Halo 3 is scheduled to come out the day the PS3 launches, or something like that.
It was Bill Gates to state that in some interview. A few days later, however, Robbie Bach - I think it was him - said that neither Bill nor he are the heads of Bungie, basically pointing out that the schedule or a large part of it is in the hands of the developers and that the game will be released when it’s ready to be released.
-Julian
Greetings:
Halo was released holiday 2001, Halo 2 holiday 2004. Spring 2006 would not be a full development cycle. Of course, that assumes that the same team would be doing Halo 3 and that they haven’t had a separate group developing it since the first Xenon prototypes were put together over a year ago.
Not that I think it’s going to matter when people go into the local Best Buy this fall and there’s the 360 running on HDTV’s next to the PS2 and GC on old CRT’s. Backwards compatibility and DVR out of the box would have been the grand-slam, but I think MS has got a pretty solid swinger coming up to bat.
Michael.
Those buttons you see on that Xbox 360 Remote is for controlling your Media Center PC. If you have a Media Center PC on your network, the Xbox 360 will serve as a “media center extender” just like if you buy the Media Center Extender kit for the current Xbox. Only the current Xbox MCE is really super crappy, and requires you to put in a disc. The quality of the MCE functionality on the 360 should be superior, and it won’t require a disc.
This is NOT TV recording or playback on the 360. It’s simply streaming the video/audio and interface commands over your home network from your Media Center PC, where everything is stored, recorded, etc.
(it can do the music and photos thing from just any old Windows XP machine…TV recording and playback and live TV are for Windows MC only)
The problem is not the hard drive. Well, it is, because 20GB isn’t enough. But even if they had a 200GB hard drive…uh…there’s no TV tuner in the Xbox 360. And no slot for adding one.
Now, using the Xbox 360 as a terminal for IPTV, that has a lot of promise. Don’t need no stinkin’ hard drive for that, and it would kick the ass of any TiVo-like thing ever. There are still a lot of business things that need to happen for IPTV to become a reality, though. And a few technology things.
You bet your ass. I loved Sega, but the Saturn burned me so much that I didn’t even entertain the notion of buying a Dreamcast.
As for the 360, here’s a question: was it clear prior to the Xbox launch that Halo was going to be the all-powerful Oz? In retrospect, it seems obvious, but did people know six months prior that it would be, not just a good game, but a system seller?
The point being can we really tell what will be the killer app before the system launches and the reviews start to break? Maybe Perfect Dark Zero is a wolf in ugly sheep’s clothing?
If anyone tells you “yes,” they’re kidding themselves. Microsoft showed Halo 1 at GameStock and then promptly stuck it underground until the system’s launch. I remember interviewing Ed Fries at the time, and he said he thought PGR was great but that Halo was going to be “something very special.” I remember looking at him skeptically and asking him why don’t they show it more. He said because they weren’t done, and this was a measly 6 weeks before launch. Halo was still considered a huge gamble for Ed and MS at the time.
Fun fact: Qt3’s own Gary Whitta was the first person in the world to play the release candidate of Halo when he was sent up to Redmond to review it for the OXM. Gaz, who had been sneering at Microsoft’s “shitbox” all summer and who couldn’t wait to get his hands on the Gamecube, came back and said “fuckin’ hell, it’s brilliant.”
Halo 3 is supposed to be out around the time the PS3 launches so it won’t be that at least initially however Gears of War and Full Auto both looked really good and having Madden a year early could sell a lot of systems.
– Xaroc[/quote]
Gears of War isn’t till 06 though either right? I imagine it could be no closer than Halo 3.[/quote]
I think it is an 06 title but possibly earlier in 06 than Halo 3 considering we saw footage of it in action at E3. We will have to see . Still I think MS has said they are going to have 25-40 titles in the launch window for the 360. I am not sure how big the window is with them launching almost in December though.
– Xaroc
If anyone tells you “yes,” they’re kidding themselves. Microsoft showed Halo 1 at GameStock and then promptly stuck it underground until the system’s launch. I remember interviewing Ed Fries at the time, and he said he thought PGR was great but that Halo was going to be “something very special.” I remember looking at him skeptically and asking him why don’t they show it more. He said because they weren’t done, and this was a measly 6 weeks before launch. Halo was still considered a huge gamble for Ed and MS at the time.[/quote]
I won’t refute that it was a gamble or that no one knew it was going to be huge, but don’t let Jim give you the idea that it wasn’t anticipated. Back before Microsoft bought Bungie and it was going to be a Mac title, it was hugely anticipated by anyone who had a Mac (obviously) but also just about anyone who took the time to get over the Mac-game stigma and give that footage from a MacWorld Expo a fair look. At the time, what they were doing was absolutely amazing looking. To a Mac gamer, for Microsoft to come out of nowhere and buy Bungie to secure Halo as an Xbox title was like if EA announced tomorrow they were buying Nintendo. At that point, Halo was watched even closer because the die-hard Bungie fans (Mac gamers) were pretty conflicted about the Most Awesome Developer Ever being bought up by the Great Satan of Redmond, and the rest of the world was thinking “Why did a PC maker trying to get into the console market buy the only good thing to happen to Mac gaming?”
So, a sure thing? Hardly. But it was interesting because Halo was going to be “the all-powerful Oz” of a different platform entirely.
It was never just a Mac title, though; Bungie was developing it for PC and Mac simulataneously, and were planning a simultaneous launch on both platforms (at least until they went the Xbox route). That’s still better than what Mac gamers normally get, though, granted.
The press first saw it at E3 (a few months prior to Macworld), albeit under strict NDA. It was sort of a funny situation–nobody could cover it, or even mention it, and it probably the best PC game at the show. So when folks asked me what my favorite game of the show was, all I could say was “no comment.”
But yeah, I thought it was going to be huge when I saw it, and I think most of the rest of the press did as well. But then it went underground for a long time, and changed platforms, and I think it slipped off everyone’s radar.
Yeah, I remember that demo - definitely one of the most impressive demos I’ve ever seen at the E3. It’s too bad it didn’t complete its development as a PC title, because they certainly were looking to do more impressive, bigger environments initially. Instead we got a port that ran like crap.