Out Run 2 Xbox Enhancements Analyzed

Thanks to GamesRadar for its Edge-reprinted cover article interviewing UK developers Sumo Digital on its conversion of Sega's arcade title Out Run 2, and trying to explain why "Sega has handed the Xbox conversion [of the new AM2-developed arcade game] to an unknown dev studio responsible for exercise bike software." The developers discuss the issues is conversion: "The arcade board has essentially got twice the memory that the Xbox has... and most of that was used", before explaining a new-for-Xbox Mission Mode which "will feature in excess of 50 missions consisting of Heart Attack-style challenges, marathon routes and AI character challenges", and also revealing "[Xbox] Live compatibility, which promises score uploading and ghost downloading while also permitting online play."

Comments

Let's compare Chihiro with the X-Box Specs

[Xoo]

The article points to some chihiro specs and here are some X-Box specs.

Just from looking at these specs, we can note that the hardware is extremely similiar in both, while the only significant difference being that Chihiro uses Sega's proprietary GD-ROM as a data strorage/access medium, and X-Box uses a DVD medium.

From the interview:
Technically, it hasn't been an entirely painless process, however, with the Chihiro board's higher specification understandably causing a few headaches when it came to squeezing the game into the constraints of a console.

I just don't get it... how are there higher specfications if the memory is the same, the bandwidth is identical, and the video gpu used is the same as well? Something fishy about this... but who am I to judge, I wish they would elaborate more on the apparant struggles of porting from Chihiro to X-Box in the future, so there isn't any confusion :-)