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Microsoft Talks Handhelds, Xbox Linux
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Canada.com interview with Xbox head honcho Robbie Bach, which shoots him some wide-ranging and perceptive questions about Microsoft's console strategy. Interesting answers include whether Microsoft wants to get into the handheld console market ("It's like starting a new business...we will focus on making the current Xbox successful."), and their views of Linux for Xbox ("..the numbers are not really that big. It's not a commercial as much as it is an intellectual property issue and we always pursue those.")
I can see the XBox handheld now
:P
One foot by 3 inches thick and about 6 inches deep. Somewhere around the size of a PS2
Could this be another wave attempt at handheld consoles? Sony is in the process of making a handheld to go along with their top selling gaming console. Meanwhile, Nintendo, who still owns the handheld gaming console market, is standing strong with the GameBoy series (GameCube isn't holding up as well compared to it's little brother). Let's see how the two (MS and Sony) do against Nintendo in this category. If history holds up, Nintendo better start cranking with ideas.
Efren Belizario
headspeak.com
I'd be very curious to know how running Linux on an Xbox is cheating.
"Vinnie! Guido! Go 'pursue' the X-Box Linux intellectual property issue. To a satisfactory conclusion."
Goons: "Daaaah, right away, boss! Heehee heheh!"
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Why would I want a portable blue screen? I get enough of that at home. :)
and we always pursue those.
Yes, far be it from you to let a great injustice, like someone using their Xbox how they see fit, from going unpunished.
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
In one breath, "For example, we can sense and disable an Xbox modified with third party "modchips" and not allow it to play online." In the next, "Telling us what we can or can't create, we think is unconstitutional."
Well, if Microsoft did an Xbox handheld, you'd need a damn strong right hand to hold it. Still, I guess if the market is adolescent makes, requiring a strong right hand isn't a problem.
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
when I buy a $180 system that cost $100 to make, you just made $100 regardless of what I do with it afterward
Good to see math alive and well on slashdot.
Apparently the highly anticipated XBOX-2 will not carry an nVidia graphics chipset. I must inject my opinion that, the way the GeForce 5 cards exist in their bulky and unoptimised state (can you say leafblower?) make me glad that Microsoft may be going with ATI or having a custom chip made for it. I know I could definitely do without heatsink-enabled RAM.
With the emergence of smaller form factor PCs like the oqo it really does not seem SO far fetched that MS might introduce a handheld gaming system.
;)!
However, it seems that absolutly everyone is entering the market including Nokia and sony.
Does MS really want to fight it out with sony on the handheld platform, when they have been utterly beaten on the console one?
Regardless, since it would probably be based on x86 hardware, it might make an excelent portable linux system
Here's Microsoft's patent application that covers disallowing participation in online services.
From the article: Telling us what we can or can't create, we think is unconstitutional.
But of course if MS tells YOU what you can or cannot create, that's perfectly OK.
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
Removing Windows XP from a newly-bought PC and installing your OS of choice as an alternative can be argued to do the same. Should Microsoft prosecute everyone who uses GNU/Linux or *BSD on their property?
Once a person purchases hardware [such as the X-Box], that hardware becomes his property, and he can do with it as he pleases - calling modding it "piracy" is no more than an egregious violation of consumer rights.
First posting isn't trolling. It's...first posting.
This isn't piracy, in any sense. Of course it doesn't involve boarding ships at sea and stealing cargo/kidnapping passengers, which is actual piracy. But it's not copyright infringement, which sometimes gets called piracy, either.
There's no "intellectual property" issue here at all, however much MS wishes they could find one. This is hardware. You buy it, it's yours. Period.
Of course we can all understand that they'd prefer to have people only buying their loss-leaders in order to run the games that they make heaps on. And most people do. But those who don't are perfectly within their rights. If MS really doesn't like it, they can start pricing the boxes more reasonably. It's their choice. But of course they want to have their cake and eat it too, and the sad thing is they have enough money to buy politicians with that they may yet get it.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
First of all you have some pretty fuzzy math there:
>>when I buy a $180 system that cost $100 to make, you just made $100 regardless of what I do with it afterward
180-100=80 not 100.
Anyways, back to my point. I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from, but all recent reports have shown that MS, Sony, Nintendo are selling their gaming hardware at a loss. This has been the way that the industry has worked over the years: sell the systems cheaply, make it up by collecting the royalty and licensing fees.
Secondly, your naive statement on piracy: You fail to recognize the sunk cost of R&D in creating the X-box. All this has to come from somewhere. The measily amount of money made from selling the hardware will not come close to making up the 100s of millions of dollars spent on developing the system.
Anyways, my point is not that you should not be modding or pirating, but rather, don't delude yourself into thinking that it is not an illegal activity. Or justify it with that you would not have bought the pirated game in the first place.
I mean, I have pirated my share of games, and modded some consoles, but I don't delude myself into thinking what I'm doing is right. Piracy is piracy is piracy.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Interesting math not-withstanding, as I understand it, every X-Box that microsoft sells, they sell at a loss. The idea is to get you to buy the console and then spend money on games which are much cheaper to manufacture.
So, by buying an X-box and not purchasing any games, you are hurting Microsoft's bottom line.
Q. Do you ever get impatient with Bungie, the developers of Halo 2, the sequel to your flagship title Halo?
A. Software development is part science and part art. I have a lot of faith in those guys to execute and produce on time, just like they did for Halo for the Xbox launch.
Because Bungie can always be relied on for release dates. I'm still waiting for my Q1 2001 Halo PC release.
How quickly we forget.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
But it's not about piracy...iot's about playing imports.
Why should I be limited to the shit that comes out in europe? Same for dvd's...can you explain regoin coding as anything else than a mechanism to control the market? And can you find a law that says I am not allowed to bypass someone who wants to limit my acces to commercially sold information that I legally pay for? No, you can't.
You can find a law which makes it illegal for me to bypass protection schemes...but if those schemes are illegal in the first place (ie anti-compettitive and anti-trust), then my rights supercede the ones which prevent me from doing what I have every right to do.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
I mean, what if I want to buy an Xbox to turn it into a paperweight?
Or an aquarium?
Or hell, maybe I'll hollow the thing out and wear it as a hat.
I bought it, paid through the nose for it, and if I want to ignore all their games and use the case as a home for fish, well, that's my business.
Now, I can understand them blocking modded Xboxes from the online stuff, because people *could* use modifications of some sort to cheat in online games. But that's not an IP problem; when they offer a service like that, they can deny it whenever the want. If they start going after people legally for modchips, though, that's a different story.
> Q. How important is the Japanese market to you?
This question bugged me. Imagine you were answering, and had no idea what was happening, what would you say?
A. Not very. We find the japanese insignificant.
A. Very - the very existance of the xbox'es fate, lies in their hands!
A. We want to be successful in Japan because it's a gaming market and an important territory where we have a lot of third party game publishers.
bah
Where they could begin to get at you is if you ran Linux on an XBox, and then connected up to their online gaming system. If the system was designed to reject anything that wasn't running the MS XBox OS, and you spoofed it into thinking that your XBox-Linux was in fact the original OS, then you could be in trouble (because the TOS for the online service would undoubtedly prohibit you from connecting with a less-than-virgin box).
But if all you were doing was just running Linux on your XBox, just for the pure hell of it and because you can, without connecting up to their servers, I think you're probably safe. At least, I don't see how this would possibly infringe on their IP. Seems to me like they're just trying to discourage people...toss around the threat of an IP lawsuit and watch any large-scale effort to distribute an alternate XBox OS disappear.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Q. Folks have even built a Linux-Xbox computer. How can you control this?
A. Electronic hobbyists will do what they want to do...the numbers are not really that big. It's not a commercial as much as it is an intellectual property issue and we always pursue those. If someone finds a way to cheat, we close it down and do an update so people can't anymore.
First off, he is being vague, intentionally no doubt, so no one really knows what he means by "we always pursue those".
Secondly, how is this question dealing with cheaters? I modded my xbox to run Linux on it, not cheap, I have no interest in the xbox live service, its just one more way to connect me to people, and I hate people. Are you comming to get me because I like to tinker?
I don't even play pirate games on my modded xbox, not for lack of options I might add, I could have every game I wanted. But there is still only one game worth playing on my Halo Machi..... I mean xbox.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Maybe you've forgotten that the Xbox can be made to run (almost) standard linux distros. For me, that set it apart from the other consoles more than being from microsoft.
PS2 runs linux right out of the box - Sony itself sells the kits. No futzing with mod-chips.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
Running Linux on XBOX violates Microsoft's IP rights and they should prosecute everyone who attempts it.
I think the idea here is that once you own something, it's yours. You can use it for it's intended purpose (playing games), use it as a book end, if you can find a way to have sex with it, by all means - do so. Take it apart, mod the hell out of it, no problem.
However, there is a grey area here. The mod chips might be an IP voilation. This is what old MS wants to crack down on, not the person who wants to put linux on their machine.
As long as we're feeding the AC trolls, might as well throw in that I really kinda like my X-Box, but I do wish it had more games for kids. Last summer, we were in best buy looking for some stuff and I let the play with the game cube. Took each of them (ages 5-9) about 10 seconds to start playing the game. I've never seen something like that on Xbox. Course... I remember when it was cool to have 2 "Fire" buttons on a joystick.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
You can modify you car if you like but if you want to enter that car in a competition it will have to meet the technical requirements of that competition.
Just as most competitions severely limit what modification can be done to cars in order to keep the racing "fair" it is perfectly reasonable for MS to limit modifications made to the XBox if you want to use it with their XBox live service.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Actually, region coding (in movies and games) was the big topic of the DMCA hearing I was a part of (May 2). Basically, the movie industry admitted that it was nothing more than a way of allowing "price discrimination" (exact words) based on where someone lives; when questioned about why they felt region coding was necessary as opposed to just not marketing a game in area, they didn't have a response.
I imagine the situation to be the same with the games industry, and by not allowing playing of imported games, they get more control over how much people have to pay to be able to play a game in a certain area.
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
Are you serious?
You fail to recognize the sunk cost of R&D in creating the X-box. All this has to come from somewhere. The measily amount of money made from selling the hardware will not come close to making up the 100s of millions of dollars spent on developing the system.
The X-box is just a low spec PC in an ugly box with an assortment of hardware and software dongles. It's not exactly ground breaking technology. 100's of millions of dollars in R&D, paid for by flying pigs no doubt.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3051331.stm
The last sentence is the article is a whopper:
"The software giant is slowly laying the groundwork for total market dominance in the coming years.
From the article (emphasis in bold added):
I find it interesting that even someone in the industry, who obviously has an interest in drawing women to the hobby, himself admits he mostly plays with his 12-year-old son. I wonder if he's tried "selling" the women in his own personal life on it? Does his wife play? His mom? His sisters, or women friends?? (Granted, as he's in the industry, it's likely a lot of his friends, including women, are also in the industry, but aside from that...)
I frequently see articles on modern gaming demographics that say more women are playing video games than is generally thought, though the numbers seem to vary. Is this really the case? If so, why are so many of the games obviously targetted toward 12-year-old boys (or older males, who arguably have largely the same interests)?
After doing a bit of reading, I'd have to say that I think you're right, but only to a point... observe
"[0008] The public key architecture involves writing a private key and a digital certificate into each game console during manufacturing. The certificate contains the public key corresponding to the private key. The certificate is part of a certificate chain that includes a certification authority certificate associated with a certification authority at each manufacturing site and a root certificate from which the certification authority certificate is derived. Whenever a game console goes online for registration, a certificate chain verification process along with proof of knowledge of the private key stored on the game console are used to authenticate the console as genuine."
Many games do this for piracy prevention already, granted. But from everything I'm reading in the patent sofar, it sounds as if Microsoft is patenting a system similar to a CD key schema that would allow for microsoft's online service to check for mod chips or memory hacks. Now, to me, this seems like a good way for the console to be constructed with failsafes against cheating in online games, which is a direction the console gaming market is going.
This IS a useful thing. How many online gaming communities are plagued with cheating? There are numerous games my friends and I stopped playing online because of the aimbots and other cheats that were clogging the servers.
What it looks like Microsoft is proposing is patenting a schema to have the console checked for modifications so that they can prevent "cheaters" (as the Microsoft employee put it during the interview) from going online and ruining every honest player's gaming fun.
Knock it if you will. Call it stiffling innovation if you will. All it appears to me is that Microsoft found a way to build encryption and authentication into their consoles for the purposes of denying people who are potentially hacking their hardware or memory to cheat the system from doing so on thier X-box live or next-gen live system.
----- I want my LART.
How is he an asshole by saying, "If you are on our Xbox Live! service, we reserve the right to boot you if you have a modchip or other cheat device (such as Action Replay hacked saves) turned on for your Xbox Live! games."
I love that they ban cheaters and people who are just assholes. Why do you think I stopped playing PC games? People'd always accuse me of cheating if I was winning.
Whinning that he has rights but won't let you mod chip Xboxs that are on Live! is like Bill Gates whinning that he can't just come into your house and pee on your floor. It's your private property to use as you please, just like the entire Live! network is MS property to do with as they fucking well please.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Now, it is my opinion that MS is kindly letting you know that you can do whatever you want to the hardware, and as long as you don't try to use your modified hardware to interface with unmoddified hardware, they won't bother you. If you alter the software, though, and attempt to use the altered Box on Live or some other connected service, MS is kindly letting you know that they reserve the right to come to your house and take your Xbox away.
Not that I think it's right, but what I think doesn't count for much in Redmond.
There's Mechassault for the PC? Or is it in development? I hadn't heard anything about this.
I wonder if he's just blowing smoke on the "synergy between PC and console gaming divisions" answer.
Ravi
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
If my memory serves me correctly, wouldn't tying the software and hardware together create an antitrust issue? Game consoles have always been treated differently than computers, but Microsoft seems to make it fuzzy as to whether xbox is a computer or a console. If its a console, Microsoft would, at least in theory, be able to tie hardware and software together, wrapped neatly in some DMCA TPM. However, if xbox is a computer, then you should be able to load any damn OS that pleases you. Of course, xbox live is a different story. If you subscribe to the network, you have to follow the terms of service.
Sony supports Linux because they can make money off of it. When you have to pay another $200-$300 on top of the $200 (well, $180 now) price of a PS2, almost all of it pure profit, it just makes sense. However, Sony certainly doesn't support modchips. IIRC, it wasn't just Microsoft that went after Lik Sang for selling mod chips -- Nintendo and Sony also had a hand in that. What company would willingly support any market that at its core is all about stealing games? (blah blah just want to play imports blah blah bullshit.)
When it comes to online gaming (which is the only area where Microsoft can really control what you do with your XBox), I'll happily take Microsoft's approach over Sony's. Add a mod chip, and you're banned from Live. No questions, you're gone. On the flip side, one of the major PS2 online titles, SOCOM, suffers horribly from cheaters. Yes, you can cheat in XBox Live games too, but you're limited to only in-game bugs. Those can be patched (see Unreal Championship's recent patch to fix a number of exploits with weapons and maps).
"Note And changes or modifications made on the system not expressly approved by the manufacturer could (emphasis mine) void the user's authority to operate the equipment."
Such language is commonplace in documentation for electronic devices because they have to meet government radio frequency emissions standards. In practice, the FCC or CRTC will care only if some device causes an actual interference problem.
"The software included in the Xbox Product is licensed to you, not sold."
Was this Xbox BIOS EULA presented to me before the sale of the Xbox hardware? If not, then it may not be enforceable under contract law in most U.S. states, and it is a sale of a copy under 17 USC 117 and foreign counterparts.
Granted: As long as you don't try to connect a modded Xbox console to Xbox Live service, you'll be OK.
Will I retire or break 10K?
They produced the hardware, with their DRM, running on their service. They can do with it whatever they like, and there's nobody holding a gun to your head to buy into it.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
The Xbox-Linux download page has a "Cromwell BIOS" containing no proprietary code. Mod your Xbox console with Cromwell BIOS and boot Ed's Debian GNU/Linux port, and your Xbox is no longer running code copyrighted by Microsoft.
Will I retire or break 10K?
> Why is it, that people always post big stories about the XboX ?
...
... oh wait, they actually stole that idea. But they've written at least a few pretty decent products over the years, like SQL Server ... oh wait, they bought that.
We enjoy reading various Xbox insiders talk about overtaking PS2 for the very same reason that we enjoying reading posts with extraneous commas and random capitalization: It's comedy gold.
> I don't see nearly as much stories about the PS/2
I almost bit on that one. I was about to waste precious time laying down an array of PlayStation-related story links, such as the recent announcement of a Sony handheld, several scattered tech notes on the architectural changes planned for the PS3, and the numerous obligatory PS2 hacks and mods.
> I guess as soon as it is from microsoft, it's bad
Of course not. I, for one, always assume that anything from M$ is remarkably stable and well-designed, and that their behavior in any given market keeps the associated industry vibrant and consumer-friendly.
There's not enough room in my head to store useless information, so I never bother with silly things like "historical perspective." That's why I
buy all of my Iomega gear at Best Buy, which I then promptly install on my SCO box; because, hey, every company deserves an amnesiac consumer base, right?
> GET A LIFE ! Microsoft is just some big company. All big companies do bad things.
I also find that moral equivocacy further simplifies my life. The world is so much easier to comment on when there are no degrees to consider. I like to paint everything with a giant, monochrome brush.
> That you are stupid enough to buy their stuff, that is your fault.
Finally, an assessment I can't argue with. The only thing I'm curious about, though, is this: I shouldn't be stupid enough to buy their products, but since all corporations are equally bad, what *should* I buy? You've obviously never been stupid enough to buy one of those "imperialist" consoles. But then, I guess it would be hard to play one without an imperialist television.
> They also do good things.
Quick, name one. I know: They ushered in the age of the GUI
I guess you're just referring to their superlative business ethics in general. Personally, I've always found the ISV and VAR criticisms of M$ as "inflexible" to be totally off-base. Their moral flexibility, alone, is without peer.
> Maybe it's not 'cool' to say good things about them
It's not. Still, the question is largely an academic one. We would need a good thing to report in order to put the matter to practical test, and there's very little risk of that happening.
- nocturne
/* Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux, et fondez vous en eau! La moitie de ma vie a mis l'autre au tombeau. - Corneille */
For those who won't read the article, here is an
... this is a 10, 15 and 20 year investment.
interesting question:
How long will Microsoft support a platform that seems destined to be in the red for the next few years?
So MS is gonna inject cash in this project for many years. Expect a hard fight in the console market for ever.
The linux modchips that you can currently get are 100% legal, due to the fact that they were developed without any microsoft software dev kits. Every other modchip, however, was developed with an Xbox SDK, making the software illegal. Also note that most of the software that you run along with those modchips is also developed with it, thus, illegal. Despite what you say about it being your right to import games and being able to play it on your xbox, you cant do that without a pirated chip. We can only hope that someone developed a homebrew bios that does run xbox software. This doesnt apply to ps2 or psx modchips though, they dont have any illegal code in them.
Many people do not understand the difference between free and politically free. For example, you are not free to kill someone. Developing violent content has nothing to do with political freedoms. Our forefathers were concerned with protecting policital freedoms, not profits.
It's been known since the GC came out that it can be made for around $90 a unit. That is why Nintendo still has PROFITS, while Microsoft has LOSSES. It is known that Microsoft is losing $150 per console sold. No one knows ANYTHING about the PS2.