme perspective, but I'm only saying that because Microsoft seems to be saying that you don't need a HD to play games (all devs are supposed to be developing w/o the HD in mind). Even if that is the case though, I don't think it will stop pirates or hackers from finding a use for the HD.

I doubt we'll get any good details on the hacking aspect of the console until after it launches. For example, we all guessed that the PSP could possibly be "hacked," but it didn't really start to take off until long after it released. So you may have to wait a while if you want to learn more about what you can do with a Xbox 360. Only Microsoft and possibly developers know the answer and I don't think they will bother telling us anything.

 

If you are going to ask me to make a judgment call, I just want to preface this and tell you that you are asking someone who will probably get the PS3 no matter what and nothing else. I can see the pros and cons of each console, but the pros of the PS3 appear better to me than the pros of the Xbox 360 (and same way with the cons). So try not to take what I say as the ultimate decision.

Ok, with that out of the way, the PS3 has the potential to really outclass the Xbox 360. At the moment, I can't tell you how likely that is or how much it will outclass the 360, but if everything goes right for Sony, there really won't be much of a contest.

Personally, I think worst case scenario, you can expect a visual difference something similar to somewhere between the GC and Xbox to the PS2. So if you can't handle the difference between the Xbox and PS2 versions of games, I think you might be more content with the PS3, even in a worst case scenario.

*I'll attempt to explain in somewhat simple terms what I know about the two consoles below. It will be a little long, but it is really the only way to get a good feel of the power of both consoles.*

Potentially, though, it could be even more powerful than that. The PS3 has an advantage in almost every area that you can compare between the two. The CPU+GPU of the PS3 seem to be stronger (or even much stronger) than the Xbox 360's CPU+GPU combo. This mostly depends on how the GPU's finally end up though. The Xbox 360 GPU (called Xenos) is much different that typical GPU's. In simple terms, normal GPU's have a group of specific "shaders" doing one thing and another group of specific shaders doing another (Pixel shaders and Vertex shaders). Xenos, on the other hand, has one big group of shaders that can do both jobs (unified shaders). This is important since a lot of times, some shaders are idle in current GPU's, not doing anything to help improve the graphics. This means that all the shaders in Xenos should be in use at all times, meaning you are getting just about peak performance at all times.

The PS3's GPU is more like current GPU (called RSX), with pixel shaders and vertex shaders. Due to this design, it may be harder to get max performance from RSX. Both GPU's are more or less similar in other ways, having their pros and cons respectively; so you may say that Xenos is the better GPU right, since it will be a lot closer to the max performance? Maybe not. While Xenos has shaders that can do both jobs, it isn't known how well the can do them. ATI (designed Xenos) currently things that these shaders can do a nice job doing both vertex and pixel shading; Nvidia (RSX) doesn't quite think they can yet, saying that a vertex shader or a pixel shader is more efficient at vertex/pixel shading than a unified shader. In other words, even if only 65%-70% of the RSX is used, compared to say 95% of Xenos, the RSX may still be more "powerful." Speaking of which, while we don't yet know the true specs of the RSX, guessing at the specs based on the 7800 GTX card (which the RSX is based on), the RSX seems to have much more raw power than Xenos. Again though, raw power means nothing if you can't get a performance close to it.

Another thing to take into consideration is that these consoles are designed so that the CPU's in both can help out the GPU's a lot when it comes to graphics. They are both somewhat similar in some ways, but I since I know more of the Cell<=>RSX method, I'll explain that process. Basically, Cell and RSX are connected to each other via a FlexIO interface (very high bandwidth). The PS3 has split its RAM into 256 MB of XDR RAM for Cell and 256 MB of GDDR-3 RAM for RSX (both seem to be similar in performance); the Xbox 360, on the other hand, has 512 MB of GDDR-3 RAM available to both the CPU and Xenos. The Xbox 360 method is usually better, but the PS3 can have a similar setup. Because of the connection between Cell and RSX, Cell can gain access to the GDDR-3 RAM and RSX can gain access to the XDR RAM. This comes in handy when Cell has some extra power left when it is done doing its CPU tasks (AI, physics, animations, etc). With this connection, Cell can dedicate a large amount of its processing power to help RSX in calculating data. Sony showed this off in a few of the E3 demos, such as the Alfred Molina (Doc Oc from Spiderman 2) demo. Cell calculated some data and then handed it off to the GPU to finish the job (little more complex than that, but shows the concept). This Cell<=>RSX thing was really emphasized at E3 by Sony, so it may be where the true power of the PS3 lies. Like I mentioned earlier, the Xbox 360 can do something similar, although the potential is higher in the PS3 given the higher performance of Cell.

That is a simple summary of how things are shaping up so far for both consoles. There are some other aspects of each console that make a difference in graphics (eDRAM of Xenos, which will clear up "jaggies" without really taxing the system; or the PS3's Blu-ray discs, which provides more disc space and probably loading speeds as well.) I've tried to simplify everything as much as I can. Technically speaking. I may have simplified too much in some areas, so treat this more as the concepts of each instead of the exact specs. And again, a lot of this is guesswork until the details of RSX is officially announced. Again, to some everything up, both consoles are pretty close, with the PS3 most likely being at least a little more powerful and potentially being much more powerful.

***end of hardware comparisons***

As for the price of the PS3, I'm still holding out hope that the PS3 will be in the $300-$350 range. There is a lot of speculation of a price much more than that, but that always seems to happen when a Sony console is about to come out (PSP, PS2). And while Ken Kutaragi has been saying things like it will be "expensive," he may just be messing with Microsoft's mind. If he can get them to think the PS3 will come out at $400-$450, maybe MS will get greedy and go with a higher price tag as well, and then the PS3 hits the US shelves at $299.99. FWIW, Ken has also said that he thinks no console can really succeed at a price much higher than $300, not to mention those report during E3 that the PS3 would be priced similarly to the PS1 and PS2. Hopefully, worst case scenario, Sony forces us to buy a bundle like they did with the PSP at like $350 or so. Plus, they can charge more for the console in Europe and Japan, where they have a better hold of the market. If they don't want MS to take the US market, pricing the PS3 at $400+ is not the way to do it. We're cheap bastards.

Back to the Xbox 360. There will be a lot of launch games, but personally, I don't think there is anything outstanding or not at the level of Halo. You'll have your "ports" of current-gen games (Madden, NBA Live/2K, NFS:Most Wanted, etc) and some potentially great games (Kameo, Project Gotham Racing, The Elder Scrolls IV, etc), but nothing really high profile, IIRC. I am drawing a blank on some of the launch games though, so I might be forget A solid launch though. Things should pick up in early '06 when Gears of War comes out, and possibly Halo 3.

Jeez, that took a long time to type. Hopefully I didn't have too many mistakes. Feel free to ask any more questions, although I may not be able to answer them until later tonight.

 

As far as I know. I use it, IIRC, and a few other ones a lot in case I mess something up (something like, "AFAIK, Bill Gates likes cheese.") I'm still learning a lot of things, so I don't like to say things are absolute fact.

I don't have all the info on the Killzone demo. I'm like 99.9% sure the clip they showed at E3 was not running real-time on any hardware, or at least not in that form. What may occurred is that the Killzone team was able to create a game engine on PS3 devkits that looks either exactly like the clip shown or almost like it, but they could only get it running at low framerates (3-5 FPS or so). So they may have sped up the clip for the presentation. Also, if they were still working on some techniques, such as nice anti-aliasing technique, they may have added those features after the fact in order to show what they will have in the game. Heavenly Sword and a few other games shown have been confirmed to be made in similar fashion. Last I heard, the effects the Heavenly Sword team added have since been added into the in-game engine, making the realtime version look more like the clip they showed at E3.

The process mentioned above is perfectly understandable, IMO. These developers were working with underclocked Cell CPUs and either 6800 series card(s) or a 7800 card. Also, the kits do not have the Cell<=>RSX connection I mentioned earlier, but are working with PCI-E, something like 10x slower than the final kit. Now factor in the fact that it seems most of these clips only used the main processor of Cell and not any of the 7 SPE's (the real power of Cell), and you can see where we may go from here. IMO, I think it is amazing that the developers can produce the graphics that they have put up so far, even if it has been at slow framerates. The final hardware should easily be able to run the games at better rates, especially if Sony can teach these developers how to run code on the SPE's. Who knows...maybe the Killzone team already knows how.

Give these guys a few more months. If the Killzone shows something later in the year that mirrors the clip they showed at E3, and confirms it is running at real-time, then let's all rejoice. If these guys show games that mirrors the Xbox 360 E3/MTV debacle, then let's send angry letters to the Killzone team...or something. Late this year, the PS3 final devkits will be available, with the final Cell chip and the final RSX chip (more or less). I guess we'll be able to tell if they guessed right on what type of power to expect.

Also, I'd take the 2007 release date with a grain of salt. If Microsoft sells like 3 consoles by the end of the year (which shouldn't be possible given the preorder sell-outs), then maybe Sony will consider a 2007 launch. But that isn't going to happen. If they want to hold off the momentum from the Xbox 360 (and HD-DVD for that matter), they'll have to launch at least some time next year. And that's not even bringing in the PS2 in the equation (7-8 years on its own). So I'd still count on a 2006 launch; preferably, one in the spring.

How come no love for the Gears of War clip? I planned on talking about the Xbox 360, but instead I'm discussing the PS3 and everything about it. I don't have a problem with that, but I didn't expect to be doing that in this thread.

 

Nice post MLittle577. Pretty much mirrors my thoughts exactly, although that may be pretty obvious.

Yeah, those CoD 2 screens are nice. What I vaguely remember from the MTV presentation and E3, CoD 2 didn't look too great. It looked a lot like a good-looking PC game today, I believe. It looks MUCH better now. I'd be inclined to call that a next-gen game. Maybe this will begin a trend for Xbox 360 media, with these new screens coming from more powerful Xbox 360 devkits. I hope so because I was starting to get worried after looking at so many "plain" looking games. I'm thinking the PS3 can be much more powerful than the Xbox 360, but the stuff they were showing on the Xbox 360 looked nothing like the stuff the hardware was capable of.

Hehe...those were some fun times. I think I even put an explanation in my sig so I wouldn't have to explain myself all the time. Oh, and don't forget my battle with my arch-rival and fellow BBS member "drpepper."

About a year ago, the next-gen buzz got ahold of me and hasn't let go since. I do eat some, but eating usually slows me down when I'm trying to find translations of Japanese articles about the USB ports in the PS3. I've said this a few time already, but the real fun starts in these next few months. The Xbox 360 will be finishing up pre-launch details (and then launch), the PS3's hardware will be finished, and hopefully something about the Revolution will come out (in fact, I think they may have said something about showing the controller at the end of the year). And after all of this happens and dies down a bit, Final Fantasy 12 will finally be released in Japan for the PS2, with a US release a year later. J/K...hopefully.

BTW, regarding the comments about Sony possibly misleading MS about the PS3's price, if they are, it may be working: