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The real blow for the graphics chipmaker could come when the arbitration panel issues a ruling on Microsoft's request for damages and lower prices on the supplied chips. Nvidia could, if Microsoft prevails, be forced to produce Xbox chips at a loss. Furthermore, increased demand for Xbox chips could reduce production of other Nvidia chips and delay shipments of new products.

Oh, Square claims FFXI already has 140,000 subscribers.

Microsoft has discontinued its UltimateTV hardware, leaving only the DirectTV/UltimateTV option. It's not doing fine, just ask one of the 400 people cut from the team (leaving ~100). ZDNet has a nice story about this entitled Why UltimateTV was an ultimate failure. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that ReplayTV/SonicBlue or Tivo are kicking their asses; none of the PVR vendors is too healthy. It's a tough market and they're all struggling. Still, Microsoft is in a compromised position because they are at the same time trying to fight software piracy and be buddies with the DRM crowd, and to make a device which really screws with the entertainment industry's business model.

The Xbox is a different matter. The best argument I've seen any Microsoft zealot put forth so far is that this is 1.0, and the fact that they sold anything at all is a victory. Riiight. True, Microsoft has monopoly profits and can use them to fund failing projects indefinitely until competitors (who actually have to make money off their products) run out of money. Did somebody say Netscape? But Sony *is* making money on the PS2, and Microsoft is losing money on the Xbox. Even so, Microsoft reduced their sales projections for the Xbox, and are now estimating that they will ship 3.5 to 4 million units by the end of June 2002. Meanwhile, first week the PS2 was available, 980,000 units were sold. The first four days the PS2 game Final Fantasy X was on sale, 1.9 million units were sold. By the end of January 2002, over 4 million copies of Final Fantasy X had been sold worldwide. That means that in the same amount of time (~7 months), one PS2 game outsold the Xbox console. Apparently Gord knows what he's talking about when he said (a year ago!) that "This console race was over before it started." Microsoft needs to pull an maneuver like the IIS/IE one they used to kill Netscape: just give away the Xbox with the purchase of Halo. Eventually Sony will run out of money and give up. Riiiight.

As for PocketPC vs. Palm, that's a matter of speculation and only time will tell if Palm will get it together or if they will continue sitting on their asses while MS gets around to producing a useful PDA for less than $400 (remember that the Palm 105 costs $99 so they aren't really direct competitors - Palm makes the cheap simple ones, PocketPC licensees make the high-end fancy ones).

I was in complete agreement right up until this part.

"...and if Sony's developers don't keep producing games that match Nintendo's consistent level of quality, customers won't keep buying Playstation titles. Nintendo's in-house titles were matched in closest by Sega, and the Gamecube shows that Nintendo learned from Sega's mistakes in the hardware department."

I'm not here to bash Nintendo, but the idea that Sony and Microsoft need to keep up with Nintendo is very strange. This report of game sales for last month would seem to belie that notion. I wish it had numbers and not just rank, but it is the best I could find. It is pretty interesting that the Spider Man Movie game is 1st for PS2, 7th for Xbox, and 9th for Gamecube. Yes, that does not address your point about who is making good games, and has nothing to do with "in-house" games, but your idea that "customers will stop buying Playstation titles" is silly. Sony has the largest user base, by a long ways. Of course they are going to sell the most games. If Nintendo has great games, that doesn't change Sony game sales, because MOST people who have a PS2 don't have a Gamecube. Great games on the Gamecube MIGHT effect future PS2 console sales. MOST people only buy one console, which is why comparing console unit sales of PS2 since its launch (over a year and a half ago) to unit sales of the Xbox and Gamecube (which have been on sale less than a year) IS a fair comparison, and it explains why Sony sells more games.

Numerous EA games support dts.

> HDTV

Tekken 4 does progressive scan.

> Let you import your own music to your driving game

Odd, if I turn the music down on the game, and the volume up on my hifi, I can get any music I want in game...

PS2 progressive scan title

PS2 dts titles

HAND

The thing I don't get about this article: What the heck does the RETAILERS opinions of the boxes have to do with things? Retailers have likes/dislikes absolutely and completely different than the general public: They like high margins and lots of co-merchanidizing efforts. They like oily salesmen soliciting regions with cardboard cutouts and salesperson promos. I really don't CARE which box the retailers themselves like because I'm not a retailer, so the like/dislike criteria are totally different. Having said that, personally I have been incredibly unwhelmed by the games that I have seen on the XBox (As a home user of a GF3 video card, let me say that what I see gaming at home is vastly superior to most of the games that I've seen on the xbox, yet on paper the xbox is technically superior, at least from a graphics perspective). I am curious about why most graphics in the current crop of games are so incredibly poor or simply uninspiring given the apparent promise of the xbox : Is this just because of the race to get games out quickly, so they didn't have time to capitalize on the hardware? If anyone would, I'd expect Carmack to be the man to actually capitalize on the potentially that supposedly the xbox has, and Doom 3, if released for the xbox, might be what puts it over the top as a killer application. If I were Microsoft I'd be a lap dog at his door everyday helping him along and encouraging support of the xbox platform.

Consolewire had a little blurb about the xbox's true purpose, that being M$'s first step creating an all-purpose set top hub

Consolewire had a little blurb about the xbox's true purpose, that being M$'s first step creating an all-purpose set top hub

Their images won't load for me, something is screwed up with their javascript. But here are direct links to the linux images... you might want to turn off javascript first.

http://www.consolewire.com/view/res.asp?in=107-071 7_IMG.JPG&tt=Playstation+2+Linux+Kit+US+Bound
http://www.consolewire.com/view/res.asp?in=107-071 8_IMG.JPG&tt=Playstation+2+Linux+Kit+US+Bound

Some simple URL hacking will bring up other images at whatever event this is.

Their images won't load for me, something is screwed up with their javascript. But here are direct links to the linux images... you might want to turn off javascript first.

http://www.consolewire.com/view/res.asp?in=107-071 7_IMG.JPG&tt=Playstation+2+Linux+Kit+US+Bound
http://www.consolewire.com/view/res.asp?in=107-071 8_IMG.JPG&tt=Playstation+2+Linux+Kit+US+Bound

Some simple URL hacking will bring up other images at whatever event this is.

It's not Mozilla. In this picture, the titlebar clearly has two words and you can just make out it saying "Netscape Communicator". By comparing what's in the photo to a Mozilla running the 'classic' skin, you can see that it's not the same. Not to mention, the throbber isn't a Mozilla lizard icon, but the trademark Netscape 'N'.

So indeed, it is quite puzzling.

The sight of AOL running on a PS2 makes me very, very sad... :-p

Check out the full system, including Sony's PS2 Flatscreen monitor here. Damn, it's really slick.
Anyone also notice how smart of a move this is for R&D at Sony? They just sit back, sell units, and wait for someone to code/port the perfect office suit/browser/etc that fully integrates the PS2 into the home office, and then they sell more units! I'd say this puts them at least a step ahead of Microsoft.

The funny thing is that I'm hardly an Xbox champion (I don't own one and I haven't ordered one, and I'm in a waiting and seeing pattern). Alas here goes.

http://www.consolewire.com/articles/item.asp?sid=2 43

There you can see that the final gamecube has a system floating point capability of 10.5 GFLOPs. Wow that's pretty impressive isn't it? Oh wait: read the fine print. That includes the H&L 3d hardware & the MPU. Suddenly it isn't all that impressive. A stock GeForce 3 has 76 GFLOPs of floating point power. Add that to the ~3 GFLOPs of floating point power in the P3 733 and you have ~80 GFLOPs of computational power, versus the all together 10.5 of the Gamecube. Of course Gamecube fanboys will compare the 10.5 number with the P3 733 processor itself, which is absurd as floating point generally only comes into play for 3D computations, which is all handled by the enormously powered GPU in the GeForce 3 (I don't have specifics because they're tight lipped, but apparently the Xbox has a Geforce 3+. I've read that the GF3+ in the XBox yields >100GFLOPs). Wow that 10 GFLOPS just doesn't look as impressive now does it (unless of course you foolishly compare it with the P3s throughput, despite the fact that the P3 is really just a master controller directing the GPU and sound hardware in what they should do). The main memory on the Xbox is 6.4GB/s versus 2.6GB/s on the Gamecube. Looks to me like there's a pretty clear champion from a technical perspective.

For those interested, the Japanese release date is Dec 14th.

Those of us in Europe have to wait until next year anyway.......

Slightly relevant to this topic is that Sony was also planning to have PS2 Java support later this year - I was assuming it was a port of the Blackdown project under Linux.

Perhaps that will help a few people sign up to ask for the dev kit! Myself, I'd almost be wiiling to buy the whole package just to get the VGA adaptor.

According to both the official site and this ConsoleWire.com site, games need to explicity acknowledge broadband access as opposed to a standard modem so not all games will work.

What were they thinking with this? They've been developing this adapter for long enough (how long has it been since they announced it was in development?) that they should have created all their games with the future in mind. What's the point of creating great games with internet access, if you intentionally leave out any sort of high speed upgradeability.

There's no excuse for not planning for the future, and this is what Sega has done. If this system flops before the XBox and the PS2 and the GameCube, then good. They were slow and they didn't look forward far enough... killer flaws in the video game world.

Q. Will NBA and NFL, Quake III and other games that are already out support broadband adaptor? What are the games that will support it?

A. At this time, the "Dreamcast Broadband Adapter" supports "Quake III(TM) Arena," "Pod(TM) 2," and "Unreal Tournament(TM)." More great games shipping in 2001 will support the "Dreamcast Broadband Adapter." All games supporting the BB Adapter will be labeled as such at retail.