Gkaruk's Technological Blog

Microsoft and ATI have obviously been working hard since E3 to prove to the gaming community, anything the PS3 can do rendered demos, the Xbox 360 can do now!  A select few of gaming magazines have been privaliged to see a unique realtime demo running on the Xbox 360 actual hardware.  The demo is called the 'Assassin Demo', and here's a quote from the article...

...this demo was how fluid and smooth it looked and Huddy promised we were watching something that had "no movie content" at all. How can we convey the feel? Well it looked on a par with those pre-rendered CGI animation series you might see on Saturday morning kids' TV...

This news comes straight from the CVG site where they are hoping to release the demos footage for all to see the information is not rumourware.

After the lack of showing Perfect Dark Zero at E3, it has proved hard to find any new images of the game showing how it real looks.  A few older game images have been bounced around, but today I hit a site which has new higher detailed images than we have seen so far.

These images come from the French site for GAME online retailer.  Now this looks more like it, high detail, better lighting.  Just check the detail and textures in the gun compared with the older shots from E3.


Well for an Xbox 360 launch title it certainly looks more promising now, only time will tell.

As part of the new partnership with Samsung, Microsfot has slected a the new Samsung LNR238W 23" LCD HDTV to go into its new Xbox 360 gaming pods for retail outlets.

The LCD HDTV shown above is the model and currently retails for around the £500 mark and comes with quite a high specification considering its only 23".  For full details on the TV head over to Samsung site for the complete low down.


The Xbox 360 pods for retails first pictures were also leaked recently and I must admit look far more futuristic and next generation than the current pods.

In official words from J. Allard, Chief XNA Architect stated in a video interview with G4 TV, the games shown at E3 were running on PC based Alpha kits which have around 25-30% of the actual Xbox 360 hardware power.

Not to much of a surprise as the original Xbox when shown at E3 2001 was also running on Alpha kits and look how its games turned out.  Halo 1 was called an ok game, sluggish frame rates, but is now in millions of gamers hands and one of the most successful launch titles ever.

So the question to ask yourself is, if games like Project Gotham 3 and Gears of War can look as good as they did in the Microsoft E3 Press Conference on Alpha Kits, then what will they be like 6 months from now on actual hardware and full tweaked and complete.

Interestingly the Gran Turismo PS3 footage has also been admitted to being pre-rendered and not running on the PS3, but more a vision of what to expect.  I have to admit when I saw the Gran Turismo and Killzone footage I was thinking of moving to PS3 from my beloved Xbox. Until I started to question what the catches are if I go PS3.

No established online gaming infrastructure, no MCE Extender (not important to all gamers, but for me is a definite) and lastly the size of the machine. Xbox 360 is a nice size and reasonable look, whereas PS3 looks rather large or to quote 4 year ago comments about the Xbox, a brick, except PS3 has had its edges curved.

Well when all said and done, its all about the games, their graphics and their game play, so let the games begin!

E3 2005 truly was the best show in a long time, with the unveiling of the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.  One game which caught my eye was Gears of War, an exclusive game for the Xbox 360.

I am sure you will agree the above in-game screenshot shows how incredibly detailed the graphics in this game are.  The game is a mixture of strategy and horror play, with you fighting some of the most detailed and imaginative creature I have ever seen in a game.

For the full low down head over to TeamXbox.com preview.