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Microsoft Unveils The X Box
markf was one of the first people to e-mail us about the ahead of schedule unveiling of the X-Box. As those who have watched the news, Microsoft's gaming console has been a close secret. Now we know it's going to be about 600 Mhz, DVD-ROM drive, 64+ megs of RAM. Gates went on to talk about the market, which is very interesting. They'll be aiming at Nintendo, Sony and Sega, the triumvirate of the Gaming Market. The machine itself will be Windows-based, and will support online "stuff" - although only through high speed connections. I've got to admit - this thing looks really interesting. They are hoping for a Christmas 2001 release, which will make competing with Dolphin and PSX2 difficult.
Want to work at Transmeta? Hedgefund.net? Priceline?
Can your IM do this?
We already have car stereos running Windows, now we can get BSOD on our TVs! What's next kitchen appliances? "Honey, the toaster crashed!" "Reboot it then wait 10 seconds" Will the madness ever end?
More competition is always good, regardless of who it is from. Mebbe since they'll be fighting a losing battle, they'll sue for an open gaming standard so we can play games on any console we want. Now THAT would be something I would play. As it is, I greatly prefer computer games for their better graphics and multiplayer capabilities. But an open standard would blow that out of the water.
I really did get first post. That was my first one! First first post... hehehe...
great for microsoft, but what about my amd stock? did it have an intel or amd chip damnit? do i sell or do i keep? oh yeah, hopefully this will be a first post
Are you sure about a "Christmas 2001" release? Don't you mean Christmas 2000? A 600MHz box will be seriously out of date by December 2001.
HH
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.
never done this before... but first post
...unless they can buy-out/bribe enough game companies to develop for the thing.
PSX2 will take over for the PSX as the #1 box, without a doubt. Why? 10 little letters: Squaresoft.
Nintendo, with the Dolphin and Gameboy Advance, won't be hurting, either. Why not? Game Freak, and Rare.
Console gamers only care about the games, not the internals. That's why consoles are so popular! You don't have to care about which chips you have; all games are compatible!
This is one area where I doubt MS will succeed.
how about a beowulf cluster of these!
X-Box users will be able to connect to high-speed Internet services to
take part in multiplayer games, as well as Web access and e-mail, but can
only use digital subscriber lines (DSL) or other high-speed services. The
X-Box will not be equipped with a standard telephone modem, Bach
said.
I'm quite sure they must have ment ethernet support right about there. Otherwise the bit about other high-speed services would not be ment. X-box. What is next? propitory game cartriges for windows only?
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I personally don't want my game crashing in the middle of me playing. And as we all know that if it is going to be windows based OS, then it wll crash at the most random times.
Also if this is going to for another branch of MS, and the gubment is going to break up MS, then isn't this just ging to form another baby-MS. I personally don't understand where MS gets off thinking that they can just jump into the Console gaming market. And if they do pull it off it will just go to show how much weight they do pull with Mindshare of the average Joe
Thank you and good night
"A fool finds no pleasure in understanding but delights in airing his own opinions." Proverbs 18 : 2
Nintendo makes it's licensees sign a contract that makes any game developed for their system, be for their system exclusively. I am idly wondering of the implications of software portability if they get released with some sort of certification for this system.
Deeply evil?
There were rumors that Sega might back the X-Box, but those have apparently not panned out
Green Monkey
it is nice to see a console with some punch. Don't get me wrong, I love Mario Kart 64 as much as the next guy, but at 90mhz, the graphics were great but severely underpowered. When too many things started going on at once, especially explosion in Goldeneye, the N64 video would just lag like hell. Then again, if a console starts crashing, I think I'd prefer it being underpowered and stable, much like my trusty army of 486's. =)
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Competetition might be good, but this is going to potentially kill the other console machines.
Look at it this way: Game developer makes PC game. Yay! Game does well in general Windows market. Yay! Standard next step? Port to console. Now, let's see... We have the PSX2, the Dolphin, don't look good... There'll be a lot of work there and the game might take too long to be released. Dreamcast? Getting closer... X-Box? It's already in our native tounge! SELL SELL SELL!
While there will always be the console-for-console developers, a LOT of the console market comes from the PC market. Microsoft's been planning this for a while, it's obvious. Why else try to impose the DirectX standard? Porting from Windows to the X-Box will save a developer considerable resources, manpower, and time over porting to one of the other systems.
We'll miss you, Nintendo.
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thank you.
When a developer decides to make a Dreamcast game, they can choose between Windows CE and Sega's OS that they developed for the DC. I'm sure that each one has their respective plusses and minuses. The chosen OS is put on the game disc with each game.
What's a Trimuverant? If you want to use "difficult" words, at least know how to spell them. Maybe you mean tri umvirate?
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bgphints - internet routing news, hints and ti
PCs and consoles are becoming one and the same, to the point that they're even going to be capable of running the same software. We've seen lots of console emulators for the PC...how long is it going to be before PC emulators for our favorite console systems start popping up?
:)
And of course, somebody will _have_ to port Linux to it, and then add on some better hardware and then.....oh, hey, look, its a low-end PC with a TV instead of a monitor!
Nothing like reinventing the WebTV
This X-Box is just a vertical-market network computer.
...
Big deal. They (Microsoft) bally-hoo'ed it a few years ago, because, clearly, they weren't prepared for that particular computing revolution. (If the big kids can't play, they don't want anyone playing.)
There's nothing in this X-Box that even vaguely excites me - all it looks like is that Microsoft has worked out how to apply some of its billions to manufacture run-of-the-mill PC hardware for the masses... well, we'll see, anyway.
Whereas, the PSX2, with its revolutionary design and take-no-prisoners custom chip designs, appeals to my primordial developer roots at a fundamental level.
Sony is the undisputed master of mass manufacturing consumer electronic products, which is what gaming platforms have become, and I seriously doubt whether Microsoft has what it takes to prove that it can do this, properly, to its shareholders. Don't forget that they've gotta show profitability for the X-Box division relatively quickly
Now, having said that, I will say that I will be watching the *developer* relationships that are fostered by these companies very closely. I wonder what lessons Sony have learned from the Net Yaroze program for the PSX - are they going to be a more developer friendly company with PSX2 this time around?
Obviously, developer relations is about the only thing that Microsoft has over Sony, so what's going to happen there, I wonder...
I predict, and time will tell, that at the very least (and possibly the very most) MS' X-Box release will have a *good* influence on the developer situation for the other platforms...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Spelling mistakes on /.? By Hemos...? First: isn't it "triumvirate"? Second: it's Zarathustra for Christ's sake! Third: "the first people to emails us"? What the hell is this? Don't the article posters have a submit button? Pr0n K1ng "Ah, well, off to download pr0n."
Oh well, back to dowloading pr0n...
Pr0n K1ng
If MS makes it possible to replace the OS, it may still be worth it to us Linux zealots. I'm sure someone will get Linux on it. Hell there are projects to get Linux on the Game Boy. Of course a choice of operating systems on a system like this makes more sense, with it's network capabilities and email/browsing software.
:)
Of course I don't see MS doing this, or making it easily accomplished, but hey, a guy can dream.
Also, any bets on how long before someone tries to overclock it?
I think that the interesting thing about the X-Box is the heavy reliance on off-the-shelf components (standard x86 chip and graphics from NVidia). In a lot of ways, this seems pretty rational, especially for the main CPU. After all, the market of 100+ million x86 users has created a pretty damn good economy of scale, so you can make up in brute force what you lose in terms of gamer-targetted features (polygons, etc.).
Why don't other consoles use such commodity parts? Has it been an issue of price? Or is this the first time that the IA-32 architecture has been able to provide a good enough price/performance ratio with respect to graphics-related features? Microsoft could have easily gone with MIPS, as WinCE runs on that platform and NT used to. Just think of how cheap a 600 mHz chip will be in late 2002, when this box is only a year out on the market! Who knows, they might just break even.
--JRZ
Japan is still the largest single market for videogames on a console and they don't show much willingness to buy American-made consoles or games (its a cold day in Hell when a US game hits the top 10 in Japan). Sure, Konami, Capcom and Namco are signed on, but how much do you want to bet that they just do ports of games from other systems? Konami has already said Metal Gear Solid Remix (a remake of the PSX game) is on the way. Ports generally don't sell systems.
Besides, by 2001, the 128-bit war will be over and done. People will have bought all the consoles they can stand. Even Dolphin will be out by then.
Anyone else notice that Microsoft's press release quotes a polygon rate of 300 million/sec? Thats more than 1 polygon per pixel at 640x480@60FPS. And I thought PS2's quoted 75Million was a bloated load of PR BS!
I think this restriction also only lasts for a year -- once a year has passed from the Nintendo 64 version's release, the game can be freely ported to any platform.
(AFAIK, I don't think Nintendo has any special rules governing the Game Boy Color.)
</karmawhoring>
Green Monkey
Here are the spec from Microsoft X-Box Site
:) (I'm sure the would need some more ram tho)
600 MHz x86 compatible CPU Custom 3-D NVIDIA graphics processor
64 MB of RAM (unified memory architecture)
Custom 3-D audio processor
8GB hard drive
4X DVD drive with movie playback
Four game controller ports
Expansion port
Proprietary A/V connector
100 MBps Ethernet
All this for $299 USD
I think the coolest thing that the X-Box has going for it is the badass 3D support (Comeon NVDA is pretty damn cool) and the 100 MBps Ethernet.
It looks like this puppy is going to be broadband ready with this fast network port.
If the price is cheap enough these thing could make decent Linux web servers or firewalls.
I'm sure M$ would love that.
There is also a mpg demo of the 3D capabilities of the x-box. It's a demo of mech. You can grab it here for MPEG and here for QT4
Thus, that 600mhz processor is a *REQUIREMENT* just to get the thing to boot fast enough...
;)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Microsoft doesn't give a shit about you.
Please remember that.
With a 100MBps ethernet port you can hook up any type of broadband. Cable, DSL, whatever you like.
Get the feel specs at Microsoft's X-Box site
did it have an intel or amd chip damnit?
According to this article on C|Net, it will be powered by an Intel CPU and a Nvidia graphics chip. This is a complete change over everything I had heard about the subject before I read the C|Net article.
Either way we're talking about a systems that isn't scheduled to ship for almost two years. Who knows when we'll actually see them on store shelves. I feel like they're hyping this thing in an attempt to damage Playstation 2 sales so that the market isn't compltely controlled by Sony by the time the Xbox sees the inside of a retail store.
joe
Will the X Box be another moving target?
Why do I ask? Simple. It has a hard drive. And supports high speed online connections. Does this mean that we'll see patches and software upgrades from MS? They live on these updates in the desktop world.. Releasing second rate products and promising fixes, leaving people begging for more. With a moving target, will we see DLL Hell?
A Static Target is a Good Thing on consoles. Early on in the consoles lifespan, people code on the API's. Then they start coding on the low-level. As they get better, programs get better. Just look at how far the PSX has been pushed with FF8 or Chrono Cross.
We'll wait and see I suppose. Incoherent post brought to you by lack of sleep and lots of Coke/Code.
I f there is one thing that tends to buck the all M$ stuff is crap, is the hardware they put their name too. It tends to be quite good. This does have a lot of potential but it will depend on the support it gets from games. After all, that were the real money in consoles are - not the hardware, but the games. Now as for crashing problems.... maybe not. The biggest problem Windoze has is supporting so much different hardware. I'd imagine they would set up (is it CE in this box? W2K cut down?) quite well to suit the hardware and that games that were able to be used on this box tested for compatibility. I dont think this will take over the market, but it will certanly broaden the market console games have. And it's certainly got some appeal with the inbuilt DVD.
"Old Rallydrivers never die - they just fail to book in on time"
...will it then be the first console system to blue screen?
We ought to get RMS, the FSF, the EFF, and any other TLAs we can think of to get out there and sue his ass. :)
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We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
I couldn't agree with you more. I own an N64 and the performance at times is horrendous, though I do love the graphics. I think it's hilarious that Sony had to release a 2nd Playstation with increased horsepower in order to keep up with the latter games being released. Give a few points to this guy!
So it's going to run windows on a 600mhz x86. Who cares. Correct me if I'm wrong (I know you will) but isn't the x86 an incredably stupid processor for a game box. I mean it's great for web serving and running linux and all but i want to play games on my console and the x86 just doesn't do enough math to make it as compairable to the emotion engine that sony is using in the psx2. Use this for word processing and browsing the net but if you want games get a psx2 or a dreamcast. It's what all the console gamers will be useing and that's where the game devolopers will be i.e. Squaresoft and Capcom.
Linux is really boring from an os standpoint. Now Plan 9......
Usually consoles break even or perhaps even lose money on their hardware and the real profits come from licensing the platform to developers. Is that what Microsoft is doing here?
... are they going for a slight profit margin on the hardware and letting normal PC games run on it too, giving them an instant software base?
Or
Since many console games are starting to appear on PCs, are they trying to shift all development of games to DirectX? Is it possible? Is it still possible if developers need to licence special X-Box versions of various tools and pay royalties?
.. and where are they going to put Windows? I mean, Win'98 is 200mb or so, they can shave much of that off but it's still bigger than most cheap ROMs isn't it? Would they put something as fragile as a hard drive in a console?
The only thing I can think of is that M$ wants to have a LOT of games ready for the platform when it is launched. It is after all games that make or break a console, not the hardware or OS.
"Old Rallydrivers never die - they just fail to book in on time"
Even assuming Microsoft can make this self-imposed deadline any more than they made the 3-years-late NT5^H^H^HW2K deadline, won't it be seriously out of date? That's a year and a half -- a long long time in this industry. I wouldn't expect Sony or the others to stand still.
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Infuriate left and right
There's a quote from a 'computer analyst' on http://news.bbc.co.uk that says
"The chip that is going to be in this console is 20 times faster than the chip in the PCs, so you are going to get a better game on the console than the PC,"
Excuse me how many pc's out there are 20 times slower than a 600 Athlon?
It was only a matter of time before MS jumped into this business, so its nothing real spectacular to me. It should be fun to see Sony, Nintendo and Sega duke it out with Microsoft. If MS positions it correctly and prices it right, it may end up being a viable contender in the console market. I'm still holding out on getting too excited about this thing until I see it in action personally. And I'm still holding out for the PlayStation 2. Oh how I wish I lived in Japan. And on a side note, I'm keeping a running article here about news and developments of the X-Box. Check it out if you have a minute.
SYSOP ('sih-sop) n.: the guy laughing at your typing.
But, my real question is, "Why make this box?" It appears that it will be a pretty damn standard Wintel box. It is hard to imagine that it wouldn't be trivial to port games back and forth between the console and the PC platform.
The problem with this, from the X-Box manufacturer's point of view, is that it destroys the typical game profit center -- that is, that all consoles are sold at breakeven at best; if not at a significant loss. The money is made back in licensing of the games. But the PC game platform has no licensing cost whatsoever!
So -- it will have to be something like this -- to get the 'Plays in X-Box' cutesy-poo logo on your game, you'll have to pay a royalty to MS -- and MS would require that even games that are for PCs would have to have the royalty paid (or not undersold, anyway) Otherwise, would people really pay the extra 10 bucks to get the game for their console that they could otherwise get for their PC?
Perhaps, you say, the X-Box will has some dramatically great API for games that is not available on Windows, and legally protected from reverse engineering somehow. Would Microsoft really do this, really cut off their nose to spite their face? Microsoft dumped a lot of money into something called 'Talisman' a few years back; it was meant to be a revolutionary game enabling technology. Basically, instead of rerendering 3D geometry every frame, it was rendered every 10th frame (say) and then the various elements were distorted into position in subsequent frames. Nothing has been heard of Talisman in a year or so, though; even though MS made a huge hoopla at Siggraph about it. Still, it was a stupid idea then, and even more stupid today.
I really don't see how they are going to get the licensing money that is critical to the game market.
The obvious answer, of course, is that they are not in it for the money, at least, not in it for the gaming money. They are in it to establish a beachhead in the living room; a box with a highspeed line connecting your eyeballs directly back to MS. The myriad ways of milking that connection for money are left to the reader's imagination.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I wish Microsoft all the luck with the X-Box that other American, PC-centric companies have had in the past with their ventures into the gaming console world.
Who remembers how 3DO made a big deal that you could buy a card for your PC that would let you play 3DO discs?
For that matter, who even *saw* one of those cards?
Ohwell, I really couldn't care less about this X-box. HDTV is way to expensive and there's no way in Redmond I'd want to play games with a puny blister-pad and a low-res blur-o-vision.
Hey Connectix? How long 'till we see a PSX2 emulator?
What business does microsoft have developing a console system? Why does everyone in the media see this system as "wow, cool. should be interesting" instead of "great, another tentacle of the beast, spreading to another domain"? Maybe I'm over-zealous about this, but it really really pisses me off when a company leverages its user base around into whatever domain they want, and this seems to be what Microsoft does best. This move is analagous to using their OS monopoly to crush Netscape, only now, they're using their developer base instead of their user base.
I sincerely hope this platform bombs.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
The holiday shopping season for 2001 is still ~1.75 years away. Better than even odds that an 'X-box' will never be sold to a consumer (well, maybe a prototype will end up on eBay in the distant future).
Microsoft unveiling new game console
Last Update: 11:43 PM ET Mar 9, 2000 NewsWatch
REDMOND, Wash. (AP) -- In a departure from its core software business, Microsoft Corp. announced it will manufacture and market a new video game console based on its Windows operating system.
The system, provisionally called "X-box," was unveiled Friday in Tokyo ahead of a planned announcement by chairman Bill Gates at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, Calif.
Gates will try to persuade the people who create games to take a chance on Microsoft (MSFT: news, msgs) as it tries to compete with video game giants Sega, Nintendo and Sony Corp.
"This is an extension of our software business," Microsoft president and chief executive Steve Ballmer said in an interview Thursday. "We're not getting into the hardware business, but we do want to provide a great software gaming experience for people."
The X-Box, which will be out in time for the holiday shopping season in 2001, will be based on the same technology that powers personal computers. It will have a PC-based microprocessor running at speeds of 600 MHz, a hard drive, DVD-ROM drive and at least 64 megabytes of memory -- the equivalent of today's mid-range personal computers.
By mid-2001, those components will likely be relatively inexpensive but could still outstrip the competition, such as Sega's DreamCast, Sony's upcoming PlayStation2, and Nintendo's next-generation game console, due out this Christmas.
"Microsoft is definitely going to be a big player," said Sam Kennedy, news editor of gamespot.com, an online gaming news magazine. "I think Sony and Nintendo will be scrambling to make sure their developers are still on board."
Microsoft is indeed aiming squarely at the Big Three video game companies -- Sega, Sony and Nintendo -- instead of the home computing market.
"In most respects, this will be a traditional video game strategy," said Robert Bach, a vice president in Microsoft's Home and Retail Division. "People won't be upgrading their hardware or installing software or anything like that. They'll just pop in the disc and go."
X-Box users will be able to connect to high-speed Internet services to take part in multiplayer games, as well as Web access and e-mail, but can only use digital subscriber lines (DSL) or other high-speed services. The X-Box will not be equipped with a standard telephone modem, Bach said.
"For games of this quality, you will really want a high-speed Internet connection," he said. "That's the only way you'll get that really high-quality multiplayer experience over the Internet."
Microsoft officials would not say how much it would cost, other than to say it would be competitively priced.
Sony's new PlayStation2, introduced last week in Japan and to arrive in the United States in September, is the most advanced platform currently on the market. It has the ability to play audio CDs and DVDs and link to the Internet for multiplayer games and basic World Wide Web access. It costs about $370 in Japan, though the price is expected to decline when it is introduced here.
The Sega Dreamcast, which uses software developed jointly with Microsoft, currently retails for $199.99. Nintendo's latest offering, the Nintendo 64, currently sells for less than $100, though the company is planning to release a high-tech successor in time for Christmas.
For the people who write games, X-Box will be familiar territory. The software on the console will be based on Microsoft's Windows operating system. Since many game developers already write for personal computers, moving their games to the X-Box and taking advantage of the new hardware will be easy.
"Fundamentally, we're a PC game developer," said Tom Dusenberry, CEO of Hasbro Interactive, the software arm of the toy company. "It's definitely an advantage to take the great content that already exists and easily move it to X-Box."
Dusenberry said Hasbro will have six to eight game titles available when the X-Box hits retail shelves. Hasbro will likely reproduce popular titles like its Monopoly and Scrabble games, and may bring new games based on its other holdings. The venerable Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, owned by subsidiary Wizards of the Coast Inc., would make an ideal X-Box game, Dusenberry said.
Microsoft hopes the ease of development will bring more titles to X-Box when it launches. Most new gaming systems only have a handful of games available when they are first introduced.
"It's a proven platform on the PC, and it will be even better on the X-Box," said Donald Coyner, director of marketing for the X-Box project.
While most of Microsoft's sales are based on operating systems and office productivity software for personal computers, the company has recently expanded its software efforts into non-PC devices, such as "dumb" Internet-only terminals, mobile phones, hand-held PCs and home electronics.
"We are all about giving people a great interactive experience any time, any place, anywhere," Ballmer said, echoing the company's oft-quoted mission statement. "This is just one of the ways we're doing that."
They may actually be serious; I don't know. This is speculation, like the rest of you are doing. But a hard drive in a game machine? Now that's an absolutely great idea. The great thing about my Nintendo Classic (and other's that I've played since, like the Playstation or N64) was that it never crashed. Mix hard drives and Windows in a "console", and you'll see that go bye-bye. (In all fairness, there were occasional bugs, but we called the "easter eggs". ;) )
In all seriousness, this seems like a major troll from the big boys themselves. Is it April 1st yet? When I first heard the rumors, I dismissed them as just that: rumors. Now it appears that they're taking to spreading the rumors more widely.
Time will tell, but I think they're playing us for the fool.
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We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
Replying to myself:
Whoever does your "HTML Programming" needs to learn that White Text on White Background = Invisible!
See it again for the first time!
Great, now we can buy a game console that crashes! Yeah, I want to be playing with my friends and get the blue screen of death. "Gee, I never got that on my nintendo or my dreamcast???" It sounds cool, it just needs another OS.
There should be a linux-based console. They could call it the X-Box; if MS complains, then "prior use" would give them a good fight. Everything runs faster under linux, and it wouldn't be so strongly tied to cheesy PC architecture.
Quick, somebody write a good API!
Even better, maybe Apple will produce a console. Stick in a G4 chip, they should be cheap in two years. Supercomputer console.
Oh, and a 8gb hard drive? It doesn't count as a console if you have to install/uninstall the games! Maybe all that space is just so Win 2001 will fit.
Why, no, I don't like Microsoft very much...is it so obvious?
-sig-
It's 2:00 AM and nothing is on television except infomercials
."
"Do you want to surf the web and play old computer games in low resolution on a fuzzy television"
"Do you want to strain your eyes trying to read some fuzzy 6pt font that some asshole CSS author set on your 400 line resolution, three color TV^H^H^H^H, I mean surf the web"
"From the same company that brought you fast and reliable computer service (paraphrased from the MSN ad), introducing the X-Bung"
"the next generation in home electronics. It replaces that shitty WebTV we sold you last Christmas. It's a hundred times better than CDi and DIVIX combined."
"It even plays DVD's and provides you with one feature that regular DVD players don't. The Blue Screen Intermission feature, so you can take a piss break in the middle of a long movie."
"Computers are expensive, hard to use, and require you to constantly purchase and upgrade new software (taken from the WebTV ad), and we know because we made them that way. And monitors make graphics look blocky, while your television smooths graphics."
"But for the price of a cheap computer^H^H^H^H, for only $300, a four year subscription to MSN, and your soul . .
...
Actually, for $300 that's a great deal. Often times console manufacturers will make no money or loose money in the sale of the console, because they plan on make their money on software licensing and need to maximize market penetration to get more companies writting software for their platform.
If Microcruft is doing this, then the whole undertaking is fundamentally flawed. If this device is made up of standard computer parts, which it seems to be. Software companies could simply bypass Microsoft's software licensing and press DVD's that boot off of their own stuff. In the past it has been difficult for companies to do this, because gamming consoles have lots of strange chips; and you couldn't do without the dev kits.
But if they are actually making good money selling all that hardware for only $300, then none of that applies.
_________________________
Of course every real gammer knows that you always buy the console that SquareSoft supports, because they only support one platform and it's _always_ the best one.
I find it ridiculous the number of people on here that are simultaneously deriding this MS X-Box thing as a closed product, while pumping up sony and its playstation line.
Sony is the king of closed and proprietary standards (or at least non-standard) that it refuses to open, and refuses to let drop. Memory sticks, mini-discs and all manner of crazy ports for their machines.
I like Sony's products myself, but only because they allow fun games on their platforms and generally have a good design sense.
In some way a more moral company than Microsoft? Unlikely.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Call me ignorant, but why would a games console need to be based on Windows? Surely the ideal game OS is something small, quick and powerful with GUI features stripped out?
SOC/RO Comment: The problem with moore's/law and console technology is that ultimately moore's/law breaks down when we encroach upon limitations imposed by the laws of nature. So how is this a Good/Thing then? I don't see it, never have, never will. All this means is that eventually the game console market will go bust as it is no longer to keep up with gamer's expectations of bigger and better. All that will continue to be popular (and then only with foreign graduate students!) are gameboys for which the sole purpose is to play Poke/Mon. Unless, of course, a solution can be found to fundamentally change the way computers operate. For example, reversible technologies will allow, say, MADDEN FOOTBALL 2040 (byline: "When you get as old as me, you've really got to watch out for the snap, moreso than usual." or some such nonsense) to neither create nor destroy information. This really sux0rs 4ss because you've got to do something will all those extra bits. I suggest a high-speed connection to geoshitties, or perhaps crapster. Both seem idyllic as depositories of unnecessary bits nobody wants. Allow me elaborate. For geoshitties, it is obvious: you post it to your 15 mb webspace, then move on to the next randomly generated account name, post another 15 mbs, and move on. Although frankly I suggest a multithreaded striping type arrangement of the data across maybe 20 or so different accounts simultaneously. DoS? No, reversible technology at its finest. Now, as for Crapster, what you do is write your own client (duh. the provided one is crap.) connect to all 50+ servers, and upload a huge list of filenames of the shittiest most annoying songs you can think of. This virtually guarantees you will be choking your ISP in no time with people trying to get Crap from you. And crap is what they will get. Unbeknownst to them, you don't have files by those names, oh no. You just set up data lines directly from your CPU to your network interface (suggestion: wire directly to the fucking wall, or preferablly a router itself), and set them up to send your CPU's "shit bits" (ie, extraneous information that results from reversible hardware emulating a non-reversible operation) straight out with nice TCP headers to all the people on crapster. Oooooh yes. If the X/BOX has this feature (and you know it does, why the fuck else would it need its "high speed only" internet connection bullshit?) then Moore's law will NOT apply to it, in the sense that it won't break down, so then I guess it will apply to it, or something. Well now I've gone and confused myself! How confusing!
Interesting. Does that mean that I could make a game that runs on the Linux kernel and have that run straight out of the box? I wonder if it would be easier to port Linux, OpenGL, and Quake or to produce a version of Quake that uses Sega's OS.
That's cute, but what platform other than DOS runs modern games faster than the Windows variants? Certainly not Linux or MacOS.
well, probably with these batchs of consoles will see nothing new.I can imagine that nothing much different from their pc stuff.it would behave exactilly the same at their os ie. the first batch would be very buggy.It will have the same solution to hangs -"please press the reset button".and for the first time they got somthing that is more better secutiry ie-cant hack a console (I hope). they woudlnt even need to train their phone support pple seeing that they have the adiquite knowelde to fix the problem "please press the reset button" or "you see that cannot be fixed you got get the new upgrade"
TRY HARDER NEXT TIME!! YOU DID NOT MAKE FIRST POST, AH ARE YOU GOING TO CRY NOW? TOO BAD? OH WELL. THAT IS WHAT HAPPENS. IF YOU WANT TO BE A FIRST POSTER YOU HAVE TO BE FAST. YOU WASTED TOO MUCH TIME DILLY-DALLYING THINKING OF WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO WRITE. PLUS SLASHDOT IS SLOW AS SHIT. YOU HAVE TO TAKE THOSE THINGS INTO ACCOUNT, SILLY! NOW DON'T FEEL BAD. IT WAS JUST YOUR FIRST FIRST POST. THERE WILL BE A SECOND FIRST POST FOR YOU, AND YOU WILL GET CLOSER. I SUGGEST PRE-EMPTIVELY POSTING SOMETHING SAYING LIKE "THIRD?" WITH A MESSAGE BODY OF SOMETHING LIKE "TROLLIN' FOR HOMOSEXUAL RETARDS". AS FOR NOW, NO COOKIE FOR YOU! NOW I TAKE MY LEAVE TO TURN OFF CAPS LOCK. GOOD NIGHT TO ALL. OR MORNING. WHATEVER. FUCK.
This raises the obvious question: who cares? I can buy an X-Box for about $300 in 2001. The PS2 will be cheaper than that in the U.S. by that point in time, the DreamCast already is and Nintendo is aiming for a low cost solution as well. The PS2 will have had more than a year's head start in terms of software and market penetration. Ditto for DC. Nintendo would seem to be more in direct competition, but Nintendo really has its own market built in (people buying it for things like Mario, Pokemon, etc).
Making matters worse for MS, crappy PC's are getting cheaper and cheaper, and so I don't see someone who wants a low cost PC spending the $300 on the X-Box. A hardcore gamer who wants to play PC games probably already owns a decent PC.
What MS needs are some exclusive titles. Having ports from everyone else is all well and good, but you can't sell a console on it. I don't think that they're going to get a lot of these (who the hell would want to develop something just for the X-Box when it's running off of generic PC hardware? You could port it to a "standard" PC with little problem, and dramatically increase your potential market). Without these, the X-Box will just be playing catch up to everything else. You can't sell a console with a pitch like "Hey, we've got all the PS2's games, only six months later!"
What strikes me as most odd is the fact that MS seems to be competing directly with Sony here. Both the PS2 and the X-Box are heavily integrated with online features, both have DVD-movie playback and both seem to be about the same price. That's suicide on Microsoft's part, because again they'll be launching too late to do this all that effectively (especially in Japan, where Sony rules even more). I see this thing going the way of the 3D0 and the CD-I.
My fear:
This gamebox becomes a sucess.
Now let me explain why.
There is no doubt that MS will push DirectX and all their other game API's on this system. I doubt that it will be designed to implictly support OpenGL. (But I bet it runs quake anyhow...)
The danger that this poses is the integration of the PC into a gaming machine. Now don't get me wrong, I play plenty of games on this machine. The danger comes in the form of more games for a single platform -Windows-. Will the games for the MS box run on a Mac or a Linux box? No. (Maybe under VMWare.) If MS corners this market then they have a great opportunity to control the game market. If they do this the odds of people choosing an alternate OS (Linux, Beos, BSD et al.) is slim.
If all the good games, or just a majority of them are run under Windows (as they are now) or on this box MS has a very good leverage point over the desktop market again. Think about this: Some parent buying a home computer. The child says "don't get the one with Linux on it! It can't run Bozo Spacewars XXVII!!" Now, Linux could dual boot as we know, but its the percetion or as they like to say "mindshare" that is important here.
Microsoft is trying to kill two birds with one stone here. They are trying to generate a viable gaming market for their OS/Firmware, and they are trying to mantain/expand their monopoly grip on software.
If this becomes a success I can only see games that are developed across multiple platforms to decrease.
No sir. I don't like it.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
At the time I write this, there is no mention of "Windows" anywhere on xbox.com. The only Microsoft API mentioned by name is DirectX. I find it interesting that Microsoft's most famous brand name, the one they are synonymous with, is conspicuously absent.
Obviously I think it will run some variant of Windows; but it begs the question, will it be marketed as such? Does this say anything about Microsoft's future strategy for non-PC devices?
Windows has the unique ability to swap and save useless shit to hard drives and leave it there permanently. I fear the Xbox might end up having corrupted drives, performance loss or possibly even no space left. And if there is no user interface for file handling... uh oh.
Sorry if this has already been posted.
For all we know it could be the 64 bit (value) version of their TNT or maybe even the 4 meg RIVA 128.
This announcement doesn't even remotely impress me..
The reason MS is "announcing" a product that is MORE then a year into the future, using Nvidia Chips that are'nt in production, yet, is to get developer support. now.
But more importantly to get developers NOT to develop for compeating systems NOW.
It's classic MS tactic: announce something that is far into the future so people will believe that MS will be dominant in that market, just to scare of developers from spending resources and developing for alternate platforms.
The alternative platform being PS2, dolfine, and in the PC space Linux and mac.
It's not going to work. It's too little, too late.
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- Don't use the naff x86 archetecture (still full of 60's technology)
- have multi-processing (a-la Amiga) where there's a processor for wazzy grafix, one for sound spatialisation, one for AI, etc etc etc..
I really don't think that an PC-based computer will be worth the investment as a games machine.This said, there's a lot of games for PC, so the only hope I have is that this will force the big-3 to up the stakes + make their machines/games even better.. (mebbe even open them to us programmers
That was one of the big success-criterias of the old NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) and all the newer hardware. Easy to install/set up and worked for hours.
The only annoying thing was that on the PC more complex games came out. On the other hand you had to buy a new PC at least every 2 years to be able to play them (I had my SuperNES for 5 years and all new games still worked).
We'll see, how microsoft will work around that - maybe a processor-and-ram-and-all-the-rest-upgrade slot if they do an OS-update (what OS will this machine use anyway: Win2K or CE???).
------------------------------
The answer is yes, me.
When have you ever heard of MS shipping a product on time?
It'll appear on the shelves in 2005 and be renamed to 'X-Box 2010 Pro'.
Deleted
If you want to control the market for computers, you get kids hooked on gaming machines so that they get brand preference. Next you make a system that will play movies and music and surf the web for parents for the parents. Parents want the new Microsoft console, and their children are hooked on their games like they are crack. Also as a side benefit, the games will run on windows machines. Oh, and you can have a PC with the correct hardware and windows do the whole entertainment center thing like you neighbors (though it already can). So they can buy the X-Box and have a DVD player, CD player, internet appliance, and gaming console. People will not need to understand the hardware and writing software should be cake, and microsoft getss all of the pieces of the pie.
So you convince people that they need to buy this product in order to do this whole integration of entertainment thing, which we all know is a load of bull. The problem is that Americans are stupidand will fall for marketing bullshit. We know better though.
- Kill Yourself, spare us all! -
Console with a hard drive.
Anyone remember the days when computer gaming was truely plug-and-play? When we just put in the floppy/cartridge/CD-ROM, boot the machine and play the game?
These days only consoles have this convenience - PC games seem to be made by lazy programmers who want to eat up their customers' hard drives by insisting on installing hundreds of MBs of basically crap on my harddrive...
I mean, ok, they're not crap, but I wouldn't mind waiting for one more second to load that funky FMV from my 24x CD-ROM drive (I bet most of you have >30x) if I can save 100's of MB of hdd space for better uses and prevent my hdd from being a few steps closer to failure thru overuse.
It is year 2000. My CD-ROM is a lot faster than 2x as it was in 1994. There's no excuse for installation.
I still remember the days when the chatter of the day was "Geez, this game is a BLOAT - it takes 4 floppies and requires you to install!!"
This is why I think the X-Box won't succeed (if the hdd is not for installation that's another story, but I highly doubt it), and I'm sure playing-right-off-the-CD is possible with computer games.
I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Last week it was a 1.5GHz machine. Now it's down to 600MHz.
Best you grabbed one now; they may be down to 12KHz next week.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
When the original Playstation came out, I had very high doubts about it. Sony selling a game console? The marked was dominated by SEGA and Nintendo, and I couldn't see how Sony could compete with them. Oh...how I was wrong. Sony had a CD based console, while the two others were still on cartridges. This was clearly an added benefit for the consumers. It was way cooler. But what really let the playstation become the best selling console was its price. Sony set its price below profit levels, and just 1 day after Nintendo set its price. Sony made losses selling the hardware, but it was able to make big profits on games' royalities. Also about 90% of psx games were first quality tested by Sony, so that only complete, well coded games were available. And the results confirmed Sony's best strategy.
Now MS wants to enter the console market. The hardware specs are impressive. And clearly MS has the same opportunity as Sony had to sell the hardware below profit levels and still make profit on games (or on whatever, MS still makes profit anyway). Heck, they really could sell them for very cheap, and don't bother. It all depends on what MS wants to do with the console. With the DoJ on its shoulder I don't think they will aggresively fight Sony, Nintendo & Co. I think they want to put a win based computer dressed as a console in the consumers' homes. WebTV wasn't enough to build customers loyalty. They want them to see a win logo every time they turn on an electrical device. That's building customers loyalty. Fullfill a core need and associate it with their logo. This however is no new marketing strategy. Companies always target core needs with their image, be BOSE, Coke, Sony, anyone. The question is about how easily you can do it. Unfortunately MS has the resources to easily enter the consumers' home.
But what excite me is that this is not strict computer ground. Sony is not Apple, and they surely will fight back hard. In my opinion, very interesting years are coming for the console market. Be prepared to be flooded with cheap propaganda, unthinkable slogans, and best of all plenty of games and hardware add-ons.
A. Coward, one of them.
Ok, the real reason MS is jumping in to this market is two fold. 1. They have so far been mostly unsuccessful in getting large scale industry support for their various set top boxes that are different from cable company to cable company... then, all of a suddent, Sony comes along, and says: we have the answer. PSX2. if you are familiar with it's specs, you know all the cool stuff it can (and I know sony will make it) do. What has MS so squirlly, is the set top-esque features it has, DVD movie playing, and get this, cable modem jack! wow, bill is scared poopless. He knows that for microsoft to maintain control over the market in 10 years, there has to be a MS powered device on top of every tv/hdtv/3d projector in the USA. And now sony, in all of their audacity comes along and wants to do it before them, and most likly better then MS can at all. if the PSX2 can come in strong, and put a sony controlled set top box (cause that is the long term goal for it. to make it a center peice of the SONY home entertainment suite) then they can kill one of MS's future expansion goals. Bill isn't stupid, he knows he can't keep putting buggy software on peoples computers for ever. Home entertainment control systems are the way to go. Any way, thats my thought. ________________ duran goodyear duran@alphex.com
Heh heh. Reminds me of this.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Can anybody recall how many times MS has announced a product, killed off the competitors, and then never bothered to release the product?
No, I can't. You make it sound like you can, though, so please tell us how many times that it's happened.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
A Wintel box carries so much legacy junk with it that it can never be a fast, efficient game machine. Not to mention that the quality of most PC games is terrible by game console standards. Consumers want an appliance that works, not a PC.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Ok so it wills till run at tv resolutions but at
christmas 2001 I will have that kind of power on my linux-pda.
christmas 2001 is about 18 months from now so I guess AMD will be unveiling their >2GHz-line if Moores law still aplies, the X-box with a 600 MHz cpu will be a tad on the weak side.
I also wonder if they will stick with Nvidia as their sole supplier of graphics hardware, who knows if they are the best supplier in 18 months.
/das Ix
This is my sig, show me yours
first post
thank you
Err ... what resolution does a TV work at? run at? err - display at? whatever ...
And surely a 600Mhz proc with a good 3D card could power said resolution at quite a decent speed?
I mean this thing does click into a TV right?
BBC is running a similar story, in which they state that the xbox will retail at approx. $299 and will hit the market in North America and Japan in about 18 months' time. Furthermore they report that AMD will be providing the processor and that the chip will be supplied by Nvidia. Guess Intel and Ms aren't the best of buddies anymore!?
Won't this be a pretty wimpy PC by Xmas 2001?
K.
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-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
I don't want to have to put the game CD in the drive, when I want to play.
Now, id Software wants to make things difficult for me, but most games haven't given me trouble.
Hard disk space is cheap, compared to the inconvenience, again and again, when it comes to swapping CDs.
Oh, yes.. and some people like to play audio CDs in the computer drive, while playing games. I've done that on occasion, even...
Anyone else worried about what this might really mean? I mean, it's not really a console, it's just a PC. Does this mean MS is moving into the hardware arena (beyond their peripherals)? I think that's a lot more significant than just some new game console...I hope they put the same quality engineering into it as they do into their software (maybe they should paint the blue death screen on the monitor and save on the electricity); at least they won't be able to make the same old "it's the hardware's fault, not Windows'" excuse. Is that coherent? I can't tell anymore, I've been up for too long.
Ok, well, good move Microsoft. You just cut out 75% of your market. That's (at least) how many people use a modem to get on the internet right now.
I know I won't be buying one.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I already have a PC that runs windows and plays windows games. Why the hell would I want another one that hooks up to the TV? At least on my windows box I can write my thesis, download porn , burn some cd's and even boot to linux.
I don't see why developers woule like the idea of porting windows games to a PC-ish, windows-ish console. Just release the friggin windows games! For all the crap linux people talk about windows, it sure has a hell of alot of decent games. (Counter-strike beta 6 comes out today)
I also own a PSX (can't play gran turismo 2 on a windows machine.) I will likely buy a PSX2 (gran turismo 2000 or somwthing like that should be out.) I will likely buy the next latest-and-greatest video card for my windows machine. I'm pretty sure I will NOT buy an X-Box.
Beauty is truly in the eye of the tiger
no, to post a beowulf cluster would be off topic, and we couldent do that could we? noooooooo, of course not. teehee. The X box is ummmmm, boxy, yea ok. any way, this is so much flamebait. good bye karma, hello schoool....IT TOOO EARLY!:(
Beer.
Microsoft is certaintly going for the exclusive titles angle. For instance, right now they are dumping a ton of money into a previously undistinguished Redmond company called "No Wonder". This company grown enourmously in the past couple of months by absorbing all the refugees of the Cavedog explosion.
It is supposedly not WinCE or 98 based, which only leaves Win2K or something new. Paul Thourott of http://www.wininformat.com suggests that the first consumer version of Win2K will be out next spring, keeping up with the yearly consumer upgrade. Seems that would be just in time for the X-Box. Any with only set hardware to have quality drivers for, they will strip lots of junk from the OS to slim it down.
One other piece I bet they will have ready immediately is the online play option that Sega has been struggling to launch. MS already has the Internet Gaming Zone at http://www.zone.com for PCs, X-Box will most likely plug right into the architecture. Sony doesn't have online multiplayer ready to go either right now, which is a real disappointment. Could be great or could be complete shit, nonetheless it will be interesting to see them try.
is that the performance needed for the TV vs monitor is a lot less. You won't have 1024x768 to deal with. So a 600 MHz processor and specialty graphics in 1.75 years will be low enough in price and will have enough hoarsepower for the TV. -Matthew
So why can't I install Linux on it and play XRacer?
Actually, I don't think Microsoft has the savvy to enter the console market and make all that much of an impression - sure, their games software is reasonably good (think Age Of Empires and Flight Simulator) but those games have a goodly collection of patches. You can't do that in the console world. When you release, you have to get it right first time.
It'll be too expensive, too slow and too late - remember the PC Jr?
I'll be playing WipeOut 4 on my PS2, without a doubt. Never has such a *cool* series of games ever existed on any platform. (And never have the ports of that game to other platforms been so poor).
--
Peter
It's going to be about 600MHz, is that a PIII of an Athlon? Maybe they'll go with RISC like Dreamcast, but if they do go with Intel, won't they be way outdated by 2001?
Way back in 1984, the game console industry collapsed, seemingly over-night, one of the main factors being too many consoles on the market, and too many games competing for the consumer's dollar. It basically came down to too much supply for the demand that was present. As a result, many game companies and consoles vanished from existence (can you say "Colecovision"?) When I first heard of the X-Box, I thought "no way..". Not that I hate MS or anything (which would be one reason ppl would be against this console). But the fact is, if they stick to their planned release date, they will be in competition with 3 other consoles (and they have actually stated this was their goal) - Dreamcast, PSX2 and Dolphin. Dont they realise the target age-groups these machines are aimed at usually struggle to afford to buy (and buy games for) a single console? Whichever of the existing 3 (Sega, Sony and the Big N)wins the most loyalty in the next few years will be the one to survive. Its simple ecconomics: teenagers can't afford every game console that comes out - they will often buy one and stick with it. Consoles have very little profit margin - its the games which make money. Now, MS wants to bring out a console which is basically a PC...why not buy a PC? If you wanna hook your PC up to the TV and play games on it, many video cards do that now. As some one mentioned earlier, unless there is a lot of initial support for it (crucial for any new console - look at why the 3DO, 32X, Jaguar, CD32 and a few others failed), it would be plagued by ports from other systems. And, as someone else has mentioned, ports rarely sell consoles. Not to mention, many consoles have been plagued with games that are absolute crud. Players deserve better than this, but unfortunately, many companies are forced to quicky churn out games to make a console look as tho it has an "impressive" library of many games - all in the attempt to attract players to it. I was honestly surprised to see Sony penetrate and survive in a market which was, back in 1994, practically down to only two big players: Sega and Nintendo. Adding a 4th player (MS) into the fray would be interesting, but also reminiscent of the early 80s when every man and his dog tried to cash in on the video game "fad". And look what happened. Eventually, people gave up on consoles (and turned onto computers). The market crashed, and was rescued almost single handedly the next year with the American release of their NES unit. Perhaps what MS should be doing is staying out of the console market and perhaps concentate on new gaming ideas for the PC. I mean, their new X-Box would basically be a PC in its own right anyway. (Similar hardware, compatible operating systems) They already make the OS that runs the worlds best games machines - PCs(no flames from console lovers, please! - Im not against consoles, I just can't see them catching up with PCs, hardware or software wise), so why not put their effort into making it better for gaming instead of pouring a shitload into something which will probably be doomed from the start due to a combination of consumer's attitudes, market trends and the allowances of the target age group? I for one will be watching with great interest. MC.
Microsoft's Only motivation here would be to gather a stronger following for windows.
By 'giving' (ie losing money) this product to the consumers of the world, they obtain more eyes on more MS logos. Thats a Good Thing for microsoft... I think we all know that Microsoft is all marketing and no product.
Portability? Sure - as long as it's with a windows box.
Microsoft does not give a damn about royalties/licensing fees for games.. Its all about market share. One more person who will be more familiar with ms Windows and the ms interface, and generally associating ms with 'good times' - ie playing games.
Its all very similar to Mcdonalds losing vast amounts of money on happy meals (giving away toys at a loss to kids) or on the kids birthday parties.
This bring me to the subject of a rant - advertising targetted at children, but Im too tired to rant.
By 'giving' this to consumers, microsoft gains another user. Thats all they care about. Its one more user educated in the right (ie 'ms' way to do things.
Time for another Amiga story to drive this man over the edge!
the above comment shouldn't be marked flamebait. Offtopic perhaps, but the person shouldn't loose a karma point for that.
Some good to come of this might be a standardisation of PC joypads/joystick... IMHO Sony really missed out when they didn't use the PS2s USB ports for the controllers...
MS makes money selling the box. They don't have to sell it as a loss leader like the console companies do. They can lure the customers with cheaper games, althouh their box is not cheaper that Sony's. Why do I play PC games? BECAUSE THEY ARE CHEAPER, so much cheaper that many people prefer bying a budget PC to run them, even though even a budget PC costs three times the price of a modern console. Not to even mention the synergies of an X-Box owner to the greater PC culture.
MS makes money selling the OS. The game box supports their other Windows CE business, and MS can even opt for letting cloners take over the X-Box hardware business, just supplying the OS for them, like for other PCs. Microsoft is mostly in the accessories business filling holes that other manufactures don't fill, and educating the market to force feedback sticks etc... X-Box and accessories are not critical as hardware sales for MS. But they are magnificent way to expand and develop MS software target markets.
And last but least MS definitively makes money selling games. They are a big player in PC gaming, and they hope to be big in the global future of gaming. They need a wide platform population to exist, to win the game for game platforms, and win it to Windows CE.
(BTW, I think both Linux crowd, MS and Sony are all wrong. What we need is a virtual pseudocode OS/device/network/billing/security/authentication/ billing/copyright abstraction layer to develop games and all other software for all hardware platforms, and thus free hardware innovation. This is what Java promised, what Lucent's Inferno perfectly implemented, and what nobody has been able to market yet. But it will happen.)
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
Just think of this.... You are in the middle of a game...you have not had a chance to save since you beat the last boss and you are almost past this one.... you just beat him and then all of a sudden...THIS PROGRAM HAS PREFORMED AN ILLEGAL OPERATION... I can just see it now, the first console to have crashes. For the people that say PC's are better for games, they aren't. Ya you can patches and what not, but those are mostly needed because of the fact that the game won't work with your video card or your joystick. To run a game on computer you have to install it, to run it on a game console, you just pop it in and run it. Anywayz I'll leave it there.
I only have one question, who is going to make the x-box? Seriously.
Follow me on this. Traditionally, console companies have made little or no money (or even lost money) selling the system itself, but they make up for that in licensing fees and game sales.
As I understand it, Microsoft doesn't want to make the system because; a) they're a software company, and b) there's no money in it. They just want to produce a specification and license it to third-party manufacturers. So, I'm guessing here, Microsoft figures they'll make money licensing the spec and/or selling the OS for it and/or maybe selling some games for it.
So Microsoft is cool with this, and game manufacturers are cool with it, but what kind of company is going to manufacture and sell the console itself at a competitive price (i.e., little or no profit) against Sega, Sony, and Nintendo? The spec's I've seen for x-box aren't that much better than Playstation 2 or the mythical Nintendo Dolphin.
So seriously, who's going to make the system?
Disclaimer, I'm just a humble engineer, not an MBA or anything.
// TODO: fix sig
"Hey guys I'm just about to beat the last level in...The following program has commited a fatal runtime error and must be shut down. Hit anykey to close surrent....Damn"
If my experience with windows has any relation to the X-box, Microsoft is going to have to do some serious rethinking about their OS. I'm sure gamers aren't going to put up with having to keep restarting the X-box all the time just because it doesn't like something. The only time Playstation or N64 or dreamcast ever freeze is when a cd is scratched or you pull the cartridge out. The only good thing about using windows is that developers won't have to develop for another platform because most games are already made for Windows.
This is the typical M$ trick of preannouncing vapour to try to give people second thoughts about buying a competators product. It seem to me that this is clearly aimed at the playstation 2. Probably because it is not windows based and offers a real threat to them in functionality.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Meanwhile, this is another odd name choice for MS - the MS X-box - shortened to MSX - reminds me that failed MS-Japanese home-computer initiative of 10 or so years ago.
Still not as painful as WINCE tho. For a marketing firm they make some pretty strange name choices sometimes, don't they?
Regards, Ralph.
I fail to see how Windows can be any use for games, if it is optimised for enterprise computing. They are two different markets. I don't think they have the branding either.
DC games don't include a "copy of the OS" but may include a copy of DirectX SDK if it's needed. If a game wants to provide network support, it must use the WinCE/DirectX layer.
As to whether the WinCE layer was at fault for Sega Rally's poor performance - you'll have to ask the developers. It's easy to point a finger at WinCE, but it could have been the result of a hastily ported game. (not that I'm defending WinCE, though...)
I've seen several comparisons with other systems on various basis. One is that the clock speed is higher than the other systems, so it must be faster. Unfortunately, this thinking is BS. It is x86 architecture, and x86 based-chips are well-known for inefficiency with respect to clock. Clock speed and MIPS are meaningless across different architectures, and I'll wager 600MHz is beat out by the RISC competition.
Also, with using an x86 machine, what are they going to do aboutcooling? I know they'll probably require more fans (therfore more space) and be noisier than other consoles. I personally don't want my game system to be as loud as my computer.
One last thing, the Operating Syetm. This part will probably be redundant, but here goes. It is a poor choice. I assume they chose x86/windows for compatibility with PC games, which in itself doesn't seem too bad an idea, except that PC games will largely be designed around COmputer monitor resolutions, and other various computer niceness. It does make it easier for companies to port games, but most game companies when given the option of slower, but easy, and fast, but somewhat harder, seem to take the harder route just to have more spectacular effects than the competition. In any case, I've always felt Console systems to be the wrong place for *ANY* general purpose OS. Just provide an OS with *only* the features needed to run games, without the extra fluff that Business Apps, etc. would use. Maybe the Windows they release for it will be specialized, but then should it be called Windows, considering?
Well regardless, it won't see any of my money, I'll likely get a PS2, and *maybe* a dreamcast, but not an X-Box.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Do they REALLY think anyone would be interested to buy (regardless how cheap they make it) such a setup in Christmas 2001???
If I would be buying a gaming system today, 600Mhz P3 or Athlon would be about the bare minimum. On the console side it would be PS2. 1.5 years from now it will be SO outdated it's not even funny. Normal PC Gaming rigs will be generally running 1Ghz+ by late 2001, and we will already have the first rumors about the next generation of consoles, and if MS drops it's X-box into that market, with those specs, it will get creamed.
Now if they would be talking Christmas 2000, and priced at around 200$, things would be different, but with Christmas 2001 launch date it sounds seriously underpowered piece of junk.
The Dreamcast was Sega's official last console system. They are changing to a software company.
Microsoft might have known this, because they were working with Sega to allow CE to run on the Dreamcast.
MS wanted into the market, and they know an opening is coming up soon. Whether they have anything good or not, there is room in the console market for three major players. Sony won't squash them, because they aren't worth it. Nintendo won't kill them, because they are much more worried about Sony and have lost most of their ability to do so. Sega is quitting the game anyway.
The end result is that MS has a WIDE opening. If they can get in and establish a beachhead in the console market, they aren't too worried about losing money right off the bat. The simple trick for them is to become good enough with their first console to stay in the running. Once they are a respected (?) name in console gaming, they can continue from there, because they are going to do their damnedest to make sure that anyone with an X-Box is hooked in some way and has to stay linked to them.
I am curious to see how they actually do it. Some of us may find the results are good enough to overcome our collective loathing of MS. Just because they usually make medocre products, doesn't mean they always do.
B. Elgin
B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
That is not the best thing to do in the console market. That, and there isn't the game that makes everyone go out to buy the damn machine. Mario sold in a 1:1 ratio with the N64, and FF7 (blows) was the reason Playstation gained on the Saturn. But the N64 isn't popular in Japan, so Japan companies don't want to make games just for the Americans. Honestly here. Japan seems to be a test market for America, like Pokemon and Tamagotchi and other things. Also, I just want to note that the PS2 "meltdowns" are similiar to the early Playstations in Japan and America, so all you people saying it will get better by then are just ignorant. They really didn't fix Gran Turismo, did they?
Someone tried to tell me that Sega's Dreamcast is based on Windows CE. Can anyone confim if this is true? Of course this guy is one of those people who knows absolutly nothing of digital electronics and, tries to make you think he knows everything. Still, he is a hell of a gamer and, does keep up to date with all this.
I think this box sounds pretty good, does anyone know if you will be able to play WINDOWS games or use microsoft periferals or any other periferals(ie: microsoft sidewinder force feedback pro or a microsoft game pad?) I cant wait for this box to come out.
XMas 2001? This is pure classic MS FUD. They'll be lucky to still be a single business entity by then, let alone launch a successful HW product.
Within 21 months we'll be seeing next-generation HW from the console makers, and you can bet that with this heads-up they'll be trying to make MS's offering look boorish.
Where's the prototype? I don't even want to get into the issues (or the resolutions thereafter). We're talking about 'dropping in a disk and going'...no hardware update. (Hell, this is this anti-thesis of Sony who's starting to ALLOW hardware expansion...)
Folks, this is pure vapor.
Someone's already questioned the business model, which is full of holes. But the question is why bring this up?
Someone's scared that Sony is going to pull developers from Windows is my only answer.
First off, to answer the question about the processor, it's an athalon.
Second, how is this supposed to compete with the new gaming consoles? Heck, you would think that the sun shines out Sony's ass with the way that some people talk about the playstation 2. Dolphin is sure to be an amazing piece of equipment.
MS, on the other hand, is realeasing a 600 MHz box that barely has enough RAM to run the operating system that is the only reason that it is being released. The only reason that this was built at all is so that MS could say that windows was actually used in a gaming platform. Heck, put linux on yours for all I care, it's just a computer that LACKS a few of the features that a good desktop system should have. Perhaps the copy of windows in it has been tweaked a bit for gameplay, but I don't see the advantage that this box could possibly have over a box running any of the newer chips, and SIGNIFICANTLY more memory.
Synopsis, want this box? Build your own, save some $$$, and get enough memory in the damn thing!
Eh...
I don't get what market the X-Box is going for. Nintendo and Sega pretty much exist thanks to their in-house development teams, and Sony has done well because it has been able to court 3rd parties very effectively (particularly that little company called Squaresoft). It seems that the X-Box's primary games will be ports, either from other consoles or from a PC.
Sony also owns Psygnosis (formerly an Amiga game developer). Psygnosis have been instrumental in making the PSX into a viable platform, by providing a steady flow of games early on and not supporting rivals.
If MS go through with this, expect them to buy out some game developers to support it; perhaps Electronic Arts or Infogrames or GT Interactive will fall to MS and cease supporting non-MS platforms.
Microsoft really doesnt know what its up against.. Its like a suburban meth dealer going to south central LA to sell crack.. The japanese already view americans as stupid (except for the women, they love white boys for some reason) In japan, the Macintosh has the greatest market share for whatever reason.. and their way of thinking is totally different.. Videogames are a part of the culture over there.. their way of thinking is totally different.. I may not fail here but if it succeeds over there Ill be very impressed
My question is:
If this X-Box scores high on the coolness value, will you Linux zealots purchase it, or boycott it simply because it is manufactured by Microsoft? Does a superior product win regardless of its origin?
man dont you guys get it? im sure all you programmers do. directx is the key to this X box. a MS standard for device/driver interaction with the prog..in other words you write for directx not a particular sound card, vid card, etc... so if you write this game under a "directx" port then that game ports to any directx capable machine..be it a console or a pc...shall i mention bleem? MS is doing it for them!! no bleem for Xbox on the PC will be neccessary. MS dont care if you buy that game and run it on xbox or windows...they win either way....the relationship between game developers and the console owners(MS, Sony, Nintendo etc) is the BIG difference here. how often have you wished you could play games on your pc or console using the one copy of the game? well here you go..course you have to use Winbloze on your PC...now will Sony or Sega do that? heres another interesting idea....maybe these Xboxes will let you upgrade them, and i mean Upgrade..swap out the cpu board add REAL memory etc....bigger HD's.. another idea....network your xbox into your existing winblozes or other tcpip LAN and play multiplayer games with it...see...MS can come at this from a PC perspective and not lose market share while Sony and the others have almost nothing to gain by marrying PC's and consoles..with them its either one or the other...at least MS can merge the two....im a pc gamer...but the xbox idea looks promising
swallow your soul!!!swallow your soul!!!-anonymous undead
The mods need to get a grip - this was not funny, just a typical Linux-user spreading FUD all around.
And let's not forget that Square has released both FF7 & 8 for the PC.
So how is this any different than a regular PC? And what will these console gamers do when they get a GPF in module kernel.exe?
//m
Flame me if you would like but seriously, why would you want a microsoft console system? They have enough to worry about before working on this. If it is anything like what is out from them now it will be crap (Windows (we wont' even touch CE), MSIE etc)
This is not insightful in the least. Get over your anti-MS bias.
Were talking the middle to end of next year folks. This system will be way outdated by then. Comparing timelines buying the X-Box with those specs next year is like saying someone is willing to sell you a computer (less monitor) that is a Celeron 300, 32 MB ram and a Rivia TNT card for $300 bucks today. Great deal, but for a gamer system a year from now I'll want a 1GHZ Processor, 128MB ram and a GeForce video card. By then the new games will require much more horsepower.
Then there is the games support. Sure you'll be able to run a plethora of old games and even sucky MS games but what about new games. MS had better cut some major deals with games software companied to provide new games that will attract customers. Personally I hoping that by the end of next year (two years away) I'll be conversing with Slashdot users via a highspeed connection in a virtual world. At a minumum I'll be waiting for good VR FPS games to play.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
This x-box will sell for more than PS2? MS won't control the software to make a profit? So where will the profit come from?
If this were a WebTV box MS could give it away with a 2-year subscription. That at least would make sense.
How is a cobbled together PC box going to act as a game console?
It has a hard drive! Why? Does this mean hard drive management and file corruption just like a PC? What fun!
It's an x86; that means cooling fans! Fans plus spinning hard drive means x-box will be a noisy annoyance sitting under the TV! They could have gone with Transmeta's Crusoe; low power consumption and no fans.
I don't get it.
Dude - they're not going to stick a full copy of Windows 2000 on there. It will probably be a version of WinCE that has been stripped down to it's base elements - Kernel, DirectX, not much else.
...It can be trivially one-upped. Haven't there been some cheap PeeCees that come preloaded with BeOS or Linux, in the $200-$300 range? Mainly intended for 'Net surfing, I think. Why not put a decent chipset in them and then use them for games?
The point is that anything they can do in hardware, someone else can do too. And anything they can do in software, anyone else can do a lot better. The only way Microsoft can prevent it is to make exclusive deals with all the 3D graphics chip makers to agree not to sell their chips to anyone else. Now, I wouldn't put that kind of move above Microsoft, but I don't think they can pull it off, these days. If someone like VA Linux decides that they like the idea of the X-Box, then Microsoft's X-Box is toast.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The specs on the X-box don't look too good for a 2001 release. By the time this machine hits the stores, there will be 1.5 to 2Ghz processors out there, specifically the Intel Pentium IV (Willamette) and Athlon Ultra, as well as a few processors down in that price range.
:)
By the time this machine comes out, you will be able to purchase a more powerful machine on Pricewatch for less money, with more RAM, a bigger HD, and also a faster DVD drive.
They made several bad decisions here:
1. 64MB Integrated RAM. Most of the super high-performance video cards don't share memory with the system RAM. This is a bad move, seeing as how video cards with their own RAM perform much better than integrated video, which is fine to use with your Compaq Presario on AOL, but not for any good 3d-gaming.
2. 600 Mhz processor? Considering the amount of processors that will be around in 2001 to whoop ass on the 600Mhz machines for a cheaper price, why?
3. Operating System? I'm thinking one thing here: Custom Windows 2000 Embedded. What better way to get developers to write code for the new operating system based on Win2K that is going to be replacing the crap Win 9x kernel? Why put bloatware on this box? Isn't that why most Dreamcast games don't use CE?
4. Ethernet only? Doesn't MS realize that most of America and the world don't have DSL, cable modems, or such? Just putting in a PCMCIA slot or even offer cartridge-based I/O expansion would be better! I think it would be very good to have options other than Fast Ethernet, such as wireless LAN, modem, integrated cable modem (so you have less wires), or even a GSM or CDMA connection. They need to think about other than North America here!
On the other hand, I look forward to Linux running on this box. If they can get it to run on the N64, obviously this isn't too far behind
But once game companies reverse engineered the copy protection (and of course in the process copied snippets of information, ie copyrighted stuff) and won in court partly because of those restrictive licenses they probably decided it wasnt such a good idea.
I believe Dreamcast has a royalty of $7 / title
sold; more if it is an in-house game.
If the average user buys ten games or
utilities during the life of the product,
that $70 is probably more than the hardware.
Sony is much bigger than MS & Cisco. (Over twice as big as MS.) GE is bigger, they're #5 on the Fortune 500. You shouldn't equate market capitalization with a corporation's actual worth. Amazon has a market capitalization of $23 billion, and they have yet to turn a profit.
I'm an OS/2 user, and we all see what the affect of MS preventing OEMs from preloading non-Microsoft operating systems will do. As far as I can tell, the main reason you can get Linux preloaded by an OEM today is because Microsoft's hands are currently tied due to the trial. Based on what they've done in the past(see the findings of fact from the trial), Microsoft would be forcing Dell and the rest to pay 3-4 times what they currently do for Windows BECAUSE they dared to sell a non-Microsoft offering preloaded on their systems. That's what Microsoft did to IBM in 95 because IBM preloaded Smartsuite instead of Office, and gave you a choice of OS/2 instead of Windows.
I really like the Microsoft split keyboard, however I purchased a 3rd party version because I refuse to support Microsoft's crusade against my freedom of choice(operating systems, browsers, etc).
and the big news is
a) it's an Intel Chip - they dumped AMD yesterday.
and
b) the NVIDIA chip does not exist yet. It's vapour. but they think it'll do 300 million polygons a second.
oh, and it comes out Autumn 2001 at an undisclosed price.
Will Sony continue to support microsoft by including Windows on its PCs? It doesn't make sence, but sony would have to unless they went to be/linux/macosX... Kinda weird huh.. No, microsoft isn't a monopoly.... /Aram
The good thing about the X-Box is that Carmack will never port Quake 3: Arena to it. That is, unless it supports OpenGL, which would go against Microsoft's strategic reasons for making the X-Box anyway (to lock people into their API's; the same reason they perverted Java). I don't see the X-Box doing too well, unless they aim it at young kiddies like Nintendo -- but young kiddies don't normally have access to DSL or Cable modems.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
For a laugh compare the EE to the SH-5, and after looking at the FLOP's and praising the EE for its superiority check out the relative gate count and power use and reconsider.
:) More programming challenges.
To me both chips look like unelegant quick hacks, but maybe its convoluted design with all the necessary micro-management is exactly what appeals to your developer roots
Strip out everything but the kernal, with OpenGL and perhaps networking?
Like all consoles, you will probably need to cryptographically sign your software some way to even load it.
Somebody who knows more about this of thing, please check me on this.
From what I understand, the box is going to just be an intel processor running Windows, and using some sort of Microsoft game API. Could we run Linux on this thing?
It seems to me all we would have to do is to get Linux loaded on a console and then write an API to emulate Microsoft's gaming API. Games that ventured outside the API would, of course, probably not work. Could one of the big distro's fund this API?
And why, I hear you asking, would we want to have the X-box run Linux and yet be otherwise identical to the Windows-driven X-box? Simple, if the game can run on a Linux-driven X-box, it can run on a Linux-driven desktop PC. Instantly, you have all those games that Linux was missing.
Microsoft is making a console out of x86 parts solely because that's the market they want to see expand into the console world - because that's the market they have an OS stranglehold on.
Don't kid yourself into thinking this XBox is actually up to the price/performance standards that the PSX2 is going to give you for a console machine.
You know what to do with the HELLO. ...
Help create an open-source world
I would like to know what a hugo can do, must be even better.
I dont remember seeing this kind of quality lighting and selfshadowing in any PSX2 demo's.
Hurm...Hasn't history shown that Microsoft is, at best, a mediocre game producer? It wasn't for lack of trying trying either. And this was on the Windows PC platform. The game console is a very different beast. Console developers probably aren't comfortable with buying new or updating their libraries or dev enviroment every quarter(read service pack).
I'm wondering if Microsoft plans to subsidize developers. No console has ever survived under heavy subsidizing and I really hope that Microsoft isn't planning to try this angle.
But then again, some of the doubts were the same when Sony decided to jump in. This will be interesting.
Sure as hell not nintendo or Sony. Sega needs more luck than m$ to make it that far IMO.
"The danger comes in the form of more games for a single platform -Windows-. Will the games for the MS box run on a Mac or a Linux box? No."
This is already the case now. You can't play Sega or Sony games on PCs or Macs without an emulator. Its rare a PC game is ported to Mac adn when it is it usually makes a mockery of Mac UI standards.
What I think is more likely to happen is the PC game market will fragment.
Think about it. The PC game market suffers from continual hardware/software updates and the resulting conflicts. PC game developers continually push the envelope on the latest hardware and software. X-Box comes in and eliminates this problem (possibly!) because it is a consistent hardware and software setup.
Game developers can either continue to push the envelope like they do now on PCs or publish to X-Box. Likely they'd develop a base setup to run on X-Box and add enhancements for the current (at the time) PC hardware. But if its too much work developers have to make a decision as to which to support. And the answer will be based on the market.
The real danger to other computer platforms is MS's pushing of ActiveX and abandonment of OpenGL. If X-Box does not support OpenGl and if it becomes a hit, then we're less likely to see ports of PC games to Mac and Linux.
But remember, in video games exclusive licensing and properties are the main draw. You won't see Crash Bandicoot on X-Box nor will you see Mario. MS's challenge in this regard is to get developers and licenses unique to their platform. If X-Box is compatible with PCs this will be even harder to do.
Well be on .15u by then, and a PIII/Athlon with integrated cache will be a rather tame design by then gate count and power wise.
Check out Quantum 3d's website for some heavy duty 3d using a "ruggedized" version of Win95 for arcade systems and high end simulations. They have sub- systems ($40,000 for the 32 CPU version) that can use up to 32 of the new VSA-100 chipsets (Voodoo 4/5) and it just rocks. I have flown a 35 million dollar Beoing 777 simulator (my brother's landlord is night security and has access) and there is very little difference in speed and quality between the two. The flight simulator does have adavantages in all the other areas of course. I haven't spent enough time with the Quantum 3d to see it crash but I have seen every other OS crash at least once including consoles. The real question is if they can build it as solid as other consoles. I believe they can IF they don't try to make it do more than it should.
Microsoft is the undisputed master of mass marketing consumer computer software and hardware to people. Microsoft doesn't join markets, it either takes control or creates new markets, for better or worse.
And as for profitability, show me where Sony is making a profit on the PS2 hardware. The licenses for software and hardware are where the money is at.
SP
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." - Voltaire
Dude, have you actually PLAYED the Battlezone game that Activision put out? Admittedly, not many did, but it was actually a rather cool game. A lot of people have put it on their "Top ten games that nobody played" list... I spent quite a few hours with it. A nice twist on the FPS/RTS type games we've seen lately - and the graphics were quite nice as a bonus.
InThane
When you are designing a plarform you want it to perform as well as possible! So why in the hell would they bother with CE?
Of course the games that use CE are going to be under-performers. When you write a game for an under-performing OS, what else can that game be?
They obviously new someone would try to remove the logo from the front of the system. Why else would they make it impossible to remove?
Well enough ranting. Thanks for the info.
New games coming out for it shouldn't have the litany of compatability problems, as they're aiming for a single piece of hardware. No "this game crashes out at this point, here's my configuration." "Ah, you have an certain NVIDIA card, you'll need to go back to the last driver to make it work with this game."
The most important thing is that 8 gig drive, though. PC's have a heavy advantage in certain areas. You can make games with complex controls, because there are lots of keys on the keyboards. And, as id discovered, additional user generated content sells games.
That drive should allow the download of additional levels and modifications, developed on PC's for games that have an existance on both systems.
I'll bet it helps out the Unreal engine to no end. Content is driven by UnrealScript, which compiles into machine independant bytecode, much like Java. So, if Unreal Tournament comes out for X-Box, you can download the most popular current mods, and won't get left out as new mods and levels come out.
Console FPS games have suffered by not having this capability.
Now if only the Linux version of UT would get patched to the latest level so my Linux box could play the Infiltration mod...
-- Chapman's Observation #1: Nothing is ever simple
see above
Yes, Quake is a common cry for the X-box, but why? Have you tried playing Quake on a shared monitor?
What, I ask you, would be the point? Driving games (Gran Turismo, as a for instance) are bad enough when you have to share the display area, but a game that requires the ability to sneak up on opponent. . . that element is utterly lacking when you're both looking at the same display. (Remember, kids, this thing comes with -four- controllers.)
Or maybe I'm just jaded b/c the resolution looks lousy compared to my monitor. And I have a hatred of Spyro the Dragon that rivals Barney the Dinosaur.
Rafe
V^^^^V
Rafe
Opinions expressed by the author may not actually exist in the wild.
I have three Battlezones:
A twenty year old Vectrex home console with a genuine vector screen (crusty, but still cool).
Activision's DirectX version. Terrible gameplay, uncontrollable vehicles, but beautiful to look at.
BattleZone for the Palm ! Best of the lot, noises, volcanoes and everything.
Circuit City is selling the I-Opener machines for $99. Flat screen LCD display, 180MHz pentium (not super fast), mouse, keyboard, 56K (non-win)modem, no ethernet, but can do PLIP over built in parallel port. The machine is preloaded with proprietary SW to be used with their internet appliance service. Just reformat the HD and install Linux. (Note, they "flipped" the IDE connector to "secure" people from using the machine for their own ends. Think upside down mirror image to understand the pinout. Not bad for a small footprint browser/terminal. The only real gotcha is the keyboard has no escape key!
x-box? I don't like the name, it makes it sound like it's running X. Doesn't it?
rbf aka pulsar
Can't you see this guy's point...if this friggin' X Box is, as we all suspect, just gonna be some sort of diskless workstation with a DVD drive in it, (after all it is a M$ product, their promises rarely even pass the "vapourware" phase), then a 600Mhz Intel processor based on the current technology level of the x86 architecture is gonna be seriously underpowered come Xmas 2001 when it comes to cutting edge gaming!
Its already begun.
Do you have any web-pages that go into this M$/nowonder and-or the 'cavedog explosion'?
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Although WinCE 3.0 is touted as real-time, it is still very new and I would have doubts about its viability in a real-time gaming environment. There is no tolerance for the "blue screen of death" in a gaming platform.
The designers of the PX2 and Nintendo have had the "application" in mind since the very beginning of the design cycle in order to provide the best performance/environment in which to play games. The winCE/x-box scenario has not been built with that in mind and I believe would fail in its attempt to provide a state of the art console. (Of course it could be just an attempt to completely control the hardware of the home PC market.)
I recall an inverview with a M$ representative about the Palm vs. WinCE machines discussing how with the Palm you could not write long emails with it. He completely missed the application for which the Palm was intended. I think the same will occur with the x-box.
In the console days of Atari 2600/5200, ColecoVision, Intellivision, Vectrex (still to date, the only home vector based game system!), etc. Computers were bland monochrome and *expensive* things with little in the way of graphics and sound. Around 84 cheaper color computers that could double as game machines like the C64, Atari 400/800, TI994A, the Tandy CoCo, etc. appeared and **OBSOLETED** the console market. People said why should I get this console for my kid when I can get this computer for a little more. He'll be able to play games *and* learn. So computer sales surged, and the console market died. The GAME market didn't die in 84, they just shifted to making computer games. Once the dust settled, Nintendo filled a void and marketed the NES. With no real competition at the time (the Atari 7800 came too late with not enough new games), the NES was a runaway hit in a vacuum market.
On three seperate computers I had from 96 to current day, win95 would be lucky to remain up for an hour at a time if it was being used. Win98 could usually go for 12 hours without major hemorages.
I currently have set a personal record for win9x uptime on one of my machines. My DUN ICS machine (win98se), which sits idle 95% of the time, has been up 12 days. It usually crashes (sitting idle) once every 2-3 days.
Windows NT 4.0 would usually crash once a week on me. I don't use it anymore because win98se is almost as stable and it does most of what I absolutely need it to. I haven't ever used win2k and I probably won't... I intend to do a major migration to linux once a distro comes out with KDE 2 & xfree 4.
I'm not saying M$ and their engineers have it easy, trying to create a stable OS for the horrible x86 architecture and all the various, low-quality hardware that makes it up. However, if a bunch of hobbyist programmers in their spare time can make linux into one of the most stable OS's around, on any architecture, then M$ could and should do better for what they charge.
Hopefully the x-box will die! I sure as hell don't want micro$haft trying to monopolize another market. Plus using an Intel P3, blech.. the thing should be called the evil-monopoly-game-BOX..
I don't understand why this was moderated down. Sure, the tone is a little harsh, but AC is right - Netscape is a total piece of shit. Buggy, poor support for standards (tables, anyone?), and slow.
/. attitude -- anyone against one of their "heroes" is moderated down. I can't believe you all support the company that tried to hoodwink the masses by selling NNTP server software for $1000/pop.
Typical
Posted anon (because I don't want to loose the karma when some 31337 71nuX 4aX0r gets a couple of mod points).
The info I heard a few weeks ago from the industries top stated that they are using a proprietary graphics card (emphasis on proprietary although I can't remember the actual developers name, but it's not one of the regulars) but their system, according to ms will can do 200 million pps- compare that to sony's claimed 75. I'm not sure if all of this was mentioned elsewhere or not, but anyway....
The X Box is the best thing to come out of M$ since the California MSN rebate money. Why you ask?
Well, game consoles are sold at a loss. Sega, Sony, Nintendo, it's at cost, or below cost. Maybe* when you start pumping 15 Million units a year do you start seeing money from console sales. It's all in the games. Getting a chunk of the game sales makes up for the loss of the console.
Okay, so MS will lose money if people don't buy the games...what does that get us? Well, let's look at eh X-Box. It's all standard PC stuff. Probally Micro ATX form factor. In fact it's probally the same system that ASUS sells to various US phone companies for their set top boxes.
So what does that get you? Add Linux, Mozilla, X Window. You're got a nice set top box that will run all the fun software from Loki, and has a good (non-MS) web browser to boot. Best of all MS took a bath on this because you're never going to buy a X-Box game.
It sounds like a joke, but it's not. I had assumed that the "X" in "X-box" was a mere placeholder. If it is the actual product name, there will be a *lot* of confusion between X Windows and "games" programming in 2002.
Microsoft has already preempted the term "Windows." Even in technical circles, refering to "MS Windows" elicits strange looks as most of the people wonder what other type of "windows" exist. Now they're trying to equate "X" with games programming - something you would never want associated with your mission critical backbone.
The simple fact is that "Windows" is a generic term which the X Consortium didn't challenge at the time -- but which Microsoft has been ruthless in defending as its own since then. Now Microsoft is trying to "embrace and extend" "X" with its own meaning. Given its history, I have no doubt they will vigorously prosecute anyone who tries to introduce "new" display software which includes the letter "X" but doesn't relate to their gaming software.
So What the Fsck are we supposed to call our display manager? In 2003, are we supposed to tell people that we run "SYSTEM", since Microsoft will sue into nonexistence anyone who uses the words "X" or "Windows"?! Or do we just go with "Version 11"?!
It sounds like a joke, but given Microsoft's legal history we can't laugh until after MS announces a different name for the product, its display system, etc. Because of history, neither the X Consortium or our community can easily dismiss the continued use of "X" as a mere coincidence. The legal trademark holder *must* ask Microsoft to find a different name since the proposed name is likely to cause massive confusion among the public and (non-Unix-centric) technical communities.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Well I have to be honest. After watching a demo via Quicktime of the Xbox, I have to admit its going to be fantastic. I later went on http://www.xbox.com and found that Xbox will do OVER 300 MILLION POLYGONS PER SECOND. Yes thats not a typo. Think of whatelse it can do as well, its from NVIDIA. The top of the line SGI workstations do around 350 Million Polygons per second. I certainly would NOT call this your ordinary PC. Check out the demo, it makes the PSX2 demo look like a cartoon. The graphics are even beyond the show "Re-BOOT"
Lets see, it's an iMac w/o a screen, in a year for $300. It can probably hook right into MS's gameservers, where it will make it's money.
It's something to shoot for. It's attainable.
Someone needs to develop a linux gamebox spec for embedded linux: Minimum CPU speed, graphic card hardware interface, sound card interface, port specs.
I really question the Reliability.
How many consoles need a hard drive? It's only another thing to go wrong. What happens when the hard drive get screwed? They need the hard drive for some reason... WebTV recording?
Folks,
I think EVERYBODY is missing the point here about XBox.
Given that XBox is more or less a variant of a standard x86-compatible desktop PC, there's one thing the hardware could become: a flat-out superb Linux gaming box.
It appears that an XBox machine could in theory run a slight-modified variant of most commercial Linux distributions as easily as the modified Windows Microsoft plans for this machine. So, instead of running DirectX, we'll use OpenGL to access the registers on the new nVidia chipset.
I have this sneaky feeling that as part of the settlement deal on the US v. Microsoft case, Microsoft will provide the specifications necessary to run gaming applications written completely in Linux on XBox.
BTW, for those who still think x86 PC's can't compete with console machines in terms of graphics quality for games, has anyone bothered to see Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, Team Fortress, Flight Simulator 2000, and others at 1600x1200 32-bit color using a graphics card that has the nVidia GeForce 256 chip? It is just flat-out STUNNING to look at, especially on a 19" or larger monitor.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
X-Box is a great idea for those who do not want a computer, but it will lack Console video game producers, like Square Soft for example. People who like Rpg's and console based games the Play Station 2 is a better idea for the chirstmas stocking
What if all the hype turns out to be true in fall 2001?
First, based on Nvidia's latest mantra of 6 months for every generation, it's likely that by Fall/Christmas 2001 it will have an affordable chip (NV3X) capable of pushing up to 300 M polygons, which doubles the PSX2's claim of 150 M polys. (Geforce claims 15 M polygons, performance more than doubles each generation according to the big N, we have 4 half years between Geforce and X-box giving more than 16 * 15 = 240 Million Poly performance).
Next, let's assume the 600 Mhz x86 compatible CPU isn't exactly your run-of the mill Athlon/PIII today. Instead, it's based on Sledgehammer or IA-64 (or for more hype, let's say it's a Transmeta Crusoe derivative) and it's running a stripped down version of 64-bit Win 2K. So it's possible that Bill's claim that X-box will double the performance of every next generation console is true. Then Bleem2! and DolphinHLE will easily emulate anything PSX2 or Nintendo can do even if we factor in a big performance hit from emulation. Then there's no need for any of the other consoles. Microsoft monopoly.
Is the hype true, or have I gone insane?
I heard a couple of games in development are System Crash Bandicoot, Test Hard Drive 6 and Capcom is working on a survival horror disk defragmenter. I just can't wait until people can download smart desktop updates in the middle of their games. Or get the newest version of Scandisk. I bet the specs will change one more time before it launches, and they lose the DVD part of it.
From the specs, it looks like a good desktop machine for low-level office workers. It's more than enough for the people who need only Word and a browser. It comes with a good LAN connection. It's cheap. And it will be easier to administer than a PC, since it has a fixed configuration. A lot of those boxes will end up in offices.
Forgive me for asking a question that's probably obvious to everyone else, but why does a game console need an OS at all?
All the OS does for a game is provide a uniform interface to non-uniform hardware, like DirectX does. All the rest of an OS's functions, scheduling, resource managment, etc are irrelevant when only one process (the game) is running. Also, a console is uniform! One X-box will have the same sound and video hardware as another, why bother abstracting the hardware? All it can possible do is add more complexity and slow down the game. In this case it would seem to me that one library could provide the same functionality as an entire OS, with a fraction of the system overhead.
0 1 - just my two bits
Can you post some pointers to info on running Linux with the i-opener? I-opener comes with the service, and I believe you have to pay the monthly fee to be able to keep the system.
If this is true, I would gladly pay $99 to get an LCD X-terminal of sorts.
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We don't make any editorial decisions about these sorts of things whatsoever.
Eric
Want to work at Transmeta? Hedgefund.net? Priceline?
Can your IM do this?
Xbox? What about Assbox?
Does anyone elses dreamcast crash all the time becuase mine does. Half the time when i tryo to load NBA basketball the thing locks up. This in not what I expected from a 400 dollar came system. Looks like WinCE can't hack it.
...are there any knowedgable "freedom-type" people who are familiar with the various console-type machines? what do you think the possibility would be of getting a freedom os (linux,bsd,solaris,osx,even beos or ???) running on this thing?
i sure hope so. i'm one of those people who hates microsoft not because of crashes or innovation issues, but because of my upbringing. well, there's also the incredibly stupid things microsoft people tend to say, like ballmer in this article:
"...we're still a software company, we're not a hardware company". what a fscking moron. it's hardware, fool! what about your bloody keyboards and mice? is there some kind of faerie that travels to mshaft people's home at night and replaces their brains with turds or something? or are they just born that way?
but i digress. i tend to dislike all microsoft products and people strictly because i beleive a company that has 90+% market share will always abuse their customers and halt innovation at some point. even if mshaft were an exception (i think there is plenty of evidence that they aren't) i would reject their products strictly on the historical behavior of other monopolies. might DOES NOT make right, and absolute power does tend to corrupt absolutely.
i would buy one of these X-boxes (love the code name) in a second if it ran linux or bsd! does anyone know if this will be like the apple or sgi vw's (where there are fpga lookin' things that you just can't get past w/o docs?)
will we have to wait for some of the euro people to reverse engineer drivers? i'm so impressed with european programmers. anders heljsborg(delphi), linus(penguin os), ???(dvd hacker), the kde people (even though i hate qt, i wish it was truly free), alan cox. americans can crank a lot of stuff out, but there is something magic about europeans, a fantastic mix of freedom, love and subtle details in their engineering that seems to elude most others. i love you guys, man!
i think mshaft will be able to stop americans from breaking in via the law, but i think the euro hackers might be able to do it, with or without docs. i hope so.
Details here. As for being "required to use their sevice to keep the machine" Circuit City never ID'd me on my cash purchase. Iopener assumes their machine will work only with their service and ID's you when you use it to sign up.
It sounds like a joke, but given Microsoft's legal history we can't laugh until after MS announces a different name for the product, its display system, etc. Because of history, neither the X Consortium or our community can easily dismiss the continued use of "X" as a mere coincidence. The legal trademark holder *must* ask Microsoft to find a different name since the proposed name is likely to cause massive confusion among the public and (non-Unix-centric) technical communities.
IANAL, but... I seem to recall that this isn't as obvious a statement, legally, as it looks. The argument can be made by Microsoft that these two products are in totally different categories, and thus not in direct competition. X-Windows is a graphical shell. X-Box is a video game console. Even a conspiracy-lover such as myself can look at that and find the connection between the two a bit dubious.
Then again, I see a lot of this now, and in the future, and sometimes in the other direction. The company I work for just changed their name to The iSpark Group. (I mentioned upon its announcement that it looked like 'iMac' and was thus rather misleading, distasteful, trendy, and amateurish... and all I got back was a blank stare. At least it's a great company despite the name.)
Long and short, X is a letter of the alphabet, and more than the flood of 'iThis' and 'eThat' and 'vTheOther' monikers, it's generic yet with impressive customer response. If there were no X-Windows, X-Box would still be a great name, and a likely one for them to pick. (Just like X-Files, X-Men, and X-acto. Wait, I smell lawsuit.... *grin*)
A digital picture is worth 0x01F4 dwords. - Jessie Tracer / Electric Keet
I would have moderated this post up, but I already posted. Why isn't this a Slashdot article? Or did I miss it? I think this hack deserves to be a seperate Slashdot article more than the Promise UltraATA/RAID hack.
If only the i-opener had a PCMCIA slot! An i-opener for $99 + a $70 Aviator 2.4 IEEE 802.11 wireless card + a small 2.5" laptop HD = wireless LCD net terminal running Linux for under $300!! If any parallel-to-Ethernet adapters are working well with Linux, I will buy one and give this a try.
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A digital picture is worth 0x01F4 dwords. - Jessie Tracer / Electric Keet
I haven't been able to find any comments that make this specific point --
It's pretty clear to me that The X-Box is Microsoft's defense to the PSX2. I don't think MS just woke up one day and decided it was going to get into the gaming console business. I think it realized the computer-like capabilties that the PSX2 has, along with the raw power and brand/marketing presence of Sony -- and saw a recipe for disaster. PSX2 could take major chunks out of MS in the consumer market. It's a threat to their monopoly.
The real concern here is that Microsoft could further limit choice in the consumer electronics world. Up until now, if one got too fed up with trying to get PC games to work, or the type of games offered for PCs, one could pick up a conole for a couple hundred bucks, and leave DirectX hell behind. The X-Box seeks to extend the cloud of darkness into the console world. In 12-18 months, I could see Microsoft begin to manipulate the press and public opinion, and convince people that the X-Box is gaining on the PSX2, and that more people are choosing it because it is Windows-based, yadda yadda. This feeds on itself, of course. These are all the same tatics used to spread NT.
However, I suspect some problems may arise when PC developers start to port their games to X-Box, and realize that they can't just leave things out, or bugs in, and ask people to get updates later. That's just not acceptable in the console world.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
X is a *lot* more than a "graphical shell." Consider the fact that essentially all graphical display on Linux (and Unix and *BSD) systems use X. Alternatives exist (SVGA, GGI), but few applications use them.
Anyway, under trademark law the real issue is if the names will cause any reasonable person to be confused. Nobody will confuse United Airlines and United Van Lines, but "X programming" suddenly means both X Windows programming and X-Box programming. Microsoft will undoubtably avoid it, but people writing code for the X-Box will naturally refer to it as "X Windows" programming, since it's Windows programming for the X-Box platform.
This isn't an abstract worry - one of my professional hats is X/Motif programming and I know that a lot of technical recruiters already confuse "X Windows" and "[MS] Windows." This new platform will only make it worse.
All of this ignores the fact that the law doesn't make the fine distinctions you assume. To the lawyers, computers are computers are computers, so (IIRC) it's infringement to have similar names on both hardward and software. I believe that Chris Carter could even make a valid claim that "X-Box, the entertainment device" conflicts with "X-Files, the entertainment programming" because of the likely confusion if/when approached another vendor for an X-Files game.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Considering MS vast stocks aquisitions in the "cable-coes" lately i fear the X-box is the first step in bringing "The MS Network" in the "average family" household. MS is already a "commercial partner" with cable provider in many occidental countries: their job will be to provide the backbone necessary to hook-up the X-Box to big brother... Why not make low cost PC's then...? Timidity in the means at this point might be necessary not to worsen the situation with the DOJ. my .02$ D
An x86 processor, gee I wonder how long until someone makes a X-Box emulator. This console is going to be interesting purely for the WAREZ value.
Atari began as a gaming company and tried to become
a computer computer company. It had a respectable share of the PC market for a few years.
Now the tide is coming the other way- a computer company morphing into a game company.
If it's an x86 based platform, usign DirectX, wouldn't it be easy to emulate the console and run them on a PC? Infact, would you even have to emulate anything, or just get a copy of the X-box's BIOS? I really don't understand the purpose of an x86 based console. It seems to me it would make more sense to just get a PC and have a more flexible machine if I am going to put up with all of x86's limitations. Am I missing something here?
Dionysus vs, Socrates! The greatest battle of all time!
I'm not sure I understand what's wrong with lookalike hardware? The PC industry is full of lookalike hardware and it's been a huge success. The competition has been great.
The problem with closed systems is that vendors will rely on their monopolies to guarantee them a market instead of providing the best possible product. Clearly the monopoly is in the best interest of the company that holds it (ie. Sony) but everybody else loses: the consumer, game manufacturers, and other console manufacturers.
Of course, as long as there are several strong players in the market (ie. Nintendo, Sega) Sony's monopoly is limited to Playstations, not game consoles in general. It's still bad, but not nearly as big a problem as Microsoft which has a lock on the desktop market as a whole.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
But the fact is that Sega (believe it or not) will be spinnning off several companies to develop games for the PS2. This is a very smart move on Sega's part since they have never been able to seriously compete in terms of hardware, yet make some pretty decent game titles.
Good point... MS hardware does tend to be good. I have a MS Sidewinder joystick and two MS Intellimice. I like that wheel. And of course, check out 'imwheel' for X (Window, not Box... big difference).
btw, it's a "modified Windows". Most likely Win98 w/ some junk removed and a few little things changed.
ok guys so far i have bought 3 of the units and all have been modded to run linux (you have to add a 2.5" hard drive) they are a little slow ~80bogomips but if you change the CPU to a intel 200 non mmx 3.4v core the bogomips go up x3 i will update my page soon.. codeman http://linux-hacker.net/iopener there is no contract to sign when you buy it!!
That's FUD and bullshit. Sega spun off SegaSoft, and what happened to them? You don't seriously think any of the AM divisions, Yu Suzuki, Yuji Naka, or Sonic Team will ever touch non-Sega hardware, do you?
Fear - The timing of the announcement is no accident. Uncertainty - I for one am uncertain. Will X-Box games need to be "installed" (that would be death) Doubt - I don't think that this machine will effect Japanese PS2 sales. - Sony needs some competition. Nintendo certainly isn't doing anything. Last week: Sony launches PS2, Microsoft announces X-Box, Nintendo settles law suit about "Mario Party Gloves". Equality?
Some more corrections/thoughts that seem to have gotten missed in this discussion so far:
1) It's not necessarily an AMD chip
Many of you seem to be under the impression that the X-Box will be using an Athlon variant (presumably a Spitfire), but the name of the CPU vendor was conspiciously left out of today's announcement. Indeed, according to this article at C|Net, MS has decided to go with Intel for the CPU instead of AMD as earlier rumored.
If I had to guess, I'd say this means a 600 MHz Coppermine modified to support Willamette's new SSE2 instructions, which look quite impressive. (Although the most impressive things I've read about them (see this article at Ace's) are in regards to their double-precision SIMD performance, and IIRC games almost always use single-precision floats.)
This makes sense because two of Willamette's other signature features--a 20-stage deep pipeline and a double-pumped ALU--don't make sense here; games don't need much in the way of integer performance, and the deep pipeline is only good for increasing clock speed (indeed, clockspeed being equal, it slows things down)--and is definitely not necessary to reach 600 MHz.
On the other hand, Willamette's "400 MHz" (really quad-pumped 100 MHz) bus might not be such a bad idea for a next-gen console. Indeed, it might be just the thing to keep the NV15 based graphics chip full of data. The problem, of course, is cost, cost, cost. Which leads me to my next point:
2) 600MHz isn't such a bad decision
Yeah, I know that by the time this thing comes out, new PC's will be sporting 2 GHz Willamettes and 1.8 GHz Athlons. However, there's one problem with all y'all going around saying that that means that the X-Box should have a much faster chip too; those 2 GHz chips are going to be selling for something like $800-$1000 a piece.
And then there's the problem of how chips are normally clocked versus how they need to be clocked for a fixed-spec market like a console. You see, when Intel (or AMD, or whoever) makes a chip, they don't stick a clock multiplier on it until it's done. They make the chip, then test it to see how fast it can reliably run (this depends on lots of factors, among them the quality of the particular piece of silicon; there's no way to definitively know this number without actually testing it), and then stick on a multiplier such that it runs at that speed (actually a speed bin or two lower, just to be safe). This means that some (very very very small) percentage of P3's ends up being smacked with a 10x multiplier and being sold as a 1GHz chip; some get an 8x multiplier and are sold at 800MHz; and some--but just a few--can't manage to run reliably at even 600 MHz (or whatever the lowest speed P3's are sold at these days is), and are tossed in the trash).
Now the thing is, all of this probability stuff is built into the price. You see, it costs Intel exactly the same--around $70, IIRC--to make that one chip that ends up being branded at 1 GHz as it does to make the one that gets sold at 600 MHz. The difference is, it takes a whole lot of chips before they make one that's good enough to run at 1 Ghz. And a bunch of them are lost to the trash bin along the way. That's why they charge different amounts for the faster chip--to make up for the fact that they're harder (but *not* more expensive) to make. And that's (partially) why even the cheapest P3's still cost about $200--far more than the cost to fab each particular one.
In the console market, though, that little trick just doesn't work. When you're fabbing CPU's for the X-Box, either it runs at 600MHz, or you throw it away. Furthermore, since the entire thing is only going to cost $300, the CPU better not cost more than, say, $35 or $40; after all, that $300 has to include 64 MB of (possibly Rambus??) RAM, the graphics chip you're buying from NVidia, which itself will have probably 32 MB and possible 64 MB of RAM (possibly DDR RAM); an 8 GB hard drive, a DVD drive, a motherboard, a stylish case, a controller, possibly a keyboard, probably pretty impressive sound support, and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting. Point being, you want to make sure you can make these chips run at 600 MHz with *very high yields* in comparison to the yields that Intel and AMD normally achieve.
Furthermore, with a kickass graphics chip (and especially one that has hardware T&L like the GeForce does and the NV15 will) the speed of the CPU is much less important. Indeed, as Kyle over at HardOCP showed (check here and here), with today's fastest chips, in real-world conditions it is sometimes faster to run with a GeForce's Hardware T&L turned *off* (i.e. so the CPU calculates T&L) than with it on! On the other hand, that same GeForce, when paired with a mediocre CPU, speeds things up tremendously. Of course, the T&L in the NV15 will be considerably improved, such that it will no doubt be a great help when paired with that 600 MHz chip. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's a waste when paired with those 2 GHz Willamettes everyone wants in the X-Box instead.
3) The X-Box will perform identically to a 600 MHz / 64 MB RAM PC of today--i.e. worse than a PS2
Absolutely definitely maybe not.
First the absolutely not: the real guts of the X-Box is not its 600 MHz CPU, but rather its NVidia based graphics chip. Even today, a pretty slow Celeron with a kickass graphics card--i.e. a DDR GeForce--will be pretty competitive with the latest Ghz P3 with a very respectible graphics card, say a Matrox G400, when it comes to running games. Indeed, in many situations (i.e. at high resolutions), it will run just as fast as that Ghz P3 with the same kickass GeForce--and much faster than the P3 with the Matrox--because at high resolutions (i.e. 1280 and 1600), the limiting factor is always the fill-rate of the video card. Course, this doesn't help if you're running at TV resolution, but you get my point: for games, the video card is *more* important than the CPU--and the GPU in the X-Box will be much better than any graphics card on the market today.
Next, the definitely: the X-Box, like all consoles, will only come in one spec. That means game developers can program their games knowing exactly what they'll be running on--and taking full advantage of that as much as possible. This means, amongst other things, that they won't have to design their games to look adequate across a wide range of resolutions and graphical detail levels, but can instead concentrate on making it look good and run fast at the one graphical level it will be run on. Secondly, this means that, like on any other console, developers will be able to dip below the API level and reap the speed benefits that come from being able to program a much lower levels, including hand-tuning important graphical code at the register-level in the GPU. This can only be done when you know that the specs of the machines that will run your game are all identical.
Now for the maybe: one of the major "points" of the X-Box is that it will be nearly compatible with normal PCs, which of course come in all shapes and flavors. The difficulty here is that, in order to maintain this compatibility, developers would need to stay at the API level, and would need to design their games from a hardware-agnostic point of view, which would remove most of the benefits of uniformity I just mentioned. However, I'd guess that what will most likely happen is that developers will keep most of their code at the D3D level, but still optimize the most important routines for the X-Box's GPU. The end result will be that X-Box games *will not* run on PC's (although PC games might run on X-Box??), but that it will still be considerably easier to port PC games to X-Box than to any other console. On the other hand, it's reportedly very easy to port PC games to the PS2, so maybe this advantage isn't as great as MS banked on. In any case, it's important to note that it's this same loss of the benefits of uniformity which has lead to almost no Dreamcast games making use of the Dreamcast's ability to run WinCE and hence pseudo-D3D. Indeed, I believe that MS has officially withdrawn their WinCE support of Dreamcast due to a complete and total lack of interest from Dreamcast developers.
4) It's Windows, and it's a PC, so it will be confusing, take forever to boot, and crash like crazy
This is almost certainly wrong. For one thing, the X-Box will be running a version of what up to now has been called Embedded NT--which should be extremely stipped down and quite reliable, as well as offering very short boot times. (Reportedly the PS2's boot time is quite long for a console--on the order of 5 seconds or so.) Furthermore, probably most Windows crashes come as a result of either bad drivers--which should never happen on a standardized machine like the X-Box--or as a result of problems with memory management of legacy code--again, no problem since there will be none--or with multitasking apps not behaving themselves--which won't be a problem since the X-Box will only run one thing at a time. Furthermore, 64 MB of RAM should be more than adequate, considering the lack of multitasking and the fact that the OS will be much much leaner than normal Windows or NT.
On the other hand, I have to say that the prospect of an 8-gig hard drive scares me a bit, if nothing else than because it offers the possibility of quite a lot more complexity and variations in end-users' actual setups. I doubt MS will allow anything like DLL hell to manifest itself, though; I'm sure the X-Box OS will keep every program's DLLs seperate and well managed, especially since this is a (more like the) feature of MS's upcoming-and-stupidly-named Windows ME.
Phew. So--do I think the X-Box will be phenomenally successful? No, not really, I don't. While I do believe that it will be more powerful that the PS2 on a theoretical level, I don't know if the difference will shine through in the games. Basically, there are two possibilities: most X-Box developers will try to keep their games as trivial ports from their PC counterparts, in which case they won't be able to take advantage of the uniformity of having a single machine to develop for, and thus the PS2 will be more impressive, or X-Box developers will try to "program to the metal", in which case they will be a year behind on the learning curve of low level programming, and thus their games will probably never decisively beat what's coming out for PS2 at the same time.
On the other hand, I think that it just might be successful (depends on if the PS2 actually conquers the world beforehand, as many predict), and I'd give it about equal odds to succeed as, say, Nintendo's Dolphin.
Ugh, I know it's awful style to reply to my own comment (almost as bad as posting such a long-ass comment in the first place), but I found some mighty interesting X-Box info in this item at firingsquad.
First off, the 64 MB of RAM is shared between the GPU and the motherboard--less than ideal, but it certainly makes sense from cost considerations. Second, the GPU will be running at 300 MHz, which pretty much kicks ass (current GeForces generally run about 150 in their default configs).
Finally, the CPU, while based on the P3 (read, probably no SSE2), *will* have the quad-pumped "400 MHz" bus off the Willamette, as they have its memory bandwidth listed as 6.4 GB/sec. That strongly hints at the inclusion of RDRAM, as it's the only stuff that can really take advantage of that kind of bandwidth.
The have its performance specs listed at 300 million particles/sec, 150 million transformed & lighted polys/sec (no effects). Not bad at all.
Ms advertises stability as if it was this revolutionary new aspect of an OS that they have been slavishly perfecting to the amazement of the computer industry. Well, that might be sort of it, I suppose. If win2000 is a stable as unix, I'm amazed, and good job to them. However, they have no right to act like a stable OS is something new and revolutionary...
Juln
As others have pointed out, this is _not_ a high end box for _this_ Chrismas - forget 2001. No, the real secret here is the _waiting_ - it allows this technology to age down the price curve, allows the anticipation to build, allows the FUD to force bad moves by the competition, and allows Microsoft to _float_ another mediocre idea that is then highly _polished_ by free design _criticism_. Look at the price of generic systems with these specs _today_ and you'll see that this box could be _shipping_ this Christmas for under $500 - can you say $199 with a three year commitment to MSN? The _wait_ is the thing - it's deliberate because it will also _benefit_ PC gaming by implication that by developing for the PC you - game developer - get an _advantage_ when it _finally ships_. I'll bet I can find an Office 2000 or Windows 2000 pre-press release from 1998 that you could use to build 80% of this by word substitution. If I were seriously targeting the end of next year then the specs would be at least _double_ everything listed except the hard drive would be in the 30 - 50 MB range - the irony is that a closed box really needs more cached storage space. This response has already consumed more cycles than all of us should give to this announcement. Wait for Release candidate 1 this time next year.
Every change is not progress, but there is no progress without change.
Market capitalization is how much capital the corporation has raised by selling stock. This doesn't usually equate to a corporation's worth. In Amazon's case (who has yet to post a quarter with a net profit), they have to use the capital for operating expenses and to cover their losses.
In order to "buy" a company, there are a couple ways. The first (and friendliest) way would be to negotiate with the company to buy them or merge with them and offer a bid, which the board and shareholders must accept. The second way is a hostile takeover, which means buying at least 51% of the company's stock (51% of market cap).
To find out how much the big corporations are really worth, check out the Fortune 500. It's updated annually, and based only on annual revenue.
From the 1999 Fortune 500:
GE #5 Revenue: $100.5B Profit: $9.3B Assets: $355.9B
MS #109 Revenue: $14.5B Profit: $4.5B Assets: $22.4B
Cisco #192 Revenue: $8.5B Profit: $1.4B Assets: $8.9B
Amazon's revenue and profit from their 1999 Income Statement, assets from their Balance Sheet:
Amazon (not in the Fortune 500) Revenue: $133.8M Profit: -$124.5M Assets: $1.8B
Maybe you should do a little more research next time.
Here are some photos from the launch
:)
If the final product looks something like the picture with the caption "X-Box", it almost makes the PS2 look boring.
Got BattleZone with my STB Velocity 128zx card. Recently got BattleZone II.
:-)
;-)
It is one of the better games on the market...
Back to the topic of X-box...
I have several Microsoft forcefeedback peripherials... Will they have a means of connecting them to the X-box?
I mean they are not exactly cheap ($130 each I think is the current price) and very good for what I play (FighterAce II, Combat/Flightsim 9x-2Kpro, Urban Assault, tons of driving games etc
The steering wheel's realism is good enough to help me vent need for speed at home or in my office and drive 65 on freeway. I've seen what happens when you speed through Chicago at 120mph in Midtown Madness
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Leonid S. Knyshov
Network Administrator
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
Bah!
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
Notice how no one brought up Linux but you? The X-Box will be competing against Dreamcast and PSX2, not Linux.
you are a fucking idiot!!!!
what if a FUCKING IDIOT like you get the fuck out of this place? that would be great!
WINDOWS ERROR X
Windows caused a fatal exception at address 00F5:0546 in program xboxfgl.crp
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Knowing Microsoft's history of Quality Assurance, would make me not buy it, plus, x86 processor, which is 32-bit is no match for 128-bit processors, such as Sony's Emotion Engine. Sure, the graphics processor is 128-bit, but that's all, it's still 32-bit!! Isn't 300mhz @ 128-bit (RISC/MIPS) equivalent to like... something greater than 600mhz @ 32-bit non RISC/MIPS? just my rant for the evening..
The main processor in most video game consoles is just a controller for other activites and the user interface of the game, i.e., load/save, etc. In particular the PS2 derives most of it's performance from the custom graphics coprocessors, and the important thing to remember is the bandwidth of the CPU is directly porportional to the number of instructions fetched from memory and the speed of that memory. The graphics coprocessors have 16Mb memory banks on the same silicon wafer with no external bus to get in the way. This kind of bandwidth has a significant impact on performance.
In the PC model, one fast processor does everything, and it usually uses external memory, from the standpoint of game consoles, this is neither how it is done, nor a good way to do it.
Within reason, I believe actual abilities will have little impact on the outcome of this race. Early and ongoing support of the Playstation is likely to steamroll it into many homes before the X-Box is even released. The X-box will really have to be something special to win out, moreover, MicroSoft will have to be prepared to dump a significant chunk of change into the X-box to get the level of support that the PS has, I'm not sure if they are going to be prepared to spend on this level to win. They may be after just a share of the market to help expand thier empire...
There are a number of Microsoft loyalists who seem to buy anything that Microsoft produces...I'm not sure if these people are also gamers, however, and I can't quite remember ever having seen a killer game come out of Microsoft games.
John
Speaking as someone who does moderate periodically, I'd disagree. That _was_ flamebait.
The hell it was. Its not my fault that you and the moron who moderated me down misunderstood what I said.
One sentence in particular:
"95% of Microsoft's OS releases are bug fixes, and the other 5% are featrues they stole from other people, but you have to pay for it!"
This implies that only 1 OS release in 20 adds functionality and that NONE of the functions they're adding are there own idea. Not just the good ideas they're adding, the bad ones too.
No, dumbass, I was still talking about Microsoft. i.e. 95% of Windows 2000 is made up of bug fixes to Win98 and NT 4, and the other 5% of Windows 2000 is made up of features copped from other os's.
Both of those statements are demostrably false, the comment's flamebait.
No, you just took it the wrong way. Keep in mind I was respond to someone who was bitching about how Linux is no better than WinXX because they both have a constant stream of patches and updates. I was just pointing out that you don't have to pay anything for Linux updates, while Microsoft expects you to periodically give them some money for theirs.