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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.
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...
Just because it's made from computer parts doesn't mean people will see it as a dumbed-down computer and expect more from it. The great thing about consoles, as has been pointed out endlessly, is that you insert the media, press the "on" button, and it goes. There's limited hardware, so compatibility is never an issue (nor is driver support, nor is keeping your console up to snuff so it can play the most current games). You don't ever have to touch the OS or any other applications yourself. It's dirt simple.
If MS can achieve the same thing with PC parts, nobody's going to care that they're PC parts. If it walks like a console and quacks like a console, it's a console.
> 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.
Incidentally, whether the Xbox "will be the most powerful" remains to be seen. So far, it is still vaporware, and there is a lot that can happen between now and whenever it sees the light of day.
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,
> Why dumb it down by default?
While it would be ultra-cool if they could ship a bulletproof fuzzy-happy-NT-in-a-box, it wouldn't work. Again...harsh truth time: most users are lusers, the rest are hackers and wannabes.
If you give Joe Schmedly a full NT to play with, sooner or later he'll trash it. Somehow. Probably the result of some bogus software downloaded from a dark corner of the web ("FREE porn! Just download and run this executable!" or "Upgrade to Netscape 9.07alpha2?") or equally bogus advice from an equally dubious web site ("5 easy steps to DOUBLE your download speed! [1] Run 'regedit.exe'..."). This puts us almost right back where we started...random boxen with bogus untrusted software.
On the other hand, there's the hackers (and h4x0rZ). Our job is to scam MS for a cheap PC a-la iOpener etc. How long before someone patches the real UI back on top of the fuzzy happy one? How long before slashdot has a link to detailed Linux installation instructions?
What it really comes down to, though, is money. MS can only afford to "give away" consoles (and you can be sure that the price tag will be a good imitation of "free") if they can be assured of making money on the games (and possibly internet access deals). With a real box you can't make as much money on dev tools, and your piracy losses are much higher. Some customers won't even buy ANY games. Consider: you're a big business with thousands of drones. You can either buy machines from Dell, Gateway, or Compaq to run Office (>$1500 each), or shell out for Xboxen which also run Office (<$500 each). What do you choose? (Ok, so I pulled those numbers out of my ass. Whatever. You get the picture.)
Microsoft is willing to take a cash hit to win market share (IE anyone?), but not that kind of hit. MS isn't known for *stupid* business practices.
Drinking will help us plan!
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...
That's a little unfair. If I go to the post about KDE 1.92's release, and ask for a filter to get rid of KDE/Linux stuff, then I'm a -1. Asking to filter out Microsoft stuff, and it's untouched.
The hipocracy's so thick you can cut it with a knife.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
How 'bout this? Stop being so petty! I know programmers are jaded, but hey, even we appreciate a nifty sounding product. Plus, it helps you remember. X-Box SDK, Java SDK, SDL-SDK. How are you going to stand out in the crowd?
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 reason is that most lasers used in DVD players can only read DVDs, CD-RWs, and DVD-Rs. CD-Rs require a different wavelength laser (if you recall, the 1st-gen DVD-ROM drives could not read CD-R discs), and cannot be read unless the drive has another laser to read CD-Rs. They probably thought that the expense of another laser assembly did not outweigh the benefits of being able to read CD-Rs.
Most new-gen console DVD players can't read CD-Rs, but read CD-RWs just fine.
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.
Looking at all the details, one can see that the X-box really seems to be just a regular computer with a few things disabled.
Win32 API
Microsoft Direct3D
USB support
TCP/IP based networking
Actually, these aren't disabled, so much as modified. For example, the Win32 API is there but fairly heavily modified.
And it is only missing such obvious things as services, hot docking, and -- multiple-procesor support. Hmmm...
No, read the article more carefully. What is missing is multi-processing not multiple processors (though presumably the latter is also gone). This is an even more serious restriction for a computer, but makes sense for a games machine. So it looks like Microsoft are doing more than just putting out a regular computer...
Sailing over the event horizon
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
I see no other sensible reason for scrapping red book audio. People, people, remember: this company, when you look at its corporate actions, is _evil_, it's hostile to consumers. Stop creaming over the words 'nVidia custom chips' for a minute and _think_. Of course they're going to f**k you over and make all your CDs obsolete in collusion with the RIAA labels. They're probably being paid to do just that and you know they want to monopolize the 'home entertainment system' which is certainly due to take over from the 'stereo system'. Do you really want to support these people?
At any rate, I would strongly suggest that this means the traditional CD is being 'deprecated'. It's time to buy ALL YOUR CDs over again! Beat the rush! Run out to the store just as soon as somebody figures out a secure digital music format that degrades after ten plays so you can be put on a _rental_ basis!
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!
> one can see that the X-box really seems to be just a regular computer with a few things disabled
This is exactly the point. Their strategy is obvious: make a machine that games developers can port to easily. Most game shops target Win32/DirectX. (Sorry, Linux dudes but that's the harsh truth). That makes for a huge base of games that can probably be made to run on Xbox with little or no modification, and a huge base of developers with valuable experience long before the hardware even ships.
The second half of the equation is consistency. The major cause of NT crashes is bogus drivers. With a fixed platform like this they can smoke (most) all of the bugs out of the drivers, not to mention optimizing the snot out of them. They don't have to worry about whether or not the latest driver patch works with last month's firmware upgrade for some bogus 3d card that nobody cares about this week. Each game can be intensively tested since the target hardware/OS is perfectly known.
> who would want a computer that is simply disabled just to play games?
Sure it's just a crippled computer, but I'll work right out of the box. It won't need configuration or tweaking. It won't crash randomly. Plug in your cable modem and it'll surf the web. Kids will be able to use it -- Hell, even parents will be able to use it. It'll be cheap, and games will be everywhere. Most people don't want the hassle of a "computer", they just want lots of cool games and their daily pr0n. Give the users what *they* want, not what *you* want.
Microsoft has come up with a great story (from their point of view). However, it may fail -- they may blow it, or nobody may care when it ships. It wouldn't be the first time, and won't be the last.
Drinking will help us plan!
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.