With Sony taking an aggressive stance on 3D gaming this year with new bundled offers on their 3D-enabled displays and firmware updates to the PlayStation 3, many are wondering what Microsoft's plans are for 3D on the Xbox 360. Monday's press conference made no mention of integrated support for 3D, and instead placed a firm focus on Kinect, their new camera-based control solution. But just because other technologies took the spotlight, it doesn't mean Microsoft isn't thinking about 3D.
While the Xbox 360 is capable of supporting full stereoscopic 3D games like Avatar: The Game, and forthcoming titles like Crysis 2, Microsoft is leaving the choice to developers rather than implementing 3D as a standard feature of the system with 2D-to-3D conversion, 3D features of the Xbox Live dashboard, and movies. The reasoning? Slow adoption rates.
"It's projected that less than one half of one percent of all TVs in the U.S. this year will be 3DTVs," the company said in a release today. "And 3DTVs will make up only 5% of the TV installed base three years from now."
Although Microsoft is leaving the decision up to developers, and subsequently consumers, to adopt 3D tech, they are prepared to act quickly to embrace the technology more widely should there be larger demand.
"We closely and constantly evaluate consumer trends," they said. "If there is demand, we've demonstrated in the past that we are able to quickly dedicate resources to respond to consumer interest." source article...
E3 2010: Xbox 360 Slims Down Today
At its E3 press conference today, Microsoft announced the brand-new Xbox 360 redesign. Smaller and quieter, the new Xbox 360 comes with built-in WiFi and a 250 GB hard drive. The wait for the new Xbox 360 is short, too. Very short. The new Xbox 360 ships today in North America and will be in retail later this week. The machine costs $299 USD, the same price as the existing 250 GB model. In Australia, it will release on 1st July for $449 AUD and for $499 NZD on 9th July in New Zealand.
The new Xbox 360 is primarily glossy black. There appears to be more vents on it for heat dispersion. The front of the machine has a sharper indent than the current hourglass design.
As if that was not enough of a surprise, Microsoft also announced that anybody at the theater for the press conference would get their mittens on a new Xbox 360 even sooner: Microsoft is shipping them a new machine immediately. (As you can imagine, the IGN War Room was suddenly full of many frowny-faces.)
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