News Microsoft lifts 720p Xbox 360 requirement

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/09/03/microsoft-lifts-720p-xbox-360-requirement/1

Microsoft apparently lifted the requirement that all games run at 720p from Xbox 360 developers earlier this year.

 

More developer freedom is never a bad thing, and I can't imagine Microsoft would let a dev get carried away and not provide a decent experience on all resolutions.

Plus, I don't know why, but I really like the picture you used. Something rather arty about it.

 

with CoD MM2 and Halo ODST about to be released, i can't help but wonder are one of those 2 games the reason Microsoft lifted the requirements?

after all, the consoles are showing its age in graphical capabilities (look at GTA4 on PC for example)

 

I seem to remember the sonys development requirements are 1080p, but not all developers can manager this when making a multiple platform title like COD and GTA. Think this is a first party requirement as they get more attention from the sony PS3 hardware engineers, think this was the reason why i remember the PS3 version of GTA running at 640p unlike the 360 version which did achieve 720p.

but like most, the PC is the prefered choice, but they're some games that just dont translate well to the PC, unless you have a 360 pad which was a smart move buy MS

 

Think they probably lifted it earlier than we think - Halo 3 didn't run at true 720p either.

 

I think the loss of full screen AA is going to suck, especially if they don't have to develop a 720p resolution.

Although develop freedom is a great thing to have. Just don't make the games fugly

 

They have made exceptions in the passed. If a big name game cant quite meet the res requirements without image quality suffering badly then MS let them lower it slightly.

 

I have always thought it was funny that console gamers have no idea that they can't see very far in their games because of low resolution. Playing at 1366x768 in a modern game is like being half blind with coke bottle glasses.

 

So now there are no standards for res and AA? Or does it need to be 720p or have AA, but not both?

This was never the case. Very few PS3 games are native 1080p (most of them being games that really don't push the system very hard).

 

I play my 360 on a 42" 1080p TV. While most games are 720p, the scaler in the 360 is very good and they always look very sharp. The only thing I notice is minor aliasing from the up conversion, but it is not very distracting. I will take a sharp picture with aliasing over a soft picture any day.

 

HD gaming on consoles was a lie?

 

Got an Elite last week, and boy is the anti-aliasing showing its age on the 360, but that said Shadow Complex is a top download, which I am enjoying alot.

 

22" 2209WA @ 1680x1050

Are you saying AA at 720p WAS a requirement? Cause if that's the case then it can't of been working, played plenty of jaggy games so it must be 2x if at all =\
Although playing Oblivion right now and it has some good AA, everything looks sharp even upscaling to 1680x1050 but by hell is there a lack of framerate, travelling around the world by foot leads to plenty of judders, maybe it's just badly coded like most of besthesda's releases seem to be going by the bugs =\

 

I havent played a PC game in less than 1920x1200 in a long long time, with maximumAA thanks to ATI.
Radeon HD 4970x2, still the best bang for the buck!

 

This is all well and good, but when is the 360 going to support my 1920x1200 monitor?

 

That's what I was thinking.

 

how about 1080p and adding a bluray drive, ya I know still would be nice.

 

That would never happen, that would mean forcing customers to purchase a blu-ray drive for their existing consoles to play Blu-Ray games, that would only happen with the xbox 3/720 in 2011/2012 or whenever they release the next console because if they done it now and didn't offer it as a free upgrade then it would never sell and it would effect microsofts and games developers profits =\

 

Marketing this as the "HD generation" was a major mistake. HDTV adoption rates are still too low to consider it standard (as evidenced by the lack of included HDMI cables with both the PS3 Slim and the Xbox 360 Elite, and comments from Epic claiming that over 50% of players don't use HDTVs), and the console hardware is the equivalent of 4-5-year-old PCs (not even the highest-end ones of that time). While they can do some great stuff with the hardware when limits are worked within and artistic direction is solid, that most of the best-looking games on the new consoles don't even run in native 720p is quite telling - Call of Duty 4 in particular gets praised all the time for its visuals, despite running in 600p and looking like garbage on the Xbox compared to my PC at 1680x1050. Unfortunately, and to the advantage of all of those big-box retail stores and the console makers, most consumers really have no idea they're being misled and sometimes outright lied to.