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More on Future X-Box Capabilities
rtphokie writes "The oft - rumored expansion of Microsoft's Xbox from a gaming console to a more full featured entertainment hub is taking a little more shape. A C|Net article tells of a HomeStation device which is claimed to be slated for a fall release. In addition to Xbox game compatibility and DVD functionality, it is reported to have TiVo/UltimateTV like PVR functionality as well as WebTV like email and web surfing capabilities.
This "report" comes on the heels of the announcement of the Moxi Digital set-top MoxiMedia Center which was named "Best of Show" at the recent Consumer Electronics Show."
I also hear that you can hook up the clapper to it.
Clap off, clap on....Ever claped a BSOD?
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Anyone rememember many years back the Beatrice commercials? You'd see commercials for everyday brand name products and that last second of the commercial was a little jingle and the words 'We're Beatrice'.
Remember how fast thost commercials went away? People start freaking out when they realizes that 65-75% of the products they use where produced by a single company. Beatrice quickly dropped the 'look how freaking large we are' strategy and went back to just promoting the single brand names on their own.
I can't help but think the same thing is going to happen to microsoft. People are going to suddenly wake up and realize the the MS logo is on their computer, tv's, vcr's/dvr's, video games, toddler toys, kitchen appliances, car electroncs, etc...
The media port on the back of the Xbox is labelled Video Input/Output. If it had a method of storing PVR info on a network share, it might have everything it needs now.
Golly, this is the first pro Xbox message in this article...hope it doesn't get modded into oblivion!
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
someone actually came out and called that "Modified Pentium 3" what it really is...
Mosesmann said the HomeStation will be based on the Xbox design, which is similar to a PC and uses standard PC components such as an Intel Celeron processor and USB ports.
Homestation. If you listen real close, you can hear Sony's lawyers suiting up...
Shift happens. Fire it up.
Well as we all know, open source is unamerican so you can't, in good conscience, use open source software. So Linux, BSD, etc, are right out.
You could use a proprietary Unix but that's 70's era technology. You don't want to be using something that out of date.
There's a couple little oddities like BeOS out there but those don't have any software for them and they are doomed so why waste your money.
You could go with MacOS, but as we all know Steve Jobs isn't a techie and is therefor unqualified to be the figurehead for any product worth buying.
So your only reasonable choice is to go with Windows.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
is that Microsoft actually has all of their stuff written already, while the MoxiBoxi is currently vapor-tastic. Unless, of course, Moxi is just planning on rolling out a slightly tweaked WinXP embedded box, which would create nothing more than a Homestation minus XBOX game compatability. Personally, I think Microsoft release WinXP embedded for no other reason than to make corporations feel silly about writing their own STB software. Then, when the suits decide to just use the XP Embedded softwares, they'll have a hard time distinguishing themselves from a superior (XBOX compatible) Homestation.
Xbox will have WebTV like capability?
Just when you thought the cursed thing had died.
Has anyone ever tried to make a webpage work with it? By far the most cryptic errors ever.
"This page is too large to display" on a TINY page.
Tivo? How big is the HD on the Xbox anyway.
Now I've been dreaming of this for years.
Why not instead of trying to make a PC out of an Xbox make an Xbox out of a PC?
Why not release a $150 card or even $300 one that you stick and your PC and tada you can play Xbox games on your nice non blury monitor?
Same with PS2 etc.
Staying on topic, M$ trying to make something do everything is typical. So expect the Xbox to try to do many things and fail at all of them.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
It deserves the scare quotes because it's a security analyst pushing one of his stocks - it's not an objective report.
This was first brought up several months ago in an article on The Register, but everyone widely dismissed it as a hoax.
PC Format also covered it a few weeks ago, and people still dismissed it as a hoax.
Now its on C|Net, is it still consired a hoax??? Or is it now a definite sign of things to come?
Microsoft Germany spokesman Boris Schneider-Johne has denied (apologies for the german link) to Heise that Microsoft is working on such a thing.
michael at slashdot.org: The real answer is that a couple of the slashdot authors are sick.
In addition to Xbox game compatibility and DVD functionality, it is reported to have TiVo/UltimateTV like PVR functionality as well as WebTV like email and web surfing capabilities.
What about the rumored mind control capabilities? ... oh, TV ... never mind.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Sure, I understand that the product is vapor, but the fact that someone reported that there are plans to make it is not suspect. Are we saying that there are no plans to make it, and the report was just made up? I'm sure all reports of new products are exaggerated and hopeful in their timing, but it's not as if they are creative writing or fictional short-stories.
I think I'll stop here.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I just can't help thinking thinking that if I want the capabilities of a TIVO, DVD player, game console, etc. then I would just go to the manufactures would DO this stuff well and buy a TIVO, etc. etc.
The XBox might be a fantastic piece of tech, but MS doesn't have a particularly good record in the consumer electronics market.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
With the release of the Xbox as it is, it was a retarded move. They released a mediocre PC masquerading as a game console with mediocre games.
The only extras were the DVD (Sony beat them here) and the MP3 ripping/playing.
This isn't MS.
Microsoft strategy is to bundle several mediocre implementations in one box, undercut the competition, and establish a monopoly.
See MS Word vs. Wordperfect, Word got clobbered.
Excel vs. 1-2-3, Excel got clobbered.
Solution, sell "Office" for less than Wordperfect was individually? Boom, market yours.
Look at the 3 consoles. PS2 wins if you want a quantity of games, period. If you are into renting new games all the time with lots of variety, you need a PS2.
Gamecube has an amazing controller, tremendous graphics, and the best hardware in the business. (Blah, blah, blah, Mhz, blah, blah, blah, the Xbox processor is going to be slow compared to a customized PPC G3 with a game-taillored vector unit... think Altivec on crack in Photoshop shootouts... Intel only looks good in integer math... games don't do integer math...) Also it brings Nintendo's franchises, which are the best in the business.
What does Xbox have? Hype? Newness?
Microsoft needs to leverage more than their cash (willingness to lose $3 billion over three years to establish a presence is stupid... Atari, Nintendo, and Sony each dominated the market their first time out the door). There is no market openning now as there was Sony entered (3rd party hatred of Nintendo and Sega). The market loves Sony and the 25m-30m Nintendo fans love Nintendo.
Microsoft needs to bundle:
a mediocre DVD player
a mediocre video game player
a mediocre MP3 jukebox
a mediocre PVR (VCR Replacement)
and price them all at $300. I don't care about the specs, but they need to force families to think, "Sure the PS2 plays DVDs and games, but the MS Homestation does all this for the same price!"
Unfortunately as the linux industry comes down from its 2001 high, sites like this are devolving into raw, unreasoned advocacy. check out comp.os.os2.advocacy circa about 1996 to see where /. is heading.
Who here started to read the article:
"Prudential Securities analyst Hans Mosesmann, who covers graphics chip..."
And thought, "huh?...Hans Moleman?"
... but there just seems to be a lot of hype about the abilities of these new machines. I'd wager that when released they'll have about 1/3 the proposed functionality. And that goes for anyone trying to produce these boxes, not just MS.
Remember a few years ago when Sony claimed the PS2 would be a digital hub with all of these same capabilities? Funny how its now been pushed back to the PS3.
It looks as if the bulk of what will make the MS unit work is going to rely on MS servers on the backend. Considering that they can't even deliver the software for their cable boxes on time I'd be real surprised if they can get this out in the next few years.
Again, not a MS bash. If Sony, Sega, Panasonic, Scientific Atlanta, et al were making such huge claims I'd be bashing as well.
The irony here being that Beatrice was later bought out by a bigger company (ConAgra).
Other companies have changed their names as they grow (First Union bought out Wachovia, and took its name to boot).
So yeah that Microsoft strategy is a good idea. I mean can you imagine if people knew there was a single company controlling something like: AOL, AOL Instant Messenger, AOL TV, Asiaweek, Atlanta Braves, Atlanta Hawks, Atlanta Thrashers, Atlantic Records, Baby Talk, Book-of-the-Month Club, Capitol Records, Cartoon Network, Castle Rock Entertainment, Cinemax, CNN, CNNfn, Coastal Living, Columbia House, Comedy Central, CompuServe, Cooking Light, Court TV, DC Comics, Digital City, eCompany Now, Elektra, EMI, Entertaindom.com, Entertainment Weekly, ESPN, Family Life, Fortune Magazine, Goodwill Games, Hanna-Barbera, HBO, Headline News, Health Magazine, ICQ, InStyle, Life Magazine, Little Brown, Looney Tunes, Mad Magazine, Money Magazine, MovieFone, Netscape, New Line Cinema, NY1 News, the Open Directory Project, People Magazine, Progressive Farmer, Qwest, Real Simple, Rhino, Road Runner, Southern Accents, Southern Living, Spinner, Sports Illustrated Magazines, Sunset, TBS, Teen People, Telepictures Productions, This Old House, Time Magazines, Time Warner Cable, TNT, Tommy Boy Music, Turner Classic Movies, Virgin Records, Warner Brothers Companies (Movies, Television Network, Video, Music, Stores), Winamp, and World Championship Wrestling. I mean really, that would be crazy.
All anti-ms feelings aside, It only makes sense for them to do so.. basically it is ultimatetv+xbox... they will need to add larger hard drive to it and maybe more CPU and ram but they will be able to charge more for it as well... and believe it or not, if they keep the price under 500$-600$, it will even be to the benefit of consumers... why pay for 700$ replaytv, when you can get similar features plus gaming console... only makes sense for them... hell, even I might considered getting one as long as pvr features are good
I can't help but picture the futuristic house: a .net passport to access your house, then you use MS voice recognition to start your X-box controlled blender ("start blender") and it opens the start menu on your tivo. You go to the bathroom and realise that the toilet paper was used up by the MS house maid when the washing machine crashed because some idiot DOSed it. No problem, the X-Box terminal in the bathroom has already sent a message through MSN to MS toilet HQ, and the delivery is on the way.
Then some script kiddie uses a widely-known-but-little-repaired-exploit (TM) and bluescreens your house. You have to go down to the basement (again!), unplug the internet cable, unplug the power cable, short the solders on your Microsoft House BIOS, reinstall House XP 2005...
wazoo....
Imperium et libertas
Autocracy and freedom
Personally, I like this movement for several reasons.
If this trend is for real and the drive is more than just fad, it bodes well for computer users. Not only will this mean better stability, but lower prices.
On the otherhand, microsoft could hit a huge wall and realize how hard it is to build a truly reliable operating system and decide to back out. I doubt that will happen for a couple reasons. Microsoft's goals are to maximize share holder value and please the analysts. In order to do that, they have to diversify and expand the markets to minimize the impact of PC consumer demands. Considering the resources Microsoft has at its' disposal, it just might pull it off.
Do you mean on your TV, or on TechTV's systems? The latter is more likely.
Has Leo tried to install Linux within the time frame of his show recently?
That aside, show me another game console that can pull this off. Microsoft or not, this is a few years ahead of what Sony or Nintendo is going to be doing.
Just what do you think Sony has been doing since the PS2 was released in Oct/Nov 2000?
Sony holds their cards a little closer than Microsoft does and for good reason. I'm curious to see what they come up with.
I Heart Sorting Networks
And I don't want a $1000 PC in each room.
When is someone going to create a credible web terminal with a small keyboard and an LCD screen that I can hookup to my DSL or Cablemodem and not have to pay MS or Compaq monthly fees for connecting to their network?
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
"People are going to suddenly wake up and realize the the MS logo is on their computer, tv's, vcr's/dvr's, video games, toddler toys, kitchen appliances, car electroncs, etc
but people havent woken up to Sony yet , Sony are just about the only company that can complete the circle from not only producing the Artists that make the media (and the equipment they use to create it) to delivering it to the consumers eyes/ears on their Sony stereo/TV/computer/etc yet people still shower them with praise and dont feel they are a monopoly, even microsoft are not in Sonys exclusive position
But it's an easy mistake to make.
Sony was the first to try such a thing with it's PS1. It saw that a video game machine with additional functionality might be appeal to the "mass market", mostly adults without children who hadn'y been interested in a home console until that point. The PS1 played audio CD's and was thought of by sony as a component of the Sony "Home entertainment" vision and not as a dedicated game machine.
With that approach, the PS1 conquered the mass market. It took less than two years for the ps1 to penetrate 10% of American homes. By comparison, it took color TV 13 years, 11 for the VCR and 6 for audio CDs.
Now Microsoft is trying to do the same thing with a different set of functionality. Seems like a good idea, but it's a very different world now.
Game consoles are no longer just a niche. 32% of US homes have one sort of console or another. Sony is by far the market leader, and the PS2 is backwards compatable with a huge PS1 base. Whats more, it also plays DVDs. Microsoft will have to price their homestation offering well over the PS2 (or suffer huge losses). It will be interesting to see if consumers are interested in the functionality for the price.
Meanwhile, Nintendo has stayed true to it's fmaily oriented niche and remains by far the most profitable of the players from a pure video game approach. And while all activity is happening in the "Home Entertainment" world, Nintendo is virtually unchallnged on the handheld side with its gameboy and gameboy advance. GBA is projected to become a 500 million dollar business this year!
If I had to choose right now, I'd rather be Nintendo...
-rg
So they're introducing an all-in-one device that will allow you to:
1. Play games
2. Play DVDs
3. Watch TV
4. Surf the web
5. Write email
Gee, that sounds an awful lot like my computer!
So why do they bother? First and foremost, because this is their opportunity to control the one thing they've been unable to get so far: the hardware. Now they will finally be able to implement their digital rights infringement, etc, without fear of pushing the user away (after all, who in their right mind would give up using a piece of hardware after they paid $1000+ for it).
There's more to this scheme, however. Take a closer look at the list of activities shown above. Notice the absence of any kind of development, programming, hacking, etc. The long term goal of this strategy is to "phase out" these kinds of activities, because they are dangerous to the Microsoft monopoly. Eventually, they want everyone's recreational activities to be limited to the 5 items listed above (give or take a few).
Impossible, you say? Not with a little careful manipulation of the market. I'd estimate that 90% of the PC market these days are our beloved Joe Sixpacks, who simply want to do items 1-5, nothing more. Instead of trying to sell general purpose hardware and then customize it with the software (OS), they will start selling customized hardware, which will have only 10% less market share than PCs. With a "good" marketing campaign (which we know MS is capable of), they can strike a huge blow to the general purpose PC business, which will either drive it out of existence, or drive prices way up. Either of these outcomes will make PCs virtually inaccessible to consumers. Over the long term, consumers will lose interest in hacking/development. It might take an entire generation, but it will happen.
Thanks for tuning in.
Haha, yeah I was really just curious. Didn't mean to jump to conclusions. I just wasn't clear that you were trying to make the point that the report was released purposely to detract from the Moxi story. It's certainly prudent to have a critical eye toward product announcements. It just seemed overly cynical when, in my view, the gist of the story was that something useful was going to be produced based on the XBox - an unfairly maligned product (IMO).
I think I'll stop here.
In Canada on CNN, AOL Time Warner runs a "aren't we great" ad that basically does just that. It lists: AOL, CNN, CNN Headline News, TSB, TNN, Tuner Classic Movies, Time, Warner Brothers, New Line Cinema, Netscape and maybe others. I think it should be Exhibit A in any Microsoft defense any against the charge that they are attacking, Netscape - the little guy.
Look at the 3 consoles. PS2 wins if you want a quantity of games, period.
Four.
Nintendo currently sells two consoles: the GameCube, and the 32-bit Game Boy Advance. (Yes, the GBA is a console. It has twice the power of Super NES, and a third party makes a TV adapter.) The GBA can play over a thousand official games, including games designed for Game Boy and Game Boy Color. (Are there more Game Boy games or more PS1 games?) That doesn't even count the demos and mini-games that any C programmer can develop and run on the system with a flash card or $50 link cable.
Gamecube has an amazing controller
I agree, but a fellow has to admit that it's a copy of PlayStation's with the L1 button removed, the L2 and R2 buttons made analog (like Dreamcast), and the left pad and stick interchanged.
Intel only looks good in integer math... games don't do integer math
Yes, 3D games are mostly floating-point, but 2D games (such as ports of some arcade fighting games) use integer math, and game AI uses heavy integer math.
Microsoft needs to bundle: a mediocre DVD player, a mediocre video game player
Microsoft currently sells this for $330 (XBox + DVD dongle).
a mediocre MP3 jukebox
Well within the XBox's capability, but Microsoft would rather use the WMA format than what some journalists have termed "Music Piracy 3".
a mediocre PVR (VCR Replacement)
So you're proposing an XBox + Ultimate TV combo deck. It'll be a while before Microsoft can get costs down to put the price below $300.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hey, maybe this time they can make some good controllers that fit the human hand.
I can't help thinking about Jon Katz's artice about iMacs yesterday. I think his point was that Apple should abandon their strategy of trying to create a digital hub for entertainment, and instead be more like Microsoft? Hmmmmm....
"I am a cipher, a cipher, wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce" -Jimmy James
I love my GBA. It isn't a substitute. It's awesome, has a monopoly on the handheld market, but it isn't in the same competition as the others. You don't see people deciding between a GBA and GCN, or a GBA and PS2. If you want a handheld, you get a GBA.
The games rock, its a money-maker for Nintendo, etc. However, it isn't competition for home systems.
I won't grant that the Gamecube controller is a rip-off of the Playstation's controller.
To me it is a natural evolution.
The Playstation's controller was a rip-off of the SNES controller that got extra shoulder pads and LATER analog sticks (after they ripped the idea off Nintendo).
The Gamecube controller is very clearly derivative of the N64's controller. The left hand options before (D-pad + L, or Analog + Z) have been merged into (D-pad OR Analog) + L with the added bonus of the D-pad and Analog both being usable with an easy switch.
The button layout on the right is the SNES layout reoriented around the reality of a primary button (A), secondary button (B) and optional extra buttons (X, Y).
The SNES had four equal buttons, but they were rarely uses as such.
The Z-button? It's a hack tacked on at the last minute for people worried about losing a button. There it is, developers, please don't use it much.
Analog shoulder pads, brilliant new invention (like N64's analog stick, SNES's shoulder pads, and NES's D-pad) that everyone will copy.
C-stick, it's neat. An adaption of the C-buttons into a stick. The C-buttons had the advantage of letting the N64 ACT like a 6-button controller (for things like Street Fighter).
Nintendo's N64 controller was large and unwieldy but REALLY flexible.
Games didn't use the flexibilty.
Gamecube keeps the controls and options and tweaks the layout to be more useful.
No it isn't 3-controllers in one (theoretically, N64 = Dpad + buttons, Dpad + analog, Analog + buttons), but 1 awesome controller with everything in a clsoe distance.
Yes the Playstation dual-shock is a nice controller (once you get past the shock of not grabbing the left side and having the primary controller there... drove me crazy on the N64 and hit me again now), but the GCN isn't a ripoff of Sony.
Well, before MS attacked Netscape, who owned Netscape? Ooops.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
The scary part is that there are only 5 other huge media corporations in the world, each with a list that's just as impressive. The pdf above doesn't go into the same kind of detail, but still gives a good idea.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
If nothing else, MS trying to "strike a huge blow to the general purpose PC business, which will either drive it out of existence, or drive prices way up will sure increase sales of apple machines. And they know this.
Over the long term, consumers will lose interest in hacking/development. It might take an entire generation, but it will happen.
If MS's monolopy was absolute, you'd be right. But it isn't. They know this. They will not introduce features that virtually hand market share to thier competitors.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I'd like a peripheral that plugs into the X-Box and serves up a piping hot loaf after a hard game of Halo. If Microsoft can make a paperclip talk, they can certainly make a game box that produces fresh baked goods.
No, it has a better controller
/painful/, but I can't imagine a kid using that thing without feeling some pain.
Wow. That is (seriously) the first time I've heard that.
It seems the universal bitch about the Xbox is the gigantic, unweildly controller.
I have both a GC and an XB controller, and IMO, the GC controller beats the XB one easy.
I have large hands so the XB controller wasn't
Yes, the GC controller is similar to a PS controller, but the PS controller design is a good one that works equally well with all sizes of hands.
It seems like MS decided to randomly mix together design concepts from like 5 different controllers, and got, well, just that - a big, mutated frankenstein of a controller.
C-X C-S
The Xbox has dollar bill slot like you find on ATMs.
Except this one only takes dollars in.
In this way MS can dispense with all the hoopla about
supporting this or that capability and get to the point
of what the Xbox is really about!
I disagree with you on an assessment of computer hardware so I'm a moron?
I'm not a huge Halo fan. It looks good, but I don't like FPS games. However, I really enjoy Luigi's Mansion. It's a fun game, not particularly deep, but fun and silly.
However, I think that picking two arbitrary games (one system's flagship with 5 years of development, the other a technical demo that morphed into a short game) and comparing the systems is a little silly.
The hardware is different.
The GPUs are really hard to tell. I THINK that the Xbox GPU is stronger, but I don't know enough about the Gamecube's to know for sure.
The CPUs are night and day. The Xbox has all the legacy garbage of the Intel Celeron, compared to the sleak Gamecube CPU. The Gamecube CPU is a more intelligent design, better at floating point, and overall should kick its butt.
Xbox has more memory, point Xbox. Given the use of standard computer RAM, it should have 128MB, not 64MB. Stupid decision. As a result, this advantage become more minor than it should.
GCN has faster RAM. There is RAM everywhere, with highspeed interconnects.
This lends itself towards not having slowdowns. This should allow the GCN to sit closer to 100% utilization all the time.
The game development environment is more condusive to building games with depth? What the fuck are you talking about. The Nintendo style of not having FMV lends itself to games that you PLAY more.
The Xbox is a crappy PC thrown in a black box on the theory that games will be better because the hardware is fixed. However, if you lock all the hardware behind an abstraction layer, you don't really have much room to optimize.
The advantage to the Xbox is that you can release games NOW that require its hardware, while PC games normally have to target PCs 2-3 years old. Given that everything save the GPU is 2-3 years old in the Xbox, this isn't a REAL advantage.
Xbox has the hard drive and larger memory areas, this lends itself towards these deeper games that you discuss. However, having a GPU that shares the memory really knocks down that memory advantage.
The Xbox is a sloppy system, justified entirely on hype based upon numbers that aren't that good when you analyze them.
Two years and the Xbox is toast.
Microsoft's strategy may be based upon the fact that they can crank out PC-based systems with near zero R&D. This means that they can rev the hardware every 3 years. Shrink the lifespan of the consoles, and you cramp Sony and Nintendo's abilities to do R&D. Take all the money out of the industry and Sony pulls out, and Nintendo gets hurt. Then you can leave crap out there and sell games.
With Windows, MS needs to force you to WANT to upgrade. With an X-box monopoly, they just need you to WANT a new game, no need to put out new hardware or anything.
What a sad, sad, sad possible future.
Apple has at least one Mac/Imac which is set up to do video capture/editing out of the box and now I think they even bundle it with a DVD burner. If you like Macs. There are probably people doing bundles on the PC side if you know where to look.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
The technology behind a PVR isn't that complicated- a hard drive, a tuner, and MPEG encoder / decoder, video out, channel listings, etc... But getting one that really works well for the user requires quite a bit of subtle work -- if you've ever used a Tivo, you can appreciate the amount of thought and work that went into the software in the unit.
Fact is, a lot of "convergence" vendors are going to be coming out with these boxes (like the MoxieMedia Center) that not only are a PVR but are going to try to do a bunch of things. I'm not bashing Moxie in particular (I've never used one) but I have a hard time believing that a company without MS's resources is going to be able to spend much time getting the user experience right for each of the functions.
I hope Tivo and / or SonicBlue are smart and licensing their software technologies all over the place, because otherwise, we're going to be subjected to a bunch of exciting sounding boxes that really disappoint when you turn them on and try to use them.
However, [a portable system] isn't competition for home systems.
If you only have one TV and multiple children, it is. The kids will fight over who gets to play on the TV and who has to sit out and play on the GBA.
I won't grant that the Gamecube controller is a rip-off of the Playstation's controller. To me it is a natural evolution.
Granted.
with the added bonus of the D-pad and Analog both being usable with an easy switch.
This is going to make Tetris Worlds hellish. It'll be quite difficult to make the pieces do what you want because the digital pad is so far away from the palm of the hand that the thumb must be twisted from the normal 45-degree orientation to reach the pad. You may get similar problems to what happens when trying to play Tetris with a SideWinder USB joypad (SWPNP or SW GamePad Pro), such that it's next to impossible to push straight down without also pushing to the side.
The button layout on the right is the SNES layout reoriented around the reality of a primary button (A), secondary button (B) and optional extra buttons (X, Y).
Two problems: 1. It's confusing for Super NES veterans, who associate the primary button with the letter B and the upward direction with the letter X and see the Cube's buttons as rotated 90 degrees clockwise, and 2. it's nearly impossible to press B and Y with one thumb on the Cube's controller.
The SNES had four equal buttons
According to nintendo developer guidelines (which have been partially leaked over the years), the Super NES had two main buttons (A B) and two secondary buttons (Y X).
However, the hardware interface treated B and Y as primary and A and X as secondary. The interface was based on the NES Four Score interface, which concatenated the data of players 1 and 3 (each in A B Sel St Up Dn Lt Rt order) onto player 1's port and players 2 and 4 onto player 2's port. Super NES, on the other hand, uses B Y Sel St Up Dn Lt Rt A X L R 0 0 0 0 order, where the 0's apparently have something to do with mouse quadrature (the mouse buttons are sent on A and X; try plugging a mouse into port 2 and using the pad test in kirby's avalanche).
but they were rarely uses as such.
Several Super NES games used the buttons as a second directional pad, such as Smash TV, where B fired south, A+X fired northeast, etc. Many PlayStation games (such as Forsaken) also came configured this way. This was made explicit in the design of the Virtual Boy and Nintendo 64 controllers.
The C-buttons had the advantage of letting the N64 ACT like a 6-button controller
And the Wishtech Adaptoid (an N64 to USB/HID adapter) even returns button information to Windows as if it were a 6-button.
(for things like Street Fighter).
Or in real-time tactical sims such as Starcraft 64.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Who needs Dell, Compaq and IBM? Microsoft is about to cut them out of the deal completely. Why not just sell your own computer?
The question is, how far will MS take their 'hardware lust'? how close to being Apple will they get before the afore mentioned giants turn on them?
Rule #1 in business: Dont compete with your own customers.
In due fairness, Comedy Central is jointly owned by Viacom (yeah, that other mega-entertainment company) and HBO (which is an "AOL/TW Property", of course).
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Is there an easy way to find this info? The last time I searched, I tried "company hierarchies", "company trees", and some others, but none of my searches turned up anything useful.
Though I'd be very interested in finding such a list, I find that -- in lieu of such a list -- it can be helpful to just check on the websites of the MegaCorps themselves (as they seem to be more than eager to list their subsidiary companies).
For instance, I've been boycotting Pillsbury ever since they sent cease-and-desist letters to universities and Sun Microsystems (among others) for using the term "bake off" to describe their protocol evaluation sessions.
But, it doesn't just end there. With a little checking, you can find out that General Mills owns Pillsbury. And, for a boycott to be effective, that meant that I needed to also boycott the rest of General Mills. So, for instance, that means no Yoplait, no Cheerios or Chex, no Betty Crocker or Bisquick, and no Jolly Green Giant, Old El Paso, or Progressive (among other brands). And, you know what? I've stuck with it -- to this day, I don't buy from Pillsbury, General Mills, or any of its subsidiaries.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
s/Progressive/Progresso (doh)
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
This Linuxhead you slammed is an MCSE. I kicked Linux out of my server room a while ago. We run OpenBSD for almost all our Unix needs (I run Linux database servers far from the Internet because of OpenBSD performance problems).
Look at the Xbox hardware. It is a Celeron processor with OTS components that are found in PCs. The Gamecube uses a custom processor that was based on IBM's desktop CPU, but with a custom GPU and unusual memory configurations.
The system, componentwise, is a PC, with a custom OS (using kernel code from Win2K, but a completely custom Ring-0 OS). The kicker to me is the inclusion of DirectX. DirectX means that applications for WinXbox are source compatible with Win32.
All the yelling in the world that this is a custom system built for gaming doesn't make it so. It is a PC with a good gaming sound card AND a special chip that converts PC resolutions -> HDTV resolutions (taking up to 1024x768 resolutions).
It burns cash for MS because the component costs are expensive. However, their R&D costs are really low. It's a tradeoff.
However, if you rev the system regularly, there is less time to recoup R&D costs. The Sony, Sega (Saturn and later), and MS strategy is to burn money early on and make money late in the console's life. A R&D light approach let's MS put everyone out of business.
First of all, trying to encode the video in software would be moronical. My theory: there's a hardware chip with its own dedicated memory that takes care of that. It then sends the data straight to the hard drive with almost no help from the CPU. There's also a hardware chip that handles video decoding, so full streaming media can be done while the CPU is full tilt into some other task. I can't think of any game that uses 100% CPU. If the operating system is designed with a realtime scheduler, the video subsystem can demand that its necessary CPU power is given to it. Since gaming is less important, it might drop speed by a few fps to handle sending the video to the disk.
"One box to rule them all...and in the darkness bind them"
A solution to the problem with music today
Can MS function without its fearless leader?
Can the Linux movement?
I'm sorry, the GNU/Linux movement. For now. Statistically, RMS will probably die first. Then we can circumcise the name.
--saint
There's no reason the X-box can't be fitted to be a "poor man's Tivo" or better yet a "poor teenager/student's Tivo." MS could use the intel processor to do a small mpeg-2 compression and then zoom it out to fill the screen. It may sound crappy, but if the dongle/adapter/whatever is priced at a fraction of what a VCR costs then you've just saved a whole lot of money. It could even look a lot better than your typical EP/LP VCR recordings. You can market it as the DVD player that records too.
The fact that MS didn't market this box as an all-in-one game/tv/tivo/web/email solution probably means this is just speculation or that they didn't want to press to pick up on the magic word "Bundle." Bundle would turn off a lot of people who are ambivalent towards MS but don't want to pay extra for stuff they don't need or turn off people who already have an OS monopolist gripe with them.
Its a PC disguised as a game machine, it can be a lot of other things if there's a market and most importantly if MS can compete in that market.
Heya, all complaints about MS being a "monopoly' would be eliminated if instead of selling PCs they just sold these babies. After all no-one can bitch at you if it is your OS and your browser running on your 'gaming console'. Hehe. Yah right. ^_^
/. reported on last week or so that was MS's idea? Imagine that implemented into this next system;
/GLAD/ to pay them.
/. itself. Hell a good part of the rest of the net is decidedly pro-ms, bleh.
Remember that 'hardware interface standad' thingy that
I am sure that it will come out on the PC too.
Heck add some Mac support and. . . . ah, you see where I am going with this? MS would dominate THREE platforms minimum and it would THEN have the power to leverage OTHER platform manufacturers into making their systems complient with Microsofts systems(sounds like a good thing? Finaly some game support in *nix? Hold on. . . ) ;
Which would likely also include some sort of software that has to be licenced from Microsoft on some sort of per computer (or user, heh) basis.
Imagine M$ collecting royalites from _ALL_ computer users!
Oh yah, and imagine the PR campaign that would make you all
Don't believe me? Just look how far the anti-ms stance has changed even within
The beast shall have you yet!
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
If you really want to know how much "choice" you have in the marketplace, look for foods / supplies in the supermarket that involve patents. You can usually trace which brands are identical products by the same company if you follow which patents are on the products you buy. Detergent, for example, is a marketplace rife with colors and boxes, but trace the patents and everything is being made by Dow and one other company.
It's a lot of legwork, I know, but it is something that you can do in your own life.
The ______ Agenda
Thank god. Cartoon Network and Comedy Central are practically the only channels I watch on TV. I didn't want AOL owning both of them.