Xbox 360 & Nausea

It’s hard to decide whether to blame it on the food or the hype.

This morning I went down with the rest of the GameAxis crew to see the big presentation to the press by Microsoft for the Xbox 360, which has already launched in North America and will launch in South East Asia by March, a fact that is conspicuously in total opposition to early Microsoft announcements of a simultaneous global release. But then it’s easy to see why they scrapped that idea when there are so few 360′s to go around that people that have pre-ordered it may still not get their consoles in America until January. So much for supply and demand…

The presentation was pretty much what you’d expect; slick, full of hype, with a lot of free food.

I have to admit, I was slightly underwhelmed by the whole experience. I know it’s because the games are first generation, but the games present at the press conference for play (Perfect Dark Zero, Project Gotham Racing and Kameo: Elements of Power) had the very slick, polished look of games that pushed an Xbox to the max. The true power of the multiple 3.2 GHz processors was nowhere to be seen in the demos.

I also got into a mild disagreement with the marketing guy, but that’s to be expected if you disagree at all. It was pointed out by my fellow GameAxis cohorts that I was indeed the Resident Skeptic of the group and have grave doubts about the system. When I was asked why, one of my concerns (There are many, but this is the first that came to mind) was the fact that Xbox 360 is still using DVD as its storage medium as opposed to going for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, both of which have much larger storage capacities and both of which are in contest to see who inherits the standard from DVD (Last I checked, Blu-Ray was winning). When I expressed my concern that sticking with DVD was a rather backwards decision, I was told, “Hey, who buys an Xbox to watch movies?”

Which kind of side-stepped the issue entirely and I had to explain my ACTUAL concern was one of simple math. Data storage space. The new consoles have greater processing power, meaning that they can render larger environments, more detailed characters and more complex cut-scenes. Up the polygon count, up the number of environmental effects and up the amount of voice-over work you’re going to require and it figures–quite simply, I thought–that you would need MORE storage for all that increased data.

I ended up having to explain then, that my worry was that if the PS3 were, for example, to come out with the lastest installement of Grand Theft Auto, with locales much larger by several orders of magnitude, more cutscenes, far more detailed characters, vehicles and buildings, etc… and it were to just barely fit on a Blu-Ray disc (Which is what the PS3 is using) then how the hell were they going to squeeze that data onto a DVD? Developers have already expressed concerns about this themselves, speculating that it means games will have to be broken up into multiple DVDs, or, more depressingly, they’ll simply have to cut down on “game assets” in order to get it all to fit.

When he finally got it, he said, “You think the 360 can’t do that?”

I replied, “It’s just physics.”

Then he said something about how Microsoft hasn’t revealed all the tricks up its sleeve.

I was sorely tempted to say, “So you’re saying you’ve lied to the public about the capabilities of your machine,” but after a moment of thought, went with the more diplomatic, “But the DVD player is built in, it’s part of your system specs, the only way you can provide more storage like that is as an add on peripheral.”

“If there’s a demand for it, Microsoft will meet that demand.”

At this point, it was a foregone conclusion that the guy didn’t really understand how the game industry works. Past consumer history has shown that the market generally HATES add ons to their consoles. Sega bombed with the Sega-CD and Sega 32-X. Microsoft itself learned this lesson from their competitor SONY, when Sony tried to sell an add on hard drive and the majority of consumers just didn’t go for it. Microsoft capitalized on that by pointing out their own hard drive was built into the console. Of course, with the new console, in order to keep costs down, they’ve removed the hard drive ANYWAY, and are selling it as… you guessed it, an additional add on.

To think that you can simply provide a new storage format, then go to your developers and say, “Okay, we’ve got an additional Blu-Ray drive for our Xbox 360, so, uh… even though we don’t know how many people will actually buy it, please try to support that format in addition to our current DVD delivery system” is naive in the extreme.

I finally gave up at that point and said, “But to be fair, it’s all about the games,” which we both agreed on, and I left it at that. Man, I wish people who tried to market games actually knew something about the games industry. Street credibility is still pretty important in the gamer community.

After that, I hung out with my friend James, who had been called up by a friend of his that was also attending the Xbpx 360 launch. We ate, and I promptly got food poisoning.

At least I think it was food poisoning. All I know is that I developed a steadily increasing case of nausea and about 15 minutes after I got home, promptly threw up and was laid out feeling wasted on the bed with a very sore throat from all the vomiting.

Too much information, but oh well… Back to Dragon Quest VIII…