21. I have neither right now and must say the game output for the xbox is really starting to sway my decision. Don't think I would ever pay for online access through a console set.. but I'm slow to change. If they had something similar to WOW I would consider it.

Posted at 6:14PM on Jan 11th 2007 by Toner Refill Kits

22. True, nVidia was announced at E3 2k5, but nVidia hadn't put together the graphics hardware at that point. All those videos were pre-rendered CGI... and they blatently lied about the way games were going to look!

This is nothing short of lying to their fans:

http://digitalbattle.com/2006/12/02/motorstorm-e3-video-vs-actual-gameplay/

PS3's superiority over the 360 is limited only to the Blu-Ray storage for video games... and that makes VERY LITTLE difference, considering multiple discs are hardly a deciding factor between consoles, for most (non-crippled) users. :p

Posted at 6:16PM on Jan 11th 2007 by Brian

23. I download every demo that comes out, I have a bunch of XBLA games and I have hundreds of saves from xbox and 360 games. I have yet to fill the 360's hard drive.

I know kids today are lazy and parents dont teach their kids common sense, but here's an idea. Clean out what you dont need!!

Posted at 6:22PM on Jan 11th 2007 by tacklebox

24. tacklebox: true... but that's to be expected... I mean... remember the touched up screen shots of the origional halo?

Maybe sony went to extremes, but seriously... that kinda BS is par for the course.

Posted at 6:30PM on Jan 11th 2007 by aragorn

25. @Tacklebox

Try downloading a couple of 720p HD television shows or one of those fancy HD movies from the Xbox Live Marketplace and get back to me about having enough space.

Game saves don't take that much space, digital media does.

I was forced to delete 2 television shows that I bought and paid for (and had every intention of keeping) because they were taking nearly 5 gigs of room, and I could rent a movie that I wanted to see.

We need the option of at least 100 GB drives, especially if they're really going to continue to push HD quality digital media on XBL

Posted at 6:56PM on Jan 11th 2007 by Christopher Williams

26. So when's Microsoft going to make a deal with Australian ISPs so that Xbox Live doesn't use up our bandwidth?

Fucking primitive bandwidth caps. 2 HD movies would wipe out my internet for a month =\. Cavemen had better internet than we do.

Posted at 8:05PM on Jan 11th 2007 by Azerael

27. Well, let me tell you from experince with a version of IPTV. Comcast INDEMAND sounds to be very similar... and in that case, your content is NOT saved to your PVR. The downside is there is a delay on your button presses, but the ability to rewind and pause, is actually done remotely, not locally.

So No he isn't talking about Vista or a seperate IN HOME device being needed.

Posted at 9:11PM on Jan 11th 2007 by Duscrom

28. I was thinking the exact same thing (as Gates) that IPTV does not need a HDD to do DVR. It's just like streaming video from the net. When you click record on a program you are essentially just bookmarking that program. It's stored on the providers server so you can access it at anytime. In theory you should be able to go into the guide and scroll back to stuff thats already aired and watch them.

Posted at 9:48PM on Jan 11th 2007 by VampireHunter Z

29. I hate how people cast aside Nintendo all together when in fact looking at the money market, Nintendo is seriously tearing Sony and Microsoft a new one, the numbers speak for themselves:
http://kotaku.com/gaming/npd/npd-and-the--nextgen-launch-winner-is-228191.php

Posted at 10:20PM on Jan 11th 2007 by cergeio

30. Basic math tells me there will hardly be any real difference in what you'll pay for either rig, the only difference will be what(services, accessory*) you pay for not the amount of cash.

*example: hd-dvd.

Posted at 11:17PM on Jan 11th 2007 by Oskar

31. Gates was commenting on how the most recent nvidia chip is newer than the one they originally planned on and it saved their asses to make the games meet the graphics level they are at now.

Posted at 11:57PM on Jan 11th 2007 by Marc

32. it will take 120 dutchmen for sony to create a game that does better graphics.

Posted at 11:57PM on Jan 11th 2007 by tack

33. Bill Gates doesn't want a larger hard drive in the XBox, because he wants you to buy the alternatives.

One is a Media Center Edition PC, which can stream music, video, radio etc. to the XBox. That's what I use. It's cool, but needs to support more video codecs.

The other is the new home server just announced. It's aimed at backing up and streaming media to other PCs and XBoxes.

Posted at 12:31AM on Jan 12th 2007 by Roger Strong

34. Sean P said: "13. Thank god I've already replace my Xbox360 hard drive with 80Gb one ; It's just too easy, a little Google and that was done !
The original one ? gone on Ebay ..."


You sir, are a bad lier.

every one knows that MS uses a proprietary hard drive on teh 360, so you cant swap it with a 200 gig one. You can use a USB port for an external HDD, but you cant store game saves or anything you download from the market place on it...you can only use it for pics, videos, music, etc.

Posted at 1:27AM on Jan 12th 2007 by Murc

35. lies can be propagated to try and cover the truth, but everyone still knows none-the-less, that bill gates is in fact the one whom claimed the 640k speach, in an attempt to further his marketing.

Posted at 2:05AM on Jan 12th 2007 by matjet

36. Wow. I have all three new systems, and while I love my 360, and I do feel it's the best system right now, the graphics on the PS3's MotorStorm are amazing (friends have the Japanese import, no online til U.S. release so I'm on hold)... I think it's the best I've seen this gen, it looks as good as the best games I've had on my PC, and I've played through Gears of War, etc. The PS3 is not the sick weakling Gates is talking about.

It's difficult to pinpoint, I'm not saying the 360 couldn't do it... It might simply be the hard work of the developer, but MotorStorm is excellent looking - complex models, well-done textures, no course edges on any of the far-off polygon shapes throwing the depth perception off (as opposed to the trees and shrubs in the Tiger Woods games), fluid framerate, no pop-up in the distance, none of the 360 'gloss' (perfect dark zero/gears of war)... People can go on and on about some thng they saw on Ars saying it's not possible, pipelines, throughput, video cards, nimble 360 vs. Cell, etc.. but the game looks and plays great.

I'm posting this not to incite a riot - I mean really, I know the name of the website we're on, I'm here too - but rather to put out there that I really take all these CEO dudes' statements with a grain of salt. Packet of salt. Too much salt. OF COURSE Bill Gates is gonna say something like this - it's his product.

Posted at 5:28AM on Jan 12th 2007 by ill trooper

37. #18

Apparently you weren't paying attention to Sony's presentation at the previous E3. At the time there was nothing remotely like an actual PS3 in existence. Look up the the videos and you'll see they ran two sets of demos. One group, which included the traditional rubber duck-bathtub theme, was run on the Cell processor. The other group were run on prototype Nvidia 7x00 series hardware on a PC.

The original concept for the PS3 was heavily driven by the idea that Cell chips would easily work in groups to form highly scalable systems. Sony and IBM have failed to explain why this should be the case where decades of supercomputer work has failed to achieve this. (Sony spouted fantasy scenarios in which other devices in your home containing Cell chips would lend their processing power to the PS3 if they had no other tasks. Leaving aside the incredible level of latency this would introduce, just the scaling would be a nightmare for developers.) At last report, the multiprocessor functionality of the Cell was scarcely better than x86 processors.

That didn't matter much because it was beoming apparent that it would be impossible to produce a PS3 containing multiple Cell processors. Yields were abysmal, making costs very high and supply very low. A major factor in the short supply of the Xbox 360 at launch was that they chose (largely after an early demo demonstrating how much more Unreal Engine 3 could do given more RAM) to go with 512MB fairly late in the product cycle and the then sole supplier of the GDDR3 memory could meet the doubled demand. Sony would have ben facing the same supply isssue but quadrupled instead of doubled, and with extremely costly chips to add insult to injury.

This is when they gave up on the idea ofa box of Cells that developers would allocate a they saw fit. A dedicated GPU would be needed. There were only two candidates for this role, ATI and Nvidia. Thus an E3 presentation in which the Cell and RSX were demonstrated separately but no actual PS3 software was ever run because there simply was not yet a box in existence that combined the two.

Posted at 5:49AM on Jan 12th 2007 by epobirs

38. #36 : Murc

"every one knows that MS uses a proprietary hard drive on teh 360, so you cant swap it with a 200 gig one."

You ignorant don't know that inside of the 360HDD box, it's just a stupid standard 2.5" SATA drive ?
The Xbox360 file system have been crack a long time ago (http://www.360-hq.com/xbox-tutorials-26.html), but that's not the point.

To upgrade your drive, follow this :
1 : Disassembling the Xbox 360 HDD unit
http://360.xbox-hq.com/xbox-tutorials-3.html
2 : Use Norton Ghost to clone the 20GB drive to the new one,
you just need a PC with 2 SATA bus available.
http://360.xbox-hq.com/xbox-tutorials-17.html

Enjoy.

Posted at 6:16AM on Jan 12th 2007 by SeanP

39. LOL, Bill Gates never said that 640KB is all the memory will need, Gates knows as well as anyone who works in IT that technology will always change and improve according to Moores Law. On the other hand, interesting article

Posted at 6:24AM on Jan 12th 2007 by Allan

40. Hey, you put a link to the article about Bill Gates saying Nintendo is the 360's toughest competition to show he was contradicting himself, but, even though he should try to clarify this, he is not actually contradicting himself. Sony has been stated as Microsoft's biggest and most direct competitor by Bill Gates. He however called Nintendo Microsoft's toughest competition in gaming. The difference, however small it may seem is that Sony and Microsoft are both going for a broad multimedia environment, while Nintendo is, for the most part, focusing on games.

Posted at 9:50AM on Jan 12th 2007 by Gabriel