"We speak with a handful of developers on how they like Microsoft's advanced kits and what new tools mean for the future of the console.

After Microsoft's mixed display of goods at E3 2005 last May, the most pressing questions on everyone's minds were simple. Will the new beta kits improve the state of Microsoft's games? And will the games look better than that?

The importance of the questions is equally simple. Ninety percent of Microsoft's games at E3 were unimpressive, particularly on the subject of graphics. We quickly learned the Xbox 360 games at the show were almost all running on alpha kits, i.e. off-the-shelf Apple G5s with specs equivalent to a single-CPU 360. Which meant that these machines were also only running at 25%-35% of the console's capacity. In other words, these were not the games we were looking for, these games can pass; move along, move along.

Not surprisingly, people were more impressed with Sony's sly CG showing, even if they knew full well the videos weren't displaying actual gameplay. Are we all so gullible? So impressionable? Such graphic tarts? The real answer is this: Sony showed us what we imagined the next generation to be, what we wanted it to look like, and Microsoft showed us what amounted to high resolution Xbox games.

So what's happened since E3? Why has all the hype, all the 360 noise disappeared? Will Xbox 360 games look any better? And are Xbox fans doomed to have PS3 fanboys laugh at their underwhelming new system? IGN has spoken with several developers on the subject of the newly released Xbox 360 Beta Kits to get a better idea the progress developers have made sine E3, and whether the beta kits have helped, hindered, confused, or improved game development." [more]