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Official Xbox XDK Details
SpoddySpice writes "Xbox365.com has released some interesting detailed specs about the X-Box" Talks about the UI, mentions that ether and a 56k modem will be supported, what media it will play, formats supported etc etc etc. Gives ya a good idea of where this thing is actually headed. Meanwhile I'm still deciding if I want a PS2, especially since it comes out within a couple days of the next Zelda.
This begs the question: who would want a computer that is simply disabled just to play games?
For $200, and with a DVD player to boot, I do.
Not all of us want the hassle of upgrading vidoecards, worrying about game configurations, etc.
If I can get the best of PC gaming for $200, plus a DVD player, minus the headaches, sign me up. And before you start talking about video resolution, there are some of us who don't mind being limited to 640 x 480 on a 35" tv. The Xbox will also support SVGA resolution, so if you want to play on a monitor you can get 1024 x 768.
I will not let my distaste for Microsoft's business practices get in the way of what I enjoy -- gaming. If they do the Xbox right, I will buy one. It's as simple as that. You can try and knock it all you want, but you'll be left behind crying.
As a registered X-Box developer, I feel obligated to make some corrections.
First of all, the graphics chipset in use in current X-Box prototypes is not simply a run-of-the-mill, off-the-shelf GeForce. The GeForce GPU we use has been modified to allow for what we like to call SMGP (the 'G' is for "Graphics"). The processor wil have four 600 mhz RAMDACs.
Secondly.. similarly to the DreamCast, we will be using a proprietary storage mechanism, which will hold 3.7 GB on a disc 3/4ths the size of a cd. It will be called the XD. As for storage, expect add-on storage periphials within months of the initial release. A bundled HDD at launch is a very real possibility.
The tech driving this thing is really flooring. It's allowed me and my colleagues to do things that we've only dreamed about, such as z-buffered photo-realistic graphic processing with FSAA.
In layman's terms: It kicks ass.
-PS2 CPU has a max. performance of 6.2GFLOPS (don't see XBox' PIII doing that). And the X-Box CPU has a 32bits architecture while the PS2 CPU is pure 128 bits and incorporates two 64-bit integer units (IU) with a 128-bit SIMD multi-media command unit, two independent floating point vector calculation units (VU0, VU1), an MPEG 2 decoder circuit (Image Processing Unit/IPU), high performance DMA controllers and the 32MB of DRAM onto one silicon chip. That's right, all that kewl shit is all implemented into the CPU. Now doesn't that sound a little bit better than that Pentium CPU on XBox? This means the PS2 is alot more powerful for physics engines, AI and accurate realistic visual effects (such as splashing water, explosions,...).
. html . XBox architecture sux compared to this, the XBox hardware will be maxed out in first generation titles and when PS2 gets through the 2nd generation games, PS2 games will look alot better than XBox games. Because the developers just have to get used to the new (and superior) architecture of the PS2 and dev kits need to be improved.
-PS2 has a parallel rendering engine that contains
a 2,560 bit wide data bus that is 20 times the size of leading PC-based graphics accelerators
-PS2 has the full screen anti-aliasing feature implemented on the display hardware. This means there is absolutely NO performance hit when using it. (developers didn't find this at first, that's why the first ps2 games look jagged)
And the 4MB of VRAM that's implemented on the Graphics Synthesizer, isn't really the VRAM. The VRAM is included in the 32MB of RAM on the EE. That 4MB on the GS is just cache with a 47GB/sec bandwidth. This means PS2 doesn't need external bandwidth for Z-buffering, rendering and framebuffer. It also means the the PS2 doesn't need videoRAM for framebuffer storage. For more info on the PS2 hardware compared to PC/XBox hardware, check out http://www.arstechnica.com/cpu/2q00/ps2/ps2vspc-1
CyBeR|CRASH
I agree. Jet Set Radio is the most innovative thing I've seen come out of the game industry in a long time. Sega's always trying new stuff, and that's what makes for a good, enjoyable game. The music, sfx, and graphics are all top notch.
Not to mention how fun it is to knock over that dumbass cop. ;>
why in all hell is /. falling for the same traps as the mainstream media, and devoting so much space to something that'll most likely go the way of NT (announced 3 years before it hit the shelves) ??
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Your argument is awesome. But, if what you say is true (and I think it is: one platform makes for stability through uniformity), then why "cripple" the computer? Why not just produce a full-fledged WinNT box (perhaps with an optional "easy cheesy" interface ala the MacOS's "easy finder" a few years back -- can't remember the name of it), but which box has the UNIFORMITY property?
Why dumb it down by default? I totally agree that uniformity is neato (for certain folks), but why not allow people to buy it as their main machine, as well?
Unless I am missing something, and this is the plan! Does anyone have a list of disabled features?
The other way of looking at it is this: They're forced (in order to make money) to accept ads that use DoubleClick. But that hasn't compromised their editorial stance on DoubleClick's behavior. Thus, instead of bitching constantly about these ads, maybe you should be applauding Slashdot's integrity.
Or something.
Too late. The PS2 is already stomping the PSX's early sales figures. Sega, by their own admission, is on their way out of the gaming market (and IMHO, it's about time). Nintendo seems to have carved themselves a niche catering to younger gamers, meaning the PS2 has more or less free reign in the rest of the market.
:)
I'm kinda happy about *that*.
It'd be nice if slashdot's topic system could
have multiple categories so my microsoft
filter could filter out all this stuff on the
X-box without filtering away neat stuff about
Loki.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
heh kool, so does that mean Joe A. ScriptKiddie could crack an X-Box and post pictures of nudes getting it on along with a blue screen background with IBM 8x16 VGA font lettering "wh4s up b1tch I 0wn3d j00r g4m3 5y573m mother fucker! 1llegal operation all the way to your while(1) { cli() }!" ? :)
the real at&t mix
No. We would think it was a pretty cool gaming system if it weren't Microsoft on it.
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Niklas Nordebo | nino at sonox.com | +46-708-405095
Also, keep in mind that XBox will be a typical closed-box game console. Microsoft knows exactly what hardware will be in the system, allowing them to test the hell out of one configuration. They don't have to worry about how an outdated Sprocketech EarBomber sound card interacts with the bleeding-edge Finkelstein Nuclear Armageddon 512 DDR-DVI-GT-R-Vspec video card.
Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel/Facing down the future coming fast - Rush
This sig intentionally left blank.
Some facts:
- No game consoles are open development platforms. You must be licensed by the console manufacturer to produce titles for that box.
- Japanese corporate business practices, for all you decry
Microsoft's foul play, makes MS look like flowers and
sunshine. Japanese corps, Sony no exception, can be
ruthlessly anti-competitive ESPECIALLY to foreign
competition.
Now if you put #1 and #2 together, you may start to appreciate why U.S. game developers are heralding the arrival of the X-Box. They've been in an anti-competitive situation for many years now, with the U.S. console market dominated by Japanese corporations. Game developers finally have a modern U.S. console to target, without the competitive problems they've been suffering.What it comes down to is that Microsoft's presence in this market is out-and-out good news for U.S. game developers. Period. That fact alone will change the nature of titles available for X-Box (and possibly PS2, through competition).
> In all other catagories (games are yet to be seen of course) XBox blows the competition away.
;)
Isn't that sort of a big-ass omission for a game machine?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
But more importantly than just setting the thing up is if it will play nicely with NAT (aka IPMasq and that Win98 Internet Connection Sharing thing). I suppose it'll use directplay which is IIRC UDP, which (also IIRC) doens't work through NAT without explicit port forwarding. Among other things this means that you'd have to change your firewall if you wanted to switch between playing a DirectPlay game on your computer and one on your X-Box (or you could switch the IPs, which would be just as much of a hassle).
I'd like to get a networked game console some day (I have an N64). I just hope that whenever they come out with these things they'll work right with NAT. I'd think that with proliferation of all the consumer-level out-of-box router-like things which accomplish what my 486 is accomplishing right now, there would be pressure for this to work. I guess we'll see; I don't have my hopes up.
B-U-N-G-I-E.
As a dedicated Mac user (don't laugh) I was disgusted to learn that the much beloved and often revolutionary BUNGIE software company had beenWhich means that HALO, which promised to be as revolutionary as Myth, will come out for the XBox only, and I'll never get to play.
Jerks.
What is supposed to mean?
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
> It won't crash randomly.
:)
Wanna bet?
How does MS plan on not supporting CD-Rs? Don't they read such that they're the same to a laser as a normal CD? I thought CD-RWs were a problem because they require a multiread laser or some such... And why the HELL do they not want to support redbook audio. That boggles my mind. To prevent folks from popping an xbox game in their cd player and listening to the soundtrack? (I assume they mean redbook formatted audio, because I don't think a dvd audio cd with standard cdda would conform to redbook standards) Boggles, Boggles Boggles. I guess if it does WMA in hardware, might be decentish, but whatever. I'm not holding my breath. *Pats his DC and his stack of CD-Rs ;)*
its a game console, not a computer. how are people going to find out the IP address of another X-Box? Why would people wanna do that? The only thing you'll probably be able to do with an X-Box is play some multiplayer game, run a web browser, and check some mail - just like a dreamcast. Let's not get too paranoid.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
The Dreamcast currently runs WinCE (as it's proudly mentioned on the machine) and I've never had a crash once with my DC... in fact, a the concept of a crashing dreamcast or console in general just makes giddy. Crashes happen because of hardware configurations that the developer of the OS wasn't prepared for. 1) I bet it's not just off-the-shelf Win2k. 2) I bet the components aren't off-the-shelf parts. 3) I bet MS knows EXACTLY what is going into this machine. Hence, I think we won't have any OS issues. Most likely, the OS will be completely invisible (ala Dreamcast.) Of course, that still won't stop all the microsoft-bigots from attack anything with the words Windows in it. -Nick
- Win32 API
- Microsoft Direct3D
- USB support
- TCP/IP based networking
And it is only missing such obvious things as services, hot docking, and -- multiple-procesor support. Hmmm...This begs the question: who would want a computer that is simply disabled just to play games?
With a system like the PSX2, or the Dreamcast, at least the buyer is assured that this system provides something that they do not already have. The separation between game console and computer has been distinct for some time now, and most gamers already have access to computers and consoles, and more often than not will prefer the console.
And of course this all seems to be part of a Microsoft plan to build up the rumors that the Xbox will be released 'real soon' just to scare some people from investing in a console such as the PSX2. I doubt that Microsoft will be successful in this venture, as many other companies already provide exactly what gamers want. Oh, and keep in mind that if you do decide to get the Xbox when (and if) it comes out, you'll be happily tied down in using Microsoft's multiplayer management.
-zavyman
Word is that Halo will still be coming out on Mac and PC. However, I imagine it'll be an Xbox-exclusive title for a few months... :P
Actually I don't see how they can, or even why they would have no CDR support. Isn't it standard? Or maybe they mean that you can't write cd's on it?
Are they going to release hardware specs at the register level? Will I be able to write code `straight to the metal' (as MS seem to be keen on calling it.)
If not then all XBox games are going to look very similar....
Does this mean scandisk will run if the XBox is not properly shut down? Well, I don't think the X-Box will need Scandisk. Since the kernel is in ROM, I don't think the box will be accessing the the hard drive actively, anyway.
.sigs are useless; it doesn't protect you from imposters.
There are several possible reasons (that I can think of):
.sigs are useless; it doesn't protect you from imposters.
Since the OS will probably be in ROM, 64 MB of RAM is a lot compared to other consoles.
If I were a mac owner, and if Halo were to be on par with (cough cough) Myth, I sure wouldn't miss it. Besides, you could always buy an X-Box... :)
you are an idiot. scsi isn't dead yet... and how is USB compared to scsi? LOL gimma break. if USB were so great, why don't we have usb cards with 10k rpm drives attached? HMMmmmm?
The benefit of scsi comes directly from removing the i/o from the system. That's why an ATA-66/100 card smokes so fast.
why the hell am I trying to explain the difference to you? you're clueless!
The price we pay for immortality... is death. Narnia The Great Fall
Why, praytail, would it take longer for games to boot?
...
...
Last I heard, the XBox is going to have only 64MB of RAM. Given that even though smart programmers will keep this in mind, the OS still has to swap a lot of data around using the hard drive. If the hard drive is full of config files and saved games, this may make loading the disk cache a bit slower.
Of course, they'll probably cover all of the bases and have some sort of set minimum amount of free space that must be available in order to prevent this from happening
... which begs an interesting question: what do they do when the hard disk gets fragmented?? Interesting
----- rL
Since the OS will probably be in ROM, 64 MB of RAM is a lot compared to other consoles.
The OS is stored in ROM and then decompressed into RAM when the machine is turned on.
----- rL
Games are stored on the CD in a proprietary format, and executable portions of the image have to be signed. And the article mentions that there are no DLL loads, fixups, or anything like that. So if a game wants to be patchable, it has to rewrite its image in RAM and handle all of the patch loading and storage itself. And if it isn't written with patch loading support in the first place, c'est la vie.
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
I don't think it would be necessary to screw around with the ROM chip. Since everything runs in kernel space, and the system is not multitasking, then all you'd really need to do is port LOADLIN. Just kick that fugly Win32 stuff out of RAM and move linux in.
One potential problem is that executable images are authenticated when loaded. And I'd bet that unsigned games won't be allowed.
As for why anyone would want to run linux on the xbox. Well, you could network it with your Dreamcast running NetBSD, of course!
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
The X Box does not yet exist.
Most crashes on Windows are because of faulty drivers. The XBox has ONE hardware configuration. Much harder to crash.
Mmmm.. Donuts
1) Apache is under the ASL, not the BSD license. However, the ASL is a BSD-style license. Is that what you meant?
2) "no need to respond to this," Screw you, Mr. Bigot.
3)" any opposing view is a
view for the squandering of freedom" If the freedom you are referring to is access to source and ability to modify it, and you are in support of this freedom, how does ensuring access to source in perpetuity (thus ensuring this freedom) squander the original freedom?
Some of the older (I believe -100x model) playstations would crash because they generated too much heat. I believe the fix for that was to flip your PS over for better cooling.
I for one will become extremely sick if advertisements of any kind is embedded into the game discs as one of those developer/publish/license/"and so on" bitmaps.
I'd bet anything you can't skip the display sequence as well.
Hey, that's not official yet ;)
:)
Project Dolphin will almost certainly be called StarCube (and I think the name 'StarRoad' for the network is a cool Super Mario World reference), but, I still will be amused if it's not actully called StarCube after all....
Nintendo have surprised us before
Just my rant-like thoughs...
"Once the system software has determined that the media contains an Xbox game, it loads the game developer bitmaps, publisher bitmaps, license bitmaps, and so on. These will be stored in a predetermined location on the DVD, will contain no executable code, and will be identified with a predefined schema. The system software will display these bitmaps sequentially, after the boot graphic and sound have appeared, while the game itself is being streamed from the DVD into RAM. As the game image is streamed into memory, the system software checks the signatures of each section of the image on the fly."
IMNSHO, you wouldn't want this crap to be hardwired into the OS. Not everyone has the same credits scheme (i.e. what if a game gets kicked through 3 developers before publication? It happens.) Furthermore, it says "bitmaps"..... strictly read, this means no movies/animations, which seems horribly backwards.
Looks like MS can't stop feature creep in a lil' ol' game console OS any more than it could in Win98+.
Xman
ok.. this may be something we've gone over before but with the potential breakup of microsoft into apps and os who gets the hardware? The mice and all well, flip a coin but the xbox has portions of the win2000/nt code and APIs as well as some other stuff. I'm only peripherally paying attention to the xbox now.. but who would own it? Apps or OS?
-
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Now for the compulsory:
Man! These suckers have ethernet on them! I can't wait until someone gets Linux up on one of these d00ds- can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?!?!?!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Windows 2000 has never crashed for me, ever since I have been using RC2. I have never had any type of freezing or crash, and i tax my system pretty harshly. Anyway, it is not impossible to crash a console at all.
Playstation would crash or freeze pretty nicely for me, but only in one game: Vigilante 8. I can reproduce the crashes pretty easily, go to Secret Base, play Coop with a max of opponents, then start launching nukes from the Silos, and make sure whoever is playing with you is blowing up the buildings or launching the planes. Also CD audio must be playing. I guarantee you will crash you playstation, getting a nice error message: OUT OF VRAM
Chairman and CEO Bainesoft Inc.
If you read the article, you would have noticed that the WinOS is embedded in ROM and then loaded into RAM. Sure, you could switch chips, but why go through the hassle? Would it even be worth it? That's the question.
How many regular Linux users have a dual-boot system so they can play games in Win32? I know several of the /. staff do, as well as many of my friends.
That evidence proves to me that porting Linux to the Xbox would be rather silly. It would be just like any other computer, except with output to NTSC/PAL. Would you want to run console-mode on a TV screen? Not to mention the pain in configuring X to match up with the custom NVidia chips.
As a games box, switching to Linux from the preexisting fully configured Windows setup would be a waste of effort. Sure, you would have novelty, but that's about it.
-Elendale (a bit scary too)
Karma burn coming
As i meta-troll again
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
In a recent article in Dobbs Programming Journal the author of an article on X-Box noted that Nvidia would supply an OpenGL API for the X-Box.
When the faults of a device are in external modules (e.g. badly-written games) I understand completely! However, with the exception of an actual computer (regretfully), I have vowed never to buy a device that runs on a windows kernel. Windows crashes SO often, and I have never had another device "crash", or at least what I considered to be a crash. My stereo never crashes. My telephone doesn't crash. I don't need a souped-up Microsoft Telephone running a Windows kernel to manage the input of wav files into the computerized voice mail system to ever crash. My bedside clock doesn't crash, and my digital camera doesn't crash. My PalmPilot has never crashed----although I understand that it can, although it is always due to a software issue---but not the OS. The point is, I'd stay away from anything, regardless how promising it looks, if the word Microsoft is within 10 feet of the packaging. -Adam
The Xbox will have Halo.
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Well, while I don't recollect the box actually crashing, I can tell you a story of a friend who's Win2k kernel disappeared one day for no apparent reason. Thats less of a crash then a terminal catastrophic falure though.
Most crashes are due to unknown hardware, dll conflicts, hardware conflicts, and (oh yeah) hardware assumtions. And any programmer out there has at least once uttered the phrase ,"Well it worked on my computer"
.dlls are or aren't installed.
:)
The X-box gets rid of this by eliminating alot of hardware uncertainty. They'll also lock down exactly what
Of course, this'll only take care of 99% of the BSOD's, but it's a good start.
Where they'll really run into problems is if the market gets flooded with 3rd party perpherials, but I imagine MS will keep this under control, and provide a mandatory Xbox certification at an affordable price
- My password is slashdot
Microsoft...affordable price... Bahahahaha!
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Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
And I have an old HP handheld PC running windows ce that hasnt crashed ever. And I've been using it non-stop for almost a year. I say WinCE is the most stable Windoze OS i've seen.
Some of the older (I believe -100x model) playstations would crash because they generated too much heat. I believe the fix for that was to flip your PS over for better cooling.
I can believe this, but in my case it was definately a crash. When I got to certain points in one game, if I made a particular move the Playstation hung, and nothing be a power-down reboot would get it back. Completely reproducible, and if I went on playing without causing the han, it would be fine for hours more of play.
Sailing over the event horizon
zelda is made by nintendo, and is only for the n64, and possibly for the dolphin.
As I recall from the original announcement of the Xbox (can't find the URL now), the thing will be incompatible with all the regular PC hardware. For example, it will sport a USB port but only "MS Xbox certified" USB hardware can be connected. It'll have all sorts of extendibility, but you'll have to pay the MS tax to get anything running on it.
I'm not much of a gamer, but for all my gaming needs I think I'll stick to my PCs.
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Besides the chance to introduce another 'X', is there a good reason to keep changing the acronym? There was, of course, the JDK, but one wishes that the software companies would just call them 'X-Box SDK' and 'Java SDK' respectively. The last thing programming needs is the profileration of more one use acronyms. Besides, what happens when they run out of letters?
Sincerely,
K
The crippled version of Win2K (I guess that makes it Win1K :-) is not worth anything. I think that the true value of the X-Box is in its being a tweaked and x86 compatible environment with useful and (hopefully) bug-free hardware. I don't think that special Linux porting efforts should even be necessary. Then what we'll get in the end is a nice & clean hardware with REAL operating system running on it. Ideal for Linux gaming, creating graphics and movies, and even being a file/ftp/http server / gateway / proxy and so on when it becomes totally obsolete. And all of it for the cost of half an average PC.
IIRC, the problem was that the heat would cause the spring holding the laser would go soft (ie, not be springy enough) so the laser was unable to focus on the CD. Turning your playstation upside down made the spring redundant and fixed the problem.
-Dead Lesbian Witches! Think about it!
Think about it. A machine with only 3.2 GB/s bandwidth can't sustain 6.2GFlops. Let's do 32 bit single precision fp. That's 4 bytes. Time 6.2 billion. Equals 24.8GB/s. Double this for double precision. The CPU simply will not ever reach projected peak performance. But that's besides the point.
The CPU only runs at 300 Mhz and is heavily optimized for vector style processing. Everything else suffers. Removing FP for the moment, the performance of the rest of the chip is no better than a PII at the same speed. Check comp.arch for more information.
The fullscreen anti-aliasing is cool but check out the XBox programming in the latest issue of Dr. Dobbs. The XBox pipeline is fully reconfigurable.
Think of it as Unix pipes. You're pluggin the output of one piece into the input of another. That sounds even cooler.
I doubt there will be much swapping, simply because, if you read the article, you would know that the virtual memory system is one of the features removed. 64MB of memory is still TWICE as much as the Playstation 2 and 32 times as much as the Playstation.
Quake uses UDP, yet I have no problems. What exactly do you mean?
Admittedly, last time I checked the price of CD-RW it was much more expensive than CD-R. It appears the price has dropped significantly.
Hmmm, the rental angle makes a lot of sense. I can imagine someone with a chipped Playstation doing this a lot with a CD-RW. This would make sense even if CD-RW was much more expensive (which, through the mericle of Slashdot I now know are pretty cheap) I can imagine games being released only as DVD, because it will probably be a while before DVD-R is as cheap as CD-R (it took CD-R forever to become a ubiquitous and cheap as it is).
In the console game business you fix all your bugs before you ship. I wish PC Game makers could do that (but its next to impossible due to the nature of the PC, almost no two are alike).
I figured the reason was that CD-Rs are a cheap easy way to make pirated games. I have a fairly old DVD-ROM which reads CD-Rs, so obviously they are purposefully disabiling it, either in software or on the hardware level. It supports CD-RW and DVD-R because these mediums are still relatively expensive (i.e. I will not just burn off a 12 dollar CD-RW for a friend, but I would a 50 cent CD-R without a second thought).
Anyway, If you want to host a game, you need to setup your firewall properly, not your X-Box.
Quake is certainly NOT TCP, I've been through the source code.
Nintendo? Sega? Sony? What's that?
Cut back to the present.
I'm sorry but this is just getting old.........
Geeky.org
All Things Geek
Geeky.org
I think its interesting that there is no CDR support, but there is support for CDRW and DVD-R.
Sometimes you by Force overwhelmed are.
How come none of the screen shots are BSOD?
Try loading the page in Opera. That's some weird shit.
I think it'd be more satisfying to buy the PS2 though, you can always buy Zelda later and it's harder to muster up $300 than to get a hold of $50 for Zelda.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
We'd all think this was a pretty cool gaming system if it weren't Microsoft behind it.
Help me through college please!
This "official document from Microsoft" certainly doesn't seem all that believable -- after all, once you take the drivers and user-mode support out of Win2K, what is the point of having it at all? The security vulnerabilities talked about by others here also make you wonder.
The stuff about the bitmaps on startup and "poking" the registers directly seems like junk to me. Has anyone actually used the word "poke" since BASIC anyway?
Time to wake up. Dreamcast has been dead for over a year now. No one is developing for it. No one. I make games, all my friends make games. EVERYONE is making games for the PS2. All the other teams in their companies are making games for the PS2.
As a CEO who will remain nameless said a year ago:
"Any effort spent on Dreamcast is effort lost on PS2"
PS2 is it. The big one. If you aren't working on PS2, you're no one in the industry. My last project didn't even CONSIDER Dreamcast, just PS2,Dolphin, and maybe XBox. And it would have been trivial to port to the Dreamcast. Not worth the minimal effort for a dead platform.
Enjoy you Dreamcast, keep it in good condition, it will be a collectors item very soon. Sell it on ebay to a console collector next year and buy some more PS2 games.
Put yourself in this mindset:
You are 13 years old. You can't afford a video game system or the games. Your parents can. Christmas is coming up soon, and so is your birthday. But they're only going to buy you one video game system.
You need to pick a system which is A) the most fun, B) will be supported for a couple years (forever to you) until you discover girls, and C) will impress your buddies and allow you to trade games with them.
On top of that, you make a decision 1) Get a Dreamcast now for your birthday, or 2) Wait until Christmas for a PSX2, or 3) Screw it and try to upsell your parents to buying a faster computer.
This is the most important thing in the world to you, and everything rides on making the right decision. So what do you do? You do lots of "research" and make up your mind. You then must spread all sorts of Advocacy and FUD to do your little bit to prove that you were right all along. Thanks to the Internet, you've got a big audience.
Heck, I'm not so old to forget how important the ColecoVision versus the Atari 5200 decision was. It was "Third Generation" -- nothing like it had ever been seen before! Then I grew up and forgot about it, and eventually remembered again and bought any video game system I ever wanted at flea markets, and watched the SNES vs Genesis and Jaguar vs 3D0 flame wars from afar. Somewhere on the net, I'm sure an Atari ST vs Amiga fire is still flickering...
all consoles operate in kernel mode. this is nothing new.
But unlike most game consoles, the X-Box has a high-speed network connection and a hard drive. Find a buffer overflow exploit in a game, and you're into the kernel. Wait until the script kiddies get going on this one.
first, let's suppose a game did have a buffer overflow problem. the presence of a hard drive will allow a game to be patched. also, you're assuming that the xbox devel tools don't do bounds checking.
And every X-Box is identical. Crack one, and you've cracked them all. It's a monoculture. The
distributed denial-of-service attack people are going to love the X-box. Millions of slaves on DSL lines, and no annoying sysadmins to interfere.
oh, so let's supppose you do crack one. the script kiddie is going to know the ip addresses of all the Xboxes? And all the owners of said xboxes are going to be playing the same game?
Me thinks you need to stop visiting 2600. you're starting to believe all the hype.
As a content creator type person I am understandably interested in these developments, and very curious about just how locked out I will be from this situation. Clearly the _trend_ is that only the Sonys of the world will get the licensing and 'encoding keys' to distribute to such a platform, but how far will it go? Will there be token means for J.Random Musician or Programmer to get their content onto the planned Home Entertainment System For All, or will it be strictly controlled? That'd be interesting because it would be an experiment- given that the ultra-huge corporations turn out a certain _style_ of media and content, how far would this go toward satisfying all of the people all of the time? My instinct says this is a backward step- like moving back to the predictability of network television after people have a taste of The Net. Of course, the Internet-savvy computer geek is NOT the prime target here- they're after the people who only have cable TV maybe, who have never experienced media as anything other than consumers. The goal is to blow them away with posh media so intensely that they don't notice it's basically one big alliance of conglomerates (MS/RIAA/MPAA/what have you) supplying ALL of it and blocking anyone else from access.
It only stands to reason that these big corporate conglomerates, in their frustrated attempts to fight consumer interests, would eventually notice that they can form alliances with each other to get what they want... informally, but effectively...
> I recently read in a NG about a doctor whose devices used Windows, and one day crashed mid-surgery!
You believe everything you read on usenet?
score -1, bullshit
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Think the X-Box is just a gaming platform?
.NET? To centralize Microsoft's application software. To run the programs, you need WinNT. So MS sells NT and Office.NET to corps to deploy in their network.
Think again.
Whats the point of
Now, since all the application processing is on the server, who needs an overpowered workstation to do MS-style work on? Bring in the X-Box! It's a semi-dumb terminal, cheap, and effective.
This completes the vicious cycle . . . . Microsoft sells the servers, the applications, AND the terminals, making money off of EVERY step.
Hmm, three-tired sales . . . . sounds suspiciously splittable into three companies.....
We're supposedly moving ever closer to convergence and internet appliances, but when oh when will these devices come with ethernet adapters? I only have one phone line, but with a 10.net subnet and DSL connection in my house, I feel it's a waste every time I attach a cable box, Tivo, or game system up to my analog line.
Can't these companies start at least coding their boxes with this kind of expandability in mind? Why should we have group playability on these machines running at transfer and latency speeds we stopped accepting 5 years ago?
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
Oops, I missed the bit about ethernet. Okay Mods, go easy, but the post still applies to all the *other* machines out there.
Go go xbox.
Kevin Fox
Kevin Fox
I played the next Zelda at E3 this year, and I didn't find anything special with it. It didn't grab my attention.
The PS2 however, now that thing blew me away. I spent a good majority of the convention playing all the PS2 games. It's quite impressive.
Well, Sega definitly had the best booth of the show (Sony's was tame in comparison), but I actually enjoyed the PS2 games a bit more.
I'll say that the DC had some great games on their end of the hall, but you have to admit the DC looked a bit dated compared to some of the games being presented on PS2.
Also, I was more referring to buying a sequal to a game on the old raged N64 vs buying a PS2, not buying a DC (though I'd still wait for a PS2 over getting a DC IMHO).
I have no doubt that PS2 will pick up steam. Every developer and their mother is writing games for it. Same can't be said for DC (where devs are jumping ship faster than you can say "Titanic").
Obviously, the really important thing about this brick is that MS will be selling it below cost. So when can we expect enough HW data to start cranking a Linux port?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
This is quite an interesting position for NVIDIA to be in. Observations
1) NVIDIA bases all its chips on the same driver model. This means that all its chips have similar registers/control sets.
2) NVIDIA doesn't release register-level specs.
3) Console developer's are almost required to give out register-level specs. The game developers love the ability to program directly to the metal (as shown by the fact that this Win2K runs apps in Ring0) and they do a much better job of finding uses for the hardware than the console developers do.
Point: If NVIDIA gives out the specs to this thing, then people can get to work writing driveres for non-Linux/Windows OSs. If NVIDIA doesn't give away specs, then they will get trounced by PS2 developers who find clever tricks to make the hardware do stuff it wasn't designed to. (For example, Crash3 on PSX uses transparency. Technically, PSX doesn't DO transparency.) Maybe they'll release the SDK under NDA?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Ah, but here is the beauty of it. At least you know that /. isn't being influenced by it's advertisers. I mean you see this on MaximumPC all the time. People post and advertisement for some product, and on the very next page is a review that spanks the product to all hell. It's a show of journalistic integrity, not hipocracy. A site's advertisements doesn't (and SHOULDN'T) having anything to do with the site's content.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I didn't consider it a troll spam. This guy had a reasonable point on the surface. Why does /. say one thing about a company, but through it's advertisements (which imply a sponsering of the product) say something else?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Nintendo can crash too. I've crashed supermario several times. Also in N64 I've frozen the system by jumping through certain places I shouldn't have been able to.. and it gets stuck in an infinite loop... All system are vulernable..windows just seems to be especially so... but from my expeirence 2000 is A LOT better... although moving around the network configuration settings and such has annoyed me greatly. Even though windows 2000 crashes less, I can still get way more done given a couple days on any *nix box. But I find vi blah.conf easier than wading through all kinds of gui.
I saw a demo of the xbox 3 weeks ago, and I was quite impressed. Especially since they were running on a fraction of what their final graphics capability will be. The chip they're currently using in the demo models, is two generations behind what they'll be releasing.
A lot of people assume that the XBox is just a pc in a different case, but it's not really. There have been several fundamental changes. Most have already been listed here, but one that I really like, is that the memory is shared with everything. The CPU, graphics processor, HD, and everything else share the same memory.
The article also mentions the Direct Music API which they've developed, which is another cool feature. Instead of looping over pre-recorded tracks, Direct Music will score music on the fly. So instead of having music fade out and in for the transition between scenes, it simply flows from one to the other. The demo showed this off as well. They went from rock to jazz to country to disco with impressive results.
The only thing the PS2 has on the XBox is that it's hitting the market first. In all other catagories (games are yet to be seen of course) XBox blows the competition away. Boy would it be cool to get one of the demo models though. The case is machined from one block of aluminum. At a $30k/each price tag though, I'll have to wait.
I don't know, man. If I were designing this box, I would only mount the HD when I had to. After I had finished writing my save game or whatever to the HD, i would hope that the machine would umount.
God forbid this would crash during a save. Who know what havoc that would cause (besides the obvious fact that I would go ballistic on the machine for losing 5 hours of my life..).
The thing that worries me is this: I can still play my sega genesis even after owning it for 8-9 years. My nintendo is kind of flaky, but it was pretty flaky when I bought it.. we all remember having to blow into the cartridges to get them to work, right? Now, the X-Box is using a hard disk. How many people here would like to bet that the HD of the XBox will still be working 8-9 years from when I buy it. Please raise your hands..
I didn't think so.
Rami
--
rJames.org - illustration
The X-box has a hard drive; depending on exactly how the boot process works, it might be possible to make something happen persistently.
But there's another approach. Each cracked box watches over a few other cracked boxes, and if a target goes down and then comes back up, it gets re-cracked immediately. Distributed persistence!
The obvious application is to use cracked X-boxes as Gnutella servers, each holding some fraction of the available content. This will spread pirated audio and video around the net in a viral way that the RIAA and MPAA will never be able to stop.
Remember, all you have to do is find a buffer overflow in a popular game, and you're in business. Non-protected OS, remember. Dumb.
The ConScript Registry is defining meanings for character codes in Unicode's private use area. Tengwar, Klingon, and several other scripts are represented.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
With inexpensive ($2 ea) CDRW media, you can erase and rewrite the media. Good for development (it's like the EPROMs used in cartridge game development) but also good for piracy. Rent a game, burn it, play it for a month without paying late fees. Rent another game, burn it, play it for half a year. Also replace "rent" with "borrow from a friend".
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
You now have an IP address with which to do what you will: spamming, DDoS/SlashDoS, etc.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
FAT32 file system
Does this mean scandisk will run if the XBox is not properly shut down?
The system will probably shut down correctly if the power button is pressed, I(?) just hope that the XBox doesn't hang on shutdown like Windows 98.
Monkey sense
The big problem for crackers would be finding a way to make any changes persistant. They could go to all the trouble of cracking a machine, but when the Xbox gets shut down a half-hour later, all is lost. When someone decides they're sick of Q3A and switches to Halo, all is lost.
You won't be able to install a root-kit or anything else that perpetuates when the machine is turned back on.
- My password is slashdot
Seeing as the X-Box is listed as being fitted with an etherenet port, I'm wondering if this will mean that multiplayer games will be playable across many platforms, eg if a Quake deathmatch betwen myself on my PC and my housemate on the X-Box. This is something that isn't available at the moment, simply because consoles and PCs are in seperate worlds.
This then means that LAN gamesplaying becomes much easier as there is no faffing about with configurations on each others' PCs and all that is needed is to cart around the console (and maybe a TV) - far easier than your average PC.
We're about to see an explosion in multiplayer gamesplaying- this in combination with the high-speed access which is now becoming available means that soon most if not all games will be multiplayer... The trend is already visible.
--
Said it couldn't last, said it wouldn't last... This is the last stand against tomorrow's world.
Microsoft will never learn that any product based on a Windows kernel will at one time or another crash. PS has never crashed, Nintendo has never crashed, but XBox most likely will at one point or another. Heart and anethesia monitors never crashed, but I recently read in a NG about a doctor whose devices used Windows, and one day crashed mid-surgery!
My Playstation used to crash. Now, admittedly this was much less common than on my Windows box, but it happened. Probably the fault of badly written games, but it used to hang solid occasionally.
The point being that there is no such thing as a computer that cannot crash - or at least not a computer that does anything useful or complex. Some combinations of hardware, software and application are certainly more stable than others, though. And I agree that using Windows 2000 as a base doesn't give me much confidence in the stability of the XBox. But until we can test the shipping hardware and software, its difficult to be sure.
Sailing over the event horizon
It's great and all if you can hook your cable modem up to your XBox and play away, but will it support home networks? If this thing can't be hooked up to a hub and used through a firewall/ipmasq box then it's going to be useless in a lot of homes. If it does, then good for Microsoft, because I believe that home network appliances are the future of computing/embedded devices/smart devices/whatever.
-Antipop
Fred Moody says that Windows 2000 is safer than Linux so I think there's nothing to worry about.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Microsoft will never learn that any product based on a Windows kernel will at one time or another crash. PS has never crashed, Nintendo has never crashed, but XBox most likely will at one point or another. Heart and anethesia monitors never crashed, but I recently read in a NG about a doctor whose devices used Windows, and one day crashed mid-surgery!
Surgery is one thing, but I don't think I can survive if an intense game of kill the space-ships is interrupted by a BSOD. And what's worse--the more games you install, the longer it will take to boot!
But unlike most game consoles, the X-Box has a high-speed network connection and a hard drive. Find a buffer overflow exploit in a game, and you're into the kernel. Wait until the script kiddies get going on this one.
And every X-Box is identical. Crack one, and you've cracked them all. It's a monoculture. The distributed denial-of-service attack people are going to love the X-box. Millions of slaves on DSL lines, and no annoying sysadmins to interfere.
I have run Win2k for 6 months without a crash. If anything XBox Win2k will be much more stable because it has been vastly simplified. There is only one hardware configuration.
Why, praytail, would it take longer for games to boot? The HDD is only used as a cache to store frequently accessed data and saved games. Games will still be mostly kept on the DVD (its only an 8 GB HD). Also, considering that I can load a saved game onto another X-Box, it can't store anything permanently on the HDD or I could not play my game anywhere else.
I have probably been successfully trolled, but many people do actually believe what you said, what a shame.