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Xbox 2 to Release in Fall of This Year
GamesIndustry.biz has the news that the Xbox 2 will be launched sometime in late fall of this year. With EA games already working on Xbox 2 titles and rumors of a name for the console in circulation, it looks like the first of the next-gen consoles will be here soon. From the article: "Many have expressed concern that Microsoft is forcing the next generation of console hardware too early, and that the current generation still has much to achieve. The most famous example of this came from then Nintendo of Europe MD David Gosen speaking at an ELSPA summit in London last October, where he lambasted Microsoft for pushing a next generation machine to market in 2005, and even went so far as to question Microsoft's motivation as profit." Additionally, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has Balmer saying that they will "blow by Sony" with their next console.
The PS3, according to official statements, will have as much PPC cores as the XBox2.. But will also have 32 SIMD cores.
Come on Steve who are you kidding. Even a monkey can see that you will be pwned.
Derivatives of the PowerPC 970 are being used in the Xbox Next and Project Revolution, Nintendo's successor to the GameCube. A sister processor will also be in Sony's PlayStation 3 system. IBM is currently developing the 970MP, which is due out in the 3rd quarter of 2005, and is code-named "Antares". The PowerPC 970MP is said to be a dual-core processor that can scale up to 3.5GHz. This chip should start at 90nm and then graduate to the 65nm process.
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
I think what he meant is that thier motivation by releasing xbox 2 early might not be profit, but to get more marketshare at loss. Kinda like how they are doing with xbox1. Ofcourse thier long term goal is profit, but he is talking about short term goal of starting the next gen so early.
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
The one H&E quarterly profit is a phantom, resulting completely and entirely from the release of Halo 2. It will not be repeated. Microsoft got a large spike in revenue since they are the publisher of Halo 2, and it was a fantastically quickly-selling game. This spike was large enough to cancel out their losses from the quarter in which the game was released, hence the profit. Unfortunately this doesn't really mean much of anything. The "profit" from that quarter was absolutely measly in comparison to their general losses, and wasn't enough to cancel out the loss from the quarter before-- if you look over the last six months instead of just the last quarter they lost money in that period. And there seems no reason to believe anything but that the next three months will devour that profit just as nicely.
Bungie seems to have been the one good investment H&E has made since the beginning of the XBox. But there is no chance they are going to be able to make the segment float on its own. Meanwhile if you can produce an event which causes a quarterly profit once, this isn't terribly impressive. H&E might as well have put $50 million in a savings account every quarter for a few years, then withdrawn it all at once and said "look! we made a profit this quarter!"
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Are you responding to me or someone else?
I suspect my post above was unclear, I am sorry. What I was trying to point out is that gamesindustry.biz has no evidence in their article more solid than "according to sources". I was not trying to say Microsoft couldn't or wouldn't or shouldn't release their console in that timeframe, just trying to observe that maybe readers should be aware that this news is not from official sources and should not be taken simply at the Slashdot headline's word. We don't know anything for certain yet.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
X-Box didn't really bring anything new to the console market.
Now, I'm no huge fan of the XBox, nor Microsoft. But I will give credit where it is due. The XBox (a year after launch) brought the best online connectivity solution out, passing what Sega was starting to do on the Dreamcast. The XBox live service blows away gaming online on any other console. GameCube has what, one true online game? Playstation has a few, but they don't link in any way, so I can't see if my friends are playing game A or B. Lastly on the online area, the XBox shipped standard with ethernet for online play. Dreamcast shipped standard with a modem. Gamecube ships with no connectivity option, and only recently were PS2s being sold with the networking built in (the mini PS2), or with an adaptor in the box.
The XBox also excels in putting out more HD games then any other console. Gamecube only does 480p, and the PS2 claims to do 480p as well on some games. Neither outdo almost every Dreamcast game supporting 480p, except the XBox going on to also support 720p and in some cases 1080i.
Then there is audio. Way better support from the developers for full 5.1 sound out of the XBox compared to any of the others.
I didn't even touch on the hard drive yet and already have 3 major points. The drive allows expansions to games, like the added game types and maps to MechAssault. Though that I feel was more due to MechAssalult being rushed for release, but hey, at least it could be added later.
The first next gen console I got was the Dreamcast and loved it. Next I got a Gamecube, just because Nintendo does indeed do well in making fun to play games. I picked up my XBox when Steel Battalion came out (I'm a mech junkie), and finally only recently got a mini PS2 and several of the now $20 games. I still have more GameCube games over any other console, but that may change now that I own an HDTV and want to see more games on it take advantage of the higher resolution. I don't like the idea of supporting Microsoft a ton here, but they are doing a decent job in the console space. I saw both the Gamecube and PS2 as a downgrade to the Dreamcast in several areas, only the XBox was an upgrade to me.
Hehum...
X - the quintessential variable
by 32_Footsteps,
in Games
, Jun 30, 2000
Pros: Potentially powerful, has serious marketing muscle behind it
Cons: Serious questions about games and support, can the X-Box survive a DOJ breakup?
Yes, that was almost 5 years ago... Why are you talking of every 2 years ? I don't like Microsoft, and I dislikes console even more. But what I hate most, that's those "like fact" sentences.