Could multiple Xenon SKUs work?

Sure there is a reason, cheaper costs to made SD consoles and then Those who do want HD get it in all their games instead of only certian ones.

I know I'd throw down double what a xbox costs if I could play Halo2 and everything else in 720p.

 

Wow, and you get mad at Sony fans for setting their sights way too high.

Anyway, I think that going for the flash-based cards will be what Sony and MS will be doing next gen. They´re big enough for things such as patching. MMORPGs will have to find a way to work without being such space hogs.

 

I assumed they meant hard drive as well. That's why I spelled it out or used HDD when abbreviated.

Agreed. IMHO, that is what makes 720p so enticing: support for 60fps.

Tommy McClain

 

Yeah, the HD-TV situation sucks.

I'd love it is 720p became the standard. To hell with 1080i - who wants interlaced anyway?

And if 1080p is going to be limited to 30fps - then the hell with that too!

 

Not high at all .

You can buy a 80 gig tivo for 200$ , as low as 150$ if you wait for one of thier rebates .

I highly doubt it costs anywhere near that much to make .

I'm not the one who is expecting a tflop chip in there , a half a gig of ram and a huge nvidia chip in there.

I'm looking more along the lines of a 500$ ssystem sold at 300$ that can quickly drop in price.

 

I know, I was just suggesting in order to lower cost and improve profit as well as target market better, they can do something like that on top of the Hard Disk. You know, like how GPU maker, seperate their chips.

Maybe even better Anti Aliasing for the high end stuff.

That doesn't matter, the game can still be render internally at 60 fps or even higher rate, and blend them to get some temporal AA.

 

I don't expect it to record while gaming . I would use it at other times. My tivo claims it can record while playing other things but i find the quality suffers as there are alot of jerks in the recordings . I was thinking more along the lines of a second recorder or an entry one sorta like the ps2 was with dvd players

 

I personally have my doubts that the Xbox2 will have PVR functionality. I do see much more improved WMC Extender support. It seems to me Microsoft wants people to buy the PC for that functionality since the cost of the large capacity drive is included with the PC. No matter how you slice it, large capacity storage COSTS MONEY. Money which Microsoft doesn't want to waste for the next go-round. I suspect Microsoft will subsidize very little, if none at all.

Tommy McClain

 

Agreed. The only possibility is that Microsoft allows Dell, HP, Gateway, etc to sell Xenon PCs or versions of it. Unfortunately, I see that possibility being slim to none.

Tommy McClain

 

Mmmmm...at least you´re not expecting 12000 rpm HDDs now. You´re expecting a $500 console to be sold at $300 in any case, right? That´s still being incredibly optimistic.

It just seems like you didn´t even read the topic and just posted what you wanted, not what you think it´s likely MS will do according to the topic. Seriously, what would be the point in offering just bigger HDDs in the upper versions? There should be more tangible differences if you´re going to offer different packages.

Also, you have to remember that MS doesn´t want to have the enormous loses they´ve had with Xbox with Xenon, and HDDs are one of the most difficult parts to reduce price troughout the system´s lifetime. IMO, that would be one of the first things MS will cut in their pursuit of a more cost effective console this time around.

 

Please note two things about TiVo though.

1> They are losing money (I thought) and might go bankrupt soon.

2> They are counting on you subscribing. Therefore the retail prices could be subsidized by their subscription fees.


Therefore you should not compare the price of a TiVo unit to a future console that will be operating under a different price structure.

 

I would still like a fast hardrive and i still think its possible.

As for the cost I remember the ps2 being around 400something cost to sony when launched. I don't see why the ps3 and xenon can't launch at 300 but have a true 500$ price

As for my replys and reading the post , I did . I don't think it would be wise spliting the lowest version of the xenon by not having an hd-dvd drive or by ram amount as the higher end consoles will never have the features used . What would the higher end xenon do with 512 megs of ram when the lowest one they need to program for is 256 megs ? Whats the point of having hd-dvd when the gams wont take advantage of it .. With the hardrive you can offer longer record time . I"m happy with my 40gig hardrive but since my sister has many night classes she can easily fill up her 40 gig drive with her shows that she misses so she bought a 80 gig .

as for the cost ... well its true that would be the hardest part to reduce in price. I don't deny it . But they can also move skus with it

They can start with what i said or even a 40 gig drive as the lowest as that should be 40 hours of ntsc storage .

So 40 gig drive , 80 gig drive 110 or 120 gig drive. Then as life goes on the 40 gig may not drop past certian point but whe nthe 80 gig hits that point get rid of the 40 gig sku and move to a 80 gig 120 gig and i dunno 160 gig . And you can continue that so that when the next gen systems hit 100$ you'd have a 80 gig drive in the 100$ one , in the 200$ a 120 gig and in the 300$ a 200gig .

Personaly i would rather see a hardrive than a thumb drive as the thumb drive is still around 100$ for 1 gig and I don't see it droping to much soon and wont offer any pvr .

 

This forum needs a "delete post" option. I screwed up with the double post and all, but still.

 

Well, then your position is that splitting the market sucks and offering multiple SKUs is a dumb idea. Becuase think about it, why would consumers give a damn about the higher end equipment if all it did for their extra $300 or so was offering them a bigger hard drive?

If you´re going to be offering a higher end machine, then the features should justify it. Maybe not extra ram, but a HD DVD/BluRay drive would definitely be a good extra, along with a HDD for TiVo like functionality (I´m not expecting Xenon to sport a HDD and a HD DVD drive) and perhaps DVD recording as well. Remember, with a higher end unit, you must offer the basic functionality plus exciting extra functionality.

Merely upgrading the HDD capacity will do nothing and will be completely ignored by the consumers.

 

Multi SKUs for different resolution outputs is the most idiotic idea I have heard in a while. When all XB2s will have same specs (CPU/GPU/RAM etc) then why would they be outputing different resolutions at different price?

 

It's awfully like 3DO Is it related that ex-3DO guys designed Xbox 2?
IIRC the software license fee for 3DO was dirt cheap, I wonder how they attempted to make money.