Microsoft fires the first shot in the "NEXT" generation.... - Page 98

Same. It's been a very long time since something has blown my mind. New games are coming out but they're only slightly different takes on older designs.

If it was back in the late 70's I would. I really enjoyed the Atari 2600 in the late 70's. We got one when they came out around 1977. But I would not enjoy playing one today. I'm not sure that I would want to play any home video game system from the 20th century any more.

Yea Atari was cool at the time, but try playing Combat solo, there is no AI to play against. There may be fun games but it's too hard to go back. Games like Dark Souls and Skyrim were nowhere near possible back then.

Yeah, I think the 2600 would be tough to go back to, but IMO the Super Nintendo holds up very well. I could seriously go through that library and have a ton of fun...

What's funny is how well the NES & SNES do hold up. The PS1 & 2 had somewhat bad graphics even back then but the simple 8 or 16 bit stuff looks cartoonish which makes it hold up. On the other hand, nostalgia made me look up Heman on Netflix and somehow it's nowhere near what I remember...

I was gonna say the same. Holds up very, very well.

HeMan was a puss.

"Thunder! Thunder!! THUNDERCATS...HO!!!"

(Mmmmmmm...Cheetarah! Schnarf, schnarf!)

Watched that too, but after HeMan I'm kind of gunshy to go back to those old shows. Netflix gossip is that their getting old Transformers and GI Joe. Kind of want to rewatch them after all these years but kind of afraid that if crappy it tarnishes their memories. Isn't there a Thundercat movie coming out too?

On topic, I'm getting the opinion that hardware really doesn't matter like it used too. It's what your doing with the hardware ie software that counts. I wouldn't want to go back to the old days. Today you fire up your console hook up with a friend and play. Old days you had to travel for things like that. LAN parties were great fun but were nowhere near as easy as just power on and play. Plus the content were getting is geared a lot more to older gamers so were getting much more mature content and better stories.

Admit what? Some of us have been saying we don't expect anything related to a new system to be mentioned including MS stating that themselves. If they do announce something related to it great if they don't that is great as well. I have plenty games now and features for the 360 to enjoy including a Gaming PC, iPad and PS3. If rumors are the most exciting thing for you then you need to expand your options. You sound like you sit on your computer hitting F5 all day for info. Some of us will be just fine and no less feel like gaming is stagnant because they didn't announce anything related to new hardware. I think after x amount of post in this thread alone has shown what opinions people believe is going to happen.

Being satisfied and being excited are two different things. I look forward to the holiday and think "hmm...lot of quality titles coming out."

I can't see anything on the horizon that makes me want to freeze myself to make the time pass quicker because I just cant contain my excitement.

Halo 15 and COD 27 don't excite you? You must be a nub!



To wedge myself into other people's conversation. Yes I need new hardware to enjoy gaming. Better graphics, more processing power, more ram; all the things a growing boy needs. Everything looks the same to me now.

[quote=Yrd;21920701]Halo 15 and COD 27 don't excite you? You must be a nub!



To wedge myself into other people's conversation. Yes I need new hardware to enjoy gaming. Better graphics, more processing power, more ram; all the things a growing boy needs. Everything looks the same to me now.[/QUOTE]

Hey YRD...that's because everything is pretty much the same. It will look better and play better in NexGen. Heck...NexGen has already been here for 2 years with the PC. BUt I bet all of us will burn out on it rather quickly when NEXBox actually gets here. Because it will all be the "same ol same ol". More irritating "Flood" stuff...more COD WW3 stuff...more zombie schtick. Just in a bigger boom box. Like I've said in the past. I want improved NexGen Storytelling much more than I thirst for NexGen graphics. ThisGen graphics on a great PC is more compelling to me if the storytelling is up to it. I say bring on the world of Battlestar Gallactica/Caprica kind of storytelling in games. You know...where the entire existence occured within the context of a virtual reaility game. That Sci-Fi Masterpeice is an instant classic that I hope NexGen Writers will try to reach.

Why couldn't they do both, a bare bones "apple tv" type system with digital content and Kinect upgradeability as well as a "full function" version with a disc drive?

They could market a slim version(with or without disc drive) to non gamer types at the same time launching a "nexbox" to us. Either way they'd increase Gold subscriptions.

It's true that sales wise, Microsoft currently has little reason to bring out new hardware. The key word being "currently". In 2005, Sony had a similar situation with the PS2 and look where they are now.

IMO, Microsoft can't afford to let Nintendo, Apple, Valve or anyone else to do what they did to Sony this generation.

After all, they can still sell a lot of 360's even after they release a newer system. It's not an either or proposition.

A super slim 360 barely makes any sense. A 360 is a neat media box if you're already a gamer that already has a gold sub, so the opportunity cost to use netflix/hulu on it is zero.

For someone that isn't a gamer, why on earth would they be interested in even a slimmed down, discless 360 when an apple TV or roku can do everything it does better, for a fraction of the price, size, noise and power consumption, and doesn't carry with it a monthly/annual fee?

Was about to give a similar reply. Would make no sense releasing something like that when it is already similar ones on the market doing it now.

Kinect?

I can't imagine there's a horde of people out there that are waiting on kinect until they slim down the 360 further. Anyone that technophobic is just not in the market.

Removing the DVD drive will barely save $10 on production costs, which probably wouldn't even cover the extra R&D costs to redesign it anyway.

You may be right. All I'm saying is Microsoft could have their own reasons for doing something like this.

Lately there's a rumor that Apple is working on a Kinect like device and it probably wouldn't have a disc drive.

I know that I work with a bunch of women that have never heard of Roku or AppleTV and couldn't care less about videogames, but they seem to know what Kinect is.

A rumor from Xbox World is that Durango uses a "16-core IBM PowerPC CPU, a GPU comparable to AMD’s Radeon HD 7000-series graphics cards, and a Blu-Ray optical drive". The "16-core PowerPC CPU" part sounds very suspicious but based on the Wikipedia page for the POWER7 it would make sense if it was really a 4-core 16-thread POWER7 CPU.

As long as they design the system to balance work among the cores so the developers don't all have to be thread experts, it'll be OK.

All those "Look at what we put in the PS3!!" stories I read never panned out as *I* expected...

They sorta did with the first party exclusives, but anything third party was never any more impressive than on 360.

16 cores stretches credulity but 8x2 or 4x4 with SMT is believable. 4x4 would mean more efficient use of finite resources, 8x2 potentially more powerful, but it really comes down to what each core is capable of.

Ultimately what we'll probably need more than anything else is just raw number crunching power for physics, lighting and shaders, so the GPU is arguably the way more important part of the equation.

I agree with your suspicion. But it could happen if they make a huge jump forward...with plans to keep the next one around for a 10 year lifecycle...and incremental improvements. But a true 16 core CPU could cost Nexty out of the ball park for most. More likely IMO is 8 true cores by 16 threads as opined by BD2003. But even that will be a big cost nut.

BTW RP...looks like you were right on the money about Blu-Ray if this rumor is true. And since I've read it from multiple credible sources...I tend to believe it. I'm ecstatic to see MS do this if it's true. Still looks like a Q1 or Q2, 2014 rollout to me though. Even if it does a limited release in Q4, 2013 (highly doubtful IMO)...I sure won't be an early adopter on this one. I'll wait for Halo 5 and at least a full year of debugging before even thinking about taking the plunge. So that puts me in 2015-2016 anyway.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/home-theat...-core-cpu/5792

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Xbo...oft,15285.html

not possible. gameboy already told us that nextgen wouldn't have bluray.

I would not put too much into these rumors. Especially when Microsoft just announced that they are dropping support for optical devices in Windows 8 (you have to pay extra to play DVD).

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403983,00.asp

Does not surprise me

This is such a non-announcement. New PC's come with DVD software anyway, and optical drives normally come with it as well. Yawn.

I wouldn't be surprised if the nextbox dropped it too...they really want you to buy movies on zune.

But Internet caps from your provider kill streaming in a way.

Hasn't stopped netflix.