Microsoft's X-Box Specs Revealed

Some information about Microsoft's rumored X-Box console has been leaked. Features are said to include a DVD drive, a 56K modem, a windows derived OS, a 1GHz CPU, 64 MB memory and 4 GB of HD space. Nintendonext has the scoop. All that, a possible $149 price tag.

Comments

Notice that it doesn't run WinCE

[Anonymous Coward]

..because MS's Games operation think it sucks and actually fought *NOT* to have WinCE on it. Also, because "WinCE" is fast becoming a dirty word
among Dreamcast developers.

Hmm. It might actually have a decent operating system, and be from MS. Interesting in itself.

(Posting anon for a reason).

Priced for when they'll come out.

[jelwell]

$149 hmmm. Taking a look at that last article about the 1.5Ghz Intel chips priced around a small yugo! Well, Microsoft must be shooting to release these X-Boxes when the Intel price drops to 45$. Using the current trends, with 300MHz Celerons still at 75$ The X-Box should be out sometime in 2004. I'm not waiting that long.
Joseph Elwell.

Re:Priced for when they'll come out.

[overshoot]

Intel has nothing to do with it. Or at least their mainstream CPUs don't; this could be a StrongArm machine. Chances are, though, that it's another Hitachi brain.

As for the pricing, all games boxen are sold as loss leaders. MICROS~1's only reason for pushing this thing would be to make a major assault on the games publishing business, which is where the money is. Expect to see some loss leaders there for the first generation or two, since Redmond can "cut off the air supply" to Sony, Sega, and Nintendo for as long as it takes to drive them out of business. After that, of course, the story changes. (When Win3.1 came out, DOS was priced over $100 and MS threw in Windows for small change -- unless you were buying DR-DOS.)

Re:Priced for when they'll come out.

[Krodge]

I'm beginning to think that some of the people here need to take a basic economics class, or at least learn a tiny bit about how products are sold.

Probably around the time that this X-Box comes out 1.0 ghz chips will go for around 300-400 dollars at the most. I predict around 200-300 dollars. The thing is it doesn't cost Intel or AMD 200-300 dollars to produce the chip. It costs more like 50 dollars, which they sell to vendors for $100 which then sell to us for $200-$300.

This means that Microsoft will probably be able to get the chip for around $100 or $150 at the most, and the HD will be around $20 (4gb harddrive in two years will be tiny) 56k modems will be like 10 dollars and the RAM will be like $20 so it will only cost around from $150-200 to produce is my prediction. So M$ takes a loss, but make it up with game licenses as mentioned in other posts.

fairly long rant

[MoNsTeR]

Here's a copy of a post I made on this same story that appeared on the Shugashack:

(disclaimer: I am very biased here, being a PSX owner and long-time MS hater)

OK, now that we know(?) something concrete about the X-Box,let's compare it to its obvious competitor, the PS2:
- CPU: the X-Box may get "up to 1GHz" cpu, but its quite likely that the PS2's 300MHz chip will beat it out. We already know that the X-Box will be x86-based, which means we have an idea of how that "up to 1GHz" can perform. As various developers who already have development systems have pointed out, the strength of the "Emotion Engine" (blah, lame name) is its vector units. For comparison, 2 of the Athlon's FP units are also vector units,
responsible for executing MMX and 3DNow instructions. The Emotion Engine has 10(!) *dedicated* vector units. Also, x86 cpus are 32bit, the EE is 128bit.
- RAM: At first, it looks like the X-Box wins here, with 64MB over the PS2's 32MB. But it doesn't say what type is in the X-Box. We know that the PS2's 32MB is Rambus (whether that's good or not is open to debate)... More on the RAM in the OS section...
- OS: "Windows Derived OS"? That's reason enough to stay as far away from this thing as possible. And as at least one other poster has noted, how much of that 64MB is this OS going to take up? Judging from what Epic has said about porting Unreal to the PS2, writing PS2 software is like
using Glide: you're basically "coding to the metal". Programming for Windows and DirectX on the other hand, involves many layers of abstraction
and results in many cycles being wasted in intermediary software.
- modem: same as PS2
- other I/O: no info on the X-Box, but the PS2 will have IEEE1394, USB, and PCMCIA, and MS had better match that
- DVD: same as PS2
- hard drive: OK, this is the big deal. Some ppl may look at this and say, "hey! the PS2 doesn't have an HDD at all! this r00lz!" Wrong. The PS2 will get by with 8MB memory cards, very similar to what the PSX has now. Sure it's not 4GB, but it costs a hell of a lot less too. But more important than the fact that it shouldn't need an HD is what having one enables. If you follow the link and read the blurb, it says "it also has a 4GB hard drive, which will allow you to download patches" OH SHIT. What is arguably THE best characteristic
that consoles have over PC's? Stability. Console games never get patched, because they're shipped on read-only media. This naturally forces developers to make their games bug-free, and it works. With the opportunity given to developers to release crap now and patch it later, like PC devs do, they'll use it. Watch out.
- upgradability: I've got the sinking feeling that the X-Box will be upgradeable. Fanatic PC gamers/console haters don't realize this, but upgradeability is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it allows the platform to evolve, on the other hand it *requires* the platform to evolve. Compare the PC to the PSX. Can a PC from 5+ years ago run Quake 3? No. But is a PSX game of today as far advanced past those of 5 years ago as Quake 3 is? Not really. So the technology level of a console's games stays pretty much constant for its lifespan. The upside here is that you've made your one-time hardware expenditure, and that's it! When I buy a PS2 for $200 (which IS the price it'll launch at, every console in recent memory has launched at that price, and Sony's not dumb enough to break that streak), that $200 will likely be the only money I spend on PS2 hardware for as long as I own the thing (other than memory cards, a 2nd controller, etc). However, if I buy even a $500 PC now, to play current games in a year or two I'll need to shovel more hundreds of dollars into it.
I'm guessing that the X-Box will fall somewhere between these two extremes.
- games: The other obvious advantage the PS2 has is games. One, there are already hundreds of PSX games that will play on it. Two, there are already many developers working on games for it. Three, several developers have contracts with Sony, most
notably SquareSoft, so we know they'll be putting their games out on the PS2. As for the X-Box, who knows?

However, I will not deny the possibility that the X-Box could succeed. Microsoft has produced at least three good products (EDIT.COM, the original Natural KB, the Sidewinder pad), plus a few others that are decent but not stellar (Publisher, various mice). So I'll concede the possibility that the X-Box could mark another good product. We'll only know for sure when the thing actually comes out. Until then, however, I will remain VERY skeptical.

==
Now for some stuff I've thought of since then:
- video: Holy crap, the PS2's advertised triangle and fill rates are insane (although I forget what they are, 75MTriangles/s comes to mind...)
And all that with only 4MB of video ram! 4MB, that according to psx2000.org, is linked to the gfx chip by a 2560-bit bus! Now, even if that's a typo, and is supposed to be 256 bits, it's still twice the width of any current PC video bus (unless you count the G400's dual 128 bit buses).
- CPU: there were a lot of people on the 'shack who concluded that since the X-Box will have a 1GHz cpu, and the PS2 will only have a 300MHz cpu, that the X-Box will be significantly faster. Now, for some perspective on this, compare the GeForce to the Voodoo3. The former has a clock speed of 120MHz, the latter, up to 183MHz. Which is faster? That's right, the GeForce. Architectural superiority will put the PS2 on top.
- price: the fact that this article projected a $149 launch price is indicative of one of two things, either:
1. this report is bogus, entirely rumor, totally worthless. or...
2. Microsoft is going to be selling these things at a loss (or very *slim* margin) in order to put the hurt on Sony.
The reasoning behind this is, as I said above, that $200 is basically THE customary launch price. The SNES, PSX, and Dreamcast all hit the market sporting $199.99. Although EB is pre-ordering PS2's for $239, so it may be that inflation is catching up with us ;) [and in light of that price, the X-Box launching at $150 is made that much less likely]

MoNsTeR

Can't be THAT bad...

[.pentai.]

Consider for a second if you will, the fact that Microsoft blames crashes on faulty drivers. Now consider the fact that since consoles are (or atleast are supposed to be) standardized hardware, meaning that all drivers should be release-worthy, in that they only have to be tested in one configuration.

This kills their excuse, but also the reasoning. They're right when they say the majority of faults is in drivers, and while a driver shouldn't necessarily be able to kill everything, hey it happens. Ever have windows crash in safe mode? I haven't. That's what this will run in, a permanent safe mode, because it's all standard overly-tested drivers.

You may not like the products, but MS is far from a stupid company, and they know what they're going up against, and what they have to do to win.

All of this said, I'm sure it will be a nice console, and I'll probably have one, alongside my Dolphin, PS2, and DC (and yet I never play games...I just enjoy wasting the money).

Plus...for people into console dev, such as myself, this will probably be a fun toy to play with.

$149 Must be with MSN Sign-up

[Cy Guy]

The only way I can see a 1 Ghz machine coming out next year at that price point is if it requires you to sign-up with a specific Internet provider.

If that is valued currently at $400 for 3 years, then they real cost of the box is $550, which I can believe. Hopefully it will be broadband access at no more than $22/month by that point.

Re:It's just SO rediculous!!!

[wowbagger]

NTSC (that's those TV thingies) are more like 378x200 something. If you do the math, it take rediculously less power to drive the same number of polygons around at that resolution

First, NTSC has a vertical rez of 525 lines, and a horizontal rez of about 350 lines if you are going over RF (e.g. tuned to channel 3 via a modulator) or 400 lines over composite video. If you go to YC (seperate lumanace and chromanance), you get about 450 lines.

Second, in most modern rendering chipsets the fill rate (the rate at which pixels can be put into polygons) is grossly higher than it needs to be: it is the polygon rate (the time to compute the position of each polygon) that is limited. Therefor, increasing or decreasing the resolution will have almost no effect on the frame rate, as the system will be limited by how many polygons it can cram onscreen, not how many pixels.

Lastly, remember that the X-Box will be running DirectX on Windows CE (Control Everything). The intent is to make it very easy to port from the console to the desktop (as long as the desktop has broken glass for an OS, not rotten fruit, flightless waterfowl, or satanic influences ;^) )

Lastly, for something like this to sell, the BOM (Bill of Materials, the cost of the parts to make it) would have to be about $75 for it to sell at $150 (the rest is eaten up with manufacturing cost, NRE (non-recurring engineering costs), shipping, stocking, returns (my box just gives me this funky blue screen, I want a new one) etc.) This is even if the whole thing sells at a loss. MS wants to dominate the game market: they sell this as a loss-leader, they get all the hot games made for DirectX, they get all the game programmers indoctrinated into The MicroSoft Way Of Doing Things and they kill all competition. They almost managed this without a game console: look at how many games are DirectX rather than OpenGL. However, today, game companies are starting to realise that if they want to make Mac ports (or Linux/BSD ports, or console ports) they had best program for OpenGL. Case in point: Aliens Vs. Predator is being ported to OpenGL so that they can make a Mac version. Hopefully, the folks at Activision are learning a lesson from this and will do all future games in OpenGL.

M$ is not ready for this

[Enoch Root]

Let's face it, M$ is gonna need some serious expertise if they want to pull this off. Their onlook on Operating Systems right now is, as long as it's stable enough, it'll fly. They also have a tendency to rush a production and issue bugs afterwards.

Did you ever hear about the PSX needing upgrades and service packs? No, because the idea is to release the platform spotless from the start. The 4 GB hard drive is worth nothing; it's not a feature, it's a way to circumvent future bugs M$ know they're gonna get. Who wants to connect to the Internet and download service packs for your platform? That's gonna hurt the X-Box's reputation immensely.

Incidentally, did anyone notice how M$ and Nintendo always explain their performance by comparing it to the PS2? 'We'll be faster than the PS2'. Hmm. It's just funny how the PS2 is already a standard, a full month before its Japanese release.

Finally, if they need a 1 GHz processor to work this thing, then they're doing something wrong. The PS2 achieves 25M pps with only a dedicated 266 processor. A 1 GHz processor sounds like infinitely more than what's needed to power a cutting-edge gaming platform at this time.

This is gonna bomb. M$ is not ready for this.

It's just SO rediculous!!!

[nft]

I'd hardly think of a harddrive as an asset to a gaming console. What's it good for? An internet cache? I've got dsl, and I load database driven sites. New games? Let 'em stay on the server. When I connect to the server, I'm playing version 1.2.7 automatically without having to patch it.

Playstion games look better now than five years ago when the PS first came out. Why? Because the programmers got better. Why? Because they weren't wasting time trying to integrate COM 2.0, or Direct X 12a, or whatever MS trys to sove down developers throuts. PS programmers just focus on the task at hand.

So a winders based platform means Joey down the street can develop his own games. You think Joey won't need to replace DLL's? That's one of the reasons why winders crashes. And yup, harddrives will help that problem manifest.

Next, let's talk about the price. If(the nintendo site didn't state any sources for their info, mind you) it really does come out in 2001 with a 1GHZ cpu, I'd think it'd cost WAY more than $150 with those specs.

If there was a 1ghz cpu to be had for under $400, that'd kill the PC industry all together. Think about it. Way more power than you need, in a $150 box? Where's the space to squeeze in a $40(or whatever...) winders licence? They'd be killing themselves!

Lastly, comparing a console to computer hardware is the old apples/oranges argument. PC gamers buy athlon 800's and GeForces to be able to run 3d games with 5000-10000 on-screen polygons at 1280x1024x32bit color. NTSC (that's those TV thingies) are more like 378x200 something. If you do the math, it take rediculously less power to drive the same number of polygons around at that resolution. The propossed x-boxen would have idle CPU cycles, which means it was over engineered, which means it costs too much to build regaurdless of the price. : )

So maybe MS is thinking about a PC replacement? That kind of power would run winders NT pretty well, but it seems a little light for winders2k. That much hardware could drive a real monitor just fine. It'd also run Linux pretty well, and I'd guess it will about 4 months if it ever comes out, which it won't.

The whole thing is just so rediculous...

-=nft1999=-

Nintendo Next is not trustworthy!!!

[m3000]

This is not a flame or some stupid AC, but a valid warning. Anyone who follows Nintendo news will relieze that Nintendo Next is the "tabloids" of videogame reporting. They've mislead SOOOO many people with their bogus stories. I HIGHLY doubt anything they said in the article is true, or if it is, they sure as hell just heard it from rumors or unconfirmed reports. I'd take this article with a HUGE grain of salt. Story after story they "broke" has proven to be just based off of rumors or have been very misleading. I can't believe Slashdot would even post anything from somewhere as unreliable as NN.

So to sum it up, I wouldn't trust anything you read in the article, especially since none of the major gaming sites have had anything new on the X-Box at all.