Gamestop.com now offering XBox pre-orders, starting at $600 for three games and some accessories -- and going all the way up to $1100 or so for people who actually want all those launch titles.

Yeah, I saw that. One thing that's weird is that the bundle includes a memory card. Why does the Xbox need that? It has a hard drive. I don't get it.

Anyway, $600 for the bundle just shows how expensive these things really are by the time you buy all the stuff you probably need and a few games.

If they're sticking by earlier reports, the hard drive is NOT for saving games and never was intended to be used for that. It's just "scratch space" for games to use. You'll save to memory cards just like any other console.

I have yet to see an article that debunked this particular item. Someone provide a link if what I've said above is not the case.

For about $200 less you should be able to get a Gamecube and the same amount of "stuff". All you'll be missing is the ability to watch movies. I don't buy consoles to watch movies and I suspect most others don't either, so for $400, you'll have the same amount of "stuff" (and maybe of better quality gameswise).

What I really dislike is that the retailers are forcing these bundles now because of the assholes who buy and sell on Ebay for inflated profit. They probably won't let you buy just the console anywhere, you'll have to include some other crap you don't want.

--Dave

I want a GameCube! I want that monkey game! I want Zelda 128 (or 256, or whatever) !!!

Wow, I just don't get it. You have a hard drive on the Xbox and yet you don't allow developers to use it for save games? Instead they have to work with the tiny amount of save space available on a memory card?

What's the purpose of this? Is this just a scheme to sell memory cards?

....I'm not even going to bother.....


Why would one buy a bundle on launch day when you can wait a few months to pick and choose?

I'm going to take a wait and see approach.

I don't know if it's the retailers alone forcing bundles. If Microsoft is behaving like Sony, they're forcing retailers to buy X number of games per system that's ordered. IF that's the case, I understand why the retailers are trying to force the consumers to buy three games per system too.

Best bet is to just to avoid being an early adopter and wait a couple of months. I suspect that there won't be much of a shortage by the time the second round of systems make it to retail.

"retailers are forcing these bundles now because of the assholes who buy and sell on Ebay for inflated profit"

Uh... I don't get it. How do people buying at ebay have an effect on retail market?

'What's the purpose of this? Is this just a scheme to sell memory cards?'

The only reasonable justification I can come up with for seperate memory cards is that you can move savegames between machines. Not that I think that's the really reasoning behind it at all, but it's fun to play the pre-spin game.

What, would there be a horde of people out there complaining about locking savegames to individual machines? Hmph.

"retailers are forcing these bundles now because of the assholes who buy and sell on Ebay for inflated profit"

Hey, blame the asshole hardware manufacturers, not the auctioneers. The auctioneers are capitalisticly (is that a word?) as pure as driven snow here. Sony and Microsoft are the ones effectively imposing rationing of their product at launch by artificially limiting supply, in hopes of supporting some ridiculous PR bullshit about it being a "hot item."

The free market allocates the boxes on willingness to pay once they're all been rationed out. That it does so through eBay is just a new, more efficient twist on the process.

Soviet bread lines in video gaming: who knew?

Full disclosure: I've never bought a console system at launch or on auction. Hell, the last console I bought was a used Sega Genesis, as I'm not counting the couple of months of infrequent play in 1999 when I owned a Playstation.

Trust me, you don't want developers using the hard drive for anything like a save game.

Developers have very little access to the hard drive. You cannot save anything specific to it on purpose. Why? So you won't fill it up with random crap. Most of it is scratch space for the games. Would you want developers monkeying around with your system at random?

And an 8 MB memory card is plenty for save game stuff anyhow.

The hard drive is for performance, and how. HD reads are SO much faster than DVD reads. An XBox game can cache dozens of MBs of textures on the drive and then stream them in a fraction of the time of a DVD read-ahead.

must-remain-anonymous Xbox developer

Hi Mr. must-remain-anonymous Xbox developer. I'm curious, how is Microsoft handling the defragging of this drive? Will it need to be done or does it essentially re-format itself with every game or power off?

Some good points for why it's unavailable to saves. I'm sure it wasn't too far from Microsoft's Xbox team's minds that memory cards make a bit of coin as add-ons also. :)

--Dave

I'm surprised MS would go with the HD if they're only using it for swap, seeing as RAM is so cheap these days. HD space is cheap too (possibly cheaper), but I imagine reliability suffers. Of course, maybe that's just me and my experiences with HD death.

- Alan

But RAM can only be filled from the DVD, slowly. 256 MB takes a LOOONG time to load from disc. HD space can be loaded from the DVD and then used in appropriately small chunks anywhere and everywhere.

I have been told that there will be a small suite of console commands available for the Xbox with no disc in it. Perhaps a utility there.

Also, here's the big thing. PC programmers are sloppier than their console counterparts due to the large amounts of memory floating around. A console designed by a PC programmer would therefore feature this. That's why all the star-struck PC coders are gushing over how easy the Xbox is to program.

At the beginning, they made the HD the centre of PR attention, to attract developers. Now, it's not that big a deal.

Interesting insight. Thanks. It still seems weird that the hard drive can't be used for save games. I wonder if it can be used for downloadable levels, etc.?

I also wonder how the hard drive affects the price and if it will keep Microsoft from dropping the Xbox down to $199 at some point?

'The hard drive is for performance, and how. HD reads are SO much faster than DVD reads. An XBox game can cache dozens of MBs of textures on the drive and then stream them in a fraction of the time of a DVD read-ahead.'

So the Xbox hard drive is designed strictly to be a DVD cache? Hoo hoo, color me surprised, but that's definitely not how marketing has been selling it: I remember lots of talk about how, effectively, it was way to have PC-style persistance and expandability on a console. Apparently they've been lying through their teeth, and the Xbox is pretty much going to be a PS2 with a better API and faster load times; from a game design standpoint, the same.

'Developers have very little access to the hard drive. You cannot save anything specific to it on purpose. Why? So you won't fill it up with random crap. Most of it is scratch space for the games. Would you want developers monkeying around with your system at random?'

Um, like I want developers 'monkeying around' with my PC system, as they do today? Again, this is all a big whiplash-inducing head-turner from what the general public has heard.

I dug up the damning quote I was looking for:

'"This game remembers everything that happens!" Thanks to the Xbox hard disk in every single Xbox, games can save a much richer state that ever before. Skid marks on tracks, marks on walls from a fight, and even footprints can remain from game to game rather than being wiped away. Clever titles will stash bits of themselves on the Xbox hard disk so that when you return to play, you're into the game immediately. Saving will be just as fast, and most of you will be able to keep every saved game you've ever needed right on your Xbox. In some games, you'll even be able to trade stuff with friends by saving things to an Xbox memory unit or over the 'Net.'

That sounds an awful lot like 'saving games on the harddrive'. You can get into hair-splitting over what's a savegame, but I don't see how you can possibly reconcile 'You cannot save anything specific to it on purpose' with the above.

Heh -- that was only from a few months ago too, and that's the official Microsoft Xbox page, isn't it? If that's no longer true they should take that down. It's misleading.

In my opinion the xbox is going to fail. The PS2 will be or is allready 199 dollars and the gamecube will be 299 dollars. Who the hell is gonna put down 1,200 dollars in this economic climate? I know that I'm talking about the ultimate bundle but it seems excessive. For 1,200 dollars I can get a dell computer w/ monitor. I see the gamecube doing well, but the xbox is going to take a beating. And once the xbox fails, we'll see all the PC game developers flock back to the computer.

"In some games, you'll even be able to trade stuff with friends by saving things to an Xbox memory unit"

Misleading, yes. But note the term "Xbox memory unit", not Xbox hard drive, they covered their bases.

I honestly never gave it much thought, or read too much about it but I do admit the idea of saving to the Xbox HD was what I thought was Xbox's edge. I absolutely loathe memory cards.

I've had too many fail and I recall the anger I felt when I got NFL2K for the DC and found it, by itself, filled the $30 VMU completely.

-Andrew

What are we supposed to make of this, then? 'Thanks to the Xbox hard disk in every single Xbox, games can save a much richer state that ever before.'

'I honestly never gave it much thought, or read too much about it but I do admit the idea of saving to the Xbox HD was what I thought was Xbox's edge.'

Yeah, Bub, me too. I mean, if the hard drive is just a glorified cd drive cache, what's the great thing about the Xbox? Hasn't their entire marketing drive been that this is basically PC gaming for the console masses? What on earth is MS up to releasing an iterative-design console?

The Xbox already has the stink of a failed project on it; I'm curious what the business case for this thing looks like. "We want to bring PC gaming to the masses, except we're not going to give them PC gaming. We're going to build a slightly better console and hope that overcomes Sony's enormous market position."

---

Quote:

The Xbox already has the stink of a failed project on it; I'm curious what the business case for this thing looks like. "We want to bring PC gaming to the masses, except we're not going to give them PC gaming. We're going to build a slightly better console and hope that overcomes Sony's enormous market position."

---

Also, Andrew's example of Dreamcast isn't really in line anymore with the next generation of consoles. Dreamcast had only 128k per VMU to save games if I'm not mistaken. Of course, the VMU had the advantage of the cool screen and portability as a gaming device (however rudimentary the games are).

The new consoles have (as the anonymous developer pointed out) 8MB or so of space on one memory card. So unless you're going wild saving stuff to it from one game, there should be more than ample room per card to save a number of games.

Still, they have to make their money somewhere. They sure as heck don't make it on the console itself. So memory cards and other peripherals such as the remote control for DVD playback are all going to be part of the plan for just about any consoles from here on.

Just look at how long it took us to completely exit the cartridge era...

--Dave

I just asked one of the PR people handling Xbox for MS and I was told that you can save games to the hard drive. The memory card is for swapping games with friends.

Now, could this PR person have it wrong? It wouldn't shock me, but that's the official line relayed to me.

So if that's the case, then why include a memory card in the package deals? You don't "need" it in the least. There also has to be some kind of limit to the save game area on the hard disk or all that scratch space is going to eventually be filled by saves.

I think we really won't know how it works in full until it's on the market and we can test it ourselves.

Still, if you can save to the hard drive, it invalidates the memory card altogether. Why even build the slot into the controller adding more cost to that part of the design?!

--Dave

'Actually, there's where you've gotten it wrong. They have said from day one that this is NOT an attempt to bring PC games to the console masses. It may look like a PC on the inside, but the marketing, business plan and even the games are intended for a totally different audience than PC gamers.'

Ok, you could be right there. In my media grazing about it, though, I've definitely picked up a "lets make a gaming PC console" thread in everything. I don't think I'm the only one, either. Alternatively, there's stuff on some of the fan sites about a Tivo hookup(?), and rampant speculation about 3do-style entertainment center stuff.

I'm still not sure how they can really do well with it unless Sony implodes Nintendo-style. Oh well, time will tell. The speculating about what the devil's up with the savegames is amusing until then.

Alright, here's another data point: Amped, the snowboarding game, will let you rip cds to the hard drive for custom soundtracks. It'd be insane if you had to do this every time you start up the game, so there pretty much has to be a way to save stuff to the hard drive.

Well, to add fuel to the fire: Sony's PS2 hard drive (40 GB, sold separately) is used for game installations as well as "scratch space." In fact, the only game that supports it, the Japanese Final Fantasy X, allows you to do a 1.6 GB "install" to reduce load times (by a few seconds).

Personally, I think the HD is there for set-top box functionality - you can't have cookies and streaming advertisements without a rewritable medium!

Anyway, Xbox still needs a hyped game. Nintendo has the Marios, Zeldas and Pokemon. PS2 has its Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy or just plain Squaresoft.

Xbox has... Abes World Oddysey. Cmon if they cant get a franchise game they will have to make one soon. Either it be a superstar anime style rpg akin to FF or a racing game that beats GT3 or something... anything.

and 600 dollars, are these guys nuts? PS2 was lucky to get away with a 300 dollar price due to the games... and thats without extras.

and where the heck are the EA sports games on XboX release? EA would have made a good sell for the new system... it did for PS2 last year. Is MS just bumbling along? I get the sense that they arent too enthusiastic with xbox, none of the developers for xbox look that excited. And is the SDK for Xbox even done yet?

etc

Amped is a first-party title.

"The new consoles have (as the anonymous developer pointed out) 8MB or so of space on one memory card. So unless you're going wild saving stuff to it from one game, there should be more than ample room per card to save a number of games."

Have you seen PS2 save games? If I'm not mistaken Madden was taking up 1.8 MBs on my memory card!

Console Owner Who Must Remain Anonymous

Yeah, but Madden is the high end of save games. Just as Bub's example of NFL2K was a high end example. Only sports games demand roster, records and schedule saving and all the text that goes with that. Most other games aren't pushing those kind of limits. That's not to say that we won't see more games that want lots of space for saves, but overall, 8MB is quite a lot.

--Dave

The $600 for the Xbox bundle is similar to what you would have paid for a PS2 bundle. The price is no different. This is just one retailer. What's EB doing?

I agree that they need a big-name title. I think they thought Halo would be it, but it didn't look like a system seller at E3.

That said, this is Microsoft and not Sega. They can afford to carry the Xbox at a loss for years if they want in an attempt to get marketshare. How well they do will probably influence how soon Sony launches the PS3. I wouldn't be surprised if we see that by Xmas of 2003.

Mark,
EB has said they will annouce bundles of the 15th. From their faq I saw this...

What accessories and software will be included in the EBgames.com Xbox bundles?

You will have several bundle selections to choose from, all loaded with the hottest titles and accessories. We will probably include the DVD remote in all our bundles. Unlike the PS2 DVD player, the only way to access the DVD functions of the Xbox is with the DVD remote. What you won�t see as a required item is the memory card. The Xbox doesn�t need a memory card to save games due to its built-in hard drive. The portability of a memory card is convenient, but we understand that you might want another great game instead.

Hmm, so I guess the memory card is just for taking it to a friend's house. No doubt they'll sell at least twelve of those.

This all clears up the "Xbox Developer" being full of hooey, though.

"the "Xbox Developer" being full of hooey"

Also explains the need for anonymity. When you're full of hooey, it's best to post anoymously.

-Tim

Well, we're Xbox developers over here, so I cannot comment on anything about the Xbox.

I can say two things about this thread:

One, the anonymous post smells a bit like troll.

Two, I rue the day that we consider information released by EB as gospel.

"One, the anonymous post smells a bit like troll.
Two, I rue the day that we consider information released by EB as gospel."

Hey! That doesn't tell us anything. Way to abide by the NDA.

Qt3 poster who must remain anonymous

If the Xbox hard drive can't be used to store save games, then Xbox PR needs to stop saying that it can. I'll assume that it can at this point.

I was planning on using mine to mix cocktails. Will it do that?

Of course it won't mix cocktails, but it is supposed to walk the dogs for me on those cold days, right?

I'm looking to my Xbox to give me a reason for living.

--DormOnkey

'I'm looking to my Xbox to give me a reason for living.'

I hope you don't need much of a reason; EMS calls are expensive to society.

I still say if you have a PC, why bother with an X-Box?

It's essentially a scaled back (productivity-wise) game-centric PC that has standard hardware (which is a PC game dev's dream). I've already got a decent gaming rig, so why bother?

I'd heartily recommend the Gamecube or PS2 over the Xbox. Gamecube for pure gaming goodness (as long as they develop a few RPG's this time) and the PS2 for the newer PS2 games (MGS2, anyone?) and the whole library of older PS1 classics.

I worry about those who think the Xbox is going to blow away the competition... unless they count the fact that you can't fit it AND another console in the same room due to its ungodly size :)

The Xbox doesn't have a strong opening day lineup, I agree. I think it's over the long haul that people expect it to do well. If it's truly the most powerful system (I don't know) then over time we might see some of the best graphics on the Xbox.

If this was Sega coming out with the Xbox, I think most people would write them off. Microsoft can sustain years of losses if they want to. Of course the high tech market is having a hard time right now and Microsoft may feel its revenue pinched on many fronts. Stockholders have a way of making companies discard unprofitable lines of business.

Yeah, you can't really go wrong with the PS2 if you want a new console system. They have the best lineup by far and there's all the PSX titles you can play as well.

Xbox might work because I *think* they're planning a massive TV ad campaign. Those ads won't phase people-in-the-know, but I don't think we can fully discount the effect it might have on mainstream holiday shoppers.

And I'm thinking they better go with something a touch less obscure than bizarro nanotech PSX 6 gobbledegook and shots of snowboarders flying through gothic churches (GBA).

I think we're going to learn how far $500mil can take you in marketing.

-Andrew

Two words: Microsoft Bob.

- Alan

The Xbox is $300. No amount of marketing is going to make that go away. The PS2 hasn't even taken off the way the PSX did when they dropped that to under $200. With the economy in a downturn $300 systems may be a tough sell. I see PS2s all over the place at retail now. Supply's having no problem at all keeping up with demand. I don't expect the Xbox to be any different once the initial rush of early adopters have theirs.

It will be interesting to see what markets the Xbox is successful in. I think the US market should be a no-brainer but the Japanese market is fairly entrenched with Sony and Nintendo.

What about Europe ? What are console sales like there ?

Well in Europe we wont get our hands on either Xbox or Gamecube until somewhere around March next year, so PS2 could do remarkably well this Christmas.

>Why does the Xbox need that? It has a hard drive. I don't get it.

It doesn't. It's a high markup item, so game stores push it.

>If they're sticking by earlier reports, the hard drive is NOT for saving games and never was intended to be used for that.

You've been reading the wrong earlier reports. =) You're most certainly supposed to be able to save to the hard drive. The memory card is only for people who want to take their saved games or custom playbooks or whatever the hell over to their buddy's house.

>For about $200 less you should be able to get a Gamecube and the same amount of "stuff".

I don't get it. The Gamecube costs $100 less than the Xbox, and doesn't come with more stuff in the box, so why would $200 get you all the gamecube "stuff" that $600 gets you on Xbox? It should cost $500.

Yeah, consoles are expensive by the time you buy additional controllers, memory cards (if needed), and games. But then, so are computers if you buy the equipment necessary for multiplayer play, games, and a CD-RW or whatever.

It's not like it's a real comparison to look at the price of a console PLUS a bunch of accessories AND software vs. just the cost of a base PC.

Not to mention upgrade costs. Buy a console, a couple extra controller, and a memory card or two for $500, and the rest is all software. You're set, except for the games themselves, for 4 years. Buy a computer, and you can't go 4 years just buying games. You gotta buy $500-1000 worth of upgrades just to keep it reasonable, not even cutting-edge.

True, the average PC game is $10 cheaper, but then there are all those "greatest hits" year-old console games that sell for $20.

And we're talking about launch prices here, too. These consoles will be $100 cheaper in 12-14 months after release, and another $100 cheaper a year after that.

My main knock against the consoles is that I generally don't care the style of games made for consoles. I'm just not into sports games, racing games, beat 'em ups, and platform jumpers. I don't like using a gamepad to aim in action games. Some of the games people say will hook you even if you don't normally care for console titles, like SSX and the DC tennis game, don't hook me.

There are only a small selection of the titles that appeal to me, like Ogre Tactics, Twisted Metal, etc.

Mark, I agree that certain games work better on certain platforms and the markets for certain games are on certain platforms. I would never really want to play an FPS on a console gamepad because the mouse and keyboard just work so well. For most sports especially football the consoles are generally better but NHL 2001 for the PC is just flat out great plus you can do things like download updated rosters throughout the year that you can't do on a console (at least not yet). Driving on one hand the console has the edge, I am amazed at how great the control is in GT3 even using the gamepad. Also you just don't get games like GT3 on the PC. I guess for more serious sim racers like the NASCAR games, Colin McRae, and Grand Prix Legends you would want the PC (I don't care for those type of games).

A quick aside about Virtua Tennis (Mark reminded me), I played some 4 player over at my friend's house and it was incredibly fun. I liked the single player quite a bit but the multiplayer with all actual people was beyond fun. Drinking beers and having long rallys and having people miss ordinary shots and razzing them etc. We had one match go to a tie breaker that one team won 8-6. And the players were not all great. They were mixed abilities. If you get a chance I can't recommend it enough.

-- Xaroc

Don't forget "a trillion skateboarding and snowboarding" games, Mark. Judging by what people talk about, those are the only console games in existence anymore (save football).

>My main knock against the consoles is that I generally don't care the style of games made for consoles.

That's a perfectly valid complaint. Though to be fair (and I'm not saying YOU do this, Mark), a lot of people make this claim without actually trying a good cross-section of the latest console games to give them a shot. It's like "I don't like console-style games. I've played two console games in the last four years."

Can you imagine if someone played, say, just Kohan and Quake III and said "I don't like PC style games?"

I agree with Rob about Virta Tennis. And I think it highlights one of the big draws of console games - it's a little LAN party that you only need one box and one TV for. Even 2-player console games or single-player affairs have a lot more appeal with your buddies around when you can all sit on a comfy couch, look at a TV screen, and just pass around the controller. Getting the same "social gaming" experience with the PC takes a lot more effort.

This brings to mind the first "multiplayer experience" that I had -- at college, the guy across the hall had an N64, and introduced us all to Goldeneye. Man, the time we killed with that game. When I got married, the weekend after the wedding we took some of the wedding money and bought an N64 and Goldeneye, and I got some of my friends hooked. About a year later (when my wife got her computer), we graduated to the PCs, though it was slow at first. Now, as often as we can, we get four guys together and play anything and everything from Warcraft II to NOLF -- which, I might add, is a new favorite for multiplayer. I picked it up for ten bucks awhile back, and I must say that in terms of games, it's the best ten bucks I've spent in a long, long time.