XBX360 & HDTV era rant.

<Rant>

Was wondering how the heck Microsoft expects people to buy such damned expensive television sets to play their latest console system the way it was meant to be played?

'tis my b-day today, so I took a hike down to my not-so-local video store FutureShop, lo-and-behold, plenty of Premium XBX360s in stock, problem was, the system itself was expensive @ $499.99 (CDN currency), that and the fact I'd have to spend another $129.99 just to get it online wirelessly (dont got anymore lan cables to tether anything else to my wireless router).....along with the fact I'd need a second controller, a memory card (although it does have an HD built in..), and a couple games...

Then I realized the fact that the majority of 360 games were built for running on HD systems, or anything above a standard TV set, and from what I've read reviews of for some games, some dev's failed at making their games even readable on older TVs because of the limited resolution, and them not being able to bump up the font size and what not...

That and the fact the system is beefy and I'd be missing alot of the finer details of the graphics, which is what the thing was built for....but seriously, when I took a trip down HDTV alley at FutureShop, all I could see are $2000+ price-tags for anything that was a wise-screen that actually appeared slightly larger then my current old 21" CRT which is really showing its age. (bright colors warp the screen, can see little vertical lines crawling up the screen, clarity aint too great, etc)

Being an Average Joe, and see'ing how awful the "cheaper" models looked image-quality wise, I really wish to know how Microsoft expected people to buy into this crap that dont have deep wallets? As much as I'd like a 360, I cant keep up with the prices people are setting their products at, I mean, just to play something simple like Geometry Wars on Live!Arcade will cost me about $750 minimum with using my current crappy TV..., that and the fact I'd have to pay monthly fee's on Live!, as well as get my parents credit hooked up (really should look into getting my own credit...) so I can even purchase Marketplace points... /sigh.

</Rant>


So what's yer guys views on this subject, too expensive for its own good? Just seems like a rich-mans toy to me atm which doesn't appear to be really worth the premium price.
(tried me a couple kiosks, and the games played exactly last last-gens games, just prettier...was surprised Fight Night3 was the "best" 1st-gen 360 games could offer in human models....I wasn't impressed)

On another subject.....how many more "gen"'s do you think it'll be before loading times are non-existant? I think I've been spoiled by my DS for having next to 0 loading times in any of the games I own (any of the good ones that is, not the crappy cheap rushed projects).

i think... this is the last OOOO pretty graphics, generation... and it will likely be a failure.

The Wii is taking a new direction. And Nintendo has been pretty good at predicting or setting trends. So I'd like to see games move away from costing 90 million to make.....

There is a top floor.. and the next gen is hanging off the roof.

It's all part of the global plan to push HDTV at us.

I am thinking about a 42" plasma or a 32" HD LCD - I've been nosing around in this site: http://www.trustedreviews.com/articles.aspx?sec=17&p=1

go with the LCD.... plasmas are crap.

I second this rant. But, more so from development and business point of view. It is nice to have awesome graphics, but at the cost of 10 million per game?

What we have now is just a tweak to an engine and higher res textures, voila NBA 2006. Those are no brainers, but what about those break-out games? None of the publishers or developers are willing to risk 18 month development and 5 - 10 million on game genre that is not cookie cutter FPS or 3rd person shooter.

I am scratching my brain myself as to how to minimize the development costs. These days, graphics take a lot of time and money. I believe if we cut the graphics (textures and models), we would save 60 - 75 percent of development cost and perhaps 40 - 60 percent of development time.

How? Don't know. But it has to be done. With higher res textures and more and more ram to store larger and larger areas, you have to reduce that cost and labor. I don't mind higher res and more ram, but the development must be contained within 6 - 9 months and no more than 1 million dollars.

I was under the impression that you could plug the 360 into a computer monitor. If so doesnt that solve the "Tv resolution is too low problem"?

I thought so too. But, why not use your PC as a gaming console then?

We need the tools to catch up with the design.... Right now, you have to do all the small little things when you make texturs and models... We need a way to speed up to process somewhat like how mocap sped up animation. Only on a much grander scale.

Mocap allowed people to do BETTER animation in LESS time. We need this kind of technology for texture generation and even more so for modeling. We can use photos for textures, but they still need to be edited heavily and they don't help much when it comes to fantasy and sci-fi games where what you are making a model of doesn't exist... sports games can be cranked out every year or more because you basicly just scan people and minorly edit a basic human form and do more mocap to ad a few more animations, then edit an existing engine...

Basicly, while it is POSSIBLE to make these great looking games, it is not ECCONOMICAL to make them.

Gameplay should be the focus, and I think nintendo is going to bring that back. The fancy graphics should only be there if they don't dramaticly increase the production time, or if the game really NEEDS it... I have yet to see a game that needed it.

Wow DampeS8N, it is like you read my mind. The problem I see with Wii is that it artificially hampers development costs by having a less of a system. While this works in a way to curb it, it still does not address the issue of tools.

Today, artists are above programmers in terms of budget in most game houses. They license the 250K engine most of the time and throw in additional 500K for staff of developers to make it do what they want it to do, the rest of the majority is spent on artists.

What we need is what the Unreal engine and other like that brought to the developers. You can license it for 250K and save yourself re-inventing the same wheel if your game idea follows the same line. Now, of course there will always be someone that sais that they need to write a custom engine from the ground up, but that is not the norm for cookie cutter games.

Same needs to be done for art department. Some cookie cutter program that can be customized to the pulisher's need. Once in a while you will get a developer that will say that their artistic direction requires 20 artists, and that is fine, but that can't be the norm.

If a developer can reduce the costs of 8 out of 10 games down by 50 to 80%, they can then take more risks. But today, 8 out of 10 games cost 5+ million dollars.

Sorry guys, I am very passionate about this. I have always loved video games but I think this 3D Card race and more more more more more attitude of the hardware developers is making the industry very stale. And I don't think it is just the industry to blame, consumers are to blame too.

I think games try and use graphics to make up for a lack of everything else. Most games today are over simple in the gameplay department, and a lot needs to be done in other areas like AI, and more realistic behaviour. Not so much to make the enemy more chalenging, but to make your environment more interesting.

These days you need 10 hours of sprawling interesting graphics, because at the end of the day an FPS is so basic, that without the eye candy your going to be bored within the first 5 minutes.

You need everything else to catch up with the graphics, and make you enjoy the game more, so you don't need all that media to compensate for the lack of everything else.

I agree with you completely, but this reminds me of something:
Does anyone else think it's funny how the Myst games were all developed with reasonably short development times and they all look Amazing? (With Myst 4, of course, rivalling the CGI quality of films like Lord of the Rings and King Kong).
I think it's fascinating that Myst's graphics (especially Riven's) were done largely with photographs. The sound effects were pretty low budget, too -- The sound of a crazy machine in Riven is actually done by shoving a microphone in a flushing toilet.
...And the characters, of course, (exception being Myst 5), are live actors -- probably, somehow, significantly less bother than complex 3d models... and they look better.

Not possible everywhere, of course, but two things to be learned here:

To the makers of all next-gen 3d games that try to look real (yes, that includes you, Crysis), Give Up; Myst 4 beat you to it YEARS ago.

Also, I think the reason why Myst 4 looks so great is not because it's 2d prerendered scenes (in fact, the pre-rendered stuff can be a problem during full motion sequences, due to the size of the video that's animating on-screen thanks to the 360-degree stuff), but rather due to the way that they focused their attention on particular, small worlds.
Lots of games are trying to look good on too big of a scale... likely as a result of where cookie-cutter FPSs are going. If more games just tried to be unique, and we had maybe a few classic adventure games coming our way, gameplay would improve in the same way that the manageability of graphics would improve... which means that artists can pay more attention to making smaller areas look absolutely stellar, thus causing those tech demos to become reality.

These small worlds work best when the player is given a sense of accomplishment whenever they get somewhere new; for example, in Myst (the reason I'm obsessed with it is because I just played through the start of Myst 4 for no reason before uninstalling it since I already finished), I will always be excited when I come across a new linking book... or even, for that matter, a regular book :P
When I do finally get to a new area in a game such as Myst (or Sam & Max, to be fair), it took so much work to get there that I am simply excited to see it. It doesn't matter how small it is, it has character. The worlds are made to be more than just visually deep, but rich in details like artifacts and paintings and other brilliant backstory.
I do not need to care about the story, and if I choose that route, it still looks cool. If I choose to care about the story, there is stuff there, and in such overwhelming quanitity that I merely think "wow".

The failing of the modern cookie-cutter computer game is that the worlds are only big -- not deep.
What little sense of accomplishment I get in said games is very quickly relieved by how they seem to be built as a film - they are to be watched, not played. The actions that I take in game are merely what the developer wanted me to do -- they do not feel natural.
Thus, it looks worse and there is no sense of accomplishment; there is nothing to be learned from the game which no-one else will see, since artists will treat areas of the game more like an assembly line -- a chore -- than something which they have 2 years to build up to perfection and to give as much character as possible like they do in Myst.
What fun could there possibly be in a world that does nothing? ...Or am I missing the point? Are games going to become just big white empty spaces with nothing but characters and small objects?




Edit:
Wow, that is incredibly disjointed, repetetive, and difficult to read.
Sorry.
I don't know what relationship it has with this topic, either... I guess it shows that I agree, anyway.

And that white scene with nothing but characters and objects could actually be a really cool gameplay game... and it was my idea, so I ask that you stop thinking about it :P


Edit2:
Thanks, Alex!
You asked a question that justifies the existence of this reply.
Too bad my reply is one post above yours...

Does anyone here have any ideas on how to fix this issue? I doubt we can all go back to PS1 or SNES graphics, so how do we have good looking games but allow developers to concentrate on the gameplay rather than eye candy?

You can. A 19" widescreen monitor doing 1280x1024 should look pretty good, and can be had for under £200.


Because you can get an XBox 360 premium pack, extra controller and three full price games for about the same price you'd pay just for a not-quite-top-of-line videocard? Not withstanding that you still have to put up with installing 8 gigs of data onto your hard drive, copy protection systems that - best case - are a pain and - worse case - stop the game from running unless you use a pirate version, and all that sorta thing.

Don't take that away from XBox 360. Being a cheap alternative to high-end PC gaming for the more action-oriented PC-gamers is about all it has going for it ;)

It's really about time the hardware manufacturers started filling in these gaps. Why do software houses have to develop or license Renderware-like engines... why aren't these new consoles Renderware-in-a-box? You really shouldn't need any coders to produce a mainstream commercial game - just scripters, gfx artists and audio guys. The idea that you have this empty space to fill up with custom code before you can even begin is old fashioned.

With respect to cutting content production down - reference models and textures would be my suggestion. It's a no-brainer, really, with the only real question being how it should be organised... I like the notion of 'prop-shops' but these only seem to be embraced by the shareware (development) market currently.

Concerning change, the main problem at the moment is that the big players like the winner-takes-all market, and development cost is one way in which they can keep the stakes high. The market leaders really have nothing to gain from development being less painful and risky, because they can weather the storm while the smaller competition goes under. Until the market flaty decides any further improvement in visual fidelity is undesirable I can't see those pushing it altering course - it's never going to happen for the genral good of the form.

What?

XBox 360 = $399.99
Controller = $39.99
3 Games @ 59.99 = 179.97
Plus tax (mine is 8.25) = 671.10

MWave.com lists:
ATi X1900 512MB PCIe Crossfire at $532.74
GeForce 512MB 7900PCIe at $525.59

Eh, I would argue that the above cards a bit above the "not-quite-top-of-line" video card.


EDIT:
I agree that most of the games today are scripted and most time is devoted to graphics and audio. Although someone has to develop those "engines" to license, that shouldn't be something being re-invented all the time. So what I am saying is that graphics tools need to be improved.

But I do not agree with the notion that is what big companies want. Sure they don't want mom and pop shops competing, but I guarantee you that if you cut their development costs from 5 - 10 million to 1 to 2 million, they will be HAPPY. Since most of them are publicly traded companies, they would welcome that since it would increase their revenue per share and inch their stock higher. I doubt mom and pop will come up with 1 or 2 million anyways.

I disagree - if I'm EA, say, and I can make money out of a market that is prohibitively expensive for the smaller players then my shareholders are going to be happy. If something came along that made development less painful, wholesale, then that is going to displease my shareholders because the economies of scale no longer apply so much. You should not be surprised to see me, EA, buying out anything that eases development... like oohhhhhh Renderware, which I can continue to license out in order to appear non monopolistic to pesky regulagtory bodies while raking in cash from my own competition.

Er.. sure, if you're gonna price all the components separately instead of the bundles. XBox360 bundles with three games and an extra controller go for a lot less.

Can't really compare with UK prices, but the XBox 360 bundle goes for under £400 here. That will just about buy me one of the top videocards going, but not the very best.

I know which I'd pick. Ok, I'd pick neither, cuz I'm not the target audience, but considering how much more you need to add to that graphics card for a cutting edge pc gaming system, I can see why people would take the cheaper ( and quite possibly better ) option.

And I agree with Sledge. Inflated development costs are absolutely in the interest of the big boys. They'll think about lowering costs when they've driven everyone else out of business, but until then, it's not in their interest to cut costs.

Damn it, then we need to think of something that will drive the costs down overnight. There has to be something... anything... I bet it is simple and right in front of us and we are failing to see it... hmmm...

actually you might be surprised at how many companies develop their own engines. A lot more than those that actualy use Unreal, Doom or renderware. It's just that we get to hear about these engines the most because they are marketed as a product.

Most games dev companies actually develop their own engines, tools and libs. Part of the reason that popular FPS games are so simple is that they are built from the ground up with MODing in mind, as well as MP. Which can often lead to simplistic games and tools for the masses to be able to play with.

When it comes to dev teams, in my experience most devs have a core group of 3-5 coders, some code monkeys to fill in the gaps, and a huge art team. If they hired more coders to develop other areas other than graphics and effects related tech, I imagine games could move on and become a lot more exciting.

Truth is graphics can still look awesome, the problem lies in how much of it there is. I kind of agree with Picklesworth on that front. It would be better to have smaller more detailed worlds where the focus lies more in how you interact with the world and your surroundings, than blast through 10 hours of pretty graphics doom fashioned.

For me the most boring thing as an artist, is to duplicate reality, running around with your digital camera and playing with photoshop retouching photos and going for realism is ok as an exercise. But gets old really quick when you have a few dozen hours of content ahead of you. And all people are going to do is run through it fast, guns blazing, following a mostly set route in a linear fashion.

Where's the fun in that, in some ways modern FPS games aren't really all that much removed from operation Wolf or quick draw mcgraw still. The only real difference is that they give you the impression of freedom with a few moves and being able to move the camera. The gameplay itself is almost the same, and the enemies havent really become all that much more intelligent.

I can relate to what you're saying, but for me we should be looking the other way. I see lowering the barriers to entry as an important part of getting more diverse products out there, and part of that means removing the technical obstacles and making sure that game development is instead a matter of design and art... or, in other words, get rid of the need for low-level coders. Integrated (with the hardware) middleware should really be the great creative enabler for the games industry... EA was astute as hell to recognise the genuine threat it presented and acquire and harness arguably the biggest middleware name (while the hardware manufacturers were, of course, dopey as hell to miss the trick).

I'm not saying that the very cost of developing content doesn't need to be addressed because clearly things are getting crazy. I'm simply suggesting that it's maybe time for the engine developers to get jobs with the hardware manufacturers in order that their fruits be directly integrated into the systems. They no longer reside in the optimal location.

It always cracks me up when I hear Canadians gripe about the price of stuff. They oughta be griping about the taxes they pay. When I used to live in Canada (BC) I payed 40% of my income to the Federal gov, 18% to the province right off the top. Then for the priveledge of spending my money the fed took 8% in GST and the province took 7% for a total of 15% total sales tax. Oh yeah, if you but a car or RV or anything considered non-essential over $30K BC takes another 7% as a "luxury" tax.

Seems to me the laassst thing Canucks should be complaining about is prices :) God, my wallet is glad I live in the USA now. Being a dual citizen is great, as long as I don't ever have to work or live back in Canada! :)

Later,

I've been reading that MODing is pretty much a thing of a past now because of the fact that new engines (the new Unreal) is going to require so much resources that the average MODer will be locked out. The Unreal team predicts that to MOD a simple game will take a team now and total conversions will no longer be realistic.

I don't think that art development will be able to sustain itself. Pretty soon you will be able to fit city size levels with each building being individual and each street being unique. What will artists do then? City plan and draw every single building?

I also agree with the rant.

Lets take Denmark for example, which I doubt is significantly different from other European countries. Aside from getting an XBox 360, there is no valid reason to buy a HDTV in the first place, as neither cable or satelite carriers offer HDTV programing.

I mean getting a big screen TV is one thing, but paying a premiun for the ability to get HD content, when none is available is pretty rediculous.

I don't think the HDTV question has been answered... And I'm not going to help it with my answer I don't think... But analog tv is on the way out. Period. Digital TV (in the states) has been mandated by 2009 if I remember right. And more and more shows are being shot in HD and shown in letterbox format (viewable full screen on a 16:9 tv). The writing is on the wall and it's certainly not microsoft's fault for catering to those with HD sets. Most if not all games for the 360 will play just fine on a standard 480i/p television, but you get extra added quality with a good 720p/1080i/p system. If you don't have an HDTV, get one if you can. If you can't, stick with a PS2/XBox. Simple as that.

well HDTV is getting cheaper all the time. I see 720p 27" ones from ok brands going for about $700

Not bad so long as your getting it primarily as a TV, and not just for playing games. There is a VGA adaptor too.

Well, considering that analog broadcast TV is about to be yanked off the air across north america in the not-too-distant future, they're probably counting on a good percentage of people switching to HDTV at that point.

Anyway, pretty much the entire entertainment industry is trying to persuade people to switch to all-digital systems -- not because it looks better, but simply because it also comes with draconian DRM schemes that makes it much easier for the movie studios and the likes to protect their content... Including those pesky VCR's people use to tape movies from TV -- they can't wait to kill all that stuff off.

> Including those pesky VCR's people use to tape
> movies from TV -- they can't wait to kill
> all that stuff off.

Or in the case of what's happening now, people find ways to record. Which in turn happens to exist on a non deteriorative medium, or to just download entire movies and games from the internet.

I recon in the future, piracy in that respect will be even easier.

Companies need to worry about the money they do make, and not the money they don't

Sure, go after the large scale pirates, and leave the rest of the people alone. They spend more money trying to stop the average person from stealing a movie off the net than they stand to make by doing so.

Right, but how many times has that been delayed already? I wouldn't bet against them doing it again, that's for sure.

Well, finally decided against getting a 360, just not worth the premium/new equip to play it the way it was meant to be played (more-so to the point : cant be arsed to buy a composite cable {or whatever it's called} to attach it to my stereo TV because Microsoft decided to only include an HD-AV cable)...maybe in the future when the price of the system lowers dramatically or something...

What is it that makes these HDTVs so expensive anyhow? The things cant display anywhere near the picture quality of my current TFT monitor, and the majority of them cant even display up to a resolution of 1280x1024 that are less then <$3000....

Regardless, decided to buy me some wireless-G PCI ethernet cards for my b-day, can finally rid of these damned blue cables running down the stairs/hallway. Only had time to install it on my personal PC (aka, the guinea pig), working great so far with not a hitch on performance. :)
(wish I could say the same for the external one I got for my PS2, that systems network setup is stupid in some ways, usually requiring me to input the IPs for everything since auto-detect never works)


Guess I could just end it by saying the 360 is ahead of its time for Microsofts target audience price-wise, maybe in 5 years when HDTVs (screw EDTV) are more common/reasonably-affordable.

Not to mention odds are Sony will fall into the same problem, as I doubt they want that system running on the common stereo TV also....well, least Nintendo knows how to cater to my needs.

Um, HDTV is very different. Just because most can't do full 1920x1080 doesn't make them bad. I have one 42" EDTV (480p - 842x480) and it is night and day compared to the regular tv of 480i.

The progressive mode makes it less of a strain on the eyes, the plasma has very beautiful colors, and DVDs look nothing like the regular TV.

I would advise folks that if they can, get an EXCELLENT EDTV rather than OK HDTV. EDTV is that middle ground and you will appreciate the difference. Plus, unless you are a crazy audio/video guy, the EDTV will surve you for at least 5 - 7 years to come.

Oh, and you don't have to have HDTV for XBox360. Genexi2, get a good EDTV (Last year, the best rated was a Panasonic one for reproduction of color, it is actually used as a benchmark against other plasma's they use). You will get into the "digital tv" age while not spending $3000. I got mine for around $1,900 here in US at Best Buy and I never ever ever regreted it. Of course I am looking at HDTV now, but I will wait till a plasma of 1920x1080 under $3K comes along. Till then, I am very happy with my EDTV.

Majority of the EDs I looked at from 3 different stores all came around the $700-1k price-range, only problem was that all 3 stores also didn't seem to want to have a clean video-connection on all their displays making some look much worse then they should be.
(nothing like fuzziness/static on your display from a DVD movie)

Will think about it as a future purchase, as my current-gen systems *do* have the support for Progressive scan, but it's all up to the developer (/sigh) to implement the functionality into their games. But I guess the picture display would be better on plain' old low-rez regardless though.

You know, speakin of audio, wish the same would occur for that department, Dolby Digital Encoders aint cheap, and my PS2/GameCube dont have a direct feed for a single input for all 5 speakers...
(had to use this little splitter attachment which allowed me to hook-it-up composite cable style, red & white cable)

It's the price people will pay for it. See Hambones rant up above about the 7% Canadian Luxury Tax? Yeah, this is the HDTV producers 500% luxury tax.

hmm video games being driven by new technology, forcing people to buy expensive stuff. whats new here?

Yes it's a bummer, but maybe this will give indie games more of a chance as they can be great fun, cheap and played on PCs? However, even indie games are needing more and more "bling" these days to compete.

Well look guys, TV has not had a major breakthrough since color. Progressive scan and lcd/plasma is the new big feature that trully has revolutionized the image quality. All those 3D comb filters did little.

I embrace the technology and know a little about the LCD/Plasma process and while there is a big part that is being driven by demand, technology itself is rather expensive. I mean, we are not just talking about todays production cost, but the 10 - 15 years of research.

But today we have EDTVs that are the transitionary for the average joe where you get much of the new features without the expensive resolution. And besides, they still have yet to come out with a 42"+ plasma or lcd that is 1920x1080 which is the true HDTV.

And besides, now that LCD/Plasma screens have come home, our pets can now watch TV with us!

Todays production costs are a fraction of what they where 10 years ago.