Slashdot Mirror
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.
-F
Too easy?
I won't buy anything that runs on batteries unless it makes me coffee. I really love my joe, and only our slave machines should make it.
-me
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Whats black, blue and green and doesnt like sex? The Girl Scout locked in my basement. Whats the worst part about having sex with a six year-old? Getting the blood out of your clown suit. Whats the best thing about getting a hand job from a five year-old? That little hand makes your thing look really huge. Guy comes home from work to find his girlfriend sitting on the porch, crying. Whats wrong, honey? Im leaving you! I just found out youre a pædophile! Pædophile? Why, thats a pretty big word for a ten year-old. How can you tell when your sisters on her period? When your dads dick tastes like blood! Two pedophiles are lying on a beach tanning, one turns to the other and says, Excuse me, youre in my son. Whats 18 inches long, blue, veiny, and makes a woman cry? Crib death. How could the mans seven year-old son tell that his dad had fucked his eight year-old sister? His dads weiner tasted like blood! Watson returns home to find Holmes in bed with a child. He shouts, Is this some sort of a schoolgirl? Holmes replies, Elementary, my dear Watson. So I was having sex with my girlfriend, and I decided I wanted to get kinky and try and do her in the ass. So I slipped around back; she looked over her shoulder at me and said, My, how presumptuous of you. I said, Presumptuous? Thats a big word for a ten year-old. Two guys are walking down the street when a beautiful woman passes. The first guy says, Damn! Id love to tear her clothes off, do her in the rear, smear my fæces all over her, slice off her breasts, chop her into little pieces, put her in a garbage bag and toss her into the river! Second guy says, Yuck! Youre a sick bastard! First guy says, Whatre you? A fag? A kindergarten teacher is asking the kids what their father does for a living. All the kids answer except for Little Johnny. The teacher asks Little Johnny what his Dad does and Johnny replies, My dad is dead. The teacher says, Thats terribile, but what did he do before he died? Little Johnny replies, He turned blue and shit all over himself! A guy calls in sick to work. Whats wrong? asks the boss. Im sick, the guy replies. You sound all right. No, Im really sick. Believe me. Listen, you were fine yesterday, and we have a lot of work today. I want you in here. You cant be that sick! Dude, I just banged my sister. Dont tell me Im not sick. A little girl accompanied her father to the barbershop. While her dad received a haircut, the little girl stood next to the barber chair, enjoying a snack cake. The barber smiled at her and said, Sweetheart, youre going to get hair on your Twinkie. I know, the little girl replied. Im gonna get tits, too. An older man and a small boy walk hand in hand through the woods. Boy: These woods sure are spooky! Man: You think youre scared, Ive gotta walk out of here alone. Whats the difference between Neil Armstrong and Michael Jackson? One walked on the moon, and the other rapes little boys. Has anyone read Michael Jacksons new book, The Ins and Outs of Child Rearing? Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and a golden delicious apple? A: I dont cum all over the golden delicious apple before I take a bite out of it. Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and my girlfriend? A: I dont kiss my girlfriend after sex. Q: What is special about a dead baby over all other forms of life? A: You can achieve deep throat from whichever way you enter. Q: What do you have when you have four dead babies, take away two, and add five more? A: An orgy! Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and a table? A: You cant fuck a table. Q: Whats white and bobs up and down in a babys crib? A: A pædophiles ass. Q: Whats the safest way to play with a baby? A: With a condom. Q: Whats more fun than feeling up a dead baby? A: Feeling up a dead baby with three nipples. Q: What does a baby and a Pinto have in common? A: Theyre fun to ride until they die. Q: What do you get whan you dislocate a dead babys jaw? A: Deep throat. Q: Whats the difference between a baby and a grandmother? A: Grandmothers dont die when you fuck them in the ass. Q: Whats the best sound in the world? A: Hearing dead babys hips crack under pressure! Q: Whats worse than a having sex with a dead baby? A: Having sex with a dead baby filled with razor blades. Q: How do you stop a baby from choking? A: Take your dick out of its mouth. Q: Whats worse than finding a dead baby on your pillow in the morning? A: Realizing you were drunk and made love to it the night before. Q: How do you make a baby cry twice? A: Wipe your bloody cock on his teddy bear. Whats better than sex with a twelve year-old boy? Absolutely nothing. ________________________________________Thanks to Fark.com for all of these wonderfully sick jokes! I couldnt have done it without you! And thanks to all the Anonymous Cowards who have flamed me, I have three words for you! YHBT! YHL! HAND!
Apparently this post is extremely good at getting biters. According to an anonymous coward, Attorney General Ashcroft is also after little old WIPO Troll now, in addition to the Canadian cops-on-a-horse that another A.C. sent after me a couple days earlier. Well, this should be fun. Keep up the biting, Slashdotters!
________________________________________J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
Amusing infact.
Especially since I am looking at buying a box within these next days. Have anyone heard of any real progress on running *BSD on the Playstation II btw?
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.
Despite the fact that PS2 has more games, Super Monkey Ball is reason enough to buy a GameCube. I would think CmdrTaco makes enough money by now that he could buy each of the consoles and not feel the need to slam the ones he didn't get... =)
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
With MS's .NET initiative, one can't help but wonder if the concept of a 'home computer' will become entirely redundant. After all, the fact is that .NET will enable traditional tasks performed by applications such as MS Word, Excel etc to be done entirely over the web. With the rise of consoles, this will render the home computer redundant in time.
Another advantage is that consoles are so easy.
I mean, I find Windows and Mac OS X very complicated and difficult to use - I am from a pre-computer generation, and have watched with a little bemusement as these glorified typewriters conquer all.
They are dividing society into two classes, the Digirati, who can understand Computers running super complicated, unintuitive OS's like OS X and Windows, and the disposessed, who just don't understand and never will.
Consoles, by extending their grasp, may remove this knowledge gap by providing a wonderfully simple, hermetically sealed system that can be easily used by everyone, including your granny, and me!
I will welcome the day, I think, I don't like the idea of supercomplex computers running increasingly difficult OS's taking over all simple tasks and dispossessing those with better things to do than understand the impossible complexities of Internet Explorer and Microsoft Word.
I look to Sony, MS and Nintendo to provide a democratic and egalitarean new computing future for all, in which everyone can share.
This has been advertised for sooooo long. I have 2 ps2's I finally have a use for, as soon as I can port Apache and mysql over.
Xbox is the best. Word to your mother. West Siiiide.
Now I have a little bit of "proof" I can break out when I want to deprecate the PS2. reading the writeup for the Gamecube, I was struck with how innovative the design seemed. Of the three, it seems the most traditional in function and intention, but it achieves that with the usual Nintendo pizazz. It'd be a pity if the Gamecube failed to capture a significant market share.
Pax Digitalia
What is wrong with you, you slow, demented hick?! Please, for the love of God (Linus Torvalds), make a slight attempt to stay on topic, before I Neotrace you and call the cops!
Here, this is on topic:
THE OFFICIAL TACO-SNOTTING FAQ By J. Wipo Troll, Esq., $Revision: 1.16 $Why do I keep receiving emails from an individual calling himself CmdrTaco?
Mr. Malda seems to be speaking in some sort of code. Do you know what it means?
Good Lord. And, yes, he did. What is Taco-snotting?
Ewwwwww. So, can I stop receiving these emails?
I cant stop receiving these emails from CmdrTaco!?
Have you ever been Taco-snotted?
That is so disgusting! How did you finally escape?
Thats horrible. Does Taco-snotting have anything to do with CmdrTacos special taco?
Does Jon Katz get involved in any of this? I thought he was a pædophile, not a homosexual.
Are you getting hard writing this?
No, thanks. Im already CmdrTacos boi toi.
________________________________________J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
I completly agree with your comments. Can't you (Slashdot) ban the guy who's making these sick comments? Take a look at his post history - all comments marked as -1, and most of them just as sick and twisted.
The article claims that the PS2 cannot play DVDs without the remote control, which is not true. It can play them just fine without. The XBox, however, cannot. It's not that bad of an article, just not objective enough.
The Gamecube CPU doesn't quite have Altivec like a G4, but it does have something pretty useful for racing through matrix multiplies; data prefetching and paired single operations. Paired Single operations simply use the FPU to work on two singles instead of a double. For graphics and physics and most math intensive operations this essentially doubles the performance.
Looking at the specs it doesn't seem that special. But when you develop for it you'll be impressed. In many ways it is clearly the best console.
Of course that can be said about any of them...
Haw haw haw... I auto-poast at -1 because I got modded down too much, months ago. But, yes, they are all sick and twisted, and no Slashdot doesn't delete poasts or users. Ever heard of "The Turd Report" guy?
J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
YEAH BABY!!!@!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And well, and I am in the Apple store in Plano, TX. Who will purchase a Powerbook G4 for me?
I am a sentient ATM.
I have not heard a thing about production xboxes off the shelf that are overheating. In fact, I have not seen anything about overheating, BSODs occuring at all.
Editors, if you have any evidence for your allegations, please provide them, otherwise you look just like bitter fools spreading FUD.
"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.)
Filled with nice specs, but I was hoping the guy might have also compared the features with what is actually a reality with games today..., but I don't think he even could havbe, based on the info at the bottom:
Technical Editor Brian Dipert, for all his time spent researching and writing about 3-D graphics and other multimedia topics, doesn't play anything more complex than Solitaire on his desktop and notebook computers and his Casio E-125 Pocket PC
NOTE : DO NOT MODERATE THIS POST, YOU WILL BE PERNEMENTLY BANNED FROM SLASHDOT AND OSDN IF YOU DO!
Goatse.cx has annonced the release of goatse linux 1.0! Free downloadable it provides a simple crap free distro that can fit on 99 floppy disks, and since its based on slackware, you get added value, so what are you waiting for? Download it now
DOWNLOAD HERE
I have had the xbox since it was released, and it has not 'overheated' once. The only time it did anything out of the ordinary was with the Obi-wan game, and I've heard reports from a couple other people of seeing the occasional fluke with the game. So please don't make generalized statements claiming the xbox overheats all the time, when in fact, I think you'll notice that the production xbox is very, very stable.
"I drank what?" -Socrates
boy, guess someone's bias against microsoft runs real deep, doesn't it .. i've had my xbox on since nov 15th practically, not one GSOD, not one crash, and no overheating.
and that whole harddrive/memory card thing is a great idea, imo.
Why do I keep receiving emails from an individual calling himself CmdrTaco?
Mr. Malda seems to be speaking in some sort of code. Do you know what it means?
Good Lord. And, yes, he did. What is Taco-snotting?
Ewwwwww. So, can I stop receiving these emails?
I cant stop receiving these emails from CmdrTaco!?
Have you ever been Taco-snotted?
That is so disgusting! How did you finally escape?
Thats horrible. Does Taco-snotting have anything to do with CmdrTacos special taco?
Does Jon Katz get involved in any of this? I thought he was a pædophile, not a homosexual.
Are you getting hard writing this?
No, thanks. Im already CmdrTacos boi toi.
________________________________________J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
I can't wait to run NetBSD on these game
consoles. BSD has been ported to every
processor built since the '70s.
"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.
Is anyone else tired of /. posting every single console hardware review? It doesnt really matter anyway, how many polygons each machine can pump.
Games matter. Instead of wasting time, I suggest you go to www.gamespot.com and take a good long look at the list(s) of games of each console, read the unbiased reviews, stare at pictures and movies, and then decide which console is coolest.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Whats black, blue and green and doesnt like sex? The Girl Scout locked in my basement. Whats the worst part about having sex with a six year-old? Getting the blood out of your clown suit. Whats the best thing about getting a hand job from a five year-old? That little hand makes your thing look really huge. Guy comes home from work to find his girlfriend sitting on the porch, crying. Whats wrong, honey? Im leaving you! I just found out youre a pædophile! Pædophile? Why, thats a pretty big word for a ten year-old. How can you tell when your sisters on her period? When your dads dick tastes like blood! Two pedophiles are lying on a beach tanning, one turns to the other and says, Excuse me, youre in my son. Whats 18 inches long, blue, veiny, and makes a woman cry? Crib death. How could the mans seven year-old son tell that his dad had fucked his eight year-old sister? His dads weiner tasted like blood! Watson returns home to find Holmes in bed with a child. He shouts, Is this some sort of a schoolgirl? Holmes replies, Elementary, my dear Watson. So I was having sex with my girlfriend, and I decided I wanted to get kinky and try and do her in the ass. So I slipped around back; she looked over her shoulder at me and said, My, how presumptuous of you. I said, Presumptuous? Thats a big word for a ten year-old. Two guys are walking down the street when a beautiful woman passes. The first guy says, Damn! Id love to tear her clothes off, do her in the rear, smear my fæces all over her, slice off her breasts, chop her into little pieces, put her in a garbage bag and toss her into the river! Second guy says, Yuck! Youre a sick bastard! First guy says, Whatre you? A fag? A kindergarten teacher is asking the kids what their father does for a living. All the kids answer except for Little Johnny. The teacher asks Little Johnny what his Dad does and Johnny replies, My dad is dead. The teacher says, Thats terribile, but what did he do before he died? Little Johnny replies, He turned blue and shit all over himself! A guy calls in sick to work. Whats wrong? asks the boss. Im sick, the guy replies. You sound all right. No, Im really sick. Believe me. Listen, you were fine yesterday, and we have a lot of work today. I want you in here. You cant be that sick! Dude, I just banged my sister. Dont tell me Im not sick. A little girl accompanied her father to the barbershop. While her dad received a haircut, the little girl stood next to the barber chair, enjoying a snack cake. The barber smiled at her and said, Sweetheart, youre going to get hair on your Twinkie. I know, the little girl replied. Im gonna get tits, too. An older man and a small boy walk hand in hand through the woods. Boy: These woods sure are spooky! Man: You think youre scared, Ive gotta walk out of here alone. Whats the difference between Neil Armstrong and Michael Jackson? One walked on the moon, and the other rapes little boys. Has anyone read Michael Jacksons new book, The Ins and Outs of Child Rearing? Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and a golden delicious apple? A: I dont cum all over the golden delicious apple before I take a bite out of it. Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and my girlfriend? A: I dont kiss my girlfriend after sex. Q: What is special about a dead baby over all other forms of life? A: You can achieve deep throat from whichever way you enter. Q: What do you have when you have four dead babies, take away two, and add five more? A: An orgy! Q: Whats the difference between a dead baby and a table? A: You cant fuck a table. Q: Whats white and bobs up and down in a babys crib? A: A pædophiles ass. Q: Whats the safest way to play with a baby? A: With a condom. Q: Whats more fun than feeling up a dead baby? A: Feeling up a dead baby with three nipples. Q: What does a baby and a Pinto have in common? A: Theyre fun to ride until they die. Q: What do you get whan you dislocate a dead babys jaw? A: Deep throat. Q: Whats the difference between a baby and a grandmother? A: Grandmothers dont die when you fuck them in the ass. Q: Whats the best sound in the world? A: Hearing dead babys hips crack under pressure! Q: Whats worse than a having sex with a dead baby? A: Having sex with a dead baby filled with razor blades. Q: How do you stop a baby from choking? A: Take your dick out of its mouth. Q: Whats worse than finding a dead baby on your pillow in the morning? A: Realizing you were drunk and made love to it the night before. Q: How do you make a baby cry twice? A: Wipe your bloody cock on his teddy bear. Whats better than sex with a twelve year-old boy? Absolutely nothing. ________________________________________Thanks to Fark.com for all of these wonderfully sick jokes! I couldnt have done it without you! And thanks to all the Anonymous Cowards who have flamed me, I have three words for you! YHBT! YHL! HAND!
Apparently this post is extremely good at getting biters. According to an anonymous coward, Attorney General Ashcroft is also after little old WIPO Troll now, in addition to the Canadian cops-on-a-horse that another A.C. sent after me a couple days earlier. Well, this should be fun. Keep up the biting, Slashdotters!
________________________________________J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
Cool write up, I just bought a PS2 mainly /.
for the purpose of running the Linux kit.
But I have to admit that I've found the
games fun. Aside from the previous
broadband pictures that appeared on
I've been trying to find details on the
port and the availability of the kit.
Anyone ??
WIPO, as usual, you rock. 2 biters today, not a bad catch!
Will you personally buy a game cube?
If you answer yes to this one you'll be the only one I know who will. Why? The Nintendo64 had such a sorry array of games when compared to the PS1, its a no-brainer to expect the same of their cube.
I think I represent the average gamer and I want strategy games, fighting games, REALISTIC images, great audio. I want games to move me and scare me. I especially don't want Mario this or Luigi that. Game cube commercials are already touting a new Mario + friends mortal combat style fighting game. I truly think you need to be 11 to get a kick out of that.
The article is pretty good overall but lacks a major component. GRAPHICS performance (duh)!. It has one paragraph telling us something about multitexturing (guess which box? it starts with an 'x'), high polygon performance to render some cute girlees hair (rrrright), anti alliasing (same 'x'), anisotropic filtering ('x'), writing z-buffer optimised code (goes for all graphics software), if multiple lighting and transforming calculations can be offloaded of the main CPU (xbox again, sorry). It doesn't even mention other texturing tricks that we are allready used to on the PC. Environmentmapping, bumpmapping, etc. (damn impressive in Halo on my xbox).
I would recommend those that want a deeper analysis of why the xbox is the graphics gaming console of the future (verses these other boxes) to have a good look at what DX8 brought us. Hint: vertex shading and pixel shading.
Oh, and Mr CmdrTaco, get with the program:
- PS2 has more games, yes. 425 PS1 + PS2 combined titles. Xbox has about 40 now and that list is growing fast. 100x...whatever
- Overheating? Don't pull a 'the prerelease box was rumoured to overheat' kinda bull on this forum please
- Luigi??? Abe farts in the fase of Luigi! In more colors, with surround sound and at 1080i
LINUX (kernel 0.9) SUCKS!!
I've had an XBOX for a couple of weeks now and I got a PS2 for Chistmas. True the PS2 has more games right now...it's been out much longer, but the XBOX games look better than most of the PS2 games. The problem I have seen with the PS2 is that it hangs mid-game sometimes in different games. I've never had that problem with my XBOX. Has anyone had this problem with a PS2? another problem I've had with the PS2 is that the dvd drive fails to recognize that a game is in the drive sometimes too and I have to remove it and put it back in before it will read it.
If by "one" you mean the XBOX, then you are either a liar or an idiot. I purchased an XBOX and have not yet turned it off, indeed I have hardly stopped playing it (that includes 18 straight hours of Halo, during which I beat the game), and it has yet to overheat. In fact, the box itself is not uncomfortably cool (although it is noticeably warm to the touch), but the gameplay does not slow down. Only someone with 17 fans on their Athlon would think the XBOX overheats. Perhaps you editors should only post what you know, rather than whatever might make people think that Microsoft looks bad. Your propaganda battle is pointless, because you're preaching to the choir, who largely don't matter.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
The pedo jokes seem to be quite excellent bait.
J. Wipo Troll, Esq.
Crapflooder Associates
Slashdot.org
This article at cnn http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/fun.games/12/27/video .games.sales.reut/index.html states "Games for the Sony PlayStation 2 platform held eight of the top-20 sales spots and represented five of the 10 best-selling titles over that period, according to market research firm, The NPD group." A game will still suck even on a 10ghz processor
http://www.kubuntu.org/
The BSODs and GSODs you hear of are actually not true. The "GSOD" you saw online is actually a disc error (inserting the wrong type of disc) into the XDK, not even the final Xbox (Next time you see it, check out the bottom).
If the Xbox crashes or freezes, you don't get ANY type of message. It'd just lock up (read the documentation). Same as the other consoles.
So somehow I actually doubt your "number of friends" got GSODs in games.
I've had my Xbox since launch day: No crashes, no freezes, no problems, and certainly no overheating.
I've actually reworked my XBox so my hamster can live inside of it. With all of the real-estate it takes on my entertainment center, I had to make it earn its shelf-space.
Enough already with this pro-GC bias! Quite frankly, the GC is pretty mediocre from what I've seen and this Slashdot bias toward it is annoying. The games I've played are hokey or stiff (Luigi's mansion looks like a warmed-over N64 game; the Star Wars game is the least fluid SW game I've ever played--compare it to the PS2 SW games.) It's underpowered compared to the other two competitors. At the time of this writing I've witnessed *3* GameCube crashes (that's 2 more than I've seen the XBox do) and the controllers look and feel like cheap toys. Don't get me wrong--I love Nintendo and if I were buying a console now, I'd try to avoid MS, but this GC bias on Slashdot underscores how willfully some bask in their own bias. The GC is half-assed, a bad showing for Nintendo, and not worthy of an editorial bias. I wish they had done better. I wish Sony and Nintendo had given MS a very rude awakening, but that didn't happen. Praise should be directed at the PS2, NOT the GC. And honestly, if it were between the GC and the XBox... I'd probably grit my teeth and get an XBox.
--Rick
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
If your Xbox is overheating, the green light around the "eject" button will turn orange. When that happens, I'd turn the thing off. ;)
God knows why that's not documented in the manual...
When I want single player FPS action, I'll play games on my PC, where I have a mouse, keyboard, cable modem and an excellent 21" Sony Trinitron monitor. So far, the dark and gritty games are still done best on the PC, and this seems to be the major targets of the XBox and PS2.
Enter Gamecube, a system with games that are commonly colourful and very party oriented. If I'm going to be playing console games, I want to play them with my friends around a big TV. When I pick up my Gamecube, I'm definately grabbing Super Monkey Ball and Super Smash Bros. along with three additional controllers.
As a PC Gamer, I see the XBox and PS2 for people who don't have near top of the line PC hardware. I see the Gamecube's function as being something a bit different, and it's very attractive. I can't get that over here.
Besides, it looks like we're going to see some impressive first party titles. Is it possible not to be interested in a Zelda game on mass storage media for the first time?
Does anyone know if there is going to be a price drop for the playstation 2 any time soon? I have heard for a while that we could expect one sometime early 2002, but no real news about it. I'd love to buy one, but I'd hate to buy it right now if the price is about to drop.
PS2 Linux Kit is only available in Japan
...maybe four?
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
FWIW the DVD remote for the X-box is exactly the same as for the RCA5215 DVD player. The only difference is colors of the button and the fact that the power button on the RCA = the "Display" button on X-box.
Of course, you still need the little receiver to plug into one of the controller ports on the X-boxy, but this could be useful to know if you want to use a universal remote on the X-box for some reason.
Further, while all the next-gen consoles are nice pieces of engineering, and get impressive power for price, none of them is particularly groundbreaking, so these 'look inside' articles get old really quickly.
or just crackheads moderating?
Why would a moderator waste a point to moderate the previous post down as a troll?
Why?
Don't get me wrong, I'm a toy-freak, but I'm having trouble thinking up uses for it: Alter the lighting to suit the game mood? Turn on the coffee maker when game-play lags? Signal the robot to get me another bheer? If you lose the next level, the goldfish loses life-support? Control those 22,000V chair electrodes for realistic game play?
It's cool, but I don't see what problem it's supposed to solve. (And I'd have to think twice before buying an X-10 module after those damned camera ads. How's that for negative advertising!)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Disclaimer: I work for GameSpy
I've found that, for reviews, the best place to go is http://www.gamespy.com/reviews, and here's why: 95% of our reviews are outsourced just to prevent biasedness.
My suggestion is to read the lowest rating and maybe one of the more verbose high ratings. Of course, as always, keep your wits about you to guard against fanboys and trolls.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
But what about the long term? As far as hardware goes, the PS was actually inferior to the N64, but won out in the long run after everyone knew how to program for it and create (at least aesthetically) better games. The fact that it's medium had 10 times more storage than the N64 is not why it won out, as many will testify; the fact that it was easier to program for becuase of the fact that size was literally not a problem (Final Fantasy, anyone?) opened the door to developers to pump out whatever game they could get approved. Where as the PS has practically countless games for it, almost all of the games for the N64 are generally good if not high-quality. That being the past, look at the race now. A 3-horse race, 2 of them similair and 1 lame. The fact that both the XBox and the PS2 can play DVD's has everyone wowed and blurry-eyed. The fact that the N64 had twice the bits of the PS accomplished much the same thing. I think that Nintendo's focus on pure gaming and affordability will win out in this one, as it did with Sony in the previous round.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
Actually, Nintendo has had official console networks in the past. Bandai Satellite and RANDnet come to mind. Unfortunately, neither of these is really feasible in the wide and sporatic densities of populations in the States. As for their popularity, well, I think your point that online gaming ends up committing suicide remains.
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Open Source Sysadmin
S.Monkey Ball and Smash Bros. are why I had to buy extra controllers. :)
:)
No wonder the GC can lay claim to the "best reason to have friends" award.
(Don't count out the PS2, though. There are a few PS2 exclusive titles that you really should play.)
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Maybe this old Slashdot article from Oct. 22 will help.
The article also states that the Xbox and the GC supports 4 controllers, while the PS2 only supports two.
This is not true. If you buy the Multitap (see here) you can play 1-5 players, buy one more and you can play 1-8 players!
I like my PS2, it's a shame that the games are so DAMN expensive!
Oh, and I agree, the article was one of the better I've read! Took a while to read it, but it was great!
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Why is Rob Malda such a Microsoft hater? I don't understand this guy. To toss out a statement like this with no basis in fact is a classless act.
It appears Rob has become a very cynical person in the last year or so. His antipathy towards Microsoft has become very overt. Rob also seems to have retreated into a weird little world where he is only interested in anime, sci-fi movies and game consoles. He is so out of touch with reality that it makes it painful to visit this anymore.
I can't wait for Rob to just quit. He obviously doesn't enjoy his job anymore.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Can somebody please explain to me the thrill of buying a system that just came out? It seems like it would be the same thrill as buying a car that hasn't had its crash dummy tests. I personally am on the lookout for a Dreamcast. A savvy consumer can buy the DC and about 6--7 games for it, and an extra controller for about $150.. And maybe I'm blind, but I can't even tell the difference in graphics.
So I'll let you 1337 gamers spend $300 on your new systems and I'll scoop em 'up in a couple years when you're selling 'em for $50 and buying the next Tomagotchi.
I care... Games are a geekish thing. Games drive modern technology.
Nice of you to say 'one has Luigi'. How about 'one has Rouge Leader, possibly the best Star Wars game ever'?
A friend of mine toured local retailers before Christmas - and he was told by them that they were seeing a 37% approx failure rate on XBoxes.
This may have been BS to cover for them having no stock but it seems like a bad way to sell something to me.
Will you personally buy a game cube? If you answer yes to this one you'll be the only one I know who will.
Get out a little more. They've sold a million of the things. By the way, great argument there. My dad can beat up yours.
I think I represent the average gamer and I want strategy games, fighting games, REALISTIC images, great audio.
Nah, the average gamer wants The Sims and Pokemon.
I want games to move me and scare me. I especially don't want Mario this or Luigi that.
Fair enough, but if you're going to speak for the average gamer, keep in mind that Nintendo sold about a billion dollars worth of software in 2000. Their closest competitor? EA, with under 500 million. Keep in mind that EA publishes games on all platforms and that Nintendo is restricted to their own. And in case you're wondering, those numbers don't include hardware, it's just the games. Doesn't sound like the average gamer is agreeing with you so far.
Game cube commercials are already touting a new Mario + friends mortal combat style fighting game. I truly think you need to be 11 to get a kick out of that.
Yeah, you definitely need to be eleven. Like last night, I was playing Smash Brothers with my roommate and two friends and it was so fun that we played for about two hours. Then I remembered that we're all over 24 so we threw that game out. I don't know what Gamespot was thinking when they put it in the top ten console games of the year, because I'm pretty sure their editors are over 11 (although sometimes it's a tough call). Good thing, we stopped playing, though, so we could move on to a game that lets you drive one of these armed cycles on some huge courses and blow your friends up.
But I'll admit that the Gamecube's graphics aren't that great, like that Rogue Leader game. I mean, did they really think anyone would want to play a game with graphics like this?
And in fighting games, we'll put aside the fact that you're superficial and clearly have no idea what you're talking about. I know Kirby and Pikachu are cute as all get out, but the fighting system in SSB is way more fun than DOA3's. And if that's not enough for you, Soul Calibur 2, successor to the real king of 3D fighters (OK, fine, Virtua Fighter rules, too), will be exclusive to the GameCube when it first arrives.
Speaking of realism, did you know that the water in Wave Race: Blue Storm, an amazingly addictive racing game with a tight control system, was so good, that Gamespot created a new category in their year end awards for it?
Oh, right, and you want to be scared. So, how about four Resident Evil games and Eternal Darkness? Is that enough blood for you, mister sophisticated mature gaming man?
I've got a GameCube, a Playstation 2, and a Dreamcast (which, as far as I'm concerned, still has the best catalog of games around), couldn't be happier.
My other
How about a Slashdot review on how the hell you plug all of these game consoles into your existing video system? :P
Both interesting and informative, that one.
Seeing how the article makes blatant mistakes (the PS2 does not, in fact, require an extr remote to play DVD, nor does it require extra consoles to play with more than two players, its got an optionnal multi-tap for that), I'm wondering how many more subtle mistakes it makes in the less easily verified points: Numbers, architecture descriptions, etc.
And I reiterate: The GAMES are the important thing.
Xbox has nothing worth buying it (ooo, halo, big freakin' deal) while PS2 has Metal Gear Solid 2 (greates game of all time???), the Game Cube has super monkey ball (come on! A monkey in a ball? You can't get any more fun!), an pikmin and more coming.
I bought a PS2...I'm thingking about a game cube, but xbox is NOT interesting.
You can't take the sky from me...
Microsoft is just trying to create a closed pc where they can control everything. The XBox is an evil machine, even the name 'X' is evil, what does it mean? why 'X'? are they trying to hide something? Also, everyone knows that the XBox crashes all the time and that it overheats because there is a hampster fused with a plutonium core inside which they can use to make a nuclear device, i've seen the plans!!!
10 years on, and Microsoft's XBox is the industry standard. After the system was reverse engineered by an independent party, the market opened up for XBox 'clones' also known as Microsoft Compatables. These clones were produced by 3rd parties but the OS and DRM systems were provided by Microsoft - Because of the wide software base (Microsoft bought up Sony in 2004), the 3rd parties wanted to maintain compatibility with the Microsoft OS, and, because it was law in America, the Digital Rights Management System had to be provided by an approved company - either Microsoft or AOL/Time Warner. On the other side Nintendo provided their range of computers - the Polyhedron series. However no-one took them seriously except artists and writers.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
They already sold plenty to capture a large margin .. And the fact that it works with the GB Advance brings in even more peeps. Nintendo will never die. Microsoft may pull out, however, since they basically didn't innovate anything. They just sold a $300 celeron system with a GForce 3 card .. Which most(all?) of us have on our home PCs. Not to mention all their games are simple ports for the most part. Yay directx ...
Sorry for the caps, but I cannot stress how cool this game is. I bought it the other day, and am enthralled w/ the detail and cleverness of the whole thing.
That said, my wife and I have also had trouble turning off Super Monkey Ball and Luigi's Mansion.
Happy gaming.
p.
You hit the nail on the head, bub. I can't get a single day of playing on my Gamecube by myself since I bought it. My friends are all addicted as hell to SSX Tricky, Super Smash Brothers, Tony Hawk 3, and Super Monkey Ball. These are INCREDIBLE multiplayer games where you can have a room full of friends all going spaztic over these games. Gamecube is TRUELY a party machine. Nintendo has succeded far more than I think they have given themselves credit for. I cannot wait for the Bomberman Generations to be released, my friends are waiting for that like you wouldnt believe. And you know what the kicker is? I bought this machine PURELY for the Nintendo titles - Mario, Metroid, and Zelda. I can certainly wait now for them all to appear because Nintendo has such a killer smattering of games off the shelf. I cannot say this for the XBox. I played it on my friends and it was pretty dull compared to anything Gamecube has. If Nintendo doesn't reign king after a year, i'll eat my shoes. And that's a promise.
The Linux operating system was born in 1991 and was created by one man, a
Finnish student coincidentally named Linux Torvalds. Since these humble
beginnings, a multi-million dollar
industry has sprung up to exploit the commercial potential of Linux, but
until recently Linux has eluded mainstream acceptance. However, due to the
recent economic downturn together with uncertainty over changes to Microsoft's pricing policy, Linux is
now being touted as a serious contender to Microsoft Windows. While there
are many other alternatives to Windows, including BSD which is based on SUN's (Stanford University Network - correction by bc) server-grade Solaris operating system,
none have commanded the same level of media attention as Linux.
Linux Mandrake is just the
latest in a long line of quirkily christened versions of Linux. Previous
versions of Linux have been named Red Hat, Slack Ware,
Storm and Coral. In stark contrast to the mundane names such
as 98, ME or NT preferred by Microsoft, the crazy
names of each Linux release hint at its renegade nature.
My foray into the world of Linux began by downloading a "CD image" from
the Linux web site. But don't worry, this isn't software piracy, it's
perfectly legal! Linux is shareware, meaning that it can be freely
redistributed without fear of a visit by the Business Software Alliance. The free
availability of Linux is a major reason for its popularity among
cash-strapped students and self-styled anti-capitalist hackers.
Before installing new software, it is always advisable to read the
documentation. Unfortunately, an unpleasant surprise was in store for me
in the "required configuration" section of the manual.
I was shocked to learn that Linux Mandrake only runs on Pentium
processors, meaning that my hopes of testing the water with my old Gateway 486 were dashed. Furthermore, a
whopping 32 megabytes of memory are required to run Linux! Although the advocates of Linux self-righteously
boast the efficiency of their chosen operating system and deride the
"bloatware" produced by Microsoft, it appears that their claims are
blatantly incorrect. Although my humble 486 will happily run Windows 95,
it seems that Linux requires far more powerful, and more expensive,
computer hardware. Is this really the sign of a lean, mean operating system?
Of course not.
Sadly, not even being able to install Linux is just the first of my many
complaints. A brief perusal of the
features of Linux Mandrake reveals that Linux is sorely lacking many
crucial productivity applications. For example, why isn't the industry
standard web browser, Internet Explorer, included with Linux? Despite the
best efforts of the experts at the Internet
Engineering Task Force to encourage adoption of the Internet Explorer
standard, the creators of Linux seem to think that they know better. By
refusing to adhere to recognised standards, Linux is simply undermining
its own credibility.
Similarly, almost all of the world's most popular and widely used software
is completely incompatible with Linux! It may surprise you to learn that
your copy of Microsoft Office, Outlook Express, or Lotus Notes will not
work under Linux. Those who wish to use their computer for recreational
purposes are also out of luck, for almost all of the most popular games
are unavailable for Linux. Although a wide range of software is freely
available for Linux, these pitiful offerings are mostly unfinished, unreliable and do not
bear comparison to their commercial counterparts.
Computer security is also an area that seems to have been overlooked by
the developers of Linux. In these times when hacking and viruses are
commonplace, it defies belief to learn that no anti-virus software is available for
Linux. To add insult to injury, there is no Linux version of the popular
ZoneAlarm firewall. By using Linux,
you are issuing an open invitation to the hordes of ne'er-do-wells on the
Internet.
The shortcomings of Linux are obvious. Without even installing Linux
Mandrake, I have exposed several fundamental flaws. Surely it is not too
much to expect that, after ten years of development, the creators of Linux
would have addressed these problems? The real question that the
prospective Linux user must ask himself is, "Why bother?" After all,
Microsoft Windows comes free with most PCs and there simply isn't a need
to replace it, particularly not with a product of inferior quality.
Although it is always tempting to support the underdog, Windows XP will
be the deserved victor in the battle ahead. I recommend that those
Adequacy readers who are hoping to upgrade their operating system
patiently wait for the release of Windows XP, rather than foolishly
wasting their time, effort and money on Linux.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
Microsoft has SEVERAL lucrative deals going with ZDNet and Gamespot in particular. Use of their news engine, reviews etc. In these tough times it wouldn't surprise me if Gamespot compromises their integrity to meet their monthly bottom line by writing favorable reviews for XBox. Fuck them.
"Geez, I never thought I'd see someone on /. that thought that dumbing down the system was a good thing."
Obviously you don't hang around for the "What does Linux need, to...?" articles.
cube.ign.com has a great interview with two of the designers of the chip, and it's really informative. Part 2 is even better, where they talk about the competition's chips :)
The interviews really shed some light onto the chip's functionality; it's engineered for gaming and a far cry from the off-the-shelf XBox CPU. Additionally, they mention that IBM detailed the chips at Hot Chips and the Embedded Processor Forum. Can anyone dig that info up?
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
The XBox seems unsuitable for general home control, since it can't do home control and run a game at the same time. So that's out.
A "Parental Interrupt" button would be a cute feature. Sell an X10 sender with a button on it as an accessory. When Mom pushes a button, it pauses any currently playing games and displays "Dinner", or some such message. But support for this would have to be in disks already distributed, so it's too late.
It's hard to do much with X10 blind, because the control modules are pure receivers; you can't query them. You could send "All Lights On" or "All Lights Off" to all 256 house codes, but that's about it.
Are you sure the XBox supports only X10, and not CEBus, LonWorks, or something else more advanced?
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...
the usual Nintendo deregatory by CmdrTaco is there. WHY do you hate Nintendo? Did mommy forgot to give you the NES when you where a little lad or is the big bad Mario giving you bad dreams? Do you still want Big buff Snake to protect you?
1. PS2 can also use a hard drive as mass storage.
2. PS2 can have 8 controllers max using a Multi-tap (not 2).
3. I'm pretty sure that they meant Dolby Digital decoding, not encoding. Because what is there to encode? Is there a line-in jack somewhere? All of the data on the disc is ENcoded, so it needs to be DEcoded when played back.
4. PS2 does NOT require a seperate remote for DVD Video.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
X10 equipment?! At last, I can see some naked chicks!
Custer's Revenge: The greatest video
That makes me regret not screwing up the country a little more before I passed it on.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Let it be known that I don't really have any axe to grind for any particular system. I'm an avid gamer, and I like all three systems.
That said, the xbox runs hot and is prone to nervous breakdowns. The nearby Toys R Us received a Xbox kiosk about mid-november. When I came by on December 1, I noticed the Green Screen of Death. According to an employee, it was the *second* Xbox to bite the dust since they got the kiosk.
Same story at Game Crazy. The system would go for a few minutes and die (regardless of the game). Same with Fry's Electronics. And Gamestop.
So, while one incident would be enough to dismiss, I have seen enough fried xboxes to assume that something is up with the first batch (or at least the batch that retailers where getting for demos).
Alot of people have faulted the kiosk for poor cooling. The kiosk has *three* cooling fans, and the xbox has about 3 inches of clearance on any side. Far better than what you typically see with consoles in the home. Furthermore, I have only ever seen one fried PS2 kiosk, and haven't seen a dead N64/Dreamcast/Gamecube kiosk *ever*. I don't buy the kiosk excuse. I do think there are alot of zealots who like to play up Microsofts misteps, but the overheat issue is for real.
ps: What sadist designed the xbox controllers?
A previous /. article stated otherwise, here
/. for
i nu x.ps2.idg/
is a cnn link that references sony announcing
the US release plans. Also search
playstation and you will see the post.
http://asia.cnn.com/2001/TECH/fun.games/10/24/l
and it scared the hell out of me.
I've never seen such a revisionist and clueless pile of drivel in my life.
I have to apologize to euroderf, if not for any other reason than the fact that he has his own opinion and is welcome to it. I however do not agree with him.
Here are some excerpts from the website and it's articles - not verbatim:
Microsoft created object oriented programming.
Microsoft concieved a workable internet when no one else could.
Microsoft has the common man at the core of it's heart.
All linux users are hackers and zealots.
All linux users hate Microsoft because they charge for software.
Windows95 was written in Visual Basic.
Microsoft is the saviour of the common man when it comes to computers. Trust them(tm)
etc... etc... etc... ad infinitum.
What I want to know is if he ACTUALLY believes what he writes or is he trying to deliberately misleed Joe Public?
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
If you buy an extra add-on thing for an undisclosed price that Sony have not actually released yet and that no current games will take advantage of.
2. PS2 can have 8 controllers max using a Multi-tap (not 2).
Again, this supposes that you buy an extra add-on (although at least this time the add-on in question is more than vapor). 8 players doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me - sure, it's great for a few games, but I think the usefulness for most tops out at around 4 (if only because split-screen becomes silly after that point).
3. I'm pretty sure that they meant Dolby Digital decoding, not encoding. Because what is there to encode? Is there a line-in jack somewhere? All of the data on the disc is ENcoded, so it needs to be DEcoded when played back.
And I'm certain they meant encoding. There is plenty to encode - the game produces sound effects that can be spatialized and encoded as Dolby Digital, so that if you have a nice surround sound setup you hear the sound effects coming from the appropriate spot. Your receiver does the decoding, the console does the encoding.
4. PS2 does NOT require a seperate remote for DVD Video.
Ok, I guess I'll give you that one.
Built-in NIC (single-player games are for people with no friends)
And NICs are for people whose friends live inside their computer.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Ok, so XBox is superior in hardware, and it may be possible to produce better looking and fun games on it compared to other consoles, but just because the hardware has the capability does not mean that you will be able to play those promised "awesome" games. Why ? just take a look at nvidia, they have been producing engineering wonders, and their hardware is really expensive, but how many games can use that power ? I'm not a hardcore gamer, but my brother and his crew live for games, and with an athlon 1 ghz using a ge-force mx2 400, they can play max payne which is a really power demanding game.So why they should give their money for a ge-force ultra giga bla bla... ?
XBox may be the console of future, but i don't see a reason for buying it now, and waiting for the "games of the future" to come out while others play with ps2 and have fun. 1.5 or 2 years and so new games for XBox: and i'll choose it, but why buy a hardware with high power, when there is not much way to use that power ?
The BSODs and GSODs you hear of are actually not true
Please look at this
XBOX BSOD
The picture taken at DreamHack 2001, a big LAN event held in Sweden. Microsoft is a sponsor of the event and they were demoing XBOX on site. The picture is taken from the XBOX there.. which is a beta unit, according to Microsoft. It probably is
I just thought I would put in my 2 cents on this...
I bought a gamecube at launch cause I am a longtime nintendo supporter and wanted to try it out. I bought Rogue Leader, Tony Hawk 3, and Super Smash Brother Melee. Rogue Leader is a great game, but the PS2 version of tony hawk 3 gets better reviews across the board and the gamecube port has some serious issues (slowdown on certain levels)....
Super Smash Brothers is good as well but not something I would play a lot by myself... so when I sat back and looked at the situation I realized there were a good dozen games I want to play on PS2 but just not that much out for gamecube yet. I realize this was the problem with PS2 at launch as well but in my impatience I have switched over to PS2. I may buy a gamecube later down the line but not just yet.
In other words, I don't really think for a lot of us the features and graphical abilities are the most important thing... its purely who has the best games at the moment.
Do you remember the slashdot article entitled4 22 9&mode=thread
"U.S. Playstation 2 Linux Hits the Streets"?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/04/025
There were 446 comments, so perhaps there is some interest here.
X-Box = PC without Keyboard and Mouse
PS2 & GC = Console without Keyboard and Mouse
So why would anyone buy a "SECOND PC" when there is way more and better games for the Playstation 2?
Maybe those people that wants PC games but have a shitty PC?.
Anyway, Microsofts only chance of winning this war is buying exclusive titles and keeping them away from the PC, in reality turning the X-Box into a hardware key for "PC" games.
For a more indepth view of the PS2 vs PC look here:
http://www.arstechnica.com/cpu/2q00/ps2/ps2vspc
It describes the fundemental differences between the two designs and much can be compared to the X-Box vs PS2.
This is great. Helps throw a little water on the FUD fires that all the little Xbox weenies start.
The whole "mature games" ploy is the dumbest thing ever.
Xbox fan boys continue to make up little facts; or as I like to call them, lies.
"Thoughts are more powerful than any weapon, and I don't even let my people own guns." --Joseph Stalin
There are UT and Quake3. For UT you can plan networked with an IEEE 1394/i.Link/Firewire connection and even hook up a keyboard and mouse. I think it was a launch title too.
More recently there was Red Faction where you could blow up the walls instead of just following the maze.
It requires a keyboard to be 100% practical, but that will only cost you roughly $20 more, or less if you get an adapter plus a PS/2 or AT keyboard from your stash. (The Mad Katz adapter will play nicely with both, the others are PS/2 only but how many people still have AT keyboards lying around?)
Certainly using a real computer to surf and get your mail with is better than kludging it with a DC. But this is certainly the cheapest way on. And hey, you can play DC games with this too!
Hi, I'm Ms. Geek, and I'm a DC addict.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
You're slightly off. The PS1 came out in 94 and the PS2 in 2000. I'd say five years.
Read "there has still been some COMMERCIAL development." As far as a Dreamcast hacking/development community goes, that's where the real action's gonna be for DC in the future.
The beauty of the DC is this:
Someone's gotta step up to the plate and build a reverse-engineered Broadband Adapter. There are too many DCs out there and too much demand, particularly amongst geeks, for that not to happen. The v90 dialup modem that comes with the box is pretty damn good as dialup modems go, btw.
It is more than likely that there will be DC development going on for years into the future. Buy a DC now, and it will indeed have a future. Also RIGHT NOW it has Unreal Tournament, Quake III, Soul Calibur 2 and on and on.
Don't take my word for it...drop in at these sites and see what's going on for yourself:
http://mc.pp.se/dc/
http://www.fivemouse.com/dclinux.html
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
The Gekko is a G3 with a few new instructions and is hooked up to SRAM (sort of..) instead of DRAM. It is not an off the shelf G3, but the Gekko chip most deffinatly contains a G3 CPU at its core.
It is still a four stage in order CPU that can execute two instructions per cycle (three if one is a branch). For longer instructions like mult and divide these take more than one cycle and clog the pipe.
The only difference between a Gekko and a G3 to a programmer is simply that IBM added SIMD (paired single you'll hear a lot) floating point operations and cache management (data prefetch).
Head to Google and search for "Gekko site:eet.com" and you'll see the Gekko is at it's core nothing more than a G3.
The Gekko is a great CPU for what it has to do, but don't think because Nintendo sent some IBM people to be interviewed as a PR move that it is anything more than what it is.
When you develop for the PC platform your game is targetted to systems up to three years old. Actually up to five if you aren't an action game since some of the systems sold three years ago are obsolete two year old systems :)
Right now games have to look good on an AthlonXP 2000+ with a 64meg GeForce3 and SB Audigy. Yet only a few hundred people have that system, so you still have to sell to the people with a Celeron 300A from August 1998 with a Voodoo2/TNT and SB AWE32. There is quite a bit of a difference there.
With a console you know the resolution the game will run at, the frame rate you want, the EXACT hardware, etc. Everything. Everybody will have the same system.
Console games wont wait a year or two before showing off what your system is capable of because they don't need to worry about games running on obsolete systems. So don't worry about games not using a console's hardware.
Of course you do have to worry about no good games comming out for the xbox as all the top developers are writting for the GameCube and PS2.
The problem is that people are claiming it is an off-the-shelf G3, which it's far from. Of course the coure is going to be G3- it's by far and wide most suitable/best PowerPC they have for this. The first rev G4s were barely more than G3s with an AltiVec unit.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
The first G4s also had OOE in addition to Altivec, right? But still an amazingly short 4stage pipe like the G3 and could only execute a pair or instructions per cycle?
Since game developers will optimize the crap out of their code OOE isn't a big win, and a full altivec implementation would go wasted I wonder if there would really be any advantage to using a G4 instead of a G3? Probably not.
Why do people like this always end up in the media?
Anyone else irritated by the senseless use of PDF documents for their figures and references?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Sadly since they aren't a commercial venture they don't get the games ahead of time to review them, but gamecritics.com is the one place that truely critiques reviews in the way Siskle & Ebert did for movies.
> And as for hardware sales...you do know that the console makers lose money on hardware sales, right?. html
This is no longer true - the only console maker losing money on hardware sales is M$ - PS2 and GameCube are cheaper to make than sell. Sony practically manufactures the whole machine, and the GameCube is made of such cheap parts that it's still making a profit at $199.
Check out http://www.actsofgord.com/Proclamations/chapter02
agent scully probing the guts of aliens
Microsoft would have plastered the X10 ability all over the cardboard box the console came in, along with pictures of racially integrated kids with awful haircuts playing together in the family room while 3D spaceships and soccer players came zooming out of the TV at them, and faked up screenshots on the back of all the titles that hadn't been released yet and a convenient plastic handle for all those times you wanted to pack up your machine in its original console and take it to your friend's house. They would also have "Can be converted into a REAL COMPUTER!*" in 72 point type on the back, followed by a much smaller "*Using optional Super X-Pander Module, coming in Fall 1983."
And best of all, in six months they'd be in Chapter 11.
I have DSL ,a non dialup ISP. How do i get it to work with my dreamcast? Does DC only support dialup web connections? I have an ADSL modem and i would love to get online and play/telnet into it and do all sorts of stuff
I know the broadband adapter works with only 2 games so thats stupid. please answer ASAP, ive got a good feeling i can get where no techie has been b4 in this machine.
Thank You, Adam Brown
What you don't notice are the other 80% of the population who don't go online and play FPSes with their PCs... Because why would they be talking to you online about FPSes?
Personally I've kinda been bored of FPSes since I finished DOOM II... online gaming was fun with Quake 2 for a while... but still, it's a fad and it's dying out.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind