Official Microsoft PR thread

[Mefisutoferesu]

ewww... entertainment weekly??

*sigh*

I wonder how long before hollywood tries to fuse with videogames, and we get trite brainless celebrities talking garbage about how they're such great gamers and they love blah blah blah when they, in reality, can't even turn the console on or something. It's the curse of all things that become popular in the populous's mind's eye (minds' eyes ??).

Meh, a pointless rant, but it just bothers me how much hollywood is getting into the games. Maybe it's just the string of game->movie announcements recently...

 

[Carl B]

I'm voicing my displeasure with this whole 'PR-thread' thing. It's at risk of turning what would otherwise be good discussion topics into something that the majority of the usership might just flat-out miss. Afterall how exciting is a thread with the word PR in the title?

 

[jpr27]

In regards to the XeCPU:

Have we seen or have any links to the final processor CPU on the Xbox 360 yet? I know we have seen schematics and the likes but I'm referring to some of the specialization or logic it might contain?

We all basicly know what the Cell and XeCPU are at their core (or cores ) but could there still be new techniques or logic (info to be released) to help minimize (or maximize) certain routines or tasks? Or is the info we have now pretty much the extent of them?

 

[Tap In]

interesting comment on HDMI

with other info, 5 page interview with Todd Holmdahl

All those connections (composite, component, s-video and VGA) have one thing in common: they carry the video signal in an analog format. What about digital connections such DVI or HDMI? Will there be A/V packs with DVI and/or HDMI connections? If not, will you consider offering that in the future?

Todd Holmdahl: Xbox 360 will support HD component video output, which is compatible with nearly every HD-ready TV on the market today. We’re poised to hit the sweet spot of the HD market at launch and as the market matures, and we will provide an HDMI for our customers when it makes sense. The reality is, you don’t need HDMI for HD gaming.

http://interviews.teamxbox.com/xbox/1190/Xbox-360-Interview-Todd-Holmdahl/p1/

 

[SanGreal]

Well, my other post was deleted for some reason but I'll just reiterate that the interview is worth a read. There is definitely some new info in there and they don't pull too many punches.


I get the point of the PR thread, but it kind of sucks because we don't get a lot of discussion on even the quantitative aspects of the PR since people tend to just ignore this thread.

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

??? Mine was deleted as well.

Anyway, as I was saying. How is MS going to bring HDMI out at a later time? As I understand it, the Xbox 360 lacks the hardware to produce a digital signal. So how exactly are they going to offer it at a later time? An analog to digital converter? If that's the case aren't they better off forgetting it, since the IQ will suffer enough that there's no point using HDMI?? Anyone, have some insight on this??

 

[aaaaa00]

??? Mine was deleted as well.

Anyway, as I was saying. How is MS going to bring HDMI out at a later time? As I understand it, the Xbox 360 lacks the hardware to produce a digital signal. So how exactly are they going to offer it at a later time? An analog to digital converter? If that's the case aren't they better off forgetting it, since the IQ will suffer enough that there's no point using HDMI?? Anyone, have some insight on this??

Either they'll just bring out a new model with HDMI outputs, or maybe there's some way to bypass the existing output chip in the AV connector.

Remember, Xenos has no video output hardware, it just dumps the rendered video buffer digitally to another chip of Microsoft's choosing, which could in theory be replaced without any alterations of the GPU design.

 

[SanGreal]

??? Mine was deleted as well.

Anyway, as I was saying. How is MS going to bring HDMI out at a later time? As I understand it, the Xbox 360 lacks the hardware to produce a digital signal. So how exactly are they going to offer it at a later time? An analog to digital converter? If that's the case aren't they better off forgetting it, since the IQ will suffer enough that there's no point using HDMI?? Anyone, have some insight on this??

I thought the whole analog only thing was assumed based on the lack of digital connections being offered by MS.

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

I believe Dave confirmed that it didn't, but I can't remember for sure nor do I wanna wade through oceans of tex to find it.... I remember democoder was going around trying to figure it out and dave discussed it with him... doubt that helps, but yeah.

 

[one]

From the same Todd Holmdahl interview,

I understand the choice of 720p over 1080i because of the fast-motion action sequences involved in gaming; a progressive scan picture is better than an interlaced one for this case, but lately we have seen more and more 1080p capable displays, especially DLP-based flat screens (although 1080p doesn’t belong to ATSC’s specifications for HDTV). The question is, will the Xbox 360 be able to offer a 1080p signal? Is the Xbox 360 GPU powerful enough to render games up to that resolution at playable framerates?

Todd Holmdahl: Xbox 360 offers choice for both the game developer and the end consumer. The game developer can create their game in any resolution. The consumer can request any output resolution (480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i). The Xbox 360’s advanced video scaler will scale the game’s native resolution to the end consumer’s requested resolution with extremely high quality output. Bottom line, the games will look amazing.

Xbox 360 does not support 1080p at this time. It’s an incremental improvement at an astronomical expense, and we don’t see consumers clamoring for 1080p TVs yet. We will continue evaluate the market and deliver the capability when and if customers want it.

As for the GPU, the Xbox 360 has the most powerful GPU of any gaming console; even better, we made specific design choices to enable game developers to render real-time complex scenes at high resolutions with high-quality anti-aliasing. Without our Embedded DRAM on the GPU and the huge 256Gbyes/second dedicated bus from the GPU core to the EDRAM, it is impossible to render true next-generation scene complexity at high-resolution with anti-aliasing.

What? Isn't 720p rendering the absolute minimum?

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

I think he's talking about the scaler... the games I'm betting are internally rendered at 720p ( more over ONLY 720p) and the scaler takes over in converting up and down the video. ... ... And then I actually read the quote... WTH?? It's either PR, his own stupidity, or MS has changed their stance.

 

[Titanio]

Floating point performance is much more relevant on the GPU, where Xbox 360 has more floating point performance than PS3. Not only does the Xbox 360 GPU have greater raw shader power than the PS3 GPU (240 GFLOPS versus estimated 228.8 GFLOPS on PS3)

Anyone wanna guess where they came up with this figure? Looking purely at the main ALUs in the vertex and pixel shaders, I make it to be at least 255Gflops for RSX..

He also mentions it is not their intention to have any vertex processing done on the CPU, although I guess he's drawing a line between vertex transformation and vertex creation/generation..?

Do Xbox 360 games require the detachable HDD to be plugged in for them to work?

Todd Holmdahl: No. Xbox 360 games and Xbox Live do not require the HDD or a Memory Unit.

This also seemed like an odd comment? I'm reminded of that rumour re. not assuming the presence of a HDD.

 

[pipo]

interesting comment on HDMI

with other info, 5 page interview with Todd Holmdahl

...and we will provide an HDMI for our customers when it makes sense. The reality is, you don’t need HDMI for HD gaming.

Equals never. Which makes a lot of sense IMHO.

 

[SanGreal]

This also seemed like an odd comment? I'm reminded of that rumour re. not assuming the presence of a HDD.

I'm inclined to believe that its not a requirement that games work with no storage device. If it were so then you couldn't have MMO games.

I think he is just trying to say that in general the xbox will work with no storage device attached.

 

[one]

Yeah, Tetris 360 can go without HDD if you don't record scores

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

I was thinking about something... why did MS and ATi decide to forgo a digital out? I mean, Xenos was built from the ground up and ATi has plenty of experience with DVi AND cables are cheap... so why? Were they thinking analog is the most commonly used interconnect for HDTVs?? Still, you can easily go digital to analog quite easily and cheaply, so... I'm rambling... simply put can anyone tell me why there's no analog innately supported?

EDIT - Perhaps they'll make virtual HDD available? A stretch, huh? Still if he's saying that there's no NEED for a HDD then there must be dual model launch (with/without the HDD) otherwise it wouldn't matter, since all consoles would have them.

 

[SanGreal]

Still if he's saying that there's no NEED for a HDD then there must be dual model launch (with/without the HDD) otherwise it wouldn't matter, since all consoles would have them.

They're detachable so one can't always assume it'll be attached, and I think thats what he was getting at. Its not a requirement to have your drive attached to run your xbox. I don't think he is meaning to imply all games must assume there is no HDD attached.

 

[London Geezer]

I don't understand, why would one detach the HDD from thier 360? Unless he's upgrading it to a bigger one...

 

[SanGreal]

I don't understand, why would one detach the HDD from thier 360? Unless he's upgrading it to a bigger one...

Size constraints, looks, portability, loan it to a friend for saves, who knows.

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

Again, if it's standard across all sales why would you're friend need it for saves?

And if you're on the go, why would you need your console HDD? I've never taken my PC HDD with me. There's no iPod-esque functionality, so that's out. Trade saves with your friends seems fair, but you won't be in reach of your console then.

Looks... I guess... seems kinda weird for a reason though... like saying I play games without a memory card because it ruins the seemless look on my PS2.

Size... how desperate for space are you?

Honestly, there isn't any solid reason aside from a slpit launch that makes this logical. I seriously think MS may indeed sell 2 different models.