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Rumored Technical Details For Next Xbox Rounded Up
Thanks to the San Jose Mercury News for its article summing up many of the rumored technical details for Microsoft's next Xbox console. The author argues: "The details suggest Microsoft is far more concerned about keeping the cost of its Xbox Next console low than it is with including dazzling technological features or driving its rivals out of the business", and goes on to discuss the possible chipset ("Three IBM-designed 64-bit microprocessors... [as] used in Apple Computer's high-end G5 PowerMac machines"), and alleged hard disc removal for Xbox's sequel ("[Microsoft] seems to have decided that saving the $50 the hard drive costs outweighs its benefits.") The piece ends with the claim that "Microsoft has begun developing game prototypes, and it is using [Apple] G5 systems to do so."
Part of the reason they're removing the hard drive isn't to save on costs. If they make a cheap, powerful system with a hard drive, it'll be hacked to allow us to run Linux on it. Microsoft loses money on the consoles as it is, making up for it with profits from game sales. A good amount of the people who install Linux on it won't be buying games, so Microsoft will only be losing money, not getting any.
Tell me I'm not reading that right, 3 PowerPC 970 processors!
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
Lastly, BACKWARDS COMPATABILITY. That one feature made a HUGE difference in the PS2, and Sony is expected to do it again, aren't they? I think not having this feature would be like Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot. Three fast G5s should be enough to fully emulate a 733 mhz Pentium 3, right? They bought Virtual PC, so they have the technology.
I can't say I get this article. I know it's based on rumors from across the web, but when you put the picture together it makes NO SENSE unless MS is trying to fail or something.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
"The machine also will have about 256 megabytes of dynamic random access memory. But Microsoft will upgrade that to 512 gigabytes if Sony puts in more."
That's a winning tactic.
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
As for removing the HD? Well assuming of course it is true then the PC will once again be the ultimate platform. A large storage medium allows you to store stuff for later. Things like save games vs save points, patches, upgrades, extra content, user made content etc etc to your hearts content. It is why the pc with all its troubles is still so popular.
Remember Kotor? On the x-box a simple game. The moment it came out on the PC people were hacking it.
Of course only MS knows what is really going to be in the x-box2. If they are really removing the HD I hope for their suckers^H^H^H^H^H^H^users they got something to replace its function. Or it is back to "save points".
Oh and those thinking that this is to prevent linux from being run on it. Doesn't really matter that much. It would just have to be a thin client. IE boot over the network.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
it's just speculation, wild wild speculation.
as much credit if I said that we'll be in mars in 2020, sure it 'might' happen but probably not.
The cpu's wouldn't be a problem if they had the sdk to go with it. It's not like you would write a lot of lowlevel code for it anyways.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Actually, GameCube Tech isn't "lousy" at all.
And there is no "downfall" to speak of concerning the GameCube - it's on par with Microsoft's offering marketshare-wise, but whith the added bonus of being actually profitable.
And lastly, 64bit isn't new at all in console gaming.
how about a smaller hard drive? Has anybody ever filled their hard drive on an unhacked xbox?
The hard drive is one of the best things the xbox has going for it. I think this article was printed 2 months early
Look it's a joke about my sig IN MY SIG! LOL!
If I get this right, Microsoft is trying to make an incompatible, low cost console that has mediocre technology. Wasn't that the downfall of the gamecube? Lousy technology? No back compatability?
Right, because Microsoft whipped the pants offa them Nintendo fellers.
I feel that MS can't get rid of the hard drive AND expect backwards compatibility. Many of the games required the hard drive--- like Halo. So, if MS gets rid of both of those features, the system will lose before it leaves the gates.
Confucious says: Man who runs behind car gets exhausted.
// jeku.com
Well maybe instead of using a 10gig hard drive they will use 1 gig of flash memory and still be able to maintain their backwards compatability
When did the gamecube have a downfall? And if it did, where would that put the xbox??
Fat and lazy is no way to go through college, and last place and unprofitable is no way to sell a console.
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
The hard drive issue is a big one, but not as big as one might thing. For example, they could ship their XBox Live kits with HDs, which wouldn't increase the price too much (if Microsoft soaked the first year costs), but would serve well enough for downloadable content. Alternately, they could sell it separately, bundled with a game (or offer 3-6 months of online service free with it, etc).
The HD in the xbox is sorely underused. Saving games is great, you can save fast and save as much data as you want, pretty much. That being said, it's not taken advantage of beyond that, really. Think about caching. You could pre-cache the next level in Halo off the disc, or the next cutscene worth of dialogue, and basically eliminate load times altogether. As it is, you get some good post-game/pre-game chat time in while it loads, if playing co-op, but that's about it. Potential unused.
The custom soundtrack feature and MP3 (or whatever) jukebox feature is a great addition, but it's really not enough to justify another $50 on the price tag (or to justify Microsoft losing $50 more on every XBox Next). Build in 15 megs of flash memory for saving games and provide the HD as an option for consumers to purchase later. That way, they can charge extra for it and make it up instead of losing it, or, as you can with the PS2, let custom hardware hackers put in whatever size HD they want, make the XBox format it when it detects it, and let them void their warantee for that extra 200 gigs of space.
Use an expensive disc format (like blu-ray) so that people can't easily burn off copies, and so that they can't rip them easily either without a few hundred extra dollars in hardware. Voila.
Piracy will never be cured, but this will make it a pain in the ass, and still allow Microsoft to make up the loss on the HDs instead of soaking it.
I know from experience working in a video game store that the HD makes a lot of people interested. They buy the XBox now and get their games, and that's all they need. Sure, the DVD remote is another $50, but they can either buy that later or not at all. With the PS2, on the other hand, they NEED the memory card (if they ever want to safe), and that's all there is to it. Ripping MP3s, downloadable content, it's all more enticing. When you look at the PS2 in comparison, it looks closer to the gamecube than the XBox, despite the fact that you can add everything the XBox does to the PS2. It's a sales thing.
--Dan
I can't believe that M$ are waiting to see what the PS3 is ggoing to be like.
"The machine also will have about 256 megabytes of dynamic random access memory. But Microsoft will upgrade that to 512 gigabytes if Sony puts in more. "
Consoles are all about optimisation. They need to decide on the specs, make them known to the devs, so the devs can optimise their games.
And there is still no info about mouse and keyboard support, in my hubmble opinion, the best way to play FPSs, RTSs, navigate menus, etc.
If they remove the HDD (why oh why are they so stupid and now taking a step back?! Sony agreed that HDDs were a good idea, and began selling HDDs for PS2 along with Linux kits) ppl wont be able to install Linux (easily!) and so the mouse/kb issue... wont be an issue.
Bottom line, M$ need to pony up, stop being Sony's b*tch, stop "competing" with Sony, and just make good hardware and games. THAT will win them mkt share.
You could pre-cache the next level in Halo off the disc, or the next cutscene worth of dialogue, and basically eliminate load times altogether
I don't know the full details of this, but Halo *does* do at least some caching of level data.
Hackers were able made those crazy Halo videos with towers of Master Chiefs and flamethrowers and so on by hex editing the cache file off of the hard drive.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
I'm excited about the proposed computing power of this new Xbox but it sounds like the great parts of Xbox are going to be dropped. I have an Xbox and I love having my own music tracks and downloadable maps and patches. With a flash card I doubt I could store music tracks although maps might be possible. I bought Xbox specifically because it has an HD now what's the point? I might as well go for PS3.
Well if they are allegedly using PM g5s for make xbox 2 games, im sure we will get empty promises of games for the mac RSN, that will eventually show up when no one wants to buy them anymore.
Besides this also implies that the x2 wont be using windows as the nightmare it would take to port it to non x86.
ok i shall end my baseless speculation.
you know you wanna mod me as troll. its ok:)
The reason why the load times are so insane in Halo is because the game is copying half of whatever map it wants to load onto the hard drive. I think one of the FAQs ranting about the co-op "infinite ammo" exploit went into further detail.
That's my biggest wishlist item for the next generation consoles. It's kinda' frustrating to finally have a television that doesn't have 50-year old resolution limitations but still not be able to really take advantage of it in my gaming...
Brien Voorhees
No comment on the other issues, but trust me on this one: Xenon has a hard drive.
emphasis mine
<sarcasm>Atleast with 64bit processors the virtual address space can access all the memmory</sarcasm>
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
I don't know that much about consoles, and I'm probably talking out of my a** here, but wouldn't MS's switch to IBM PowerPC chips be something of an admission of failure for MS? The whole point of the XBox being a stripped-down computer was to save money while also leveraging MS's experience with PC's. Yes, I know the cost savings never panned out, as neither did the concept of "we'll have tons of developers because it's so easy to program for!", but MS has never really admitted that. If they make a change away from "stripped-down PC" it would seem to me to be a marketing problem, and nothing would make Steve Jobs salavate more than to proclaim that a) MS uses Mac G5's to design games and b) the XBox 2 is basically a stripped down Mac. On a technical level, using G5's in the XBox 2 sounds fine, but in terms of marketing it sounds like a disaster.
Yeah, the load times at the start of Halo levels were long, but it took quite a long time to go through a level in Halo, and during that whole time there was no loading (a TINY studder whe loading a new area of th level, but nothing compared to what it would be otherwise). This allowed them to have big, complex levels without needing frequent pauses during the gameplay to load stuff. I think they used it to fantastic effect.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
In the past year I have lost 2 hard drives in a ~0-20'C enviroment with 60-100% RH, no tell-tale grinding or click-click whirring just sudden death. I'm noticing now that when things fail there is no chance to save them anymore because the designs have grown to meet standards of production instead of usage. As more and more things are made using various physical simulations programs instead of hands on interaction with end state materials in prototype form we lose the tactile perspective as a source of failure before production.
I have an old Micropolis 3243WD scsi-2 as the sole scsi device in my media server for one single reason. It has held a debian stable image for almost 2 years now; whereas, out of 9 hd in my place (including xbox and laptop) I have had 4 failures, and all of them were IDE and less than a year old. This micropolis is of unknown pedigree but from the ashes of some dot com company came a worthy piece of machinery I got for only 90 some odd bucks 2 years ago.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I don't know why M$ is wasting money on advertising and actually trying to sell the system (xbox). If M$ gave the systems away for a cheap price they could easily outspend SONY. Much like they did with IE. But with THREE processors and PS3 having some never before seen CELL processor(s), who the fuck is going to be able to program games for these new systems. Everyone bitched about how hard the ps2 was, and now this. If they don't put a hard drive in, then they are stupid. Can't have online games without the drive. Look what has happened to the online games for the PS2. People are using the gameshark and cheat codes and have ruined the ps2's online game linup. If the ps2 had a built in drive they could easily issue a patch. Lastly, who cares about backward compatibility anymore?! Is this really an issue? Most people sell their old systems whenever a new one comes out and happily abandon their old system. For the diehards are the new systems really going to have a problem emulating the older systems? Really, if the xbox2 cannot emulate a 800mhz processor and an aging geforce 3 chipset, then it sucks.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
The big clue here is suggesting that the HD costs $50 each. That is an 8gig hd inside (some are actually 10, but they probably cost MS the same).
A 9.1 gig hard drive - just one - costs $10 shipped from a reputable seller. Another vendor is selling them for $5.99. How much do you think MS would pay for a few million?
Additionally, even if this is correct, the XB2 will still have *storage*, it will just be in the form of flash rather than an HD. Other than the CD ripping option, my three years of Xbox ownership and 40+ game playing have never caused me to show even 1% usage of the hard drive (despite having ripped 4 CDs to it!)
The 64bit PowerPC cores are capable of 64bit load/store, as well as 64bit logic, integer and float point operations.
There has never been a true 64-bit CPU based game console. Even the PS2 uses the MIPS III core with a 128bit bus and 32 128bit GPRs, but it still uses 32bit IPUs as well as 32bit FPUs (in the form of the COP1 coprocessor).
...is how ms plans on adding hardware "only if sony does it" when they plan on releasing the 6 - 12 months before sony does. if, 3 months after the xbox2 debut, sony announces the ps3 will have a hdd, will ms upgrade all the units they have allready sold? doubtfull. i am unable to take specific details about a hardware system this far in advance as anything more than speculation and media hype.
Lead me not into temptation. I can find it myself.
If Microsoft is using the G5 mainly for it's 64 bit capabilities, then this could be a great opportunity for AMD to jump in, undersell Apple, and gain some good solid ground for their Opterons. That would certainly lead to more AMD optimizations in other MS apps, and probably help them get a bigger peice of the grey box market too.
Backwards compatibility is key, look at how many PS2s were sold because they can run PS1 games also.
New specs:
1.Pentium 4 at something like 3GHz (by the time XBOX2 comes out, 3GHz chips will have come down in price)
2.at least 512 megs of RAM (its not like RAM is expensive)
3.hard disk at something like 20gb or 40gb or whatever
4.complete security (based on RSA or something better if its available by then) with the BIOS engineered inside some kind of unremovable, unflashable, unreplacable surface-mount chip (making it so that the BIOS cant be fiddled with without screwing the XBOX2 completly should be possible).
Most people here probobly despise DRM, copy protection and stuff (Even I dont like it much) but the fact is, the XBOX2 is going to have copy protection like this anyway (to stop all the hackers).
5.a drive that can play exisiting XBOX disks, DVDs, music CDs as well as special XBOX2 disks (using blu-ray or some other high-density standard to make them harder to copy). Add special features to the drive or the BIOS so that it will reject any disk with a signature indicating that its a recordable media (CD-R, DVD-R etc). This makes piracy even harder and also prevents running of pirate DVDs and music disks.
6.a good graphics chip (perhaps of GeForceFX level if the price has come down enough by then)
7.LAN card and drivers to allow broadband out of the box. Remove the need for an XBOX live kit to be purchased, instead, you purchase XBOX2 live subscription time.
Basicly, in order to play XBL games or download content for XBL games via XBOX2 live, you would just get a subscription which would cost a certain amount per month. Exactly how you sign up and pay I dont know but it should be designed so that you can sign-up online via a PC and also online through a special XBOX interface (i.e. plug your XBOX into the broadband link, run the special signup option and sign up with a credit card). Options for those that dont want to trust online signups would also be available. (i.e. its gotta be as easy as possible to sign up)
The XBOX2 should not allow email, web or anything like that (for one thing, previous attempts at "use the internet from your TV" bombed horribly)
8.complete backwards compatibility with existing XBOX games (only the legal origonals of course).
9.to prevent hacks, the hard disk and memcards would be encrypted with a strong encryption mechanisim with the actual encryption being inside the BIOS (which if you remember is supposed to be unreadable making it difficult to just disassemble the BIOS and get the encryption)
and 10.make good games with good online playability (if the libraries are done right, adding online play should be simple with all the tricky bits handled by the network layers)
last, and every time ive checked except 2 weeks at christmas, xbox has been outselling cube
"There has never been a true 64-bit CPU based game console."
Nintendo's N64
You're imagining numbers.
More GameCubes were sold in 2003 (both in North America and overall worldwide) than Xboxes. Xbox has never had a higher installed base than GameCube worldwide, and their lead in America is shrinking. Shrinking lead in America compared to GameCube = selling less in America compared to GameCube.
If PS2 outsold XBOX 5:1 why should the xbox2 bother about backwards compatibility with the lower amount of customers expecting backwards compatibility? I for one would like to suggest that xbox2 is backwards compatible with PS2 instead! Everybody wins except sony.
Maybe they will make the controllers the size of human hands.
How will it manage backwards compatability when so many current Xbox games use the harddrive?
Use an expensive disc format (like blu-ray) so that people can't easily burn off copies, and so that they can't rip them easily either without a few hundred extra dollars in hardware. Voila.
Eh? AFAIK, Xbox games can be easily ripped by the Xbox onto the internal hard drive, and also played off the hard drive (with a modded Xbox). With an Xbox Live hard drive like the one you proposed, I think the situation would be pretty similar...
I think you've got your press releases confused. The x-box outsold the gamecube for the last 2 weeks before Christmas. And Nintendo's response to that was that most retail stores were already sold out of Gamecubes by then.
.. and its costing them a billion dollars a year to do it.
Look at the NPD sales numbers, its pretty cut and dry.
The X-Box is only being kept alive by MSFT
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
What doesn't make sense to me is that if MS goes with PowerPC then it means that if MS is going to run Windows as the OS then they will have to port it over to PowerPC... (Windows running on a Mac? Yeah I doubt it too). If they went with Athlon 64's or even Opterons then all the work that they are putting towards XP64 would apply directly to Xbox Next. It makes A LOT more sense then to switch to an entirely different system. Also I would think that backwards compatibility would be easier. Since your not having to emulate a different architecture you would only have to worry about any NVIDIA specific graphic calls and convert them to ATI calls.
Gateway has a big market share. For a while it was neck and neck with Dell. Now it's on the verge of bankruptcy. Why? Because like Nintendo, it is in DECLINE.
If you're not growing, you're shrinking.
Depends on how strictly you define what a 64-bit CPU to be. The N64 uses a customized R4300i, which is quite different from the R4000 series -- one of the main differences is that the R4300i has a 32-bit multiplexed address/data bus.
would be cool..
Jeoin
That's a software issue, you don't need a hard drive to do it. Look at Jak & Daxter on PS2 -- huge detailed world, no loading pauses. And it's written in Lisp!
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I think this new Xbox will lead to more games on Macs because it uses the same proccesor as the G5. Instead of adopting PC games to console, the reverse will happen, and voila, lots of good games for the Mac. The article even said that MS is using G5's to start developing games.
Personally, I think it's a great idea - as long as it is optional. There should be nothing wrong with allowing people to have something like 16-32 MB of storage space per Live account for storing data. Gamers can already choose (on most games) to save to HD or memory card, just make Live another option. As someone who had an Xbox HD die recently and lost a few hundred gold medals / cars on Project Gotham Racing, this would have been a godsend. I guess I should buy memory cards to back up important saves in the future...
Dan
According to IBM's roadmap, some years from now the IBM PPC processor will be able to emulate the x86 architecture with little speed down. Sorry, I have no source of this, but it is what I have heard and give an easy explanation why Microsoft picked the G5:ish processors in the first place.
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
Good idea in theory, but statistics I've heard is that any given add-on to a console (the extra RAM for the N64, the 32X for the Genesis, the Super Scope for the SNES and all that) tends to sell 1/10 as much as the console itself. Granted, these statistics are old and vague, but you're not going to sell XBox2s as backwards compatible XBoxs when people could just buy an XBox (which by that time will cost $99)
The whole point of the XBox is it's the first system to demonstrate to Nintendo, Sony, Sega, etc. that there's a second game market, not made up of children, with lots of cash, and who are very picky.
Removing the hard drive and sticking in cheap hardware wherever possible will only mean I have no more reason to buy it. I'll simply resort to the rule of "wherever the best content is", as opposed to "whichever machine has the most power".
Why would I want to wait for PS2 to load a game for 5 minutes only to wait some more every 30 seconds while it loads the next screen, when I can play the same or a better game with almost no load times thanks to the hard drive's caching? How come I don't own (nor have I lost) a single memory card for XBox, and would marry Gates for that reason alone. Why use GameCube at all in 480i over S-Video when I can drool over some widescreen progressive component video on my HDTV?
I hope they're listening.
1 small period of time didnt push them ahead of xbox's total sales
True, but that still doesn't explain why every game store located around me is contantly out of stock on the Gamecubes. I guess they could just not be restocking them, but I find that hard to believe.
And before you shout troll, I own all everyone of this Generations consoles Dreamcast included. A PS2/GCN combo just makes more sense. Pretty much everyone that wants a PS2 owns one by now which accounts for their decreasing console sales; however, with the GCN at $100 and all the cool exclusive Nintendo games, it makes for a good bargain. Sure you could purchase an Xbox for $180 and play a few of the exclusives, or play better versions of the games you could get on your PS2. But most people won't bother, it won't look at pretty but the games are still fun, and with a GCN you have another whole library of games to choose from.
Anyone wonder why Microsoft bought VirtualPC? It would be easy enough to use that technology to build a 'virtual X-box' in emulation... *poof* and all the old games start working.
If by "xbox's total sales" you mean all Xboxes in existence, there was no push required on Nintendo's part. The worldwide installed base of the Xbox has never been higher than that of the GameCube; Xbox has been the overall #4 console platform since its introduction, behind PS2, GameBoy Advance, and GameCube.
Remember when that one slashdot story reported a guy being fired from Microsoft for taking a picture of G5's being delivered to Microsoft? Maybe some of those were being used to do tests for the new Xbox. Just an idea.
___ Shout Central - Crushes your nuts!
>The whole point of the XBox is it's the first >system to demonstrate to Nintendo, Sony, Sega, >etc. that there's a second game market, not >made up of children, with lots of cash, and >who are very picky.
It's Sony Playstation, not Xbox.
They should run with the PC concept a bit more, and develop an OS that can override options in games. You want to listen to custom soundtracks? Bring up the OS(from within the game), turn off in-game music, turn on one of your soundtracks. Want to know if your friends are on Live? Bring up the OS and check. Maybe they could even have control mapping to have custom controls per game, instead of developers usually giving you one or two configs. No more gently requesting the developers opt-in to these features. It should be forced by the OS.
Also, they should allow for XBox Live accounts to set up profiles, for families who don't want to buy multiple subscriptions for a single 'box (which really shouldn't be necessary) but want to distinguish between themselves when they're online.
Creator of the popular web game Proximity
No loading, but a hell of a lot of riding on a boat with nothing to do.