[Grug]

Porting an xbox game to PC would still require effort. Otherwise the market will be flooded with HaloPC clones.
-Only works on machines that par with the Xbox.

They need to take in backwards compatability.

Albeit Xbox 2 'Xenon' looks pretty promising overall.
Start saving your pocket money now....

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by WeatherOp
What I don't get is how are they gonna keep the price down on something with that much hardware, same way with the PS3 that I herd will have a 4 Ghz processor. Unless their about to release a mega powered one for the Pc that would lower the price of the Hi-P4s or Athlons.

Simple; they don't.  They'll consoles at a loss initially, and over time refine the fabrication, etc, in order to begin making them at a profit.  I think MS still loses a lot of money on each X-box game they sell; it's the games where the profit is.

Albeit I wouldn't put too much faith in PC chips being affected by the new consoles; both the XBox2 and PS3 are shaping up to use some form of parallelised multi-processor architecture (and the Revolution uses an IBM chip which I think is a PowerPC derivative like the GC did)....

[Rictor]

I think they just broke even a few months ago. Which begs the question: if they just broke even with the Xbox 3 years after launch, what will happen with the Xbox 2, which will presumably be costlier and require and even larger intial investment? Cause the lifecycle for consoles seems pretty much to be 4-5 years.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Rictor
I think they just broke even a few months ago. Which begs the question: if they just broke even with the Xbox 3 years after launch, what will happen with the Xbox 2, which will presumably be costlier and require and even larger intial investment? Cause the lifecycle for consoles seems pretty much to be 4-5 years.

That might be why they made the Hd optional... possibly the use of multiple existing-tech-level processors is aimed towards cutting cost, too.

I don't think breaking even on the hardware counts, though; it's all about selling games, and the money they get from licensing the right to make them.  I'd imagine XNA could be an important part of that strategy.

[Grug]

Games and XBLive is where they make the most dough.
With every game being live aware as a minimum, you can see where they are going.
MS is pushing for the everythings connected to the internet theme. Just look at the new media center OS's etc.

If they start charging more for live though, it will be irritating.
If they charge you to d/l updates / expansion packs though, it will be very annoying.

But going by those specs... damn. Near photo realistic graphics + larger games = longer dev cycle. But publishers dislike long dev cycles. So it will be a balance between the games that are rushed or under made because of Developers, and Duke Nukem Forever clones...
A licensed Xb ready to go engine would be handy though. And making it easier to port from PC to Xbox might increase the flow...

[aldo_14]

Long dev cycle for first games + plenty of EA style shoddy yearly sequels, I'd reckon.

[WeatherOp]

I don't think I'll buy another console, unless one of them really catches my eye. I'll just get a better pc.

[Carl]

then emulate

[Grug]

Originally posted by Carl
then emulate

lol.

Still, for most emulaters you need more like a super computer than a PC to run them and a game...