Microsoft Conference Roundup News

Just finished watching the whole thing onG4TV - great presentation!

Braid? Ooooooo 2D platforming goodness!

That Gears 2 gameplay video looked absolutely stunning. That will be VERY hard to beat.

Anyone else think there's a lucrative reality TV opportunity in all this console war flaming nonsense?

Installable games. Not such a bad idea now is it.

At least the 90GB left on my Elite will be useful for something now. Not that I'll be using it as it is just going to become a big black Wii over the next 12 months. Going to enjoy Fable 2 and Gears 2 while those sort of games still exist on it.

septimus;
It's not actually an install, it copies the entire disc to your drive and uses the disc for verification.

/rant on

You won't be installing the games !! arrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh you will be copying the ISO on to your machine. Not installing, there will be no install process

/rant off

I wish there had been more focus on new games. Too much was made of the update to the dashboard. Yes it's nice but it's not the main reason people will go out and buy a 360.

Has anyone read how Lips handles your own music? I am guessing it's either just played over the top or if they have been really smart made a link to cddb and a clever link so you could get the lyrics to the songs (i can wish)

Damn beaten to it, well my rant still stands.

Installs are hardly worth it if

(a) you still need the disk in to play it

and

(b) games are still required to be made to run on machines without hard disks at all

Unless this is just in order to prevent the need for disc swapping on certain high profile JRPGs coming 360's way.

It'll enable a less noisy 360 and quicker load times.

I have to say, I'm somewhat underwhelmed - Lots of release dates for games we already knew were coming around September-November, video streaming service that'll probably necer see the light of day outside the US and Final Fantasy XIII that I don't care about.

I do like the game-HDD transfers though

The principle behind 'game installs' and just copying the ISO to the HDD is the same. It's just an easy way to utilise a hard drive's faster access and seek times on a system which was not originally designed to use it.

But, if you all want to call it something different lest you lose a bit of ammunition to throw at the PS3, go for it. Few really care.

/rant on

You won't be installing the games !! arrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh you will be copying the ISO on to your machine. Not installing, there will be no install process

/rant off

Isn't that, in principle, what an install is?

^^

NO.


The END.

Initially I was disappointed over the lack of new game announcements. Although, looking at the releases now, I am starting to realise that I may have the same problem as last year . . . finding time to play everything comming out. There doesn't appear to be as many big releases but, games like fallout3 and gear2 look like they will be taking more of my time than the relatively short games of last autumn.

@Razz
"/rant on

You won't be installing the games !! arrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh you will be copying the ISO on to your machine. Not installing, there will be no install process

/rant off

Isn't that, in principle, what an install is?"

In principle, yes, however an install (on Windows and most other OS) normally unpacks the application/game data so it can be accessed easier and also creates any required registry entries/config files.

However, you don't really need to unpack the disc data on the xbox 360 (they don't seem to be that tightly compressed if at all) so you basically end up with the same net result: a file or files on your local hard drive that are quicker to access than they would be on the DVD in the disc drive. So practically speaking there's no difference between a "regular" install and this type of install.

"The principle behind 'game installs' and just copying the ISO to the HDD is the same. It's just an easy way to utilise a hard drive's faster access and seek times on a system which was not originally designed to use it.

But, if you all want to call it something different lest you lose a bit of ammunition to throw at the PS3, go for it. Few really care."

+1

Er, but it is different.

Some PS3 games install (sometimes they force you too) because blu-ray drives have shitty access speeds (look it up)

MS are giving the option to install entire games, the option.

any idea when downloadable movies will come to Europe. I would be really interested in that.