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Probing the Guts Of the Consoles
Max Entropy writes "Finally, an in-depth article of the technologies within the GameCube, PS2, and Xbox. The article covers architectures, processor/memory silicon, I/O, expandability, and storage among a host of other topics." If you are wondering what makes each system distinctive (Besides
the fact that one has about a hundred times as many games, one overheats,
and another has Luigi) this might be worth a read.
is that the Xbox also has an X-10 compatible home automation controller built into the power supply. If you notice, a small serial data cable leads from the motherboard to an area of the supply (the part of the supply farthest from the large capacitors). No software is known to control this yet, though. IIRC the IC that they used will only send signals, not receive them.
"The shoot-'em-up game genre, popular in the past, is losing its appeal as television viewers behold the horror of real-life war on the evening news. What game genres will replace it is less clear"
HUH!?! I beg to differ. Too many people have asked me about playing Q3, Half-Life, and UT online in the last few weeks. Since the prices of pc's have dropped and broadband availibility growing in my city, more and more people are wanting to "shoot'em up" online. (Oops, forgot to mention that the price of those games have dropped recently.)
"At first they were simple gaming machines, now they focus on email, broadband, DVD playing, web browsing, etc etc"
:) There have been consoles before with laser disk support though.
Bah.. Yes, at first in 1972 they were just that. But hey, the Odessy only had 40 transistors/resistors/diodes and the "computer" world was a bit different then.
Current gen:PS2 has planned NIC/HD and can play online (check the back of the PS2 version of Tony Hawk 3 next time you're in a software store!). GC has broadband/56K support on Nintendo's page. The Xfl-box has a built in NIC. DC has 56K support.
Previous: Saturn had an official modem and all that email, web, stuff, just not the DVD
Previous to that: the 3DO was going to be a multimedia box every household needed. Before that in the late 80s/early 90s Commodore tried the CDTV for multimedia stuff and had Nolen Bushnell promoting it.
Previous: SNES and Genesis had the Xband modem for games and "email". Again there was planned modems, etc that never shipped. Still Nintendo etc always have those expansion slots-just incase. There was a CD-ROM add on for many of these era consoles so you didn't need to buy a seperate cd player to listen to the new music format..
During the NES era Nintendo partnered with AT&T to allow users to do banking/stock trading online through their NES! 10,000 homes were hooked up for a test in Minnesota and for $10 a month they could play the state's lotteries online.
In 1983 there was the CVC Gameline (used a catridge with a 1200baud modem with 8K of ram) for the Atari 2600 that offered news, stocks, "electronic mail", and banking services to 2600 owners. And you could download games for $1 each and keep them until you turned your system off.
Game consoles have always been "simply gaming machines" until there is enough of them people's homes to be something else. What MS is doing is nothing different than what has been going on for the last few decades.
I left my XBox on over the weekend (shame on me, but I was out drinking) and came back and played my game with no problems for many more hours.
:)
The only problem I have with the XBox, aside from the expensive low quality DVD remote that you must have (and is somewhat hard to find), is its rather large area. It's the only console that won't fit on my mammoth 1985 VCR
Bullet-Time (TM) rocks.
I just got an Xbox and I am quite happy with it.. except for one thing: It does over heat. While playing a great game of Project Gotham after finishing a one on one with a Skyline (with my Ford Focus lol) it just froze on the loading screen... I havent had this problem with other games I have but its quite annoying...