Games: What games are you currently playing? [OT!]

**mrwiseman** · January 9th, 2007, 12:34 PM

BTW, I'd be careful with HDMI... it supports Intel's HDCP digital restrictions management scheme, and nobody knows what will Microsoft do with it. There are several possible uses for HDCP. For example, they're forcing it like AIDS on television vendors: they must license and use HDCP on all their models as any HDCP device is forced by the HDCP license to scale down to DVD quality if the connected device doesn't support HDCP. HDCP is used to violate and disable one's legal right to private copies.

Fortunately, HDCP has been cracked and defeated in at least two ways, and HDCP defeating devices can be purchased in the Internet. Here's an example reference: http://www.immateriblog.de/archives/000242.html

There are little advantages to using HDMI; mainly the 1920?1080 non-interlaced mode (called 1080p) if I'm not mistaken, but few televisions support it and few games would even support it. Microsoft requires that "games run on 1280?720 with no slowdown" (as vague as this sounds), and game developers focus on making the games work decently (though "no slowdown" doesn't mean "60 fps", it means it may very well run at 25 fps without 20 fps peaks) at this resolution. Targeting 1920?1080 means they'll have 2.25 times less pixel shader power available for the game, and other disadvantages which scale to pixels, so while the resolution is higher (presumably higher than you could notice in most displays), graphics would probably be worse, as they couldn't afford to use expensive, realistic shaders for materials that often and while covering that much of the scene.

Nevertheless, you can already use that 1920?1080 non-interlaced mode in VGA monitors today. IMO, the Xbox 360 is best played on VGA monitors (be them CRTs or high-end TFTs, 4:3 or 16: 9), as they have a higher quality and sharpness than even most HDTV sets have, and chances are that you already own one, while HDTVs are not that widespread (nor that cheap).

On a side note, Microsoft's Windows DRM (Vista), which is plagued with AIDS, will support HDCP, which probably means people is going to get even more screwed with it than we already know as no video card in the market supports HDCP ( http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/..._hdcp_support/ ).

Supplementary articles and resources:

Boycott HD-DVD and Blu-Ray
http://writersblocklive.com/boycott/
http://bluraysucks.com/
http://hddvdsucks.com/

[ January 09, 2007 08:42 AM: Message edited by: -Wiseman- ]

**Cataferal** · January 9th, 2007, 06:46 PM

Understood. HDMI = unnecessary compromise for gaming. I mentioned it because this article caught my eye last week: HDMI 360 with 120GB HDD. It seems there is a genuine chance of this being released. I doubt they'd ever use the HDMI for anything other than HD-DVD movies though.

Meanwhile, in Sony-land, the new Sixaxis controller wins an Emmy for innovation. Its for the inclusion of motion sensitive controls.

**mrwiseman** · January 9th, 2007, 09:58 PM

The 120 GB HD is somewhat interesting. In case you don't know here's what what the Xbox 360 uses the hilariously small 20 GB hard disk for:

- 6 GB of optical disk cache - really useful as it increases loading times and decreases noise (the 360's DVD-ROM drive is the noisier piece of junk of a drive I've ever seen).
- User profiles: a few hundred KB each
- Saved games: usually less than 1 MB each
- Themes and icons: a dozen KB each
- Xbox Live Arcade: you can download 10-25 MB small games (some of which are worth playing) for a fee (or limited versions of them for free)
- Xbox Live videos: nothing worth getting except maybe for game trailers
- Xbox Live demos: demos of games, ranging from 300 MB to 1.25 GB.

Right now, the 20 GB hard disk is more than enough. Okay, you can't have a hundred game demos, but you'd be rarely interested on enough games to fill that hard drive. The hard drive is this small because Microsoft feared people might find out a way to load and play games from the hard disk (the Xbox 360 CAN run stuff from the hard disk, and if its protection is cracked in the future, you can count on loading your games from it).

Now, why offer a 120 GB hard disk? It's not like there's a lot to store on it. Even if you get all the games from Xbox Live Arcade and have a thousand saved games, you're left with room for like 200 demos. The big HD is not for demos, but for video recording. Microsoft wants to turn the Xbox 360 into a digital TV platform in the future. It'll offer paid TV via Internet (I suppose with packs of paid channels as well as paid-per-view content such as movies) and the possibility of recording what's on TV for personal use (count on a lot of DRM shit and not being able to give your hard disk to your friend for him to watch what you recorded, though).

Of course, the 120 GB will also come in handy if somebody cracks the Xbox 360 protection scheme. Currently, you can read your Xbox 360 games and burn backups of them in dual-layer DVDs. Microsoft violates your right to backup covered by law but you can flash your Xbox 360 DVD drive with modified firmware to run your backups. However, this still requires that the games are read from DVDs ? dual layer DVDs ? and this does not disable regional protections, so you cannot play legitimately bought imports of protected games (tip: virtually all Japanese games are protected).

?????

Sony's Emmy award is unfair and infuriating, though a lame display for them. If somebody ought to get an award for making a motion-sensitive controller it's Nintendo, who did it first. But what can you expect, the Emmy guys are American media corporations. You can expect they'll lick Sony's balls, especially when Sony is part of the digital restrictions management mafia.

Receiving an undeserved award is lame, but awarding yourself an award, let alone an undeserved award, is actually kind of sad.

[ January 09, 2007 06:07 PM: Message edited by: -Wiseman- ]

**Cataferal** · January 10th, 2007, 01:37 AM

Award or not, its all going pretty swimmingly for Nintendo nowadays. The Wii has broken sales records in every territory, and if they've learnt anything from the Gamecube, they'll work hard to keep a consistent flow of 3rd party titles. Plus, they've pretty much consolidated their victory in the portable market now all the 3rd parties are developing for the DS.

Speaking of which, ive been meaning to do this for a while: here's my review for the DS Lite:

Pros
+Compact, simple to use, with clamshell design to avoid damage to the screens.
+It's recently become the official home for the portable RPG, with almost all of Square Enix's handheld titles being developed for it (a total of 9, to be precise).
+3D graphics are of similar quality to the N64, while the 2D is beyond the quality of the SNES.
+Well over 10 hours battery life.
+Use of flash cartridges = little to no loading times, and lower production costs.
+Like the Wii, its relatively cheap.

Cons
-For the frequent stylus user, the touch-screen will scratch over time.
-Buttons and D-pad may be uncomfortably small for some players.
-Not a console for the graphics whore; so far, many of its best games are in 2D.
-Small speakers can sometimes sound a bit tinny; headphones are recommended.
-Use of flash cartridges = limited storage space for developers to work with.

Conclusion so far:
Its currently outselling the PSP by a ratio of 2:1 for a single reason: it's not trying to encourage developers to make pre-existing gaming experiences portable, its using its unique, portable interface to encourage them to create new ones exclusively for it. No doubt, it doesnt hold a candle to the technological versatility of Sony's handheld, but if your after the best handheld gaming experience out today, then this is the purchase you're going to have to make. The Wifi online play is very solid as well, and could well be the highlight of the console once the likes of DQIX and FFCC: RoF are released.

[ January 09, 2007 09:40 PM: Message edited by: Cataferal ]

**Cataferal** · January 10th, 2007, 01:49 AM

Kaz Hirai shares his wisdom on the games industry once again. Bless him, he's trying so hard to find new ways to rephrase that sentence.

**mrwiseman** · January 10th, 2007, 06:25 PM

Quoting Kaz Hirai:

I have heard many people say our competitors' systems are just as powerful as the PS3. That simply is not true,

That simply is not true. From a developer's perspective, at least at first and second glances, the Xbox looks easier to considerably easier to develop.

● First, you don't have to write code for two different kinds of processors: mainly single-threaded code for the single Cell core (almost identical to the three cores used in the Xbox 360 processor), and multi-threaded code for the Cell coprocessors, which are kind of unconventional and the C compiler better handles them properly or you won't get much from them in any real circumstance. In the Xbox 360, you have to use 3 to 6 significant threads to get the most of the system. Threads are a pain in the ass to work with, speaking from my own experience, but that's something you have to do in the next generation systems no matter what. When talking about squeezing the maximum performance out of these systems, you have to write 3 to 6-threaded code for identical cores in the Xbox 360, versus need single-threaded code for the main Cell core, and 6-threaded code for the Cell coprocessors, not less, not more. By the way, if you write single-threaded code on the Xbox 360, or ignore the Cell coprocessors in the PS3, you'll have less raw CPU power than a 5 years old PC to work with.

● Second, the memory architecture. The Xbox 360 has a simpler, unified memory architecture, while the PS3's better be well handled by the OS because it's not as simple, and trading main memory for video memory and vice-versa can and will have gotchas. The Xbox 360 is more flexible, so if you'd need more RAM for, say, a strategy game with a myriad of characters with complex properties and AI, you could just use less video memory (and presumably, a strategy game could spare some), while if you're working on the latest epic RPG, you'll want to use at least 256 MB for video memory, probably more: as the game requires little else, you can go all out on a huge variety of huge-resolution textures.

● Third, the graphics. Despite what's being said everywhere, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 have very similar GPUs which have very similar specs and very similar power. Sure, they are different cores from different companies, but they are close for their own good in the PC platform, and both offer the same set of features thanks to competition in the PC platform. There are no signs that make me think the PS3 would perform any better graphically-wise, while the Xbox 360 can use some tricks to outperform the PS3 in some applications. As with the memory, the Xbox 360 vertex and pixel shaders (geometry and texture rendering processors) can be dynamically exchanged, so you could assign more ALUs as pixel shaders in a materials-intensive game, or as vertex shaders in a geometry-intensive game, the later in particular getting to be a massive advantage over the PS3. This is because the PS3's GPU has a fixed number of vertex and pixel shaders which you cannot reassign. It has a very good pixel rendering and geometry maths power, and does about the same as the Xbox 360 in a default setup, but you could make the Xbox 360 push 4 times more geometry on screen at the expense of the complexity of materials, while the PS3 doesn't seem to have any clear advantage over the Xbox 360 in any kind of application. This still means little as both consoles have more graphic power than developers are willing and can afford to exploit.

● Finally, APIs and development tools. Microsoft is famous for creating overcomplicated APIs and awesome development tools. Sony is famous for creating overcomplicated systems and just "ok" development tools. So far, developer reaction was pretty uniform on the issue: those who know both SDKs prefer Microsoft's.

The conclusion is that not only the PS3 is not any clearly better than the Xbox 360, but there are particular applications where the Xbox 360 may excel, and the PS3 doesn't have equivalent sweet spots. Despite this, I bet we aren't going to see the differences in games, at all. That's because both consoles offer far more than developers can realistically exploit. They will no longer work long midnight hours to optimize some code in assembly, or to rewrite the graphics engine so they can reduce overdraw and save 1 megapixel of fillrate. They will just do what they envision, and the system will allow their vision to run untouched, unless they suck. Furthermore, development costs to barely exploit these systems and offer competitive art are so high that companies will almost always try to keep games portable, which means they won't do in one system what they cannot do in another system.

As for the Blu-ray discs, Kaz Hirai is one of the few people left in the world thinking that more space means better games. The only way to make a game that doesn't fit 9 GB with a realistic budget is to waste space in uncompressed formats for art. Uncompressed formats will yield longer load times, so that's what PS3 users are getting with their Blu-ray. Furthermore, Blu-ray is one of the main reasons why I haven't got a PS3: lots of digital AIDS that turn your console into a media corporation surveillance unit, 1 year late, and ?200 more expensive. Microsoft can be thankful that Sony decided to use Blu-ray discs for the PS3.

Also, Riiiiidge Raceeeeer!

[ January 13, 2007 05:23 PM: Message edited by: -Wiseman- ]

**Cataferal** · January 11th, 2007, 03:14 AM

Im glad to say i understood all those points, despite not having any knowledge of programming. And I agree, it just makes sense that developers thesedays are only going to be pushing the hardware for as long as their banks can hold out. But graphics aside, all that really stands in the way between the 360 and global success is a broader variety of games (ie, something which doesnt involve guns). The greater the variety, the more of the now frustrated Sony fanbase they'll be appealing to, and possibly converting.

Currently playing Mario Kart DS, and Zelda when the big TV isnt being used by my family.

[ January 10, 2007 11:15 PM: Message edited by: Cataferal ]

**phaq** · January 11th, 2007, 09:12 PM

dynasty warriors volume 2 still. this games kinda brutal. i mean the conosle versions you can get through one guys musou(story mode) within a half hour if you feel like rushing. here it takes like 4 hours. good thing this came with a power chord, that'd be an assload of recharging otherwise. the other bright side is if you get to the right stages you can unlock 3 or 4 characters in one musou, where as you only had 1 per specific character that unlocked them in the console versions.

and i still got metal gear acid 2, gta liberty city stories, and even the wrestling game takes some time. that's on top of republic commando(star wars) on the xbox.

is it me, or does gaming seem more like a time commitment these days?

**mrwiseman** · January 12th, 2007, 12:52 PM

Well, anything short of 20 hours is unacceptable, at least for RPGs and adventure games. It's not only that they aren't the cheapest product so you expect to get a lot from it, but you buy the game to get into the story and live through it in an alternate universe, which you can't if the game takes a day to finish.