E3 2005: 360 Running at One-Third Power

[doovepop]

May 17, 2005 - In between furiously posting the latest game information, we had the time to shoot the breeze with a PR representative from a third-party company. The conversation drifted toward the framerate issues that we've seen while previewing a few Xbox 360 ***les. There is no doubt that the level of detail in the trailers is up to next-gen standards, but almost anything in-engine has chugged a bit at one point or another.



When asked about this issue our source replied that the current playable 360 games would all have framerate issues due to the fact that they are running on alpha test units. A rough estimate placed these machines at about one-third as powerful as the 360. We went head-to-head in Top Spin 2 and noticed that there were visible jaggies and a few frame drops. This is because the Alpha units do not run anti-aliasing and simply don't have the power to run a high-res game at full quality. The developers had tuned Top Spin 2 to run at a smooth 60 frames per second but this was simply not possible on the Alpha hardware. Official sources place the final development kit dates for July and the results promise to look much better.

It is not surprising that many games in early stages would suffer from the types of issues we've seen so far. Since the alpha units are underpowered, it is surprising that Microsoft hadn't touted this fact earlier. Knowing that the final products will most definitely run smoother certainly got us more excited about the 360 line-up

IGN

 

[ALLBLACKS]

yea yet gears of war is supposedly using 80% of the xbox's power i hope you didnt get that info from g4tv

 

[Wally]

Man, they said that when Xbox came out. Oh, we're only using 70% of Xbox's power.. oh just think of the capabilities. Bla, bla. It didn't get much better.

 

[ALLBLACKS]

exactly and now ppl are questioning if sonys games were pre rendered instead of real time i guess only time will tell sonys ken kutaragi even said everything was real time.

yet xbox fan boys give off excusses like sonys just trying to hype it and xbox isnt at full strength..of course no console is at full strength look at sonys ps2 graphics from 2001 and compare it to the ps2s graphics now a good example thq's smackdown series.

anyway judging by the specs the ps3 is the strongest but again its all about the library just compare the ps2 to the xbox the xbox was a way better system but sony had the library

but for those M$ fans getting use to not being the strongest system out might be hard

 

[sanzar]

Originally posted by ALLBLACKS@May 19 2005, 01:41 AM
exactly and now ppl are questioning if sonys games were pre rendered instead of real time i guess only time will tell sonys ken kutaragi even said everything was real time.

yet xbox fan boys give off excusses like sonys just trying to hype it and xbox isnt at full strength..of course no console is at full strength look at sonys ps2 graphics from 2001 and compare it to the ps2s graphics now a good example thq's smackdown series.

anyway judging by the specs the ps3 is the strongest but again its all about the library just compare the ps2 to the xbox the xbox was a way better system but sony had the library

but for those M$ fans getting use to not being the strongest system out might be hard

This will be very damaging for microsoft in my opinion... I bought an XBOX a couple years after getting a PS2, purely because it had the better soecs etc. However now that it doesn't even have that I think sony may take an even stronger lead than before.

 

[Wally]

As someone said before, depends on the games. Xbox is going to be released first so it will have first shot.

 

[kinkon89]

but sony always has a massive library of games.....on the ps2 they even had barbie games!...barbie!!...BARBIE!!!

PS3= performance + realistic graphics+ games = the almighty god!......









.....of consoles

 

[ALLBLACKS]

xbox could also fail like the dreamcast did ppl might not feel this is the time of the next gen ppl might think its to soon the xbox still has something to give and this is why releasing early could haunt you.

sony has mgs4,killzone 2,gateway 2,gta has now said it is backing sony.So if xbox doesnt get uo there finacially this yr i think bill might call it a day for the xbox franchise cause he actually lost money with the xbox.