Xbox 360 gets first upgrade.

dirtydog · 23 Apr 2006 at 13:51

VIRII said:
If you bought a MkIV Golf would you think it a bit unfair that 9 months later someone bought a MkV Golf?

It's not a fair analogy as I think you realise

Later revisions of consoles have always had improvements to reliability and noise but never to performance/speed, because that must always remain constant in order for games to perform consistently on consoles of all ages.

BoomAM · 23 Apr 2006 at 13:59

VIRII said:
That might seriously upset the second hand market for 360 games.

Not if they do it correctly.
One way to do it is that a game can only exist on a systems HDD for a week before having to 'reregister'.
Or another way is that once another system has tryed to DL the game to its HDD, that Db 'tells' the first one to delete its copy.

Ultra_Extreme · 23 Apr 2006 at 15:35

dirtydog said:
It's not a fair analogy as I think you realise Later revisions of consoles have always had improvements to reliability and noise but never to performance/speed, because that must always remain constant in order for games to perform consistently on consoles of all ages.

but dont you see that devs could NEVER use that extra speed anyway (if it even existed) and to prevent any issues the chip would be 'clocked' exactly where it is currently. The only benefit us owners will see is that as our 360's go into failure override, saaaay 13months from purchase, we will be able to afford a smaller, cooler slicker replacment more readily

VIRII · 23 Apr 2006 at 20:30

dirtydog said:
It's not a fair analogy as I think you realise Later revisions of consoles have always had improvements to reliability and noise but never to performance/speed, because that must always remain constant in order for games to perform consistently on consoles of all ages.

All products get revised and revised and revised. Was it unfair when apple made the gen 2 iPod?
There is always something slightly better in the pipeline, manufacturers have ongoing production reviews to reduce costs and frankly without that process we'd be stuck in a technological rut.
Early adopters who want a "better deal" should not buy 1st generation products as the next generation is likely to have significant improvement.

However at the end of the day I doubt gen 2 360's will have any notable performance differences in actual useage to gen 1 360's. They might be harder to hack though.

VIRII · 23 Apr 2006 at 20:31

BoomAM said:
Not if they do it correctly.
One way to do it is that a game can only exist on a systems HDD for a week before having to 'reregister'.
Or another way is that once another system has tryed to DL the game to its HDD, that Db 'tells' the first one to delete its copy.

That would rely on MS running a fairly large database of discs and that all costs money. I suppose some sort of DRM on games is possible though.

dirtydog · 23 Apr 2006 at 20:32

Ultra_Extreme said:
but dont you see that devs could NEVER use that extra speed anyway (if it even existed) and to prevent any issues the chip would be 'clocked' exactly where it is currently.

Yes I do see it, isn't that the point I was making?

dirtydog · 23 Apr 2006 at 20:33

VIRII said:
Early adopters who want a "better deal" should not buy 1st generation products as the next generation is likely to have significant improvement.

Absolutely which is one of the reasons I haven't bought a 360 yet. I'll let others be guinea pigs and pick one up in future when the bugs have been ironed out (amongst other reasons for waiting)

VIRII · 23 Apr 2006 at 20:36

dirtydog said:
Absolutely which is one of the reasons I haven't bought a 360 yet. I'll let others be guinea pigs and pick one up in future when the bugs have been ironed out (amongst other reasons for waiting)

I would not be able to maintain my technohead status if I was not an early adopter

Besides early generations tend to be buggy which can be an advantage if you are nefariously inclined.

Boogle · 23 Apr 2006 at 22:43

blueshift said:
i really dont know what all the noise fuss is about??, can you really hear it when your playing a game?? or do you sit there with your ear pressed up against just to have a good ,moan, yeah it makes a little noise, but i cant say i even notice it myself

My Xbox 360 sounds like a jet engine when the drive spins up. My nephew's is pretty quiet, certainly what I would consider 'normal' for an optical drive.

As for people thinking the next CPU is clocked faster - thats just a poor choice of words in the original articles. The CPU will be exactly the same, its just been shrunk (new manufacturing process). This will result in it being cheaper to manufacture, more fitting on a single wafer, and the chip running cooler. No speed difference whatsoever. Is a P4 3.4Ghz Prescott manufactured in 90nm any faster than a P4 3.4Ghz manufactured in 65nm?

Wait for all the problems to be ironed out? I've been playing on my Xbox 360 for over two months and got a lot of enjoyment out of it. If I were waiting for the next revision, I would miss out not only on those two months, but the coming months until the new revision makes it to the shops. During which I will be getting even MORE use out of it. Incidentally LCDs are still not perfected, should I also wait the 10-20 years for LCDs to reach their technical limits similiar to how CRTs have?

dirtydog · 24 Apr 2006 at 07:37

VIRII said:
I would not be able to maintain my technohead status if I was not an early adopter
Besides early generations tend to be buggy which can be an advantage if you are nefariously inclined.

You mean if you enjoy bullying poor innocent shop managers

Boogle said:
Wait for all the problems to be ironed out? I've been playing on my Xbox 360 for over two months and got a lot of enjoyment out of it. If I were waiting for the next revision, I would miss out not only on those two months, but the coming months until the new revision makes it to the shops. During which I will be getting even MORE use out of it. Incidentally LCDs are still not perfected, should I also wait the 10-20 years for LCDs to reach their technical limits similiar to how CRTs have?

LCDs is a good point, and that's one of the reasons I still have my CRT - in my eyes it's superior to any LCD out there. I once bought a TFT monitor and sent it back because of how awful it was - and it was supposedly a good model. As for the 360, I wouldn't get one now if they were £80 new and the games were £9.99 each, for the simple reason that there's no games out that wet my whistle as yet.

Kalsius · 24 Apr 2006 at 12:23

All the rest is piffle imo!! This is the important bit....

playing all sega games.

W00t!! I wonder how far back or forward they will go, how cool would a Master System compilation disk be!!

CPU 65nm upgrade tish per sure nonesense!!

dirtydog · 24 Apr 2006 at 12:28

Kalsius said:
how cool would a Master System compilation disk be!!

Not very?

Wyrdo · 24 Apr 2006 at 12:40

dirtydog said:
Not very?

Heh yeah. I tried to think of any old Sega games I'd really want to play, couldn't think of many to be honest.

melchy · 24 Apr 2006 at 12:46

wyrdo said:
Heh yeah. I tried to think of any old Sega games I'd really want to play, couldn't think of many to be honest.

Depends on whether they mean only games written and published by SEGA or whether they just mean the entire back catalogue for SEGA consoles. I'd quite like to play Golden Axe and Soulcalibur on my 360

Kalsius · 24 Apr 2006 at 12:51

Okay okay, maybe a bit caught up in the moment

but I owned Master System, Megadrive (skipped the 32CD) and I still have my Dreamcast with some pretty enjoyable pickup and play games. Surely there's something in there somewhere over the past few decades to be worth playing. The rest of the 'new features' is all pretty much expected imo, 'new eye toy type device with game' old news, and the new fab is only being blown out of proportion because people think its a big thing. CPU's fab's are all upgrading atm so this news isnt all that special or hypeable really.

McManicMan · 24 Apr 2006 at 16:38

dirtydog said:
The DVD drives in the Xbox and PS2 are virtually silent.

because they are a lot slower, 6x speed i think?, if it was even that?, as loading games from the harddrive addons was a lot faster than using the dvd drive by a few seconds