Slashdot Mirror
Leaked X-Box 2 Specs Include PPC CPU
Jutebox150 writes "According to the MercuryNews.com, the specifications for Microsoft's successor to the Xbox were revealed. The specs for the next Xbox, at least according to this report, are as follows: Three IBM-designed 64-bit microprocessors, the same chips now used in Apple Computer's high-end G5 PowerMac. This will give the new Xbox 'more computing power than most personal computers.' A graphics chip designed by ATI Technologies that will clock in with speeds faster than the upcoming R400. But what I found most surprising is there are no talks about an internal hard drive, rather suggesting that the next Xbox will instead rely on flash memory, and, depending on hardware cost, backwards compatibility could be out of the question."
Can it run Linux?
I'm thrilled over the potential processing power of the new Xbox. I love my Xbox and more Xbox goodness is headed our way.
I have mixed feelings about backwards compatibility. While being able to play current games on the next Xbox would be nice; too often, hardware/software is seriously crippled because of backwards compatibility. I would dare say that a lot of the long overdue innovation in Microsoft's Windows line was due to being handcuffed with compatibility issues. It may be that someone or Microsoft will release an emulator for the old games as well after the next Xbox is released. That is a possibility.
I totally don't understand not putting a hard drive in the system. That is a monster step backwards. What are they thinking? I enjoy being able to download and play new levels for current games, that would probably not be possible without a hard drive.
The one thing I'm most concerned about and I don't hear anything about yet, is, are they going to allow a keyboard and a mouse on the next Xbox? That needs to get done. Sony allows it on the PS2. The Xbox is never going to be strong in the MMO arena without allowing a keyboard and a mouse. First-person-shooters would be much more enjoyable with a keyboard and a mouse too.
From Sunday.
..also it's just worthless information for most parts, so much speculation.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Does this mean I'll have to buy a new modchip?
Why dosen't Microsoft give it up and admit to all the Xbox players that they're gaming on a PC? Or in the case of the Xbox2, a Mac. :)
Pretty interseting endorsement of the PPC architecture - straight form the beast itself. I wonder how Steve Jobs will spin this - a chip so good, even M$ uses it!
Something tells me that "640K of memory should be enough for anybody" is not going to cut it...
Virginia Tech can make the next supercomputer using a cluster of XBox2s. And as soon as they did, employees of Microsoft would finally remove the flesh-like coverings and reveal their true cyborg selfs as they began the final assimilation effort.
If they can put enough flash memory on that, then why can't it replace a hard drive? Or external hard drive could be used (USB 2.0), lowering the cost but still providing an option for playing old games and using more features(downloading stuff).
we can expect a Windows XP version for PPC?
I am dying to switch from MacOS X to Windows XP, but it is the i386 price barrier I can't overcome.
Does it come with MyDoom pre-installed?
I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
The hard drive was central to many of the Xbox's coolest and most unique features. Content downloads, soundtracks, large levels cached to HD to cut load times, large save files for games such as KotOR, etc.... Without the hard drive and Live, the Xbox would have been just another game console.
This is one case where Microsoft did a good job with v1 of the product. I'd hate to see a backward move like this for v2.
which is the better financial model?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
While I don't put a lot of stock in these sorts of rumors, doesn't the idea of an almost complete architecture change suggest that backwards compatability is going to be difficult, HDD or no?
Also, has there ever been a prerelease rumor about a game console that didn't claim it was going to be faster than any known computer in the universe, able to push more polygons than a high end Onyx, and so on and so forth?
I read the internet for the articles.
Like the Playstation it does not have a harddisk.
Makes it more difficult to run Linux?
The gem from the article:
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, according to a variety of industry sources.
The Xbox outperforms the PS2 on graphics every day. Yet, I prefer the PS2 (mostly because once you are done playing HALO, whats next?!)
So performance is not enough. Nintendo's strategy was to underprice the behemoths, and they are still hanging on.
So if MSFT can sell a console cheaper than the PS3, AND!! get a bunch of games developed,
they will continue on into the future as a major player in the home console market.
(just my 2 cents)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
First everybody thinks that Apple is going x86...
Now we know it's Windows going PPC...
(before anyone whines that XBOX != Windows... Two words (ok three): DirectX and Kernel Functions...)
how long until
Microsoft doesn't belong in the gaming market, they need to get thier OS woes in order befre they try to pummel another market. This division is bleeding cash and no other company would have been able to stomp in like they have. I personally want xbox2 to fail. If gaming comes down to SONY and M$ as my only choices, I'm out.
Support Nintendo, or pay for it later with generic fps and miltiary strat out the arse.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
wonder what bill is up to, and what made microsoft switch to a complete different world.
how about easy development and porting of x86/directx based titles to the xbox2 now?
microsoft inventing the incompatibility and dropping backwardcompatibility all of a sudden?
what the heck is wrong in the biz world?
The PPC chips don't have the heat problems of Intel's or AMD's product. So you can use smaller and more importantly more silent fans and cooling.
The only drawback is that they trade power/heat benefits for reduced performance - if main issue with PPC's. This makes me wonder why they don't use mobile processors from scratch.
Over 90 years and counting !
The shocking thing is it will probably run linux and some variant of *BSD, but not windoze.
Personally, I don't use game consoles as PCs, although I do use some PCs to emulate game consoles. As long as the platform is stable, has good graphics technologies, and a good selection of games, then does it really matter what platform it utilizes? Or is the platform choice more than that?
...Mac-ophille would run windows on a Mac?
Who'da thunk.
That'd be a nice add-on for the current macs in a couple years when this thing finally ships. Maybe M$ could make an agp card with the xbox2 chips on it. Or, maybe an iMac wtih an xbox2 built in from the factory. That'd be a great space saver in the dorms, and with that 17" flat panel it'd look HD.
to save on cost MS may not make the Xbox2 backwards compatible.. They could save a fortune if it didnt play games either!
serenity now!
I wonder if M$ will port an embedded Virtual PC to the new system to ensure backwards compatibilty. Three "G5's" should be able to achieve similar if not better performance than the current xbox 800 mHz? x86.
Rumor has it Virtual PC 7 might have Direct 3D capabilities with Quake3 being playable on the 2Ghz G5 via the emulator.
All xbox2 devs will use dual G5s to build and test software. Sounds like ALL mac to me!
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3 307631
Subject line pretty much says it all.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
The difference between the past story and this one is that the past story was "rumors" whereas this is "leaked"....
I never heard such an amusing joke before. Where did you hear it? I'm sure it must be true, especially if you repeat it long enough.
are going to be named "Agnes", "Denise" and "Paula". Really! It's true!
And "XBox Next"?
Wonder if the Apple legal eagles are licking their chops over that choice in name.
---anactofgod---
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
The timing of the release of the new Xbox is very interersting. Almost a year before the PS3, so, maybe M$ is trying to get there money, and still allow PS fans to get a PS3 when they come out. There could be more than meets the eye with this. Plus, not to metion the use of a PPC processor. Maybe that is why M$ fired that guy for the picture of all the Mac G5s' being delievered. But, it's just my oppinion, I am prolly wrong.
eh, this sucks, I am going back to bed....
Remember, MS has said they can't make XBox 1 profitable. You can bet they are going to try to drive down their hardware costs with XB2 so that they can actually make some money. The harddrive is a big expense that could be dispensed with without too much pain.
Can somebody say Gamecube?
Why is the title referring to this story as being 'leaked'? Leaked implies that the specs were released before they were suppose to be. Or that some shady deal occured. This isn't true.
The specs and what not, were in no way 'leaked'. They were reported to the press like any other news story. Hell, I even got this information yesterday morning through my 'stock news wire' from etrade. It was a national official artical.
Oops, I just 'leaked' the sourse of my information.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
This will give the new Xbox "more computing power than most personal computers." A graphics chip designed by ATI Technologies that will clock in with speeds faster than the upcoming R400.
...this leak failed to include the part about bundling MS Office for free IAW Euro settlements to "give" back to the public. I hear they may even provide hardware acceleration for this. Whew. With hardware acceleration, MS Word could open in less than a second!
G-Force music visualization
It also comes with a handy set top grill.
Site isn't working for me, here's the Google cache:
I J: www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/78491 91.htm+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:4nS9HzJIHm
<obligatory joke about the site running on an xbox here>
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
here
3 PPC G5's? And how much do they want to lose on each Xbox2? This is just what we call 'Wild Speculation'
I think personally it will have magical elves doing the graphics and you'll have to feed them cookies every night!
Honestly the original Xbox was 'rumored' to have 3 CPU's.
-- taking over the world, we are.
So can they just release the os so I can play on my Mac? Then they wont be loosing money on me. Lol. Wonder how long til someone hacks that.
The Xbox has long been targeted to the hardcore. People who probably already have a PC. I don't even want to look at a keyboard when I'm sitting on my sofa with friends, playing SCII.
Linux: Free if your time is worthless.
backwards compatibility could be out of the question
Sweet. Even FEWER games to play on the XBox2 than on the original.
Does anyone know - are MS still losing money on the X-Box?
I read somewhere that they might reduce the price further to $99. It seems to have come down in price really fast, but they don't seem to have made the same efficiencies in production as Sony has with the PS2, because of the way the X-Box was designed. I imagine that Sony could reduce to $99 at the same time but MS would be taking the bigger hit.
I don't get the "hoo-ha" over backwards compatibility. Sure, it probably helped PS2 sales, but what about the Game Cube? Were people angry that it couldn't play their N64 games? From the looks of it, this is a completely different system than the current Xbox (different CPU and GPU just to name two key aspects) and thus why should we expect backwards compatibility just because the format of the discs is (likely to be) the same? The systems are poised to be very different.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
So is Saddam gonna beat Dept. of State regulations and order 500...oh wait...
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
If it's not a plain jane x86, hacking/linux on the XBox won't be as wide spread. It will still happen, but there are much less resources, especially people who know PowerPC.
I've heard the reasons for not including the hard drive (I'm in the games industry), and they make sense.
1) People don't care. Believe it or not, it's not actually a big deal to MOST people. Yes, there are lots of people that do want it, but they're a small percentage of the population. It doesn't matter what they save their games on as long as it's fast.
2) With the PPC, backwards compatibility is already broken. Not to mention backwards compatibility is a pain in the ass for developers as well. They don't care about it, either. It's just not worth the money in the end to make a system that's backwards compatible unless it's easy. The PS1 is a single chip in the PS2. The Game Boy is pretty primitive, and is also easy to include in a GBA. For the Xbox 2 to be backwards compatible, it would either a) have to be the same architecture again or b) have an Intel 733 in there again that somehow gets used with XBox 1 games. Interestingly, the majority of the population isn't interested in backwards compatibility as a MAJOR feature anyway. It's just another bullet point to them.
3) Hard drives are expensive. The interesting thing about hard drives is that they never get cheaper, just bigger. Microsoft gets murdered with every hard drive they put in the Xbox.
4) They want this to be part of their digital hub thing. Since the Xbox 2 will likely have a network connection, if you want to store things more permanently, I heard mumblings about being able to do it on your PC.
5) The hard drive does a couple other things: generate heat and take up space. Getting the size down is something that they have to do if they want to make it in the all-important Japanese market.
6) Lastly, they don't want Linux running on Xboxes. If you want a PC, they want you to go out and buy a PC with Windows on it. The margins are better there.
I think this new Xbox sounds exciting. I'm not a big fan of the current model, but the new one will be a huge boon to developers and gamers alike. With 3 general purpose CPUs and a unified memory system, you can do things like generate a single tree and have each processor modify the tree in memory slightly before sending it to the GPU. Voila! Instant forest with quickly generated unique trees.
Please
The newest version of the xbox has already been hacked. It will contain a flash memory bootable version of something related to Darwin, which will then sit there and look cool, and do absolutely nothing since there is no hard disk, keyboard, or mouse.
stuff |
If they port directx to ppc :) What an dream boys?aint it? Or they will simply just hire Apple to do the OS for thim :D
I just hope they make a controller that a kid can hold this time. And a box with a flat top, so you can stack other units (VCR's, PS2's, etc), unlike that stupid dome they have at the moment.
The xbox was alright, but it really suffered from stupid visual and useability design decisions...
Microsoft has been bleeding money on Xbox hardware from day one, and even now they're still losing a significant amount of money on every console sold. In fact they abandoned a project to create a smaller, sleeker Xbox 1 because they didn't want people to go out and buy any more money-losing hardware. While in contrast Sony is now I believe earning a profit on each PS2.
The Microsoft brass are I imagine getting sick and tired of the Xbox hemorrhaging money and have insisted that they go toe-to-toe with Sony on component prices this time. They already alienated AMD and Intel charges too much of a price premium, so switching to embedded-friendly IBM is a logical move on the processor front, and as for the hard drive, they can't afford to spend that much on a component that Sony doesn't include even if it does give them a competitive advantage; most people won't buy an Xbox just for the sake of load times. Microsoft needs to win over developers, they need more and better exclusive titles, and to do that they need a platform that's easy to develop for, which is exactly what this is.
...on XBOX II flash, you risk that the unit will constantly reboot after drilling into your television.
as far as I can tell its a gamecube.
``wouldn't you just have a PC in a fancy box?''
No. It would be mostly incompatible with the PC/x86 architecture. I bet it wouldn't be compatible with macs, either. Of course, this should be no reason for not running a Free OS on it.
I like the PowerPC ISA...large quantities of Xbox should mean the video card would be well supported...I like Free software...MicroSoft will probably be selling them at a loss...I am not bound by DMCA...
</dreaming>
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
This does not ring in as being bullshit to anyone?
I would have blinked if they said it has ONE CPU similar to the one in the G5, but three?
Come on.
... HOWEVER, I see a combination of advantage and disadvantage. On the one hand this will require starting from scratch; I'm sure GNU/Linux can be customized to run with flash memory, or from optical media like Knoppix, but it will take time. On the other hand, Microsoft's security attention will be drawn away from the legacy model. This means that the old XBox is up for grabs, and we can expect minimal future security blockades. Old XBoxen will be VERY big sellers among Linux enthusiasts, possibly selling secondhand for as much as they sold as new, if not more.
But regarding backaward compatibility, I wouldn't worry about it. Remember that Microsoft bought Connectix, the maker of Virtual PC, and has been looking into technologies for running virtual machines. This may be related to those efforts, and running i386 game code on a PowerPC 970 might be doable with the right emulation built into the OS.
What really surprises me is that Windows code is well-organized enough that Microsoft thinks they can port it to another platform at all.
It's interesting they are using Apple G5's to develop prototype games. That mean if they go along with this hardware theres nothing stopping someone for hacking it to be played on a mac. I'm going to go look for that flying pig now- I didnt think I would see the day where Microsoft would be making games for Apple Hardware. :-)
This explains Micro$oft's recent shipment of G5's
1.) It doesn't have a hard drive -- Geeze, that's the only reason I bought the damn XBox. Otherwise, I would have bought the Gamecube or PS2.
2.) It's not backwards compatible -- Look at the PS2 , nuff said.
3.) They actually reduce the RAM from 512 to 256, not include a hard drive, or do anything stupid because the PS3 did the same. -- I'm tired as hell of companies putting out sucky products because the competition is no better (Maybe if the PS3 doesn't include an ethernet adaptor they will revert to a 56k modem. I bet Xbox Live will run great at 56k!!!).
... is it going to come with your choice of 4 toppings? And freaky toppings at that, like corn!
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
This sounds like it is a closer relative to the present gamecube then the present Xbox. Just shows to go who reall put together the best hardware for the job the first time around and the usual M$ ripp off the competition, rather then creat new mentality.
maybe you could make a symbolic link to yesterdays posts to save us all the bother of repeating ourselves?
Some months ago, Microsoft purchased Connectix
Connectix' product line mainly consists of VirtualPC, which is a software emulation of an x86 PC for use on a PowerPC Apple Mac
Possibly Microsoft intend to use Connectix' x86 emulation technology to support Xbox1 games on Xbox2, as well as their rumoured intention to use emulation technology in future versions of Windows for backward compatibility.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Does this mean that Macophiles can no longer bemoan the vileness of "Wintel" if M$ is using the same processor in one of their flagship products that Apple does.
Will this also make it easier to port XBox titles to the Mac? Will this make the Mac a more viable gaming platform?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
This pretty much explains why Microsoft bought Virtual PC. If they are at all interested in backwards compatibility, they are going to need to VPC to run old games on the G5.
Nintendo has almost always been about great games.
They've never bought into the glitz and glamour that Sony and Microsoft push for. Nintendo is, first and foremost, for gamers who like playing games.
My opinion anyway.
"Thoughts are more powerful than any weapon, and I don't even let my people own guns." --Joseph Stalin
The machine also will have about 256 megabytes of dynamic random access memory. But Microsoft will upgrade that to 512 megabytes if Sony puts in more.
This sounds like a bunch of technobabble, geared towards impressing "analysts". I can't imagine why any company would make a crucial decision, such as the amount of RAM the product will have, based on what the other guy is doing and not its own technical goals for the device.
How big it would be!
- 08 -01
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2001
If they make this change they are going to soon go out of the console business.
They simply cannot compete with Sony once you take away the current advantage of "just like PC hardware". The only thing that's kept the X-box floating is that the Xbox is based on hardware that's very well understood. Take away this advantage and they are simply screwed - Sony will eat them alive.
Dumb bastards.
Ugliest. Mac. Evar !
Flash memory only reminds me of the rover.
That's what I thought when I knew Microsoft had acquired the VirtualPC software. They kill two birds with one shot:
That was an evil idea myself could have devised, isn't it so, Minime?
Looking at the specs, it seems that MS has changed some of it's policies regarding the xbox drasticly
Originally, my take on the xbox was that it was a PC specificially designed to be a console. In other words, Game X on WinXP could be translated to the xbox will very little recoding, or vice versa, since the xbox was pretty much a standarized hardware PC running Windows 2000 with Directx.
If these are, in general, what the current specs are going to be for the neXtBOX, this basicially throws this stragety out the window, since the neXtBOX will be not only software imcompatible, but also hardware incompatable with the PC, as well as the current xbox.
It looks like MS is changing its stragety and looking at the XBOX more as a seperate product rather than an extension of the PC.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
If this is true then we'll be seeing a LOT more games on the Mac! It won't be a "foreign port" anymore since developers will be targeting the G5 already.
As much as everyone is griping about backwards compatability, do you really need it? I thought it was a cool feature when buying the ps2 over 3 years ago but I never used it. I didn't have any urge to play ps1 games after playing a few ps2 titles and if I wanted to play ps1 games, I could always hook up my ps1. Its not like your going to the sell the system on eBay and make any money. Same goes for the xbox by the time the xbox 2 comes out. I would prefer MS make something new rather than be limited by a backwards compatability requirement. Look what backwards compatability did for windows :)
The major design principle of the original nt kernel was crossplatform abilities. They used to sell Nt on alpha, and now the sell 2003 on itanium. They could easily make a version to frun on other archs, but there isn't a really good reason to. ...Except perhaps the xbox 2.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I don't understand this. IBM is building both Xbox Next and the next PSX? They must have something big up their sleeve.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
They're not including a hard drive so they can make money on the Xbox 2. The hard drive is the reason they lose money on each Xbox 1 they sell. You can get the full scoop in Opening the Xbox.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
They don't utilize the hard drive as it is now anyhow. Without actually putting it to use, like speeding up load times, it's just a huge memory card. Three PPCs based on the IBM 970. Not quite the same as the G5 as it isn't supposed to have the Altivec on board. So, no 128-bit pipes. Also, ATI, as pointed out by others, it's a GameCube on steroids. This is all old news, aside from the 3 procs. This is all being done to ensure that MS won't have to worry about the hackers of their old XBox with regards to the new one. As for backwards compatibility, who cares? Certainly not Microsoft.
and install Linux on this baby! Oh yeah!
Even Mac On Linux becomes possible at this point!
www.maconlinux.org
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Maybe Microsoft is hoping that people try to hack this new x-box to run OS X in order to hurt apple? What if they made it so people can mod it very easily in order to turn it into cheap hardware to run OS X? They could kill apple's hardware sales pretty quickly with that, don't you think? Apple wouldn't make any money off of selling their OS either, because if you are going to mod an X-box, you probably don't care about buying anything legally.
It would be pretty funny if the whole X-box plan was to make it hard for Apple to sell hardware.
Give me a great big, giant, "YAWN".
..Brent
M$ is just trying to stay in the news and build hype around its next box that actually wont be out until the 3.5 Linux kernel.
B-F-D!
Here's a somewhat relevent question though:
Why do you Slashdot/Linux guys support BillG and his world domination quest by buying XBox at all? What happens when Sony and Nintendo are gone??? Then we're stuck relying on M$ to produce all the console videogames on Earth... oh God.
I've never contemplated sucide before, but that scenario makes me think twice..
Micro$oft would not be worth $5 if none of us bought thier crap.
Sorry guys, i'm not willing to ruin video gaming just so i can play Halo. Shesh.
Moderators need an additional choice: "Karma Whore" for people who cut-and-paste articles as their comments!
Everything is obsolete again! Now all the Xbox games will have to be recompiled and repurchased! And all that wonderful happy talk about how games could be easily developed using DirectX goes straight into the crapper! Woohooo!
Once again, the bar is raised (or lowered depending on your POV) for game developers! Instead of using standard, simple and easy tools which would allow game developers to concentrate their effort (and money) on a good, well thought-out and well written game design, now game developers have to invent everything from the project equivalent of the Bronze Age to the Industrial Age in a standard development cycle!!
And of course, the moment an engine/game/toolset is debugged, stable and begins to improve workflow, the game press will declare it (echo effect) OB-SO-LEET and demand that the developers leap from their chairs to cram it into the nearest shithole and start over because this other unstable, buggy piece of shit engine says it can draw five more voxel-angles-a-second.
So, that means more sequels, more clones and more under-engineered over-graphicized $50 a box crap for everyone!! Yeah! Let's have a big round of applause!
(a small jazz ensemble in straw hats starts playing "Happy Days are Here Again")
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Weren't MS making a big deal about the next Xbox was going to evolve into something that would take over as central control of your home theater experience? How are they going to do things that I'd associate with that, such as PVR, if there is no hard drive? Or would leaving out the hard drive give MS back the control they are losing due to software installed via ModChip taking their Xbox-1 control away from them??
I believe that they want to remove HDs from peoples homes, and have everyone store their data on MS servers.
You'll pay a monthly fee to use your account and get terminal access to the approved software suite and library of games. Migrating to another platform will become well-nigh impossible.
And if you're a small-time developer? There's always telemarketing....
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Well, here are a few quick thoughts:
1. Moving to a PPC CPU?
Why? The current XBox uses a custom 733MHz Intel CPU (akin to a Celeron or Pentium III according to some sources) so wouldn't moving over to a faster part based on the Pentium 4 make sense? At least that would make it a lot easier to maintain...
2. Backwards compatibility.
This is a must. The Sony Playstation 2 managed it and it wasn't "seriously crippled" by it. Nowadays, it's what gamers demand: they don't want to throw out their collection of old favourites because they won't work with the new machine, they want the new machine to run those games.
In a way, by promoting backwards compatibility out of the box with the PS2, Sony has set the standard on this issue. If Microsoft drops the ball on this one then bye-bye XBox Next.
As the analyst in the article said, "I can't imagine that Microsoft would be so insanely stupid as to make it incompatible."
3. No hard disk drive.
Well, if you're going to maintain backwards compatibility then you're going to need that HDD. But how does removing the HDD make any kind of sense? HDDs are cheap and spacious compared to the alternatives.
Unless Microsoft is building a $1,000 console, how does replacing the HDD with Flash RAM make any kind of sense?
Is Microsoft really this intent on screwing up with XBox Next?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
That's a stab in the back as far as I'm concerned. Yes, I have an X-box, and I can play the Xbox games on it.
But, as a part-time salesdroid, one of the larger selling points of the PS2, at least as far as "Parents buying for Kids" is concerned, is that they can just plug in the PS2 where the PS1 is, the OLD games still play on it, and the new games will as well.
To me, that was one of the wisest decisions of Sony, as well as keeping the -same- form factor of their interconnects. Nintendo was close, but had the N64 been able to play the NES/SNES games out of the box? There would have been no contest in that segment of the console wars.
No HD? Fine, I can deal with that. I'll get a mem card. I have one for my OTHER consoles, I can do that with the Xbox2. But -please- don't make me have to purchase an additional kit just to play DVD's... my PS2 doesn't need it, why should the Xbox?
Also, ditch the "Xbox Only" games. FINE, so your competitors can get a shot at them. If your hardware is -superior- are you really worried? These days, since I now own pretty much all of the 'current' consoles, if I'm getting a game, I go for the one that looks, and 'feels' the best. I'm not a platform zealot.
And take a lesson from the Nintendo Book Of Things To Not Do. (That they seem to be good at writing, but never reading from.) Don't make your controller look like a Klingon Hand-to-Hand weapon. Don't add more buttons Just Because You Can.
And while you're at it, sure, your games are targetted at "Mature Gamers"... from my experience as a salesdroid, that's where you're losing to all the other systems. Other than "Barbie rides a horse again" game for girls, and the occasional sports game or what have you, 90% of your titles, a parent isn't going to purchase, even for a teen, because its Questionable. I'm not saying, take the Nintendo Route Of Least Offensiveness And Family Entertainment. Just take some of your Huge Wad Of Cash, and make a few Games Parents Will Buy For Their Kids. You don't know how many copies of Mario Party / Mario Cart I've sold to parent's who bought it because "Well, its a Mario game..."
(Oh, like Microsoft will read my slashdot post and listen to me.)
"Three IBM-designed 64-bit microprocessors... A graphics chip designed by ATI... backwards compatibility could be out of the question."
Compared to an Intel x86/NVidia solution? Gee, ya think?
But Microsoft will ensure the game developers that it's as backwards compatible as Xbox is to PC. After all, everybody used the "Recompile, Re-box, Retail!" strategy for exclusive Xbox/PC games and it worked out great, right?
With the PPC, backwards compatibility is already broken
Not necessarily... they bought VirtualPC for a reason...
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
click here!
Mod parent "-1, Whoosh!"
[blatantly stolen, but I laughed]
Apples current G5 rocks something like 7-9 fans depending on your config. For some reason, I just don't see a console with 18 to 27 fans in Microsoft's future. Certainly, I do believe XBOX Next will be based on an IBM PPC, but I'd imagine something a little more power and cooling efficient.
As for the hard drive; it will definitelyi be there or at the least, be bundled with the Live pack. The HD is absolutely necessary for Xbox Live, which as far as console online gaming goes, has been very successfull.
which is the better financial model?
No brainer - the flash memory. Not everyone has broadband, nor is willing to get it just to play console games. You can add on the broadband access to those who have it and are willing to subscribe, but it *can't* be a requirement of the system.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"Internally, Microsoft has begun developing game prototypes, and it is using G5 systems to do so."
Thanks MS... I'm gonna have a smile on my face all goddamned day.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
I'm with you 99%.
A lot of games simply wouldn't be feasible without the harddrive or would require such insane load times that it would greatly annoy a user. The only two games worth owning for X-Box, Halo and Knights of the Old Republic, use the harddrive to cache information extensively. Neither of these games is feasible on a GameCube or PS2 (BTW, I'll take my GameCube over X-Box any day....).
Oh! And as with any harddrive, and with the help of a modchip, you could store porn on it!(/end cliche slashdot comment...)
What I want is to be able to run Mac OSX on a $200 box through Mac on Linux if I have to... Here's hoping Yellow Dog can get ported to the new Xbox...
Has anyone read the specs for the G5. There is no way they are using 3 CPUs. Their configured for 1, 2 or 4-way systems and that's it. And why use a G5 at all when the Cell processor that PS3 is picking up is being developed at IBM as well. Doesn't it make more sense to pick up a modified Cell processor than 3 G5's?
from the article (yes, i RTFA! ;-)
> Internally, Microsoft has begun developing game prototypes, and it is using G5 systems to do so.
so that explains the Microsoft Fires Mac Fan For Blog Photo
IBM has been moving toward putting multiple
processors on one chip. People tend to expect
it to be 2 or 4, but it could be 3. If you
read between the lines here, Microsoft has
just leaked some IBM plans.
Seeing as how MS wants to keep the cost down, the XBox2 certainly uses 3 IBM "Cell" cores, not G5 chips. G5 chips are affordable, Cell is downright cheap.
This is the same core that the PS3 uses, and it is going to use it for the same reasons. Low cost, high performance.
3 G5 cores would take up a lot of space die space, certainly a whole chip. 3 Cell cores would still leave space for plenty of other things on the same chip, perhaps even the graphics accelerator.
7-9 fans for the PPC 970s based on 130 nanometer process.
.65 nanometer process which are much cooler than their predecessor.
Chips used in this XBox would be using G5s based on the
Bob
I can't imagine how they can stuff THREE cpus into a box and make any money on the hardware. I know they didn't make any money on the Xbox. It looks to me like they'll lose MUCH MORE per Xbox Next. Perhaps they won't lose that much since not having backwards compatibility will kill their sales.
Microsoft will be shipping VirtualPC 7 as part of Office
Will Microsoft also sell Virtual PC separately, or do I smell product tying in further restraint of trade?
Given that Darwin is open-source, anybody else think there'll be a push to get it running on the Xbox? It shouldn't be that hard - maybe somebody will even go so far as to come up with an extremely clever hack that would let one install the rest of X on an Xbox...mmm...
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
According to the Microsoft developer specs, you aren't allowed to talk about "Data," "CPUs," or anything else in your games that might suggest the XBox was a PC (except for games like Star Trek where it would be diagetic). We had a game bounce from Microsoft because we "saved data." Having a first party keyboard and mouse would run counter to that mantra.
It's difficult to justify buying a big box if you realize that it is actually a slightly smaller box than you already have.
The ______ Agenda
This implies they will be creating a new version of Windows for PPC. Hmm...
I think that MS can do backward compatibility. Heck, they own Connectix and their Virtual PC software and technology!
What that hopefully means is that a G5 equivalent should be able to emulate a 733MHz PIII. There is probably no need for an x86 chip there.
The graphics API could be ported to the newer chip, as long as MS didn't allow games to go "to the metal" of the graphics chip.
Most flash drive chips emulate an ATA drive anyway, so no change there, other than maybe less total capacity.
The only thing that might be missing is the will to do it. Some people say a lot of the PS2's sales in the first few months were bouyed by being able to retain backward compatibility.
with multithreading, the code wont care which cpu its on, it will just work and the OS will handle it.
You can just split up each logic on diff threads and make sure its in sync.
DX11 DXXI will probly do it all for you.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Old article here
Considering that Microsoft just bought Virtual PC from Connectix, backward compatability is very much a possibility
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
I can have a tripple-cpu-linux-ppc computer then.. i hope the design doesn't suck as much as the old one... big ugly black box with a green snot in the middle.. even bullets get distracted by it..
:-/
If it only would have had a TV _input_ so I could use Linux on it to capture movies while connecting my Gamecube (a great and true game console) to it... but nothing is perfect
If it has a PPC and you know someone WILL get Linux to run on it. You could have your cheap Mac On Linux box running OSX.
The Virtual PC purchase!
I wonder if they're going to use the old NT-PPC kernel. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Rumour has it that it will run Linux.
MS has confirmed they will break backwards compatibility, Linux is already ported to the PowerPC platform...I'm betting this will happen!
/mod up for humour
According to this story : "Sony Corp announced on Monday that it plans to build new lines at Toshiba Corp and IBM Corp factories to produce advanced microprocessors for use in such products as digital appliances and game machines including Microsoft's Xbox gaming console and Sony's PlayStation 3."
So the scenario is that Sony invests in IBM chip production, and then Microsoft buys chips from IBM for the XBOX 2 that competes with Sony's Playstation 2 & 3. This might be a ploy by Sony to get a leg up on Microsoft. Or, more likely in my opinion, the console market is so important to both companies that going with the technology with the best price/performance has naturally led them to the same IBM chips.
If both Sony & MS rely on basically the same chips then the next round of the consol war will truly come down to who has the best games and best exclusive games.
This space for rent.
My initial thoughts on the first X-Box were that no developer would be able to resist the insanely easy port to the PC of X-Box games. For the most part, that's panned out. The most high profile X-Box games tend to make their way to the PC. What are the chances that the same will be the case for the Mac with X-Box 2? Granted it won't be quite as easy to port games to the Mac as it was to Windows on x86, but it shouldn't be that much more difficult. I see this as a very good thing for Mac gaming.
Geez, can't you MS-haters spot a troll when you see one???
FYI the next big thing (tm) that ATI fanatics are looking forward too is the R420, not the R400. Rage 3d reports that the Xbox2 VPU will be based off the R500.
There's now way that ATI will cannibalize their PC graphics card market by making the xbox VPU on par with their top PC VPU for a fraction of the price (IMHO).
Very nice. Perhaps this is intentional.
A very interesting move. Is it just a technological decision or more?
A blog I run for the wealth
Now, with Microsoft taking a tougher stance on XBox DRM that might not necessarily be the case with XBox 2. (The D0, for instance, already is different on v1.0-v1.2 and v1.3-1.5 boxes; though not necessarily to prevent the installation of third-party addons) Sure, there's eventually going to be a way to circumvent any kind of copy protection but it might take a while...
Now we know the real reason the blogger got fired for taking pictures of the Microsoft loading dock. The G5 computers were for the XBox team! No doubt that the XBox team is using Mac G5s to create a development environment. I wonder if it is based on XCode? XCode for XBox. I like the sound of that.
But what about making the XBox into the home entertainment hub (Tivo functionalities, PSX)? Would be pretty tough to do without a HD. Or is that concept dead?
Perhaps with a bit of work they can be turned onto a nice PPC based PC, cheaper then a apple..
NetBSD would run on it at least...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Internally, Microsoft has begun developing game prototypes, and it is using G5 systems to do so.
Perhaps that's what these were for? (as opposed to: new machines for the MBU, controllers for Bill's video wall, or any of the other umpteen theories)
If the Xbox Next is not backwards compatible, it will be destroyed by the PS3.
First, on the day of release the PS3 will be able to play all PS2, PS1, and the new PS3 games. Thus, it will have several times more available games than the Xbox Next.
Second, people do not want to have multiple consoles in their living room, especially ones the size of the current Xbox. Sure, some people might have a PS2 and an Xbox, but when the Xbox Next and the PS3 are released, the choice will be easy. If you choose the PS3 you'll still only need two consoles. But if you choose the Xbox Next, you'll need three.
Third, people don't like being screwed. When people invest in games and hardware, they like knowing that they don't have to throw them away every few years. Sony respects that and allows gamers to keep their investments.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
does it run MacOS X
"People familiar with Microsoft's strategy say the company apparently believes it can capture a much larger share of the market if it launches its machine before Sony fields its PlayStation 3 console in 2006."
But Sony hopes to have its 'Playstation OS' for PC out before Microsoft ships Longhorn in 2006!
Well, 2006-ish...
Have you ever seen VirtualPC run on a Mac? I've seen instances where VPC is able to emulate code pretty close to the x86 equivalent speed. Now if we're talking about a multi-way PPC, (tri? dual?) 970 class processor, even if you penalize one of the 1GHz processors 50%, it should be able to handle the 700MHz P3 that's in the XBox.
It depends a lot on what's being done, but a very rough rule of thumb is that it requires about three PowerPC cycles for Virtual PC to emulate one x86 cycle. That would make a 1GHz 970 very roughly equal to a 300Mhz x86 chip. Keep in mind that this is not a process that can be parallelized easily, and that Microsoft is constrained to handle the worst-case scenerio, not just the average case, since games are (soft) real-time. Based on this, unless this PPC chip being shipped is notably faster than is being estimated, I strongly doubt that Microsoft will be capable of shipping an X-Box 1 x86 emulator for the XB2.
My guess as to why Microsoft wants to use a PPC chip has more to do with piracy prevention. Most potential pirates and emulator users are using an x86. It's impossible to emulate a PowerPC at any kind of a sane speed on an x86 processor. Thus, all those Windows-using folks have neatly been eliminated as potential pirates -- if they want an XB2 game, they have to buy it, not emulate the system.
May we never see th
According to earlier reports, the 3 chips in the XBox2 will be the same chips that IBM is making for the PS3.
The "Cell". Go look it up.
Oh, yeah. And we all know how reliable flash memory can be.
Longhorn is Microsoft's OSX, and their purchase of Virtual PC is their attempt at doing what Apple did with their 'Classic' emulation.
I'm not surprised at all by the Apple Users' responses you got. Mac's fans claim to be free thinkers (as opposed to the rest of use non-Apple drones) yet, they seem incapable of tolerating any dissenting opinions.
Nice work on your G5/AMD mod.
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
Sure, just like the 65nm Prescott is not much cooler than its predecessor, the Nortwood?
I don't think this "leak" is really a leak. You don't think M$ lets data out like that to test the wind? There's somebody from Microsoft's marketing department reading your comments now. They're scowering /. and the message boards trying to see what gamers will say about it. It's just like politics--Microsoft wants to win no matter what. Once they've taken control of the market, they'll go after another market and make it bland, buggy, and boring too. They don't give a crap about quality as long as you keep buying.
Enhydra, an Open Source Java-based Application Server, was recently installed on an XBox using Xebian.
I had submitted a story about this the day it happened (a few days ago) but it didn't make the cut.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
If microsoft is so concerned about the cost of the xbox why is it going with such high priced companies. I think ATi is a good choice for the video end because of the quality of the chips, but using the overpriced IBM processors is not very smart. If they wanted to keep the cost low they should have used AMD chips, then they could also afford to throw in a decent sized harddrive as well. AMD chips perform almost on par with the IBM equivilant and are better for gaming than the IBM chips so why not use them?
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
Hi, With no HD and Microsofts' interest in besting Apple's music store, one strategy could be that you wouldn't have the MP3s (or whatever) on you XBox (computer) anymore. They'd be on the central M$ server (waiting for MyDoom, or whatever). Benefit for people: They wouldn't have to juggle DRM when moving to another XBox (computer) and would remain faithful Microsoft customers for the rest of their life (or lose their files). Just speculation (which has a higher caloric value than kerozene). Bert
PC manufacturers are guilty of perpetuating monopoly abuse by M$ until they include a partition with Linux pre-installed
3 Pulse Particle Cannon CPUs?
Sweeeeeeeet! Now where's my LRM20s and my quest for a bigger and better Timberwolf will be complete!! Note: lots of heatsinks though. Maybe stand in some water while playing with this console
said in the voice of Arnie in drag (ala Total Recall....)
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
D'oh!
AFAIK: Virtual PC does not work on the G5 yet. It only works on G4 or earlier.
Also, Virtual PC does not emulate graphics cards, hence the sucky gaming on macs. Don't flame me for that, I am a mac owner.. I just play games on my xbox and gamecube.
Hopefully it will allow Apple to purchase G5s from IBM at lower prices.
1. There are rumours that Nintendo and Microsoft will be working together on the next-gen console.
2. I read somewhere that someone high up at Nintendo said their next-gen console would be able to play Gamecube games.
3. The gamecube is PPC-based with an ATI graphics chip.
4. Microsoft's rumoured new console is supposed to be PPC-based with an ATI graphics chip.
5. ???
6. Profit!!
or something...
This bit about the hard drive might be a "trial balloon". This isn't an official announcement, so MS can still say "we never said we would do that; it was only a rumor." Now they will see how much people care about the hard disk.
If they do release without a hard disk, you will still be able to get one. It will be in an external box. They will probably have a special "storage" port, which should be a FireWire port, because FireWire can provide enough power to run a hard disk (only one cable needed).
If they are smart, they will not make some wacky custom connector; people should be able, for instance, to use their iPod as their XBox2 hard disk, and then take it with them to their friends' homes for gaming. (Even if they make a wacky connector, someone will make a custom cable so you can connect your iPod anyway.)
Initially I thought this was just a wild rumor. But the quotes in the newspaper article, about how most games don't even use the hard disk, were interesting.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
while seemingly a nice addition, backwards compatibility is not that big a deal. playstation 2 would have been a resounding success even if they neglected to make it run PS1 games, don't you think? at the beginning of the PS2's lifecycle, sony's profits were actually hurt by this feature (as well as its movie playing ability). since software is what ultimately creates profit, it's a better business model to make customers purchase a whole new library of games, rather than let them sit on the ones they already have. besides, you buy a new system to play NEW games. i doubt anyone dropped $180-$300 on PS2 just so they could give old PS1 games a whirl. besides, i think a lot of people like to keep their old consoles, esp. in this day and age of ebay, where defunct systems become collectors items. i mean sure, my TurboDuo is a relic, but does that mean i'm gonna get rid of it because PS3 or X-box2 is around the corner?
--They say only a fool looks at the finger pointing to the sky...
Most of the good games these days are available on all three platforms and usually the XBox version is best in terms of graphics (HDTV support, constant framerate, more graphics dazzle) and sound (Dolby Digital 5.1).
It seems to me this could be a boon to users of the Mac. Many games developed for the Xbox were also developed for the PC at the same time. Using G5's in the Xbox Next could mean that games for the Mac could come to market faster and even be released earler on the Mac than the PC. Also, since the Xbox uses a modified win32 kernel, will the next xbox use a modified win32 kernel designed for the G5?
So, MS nick Nintendo developers and now they're nicking hardware technologies aswell! GameCube has been using PowerPC processors and ATI graphics for ages!
It's worked for Nintendo. Look, has the GC been hacked yet? Not really. There have been lots of games floating around the ether but no existing mod will allow you to play copied games on the GC - NONE.
Meanwhile the PS 1/2, Dreamcast (with it's supposedly unbreakable protection), and the X-Box have been hacked to oblivion. Hell, even the newer N-Gage was hacked in a few days! Piracy is rampant on all of these platforms. It can be argued that this was the main reason why the Dreamcast died.
Meanwhile, the GC? It's a 'trusted' platform. If I were any of the competition I'd be looking at how IBM helped Nintendo create the world's first secure console. You betcha.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
First off...Prescott is not 65nm. Prescott is 90nm. It's Intel's first 90nm chip, beaten to market (although only barely) by the G5 that's inside Apple's newly updated Xserve.
Now, as far as Prescott consuming more than it's predecessor, and the 90nm G5 consuming less...it's true. From The Register...
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
With three G5 CPUs and if they ever managed to get linux on this baby think of how many SETI@Home Work Units you could crunch in a week? *drool*
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
All our XBox ever did, including a large stack of games, is collect dust. It made a nice trade for a few PS2 games and a network adapter though.
.... ?
Halo was alright, and the only reason for a XBox, but when you can get a better version of the same game on a PC,
I'll stick to my PS2, and wait for the next PS to come around, thanks.
Translation: MS is writing Mac games?
I thought that the XBOX controller ports were USB, just with a proprietary connector on the end of the bus instead of the standard one.
An eye for an eye... leaves the whole world blind.
These days a single postage stamp-sized (TSOP2) NAND flash can hold 256MB with 512MB on the horizon - quite enough storage to run quite a big chunk of OS and applications.
With PPC processors, this thing won't be running x86 software. I wonder if they're going to go with big-endian software (better graphics performance than little-endian).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I think the real question is whether or not it will play old X-Box games, but can it steal Sony's thunder by emulating (or otherwise simply playing) their games. Now that would be smart. Not many other (paying customers) care if it will run Windows, Linux or the T1-99's OS.
Well, as for me, when I was facing the typical "Xbox or PS2?" dilemma, backwards compatibility was the key factor determining my choice. I have a fairly large library of PSX games and I enjoy playing them on my new PS2 console. Without ensuring the PSX compatibility, Sony could lose me as a customer (should I have to move to entirely new machine... I might move to an entirely different machine). Microsoft worked really hard to promote Xbox as a viable platform - and they succeeded. Uncompatible Xbox 2 would equal to jettisoning all that work and starting again from scratch. I can't believe they would do this!
Could these be the same G5's we saw a photo of that got a former M$ employee fired. This could be why they were so annoyed at the taking of the photo!
Is there any way these reports could be confirmed ?
:
I'm skeptical because
(1) A three-way machine is going to be extremely expensive to build. Not ideal for a mass-market console.
(2) Microsoft supported Windows NT4.0 on PPC, but I don't think they went beyond that. I remember them saying at the time that future OSs would be ported internally beyond x86, just to ensure the OS retained it's portability, but that such things would not be actively maintained
(3) The existing base of software and APIs already available for Windows/x86 would have to be ported to the new OS and the new architecture.
(4) I've never heard of three-way SMP. Two way or four way, yes. Three way is a bit odd.
I've got a 120MB HD that still works.
So your saying I can get enough for it on Ebay to at least pay the fees?Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
You know...I had an interesting thought... If Microsoft comes out with a three-processor G5 system and it actually is about 3 times faster than a SP G5, Apple will probably make a tri-processor G5 system as well. Now, consider. A tri-processor G5, with a PPC CPU and a big graphics card, a 200 GB hard drive, internet connectivity, etc etc... vs a tri-processor G5 PPC XBox and a big graphics card, no hard drive, no OS useable for anything but games, etc etc... Can someone say emulator? Imagine the ability to go buy an XBox 2 game, slap it in the G5, and play to your hearts content. And if Microsuck makes VPC 7 work well for the G5, then Apple could have VPC 7 being fast enough to run an XBox 1 emulation program on a tri G5! Then Apple can brag to having the only system that can emulate Windows, Linux, and both XBox models, and also run OS X, OS 9, UNIX, and Linux...
I wonder what will be there first, a 64 bit Windows OS for the Opteron / Athlon 64 (and FX, for completeness sake), or a 64 bit Windows OS for the XBox deux? Seems to me that Microsoft is protecting Intels intrests with one -er- foot and kicking them in the parts with another.
Or are they just trying to presurise Intel with this? It would not be the first time that Microsoft would say "thank you but goodbye" to a company that was sure they were on the same side. IBM is a very dangerous company to ditch though.
MOD GRANDPARENT DOWN
Then,
What are the XBox2-viruses that they destroy the XBoxes-2 and/or the games?
open4free
3 G5 chips and top of the line ATI video?
who's going to line up to buy a $3000 xbox-2?
One word - bochs.
just like the PC emulates the x-box now, right?
The reason the GC hasn't been hacked is not its CPU, it's the disc media, which uses a format completely incompatible with anything else.
Unoftunately for Nintendo, this is also why fewer third-party developers want to develop for the Gamecube: it locks them into Nintendo's manufacturing and distribution system.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
It isn't a G5 (IBM PPC770) but is closely related
Boy this is good news. I am an avid Xbox fan but this is a little topsided:
The current Xbox has an eight-gigabyte hard disk drive. That drive is useful for online games and storing game art, but many developers chose not to make use of it. As a result, Microsoft seems to have decided that saving the $50 the hard drive costs outweighs its benefits.
If they want to save money, why don't they put in a 1.5 GB hard drive or something?!?! The hard drive is really handy so you don't have to hunt down memory cards for an hour and a half like I did with my N64. When I did heard the Xbox have an 8 GB hard drive, I thought that too much unless you like all the Xbox games. I personally like about 5 games; but to the point now. That was one of the big advantages the Xbox had over the PS2 or the Gamecube: It had a permantent memory. And how else would you beable to install Xbox Linux on it? I just think they should keep the hard drive but keep it down to about 1.5 GB or 2.0 GB.
Why I am saying this? Well lately I've been concerned with hard drive space because mine is an ancient 6 GB. Yes time to upgrade...
Game Maker Community
I wonder what kind of firmware will be bootstrapping this thing. This would be great if it can boot a Mac OS X toolbox image (ROM).
*drool*
Well, first of all, it's heavy.
Yeah, just look at all those people staggering around under the weight of their iPods.
I don't believe the "Xbox has a rounded top to prevent spills into its vents" bit
It was a guess, based on Nintendo's analogous design requirements with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. A few months before the Super NES came out, Nintendo Power magazine explained that spills were a big problem on the 8-bit NES because people would place containers of food on top of the system. The N64's case was rounded for the same reason.
Most reports are saying Sony will abandon the PS1 platform once the PS3 comes out and will only support 2 consoles at a time (not including PSP). Makes sense because they get PS1 compatability by including the old CPU. What, are they going to have 5 different consoles-on-chip in there? No, they'll phase out the old technology. So... you're probably wrong or at least pulling this out of your ass.
I don't think anyone will miss the great games presently on the Xbox either.
The PS1 had a library of a few hundred games with dozens of classics in their respective genres. Not to mention the playstations are difficult to program for and most companies would not be able to dive in and switch easily. On the other hand, the Xbox is EASY to program for, it's basically Windows DirectX programming. They want all their old developers on board out of the gates.
The Xbox has a handful of good games, many available on other platforms or superceded by the latest-and-greatest sequel. There's not much to salvage with backwards compatability on the Xbox, I don't know what you're talking about. Xbox has few developers. Microsoft doesn't want any of them developing legacy games when they could be pushing their latest system as they've already written this one off as a loss.
I hate losing karma for pointing out people's spelling mistakes, but there's nothing more fun than loosing the hounds on people who can't spell!
If the Xbox next has a PPC chip(s) does this mean that porting games to the Mac platform will be easier/cheaper/more common?
Does this make my brain look big?
Don't forget that the Japanese market is very important and XBox has failed there, one reason being the size of it. So, without the hard drive, the XBox2 can be much smaller in size.
I am suprised by the sheer power of it though. A couple of years ago, this kind of power would costs thousands of dollars at the arcade. Now, we have vastly superior power for a couple of hundrends of bucks.
Go PPC!!!
So what?
I'm writing a game right now, and I've studied up on game architecture. Without exception, that realtime game you've been enjoying uses what's referred to as The Big Game Loop. The simplest form goes like this:
This doesn't parallelize well. You want to read user input as close to rendering as possible; the longer the delay between the user pressing the jump button and seeing the Space Goblin start to jump, the sloppier input feels. The best you could do, in the general case, would have one thread reading input and computing game state, and passing it off to a second thread for rendering just as it finished rendering the previous scene.In point of fact, John Carmack experimented with exactly this while developing Quake 3 Arena. You can read his results here. To summarize: he saw improvements of between 3% and 15%, and some levels were actually slower. Meanwhile it added complexity. So he scrapped it.
XBox 2's six-way SMP sounds lovely, but it strikes me as irrelevant for games. Maybe it'll be useful for other applications.
larry
p.s. Please pardon the formatting, but Slashdot doesn't support the pre tag. (Or, sadly, SGML character references.)
To me the best part about backwards compatibility is that if you an early adopter-as in buying a system within a years of its release- the ability to play old games makes the system instantly more useful. Nowadays consoles usually only ship with one REALLY good game in the first six months (since good games cost more and take longer to develop or something). So the ability to play all the gems from the last console (and benefit from the usual rush of good games that come at the end of a console's life) makes any system instantly more entertaining. It also makes it a better buy for the parents. Mine never understood why all those nes games couldn't play in the snes if the second was more powerful.
Open Source Sushi
Another popular myth is that the GC is the 'slowest' console around, or at least significantly worse than the X-Box.
In fact, although the XB has faster core processor speeds, the GC has a much higher pixel fill rate, better sound processing (PLII rather than 5.1), a comparable amount of memory and much better multi-texturing and anti-aliasing capabilities, thanks to running on an ATi graphics processor. Plus the GC is in a tiny little box, which has got to count for something in a world where people are constantly building super-micro-mini-ATX PC systems. The X-Box has a faster (although different instruction set) processor, and a faster GPU. It pushes more polygons but less textures per second.
If in doubt, you should try playing games that are available on both platforms, e.g. various sport games. In many cases the GC will look as good or better with the same game, especially if there is heavy texture work involved. Of course the PS2 leaves them both in the dirt for sales, despite being relatively technically puny.
Read Pynchon.
Probably the biggest problem is this (which is why I'm skeptical the article is true): The G5 (PPC970) was designed to benefit the most from a dual-processor configuration. A three-processor PPC970 doesn't have the same advantages... In fact, it likely provides very little gain, proportionately to the second. The number "3" also is quite un-computer-engineering-ish, because processor configurations almost always rely on powers of two.
When the CD-based units first started appearing, can you believe they actually came with (some) built in flash storage? Enough for saving maybe 3-6 different games. When the PS1 hit store shelves, and REQUIRED you to buy an add-on in order to save any game at all... I said the same thing as yourself. Who would want a console that you need to buy a bunch of extra parts just to use it properly? Today, memory cards are considered standard purchases along with a console.
The way I see it, onboard flash memory for a few games would satisfy most gamers out there (I think the average console/games sales ratio is somewhere around 1:4), and for the rest of us, an external HD would be just the thing. If someone coded the killer app/use for the HD, people would start buying them, and developers would use it more. Kinda like the N64 rumble pack, originally an add-on but now standard on any console.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I (and I am sure many others) have been saying this from the beginning. XBOX IS JUST A CRAPPY CHEAP COMPUTER! It runs a Microsoft OS (yuck) and has just about every other component a normal PC has, lets ponder on this one: What are we buying again?
And do you think this way of thinking won't change with MS and Sony at the helm? Give me a break! These people INVENTED DRM!
Anyway, the technical reason it works is unimportant - it works and it's cheap, and that's all that matters. Who masters the discs is also unimportant as NO console company can have a successful run without the support of the software industry. If they decide to be unreasonable, there are competitors.
The three major console companies will practically fall over themselves for exclusive sweetheart deals (ala Grand Theft Auto and HL II). No, a console's future is very dependant on the software manufacturer feeling 'da love'.
As Sony's design might prove to be difficult to code for, it might give MS and Nintendo an edge. OTOH, the PS/2 was a BITCH to code for with only 4 MB of GFX RAM and it was successful.
At any rate, it will be interesting to see if MS has backward compatability. If they don't do this, it may tip the balance as I believe it did for the PS/2.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Microsoft is not really interested in going into the hardware business. They are doing consoles because their core markets aren't going to give them any more growth, but that doesn't mean that they want to try and compete in the PC hardware business with the likes of Dell.
Microsoft is well aware that if they turn the XBox into a PC-killer that Dell will have their own console out on the street the next afternoon (probably running Linux). What's more, where Microsoft lost billions of dollars selling XBox hardware, Dell will almost certainly start turning a profit immediately.
> but that doesn't mean that they want to try and compete in the PC hardware business with the likes of Dell.
.NET, DRM, Microsoft centralized storage, HOTMAIL, DSL/Cable, and online program rental. The pieces are all falling into place, as we speak.
Yet.
Alas, their "entry" into that market is just a CD-ROM away.
Pretty much everything you need to remove the average end-user from a Dell PC purchase.
Make no mistake Xbox IS a "trojan" marketing device.
There are TONS of old NT4 servers sitting out there all over the world. Sysadmins are afraid to touch them because they work, and they don't want to screw something up. But they are afraid that the hardware will fail some day, and they'll be stuck looking for a system that they can slap NT4 SP6a on.
Virtual PC can take several of these servers and aggregate them ALL on a single modern box. One computer can take the place of several old servers. The newer hardware is less likely to fail (at least by MTBF numbers) and Virtual PC guarantees that you can still install NT4 SP6a on a virtual server, whereas you might not be able to do it on the latest Hyper-Threaded Dual Xeon.
Now you only have ONE physical box to administer, you only have ONE box to keep running, you can tightly control the "virtual hardware" on each PC without spending money, and you've even saved some money on your power bill in the process.
Starting to smell market potential yet?
I would think Microsoft would have put that idea to death, considering the quiet obliteration of UltimateTV. But who knows, Microsoft might just try another round of beating that dead horse. Guess we'll see.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
There's a big blip on my bullshit radar.
Let's look on store.apple.com, shall we? The iPod prices are:
- 15 GB: 299$
- 20 GB: 399$
- 40 GB: 499$
Let's assume that the hard drive cost is only half of that price.
So we're talking putting a 200$ hard drive (the 20 GB version), in a console which will sell for less than that hard drive alone. How stupid is that?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
At least that's my take. One of the reasons I bought an X-Box was the ability to run games off the hard disc. And before someone starts on an anti-piracy tirade, I own legal copies of the games, but putting them on the disc and being able to play them by just pressing a couple of buttons, no cd swapping involved, is great. It may sound lazy, but it was a big selling point of the box for me, and if Microsoft drop the drive, I won't be buying it.
I wish they'd stop being so paranoid about not being mistaken for a computer, though. It would be nice to have a keyboard and mouse for FPS games.
i guess you have no real experience with programming my friend :)
:)
some threads and events flying here and there make the programs architecture 10 times easier and more understandable.
ofcourse small silly games should use exactly the thing you showed. but big games with many processes running at the same time , which also communicates with net and other players will a have a tremendous lag while using this simple while method.
have a nice day.
and study a bit more about multithreaded apps
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
I think the official name is "OS X-Box"
The biggest letdown for me is that they never made the XBox work as a PVR. Everything is there to make it work, but hey have not made the software. Seeing as how the PSX will be a PVR, the XBox Next should have a HD for using as a PVR. With subscription fees of $12.95 a month, just like the TiVo, they can make some good money off of the PVR service, seeing as it should be pretty cheap to implement, relative to millions of users able to use a PVR for the same price as a console system.
- Kill Yourself, spare us all! -
Can you list for me some "big games" that don't use The Big Game Loop? I sincerely doubt it. For one, very little consumer hardware supports SMP, which means heavily-threaded code is going to add context switches as well as synchronization overhead. For another, the work load simply doesn't distribute easily to multiple threads. Your "big games" face the same problem that my "little game" does: first, read all user input, second, compute the new game state, and third, render the current state of the game. (Client/server games split up this work a little.)
There are a few places where multithreading can really help. It can make networking cleaner, though that's just as easily done single-threaded with a big select() call. (A well-written select()-based web server can easily be higher performance than multithreaded servers; see thttpd.) It's also nice to do sound mixing in a thread, but again that's not a must. But this is an architectural concern, not a performance concern. Your game will be plenty responsive with The Big Game Loop even if it's networked.
Anyway, this is missing the point of my original posting. Run any game today and watch it with a high-end process monitor (I'm on Windows XP, so I used Iarsn TaskInfo). It might have as many as a dozen threads, but you'll see that it spends 99%+ of its CPU time in a single thread. For example, I just checked Unreal Tournament 2003 and found that to be true. It had about nine threads, but only one was using a measurable amount of CPU. My game also has about nine threads; one is the main thread with The Big Game Loop, and something like two or four are from the sound library. The rest seem to be started by global system DLLs. (I'm not sure what they're doing, but I can't do anything about them, and they don't seem to be hurting anything. Ah well.)
So let me put my original question another way: how will games on XBox 2 benefit from having six-way SMP? Since they will very likely still use The Big Game Loop, how will they make any significant use of those other five pipelines?
imagine even a single game you wanna play with 5 friends, and you agree that you should be the server.
... then smp will be your best friend :p
:)
are you juggesting that your machine would die into lagging while trying to read one of your friends's socket ?
don't think so.
anyway, my point is, on simple games you are absolutely right and while there are mostly simple games out there , the benefit from Xway smp is almost zero.
but if you want to hack your xbox and run X11 and apache on it
sigh
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.