New Xbox 360 console next autumn? Comments by Robert Purchese

miiiguel "ahah, no, it just that "many games" is just a figure of speech, right. Mirror's Edge has *a* DTS track. As an example of technical supermacy is funny, I have to give you that."

I think the point is most PS3 games have more than one English track (Uncharted has six), usually DD 5.1, sometimes a DTS one and more often than not a LPCM uncompressed track (5.1 & 7.1) If you have the kit that can deal with LPCM then DD 5.1 is a step backwards.

I'm not entirely sure how much disk space these extra tracks take up since both Wipeout HD & Warhawk have LPCM 7.1 soundtracks and neither were massive downloads.

@Calgon
"Miths well you have to admit noise, speed and reliability(from DVD to blu-ray... can anyone honestly say they are totally confident that whatever device said optical media device is a part of will last as long as you want it to... there is always a chance that it could start failing for lots of different reasons that we've come to accept) are some of the things that could be improved by eliminating optical media..."

Are you talking about reliability of the discs or the drives? If it's the former, barring complete mistreatment of the discs they should last for years, or decades. I certainly have vastly more faith in my data being safe on an optical disc than on a hard disk (which is why I've got several Terabytes worth of external hard disk space, more than half is for backup :)).

If it's the DVD or BD drives dying prematurely, well, I've got very little faith in electronics lifespan in general. Since the early 90s I can't recall owning a PC that didn't have at least one vital part fail within 18 months - and that has been without pushing things with overclocking and usually using quality components.
I've also had amplifiers, expensive loud speakers, CD players, hell, a couple of months ago even a one year old fairly expensive desk lamp die on me prematurely - so I'm very much a pessimist in that regard. My PS3 is actually coming up on 18 months right now so I'm sort of expecting it to go up in flames any day now :p - or at the very least die with a sharp sound and nice crispy smell like the Asus mainboard in my last desktop PC (ironically exactly a year after I bought it and on the very day the system warranty ran out).

Ah I was on about the drives yes, I thought I was clear about that, the lasers fail, mechanisms go caput, low tollerence to dust ect... they just arent that reliable. Theres better alternatives for reliability, noise, heat and speed(not really looked into this but even if it was just a little faster along with the other improvements its win-win)... the advantage optical has is simple = cost per GB, untill they can match that or approach it they(platform holders and publishers alike) wont bother, I say the sooner we move from optical the better.

As for the disks, well they do degrade over time but so does everything else, I have had more disks either get scratched or develop cracks more often than problems with other storage mediums but scratches can be avoided(but in all fairness you dont have to be as anal with the altenatives about taking care of them.. just dont drop them or throw them around... scratches can come out of nowhere sometimes for using the wrong cloth or your jumper to dust them off ect) and cracks are down to poor manufacturing that should be rare.

Still they can develop cracks unless they are made of a different material... I am aware of the protective layer Blu-ray has but most of my quarrels are with the technology itself as I stated(on the drive side).

X360: lite yes

X720: nope!

Simply MS would have given something out by now IF not proper announcement and to leave it till next E3 WILL give them an unprepared market which hasnt been hyped up and what games to look forward to?

Nope.. I second that a new generation of console is a good thing but ONLY when we have virtually exhausted current gen, and recession had world looking towards their savings more prudently.

X360 still have a good 2 years at least of games but after that I would be worried if MS hasnt got something else by then... PS3 Sony had said many times that PS3 is here to stay for 10 years. PS3 do dates as bad as X360 as both are actually very comparable no matter how people want them to be.

@Beasley

I just had to do that this weekend. My pro died...well the video died and it's out of warranty, so I just went and got an arcade. I was originally miffed until I reasoned that an arcade cost less than a bloomin DSi. That kind of put things into perspective for me.

As for this new console. It's not actually a new console. Natal is geared to work with all exisiting 360s and the so called new console is simply supposed to be a redesign (along the lines of the PS2 slim). I think the press are simply bored and want to come up with crazy speculation in the hopes that it forces Microsoft's hand and they have to spill the beans to avoid some PR nightmare and lost sales.

Bring it on i say, i love new gadgets!

Not Gonna Happen!

Makes no sense and MS clearly said (in E3) that x360 has still life in it .... natal is an addon - no need for a new console.

Why release a "new" console with "minor" improvements + natal? That's like releasing a new console cos' of a new guitar hero game ... makes no sense.

If you're gonna bother release a new console then just go overboard with more cpu cores, a better gpu, more ram, internal(ish) hd, and no (yes NO) optical drive!

Don't believe this ppl!

Mega CD
32X.

Just saying.

Wouldnt surprise me.. unless natal is bundled with hardware, it'll be doomed to "eye toy" levels of games/public pick up.

You think the wii has a lot of mini game crap?

The Xbox 360 has little appeal to the casual market (most probably don't even know about it, and those who do probably believe it is a "hardcore shooter bore") so it makes sense to redesign the machine (smaller, quieter, nicer), put Natal as standard and give it a new name. Then it's just a matter of spending huge amounts of publicity (wii-killer! hd waggle!) and games made for Natal. But it will still be a Xbox 360 in disguise, no new tech.

If it happens to be like this many will upgrade (including me). I love my 360 but it is bulky, noisy and prone to RRoD...

@ photoboy

What the F**** are you talking about,

That said, the Xenon is already clocked at 3.2GHz and all the chip manufacturers have been struggling with voltage and heat at any speeds over 4GHz so it's hard to see IBM being able to squeeze out a CPU much faster than the original for MS "photoboy". LOL

Are you triyng to compare IBM to INTEL? lol lol,

POWER 6 and POWER 7 means anything to you?