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Microsoft HomeStation - Son Of XBox Revealed
An unnamed reader contributes this link: "PC Formathave story about Microsoft's follow up to the XBox. Rumor is it's a home entertainment centre called HomeStation. It'll offer video and TV on demand, and act as an internet gateway for internet appliances. Profiling is mentioned. The story makes an interesting point about how the XBox's true purpose is to pave the way for Microsoft as a home entertainment brand."
I haven't seen any Xboxes in the store yet. What is the point of advertising an upgrade to a product that hasn't been sold yet? Why would people buy the Xbox when they can apparently wait a few monts to get a much better version?
While I do often bash MS's software, their hardware is normaly top-notch. They've got good engineers, and with the nFORCE (and with it, most likely an AMD CPU) and all the nice stuff the nFORCE has (AC3 encoding, nVidia graphics, AMD, lack of intel) this box will probly be fairly nice tech-wise. Combine that with the Microsoft name, probly one of the most known corp. on the planet, and you have a big seller right here. The one thing I dont love is the fact it runs XP (however, besides being windows, one if it's biggest faults is product activation, something that wont matter in this case, due to the fact you wont be upgrading it) I personaly think this is something MS should have kept hidden to boost sales on the xbox.
If this thing runs windows and can run PC and xbox games, does that mean my copy of XP (no I dont have one, nor am I planing on it) will run xbox games? or does this copy of XP have some magic DDLs that will run them? (how long till those find their way to the net to become the ULTIMATE emu.)
as much as I hate to say it, I do have some respect for MS's R&D team. Dont bash it till you've seen it, guys.
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
I have it on good authority that the box will actually be called "My Games Console".
Pokéthulhu
Gotta catch you all!
I wonder who's really got the domain. Network Solutions shows it expired in May, 2000.
Registrant: Sue Almand (HOMESTATION-DOM)
51 Ocean Breeze Drive
Atlantic Beach, FL 32233
US
Domain Name: HOMESTATION.COM
Administrative Contact, Billing Contact:
Almand, Sue (SA4428) scalmand@EARTHLINK.NET
51 Ocean Breeze Drive
Atlantic Beach,, FL 32233
904-246-0131
Technical Contact:
Eclipse Communications Hostmaster (EC136-ORG) hostmaster@ECLIPSE-COMM.COM
Eclipse Communications
701 W. 4th St.
South Pittsburg, TN 37380
US
423-837-4955
Fax- - 423-629-6121
Record last updated on 26-Jul-2001.
Record expires on 23-May-2000.
Record created on 23-May-1998.
Database last updated on 6-Sep-2001 18:26:00 EDT.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.ECLIPSE-COMM.COM 209.75.67.159
NS2.ECLIPSE-COMM.COM 209.75.67.160
I haven't even seen an XBox in the flesh yet. Surely advertising it's predecessor won't do XBox sales any good. There are bound to be people who'll be thinking "Hmmmm......I don't think I'll but that XBox now, I'll wait for the next one."
/.? This is the first time I've been able to log in for the last 24 hours. Why doesn't someone just post an article explaining the problem instead of seemingly pretending that nothing is wrong?
On a side note: What is going on with
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Moderator's essentials
However, with the X-box and the HomeStation (?) this will change. Here's a device with large storage capabilites and easily upgraded with the right DLL to become a DivX player.
Nice work MS, but will the MPAA like this?
it's in my head
Any company which has gone it head-to-head against Microsoft has lost (Novell, Borland/Inprise, Corel, Lotus etc. etc.). If MS is going into the home entertainment area, then it's time for Sony etc. to get worried. Don't think Microsoft won't destroy you.
Novell used to think that supporting DOS was a good idea... then came NT.
Borland used to think writing compilers for DOS/Windows was a good idea. Then came Visual Studio.
WordPerfect used to think that writing a word processor for DOS/Windows was a good idea, then came Word (for Windows).
Lotus used to think that writing a spreadsheet for DOS/Windows was a good idea, then came Excel.
Sony use to think that making stereos/playstations/etc. was a good idea, then came HomeStation.
How can we stop this?
We can't. AfxMessageBox("You're Screwed!")
return 0; }
Damn it, I wish Microsoft had thought of this.
You know the original demo for the N64, the one they incorporated in to Mario64, where you could play with Mario's face and distort it and tweak it? I think Microsoft should do the same demo for the XBox with Bill G's face and maybe Steve Ballmer's as well.
Think of how much fun that would be to play with! Way cooler than the Mario demo. Plus, it'd be a funny PR move, showing they have a sense of humor.
I also hope they don't keep the name as HomeStation. It sounds like something out of a military movie: "Echo troop to home station, do you copy?" Brrr! Call it something cozy and consumer-friendly, like... I don't know... Microsoft Bob.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
If the above statement is true, it becomes much less atractive to develop games specifically for Xbox. By building a PC version you would already cover PC and HomeStation users.
This has to be a hoax. The picture on the site is terrible, and the details don't make much sense (will be able to play PC games? what PC games? how, if it's a locked down 2nd generation XBox?)
And "HomeStation"? I mean, com'on, you mean to tell me that MS will spend millions promoting the XBox brand and they will not use it for this (call it XBox TV or something?). I don't buy it.
Apparently you have yet to grasp the finer points of karma whoreing on /.
Any post that starts with "this will probably be modded down but..." or the like are always modded up.
Whether this is because moderators like to be unpredictable or there is some other reason is yet unknown to me. So the effect of the subject of this post is not quite known (if they just like to be unpredictable, they'll probably mod down, as modding up is predicted elsewhere in this post. But if the reason is something else, then they will probably mod up).
Anonymous karma whore.
I'll get me an x-box and one of these too I'm sure.
You've stated the problem with your attitude right there in that sentence. You're already planning to buy one of these HomeStations, just because of the brand attached to it. All you've seen is a one page article, the picture could be phony, the quotes could be phony, but it seems you don't care.
That's the real problem with Microsoft being "tied into just about everything." People are willing to buy, buy, buy, based solely on brand-name and not quality or comparison. Name one other industry (if you can still call Microsoft a one-industry company) where you can get away with that? Will Ford ever make microwaves? Will AT&T ever make vacuums?
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
I haven't even seen an XBox in the flesh yet. Surely advertising it's predecessor won't do XBox sales any good.
This wasn't an ad, in fact the entire tone of the article smells like a leak especially the part about talking to potential partners who state "you aren't supposed to know abut this". Considering how secretive the X-Box guys were within Microsoft I'm not surprised that I worked there and this is the first I'm hearing of it.
Of course it makes sense, X-Box is just a console. It would be extremely stupid of MSFT not to at least try and leverage the X-Box it to something much more considering the fact that they have content, an ISP, a desktop and server OS, and games.
Games-wise, it's anticipated HomeStation will play both PC and Xbox titles.
MS is entering some interesting territory, they are COMPETING with their own customers. Compaq, Dell, IBM *also* sell PCs for this purpose... I wonder how they will feel when the XBox v2.0 starts to serve the same functions, in the home setting, as their product.
One of the cardinal rules of business: Never take a product 'direct' to market, and compete with your customers with the product that they BUY FROM YOU. It will leave a bad taste in the mouths of the people who *used* to be your customers.. there will be desire, on their part, to collectively THUMP you.
The Xbox is the single-handedly most astonishingly brash thing MS is doing right now - they are really looking at taking over the Home-PC market. Will XBox v4.0 be a Proprietary Computer? Will MS start selling full featured PC work-a-likes, sure they might call them appliances... but if it smells like a monopoly, and acts like a monopoly....
The Xbox may be hackable, but the Home Station will likely be set up so that you have to subscribe, i.e., give MS your credit card number and agree to 1 or more years worth of monthly payments, with a substantial penalty for early termination, the way that cell phone companies do when you get a "free" phone when you sign up for service, so that the combined cost will make it uneconomical to buy the HS just for the hardware, and they'll probably do their very best to make the HS hardware unusable for anything except a doorstop without the Microsoft sold content. I'm sure that MS has taken notice of what's happened to other companies that took a loss on hardware that they expected to make up on subscriptions or whatever, only to discover that they shouldn't have sold the razor without getting a signed contract for a year or two worth of blades.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.