Xbox 2 In Motion
Someone who's seen an Xbox 2 game describes the wonder.
by Anoop Gantayat
March 1, 2005 - Final Fantasy father Hironobu Sakaguchi made a surprise announcement last week that his new development studio, Mistwalker, would be working with Microsoft on the development of two RPGs for the next-generation Xbox. Upon hearing the news, we immediately started imagining what we could expect from the new titles.
One individual far more privileged than team IGN Xbox was able to do more than just imagine. Sakaguchi gave Hirokazu Hamamura, president of Famitsu publisher Enterbrain and one of the most respected names in the Japanese videogame scene, a private first look at a video of the game in motion.
During a speech given at the Asia Online Game Conference 2005, Hamamura had this to say about the experience: "It's such a realistic video that with just one look you'll know that you're looking at a next-generation system. It's something that cannot be realized on today's machines."
Going into more details, Hamamura offered an example of what's possible on the next generation Xbox: "It's possible to show a camera outside the Earth's atmosphere approach a forest on the Earth's surface, then show leaves on a tree one at a time." Hamamura wasn't clear on if he'd seen this specifically in the Mistwalker footage, or if he was just giving an example of his own.
Regardless, this is an exciting view of things to come. Hopefully, we'll get to see what impressed Hamamura so much as Microsoft gets set to unveil the Xbox successor.
