Squilliam said:
Now I understand this topic draws a lot of emotional responses. So imagine this scenario, Microsoft releases an updated Xbox 360 at the current price, the Xbox 360+ which has some updated hardware in the box. It doesn't effect people who just want to play games as all games would still be designed to run excellently on the current Xbox 360 hardware. Retail support for the Xbox 360 is still maintained to the usual and expected 2012/2013/2014 timeframe. They also don't release any games which cannot work on the current hardware that people have. Also the Xbox 360+ would cost no more than whatever the current prices for the Xbox 360 are.
With the new PSP Go and the Xbox 360 direct downloads of games and Natal, its got me thinking. What if they could allow people who wanted faster hardware to download games for an Xbox 360+ which are identical to Xbox 360 games, but are optimised to run on better hardware? Lets say both consoles can run GTAIV (next city) well, but if you download it for the Xbox 360+ you can have 2-4 player local multiplayer. So it could be excellent for the hardcore people who want more, but doesn't effect the current experience people get with their console in any negative way. It could mean that they help ease the transition into a newer generation by following the handheld route of mini hardware generations. DS -> DS Lite -> DSi or Gameboy -> Gameboy Colour, rather than having the harsh transitions which are normal and costly with home consoles.
Lets say the hardware in the new box goes something like this:
- 4/6 core Xenon running at 3.2 with small architecture tweaks.
- Xenos replaced by an ATI Directx 11 GPU with 2-3* the performance with say 22MB of ED-Ram (too lazy to perform the calculation to work out how much they need haha sorry) to natively support 1920/1080 games or 720P games with full HDR.
- 1024MB GDDR5 running on a 64bit bus (save money) with say 40% more bandwidth (Again too lazy to calculate)
- 500GB of HDD space to download games to which gives far higher throughput than optical media.
- Xenon/Xenos/ED-Ram combined into one single die to improve latency and lower cost on the 45nm Global Foundries process.
How would you feel about it? Its not a hard generational change and it shouldn't effect you personally if you don't choose to upgrade but it also gives people who want extra performance the option and it slowly increases the level of performance available to developers so that they can transition to a new generation without incurring the same cost they did this generation.
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If you change the power of the CPU or GPU you have an issue where developers will take advantage of the extra capability. That would fragment the market. What will really extend the viability of the Xbox 360 is the cost of very large HDD in a couple of years. On NewEgg.Com the cheapest 60GB drive is $69.99, 80GB drive is $39.99, 160GB drive is $49.99 and the cheapest 500GB drive is $89.99.
So the answer is digital downloads and installs for people that dont want to change disks. The other things that will add lifetime to the 360+ are extra capabilities like WiFi, Natal in the box, etc.
I really think the only thing you can do is change the optical drive to something that can hold more (like Blu-Ray) for people that want to purchase physical media and dont want to install.
