Slashdot Mirror
ATI Wins Bid For Next Xbox
TypoNAM writes "CNET News is reporting that graphics chip underdog ATI Technologies has signed a contract with Microsoft to produce components for future versions of the Xbox game console, beating out market leader Nvidia." According to the article, "The announcement ends months of speculation over whether Nvidia, the leading maker of graphics processors for PCs, would renew its troubled partnership with Microsoft on the Xbox."
Yeah, I mean look how much it hurt the PS2.
For the record, I would not have bought a PS2 if it didn't support PSX games, because a good chunk of the games I wanted to play (and all of the ones I was _really_ interested in) were PSX games, but I didn't have a PSX. Fortunatly, the backwards compataiblity of the PS2 made my choice easy. Plus, it just gets messy having 6 game consoles hooked up to the TV, when it's much nicer to be able to upgrade a console by swapping it out with a newer one.
I read the internet for the articles.
I don't understand why ATI is considered an "underdog" these days.
... people tend to forget that nVidia was not only supplying the video solution for the Xbox, but also the networking and audio components. So with nVidia out of the picture, who is going to do the audio and networking? Does ATI have any GOOD audio and network chipsets? I know they have some sort of motherboard chipset "a la nForce", but does it feature decent 5.1 audio and networking?
Okay, well, I'm going to leave my personal opinions are out of this one, but just so you know, this is what the official Slashdot Party Line(TM) seems to be:
People who partner with MS are not necessarily bad, and in fact in some tiny way on the "good" side, because they are Victims. Victims, and nothing worse than misguided. Anyone who partners with MS are going to get screwed, eventually, in the end. Remember: *everyone* is a competitor to Microsoft. The world is simply split up into people Microsoft can replace and people Microsoft can't replace *yet*. If you're in the second group, Microsoft temporarily needs you, so they cuddle up to you and try to ensure that the alliance works out in such a way that at the moment Microsoft gains the ability to replace you they can as efficiently as possible stab you in the back and quietly wipe you out of existence.
Look at MS's business partners and allies for the last ten years. It's a steady stream of broken promises, broken hearts, and dead companies.
Once/if it becomes clear there's no way the partner is ever going to wind up a Victim-- say, NBC or SCO (and SCO's pretty clearly about to implode.. f you can think of any other examples offhand of a company that's partnered with MS and not lost an arm and a leg in the end, feel free to speak up)-- the company becomes a "puppet" or "shill" and defaults back into the "Bad" camp, indistinguishable from MS itself.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
access the hardware directly? where would you get such an idea?
developers are using dx8 and at most are hand-coding vertex and shader routines; which if you hadn't noticed, may have been proprietary to nvidia 2 years ago, but are directx 9 canon now.
there is no reason to expect that xbox2 will not have backwards compatibility. there is every reason to assume that it will. heck, nintendo might even cave and have backwards compatibility.
if anyone has learned anything from the ps2 run - it's that backwards compatibility guarantees solid sales out of the gate. you can accuse microsoft of many things - but being bad businesspeople is not one of them. they know where the money goes.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Hopefully MS will take advantage of ATI's other strength (swiss army knife video card) and expand the concept of a console into PVR, etc.
There is a difference between "catching up with eyecandy" and "catching up with gameplay".
Chances are Doom3 will have kick-ass graphics but the AI will be "the same old, same old" and the physics models [and interaction with the environment] will be "more of the same".
I'd rather see games invest more time into physical interactions with the environment. E.g. can move objects, pick them up, kick them, break them, put them to use, etc...
Look at UT2K3. It has awesome graphics but it isn't anything more than UT2 with fancy graphics and a better modeling system. The AI is the same, the maps are the same [e.g. all inmovable objects around with the players running at each other]. Same for GTA style and other racing games.
I mean what happend to the promise of "totally immersive" gameplay? I'm sorry but for anyone with an IQ over 80 games like Quake, while fun and a mild diversion, are not games that require a lot of thinking power.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.