Eurogamer had a chance to talke to Chris Satchell, general manager of Microsoft’s Game Developer Group. And they’ve dug up a lot of Xbox 360 details I’ve not seen already. There are literally 35 points of interest listed, but I’ll only touch on a few.

“The console can be switched on and off wirelessly using the Media Remote control or the wireless game controller.”

Hey, now that’s cool. If I have a game I play a lot, I can just keep it in my machine, and turn the machine on and off with the controller. Nice touch.

“The System blade offers greater control over your individual settings. You can specify, for example, that you prefer to invert the right analogue stick camera control and this will then be picked up on in any game you play.”

Nice! I hate having to invert the camera control in every game.

“The “ring of light” around the power button highlights which wireless controller is being used, highlighting player one’s activity in the top-left quadrant. When the console is laid on its side, it senses this and starts using the top-left quadrant as you see it with the console laid flat. What’s more, the ring of light motif is spread throughout the Xbox 360 interface, so you can see which player pulled up the “Guide” page as you’re watching a film or playing a game and, in the words of Satchell, “slap him”.”

Just a nifty little thing that’ll make the Xbox 360 experience consistent.

“DVDs can be played even if you don’t have the remote control, unlike Xbox 1.”

Good!

“iPods are detected by default, as are PSPs, and by our watch it took about 2 or 3 seconds for the Xbox 360 to notice they were there. With an iPod plugged in you can play music direct through the Dashboard software, with visualisations, or you can play a slideshow of photographs.”

Cool stuff. I wish I had an iPod or PSP…

Eurogamer - Xbox 360: Lots And Lots Of Questions Answered

Ninja Theory started development of Heavenly Sword before they knew what console they were targetting. They said hey, we know that the consoles will be super powerful, so lets take a guess at how powerful they’ll be, and start developing this game on a PC. Later, we’ll move it to a console. That console ended up being the PS3, and Ninja Theory details the arduous journey of finding a publisher for Heavenly Sword.

The PS3 game features a red-haired heroine with a mighty sword. And many other weapons as well. The trailer shows off her many moves in combat against a large numbers of foes, with detailed enemies and destructable environments. The graphics look great, and the animations even better. The heroine does flips through the air, tosses people into one another, and blasts an uber-canon at a horde of evil-doers. It doesn’t look like any of this is in-game, so I wonder how much of what is seen in the trailer will translate to actual gameplay. One thing the developer diary notes is that they had a working demo to show off to potential publishers. I’d love to see what’s in that demo, because this looks like a great game.

Ninja Theory - Heavenly Sword Screenshots
Ninja Theory - Developer Diary
Eurogamer Interview - This Sword’s Gone To Heaven
PS3 IGN - Heavenly Sword - Main Page
Gamespot - Heavenly Sword - Main Page

team XBOX had a chance to interview Mark Rein, Vice President of Epic Games, to talk about the Unreal Engine 3 (UE3) and the Core Xbox 360.

To sum up, there are few worries. If you don’t have a HDD, UE3 can still stream levels from the DVD to allow seamless world support.

team XBOX - Unreal Engine 3 and the Xbox 360 Hard Drive

Phil Harrison, VP of studios for Sony Computer Entertainment, personally feels that Microsoft’s decision to put out two versions of the XBox 360 will just confuse things.

“Are there two versions of the Xbox 360 that people want to buy, is my question,” he said.

“I don’t know. This is my personal view, not my corporate view, but when I look at those formats, I think it just confuses the audience. They don’t know which one to buy, developers don’t know which one to create for, and retailers don’t know which one to stock.

“So I think we wouldn’t take that strategy. We wouldn’t create confusion,” he concluded.

This isn’t the official word, but it is indicative of what Sony is currently thinking.

Eurogamer - Two versions of PS3 ‘unlikely’

This is what I get for running a website about the PS3, a system which won’t be released for over half a year. Rumour-busting.

The latest rumour is that the PS3’s RSX chip won’t be as fast as the current 7800. All based on what some guy said would be in PSM magazine, not even providing an exact quote.

Well, I do have an exact quote from David Kirk, the Chief Scientist at NVIDIA. bit-tech.net did an interview with him over a month ago, and he’s quoted here:

For those that don’t know, if you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months, the graphics processor in the PlayStation 3 is NVIDIA-designed and is called RSX. How does it compare next to the 7800?

“The two products share the same heritage, the same technology. But RSX is faster,” said Kirk.

Is that good enough for you? Rumour squashed.

bit-tech.net - Interview: NVIDIA, RSX and the future

[Update: NVIDIA has spoken. The source was indeed wrong, and NVIDIA has provided an exact quote from the magazine, according to teamXBOX:

There’s no doubting that NVIDIA’s new 7800GTX is the ultimate in PC graphics technology. The card’s G70 GPU, which is more than twice as powerful as two of NVIDIA’s previous top-of-the-line 6800 boards, shares a lot of similar workings with the PS3’s RSX chip - only it isn’t as fast. Oh, and it retails for $599.]