Engadget's live coverage of the Xbox 360 launch
posted May 12th 2005 9:21PM
Hey ya'all, the Engadget and Joystiq teams are crewing it up tonight to bring you live Xbox 360 coverage, so stay tuned! Aight, here we go!
Elijah just showed up on the tube promising an "ultimate celebrity deathmatch." We can't wait for that - celebs
have shown time and again that they're gaming masters. Why they led off with that we're not sure. An ode to
Atari and pong, as expected, and now "the future of gaming."
While The Killers slay the crowd, a brief note from the ourcolony video: "The basic gesture of the new console is double concavity. It's derived from the idea of an inhale. It has a very distinctive iconic gesture. This is <makes bong sucking noise with motion Ralph Maccio hand motion>."
Update: Tony Hawk promises no load times: ”[The next Tony Hawk game is] just one giant level, no load time.”
Update: Sway calls the Xbox 360 the “the Holy Grail of gaming.”
Update: Now they’re showing the OLD Xbox from Pimp My Ride. Why are we looking at the old Xbox? (Answer:
Allard is showing off the Xbox design to the Pimp My Ride crew first, because, you know, it’s important to get their
industrial design sign-off.) Xzibit concludes the design session with “Xbox 360 - feel the experience.”
Update: Xbox Lingo Bingo Update: Annie’s getting close to Bingo with “Xbox Live” and “Halo” — has “wireless” been
mentioned?
Update: We’re now 2/3rds of the way through the program and we’ve seen about 30 seconds of game footage (Quake 4 looks hot; Saint’s Row looks not so hot), and Elijah is finally back, talking to Ryan Cabrerra. Who the hell is Ryan Cabrerra? Game footage from the following games shown:
Kameo: Elements of Power (Microsoft)
Gears of War (Microsoft)
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon 3 (Ubisoft)
Project Gotham Racing 3 (Microsoft)
NBA 2K6 (2K Sports)
Quake 4 (id Software)
Call of Duty 2 (Activision)
The Darkness (Majesco Entertainment)
Saint’s Row (THQ)
Update: Xbox360.com just went live.
Update: Death match segment with MTV choppy-camera-style. Here’s how it went down. Shot of intense nerd, shot of cleavage. Shot of fat dude, shot of cleavage. Shot of unshaven geek, shot of cleavage. It’s like yin and yang.
Matt Leto, a professional gamer who pulled down $80k the year after he won his first big tournament, is quoted as
saying, “This is an honor for me, I get a chance to go across the world, you know. I get to play the Xbox 2 with
Perfect Dark Zero.” (Wait a minute, is it the Xbox 2 or the Xbox 360!?)
Signing off from doucheland MTV!
Your other, non ex-LOTR hosts for the evening, Ryan, Vlad, and Josh
What! He just sooo hot!
a video feed would be kick ass! but still cool guy!
This is so embarrassing.
It's HUGE! It's about the size of a PC! Jesus.
This is not looking good for Microsoft.
Way to gloss over the last 15 years in video games Microsoft.
damn the killers suck, the singer can't sing at all
meh so good so far
Is it just me or did the first part of The Killers performance taped? The layouts don't match one another!
ur right, the killers do suck, i changed it for now
that was hilarious. they were like, it started with pong, then pacman, then in 2000 xbox came. mustve forgotten sega+nintendo+sony+the rest
This is looking like 'Live...except on the west coast'. I hate that crap.
I liek that mr. brightside song
did they have to sing a song that was 10mins long...lol...cant wait to see pgr3
man this has to be the gayest thing I have ever seen.
pimp my ride?...clearly synonymous
WoW! That was 7 minutes of crap so far
So I dont apparently what 9:30pm ET means, I thought being MST thats 7:30pm my time, but nope im "enjoying" a episode of "Meet the barkers", Or as i like to call it: more rich people that really don't deserve the insane amounts of cash they have.
BAAHAHAHA @ no spoken word of Nintendo, Sony, and Sega in the videogame history.
The MTV show I mean, engadget is always cool!
Gotta love tivo... I just caught up to you guys... fastforwarded through the killers suck bawls reformance...
they showed pics of the gameboy, genesis, and said the words "donkey kong" and "mario"...lol...cut them some slack
yeah, we went from pong to the genesis to the xbox! woohoO!
Then in 2005 MS and Samsung bring you the half-assed 720p HDTV!
I'm sure they'll milk it until the Next Next Xbox to "unveil" 1080p
Its all True!
sway is excited
Video feed plz.
sucks being on the west coast
Well thats me waiting 2 hours to see this garbage. Im such a gaming whore. And Mik Ishmael looks like theyve stiffed my mountain time area too.
Oh well ill take the time delay so I dont have to live on the east coast.. :)
All the new pimp my ride cars will have the xbox 360... so every 80's POS that gets turned into a BIGGER pos will atleast have a good game system in it! OMG it dosnet have a huge muffler!
wow, could this get lamer?
What kind of unveiling is this? Nothing other than a few moments of the ginourmous 360 so far! I'm glad they've taken the time to give all the details of what we'll actually be able to do with this rectangular cicle.
ok those different designs are cool
It's on MTV right now. They're showing the guys from West Coast Customs pimping the XBOX and they have Sway from MTV in XBOX's headquarters. They are showing all the prototype designs they went through! I'd have loved to get my hands on all them!
HA this is So typical MTV,,,, So far I have seen about 35 - 45 seconds of XBOX 360,,, And about 6 Minutes of Some Band i could care less about and now i have to watch PIMP my ride were they are pimping an OLD XBOX,, Well i have see the OLD x box For the Past however many years,,,,, So far This Special is pretty Weak Well now it finally looks like they are getting into the console,,, Im sure another KILLERS video is right around the corner ,,, we will see
By the way it doesn't look as big as a PC.. it looks about the same size of the original XBOX.
Sweet Sweet Perfect Dark!!!!!!!! "Drool" Damn Commercials!
Sweet Sweet Perfect Dark!!!!!!!! "Drool" Damn Commercials!
Oh feck this is hard to watch.
I love this, "THE MONSTER INSIDE!!!" and then they don't talk about ANYTHING technical at all.
WOW FACEPLATES!!!
All in all I think the 360 is great, but the ps3 will kick it's ever loving ass.
Anyone else notice at 9:45 he said "If you want to download new content for Halo or Perfect Dark"
NEW HALO!? SWEET!
Did anyone else see those clips before the commercial I could have sworn I saw a game clip that looked like de_dust2 on CS:Source. HL2 on xbox360 maybe?
Your mom is as big as a PC
The faceplates are a nice touch. They'll make a good cottage industry. I wanna Spiderman one.
They'd better have some sort of big finish at the end (about halfway through right now). I am waiting to be wowed.
As it stands, Sony is going to wipe the floor with these guys at E3.
I hope for MS's sake that they pull a rabbit out of a hat at the end.
Or, for all of our sakes, they tell us that this design was all some big, sick joke and show us the real one in the final minute.
(btw, is it just me or do the games they've shown so far not look much better at all than current Xbox games? That racing game looked cool, but the other games looked like high quality Xbox games, not anything I'd expect from the next generation of systems.)
Since when did mtv start sucking so much? I havent watched mtv for a couple years and it all goes down the toilet.. I wonder if they ever air the poser mobile commercials on mtv? Poser mobile say you almost out of pre-paid minutes yo..
#34 or it could mean the inevitable backwards compatability....
#2, it is a pc dumbass. is your computer that big?
I think there are more non-Microsoft commercials than the Microsoft commercial itself....ooohhh a tampon commercial, I'm pretty sure the primarily male audience needs those.
JUST POSTED ON TOMS HARDWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www7.tomshardware.com/game/200505121/index.html
sway meets j allard = awkward
j allard = overrated
seriously, the ring of power concept--who the hell designed this thing???
sure, i'll buy one because i'll need something to entertain me while i wait for ps3 and revolution, but damn it's pretty ugly on the outside
BEST PART OF THIS STUPID MTV "SPECIAL" IS:
the burger king commercials with darth vader are cracking me up
"brendan...i am...your uncle?? brendan, wait!!!"
ps - please, please, please no more killers, tell me one song was it
So, um - what genius scheduled this thing at the same time as The Apprentice finale?
Thank God I have DirectTivo with two tuners... OH WAIT, there's also a new episode of CSI tonight. :-( And no streaming video on xbox.com? Well, there's obviously no chance I'm seeing this tonight.
What's up, Bill - do you want to tell the world about this or not? Freakin' brilliant...
THIS WEBSITE JUST UP:
http://www.xbox360.com/
Do you notice that the bike in the screenshot doesn't cast a shadow?
Darkness, saint row, perfect dark zero game clips look great.
Now they're talking to pro-gamers who spend far too much time paying games.
So far this is the least impressive graphical display I have ever seen.
Joanna Dark is only 5000 polygons?
God this is pathetic.
Some of these games are way too early in development to be shown on national tv.
wow. that was the worst coverage ever. thumbs down mtv
nooooooooo the killers again, where the hell is the remote?????
bring on e3, this "special" was actually pretty crap
THAT WAS A HORRIBLE LAUNCH!
1. Only a half hour long
2. We saw the XBOX360 for like 2 minutes!
3. We knew more going into this
4. Joanna Dark is still HOTT
Soooooo:
Essentially this was all just a Killers concert with about 1 min of real info about the xbox 360, GOD MTV SUCKS!
I thought the show was terrible personally. I didn't really see the close up pictures of the XBOX360 (like the backside)...
When the people were playing Perfect Dark I didn't really see the graphics...I just saw their facial expressions. Seems like E3 would have been a much better premiere!
"please, please, please no more killers, tell me one song was it"
Sorry dude, you didn't get your wish...
Man, this was totally embarrassing on almost every level I can think of.
The Killers make me want to buy an Xbox 360. They're now telling the crowd to "smile like you mean it"
No joke.
31.. the original Xbox was HUGE.
This is way too much hype. What a piece of trash. No gameplay shots. All of the 'coming soon games' were all cut sequences. Bah. Who gives a freakin' care.
Way to rewrite video game history microsoft.
Jeez, only 5,000? I regularly make models with 2.5 million on Blender, and that's only a hobby! This is Rare?
Wow, that was a waste of 30 minutes of my life. I learned more from all the leaked info on the net in the last few days then that pile of crap on mtv. Think im going to go pimp my xbox case now.
Am I missing something or are we not gonna get any real specs tonight?
i just watched the MTV video and in the end, it's really no big step forward from where we are now. being able to connect online and play against people. it'll be the same just with better graphics and fun games.
total dissapointment just wait for ps3 ppl the only good part is xbox live. now if only sony made something like that ps3 would be perfect
Thats it????? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
To put it in perspective, Leon Kennedy in RE4 is 10000 polygons.
This is going over as well as the Longhorn unveiling last week.
That went over like a ton of manure, btw.
Did you see how choppy Perfect Dark Zero was? And it didn't look any better than this gen.
whats up with the pic of the monsters playing the xbox on the xbox360.com site? You get there by clicking on the question mark.
sway is excited
Yeah, well that sucked. Only the prerendered EA videos actually looked that great, but they're prerendered.........
in the game developers room there was a g5... I guess that was true about the beta units being just G5 powermacs
That was incredibly dissapointing. Did they tell us anything USEFUL?...
No. No they didn't.
I was enthusiastically waiting for the whole week and looking foward to this. I am a Sony fan but the launch of the 360 had me excited. But dam... this was one of the most disappointing presentations ever. The only impression that i got was that they made the graphics better, formed an online community (big deal .. they charge for it , Sony does not charge for online play :P ) and woaaah added wireless controller (which are almost same) big deal to all thisssss. What a disappointment. No innovation of any sort. Sony already has a Camera for the ps2.. so big deal video confereencing. Also if you guys follows some news your will see that the eyetoy inventors have come up real cool methods to control games using the eye toy and its next version including 3d control. the PS3 should hopefully blow the xbox 360 out of the water...... threee design firms workd on the design and all they could do is b inspired by the ipod.... this was ridiculous. i just hope they show something worthwhile in E3.... neway the graphics in nfl look really amazing, but how does that effect the gameplay.
really disappointing.
I believed..I soo wanted to believe!
All I can say is that the graphics don't blow me away at all.
Ok just a few things, I noticed that it said Xbox 360 HD and Samsung or something, but that the date was 2005. Am I missing something? I thought it was coming out in 2006.... maybe im just wrong but then could this be some slip/launch date? hmm... then again i could just be messed up....
I cant stand it; I turned it off after the killer's 2nd "killer performance",,, forgot how gay mtv can be.... Ill read the best stuff here on engadget later... people dont waste your time on this press release lol
and as for the PD match... it was totally gay... the graphics were obviously not up-to-par yet... didnt look like next gen material... meh... wait for closer to its release
and thats another thing... on the "timeline" it jumped from 1978 to 1998.. bit of a leap there huh? well that other stuff doesnt matter right?
Great job on the xbox360.com site Microsoft! - complete ripoff of Sony's PSP site - http://www.us.playstation.com/Content/Sites/65/Info/
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/factsheet.htm
that.....was.....awful....
i cant believe how watered down that was. they were practically drowning it. How is this supposed to convince people to buy it???
"HEY! It has changeable faceplates!!"
^^That really isnt whats important to me. That whole show was crap
Anyone else notice that the LED power light turned on in the unveiling of the Xbox 360, but it wan't pluged into a power outlet? And that "live" tournament wasn't really live?
Anyway, that special was pretty bad. Most of the games didn't look much better than what the origional Xbox could offer. And I know that the games were still in development, but those framerates were horrible!
That was embarrassing. All the clips looked pre-rendered (i can't believe they used that madden clip), and they weren't even that impressively pre-rendered. And the ones that did look like they could be a next-gen title had really choppy framerates (the gears of war shot).
There was no new information here.
Earlier today I was thinking "how can I wait another year for ps3? I'll have to buy an xbox360."
My mind has been changed.
Um. That was 30 minutes I would like to take back. Actually, with commercials, it was more like 15 minutes. They made such a big hype about changing the face of gaming, and all I saw remotely new was the online market and ... faceplates?
You would think that if they wanted to sell this thing they would show some killer app. You would think that it was Perfect Dark Zero with the time spent on it, but i got nothing useful. All I saw were inane questions and some unsubstantiated comments (If it has new FPS elements, then describe or show such elements).
The only good thing useful I found was that I was reminded why I stopped watching MTV in the first place. Reruns of Yu-Gi-Oh were better than this dreck.
The system might very well change the face of gaming, but I couldn't tell because the presentation sucked.
that was pathetic. seriously.
microsoft is trying to hard.
plus. this things graphics really didnt wow me.
http://www.xbox360.com/latin/poster_wallpaper_1024x768.jpg
(the small print says "Video on the TV is NOT Prerendered!")
That was embarrassing. All the clips looked pre-rendered (i can't believe they used that madden clip), and they weren't even that impressively pre-rendered. And the ones that did look like they could be a next-gen title had really choppy framerates (the gears of war shot).
There was no new information here.
Earlier today I was thinking "how can I wait another year for ps3? I'll have to buy an xbox360."
My mind has been changed.
has microsoft abaonded the 1 player gaming market or what? what if we dont want to play online for once?
#78, yeah, they were rockin the steady 5FPS, with peaks of 15!
wow, faceplates. now that's classy.
unless microsoft really did not want to reveal anything, this was really disappointing performance from them. i thought atleast Allard would be a good representative .. damm... why is it so overhypedddd.. y is an online community such a big deal.. u know what.. if sony does not make one i will make an online community where all ps3 ppl can connect n chat. hahah big deal... sony plz blow this away.... i am putting a deposit for ps3 as soon i can.... that system will b revolutionary.... just look at the specs. the xbox is like almost a PowerMac with a great graphics card ( ok that is an ignorant comment ) but really nothing revolutionary. Sony is the one thats taking out the real next-gen stuff......
The new xbox360 site just crashed on me TWICE using both Firefox and IE. I hope that isn't an omen!
Its kinda fun to read up about the 360 while listening to the star wars imperial march and slowly scrolling down a huge pic of the vertical xbox360 pic. its just fits together.
Pre-rendered or not, it didn't look very good.
Some of the games looked ok. The racing game (maybe it was PGR3 - they had one unlabeled clip of a game with cop cars, and then later they showed a game labeled PGR3) looked good. The FPS games, though, all looked like ass given how powerful this thing's supposed to be. I mean my PC could make an fps look better than that. And Tiger Woods looked almost exactly like it does on the current Xbox.
I *hope* these were pre-rendered, because the gameplay had better look *better* than these clips or this system's going to tank really, really hard.
I'm exceedingly confident after seeing this that the PS3 is going to absolutely crush the Xbox 360. I don't even have much doubt that Nintendo will be able to match these graphics with the Revolution... and they'll do it in a smaller case that doesn't look like a cheap Dell PC.
GODDAM THAT WAS FRIGGIN' WEAK. seriously, pseudo-cool all over the place - from allard on down - and how 'bout showing us some gameplay? yawn. MS better put up at E3 or i'll put off buying for 2 yrs (like i did for the original xbox)
The graphics at launch are always way worse than the graphics at the end of the life of a console. Jeez. Give the developers some time to figure the thing out.
Graphics at launch are generally never that impressive.
Note to self: When promoting a product in which the main feature is HD, broadcast on a channel that puts out HD!
Who cares what the damn console looks like. If you want to complaing about it how about the fact that they plan on charging you to buy virtual crap in the games. Or that they probably won't make a non-online game for the thing.
This show was so boring>Just filled with commercials no real game play features.Just one big snore fest.I think the genreal consesus is that it was just plain boring but hey microsoft has the money to burn.