TGS 2006: Xbox 360 to get 1080p patch

360 News | But Sony isn't impressed.

Microsoft has declared its intentions to release a software update for the Xbox 360 that will enable the console to upscale both games and videos to 1080p, the highest resolution that can be achieved on Sony's rival PlayStation 3 console. Currently, it is unknown which future 360 games will support the new standard.

The highest resolutions currently attainable on Microsoft's next-gen machine are 720 progressive scan (720p) or 1080 interlace (1080i). However, the new patch, which is due to appear before the Holiday season, will mean that Sony's next console will no longer be the only machine capable of displaying content in 1080p. Needless to say, Sony was fairly dismissive of the news, with SCEA executive Dave Karraker telling Kotaku, “Microsoft's announced HD games patch is really just a compatibility feature - upscaling lower-resolution content does not make it Full HD (1080p), something that PS3 can do out of the box."

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17 Comments

Samboy

5 years ago

lol, doesnt any1 else remember the '1080p is meaningless' report that MS announced in august?

Chris-Leigh

5 years ago

Samboy wrote

lol, doesnt any1 else remember the '1080p is meaningless' report that MS announced in august?

Yea, now you mention it - here's the story. Clearly one of the 'spoiler tactics' Microsoft discussed a few weeks back.

Spanca

5 years ago

It's still a feature to have, but that doesn't mean it isn't meaningless for the 99.97% of people who don't have a 1080p capable set.

And as for the news, I posted this yesterday or the day before in the 360 thread

Chris-Leigh

5 years ago

Spanca wrote

Have a cookie, Spence.

There'll always be occasions when news gets to the forums first, but then out forum traffic constitutes only a small part of the site's overall traffic. Hence, there will be people (who don't visit the forums) who didn't know about this. I have to admit though: we are later than we'd usually be with this one. I thought it would already be up, as it's a reasonably important development in terms of the next-gen race, etc.

ugh the boot

5 years ago

But it's not true 1080p is it? Is it only an upscaled signal? I'm just wondering how a patch can change hardware features such as this...because technically and visually the Ps3 1080p will look much better....am I right? Sorry i'm not much of a videophile but I definately know what I like and I do like the best.

I think Microsoft are definately trying to make up for the shortcomings in the Xbox 360 and really should keep their mouth shut a bit more because as they've shown....they've had to eat their words on more than one occassion.

Jabjabs

5 years ago

By the looks of it the Sony PR guy didn't read the press statement since it will allow real 1080p games and not just upscale.

Also the downplaying of things is usually a marketing tactic for instance last year Apple continually down played the idea of an iPod video saying that it was useless and nobody wanted it until the day it came out. It is done to make the opposition look less spectacular right up until they them selves deliver. MS has just done such a thing.

That said 1080p is still useless and I hope NO game content is made for the format ever.

mqphu1

5 years ago

Chris wrote: "Currently, it is unknown which future 360 games will support the new standard."

From what i know, the 360 games (both old and new) doesn't have to support it. The patch simply allows the 360 to output 1080p video by "interpolate" every second scan line of the 1080i video. This is a "cheap" way to make an interlaced video progressive, BUT not TRUE HD (like Dave Karraker said).

But of course this is a good feature to have. Well done MS.

Emuaust

5 years ago

LMAO, Like them or hate them Sony have MS running around in circles,
1080P is meaningless they tell you, So here is our update supporting it!
What a joke

LOL, noobs i tell you, they are honestly every bit as bad at bullsh#t talking then Sony ever will be

Spanca

5 years ago

Chris-Leigh wrote

Spanca wrote

I wasn't meaning to be critical as such, just curious why this news has taken so long to filter out. You certainly weren't the last to report it, in fact a lot of places still haven't.

You guys follow Digg.com don't you? A lot of articles get posted there well before a lot of mainstream channels pick up on them.

LeonJ

5 years ago

No games will probably support 1080p, but HD-DVD are encoded at that, so hence the need to support it. But at the same time, I seriously doubt at PS3 game that requires processing grunt will run at 1080p. Virtual Tennis 3 doesn't exactly have a lot going on. Smart move on M$'s front, kind of makes the 'WE HAVE THIS' factor of Sony seem less important.

I love the way Sony got a chance to slip in a sly comment. Sony, where the hell is your console anyway?

Karai Pantsu

5 years ago

Emuaust wrote

LOL, noobs i tell you, they are honestly every bit as bad at bullsh#t talking then Sony ever will be

Hah, I call bullsh!t on that

Toy Story Graphics anyone? These videos are all 'real time gameplay footage' anyone? GIANT ENEMY CRABS?!
Haha... no, that's not fair... it's too easy to make fun of that

When it comes down to this PR back-chat and damage control business though, they're both as bad as each other. Not as bad as watching question time at Parliament, perhaps, but not too far from it.

GooberMan

5 years ago

leonmc wrote

No games will probably support 1080p

If the game can support 1080i, then it could theoretically support 1080p - albeit at half the maximum rate. Rather than drawing the world at the highest rate it can (ie limited by vertical refresh), you'd draw the world effectively at half the vertical refresh by draw it at half vertical resolution each frame. By combining the two resulting interlaced fields, you'll get a progressive image but at a much lower frame rate.

Regardless, I doubt you'll get true 1080p signals on the 360. The embedded ram on the GPU is only 10mb in size and is thus the perfect place to store the backbuffers. You'll be squeezed for room fitting in a 1080p backbuffer as well as other necessary buffers like stencil and z buffers in to 10mb of RAM - an 8 bit stencil buffer alone will chew up close to 2mb of RAM.

(DISCLAIMER: I haven't actually programmed a 360 yet, this is just my theories based on data from the Wiki entry and knowledge of how graphics pipelines work)

EDIT: after checking the 1080i article on Wikipedia, it appears there are no 50 and 60hz definitions for the standard thus far. Using the method above would effectively fake true 1080p - but the renderer would definately need to be tight to make sure no single frame draw takes up more than 1/50th or 1/60th of a frame...

Jellyfish

5 years ago

ugh the boot wrote

Oh it's real 1080p, developers now have a choice to make their games with 1080p textures, exactly the same as the PS3.

I think the most important thing about this patch is that, the Xbox 360 on launch was underpowered and so far is looking better than the PS3 clips. The High-Def wars are going to be crazy.

GooberMan

5 years ago

nikack wrote

1080p textures

You could have picked many better ways to say it than that

1080p is just the display (and possibly backbuffer - see my previous post) resolution. The textures don't mean anything - you can still run Doom 3 at 1024x768 with low detail textures for example. I'm not entirely sure how RAM is treated at the graphics level on the 360, but I'm guessing there's still going to be options to use 1024x1024 textures even on a SD display. Higher res textures will purely be a performance -v- visual prettiness choice for developers. Supporting 1080p itself will be something developers will have to decide if it's worthwhile or not I'd assume.

Jellyfish

5 years ago

^ The eRAM on the Xenos, is for Anti-Aliasing and other not so memory intensive tasks. Back-buffers I assume would be loaded into the system RAM. That's on the assumption that the Xenos works like a souped up dual turbo Integrated Graphics chip.

dc0079

5 years ago

Good for M$ i'd say, more value for the money. $ony is just being an Ahole

GooberMan

5 years ago

nikack wrote

The eRAM on the Xenos, is for Anti-Aliasing and other not so memory intensive tasks.

Antialiasing is effectively a per-pixel blurring tool applied at render time to a buffer. If you want any sort of speed at all, you wouldn't render on the graphics chip and pipe it back to the main system RAM for storage - likely, the buffer would be on the eRAM and written directly, similar to how the CPU performs operations in the cache and pipes the results back to main RAM. For the same reasons, I doubt the Z buffer and stencil buffer would be stored in main memory.

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