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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."
Um, if they did this wouldn't you just have a PC in a fancy box?
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).
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.
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.
More computing power then most PCs? Not exactly. If it were built today, it'd be doing pretty good, but by the time it launchs Intel is going to be at 4-5Ghz.
Also, there doesn't seem to be any way for Microsoft to do backward compatibility. I don't think there is any code in the entire world that would let a 2.0Ghz G5 chip emulate a P3 733.
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.
No, becaue the hardware config would be fixed so you wouldn't get the compatibility issues you get with PC games.
I bet they move the HD to external via USB 2.0 or something. It may be useful but its not useful enough to justify forcing people to buy it. They would be able to keep the cost down a little more without the HD. Those that want it can just go buy it for a premium price.
Yes, but a PC that consumers actually know how to use - the problem with PC's today, IMHO, is that 90% of the users dont know how to use it - and then we end up with a shitload of machines ill configured, that spams the rest of us.
;))
Furthermore the devs gets ONE platform to test on - This leads to less testing time needed, which ultimately SHOULD lead to cheaper games(or the cost saving would be used somewhere else - the directors pockets!
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.
I totally don't understand not putting a hard drive in the system.
We know that the xbox is just a pc, no matter how much the vendor wants us to believe otherwise. What better way to make it more of a closed system than to use flash RAM instead of the hd for temporary storage. What better way to have more rights management built into the thing than to make the data that much harder to access
That is a monster step backwards.
I agree, but from the m$ perspetive, it is probably viewed as a major step forward. If they can obfuscate the internal operations of the system, it will make it that much harder to hack and mod.
What are they thinking?
This is where you will go today
Seriously though, it will probably come to pass that you only purchase a license to use this thing, and not the hardware itself. They are obligated to protect the content which of course, belongs to someone else... The end of the open PC has been written about before, and perhaps this is how m$ would like to do that?
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
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...
Well, first of all, it's heavy. Why do you think they've got disconnect joints in their controller cables? It's also full of moving parts and not reliable. At least when a slotted flash card goes bad, you can always get another one. And then there's the cost issue. Hard drives have a certain minimum cost regardless of their capacity.
I totally don't understand not putting a hard drive in the system.
How about just going all the way and making the controller ports be USB from the very start? I don't see why we need a new custom controller port on every new generation of console. (Sony gets a bye on this for keeping the original Playstation controller and memory port plugs.)
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Beating the hell out of it is one thing, emulating it at a register level is another. Remember that these processors are not simple tinkertoy-style chips like the 8080 any more, these are complex CPUs where they probably waste more gates than those little old CPUs even have milking another 1% performance out of some function. Emulating them to a level that will allow all optimizations to work is nontrivial. The video is easier because it uses basic established APIs to talk to the hardware, since it's just another GEforce. If you have a geforce card with the same features or better in your PC, getting the graphics instructions to the video adapter should be trivial. But complete, accurate emulation of a P3 sounds a bit harder to me.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
too often, hardware/software is seriously crippled because of backwards compatibility.
Home game consoles have never really be backward compatible. PS2 is the first real back-ward compatible that I know of (though someone will end up telling me differently).
I couldn't play my Nintendo games on a Nintendo 64 out-of-the-box, and I surely can't play them on a GameCube. There is no precident for backwards compatibility in the gaming market, IMO, so it shouldn't be a concern for Microsoft.
Besides, most gamers I know have more than one game system, so it is no big deal if they have yet another one.
I support the XBox, because competition is always good. And M$ has enough money to bleed cash on the XBox for generations to come. It's actually a good thing in this case that M$ created the XBox as opposed to another company not capable of weathering the losses until the XBox either becomes profitable or at least provides enough competition to Sony and Nintendo to improve their systems.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
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.
You've never used one of these PPC970 chips then, if you are claiming reduced performance. PPC is a fundamentally different architecture, and one that typically yeilds both less heat and greater performance.
So, do yourself a favor and walk into your nearest Apple store and check out a great computer with a great processor. While your at it, give the OS a chance to. You might find something better than your biases previously allowed.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
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!
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.
All microsoft needs to do is require you to open up a windows share...
:)
Opening a Windows share... right. Considering 2000/XP's file sharing is already fairly complicated to n00bs, that might be a fun exercise.
And on a tongue-in-cheek note, I think this is the first time I've seen a comment encouraging people to use windows and open guest-enabled shared... modded to +5!
Modern emulators are WAY better than they used to be . You can get 10% of the native speed without big problems with a hotspot recompiler (like FX!32 or intels new itanium emulation software) All you need is more RAM. And if your new XBOX has 256MB, you got 192MB for hashtables, recompiled code, ect.
2005, it should be no problem emulating the CPU. (and GPU shouldnt be a big problem because they use DirectX and can eventually insert some code to trap and recompile propritary shader code/ect)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
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...
Bob
The PS2 is backwards compatible because there were so many scorn PS owners who's system fail to work after a period of time. If you own Xbox games, chances are you have a functioning Xbox, and therefore backwards compatible is moot.
That being said, I hope for Sony's sake that the PS3 is also backwards compatible, because every single PS2 I or my friends have owned have either started to fail, or just don't work at all anymore.
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
Old article here
what about the Game Cube? Were people angry that it couldn't play their N64 games?
No, and that's because the N64 lost its round.
PS2 ($180) can play PS1 games. GameCube ($150) can play Game Boy games. See? They both have backwards compatibility. Not all would find built-in DVD Video playback desirable, as it only encourages somebody else in the house to hog the machine for a 12-hour Meg Ryan marathon. Get a cheap Apex player if you want that.
The real problems come from a systems engineering standpoint. Computer Engineers do things in powers of 2. . .. We don't use 3 cpus because it would waste an address. The real question is why? Games generally aren't written as multi-threaded applications (what games give performance gains on dual cpu rigs even?) Its just not a paradign that game designers have been exposed to; not to say they can't do it. The article goes on to say they may be using a dual core architecture, as well as SMT. . . That works out to 12 threads of execution. Plus, with that many threads you'll have some blocking at any given time. So to fully utilize it you're looking at 15-20 threads needed. Now programmers may be able to adapat to writing a game in 2-4 threads, but 15-20 is just nuts (if you believe in the SMT/dual core rumors). Concurrency alone in a game would more then offset the advantages. Gaming threads simply require too much communication.
.If that. So why 3 cores?
... this is MS bedding with IBM, kind of an interesting combination there. We already have linux on a G5 architecture, and I'm sure IBM supports it, so why would MS want to do this? Sounds like with 3 chips they're just throwing money at the problem .. But when you have 50billion at your disposal, I guess you can.
the other problem with it is. . . why??? It's been routinely shown that for pcs (which this is) the cpu does not limit gaming performance very much. That's limited by the gpu. A 1.2 ghz athlon is about as fast at gaming as a 2 ghz Athlon given that the rest of the system is the same (ie high end video card). Granted the 2 ghz system is faster, but by maybe 10-20% in most games . .
Granted, if MS does go this route, I'll be picking one up, as thats a lot of cpu power. The other question is
Philip Garcia
The problem with console add-ons is that (relatively) no-one buys them. the historical adoption rates for add-ons is abyssmal.
Developers can't assume the functionality of the add-ons exists, so they generally don't waste coding time to support the ~5% of their users who might have one.
and if most games don't support the functionality, then what's the point of the device at all? why pay $100 for an external HD if only 1 in 40 games supports custom soundtracks/content download?
Add-ons only move when a particular game has so rabid a fanbase that they can financially survive requiring the add-on to play.
E.g. Phatasy Star Online's keyboard for various consoles, FFXI/PS2 HD, etc.
If the neXtBox doesn't ship with a HD, I doubt MS will release an external device unless a particular developer is going to require it.
Perhaps if backwards-compatibility was supported only by purchasing the external HD they could move the units by themselves, but newer games almost certainly wouldn't support it as much as current games do. And that would likely arouse much contempt from the playerbase. Particularly seeing as how the XBox itself will likely cost only $100 when the neXtBox hits.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Home game consoles have never really be backward compatible. PS2 is the first real back-ward compatible that I know of (though someone will end up telling me differently)
Yep, the Atari 7800 was backward compatible to the 2600. That's one of the main reasons why I bought one, to play the piles of 2600 games I had.
The problem is that Microsoft is going more thrifty with this Xbox Next because of how much money they've lost on the Xbox. They've admitted in the past that their current model will never be profitable with Sony in the market. So they need to be saving money on the hardware side. There is no flash RAM here. Microsoft simply wants to save money asnthey are still losing around $150USD+ on each console sold. They'll only go with a HDD if Sony's PS3 has one.
Longhorn is Microsoft's OSX, and their purchase of Virtual PC is their attempt at doing what Apple did with their 'Classic' emulation.
One of the biggest problems with the X-Box is the hard drive. It is more fragile compared to the other components. There won't be any X-Boxes around 20 years from now. They will all have all broke before 2010, unless you are willing to spend the $100 to have Microsoft replace the drive for you, more than half of the cost of a new X-Box.
I was foolish and purchased a second X-Box after my first one died at 1 1/2 years old.
My previous consoles (Atari 2600, Nintendo) have lasted longer before breaking and I was much more abusive to them way back when.
With the removal of the hard drive, Microsoft may be able to build a solid piece of hardware and maybe even a provide a longer warranty.
If the removal of the hard drive doesn't compromise performance, I'm for it.
BacMan
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...
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..."
interesting observations, but, just because VirtualPC doesn't do those things now doesn't mean a version of the technology for the xbox wouldn't.
Since new games are critical to the acceptance of a platform Microsoft wants to encourage developers to create new games that require the new console. It's really as simple as that.
Notice how PS2 development was strong out of the gate while there was still development of the PS1? The lack of backwards compatibility isn't going to influence developers one whit. Most will sign onboard for neXtBox development and some will conntinue to develop xBox games. Why? Because there's a few million units floating around this planet and some people will continue to buy games for it. Remember, MS gets a cut of any game sold, so frankly it shouldn't care which platform sells.
As I said before, backwards compatibility will be included if the development costs are cheaper than the potential marketing. If it's fairly easy (i.e. cheap) to include they will do it. If it isn't (because they remove the hardware, for some reason the emulation layer is buggier than all hell) they won't. But MS inclusion of it isn't going to change a damn thing when it comes to software development for both the xBox and the neXtBox.
Far as I remember, the Sega Genesis had the capacity to play the games of its predecessor, Sega Master System... And although not "consoles" per se, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance both are capable of using their precursors cartridges. More to the point, however, is of what utility really is backwards compatability? After playing Super Nintendo games, did NES games really hold that much attraction, apart from nostalgia value? Look at an original PS game lately after going a couple rounds on the PS2? I'm not denying it would be a nice feature, but if the melancholic urge to relive past glories gets too overpowering, you can always just grab an emulator...
By your logic, the GameCube is just a Macintosh, because it's built from a PPC chipset.