News EA: We've maxed out the Xbox 360

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/06/09/ea-we-ve-maxed-out-the-xbox-360/1

Electronic Arts reckons it has reached the limits of what the Xbox 360 can do, though there's still plenty of power left in the Xbox 360.

 

You mean PS3

 

Sigh, if so then consoles will probably hold back the computing world

 

Or the computing world will leave consoles in the dust.

 

The fact the PS3 is still so expensive will override and potential spangly graphics it has to offer......

The fact u can pick up a 360 arcade for 100 quid these days is still M$'s biggest trump card...

 

Yer but the 360 is old (so is the ps3 for that matter).
I suspect in a year or less we will have the xbox 7, which is basicly a microsoft gaming/media PC for the living room that combines tech from natal, surface and 7. There will be an emphasis on having a windows server machine for it to connect to in the home to stream your moves/music/games to a variety of other MS devices.

I think Sonys 'long term view' that had them playing catch up is going to backfire because as soon as they make significant gains MS will just ditch the current tech and bring out something 'good enough'.

 

That means Microsoft will bring out a new console? Xbox 720 or something?

 

EA may have reach there limit, but the new features that are in the latest version of the unreal 3 engine just seem to be pushing the 360 forward.

many EA need to get better internal developers

 

MS will definitely bring out a new Xbox, the only question is when.

As for the PS3 not being maxed out: Possible. I hate my 360 for lagging every now and then and it might show the 360 reaching the limit of its abilities, or developers' fail.

Only time will tell what will happen with these and Sony's predictions but I just don't think Sony's being realistic. £300 for a console that is 2.5 years old? As if I'd pay that much.

 

This is true, but for that £100 you are getting a really unreliable, noisy and technically limited console that doesn't have a hard disk or wifi so you need to spend more on it. Even at the PS3's initial price of £400, it's 10 year life and reliability makes it a better long-term bet, just as the PS2 is still reasonably healthy 10 years on. We've already seen announcements that some 360 games are going to arrive on 2 discs.

Think of the costs of that £100 Xbox over 10 years...
Console - £100
Hard disk - £45
Wifi - £50
10 years of xbox live gold - £350
Lost income waiting for UPS to collect your latest RROD victim...???

 

The 360 is hardly maxed out. Take a look at God of War II for the PS2. That was released 7 years after the PS2s original launch and was the best looking game for the system. EA pumps out games as fast as they can. It may be maxed out for them because they don't take the proper time to develop really great games. But real developers will still find ways to push the system to its actual limits.

I don't completely hate EA. there are some good games they put out. Of their many devs, DICE and BioWare are probably the only 2 I have any interest in.

 

The reason games keep looking better years into the lifetime of Sony consoles is that Sony has a habit of releasing extremely capable architectures that are extremely difficult to code for. The learning curve is much steeper for the developers, so it takes them much longer to fully utilize the hardware.

As for the 360, I have no problem at all believing that developers are using it to its full potential today, considering the fact that it's simply using a PowerPC CPU and ATI GPU. PowerPC has been around for a long time and is a well understood architecture and the 360 uses DirectX for the graphics API, and we all know how prolific DirectX is. The developers know exactly how to program for this hardware, while the Cell B.E. is a completely new beast.

*Ninja edit* Maybe I shouldn't say that the Cell B.E. is "a completely new beast" since it's technically just a PowerPC CPU, too, but its design is certainly new to developers (the whole SPE/PPE thing).

 

10 years? Most people will not be using a 360 in 10 years, it will be the new thing long before then.

I mean how many people still play on their ps1? Which was about the same age 10 years ago as the 360 is now.

 

"Need" is a subjective term there - Not everyone uses wifi. It's common, yes, but not by any means the standard network interface. You don't 'need' to buy the wireless adapter, it's down to this thing known as 'choice'.

HDD is also not 100% required. Sure, for some of the DLC, but by no means a requirement.

XBL Gold is also a choice thing. I know a number of people who have 360's who do not have XBL Gold.

The UPS reference is assuming that the consoles are all going to fail - massively false assumption. I've had 5 of the ******* things, and only two have had an error. One was my fault, the other was sorted inside a week.

I still play my PS1. MGS doesn't like my Ps3. Neither does FFIX

 

If the PS3 still has plenty of potential, then why in the world is it only marginally better looking then the Wii on the majority of games I've seen it run compared to the 360 versions of the same game?



And also.. PS3's 2009/2010 line-up consists mainly of multi-plat titles..

 

I went through two of them in 18 months. Never again.

 

Choice only exists outside of the world of fanboy-ism.

 

i find it hard to believe that one of EAs many clones have pushed the boundaries of anything

 

Then, in all good heartedness - Sucks to be you!

I always forget that one!

I dunno. Repetition? Taste? :B

 

... because you're blind?

=P