Of the recent Xbox 360 gameplay footage we’ve seen so far, the one major concern has been that of the sometime sluggish framerate. In a recent discussion with a number of Microsoft executives, we managed to learn that all current Xbox 360 games that were shown at last night’s E3 press briefing are still running on alpha development kits that are not a true representation of what we can expect when the console launches this holiday season. Estimations are that the current kits are running at only 25-40% of the maximum power that the Xbox 360 will possess. Beta kits are scheduled to hit developers within the next 2 months and final hardware should arrive in early July. One example given by Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, was that of the original Halo when it made its E3 debut back in 2001. The game suffered from a pretty terrible framerate and criticism was heavy, but we all know how that story ended…not too shabby. Therefore we can assume that all the Xbox 360 games shown at this year’s show will see a number of upgrades during the next six months.
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