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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."
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 You don't want to be using something that out of date.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
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.
"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?"
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.
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
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."
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.
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
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?
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