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Tom's Hardware Reviews the Xbox
steddyj writes: "Tom's Hardware released this article which looks deep into the Xbox, its peripherals, and just about everything from every angle, and compares it to the PS. Incredibly detailed article."
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I wonder how long it will take for someone to port xbill (which would be more popular than Quake according to the xbill homepage) to the XBox... there is a port for Win32 available, so it shouldn't be too impossible.
feh
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It's been out for ages. Why no version of Linux for the box yet? I remember lots of little penguin people claiming it wouldn't take long to crack the box and get their favorite kernel running on it. So where is it? Or are Microsoft actually smarter than the smelly unwashed masses?
http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/02q1/020204/i ndex.html
Badly, I might add; from a tech point of view anyways. The PS and PS2 are dedicated hardware. Their architecture is completely different.
It's like comparing pears to advacados. They may both be green, but it's what's underneath that counts.
Aside from that, it was a great article. Quite a bit more in depth than I'd expected. I especially liked the hardware stuff. So, if the PIII is soldered on the motherboard, could the clock be modified to overclock it?
Just can't help myself.
Does the XBox come in a rackmount? 1U preferably? I'd love to use these as commodity visualization center parts.
Beowulf anyone?
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I wonder how long it will take for someone to port xbill [xbill.org] (which would be more popular than Quake according to the xbill homepage) to the XBox
For one thing, xbill is a heavily mouse-oriented clickfest similar to Hampsterdeath, and the Xbox doesn't come with a mouse.
For another, Microsoft must approve every piece of software that runs on a home XBox so that the company can make up the money it spent marketing the console. (Console makers make a slight profit on the console itself but take a loss in initial marketing that they make up with software sales.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
There have been hacks already to try and change the HD (which is unrecognizable by any file system, even Linux) and assorted other things, (including a USB controller patch-in), but no need for a modchip.
Once the Xbox gets released in Japan or Europe, watch the rapid proliferation of modchips for the Xbox then.
Anyone can walk on water....think WINTERTIME.
Implied: Nintendo is not a player in the console market.
"Nintendo... attacked the market with the GameCube. This console, based on an ATI graphics chip, surprised the whole world with its capacity. However, it targets a younger audience that remains faithful to the Nintendo tradition with its Mario Kart-inspired key titles."
Implied: Nintendo is only for Pokemon and Barney loving children.
Good God - it seems like any time anyone mentions a Nintendo system, they need to put in an aside about it being for kids. You never even see a shred of a veiled compliment suggesting that Nintendo might focus on gameplay, and not on making the most "mature" game. The mass media seems intent on further pigeonholing Nintendo every chance they get, is it any wonder that they are perceived as "kiddie" and that it's tough for them to shake the image. Photorealism and gore have their place in games, as do style and gameplay. When it comes down to it, the latter two have the bigger influence on my enjoyment of a game. Even on a Nintendo system, I'd rather play the latest Mario game than Turok 12, because while one has the wow/blood factor, the other is much more polished all-around.
I'd like to see media writers focus on the enjoyability of the games, for just once, instead of leaning on the tired-but-apparently-mandatory "Nintendo is for kids" appositive.
Seen any BadMarketing lately?
As the article says, the controllers are NOT USB, which is a really bad thing.
I wonder how long would it take for fellow electrical geeks to hack up an XBOX2USB adapter...
But to the point, I find the standard controller to be not big at all, if you forget how ugly it is (I know, I have BIG hands =) )
The Thrustmaster, OTOH, is maybe a little bit small, but it's ergonomically (and aesthetically) much nicer!
I think I'll have to wait for the ultimate controller to be released (the Coleco dual controllers ([pic here] ruled, you could put your hand INTO the controller and use all your fingers and your palms too... but those were the days).
Txurlo
The only problem
with Tom's hardware is
the ammount of information
that they display
per page, in order
to get as many
advertisment
views as possible
.
sig?
- It has two fully programmable 300mhz T&L coprocessors, of which 1 is really usable, the other just supports the main CPU (but can run independently).
:)
- They wonder what people are doing with the 16 pixel pipelines, as if implying that it renders 16 layers or something. The PS2 fills 16 individual textured alpha blended pixels per cycle at 150mhz. In single texture mode the PS2 has far more fillrate than the XB, but scales linearly with extra passes.
- He complains about the 4mb video RAM. After framebuffers and Z buffer, you're left with about 1.5mb, at which point you realize they didn't intend it for actual storage, it's a streaming buffer. The bus bandwidth to transfer 18mb textures/frame at 60hz also helps make that a possibility.
I think people should take a look at the games and decide which platform they would rather play, and quit bickering over meaningless specs. They're both graphics monsters
-Wade
I knew we'd have this problem, and Tom's doesn't mention it...
Performance sucks on Xbox after a while as it starts to swap on the HD. It looks like stuff becomes fragmented.
Anyone want to comment on how we can correct this?
Games are what matters on a console, not how many polygons it can push. The Japanese launch lineup for the Xbox is pathetic. There are 4 snowboarding games, DoA3 (a practical port of DoA2, a launch game for PS2 a year ago), and Genma Onimusha, when Onimusha has been out for more than 6 months on the PS2.
When the Japanese launch of the Xbox flops, the Japanese developers will jump ship. When the Japanese developers jump ship, the Xbox will lose about 60% of its title lineup. When 60% of the titles go to other platforms, people will stop buying the Xbox. When people stop buying the Xbox, the other 40% will jump ship to either the PS2 or the Gamecube.
To be a big player in the console industry, you have to have both countries. As a corollary, just because something does well in one country does not automatically spell success in the other country.
In 2 years, nobody will remember the Xbox. It will have entered the Gaming Lore books right along side the 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Atari Lynx, Tubro Grafix 16, and dozens of other systems that went obsolete because they had no games.
*scratches head*You can create multiple passports like I have. You don't even need to include your contact information.
at the end of the day Games Sell Consoles. Microsoft has made a solid first attempt, but untill the games for the system begun to mature (mature as in quality, not as in pokemon) I can remain comofrtable in my choice to purchase the PS2. What is more interesting is thet the timing in the industry is now off. The game cube & XBOX were released a full year after the ps2, which means
1. The PS2 has more variety of stable, entertaining, and visually stunning games than any other console and
2. The PS2 is significantly behind when it comes to console tech. There is already talk of SONY shortening the PS2's life cycle to come out with a more davanced box earlier to compet with the other consoles that will be most likely coming of age at that time. A shortening of the console lifecycle from 5 years to, say, 3 years may have a detrimental effect ob the console market, much like it has to the pc market.
Indeed, condidering $1 = 1.15 at today's rate, that's $417. In the USA, the Xbox is $300, which is 345. This is a complete ripoff! The days electronics were over-overpriced compared to the US are gone, this is pure extorsion(sp?)! How do they justify the extra $117? Shipping fees? Let me laugh...
For this price I can build a complete PC with a Duron 1GHz and a good graphics card (GF2 ultra or so), so COME_ON! Who's gonna pay that price for just a game console? PC prices have crashed to a point the PS2 itself is now a mere $235 where I live (Switzerland, outside the EU, I know :) so it can be sold, but the XBox will be twice the price with a hundred times less games to start with... The PS2 is hugely popular whereas Microsoft is still unknown on that market... No doubt the Xbox is a lot more powerful than the ps2, has a HD, etc... But when for the same price you could get a real PC that'll play games even better, and with which you can do whatever you want, I think M$ is trying hard to rip-off markets on which it can (still) freely impose its monopolistic dirty hands.
/jabba
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
I'm use to their sometimes poor reporting standards, but this one had way too many errors in it even for me to be bothered to finish reading it.
Also, has anyone else noticed that Tom's stuff really isn't up to snuff when compaired to his compeditors?
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Vector units, not really T&L coprocessors. The difference is that vector units have no specific purpose other than to do lots of floating point math. On the PS2, each VU has 4 FMACs and 1 FDIV (one VU has one more of each), each operating on 4 pairs of 32-bit floating point values stored in 2 128-bit registers, and each capable of operating independently and simultaneously.
MMX and its successors pale in comparison.
"Luncheon meats make the sawdust in your stomach explode."
"A quick peak over to GameSpot to sneak a peak at the previews. After you remove the previews for games already out, you come up with the following:
0 1. html
.People buy console's for games not to boast about how powerfull there console is .The playstation 2 has
,because for one thing I do not think people are willing to spend money as freely as they once were due to the present economic climet and back when people were willing to spend more
GameCube has around 60 titles previewed.
Xbox was around 140 previewed.
PlayStation2 has more than 300 previewed."
taken from
http://www.actsofgord.com/Proclamations/chapter
I think this really says it all
the huge back library of ps1 games and the most new titels in the works. There are far far more playstation 2's siting in peoples house at the moment than xbox's, hence a far bigger market for
developers to sell to.
By the time the xbox is able to take full advantadge of its enhanced graphical abilities it will be to late and the ps3 will be here which
will raise the ante in terms of tech specs even more.
another point which is this also taken from the afore mentioned site,(actsofgord.com),:
"To date, Sony has sold nearly 100,000,000 PS1's. That's a lot. And for the
sake of the argument, we'll pretend Nintendo sold nearly 30 million N64's
(though sales data suggests between 20 to 24 million, but who cares). So,
assuming every N64 owner also bought a PS1, that means 70% of the market bought ONE console. One console. Just one.
Now, obviously this didn't happen. Somewhere near half of N64 owners bought a PS1. Now, so we have 15 million N64 owners who remained exclusive, and 15 million who were multi-console (and 15 of the 100 million PS1 owners).
So, you've got 85 million PS1's who belong to one system owners, and 15
million N64's who belong to one system owners. That's, well, 100 million.
Add in the 15 million owners who bought multi-systems, and there you are at a market peak of 115 million users.Basic math shows that 87% of owners owned one system."
I think this shows quite clearly that the majority of people will not buy a playstation2 and a xbox
,(ps1 v n64 days), they only bought one console.
Now back in the ps1 v n64 days a console cost alot less,(stating the obvious I know), NOW look at the price i.e back then ps1 + n64 = $200 maybe a little more , now ps2 + xbox = $650 or more and this without any games?
For that sort of money required to buy two consoles you may as well go the extra inch and just buy a gaming pc.What graphics power the xbox appears to have now has already been surpased by the pc (nvidia g4),and this gap will continue to grow as more and more 3d cards are developed by the hardware industry.The upgrade ability of the pc will mean that in the end it will surpass any console currently on the market in terms of graphics.The question I am trying to raise is is there room on the market for the xbox?The xbox will not be bought en mass by playstation2 users
as it does not offer enough NEW and signifigantly different games or features which would make the
averedge ps2 owner fork out the extra money.
I personaly think that the xbox will not gain enough of the market share to pose a serious treat to sonys domination of the console market.
_________________________________________________
No, it's not what's underneath that counts. It what comes out that counts.
Hmmm let's see. The XBox sold more units than the GameCube. You're right it's not going to be a success.
I was repeatedly dissapointed on each and every repetitive page of prediction after prediction of what the XBox *WILL* be and what it *WILL* do, and how cool games *WILL* be. It all adds up: Xbox is SUPPOSED to be the coolest console ever, but even Tomshardware.com can only say that it's SUPPOSED to be the coolest console ever. There is precious little hard empirical truth to demonstrate any of the projections made in the pages. Here's what I mean. If these way-cool features are really available, where are the games that demonstrate them? How do we know it works as described? If a feature never appears in a single game you want to buy, then it doesn't add to the value of XBox does it?
Having read a good many well informed articles there, I kept clicking the next page links thinking Tomshardware was teasing me before he got to the meat of the article, but I wore through 2/3 of it before I gave up looking for the gritty pull-no-punches analysis. This is NOT journalism, it's advertisement, and it's wrong to print it without the "Sponsored by Microsoft" disclaimer. I will never feel the same about Tomshardware again.
I've read past Slashdot flames toward Tomshardware, but I had to reserve judgement for myself. Granted, I deserve it; you told me so., but please try to add something more if you reply to this.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Network Gaming is *so* important: It didn't save the Dreamcast though, did it? The PC will always be the superior online gaming platform, unless the Xbox suddenly grows a keyboard, a dozen well-established MMORPGs, and a modding community. Also, bear in mind that Allard's "broadband vision" will exclude the vast majority of gamers especially in Europe (only 50% can get broadband in the UK, at a massively optimistic estimate).
Discounting Nintendo out of hand: The largest games publisher in the world, the only games company to make a consistent profit throughout the market 'downturn', a company shipping a console at half the price of the bloated Xbox. They're not aiming it at kids- no Nintendo console ever has been- they're aiming at *everyone*. If you think a game is 'kiddie' because of its graphics, you shouldn't be playing games, you should get a hobby you can easily understand.
None of the games covered were evaluated by any metric other than their 'dazzling' (640x480) graphics. No games were compared to the benchmark titles in their genres. (As always, DOA3 is taken on face value to be any good- which it might be if Tekken, VF, Soul Calibur didn't exist.) Blinkered, to say the least.
It really is Atari all over again. The pushing of gimmicks like the Game Voice is especially reminiscient of a company floundering for a new angle, while ignoring the fact that they need decent games and have priced themselves out of the market. Outclassed, outgunned, only selling to the most credulous of casual gamers. I'll be picking up a Gamecube, then a PS2 if I have any spare cash, then upgrading my PC, then picking up a DC with a dozen quality titles on ebay, before even considering an xbox.
Preferences > Homepage > Customize stories on homepage > Authors > Zonk > Uncheck
You live in Switzerland and have a hard time understanding why the European X-box might be priced higher than in the US? It's stupid to do currency conversions on the boxes for two simple reasons: cost-of-living and cost-of-doing business. Both are much higher on the European continent compared to the U.S. A simple currency conversion doesn't do justice to the extra costs Microsoft has to absorb to do business in Europe.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
XBox = Microsoft = Bad, OK?
And to think Bill Gates is drawn as a Borg...
Personally I'm reserving judgement until it's been out for a while, there are more games available and I've actually seen one in action.
"Information wants to be paid"
Funny, that Tom's article sounds very much like MS marketing speak, with everything being "milestone", "extraordinary" or "unrivaled". It even goes as far as telling that there is no lack of good titles. As far as I know, that's the biggest problem of Xbox. It has only a very few exclusive titles that have been hailed as interesting. And yet, Tom couldn't even spell PS2 game names right.
This is my favourite: "the xbox is definitely a generation ahead, compared to the ps2 at least"
It *is* next generation! It's funny how people are still comparing *everything* to PS2. So, you're telling me Xbox or Nintendo GameCube has better technology and more processing power than almost TWO YEARS older PS2? Ooh, *gasp*, I'm shocked! Seems like PS2 really is technically pretty revolutionary, if it's still the comparison standard for new consoles. I'd be really, really worried if that much newer machine wasn't technically superior...
And in any case, it isn't technology that matters, it's the games. Original PSX was technically the weakest of its generation, Sega Saturn (released the same year) and Nintendo 64 (released about a year later) are both far superior, but PSX reigned because of the games. They still make games for PSX (and N64 as well, but in smaller scale), though it was released in 1994!
Also check out xbox-linux.org - It' run by h07 (h07.org) and aims at eventually getting apache to run on linux on the xbox. They already got apache to run on the xbox os (a stripped down win2k) using microsofts xbox sdk.
Had me grinning for a bit. Are you sure this isn't going via babelfish?
I couldn't help but wonder whether the name of the "Mad Katz Control Pad Pro" was a nod to the Slashdot community...
include $sig;
1;
I must say that jumping through hoops to make the zone work may force me to quit Asherons Call, which I'm quite fond of otherwise. Worthless stupid web interface thingy.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
At least as far as I can tell.
I came upon an XB controller last month, and did exactly what you said - hacked a USB connector
on to the cable.
On plugging it into my machine (WXP), it was detected, and two devices showed up:
1) Some sort of hub-type gadget (possibly for the "card slots" on the bottom of the controller?)
2) An "Unknown Device", which I'm assuming to be the actual control interface.
If I knew anything about writing USB device drivers,
I'd try to hack one up, but I don't, so I haven't.
I prolly should try plugging it into a Linsux box just for shits and giggles, might at least be able to get the device ID or something else interesting.
C-X C-S
(Posting with a text browser, so the formatting might be fucked up...)
Here you go
Lycos holiday console sales
Nemesis Online
Slashdot
La Times
I struggled half way through it before giving up, this article is riddled with factual innacuracies, grammatical gaffs (excusable if it came from Germany) and outright marketingspeak shite. Read at you peril, or go and look at anandtech's excellent appraisals of the machines in question instead.
That was classic intercourse!
must we suffer the X-Box Beowulf crap AGAIN? If you would employ your brain for a second, you'd realise that you could build a quicker PC for less money than an X-Box the wasn't all tied up in encryption AND which would be mountable in whatever way you'd like. A 32 machine cluster needs 32 GFX chips like it needs 32 cans of Coke pouring over the mainboards.
That was classic intercourse!
The problem I foresee is that the XBox is only going to fall farther behind in 2002, with a spectacularly mediocre lineup consising mostly of games being released for all three consoles and many that the XBox is getting several quarters later than the PS2 or NGC (THPS3, GTA3, etc.).
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
Huh!? Who makes NFL 2K2? NBA 2K2? Jet Set Radio Future?
and Nintendo has settled for Game Boy.
So N64 and GameCube are just figments of everyone's imagination?
But above all, [Microsoft] has the best programming kit in the world with DirectX.
*giggles*
As far as memory is concerned, the PS2 has a 250 MHz processor, even if the two are not comparable.
Um, what does internal processor speed have to do with memory in this context?
Technically, I think the Xbox is great console--Microsoft almost got everything right. But as we all know, it is not always the "best" technology that wins...
Schrödinger's cat is not amused—maybe.
A valid point, however i think the bigger reason for console games being less buggy is that the developers know EXACTLY what hardware they are developing for, and all the hardware components are designed to work together smoothly, unlike the PC market which is far more fragmented in this respect.
That's why I bought a PC rather than a console
:)
...
That, and I like writing my own software, meaning that it'll be a cold day in hell before I can do what I want with my hardware if I go with an X-Box.
But then..........I'd buy a PS2, because all the cool games are made on that.
It's been a long time.
Is it totally inconceivable that the reason the XBox hasn't been hacked is because so far, the anti-hacking measures have been stronger than the hackers?
vastly superior how? just because YOU don't understand the architectures of the GameCube and the PS2 doesn't mean that they're not extremely powerful. Have you seen MGS2, Pikmin or GT3 A-Spec? In what way could the graphics of GT3 be bettered by the X-Box?
That was classic intercourse!
When it comes to Gaming consoles, looking at what has been done in the past would give you a fairly clear idea that they are all about "one-processor-for-each-medium".
Starting from the NES (or even Atari, for that matter), all these "computers" have different chips to process each element of a game, those being, graphics, physics/gameplay/backend work and sound.
Looking at the original playstation, and comparing it to a PC in the same era, let's see what you get. It had a 33 MHz core processor (CPU) for doing the I/O/Physics/backend work, a seperate GPU with its own memory for graphics, and a seperate SPU (Sound processing unit)for the audio. All well balanced, and each part doing its job individually, controlled and piped by the IO processor, are capable of beating the shit out of a P-200 with a Voodoo graphics accelarator (which was commonplace when the PS-1 came out).
The whole point being, "BALANCE"....
If you look at PS2, it has a very well balanced architecture. The CPU is capable enough to max out the GPU, and the sound engine supports what can usably be classified as "best in gaming audio". The DVD ROM has enough storage to pack in all hi-q cutscenes you would ever want, eliminating the need to have in-game rendering, which is both hard to make, and not so good looking.
XBOX, although flaunts so much high tech stuff, it isn't well balanced. The CPU - a 700 MHz intel P-III equivalent, is hardly capable of pushing the graphics unit to 60% of its usability, so even though the theoretical graphical fill rate/texel/pixel pipelines might be capable of a lot more, it will never actually deliver those rates because the CPU isn't capable enough to pump those bits to the GPU fast enough. Same for sound, XBOX supports "so many channels" of audio, but to put all that through the sound processor, you would need to dedicate a major chunk of CPU processing power to that thread, bringing down the available CPU power once again. Not to mention the overheads the XBOX carries as it has to address far more hardware devices than the PS2.
Well integrated design, balanced specs = cheap/decent performing architecture
high specs, no balance, bloatware = inconsistent performance, scalability issues
you decide....hack your XBOX, benchmark everything, and prove me wrong....i guarantee it doesn't even perform as much as 55% of the claims the specs make..
Is it totally inconceivable that the reason the XBox hasn't been hacked is because so far, the anti-hacking measures have been stronger than the hackers?
:)
Remember this statement...put it on your webpage or something...someday, when the X-box is good and hacked, you'll look at it and learn the following lesson:
"In the war between armor and warhead, the warhead will eventually win. Always."
The X-box has only been out since what, Nov. 15th? Not even three months...Linux on the Box is coming, and I'd bet sooner than later. Like I said, remember your statement when that day comes. You'll need it, just to season that crow.
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
Yesterday I zapped through the German TV-Channels and then I just decided to watch NBC Giga. They wanted to show a game, tried to load it 3 times and only a black screen was there. Of cource it wasn't blue :-)
Another game needed 4 Minutes to load!! But when the intro was successfully loaded it was time for commercials.
Just have fun with that xbox *lol*
So how stupid do I have to be to tell the people that the xbox is a must?
So if they think the technology is good, you think they should actually dis it instead? They stated their opinion, and just because it was favourable you say they are biased.... Sigh. ;)
A lot of people care about Dolby 5.1 sound. Perhaps more would if they had content that used it properly. At a recent XBox developer conference we had a great presentation from a Dolby guy. It really pisses people off when you leave channels silent! So you don't have a nice speaker system. So what? It's a great feature of the XBox.
By the way, despite the fact that I just said "great", I am not a Microsoft employee
Surround sound has about as much to do with hi-fi sound as the NASCAR does with getting you to work in the morning. 5.1 is a marketing gimmick designed to seel crap to you that you don't need, and is merely the third pathetic attempt by the electronics industry to flog this useless surround concept. My father had a "Quad" system in the 70's, and it was pointless then too. There was once a hi-fi surround system called "ambisonics" or "UHJ" which could reproduce the most beautiful sound, I think the Soundfield microphone that was the heart of Ambisonics is still coveted today.
That was classic intercourse!
Please don't patronise me, sonny. I've done my fair share of hacking.
Did you notice the words "so far" in my comment?
I was clearly responding to the parent's assertion that there was no hack due to lack of interest. There is plenty of interest, as you well know.
Also... I won't consider an "XBox Linux Hack" to be valid unless a non-hacker can install it on a standard retail unit, without a soldering iron, in one day.
I will not be munching any crow, because I never said never.
I think my favorite line was along the lines of 'of course, graphics quality is FAR superior to PS2'. Um, OK. Is that why Gotham Racing looks totally fake and computer-rendered and GT3 looks eerily photographic? Somebody's not using their freaking EYES. Mind you, that XBox fighting game looks very slick. Other games, like 'Shrek', look appalling- like 1999 PC games with more polygons.
I think it's quite laughable. If they want to seriously concern themselves with image quality they'd better put down the crack pipes, quit paying off hardware review sites for paid promotional materials masquerading as articles, and devote thought to current _EFX_ concepts like atmospheric effects, cinematography, haze etc. You DO NOT WIN by showing off how many polygons you have and how clear everything is. That's freaking 1995 GFX thinking. Sometimes you win by doing stuff that is actually very simple and easy, but in an artistic way...
I'm reminded of the book "Disney Animation: The Illusion Of Life" which goes into backgrounds at one point, and how the Disney animators often took pains to NOT depict the background with wizzy high fidelity and clarity... some effective backgrounds, shown in the book and used in feature films, were little more than blurs of color with bits of vague detail in them, and they worked perfectly in context.
It just furthers my opinion that Microsoft have all the artistic insight of Garth Brooks selling Dr. Pepper... and the companies that are making games for X-Box are largely being persuaded to on grounds of easiness, cheapness and (likely to be frustrated) greed. If that's the best they can do there's going to be a lot of really lame, undistinguished games out for X-Box that nobody will particularly want to play...
Whoever did GT3 had an artistic sense fit for working in film EFX, not just PC gaming, and used things like blur and desaturation to produce nearly photographic results. By contrast, Gotham is clearly (no pun intended!) about showing off as many polygons as possible, so it looks downright fake. Reality is dirty and often out of focus. The developers in the Microsoft camp are evidently not encouraged to understand this (it would make it look as if not as many polygons are in use!) so their output continually looks more like high-end 1995 raytracing. You go 'my, that must be a lot of polygons' and it looks real plastic.
I was a bit surprised not to see, "The PS2's DirectX support just isn't there yet- in fact, Sony have not even pledged to commit to supporting it in future! This has to be considered a major drawback, that will slow and hobble PS2 development" :D
Please don't patronise me, sonny.
:)
Heh heh heh...
Did you notice the words "so far" in my comment?
Yeah, which was precisely the point of my "eventually, the warhead wins" statement. The whole point being, of course, it doesn't matter what "anti-hacking" provisions they've put in an X-box, they'll just get beaten someday.
I was clearly responding to the parent's assertion that there was no hack due to lack of interest. There is plenty of interest, as you well know.
Fine...I guess I was too far down the thread to pick up on that one. Mea culpa. But neither do I think that the lack of an X-box hack is due to anti-hack measures - I think it's just been too short a time for a home-grown hack to have been properly made up/bug-fixed/tested.
Also... I won't consider an "XBox Linux Hack" to be valid unless a non-hacker can install it on a standard retail unit, without a soldering iron, in one day.
OK, the whole world will pay attention to what you define as a valid hack. I personally won't consider it a valid "Linux hack" until my X-box can toast the perfect bagel using Open Source code and a nifty DVD-laser hack that projects a spinning Tux on my wall. But who cares about what we think...most people will be happy to have a Linux prompt on their TV, right?
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
You think the review was gushing? Hmm, let me quote one bit:
Moreover, the vibration system is much better than the pS2 Dual Shock. The vibrations are powerful and subtle at the same time...
Yeah, that was when I pretty much gave up my doubts that a raving Xbox fanboy wrote the review.
"The vibrations are powerful and subtle at the same time"?? Phew, that's really digging deep. Damn, why haven't the other companies learned to make great vibrations like that in their controllers?
...and I was horrified by this comment:
"As far as the games, things look good as well. As of now, the choice is enormous and there is no lack of good titles."
25 games is enormous? Give me a break. I thought Tom's was generally not-biased, but they tiptoed over the edge on this one. Every other review of the XBox I've seen said the games are standard, and boring, with the exception of Halo. 100 games is good selection. 2000 games is enormous. MS will be lucky if their game selection reaches "good" by next X-mas.
OK -- I'd heard that Tom's has picked up some better writers...
I don't mean to be inflammatory, but that thing looked like it was written by a 15-year-old British high-school dropout.
Hey -- Tom's Hardware...there's plenty of out-of-work folks over here who will write for you (and they have college degrees too).
-Turkey
How could the dreamcast to have been dead by the time that the network adaptor came out, IT CAME with a MODEM!!! You could goto the store on 9-9-99 and buy a dreamcast, go home and surf the internet on the same day!
The problem with the ethernet adaptor was that the games had to be reprogrammed to use it! Nobody wanted to buy a new version of their games to use the broadband adaptor. That and sega made it impossiable to find.
If they finish morrowind and Shenmue 2 is really good, then I might get an X-Box. But as of right now all the cool games are ps2/GC. RE4 on GC, now I have to get a GC, well that and Zelda.
Pro XBox = overrated? Whatever.
I'd just like to reiterate that I did not say or imply anywhere in my previous comment that the XBox will never be hacked. So we're in agreement, OK? Chill! :-)
I don't agree with you about the inevitability of the hack. Personally I have an open mind about it... It may happen, it may not. But you or I do not have enough information to say confidently that the hack is possible.
For example, if I wrote this code on my old Oric or something...
10 PRINT "ANDREW IS GREAT"
20 GOTO 10
That is pretty secure. I guess you could Ctrl-C it but I know about that, and I can disable it. I knew enough about that system that I could make that program completely secure.
Now, the Xbox is a lot more complicated and we would expect the probability of a security hole to be quite high. But we don't know until we find it, do we?
I never expected anyone to take on board my definition of a "valid hack". Let me put it like this. Suppose we gave points for a hack according to how cool it was. I would give 10 points for booting Linux from a CD-R popped into a standard retail XBox. That is pretty much top marks. (I might give an extra one for booting off a memory card
Taking advantage of a hypothetical back door that a mischievous developer left in a game would be worth less points, you see? And desoldering your BIOS and bunging in one you flashed is worth a few more, but less than 10.
Erm, no. Have you ever looked closely at PlayStation graphics? While in the hands of the right developers the PS1 produced impressive visuals, it was by no means capable of "beating the shit out of" a PC with a decent 3D accel. The textures were not filtered, and were not entirely perspective correct, producing strange "warping" effects when you approached a wall in many games. The final image was, I believe, rendered in something less than 16-bit color, as dithering is quite apparent in many games (Silent Hill being a good example; gotta love that halftone fog). The Voodoo had much higher quality output, and did so at twice the resolution or four times the screen area of the PS1.
I will agree with your contention that the X-box was sort of cobbled together so Microsoft could say they had something BETTAR TAHN PS2, but the real-world performance doesn't match the hype by a long shot.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
For 3-D games, God yes. Saturn was underpowered in this regard -- one can only wonder what a modern-day Azel Panzer Dragoon RPG would look like (maybe we'll find out).
For 2-D games, well, let's just say that it will forever remain tied with the Super Famicom and Sega Dreamcast as my favorite console of all time, because of Capcom's 2-D fighter releases on it, the innumerable selection of high-quality shooters like Radiant Silvergun and Battle Garegga, and the incredible variety of other Japanese RPGs, sims, and puzzle games. IMO, even the Japanese PS1 game selection is relatively uninteresting compared to the Saturn's line-up (fewer blockbusters, more obscure high-quality titles).
The Sega Saturn lived quite a healthy life in Japan until 1998, during the later years of which it was considered the venerable also-ran (somewhat like the American N64 in 2000 and 2001).
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
Funny that, because it's actually the reason why a lot of people want to hack it...