Allow me to slip into my flame suit: I love my Xbox 360. I mean I love it. It's the console that's given me more gaming pleasure than any other; the console that made me buy an HD telly; the console that dragged me kicking and screaming away from my PS2 and into the next generation.
I unashamedly play it more than PS3. Hold your breath Sony fanboys: That's not because it's better in any way. The PS3 is an incredible machine.
My reason is far more anecdotal: Xbox 360 arrived first, and quickly earned my loyalty. After a decade of never looking past PlayStation controls, the Xbox pad now feels more natural; its interface more friendly. Microsoft's charm offensive has won me over - and I admit, I feel a degree of constancy for its joy-harboring machine.
It's why the plentiful PS3-supporting, Blu-Ray-heralding bean counters have never bothered me one iota. Doleful comparisons of processing power, HD screenshots and (painful...to...write) disc storage space leave me cold; an over-complicated distraction from the critical point: It the game in question any good?
That is, until last week - when suggestions of 360's shortcomings first struck uncertainty into my green-tinted faith.
The inconsequential dogma of number-crunching Blu-Ray obsessives is never going to persuade me of anything other than their own need to leave the house once in a while. But when a respected developer on a huge franchise like Lost Planet - an Xbox-allied one at that - tells me they have to hack out chunks of their game out to fit it on Xbox 360? I smells trouble in the air.
We're not talking about the pie in the sky ideas of Hideo 'let's fill up a disc with four hours of FMV' Kojima here, either. This is Capcom - one of the most pragmatic developers out there - admitting they're releasing a game on Xbox 360 that doesn't hit the highs they hoped for due to the limitations of DVD.
Call me naïve, but ever since I was a sticky-fingered, arcade-loving teen, Capcom has been synonymous with delivering cutting-edge experiences - without pushing technology for technology's sake. This was not good news. For the first time - even for a hard-to-dissuade 360 supporter - DVD has started to look last-gen.
"The edited content was way too much and dealing with that was more difficult than anything," said Lost Planet 2 producer Jun Takeuchi. "This time, truly, the content that was cut was significant... we had to wrestle with disc space."
Right on cue (and no-one's telling me this wasn't deliberate) Sony's tech director for God Of War III tells us that the must-buy title wouldn't be able to fit on anything but Blu-Ray. Scratch that, dual layered, 50GB Blu-Ray.
I'm not one of those with blind, unwavering belief in Microsoft's hardware (two Red Ring veteran, me), so I shouldn't feel shocked. It's just that, all of a sudden, Blu-Ray looks beefy and superior: Whereas once it was the ostentatious nouveau riche, now it's the wealthy, landowning upper class - leaving DVD very much in the gutter, looking at the stars.
Aaron Greenberg told CVG a fortnight ago at X10 that 360 isn't even "half-way through its lifecycle" - as we sat unbeknownst to the diminished Lost Planet 2 blaring out in the background.
If that's true, the system will still be around in 2015. In that time, the ambition and funding of the world's leading developers will grow exponentially - as will the amount of space their Triple-A output takes up. Surely Xbox is going to need to adopt Blu-Ray at some point to compete?
Now, Natal is certainly a mouth-watering proposition, and will extend interest in 360 for a good few years yet. But if it wants to avoid becoming Wii - huge success off the back of limited tech - it must begin offering an outlet for games of God Of War III's size.
Microsoft may believe that its hard drive offers the answer, with a 250GB model recently shown off in Japan. It's a smart, long-termist view - the industry is certainly migrating into the downloadable realm.
But for the next five years? It's a big ask if the firm thinks consumers are going to be happy abandoning their prized boxes. (Or, as with Capcom's LP2, purchase a cut-down game and tack on DLC at a later date...).
The Seattle giant is going to have to find that interim solution to remain competitive - and a revamped 360 with Blu-Ray compatibility seems to offer the perfect answer. Problem is, following its ill-judged HD-DVD allegiance, Microsoft is going to have to swallow its pride to make that happen.
If it doesn't, Lost Planet 3 could become the most telling PS3 exclusive yet.
hat kaum rendersequenzen (einpaar für raumschiff kämpfe) und trotzdem würd ich jetzt mal sagen das es zig mal präsentiert ist als das, was ich afaik von FFXIII gesehen habe
