2 Versions On Re;ease Day?, That would be an unwise move... Options

[CattyKid]

If you read the front page, it reports that Forbes says there may very well be 2 versions of the 360 on release day. Now this, my friends, is not the smartest choice, in my mind. Okay, it may be $100 cheaper, but what ar the devs supposed to do? One of the reasons that games played so smoothly on the XBox was because an entire level could be cached to the HDD, like Halo, so there is no lag/ VERY little.
Without a HDD, then devs will either have to make 2 versions of a game, which would be absurd, or just disregard it, which would be likely. Also, you would only be able to stream media and not store it locally. Haven't they been toting the Media Center Capability of this thing for months?
Games were supposed to use the PS2 HDD, but few people bought it. Look what happened to it. I know it was released late in its life, but if the PS2 had a built in HDD, games could have been so much better.

Just my $.02

Comments, or am I just a little tyrannical?

[EverestX]

Without a HDD, then devs will either have to make 2 versions of a game, which would be absurd, or just disregard it, which would be likely.


I dont think so.. I think that it is brilliant.. Make a lame box for people who dont want backwards compatiability, they just want the newest shit at the cheapest price. And make the other for us.. the mod scene.. It seems perfect.. As for making 2 games I dont knwo where you came up with that.. a game will load just the same on a cd as a hard drive.. and did you really think you were goign to cache a whole game to that thing anyway? Doubt it...

Also they said compatability .. not being able to store the shit on your HD you are just goign to have a boxthat can stream all your chit from a media center home pc..


--Edit horrible spelling and grammer

This post has been edited by EverestX: Aug 5 2005, 04:57 PM

[PowderDay]

I disagree,
The seek/load time from a HD is much faster then a cd/dvd. Take for example GTA-SA, had some ghosting/graphics loading problems from disk on both xbox and ps2, but played straight from the HD, no ghosting at ALL. Graphics load when their supposed to instead of waiting for the dvd to seek it out. Plus, dvd/cd's get SCRATCHED which will affect gameplay if its trying to load on the fly instead of from the cache on the HD (would just take longer to load into cache if scratched, big whoop)

[thax]

This "news" is from Piper Jaffray, a financial consulting firm. They don't know anything about the xbox, the information they provided was the old MS strategy of having 2 consoles.

This information is not accurate in my opinion. You can't provide backwards compatibility without the HD.

[xboxmodder4life]

"and another unit near $399, with the more expensive unit including "additional hardware components (e.g., hard-drive option, extra controller, memory option) that core users will likely buy anyway."


it's already been said that the xbox comes with a 20gig harddrive. So i'm guessing for that extra 100$ maybe you get 2 wireless controllers + charging kit, or 2 controllers + project gotham racing 3. Basically i believe the 399$ is just a bundle made by MS.

If there are a bundle version and regular version both with include the 20gb harddrive. This has been announced by MS numerous times that all versions will include the harddrive.

[CattyKid]

Without a HDD, then devs will either have to make 2 versions of a game, which would be absurd, or just disregard it, which would be likely.
I dont think so..  I think that it is brilliant.. Make a lame box for people who dont want backwards compatiability, they just want the newest shit at the cheapest price.  And make the other for us.. the mod scene.. It seems perfect.. As for making 2 games I dont knwo where you came up with that.. a game will load just the same on a cd as a hard drive.. and did you really think you were goign to cache a whole game to that thing anyway?  Doubt it...

Also they said compatability .. not being able to store the shit on your HD you are just goign to have a boxthat can stream all your chit from a media center home pc..
--Edit horrible spelling and grammer

I am sorry that you misunderstood me. I did not mean that it would cache the ENTIRE game, only that while loading much of the level you are playing is cached to the HDD to minimize load times. Have you ever FTP'ed to your XBox and seen how big a lot of these temp files are? You seem to imply here that if you the XBox didn't have a HDD that games would run as smoothly with no changes to the code? Even if the code was changed to detect if a user had the HDD, it would run terribly slow since it is just a DVD-ROM drive. Many of these games will be huge, as I'm sure you know. How fast would Halo2 be if the XBox didn't have a HDD. Now, couple that with NextGen games, especially towards the end of the 360's life.

[EverestX]

Yeah but do you really think once the hd-dvd's get to the box your shitty 20 gigs is goign to hold more than 1 game? That's my point.. and there is a differnt in caching to a hard drive and loading off a hard drive if I am correct.

[thax]

I disagree,
The seek/load time from a HD is much faster then a cd/dvd. Take for example GTA-SA, had some ghosting/graphics loading problems from disk on both xbox and ps2, but played straight from the HD, no ghosting at ALL. Graphics load when their supposed to instead of waiting for the dvd to seek it out. Plus, dvd/cd's get SCRATCHED which will affect gameplay if its trying to load on the fly instead of from the cache on the HD (would just take longer to load into cache if scratched, big whoop)

The new 12x DVD drive in the x360 when spun up will theoretically have better seek and tranfer rates than the integrated HDD. This doesn't mean that files will not be cached to the HDD, as transfering from both sources maximizes seek and transfer rates. The HDD is nice because there is no spinup lags or read errors due to scratchs or fingerprints.

[CattyKid]

"and another unit near $399, with the more expensive unit including "additional hardware components (e.g., hard-drive option, extra controller, memory option) that core users will likely buy anyway."
it's already been said that the xbox comes with a 20gig harddrive. So i'm guessing for that extra 100$ maybe you get 2 wireless controllers + charging kit, or 2 controllers + project gotham racing 3. Basically i believe the 399$ is just a bundle made by MS.

If there are a bundle version and regular version both with include the 20gb harddrive. This has been announced by MS numerous times that all versions will include the harddrive.

That's what I thought, except I know MS likes to change their minds.

Yeah but do you really think once the hd-dvd's get to the box your shitty 20 gigs is goign to hold more than 1 game? That's my point.. and there is a differnt in caching to a hard drive and loading off a hard drive if I am correct.

We know this. Caching just puts parts of the game on the HDD (in temp files) while loading it off the HDD means that the entire game in on the disk.

[EverestX]

No I am emplying that you would need one system with an hd to play the original Xbox games. The new 360 gmaews could opperate with or without it.. Infact they make make titles that require the hard drive... but I doubt they will make games that cant function in a 360 with a hard drive..

Ture about the caching but if there were 2 versions one could use the feature and one couldn't,, possibly part of that $100 differnce.

REally more than anything I think the hard drive has alot more to do with backwards compatability for the 360 than with cache. It's simply too small.. Along with teh fact the 12x dvd's are supposed to have a sick read/seek time it may be as fast in comparison to a 5400rpm 8 gig... You never know.. Well at least I wont tell i have that thing in 100 pieces accross my floor..

[Carlo210]

If you read the front page, it reports that Forbes says there may very well be 2 versions of the 360 on release day.  Now this, my friends, is not the smartest choice, in my mind.  Okay, it may be $100 cheaper, but what ar the devs supposed to do?  One of the reasons that games played so smoothly on the XBox was because an entire level could be cached to the HDD, like Halo, so there is no lag/ VERY little. 
Without a HDD, then devs will either have to make 2 versions of a game, which would be absurd, or just disregard it, which would be likely.  Also, you would only be able to stream media and not store it locally.  Haven't they been toting the Media Center Capability of this thing for months?
Games were supposed to use the PS2 HDD, but few people bought it.  Look what happened to it.  I know it was released late in its life, but if the PS2 had a built in HDD, games could have been so much better.

Just my $.02

Comments, or am I just a little tyrannical?

You, my sir, need to learn a bit more about what you are talking about. There wILL NOT be 2 versions of ANY XBOX360. Retailers are just sugesting the occasional barebones xbox360 console for the listed price with the stuff in the box (cables, headstet, harddrive, etc) and a bundle, including the xbox360 box (cables, headset, harddrive, etc) with a game or two and an extra controller along with a memory card maybe.

Get your facts straight.

How, you ask? Miscrosoft said there will only be ONE XBOX360 VERSION ON THE SHELVES THIS HOLIDAY SEASON, WITH EVERYTHING INCLUDED IN THE BOX INCLUDING HARDDRIVE AND HEADSET AND A WIRELESS CONTROLLER.

Ugh, why do I bother trying to straighten dim-minded people like yourself.

[holla45]

Well well well noiw there's a slight chance they might be 2 versions if that statements true.......i guess there's gonna be alot of pissed M$ fans

[deftonesmx17]

The new 12x DVD drive in the x360 when spun up will theoretically have better seek and tranfer rates than the integrated HDD.

Huh Then explain why my 16x DVD drive in my computer cant even catch up with my IDE ATA-100 HDD, let alone my SATA drives.

[Bogus8]

Yeah, optical storage is WAY behind and always will be behind standard HD storage... On the other hand Networks can keep up with cd/dvd roms but that is a painfully slow medium so that kind of puts it in perspective.

Try running linux live off a cd and you will see how slow cd/dvd really is

[twistedsymphony]

GAH!
stop the stupidity please!

1st:
As Thax said Piper Jaffray is a consulting firm... they know next to nothing about the Xbox and are probably going off of old rumors reports with the two versions (The forbes article listed word for word the 2 versions rumor that was going around BEFORE the MTV unveling... it's totally rubbish don't bother listing to it)
Besides MS has outright said many many many times that "there will be only one version this holiday season" I tend to believe MS over fuggin Piper Jaffray, wait let me correct that... I tend to believe 4 or 5 MS execs, confirming each other about an MS product over a 3 paragraph online Forbes article quoting a consulting firm that's speculating about another companies product with no references to when those speculations where made.

2nd:
Even if the rumor IS true they never said that the lower "version" (which really sounds more like a "bundle" to me) would NOT include a hard drive. Who's to say that the "advanced" version wouldn't include a 40GB and the lower one includes a 20? Don't bother answering that because the rumor isn't true anyway

3rd:
There have been several interviews with game developers saying that they're utilizing the hard drive for caching/virtual memory. END OF STORY. Developers will not be making 2 versions of their game for a single console. And developer are relying heavily on the included hard drive for caching. THERE WILL BE A HARD DRIVE.

4th:
a 12x DVD drive is not faster than an SATA hard drive.... NOT EVEN CLOSE
1"X" is 11.06 Mbps so 12"X" is about 132.96Mbps. Now also consider a 12X is the drives "peek" speed meaning it has an average speed probably around 8X or 88.64 Mbps. An SATA hard drive on the other hand has a transfer speed of about 1200Mbps... in case you weren't paying attention 88 is no where near 1200. Not ot mention that on the off chance the 360 uses an ATA-100 drive as opposed to an SATA drive, the transfer speed is still 800Mbps. Add to that the fact that optical drives always have longer seek times...
Don't believe me? look it up yourself:
http://www.forret.com/tools/bandwidth.asp?...itle=Serial+ATA

Besides they don't put the whole DVD on the hard drive because it's faster than pulling it off the CD... they use it for virtual memory; as an extension of the RAM... If you still don't get it go look up virtual memory....



This post has been edited by twistedsymphony: Aug 5 2005, 07:48 PM