First of all I want to point out that I'm not trying to brag with this, but .. well actually yes I am.

I just got my tickets to this digital entertainment fair which will have x360's with fresh installed Project Gotham 3, Perfect Dark Zero, Kameo and Fifa soccer (for the first time), on some HDTV displays. Some network gaming competitions will be held, hopefully with PD0, I'm not sure about that yet. I'll try to keep you informed about how the games look, feel and play these days.

That's my plan for tomorrow .. so what are *you* going to do this weekend then?

I'm going to have sex with my girlfriend then try to have sex with her the day after and if she refuses I will have sex with myself.

What are the rest of you doing?







You luck B*****d! I really am jeleous of you. Enjoy it and we all expect in depth reviews of the games.

Consider it done

Here's the deal short: it was TGS all over again. Old builds. Rooftop of PD0 playable. I did beat the level but it just sucked major ass, absolutely nothing to write to home about,

PGR3 was by far the best game there, no other title looked like the next-gen title there King kong ran about 5fps amd was really a sad, sad deal to watch. PD0 was just downright bad, we got to play the rooftop level and the controls were sluggish, graphics bad and AI sucked ass big time. Just stupid.

No game had AA. Absolutely none - and they were running on 720p for sure.

The demos were just like the ones I saw in TGS. I've read tons of revies of PDZ and PGR3 running at 60fps with AA on nowadays, but it was evident that these demos had no such thing. They actually got a pretty back feedback from the audience and it was easy to get to play the games as people were leaving from demo stands. I'll still be waiting for the the final reports on games, but these games didn't lure anyone into buying the console.

On the positive note we had fifa 2006 playable and it looked really good, 720p resolution really makes a huge difference, you can name every man on the field while you're playing. Don't take this review as the definite truth, we were given the same kind of consoles that are present in old game demos. I'm sure the mileage will vary with final products.

Best news: PGR3 really does justify getting the console alone, it's really that good.

Hopefully there will be huge differences in the final build of PD0 but in the A.I. department all the videos ive seen so far and im pretty sure ive seen em all show that the A.I. is horribley stupid.

Glad to hear that PGR3 is great, relly lookin forward to that and Condemned on launch! Thx for the disapointing info.

king kong has perfect framerates at walmart

It really is. We're talking about old build here, one or two months old with some graphical bugs dropping frame rate, but people were all over it. You could get to play all the other titles easily, but for PGR, you had to queue.

The cockpit view feels amazingly authentic.

Perfect dark zero AI is stupid because it is on easy mode. that's why you get the arrows pointing where you should go.

Unlike games where on dificulty settings the emermy health is turned up and down, pd0 has AI settings.

If you play a game on easy how do you expect the AI to be great. Plus it is an old build.

why cant stores have PGR and PD0 DEMOS!!?!?!?!

Because M$ have orginisation skills of the UK national lottery. Things go at random, some time M$ will get lucky and do things right after a few games, but most of the time the chances are slim.

Or Kameo, COD2, and King Kong are the only games ready for a solid-running demo.

With 2.5 weeks to launch? Kinda worrying if it's true.

We have have very little marketing for the x360, theirs the posters in stores, the pathetic kiosks and no one has seen a finished game yet.

How are M$ going to get the hype up. Sure the console is preordered out but that is because people are hoping that this console is going to blow them away come november 22nd, but so far have had nothing that will convince them.

If M$ showed a little footage of games that are finished or close to finished then the hype would up again, "OMFG that looks amazing" and stuff like that.

But nooooo, all we've seen is unfished games on consoles in kiosks that are slowly melting because of the high heat.

Well how do we know they are unfinished. Thats pretty dumb if they send out old beta versions of the games for demos and not final products. For all we know they could be either old builds or the final versions.

It... Is... A... LAUNCH.

We should be so fortunate that there are even kiosks in the first place. It's hard to put together a demo. Time must be taken to code and build a disc that ONLY plays 1 level or so. So if the kiosks come out 1 month before launch (as they did with 360), and it took 1 month to build the demo disc (which I'm probably being generous on), then the demos on the kiosks are at minimum 2 months younger than their final builds! And I'm SURE developers aren't happy about drawing resources off a project that they will probably be working overtime on until the last possible second. So the demo discs are old builds, that aren't getting full publishing attention... surprise, they have bugs. This is not dumb... it's what they had to work with. I don't believe Xbox or PS2 had any kiosks out until after the holiday rush anyways.

Chill. Most optimizations take place in the last 2 months before launch.

The demo kiosks weren't sent out 2.5 weeks before nov 22nd.
Also, if you think that changing the demos after a couple of weeks is good for business, how can you be so sure? It costs money to ship them out, install them, etc. Once they are done giving out demos of newer builds of PD0 and PGR3, the Xbox 360 will be out in a week - then they have to go and ship out demos of the finished games.
You aren't a marketer, and neither am I. If you think that what MS is doing is wrong, then good for you, but it doesn't hold much water. All you want is better demos of more polished game versions, but the demos which are out right now are doing just damn fine in 'raking in the hype'. Sure,it's not the best looking to ALL of us, but to the average joe gamer who walks in and see's it, he's usually impressed (facts thus far from what I and others have seen).
I am not saying I am a marketer, but there is a difference between arguing against a multibillion dollar company's marketing decisions and understanding it.
Aside from the already present 'mountain dew' and 'tour truck' commercials, which play rampantly to expand knowledge of the products coming existence, MS will most likely start the 'real' advertising campaigns once the Xbox 360 is out in stores.

You comment on how MS isn't hyping up the launch of Xbox 360. The reason why they are doing this is because they are in no rush. Sales on launch is covered, so why waste advertising on gathering a crowd which won't be able to get their hands on one? This is where the conspiracy of 'MS purposely creating hype with low supply' comes in. The only flaw is that MS isn't creating too much more hype before launch for a very good reason.
Since Launch day is covered, they will (by my guess) start advertising close to launch and when it actually launches. This way, the Xbox1 gamers can say 'Hey, it's out?! What have I been missing?!?!?!". The commercial will prbably feature game footage from PD0, PGR3, and Kameo (1st party titles) and other 3rd party titles. This will wow them. They didn't see development footage, they aren't wowed-out like the rest of us on Xbox-scene, they are fresh.

Etc Etc and so on, I'll stop there. I don't want to sound like I think I know everything about marketing and advertisements, I just use the information I have and come up with the cause-and-effect scenario which MS might be thinking about.
It's called 'making sense out of things'.


Sorry if I came off as an ass.
Good intentions.

/rant-ish post

Ps. Holy shmoly, long post! I should get 12.6 post counts for that. Did anyone read it?

I read it. I ment 2.5 weeks and still there isn't many ads nor hype.

The demos in the kiosks, that aren't set up right, are old and not very next gen.

Sure M$ have launch day sorted in terms of sales, but in the quality of the product, they are lacking.

They haven't shown finished games, they don't have enough hardware and they seem to have hardly any marketing.

Why do people want the x360? We want it because we know it will be good on an educated guess.

To the average gamer, some xbox games look like these unfinished unoptimised games apart from they are in 480i, not 720p.

Not totally correct I remember me I and my friends skipping school one day to go to the mall and sure enough when we walked by an EB Games there was a PS2 kiosk running a pretty nice build of Madden 2001 and this was early October and if I'm not mistaken the ps2 was released on the 31st of October.

Oh, you bad boy!


Yup, the whole thing. Sure you aren't a marketing exec?
Anyway, I am worried about PD0 quite a bit. I just preordered it a week ago, and SO many people are saying what garbage it is, and how it is almost not next gen. I just hope I get what I pay for, either that or it gets sold before I open it (it's a limited edition/special edition).

If you know any opportunities in marketing for 16 year olds, I'm listening.

PD0 already has great graphics, we know that for sure, I'm jsut skeptical about the gameplay (looks tight/linear/bland) from what I've seen so far, but I only take that with a grain of salt. I'm still not picking it up either way, though, since I will get my much needed FPS fix with Halo2 at launch (I don't own an Xbox). I'll also be getting Kameo. Not too sure about Xbox Live yet when I get my 360 because I might not have the necessary funds (plus, they are only gonna be selling the bundle with the headset at launch), so I might just wait until christmas. Also, an employee at EBGames said that the prices will go down after launch and he actually reccomended that I wait.

Ps. Off topic posts rule.

PD0 wasn't that bad, but it didn't awe me either. AA would've surely help a lot and some graphical bugs that we've seen in previous demos still were there. AI was utterly dumb, and I wasn't playing with easiest setting (no arrows on the ground), but we've been told that this has been fixed.

I tried to fiddle around with the controller settings (you could get to tweak all of those), but didn't find a one that would've suited me. It wasn't like Halo, which worked well right out of the box for me, and I didn't find the right settings with a few tries. Aiming was a bit hard (and I'm pretty good it in), but that covering thing worked for every corner so that you could aim in peace from safe and then just press trigger to turn and fire away. It felt almost like cheating though, hopefully this isn't enabled in multiplayer modes.

I've played the demo and didn't fancy it too much, but I'll still go with the preview the other guy wrote a few days back, because he obviously had a go with some newer version of the game. This must've been the same build that has been around for a long time. Anyway I'm not too bothered that Europe is getting the x360 Dec 2th, this way we'll have reviews of every launch titles available to help us choose between the games.

I agree.