X-Box is 64Bit
as for games being technically impossible on the N64 ... the only reason developers never picked up on the N64 and made it some truely awesome use of what it had, was because it is an assembly machine.
making games at the best of times was tricky business trying to keep polycounts and details in a scene to accomidate the hardware, but at the end of the day the Playstation was C using special DirectX3-6 libraries... which was alot easier and quicker to produce a full game engine on and use it - than it was to create one from scratch in assembly, anyone who's tried to develop a Gameboy game directly in assembly rather than one of the C/C++ compilers will know that is isn't exactly one of the most enjoyable or simple of things to do.
if the N64 had been simpler to program on, then the N64CD would never have gone under and alot more games would've been developed - and due to the sheer number of carts produced for this the actual price of games could've come down because sales would've been more guarenteed.
as far as innovative games go... it isn't actually the point of the hardware being used that dictates the games developed - its more a fact of what the publishers are asking for at the time.
There are very few development houses who are in it for themselves and get to decide what thier next titles are ... most will be given a list from the publisher in the tried and tested area's and be told they want one of them. However also you'll be allowed one title which can be creative... problem is most companies don't have the employees for the creative one and they suffer - and the larger companies don't even remember howto be innovative, as they like to stifle whatever ideas are produced and make them more generic.
personally i don't think there is any methods or simple things you can say to make the next innovative game like Tomb Raider or Wolfenstein - because at the end of the day, the public don't know what they want until they get it.
To me one of the most innovative games i've seen in the past few years has been Oni - yet it only has a tiney fan base, because for some reason only a few people liked it.
Personally i'd attribute this to the fact that its hard as hell and most gamers just want to complete games ASAP (sad but true), whats even worse is they then bitch the game was too short - but can't say there were ever challenged in it.
I mean Oni for example has only 17 levels, however they're not small and on normal mode they're a challenge to complete - especially the "Konoko Dream" level ... but on easi the game seems quite short, i mean i can complete it within 4hrs on easi mode.
obviously thats missing all of the secrets and fumbling around the levels or even killing all of the enemy - but that would be considered a short game.
however if you play it properly as if you actually want to play it because you want to know the story and not just as some challenge to complete, see all the weapons and get bored - then ya know thats the difference.
probably the only thing that disappointed me about the game was it only had a few moves to perform which you got slowly throughout the game... but then again the most fun i had was when like 5 or 6 guys were all trying to beat me rather than shoot me, cause i could get all Bruce Lee on thier ass's
but that was an innovative game, and if it'd been coupled with more indepth puzzles and more open architecture (it was a dishearteningly linear game) then it would've been a game that even if you didn't like you'd of had to stand up and think "hey thats pretty novel"
most saw it as a TR rippoff and went into playing it with that mind set, which is what i hate about online reveiwers and alot of games mags. they like to pigeon hole new ideas, which means that no matter what the game was before - its completely different.
i think the only innovative game they had trouble with was Black&White ... that was something pretty smart and sweet, and actually is one of the only games i'd truely bitch about the length - because the game itself was outstanding, but once you defeat nemesis you've only got online play, which is DSL ONLY country (i did try to play with a 56k several times)
something pissed me off about that game though was EA's attitude, rather than releasing it to the British public first who'd heard about it first, were bloody dieing to play it - they released it to the Americans which although it had a small following, it was never really taken up anywhere near as well as in the UK or europe.
and to add insult to injury, they got 250,000 copies sold in the US (not bad but hardly decent) in the UK we had double the preorders, and yet we still had to wait 2months for the exact same f**king game to be released!!
i really hate that about american publishers, they always release stateside first then the UK in thier own leasure even when the developer is british. Think there should be a rule that means that you have to release the game atleast a month ahead in the developers own country first... after all the people there have been waiting the longest for the title and deserve to play it first don't they?
pissed me off about DarkBasic as well the fact that the bloody american's got thier hands on the retail of it before we could... to me there is just something NOT RIGHT about having to buy a British product or game from an american retailer just to be able to have it upon release.
Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
One block follows the suit ... the whole suit of blocks is the path ... what have you found?
