XBOX 360

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-11-29 01:09pm

The Dude wrote:Since when do HDTVs require spending five grand?!? And since when are they used only for gaming?

If you read the context...

Then the answer to your question is, "Since we started talking about Australian prices".

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2005-11-29 01:12pm

Uraniun235 wrote:Toilets don't swirl the opposite direction just because it's the other side of the planet.

Lies from the establishment! You just want to see capitalism fall! TIME CUBE!

Dooey Jo · Post by **Dooey Jo** » 2005-11-29 01:12pm

LordShaithis wrote:Welcome to the future. Four years from now you'll have retards standing out in the snow to buy the Xbox 720 because, get out your magnifying glasses, Madden 2010 has even slightly less jagged lines than before! OMG YAY!!1!

And when people roll their eyes at that, they will scream "but look at the totally new controller! It's gyroscopical!! You can use it as a sword, err I mean uber-awesome BFG!!1! (but it's so huge you'll need both hands to lift it)"

Actually, if MS will go the same way next time, I bet that is a very accurate observation. If you think the graphical differences between the generations is small today, imagine what it's going to be like next time.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-11-29 01:14pm

If the Xbox360 isn't next gen, What is?

If the requirement is "New types of games" then how was this generation nextgen?

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2005-11-29 01:18pm

I think we've already gone past any significant gains in resolution. Past a certain point, we really just don't care, visually speaking. After that, it's a matter of getting everything else right. Textures, deformation, particles, lighting, and so on. We've made some very good advancements, but we're still very short from photorealistic. After that, it's pure optimization and raw numbers. Okay, so you can have top level graphics in your first person shooter. How about your RPG? The space sim? The flight sim? The RTS? The MMOG? When Half-Life 2: Total War comes out, we'll see some interesting things.

So yeah, there's still a ways to go, graphically.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-11-29 01:34pm

LordShaithis wrote:Anyway, are we counting Pong and whatnot as the first generation of consoles? Because if we start counting from the Atari 2600, this would be the sixth generation coming out now.

PONG and its dedicated consoles are both First-Generation, while the 2600 was part of the Second Generation. The article you linked to seems pretty correct, more or less because it seems to be yet another copy-paste job from the Wiki.

Because I feel like it, the video game console generations pretty much break down like this:

First Generation
Magnavox Odyssey - 1972 (dedicated console with signal-generating circuit cards)
PONG - 1972 (arcade), 1975 (dedicated consoles)
Coleco Telstar - 1976 (dedicated consoles)
*Fairchild Channel F - 1976 (first ROM cartridge-based console)

-Video Game Crash of 1977- (due to market being flooded by PONG clones: relatively minor compared to 1983)

Second Generation
Atari 2600 - 1977
Magnavox Odyssey² - 1978
Mattell Intellivision - 1980
Atari 5200 - 1982
Colecovision - 1982
Milton Bradley Vectrex - 1982

-Video Game Crash of 1983- (due to increase of low-quality games and various marketing and management disasters: note that in both crashes, the arcade industry was relatively unaffected)

Third Generation ("8-bit Era")
Nintendo Family Computer - 1983
Nintendo Entertainment System - 1985
Atari 7800 - 1986
Sega Master System - 1986

Fourth Generation ("16-bit Era")
NEC PC Engine - 1987
Sega Mega Drive - 1988
NEC TurboGrafx 16 - 1989
Sega Genesis - 1989
Nintendo Super Famicom - 1990
Nintendo Super NES - 1991
SNK Neo-Geo AES/MVS - 1991
Philips CD-i - 1991

Fifth Generation ("32-, 64-bit Era")
3DO Interactive Multiplayer - 1993
Atari Jaguar - 1993
Sega Saturn - 1994
Sony PlayStation - 1994
NEC PC-FX - 1994
Nintendo 64 - 1996

Sixth Generation ("128-bit Era")
Sega Dreamcast - 1998
Sony PlayStation 2 - 2000
Nintendo GameCube - 2001
Microsoft Xbox - 2001

Seventh Generation ("HD Era")
Microsoft Xbox 360 - 2005
Sony PlayStation 3 - 2006
Nintendo Revolution - 2006

*The Wiki considered the Fairchild Channel F a Second-Generation console for some reason, but I decided to move it back where it makes more sense.

Loner · Post by **Loner** » 2005-11-29 01:42pm

I remember the Dreamcast was released in 1999.

The Dude · Post by **The Dude** » 2005-11-29 01:43pm

Praxis wrote: Then the answer to your question is, "Since we started talking about Australian prices".

Right you are. The $400 Xbox made me think it was $CAD or $US (it's $500/650 AU). Still, a Toshiba 36" HD-CRT or 46" HD-RPTV in Oz costs around $2k AU and - as far as I can tell - their computer prices are similarly inflated.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-11-29 01:53pm

Loner wrote:I remember the Dreamcast was released in 1999.

For consoles like the Dreamcast, I went with the earliest release date, which for that system was 27 November 1998 in Japan compared to September and October 1999 in the US and Europe. For consoles like the Famicom/NES, which were modified in some form for different markets, I went with the release of the original version, then italicised the earliest or most prominant release of the offshoot, although I did fudge it a little bit here and there (moving the Fairchild Channel F and ignoring the Sega SG 1000 Mk. I & III).

I also didn't include add-ons, reissues, portables, computers, or no-names.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2005-11-29 03:27pm

The Dude wrote: Right you are. The $400 Xbox made me think it was $CAD or $US (it's $500/650 AU). Still, a Toshiba 36" HD-CRT or 46" HD-RPTV in Oz costs around $2k AU and - as far as I can tell - their computer prices are similarly inflated.

CRT? REAR-PROJECTION? You make me sick! By that argument, I could just plug a set-top box into my 32" black and white analog set!

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-11-29 03:43pm

Why is it called the "HD Era"?
1) the XBox and PS2 already had HD the generation before
2) the Revolution doesn't have HD, just ED

LordShaithis · Post by **LordShaithis** » 2005-11-29 03:59pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Atari 5200 - 1982
Colecovision - 1982
Milton Bradley Vectrex - 1982

The more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to call this wave of consoles the third generation, albeit a "lost generation" thanks to the crash. They came out half a decade after the Atari 2600, after all, and were much more capable machines. As a comparison...

Donkey Kong, Atari 2600

Donkey Kong, Colecovision

I can't really see calling these the same generation, given the timeframe and difference in capability.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2005-11-29 04:30pm

My SNES survived the flood here in yosemite.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2005-11-29 06:25pm

Praxis wrote:Why is it called the "HD Era"?
1) the XBox and PS2 already had HD the generation before
2) the Revolution doesn't have HD, just ED

1) It's going to be standard now, obviously
2) Nintendo is aiming for a different (or expanded) audience consisting of people who want to cook virtual chinese food or tie a pimp's shoe with the remote control.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-11-29 07:39pm

Praxis wrote:Why is it called the "HD Era"?

Because of the output of the PS3 and 360, because that's what Microsoft's marketing is calling it, and because I God damn felt like it.

Besides, there really wasn't anything else to call it.

Utsanomiko · Post by **Utsanomiko** » 2005-11-29 10:17pm

It was so much simpler when it was all about the bits...

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-11-29 10:35pm

Utsanomiko wrote:It was so much simpler when it was all about the bits...

Which was more or less just a marketing gimmick: one that kids fell for for about twenty years...

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2005-11-30 12:24am

They still fall for it. I still have kids asking me if the new systems are 256-bit and what the bits are on the PS3 because its supposed to be more powerful.

LordShaithis · Post by **LordShaithis** » 2005-11-30 03:50pm

They kinda fell for it, but bit-inflation marketing gimmicks never saved a shitty console. (Jaguar!) Speaking of lame gimmicks, two words: Blast Processing.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2005-11-30 06:35pm

LordShaithis wrote:They kinda fell for it, but bit-inflation marketing gimmicks never saved a shitty console. (Jaguar!) Speaking of lame gimmicks, two words: Blast Processing.

Actually it was probably the only thing that caused the TurboGrafix 16 to sell as well as it did. Not that it was a bad system, but the only thing I remember kids saying about it was "OMG, it's 16-bits!!!!!".

LordShaithis · Post by **LordShaithis** » 2005-11-30 08:53pm

Wasn't the TG16 largely a failure? Growing up, it was that spiffy-looking console that nobody had, and everyone promptly forgot about as the SNES/Genesis war got underway.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2005-11-30 09:12pm

LordShaithis wrote:Wasn't the TG16 largely a failure? Growing up, it was that spiffy-looking console that nobody had, and everyone promptly forgot about as the SNES/Genesis war got underway.

I'd say it had a limited level of success akin to the Dreamcast. It sold well and even got a portable console off the ground (which had the ability to play the same games as the console counterpart), but it didn't do well enough to survive the Sega/Nintendo next gen efforts.

DarkSilver · Post by **DarkSilver** » 2005-11-30 09:25pm

I remember the TG16 well, a friend of my older brother hand one, and it was my third brush with console gaming (atari 2600 and nes were the other two).

It was a spiffy console, the controller wasn't all that bad that I remember, and had very good graphics for the time. But it was to quickly overshadowed when the Genesis and SNES came onto the scene....

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2005-11-30 09:43pm

One of the main causes of the TG16's failure in the US (the original Japanese PC Engine did rather well) was that very few of its Japanese games were ported over to the US, so the TG16 was pretty much stuck with crappy domestic licensed games.

That and it was indeed overshadowed by the war between Nintendo and Sega for market domination.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 2005-12-01 12:05am

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Sixth Generation ("128-bit Era")
Microsoft Xbox - 2001

The Xbox is just a 32bit processor.