From what I understand the tools to implement the tessellation just weren't there so the cost/benefit of going it alone really didn't make it worthwhile for most Xbox 360 games to implement the feature. The Xbox 360 GPU uses a combination of Direct X 9, 10 and 11 features as well as a few unique tricks so its a unique case.

I can't say when and where it makes sense to use it and when and where it doesn't because its something which hasn't really had enough use and we haven't seen enough real world examples of it in action. But from what I understand the best useage of the feature are in rendering terrain and rendering certain uniform models like for example cars in Forza 3 and during cutscenes where the developer has control over the camera.

The tessellation feature in the Xbox 360 is more akin to the tessellation feature currently implemented in ATI cards (2900XT up) and tessellation is in direct X 11 is based off the ATI lineage of tessellation. Its just very much a basic implementation. We will really have to see what happens in 2010 onwards to find out what it can really do.

^^So all MS needs to do is provide 360 developers a new API for using this technique? Or perhaps documentation on ways to implement it?

^ Pretty much, remember they only just developed the DX 11 tools and released it towards the end of 2008, start of 2009. The first developers whom would have gotten their hands on the technology would be their first party developers, so we won't see any real implementation of the technology until the end of 2010, because theres that 12-18month lead time coming into play here.

Just saw this post on the N4G comments:

"Two of the new stages are programmable (the hull and domain shader stages) and one is configurable (the tessellator stage). The xbox 360 is not a brute force chip compared to the tech coming out this year for direct x 11 yet if you watch your resources you can make use of the pooled memory set up the xbox 360 has, which is why so many complain about the rsx set up. You see we told you it was not future proof LOL.

This is really the reason why the PS3 was a let down in so many ways, maybe not to the gamers yet more to the developers. The tessellator is a fix function tech and the cell in the PS3 is not powerful enough to produce the same out come as a true fix function set up. It takes the larrabee 30 cores to do what ati will be able to do in one fix function hardware. Devs will need this extra ram to see what is going on with in their code and set up of this tessellator and how it effects the new programmable parts. The commercial tools are coming in august also!

This is new tech we are playing with but it is not uncommon. To use it before MS's API you basicly had to create your own drivers which is pretty hard to do if you are not MS. MS pretty much tells the hardware guys what to support. I'm glad some one leaked this stuff because directX 11 is going to be fun and the new GPU like cpus are going to be fun also. We will get a little next gen bump right now before the next gen. NDAs are in full effect here. ATI is currently ahead of this game by a few years and nvidia was one of the main reason this tech was left unused. What is funny is even in the PC realm this has been confirmed by gamers and devs. Yet no one supported it because ati was the only guys to do some thing with it. Now you have intel jumping in so nvidia has to answer.

Right now people a debugging stuff and a few things have been shown but if we or other developers get what we want from this new tech you will have almost the effect of real time sub divisions happening along with real geometry with normal maps or with out normal maps. If this new method is faster than normal maps then it would be a superior tech. This will mix texture mapping and high polygon modeling together. There is the possibility that you could achieve better looking texture this way and use less ram. Since this is more of a procedural method."

This guy is in full agreement with ya squil.

Is this even possible, also wouldnt this cost a lot more.

^^By cost, what do you mean?

Development cost

Only due to artists being able to make more detailed environments and models.

Its the reason why I was so certain in the past that the Xbox 360 had one considerable untapped feature. Its not the beall technology, but its going to make Xbox 360 games look pretty good and with PC development of DX 11 in full swing its really going to come into play now.