Of course, a decade ago – when the PS2 launched – the media was trumpeting its “Toy Story caliber visuals”. Even Saddam Hussein believed the hype as he tried to get his mitts on a large number of PS2′s (for their computing prowess?!?!?!?). I didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now. I’m sure the 720 or whatever it’s called, will sport some spiffy new visuals but I think the only way we’re going to Pandora is to fork over another $30 for tix to the sequel.

I wonder if anyone will sue AMD when it turns out that their claim is optimistic rather than realistic.

Do they not always tout every new thing as being hyper realistic? Every new console, every new GPU, every new FPS or driving sim, every new bit of rendering tech software or hardware.

It’s never going to be as pretty as Avatar in real time because Avatar was done, like all CGI movies, one frame at a time in ludicrous resolution on machines that were networked to speed up processing, add to this the way CGI isn’t done with textured polygons but realtime games etc are and you see the problem.

In my experience hyper realistic just means shinier because shiny things seem to be the way to display the new tech every time someone creates it.

What you’re likely to see on the next Xbox is all the dx11 gubbins high end PC gamers get now such as tessellation (and with it an increase in geometry) and more accurate post processing essentially done faster than current gen hardware and genuine 1080p games (current gen games are all 720p or less simply upscaled) rather than a massive and shocking increase in “realism”.

I doubt anyone will sue them though, so far all they’ve done is make a boast about the processing power they’ve created for the new console, they haven’t made any statements in an advert or other marketing material that you could do them for false advertising for, that said both M$ and Sony have got away with false advertising for the last decade at least.

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone TRIED, Alaric, but being over-optimistic is not a crime, even in the U.S. We may even end up pleasantly surprised… but I, too, am doubtful that it will deliver Avatar-level visuals.

I’ve been hearing “better AI” nearly as long as I’ve been hearing “cinematic graphics”. My guess is that between the increasingly short playtimes and ever-diminishing immersion that games are offering, the only way it will deliver an Avatar type of experience is by making us all feel blue. Oh well, just so long as it doesn’t have Avatar-level preachiness and absurdity.

Yet again the tier one oem companies are locking down the hardware for the” next gen” of console.. yet again it wont ship untill years after the hardware itself is outdated and all the while the PC install base gets less and less game for its buck.. progress my ass.

I for one completely believe it. With Microsoft’s notorious history of releasing products late but hyping the hell out of it long before the first beta cycle, by the year 2042 when the next Xbox hits the market I’m sure the graphics will be quite lovely.

Except Microsoft rushed the 360 to market – looking to beat Sony’s PS3 by a full year – and in the process rushed over major design flaws leading to the legendary RROD epidemic that gripped the States from 2005 through 2009. As a guy who has been through SIX!!!!!! 360′s, I shall never forget those dark days of rushed product.

Remember – Remember – 2005′s November.

It’s the usual hype, as Ed points out we’ve heard it before and it was as stupid then as it is now.

As for better AI, that’s down to coding it right, more than processing power in any case… well, perhaps not on aging consoles where they run out of power early, but on the PC we’ve had plenty of power for more complex AI but not seen much of it anyway. In the end it’s more of a design choice than hardware related.

Companies always hype their products to be more than what they are upon release. If the rumors are true then the next Xbox will be released in fall 2013. That means the hardware would have to be locked down in the next six to ninth months, perhaps earlier, with developer kits already in the hands of game developers. All that to say I seriously doubt that a console, no matter company’s it is, will ever achieve the level of CGI goodness that we saw in Avatar. But, as always, they are welcome to try.

I’m not holding my breath although I do have a question since Avatar seems to be what they are shooting for…. Does this mean we will also get stories in our games that

A: Beat us over the head with a lame ideology
B: Paper thin stories and characters

Well, no matter what MS, AMD or game developers say this time around. After several failed 360′s and scratched disks, it will be a long time before I invest in a MS console or believe any hype.

Chip, we haven’t had a lot of (A) over the years (thank goodness), but a ton of (B) already. As for the “increasingly short playtimes”, that’s partly due to a perceived lack of patience on the gamer’s part, and partly due to the development costs of writing a game with 30+ hours of gameplay.

As for “if rumors are true, the next XBox will be released in Fall 2013″. Well, that’s just it… RUMORS. I used to work for an XBox Live call center, and we were warned that if someone asked us about the “XBox 720″ or other rumors, that we were NOT to speculate. So my answer was always, “We don’t have any official information from Microsoft regarding the next XBox console, so I can’t speculate on that. As soon as WE know something, YOU’LL know something. Probably before we do, in fact.”

Apparently they are offering the 720 with an open case design so you can cook popcorn on the GPU/CPU combo heatsink.

The heat problem on the XBox 360 that causes the RRoD is usually due to Microsoft using the wrong type of lead-free solder in response to a European Union mandate. This allows the solder connections on the GPU to crack, and eventually the GPU becomes loose, resulting in the RRoD. There IS a fix that you can perform at home that only costs about $10-$15 that involves some nylon washers and some thermal silver compound, but I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone who isn’t at least somewhat technically proficient since obviously you have to take your XBox apart. (I also wouldn’t take it apart if it’s within warranty, because if you later send it to Microsoft, they WILL notice that it’s been modified, which voids the warranty.)

Note that there are other causes for the RRoD, because the three flashing lights indicate a “General hardware failure”. It isn’t always the GPU. For example, it can be a power surge (in which case turning off the XBox, unplugging all power cables and plugging them back in, then turning the XBox back on, often fixes the problem).

The “Xenon” and “Zephyr” chipsets are far more prone to the loose GPU than “Falcon”, “Jasper”, and “Trinity”. If your XBox 360 was made after September 2008, it’ll have the Jasper chipset (the XBox 360 Slim has the “Trinity” chipset), and you will NOT have the loose GPU problem. (That’s not saying that you might not have some OTHER problem with the GPU…)