Guys, I think you'll find the XBox to be a big disappointment. I played Project Gotham Racing on it a couple of months ago, and the system has MASSIVE slowdown in complex parts of the game, and it sometimes even "skps" where it slows down to like 2fps for a few seconds. Yes, the game was pre-production, but it simply looked like the hardware wasn't powerful enough to process the (unimpressive) graphics.
As for developing games, I think it's probably much easier to develop for XBox than for PS2. At the very least, the XBox specs have been in use for longer (Standard PC architecture).
Comparing gaming systems by their processor speed is pointless, especially here. Microsoft is trying to use a sledgehammer to make up for the crappy system design. Look at their handhelds -- You need 64mb in a Microsoft-based handheld to do **** that can be done in 2 or 4mb on a Palm OS system. The REASON the XBox has a 733 or 800mhz or whatever they're saying today processor, is bercause it's not a system designed from the ground up to do gaming. It has much higher system overhead and that kind of crap. The PS2 was designed to be a gaming system, it was optimized to do this kind of work.
That is not to say that it is a faster system than the XBox, it's just saying that you can't compare by processor speed. From what I understand, the XBox pulls more polygons than the PS2, but not 4x as much as the processor speed differences might suggest.
Anyway, I tink the XBox plays like ****, and from what I've read, it crashes too. I had no crashing problems in the 2 hours I played the unit.
Just wait for it to come out, play your friend's, and then decide if you really want it. If it plays well and does't have problems, or has problems but the games are something you really want, go ahead then. Just don't believe the hype. That's what Microsoft is best at, and what the gaming community will soon find out (IMO).
- reid
As for developing games, I think it's probably much easier to develop for XBox than for PS2. At the very least, the XBox specs have been in use for longer (Standard PC architecture).
Comparing gaming systems by their processor speed is pointless, especially here. Microsoft is trying to use a sledgehammer to make up for the crappy system design. Look at their handhelds -- You need 64mb in a Microsoft-based handheld to do **** that can be done in 2 or 4mb on a Palm OS system. The REASON the XBox has a 733 or 800mhz or whatever they're saying today processor, is bercause it's not a system designed from the ground up to do gaming. It has much higher system overhead and that kind of crap. The PS2 was designed to be a gaming system, it was optimized to do this kind of work.
That is not to say that it is a faster system than the XBox, it's just saying that you can't compare by processor speed. From what I understand, the XBox pulls more polygons than the PS2, but not 4x as much as the processor speed differences might suggest.
Anyway, I tink the XBox plays like ****, and from what I've read, it crashes too. I had no crashing problems in the 2 hours I played the unit.
Just wait for it to come out, play your friend's, and then decide if you really want it. If it plays well and does't have problems, or has problems but the games are something you really want, go ahead then. Just don't believe the hype. That's what Microsoft is best at, and what the gaming community will soon find out (IMO).
- reid