Xbox 360 & Next-Gen Live Specifications Leaked

Tim Grube writes "Gaming Horizon is reporting that the Xbox Live 360 specifications and console specifications have been leaked. Xbox Live on the next generation is said to have two version, a free one and a subscriber one. The Xbox 360 iself will have a DVD-RW, be Wi-Fi Ready, contain 3 USB ports, and have 512 GDDR3 RAM."

Comments

Re:Nothing shocking

[Neitokun]

pfft. when have we ever been able to upgrade a console using off-the-shelf stuff?

Looks impressive

[SlongNY]

The specs look impressive, expecially with a custom kernel to take advantage of the hardware. I am just curious what the price point will be. I am going to grab it the day it comes out, mainly because i want to make use of my 45 Inch LCD Tv :) I wonder low long it will take after lauch for the 1st modchip.

Re:Looks impressive

[SlongNY]

I was referring to custom kernel in regards to the specs being compared with say a PC.

Re:Looks impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

You could save some money by waiting for the price to drop in six months.

Re:Looks impressive

[Guspaz]

It will very likely be quite affordable... Microsoft will sell it at a huge loss hoping to make up the cash on xbox live, game licences, and so on.

It will be quite funny, really, the hardware will be faster than any desktop (And most servers) on the market now or then by a long shot (It will even blow away the fastest Apple G5s), and yet it will probably sell for well under $1000.

You can bet the xbox linux people are going to be scrambling to unlock this sucker. If the original xbox made for a nice cheap home server, the xbox 360 is probably faster than most quad-processor servers that cost ten times as much.

I say faster than quad servers because the CPUs the xbox ships with are each 500mhz faster than the fastest Apple ships now (2.7ghz). Combine that fact with the fact that there are diminishing returns for SMP, this means that you can probably get better performance out of 3x3.2 than 4x2.7

But hey, Apple doesn't make quad-processor systems or servers, and their servers top out at 2.3ghz.

So what am I trying and failing to say? The XBox 360 will pack an insane amount of punch, and yet be dirt cheap for what you get.

Re:Looks impressive

[HAKdragon]

...it will be quite funny, really, the hardware will be faster than any desktop (And most servers) on the market now or then by a long shot, and yet it will probably sell for well under $1000.

Isn't that how the original XBox was? Granted 700MHz wasn't that fast back in 2001, but it was a damn good deal to get that kind of hardware for $300 back then.

Re:Looks impressive

[Guspaz]

A dumb xbox fanboy. Gee, never seen one of those before...

You are kidding right? You couldn't be further from the truth. I don't own an xbox, I never planned to buy one, and I also don't plan on buying an xbox 360 (Though it's media capabilities might entice me). I'm strictly a PC gamer, and dislike console games in general. I'm really not sure how I could be an XBox fanboy.

Dual dual core machines in the 2.5 to 3ghz range or so are on the way for Apple and will most likely ship before the first xbox 360 hits the shelves.

The XB360 clocks in at 3.2, if these specs are real, not "2.5 to 3ghz". In addition, the XB360 is supposed to have THREE processors (cores), not two. If the posted specs are real it still puts Apple's fastest to shame.

And second the CPU in the xbox 360 isn't a 970 and can't be compared to it by clock speed. It doesn't take a developer with access to the hardware to know that.

It might as well be. As far as I can tell, each core in the XBOX360 should be significantly faster than a seperate PPC970. It looks to be about the same, but with something like HyperThreading added to each core. If you have information that says that the cores are slower clock-for-clock, feel free to share it, but for now it looks like each core should be faster.

The xbox 360 is weak. Sorry to burst your fanboy bubble. This is what happens when your previous effort goes in the red for 3 and a half billion dollars and the higher ups at your company slash your budget.I do hope next time you make a post like this you will make certain you know what the hell you are talking about before you make a fool of yourself. It helps to actually RTFA.

And not only is it weak, it is going to be weak by a wide margin compared to the PS3 and Revolution. This is going to be ugly for MS...
Right, do you have proof? Or are you one of those idiots who thinks that Cell must be faster simply because it has more cores, without any consideration for speed per core? I guess you're also forgetting the fact that the XB360 will be out a heck of a lot earlier than the PS3 or Revolution, possibly as much as a year earlier. So you're pretty stupid to suggest that the relative performance even matters at this point. Give any company a year of extra development time and they can put out something faster than what they have now, certainly.

My post can be summed up with an acronym STFU&RTFA

Re:Looks impressive

[Guspaz]

It was, but it was never amazing hardware (The CPU wasn't anyway, the GPU was nice at the time). It was just a good deal for what you are getting.

The XB360 looks like it will be FASTER than any desktop, but at a console-like pricepoint. And while this wouldn't matter to anybody who wanted the XB360 for Linux, but as a console it's GPU is loads faster than ATI/nVidia's fastest. I suspect that the XB360 might launch at about the same time or after ATI's new desktop part based on the same core, however.

Re:Looks impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

"The XB360 looks like it will be FASTER than any desktop"

Nope.

Unless you only mean faster in pure Hz, which is a meaningless comparison.

The chips in the 360 are weaker but clocked higher. It will be at or just below desktop performance if only dual core systems are out by the end of the year.

If quad(2xdual core) systems are out they will blow the xbox's chip away.

The GPU is a bit more up in the air. I hear NVidia is working hard to release a desktop chip around the time the new xbox is released that will make the ATI gpu look like nothing special - there is some lingering bitterness at NVidia over the dust up over the xbox pricing dispute...

Re:Looks impressive

[Guspaz]

Nope.

Unless you only mean faster in pure Hz, which is a meaningless comparison.

The chips in the 360 are weaker but clocked higher. It will be at or just below desktop performance if only dual core systems are out by the end of the year.
But why? To me it looks like each core is essentially a PPC970, but with the ability to execute two threads at the same time (a la HyperThreading). So if anything it would be faster, no?


The GPU is a bit more up in the air. I hear NVidia is working hard to release a desktop chip around the time the new xbox is released that will make the ATI gpu look like nothing special - there is some lingering bitterness at NVidia over the dust up over the xbox pricing dispute...
I would suspect nVidia is aiming to compete with ATI's desktop version of the R520 (which will be in the 360), since it should be out in ballpark the same timeframe as the 360.

I don't much care who has the faster graphics card. If nVidia can put out a faster card, power to them! Competition breeds innovation, which can only be good for us. However I'm wary of such claims from nVidia after the NV30. They claimed it would be twice as fast as the Radeon 9700, and would be available right after the 9700's release. Instead, it ended up being slower than the 9700, and came out more than 6 months later.

Since I was saving up and waiting for the NV30, when it's benchmarks came out I was a bit ticked off and just bought a 9700. Since then I've been wary about such claims from both companies.

So while I do hope nVidia has a chip out that is faster than the X800, I'll believe it when I see the benchmarks.

Re:Looks impressive

[oldwolf13]

I was (am) a little pissed off at the naming conventions of nvidia (and ati to a lesser extent). As a secondary card, on a whim i bought a geforce fx 5600xt, and I know I probably should have researched it, but it was right when they came out.

The damn thing is a lot slower then my gf4 ti 4200 8x, and it cost about $30 more (before tax)! Nowadays it's just a spare ready to swap in if my main card (9800 pro) fails.

As I said, I bought it without researching it, and I guess my thoughts were on the fact that aTI's top cards had the XT designation.

To tell you the truth, if I was going to buy a mid range card by nvidia now I still wouldn't know which piece was the best bang for the buck, whereas ATI's I would know.

Hey wait, wasn't this thread about the xbox 360?

Here's my thoughts:

stupid name. ugly design (from what I've seen).

I think microsoft will make it a lOT harder to mod, in which case it will be useless to me, i wouldn't have a current generation xbox if it wasn't for XBox media center.

I think this is part of the reason they're going away from the x86 ancestry of the original xbox... to try and make it harder for anyone other then MS to have control over it.

Also, it will be a lot harder to do homebrew development for, as the XDK is now tied to a MS hardware product... can't just install visual studio and the new xdk on your current PC.

If I can't do what i want with my hardware, i have no use for it.

Re:Looks impressive

[Elranzer]

Denial from Sony fanboys is a hilarious thing.

Re:Looks impressive

[Slashcrap]

Hi There Anonymous Repetitive PS2 troll!

How's your B-Spline based graphics engine for the PS2 going?

And most importantly, have you taken my advice and got yourself laid yet?

I'm guessing that since you're still posting your teenage boy level rants the answer is no. So sad.

Maybe suicide is the answer?

Re:Looks impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that the chips are going to be so similar to those already supported by a flavor of linux, I can't imagine that a work-around will be vastly more difficult than swapping a chip out. Between that and the removable harddrive, I think it's likely Microsoft will just settle for crippling xbox live functionality, or perhaps try to use it for hardware revokation (either way I would be very careful using it with xbox live). And in time, I'm quite sure solutions to those hassles will present themselves.

Honestly, I think the move away from x86 could just be the result of a competative bid by IBM. They've already built the facilities to make the chips. The more of them they can make, the cheaper they are to produce. Not to mention it wouldn't be a horrible way to ramp up for a next gen Intel killer in the desktop space.

Re:Looks impressive

[AzraelKans]

Actually I would hold back on modding it. Xbox live is not going to be available for modded consoles, and since (Aparently) is going to be free (or have a free mode at least) that could be a major handicap since all games are going to be compatible to live one way or another.

Besides the dash is going to look and work like avalaunch or evolutionx (which are the best dashes to have in a modded xbox these days) The only thing I will be really missing is the ability to have games stored on the hard drive for easy access (theres not even a mention if theres going to be a hdd or not) but you have to take the good with the bad.

Re:Looks impressive

[default luser]

To tell you the truth, if I was going to buy a mid range card by nvidia now I still wouldn't know which piece was the best bang for the buck, whereas ATI's I would know.

Agreed, although ATI also was guilty of this in the 9000 series (9000, 9100, 9200, 9250 are all DX8.1, 9500, 9550, 9600, 9700, 9800). And it doesn't help that both companies use crazy qualifiers like SE, LE, XT, PE, GT, Ultra to create overlapping markets.

Really, which one is faster: a 9600 XT, or a 9800 SE? Bet you wouldn't have any idea unless you thoroughly researched them.

Thankfully, Nvidia has finally recognized that all this crazy branding is a mistake. For the 6000 series, Nvidia only sells the 6200(TC), 6600(GT) and 6800(GT, Ultra) series, and there's little overlap. The lowest-end 6800 is faster than a 6600 GT, and the lowest-end 6600 is faster than a 6200.

ATI is working on this as well, but their product range still has considerable overlap, and they still suffer from "too many qualifiers" syndrome.

Oh, and we migth as well stay on-topic. Don't worry about the X-box 360 and security. Just like every "secure" platform before it, people will find ways to hack their way in.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are dots per second? I can't tell if they're better or worse than the 700 MNz (meganerdz?) memory.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would guess they mean number of float dot-products per second, Not sure about MNz though...

Re:What?

[Bongzilla]

I was going to ask about MNz. It's a typo for MHz I guess?

"dots per second" --> "float dot products per second" is quite a stretch but I can't think of anything else it would be...

Re:What?

[Castar]

I think the "dots per second" is probably supposed to be dot-product operations per second.

Re:What?

[Castar]

Nevermind, it's just an OCR error or typo of some kind.

Re:What?

[yakitori]

I think Microsoft has invented a new marketing term for describing how many polygons per second they can render. Oy....

Iffy sources

[frikazoyd]

The sources on this report are actually kind of iffy. The first place I saw the report was on endgaget, and they say that the specs "were posted and then quickly pulled from the TeamXbox forums." The thing that makes them interesting is the proximity to the actual release date, and the reaction once it was posted. But bottom line, it could be entirely fake.

Re:Iffy sources

[Ayaress]

Really big givaway is the DVD-RW. The "leaks" before the first X-Box release suggested that you could put games on the hard drive for faster load times, but that wasn't there in the final product. Console makers are having a hard enough time trying to thwart piracy without using drives that crap out a month after you buy them that I doubt they'll build the tools to do so into the console.

Re:Iffy sources

[j.bellone]

The Disks might be some form of hybrid; a partial DVD-RW allowing for the writing of game data to the game disk itself. That's just a guess. There is really no other reason to have a DVD-RW in the system unless they totally plan to push this as a media-center hub and allow for Tivo-like features.

But with a 20GB hard-drive I find that not possible.

Re:Nothing shocking

[bassakward]

Not yet, but we can always hope for improvements the next time around. Buying a new graphics card and/or a new processor might be cheaper than buying the XBOX3 (the 720?) in a few years.

That is impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess they are still going to sell at a (BIG) loss.

Re:That is impressive

[spikestabber]

Yeah, GDDR3 is expensive. Take a look at the price of the 512M 6800U graphics cards, over 800 bucks.

Re:That is impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

As remember that the Xbox 360 won't be released until November or so. This will give prices a chance to come down, and Microsoft will be building a lot more console than there are 6800 Ultras so they might be able to get some nice volume discounts.

Re:That is impressive

[SunFan]

Microsoft is likely ramping up production _now_ to have enough in stock for the first few months of sales.

free live in the weekends

[Anonymous Coward]

looks good

Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[MBraynard]

This is a really nice touch that seems not to get much attention. What it means is that rather than having to create a profile in every game (Halo, Halo2, GR, MechAssault, etc.) you can have a single profile. Hopefully the basic options, like aviator-absolute stick looking, will carry through, along with playlists.

Also cool is the support for music from mobile players. I have a Dell Pocket DJ with the Napster2Go service. This will allow me to carry my 'library' of over a million songs over to the Xbox.

I really can't see that they missed anything with this. Perhaps they will overprice is, but I'm looking for a 299 price point.

Re:Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

your karma is fucked...

Re:Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, MS plans around that.

All MStroturfers are given multiple /. accounts to use, in the event of a bitchslapping. :)

Re:Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[Bongzilla]

Well whatever the price point I predict that microsoft will be able to generate a large amount of those points per second.

Re:Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[KDR_11k]

I thought invert-Y was one of the examples for what that profile system will do? so basically, it's very likely that basic options will be stored in your profile.

Re:Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[dave1212]

Don't forget to keep paying rent on your music. Did you know that if you don't keep renting it it will cease to work? That's gotta suck.

Re:Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[MBraynard]

Every Tuesday I log in and download and listen to all the new release album. Just one album covers the monthly cost.

I've downloaded so much stuff it's insane.

BTW - don't forget to keep your CDs out of your car in the summer and in protective baggies - beacuse if they melt or get scratched, the record company is not going to replace them.

Look at it this way - it's a montly fee for storage space where I store all of my music - gigs and gigs - for a small price.

Re:Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[dave1212]

no, no, I buy my music. I don't rent it. I get to keep it. Do you understand? Keep, not rent. My music will continue to play long after I stop shipping at the iTMS. Your songs require a constant payment to stay useful.

If you stop paying, your music will stop playing. It's very simple.

How can you live with this arrangement, of not actually owning the media you enjoy, knowing it could be gone the next day or after your drive crashes?

My 110GB of mp3s and mp4s is backed up, playable on any computer or portable music device in my house, and the music itself is not going anywhere. You cannot say the same.

Make sure you save your receipts, they may let you actually own a track or two once you've been paying them for 4 years.

Re:Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[rednalb]

Actually, you can buy the songs for .99 if you want to keep them/burn them.

Re:Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[syates21]

Uh, try not to show yourself so blatantly ignorant of the Napster offerings. If you want to buy 99 cent tracks from Napster, they will happily sell you them.

Just think how many people *gasp* rent their movies from Netflix and Blockbuster too. Oh the horror. Plus, whose tastes don't change over time. I don't listen to too many of the songs I bought 15 years ago.

Sorry that you're bitter your leet iPod doesn't offer you this added flexibility. Better luck next time.

Re:Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[NeMon'ess]

What makes you think MBraynard will ever tire of finding at least one new album a month? Granted the collection dies with the user, but a user of the service may be perfectly prepared to pay the equivalent of one album a month the rest of their life. Just like people pay for cable.

Re:Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[MBraynard]

Actually, I will be switching to Yahoo's new service and the cost is going to be either $5 or $7, not $15. I suspect Napster may drop their price, too.

Like I said, it's like paying for storage. I can listen to it anywhere with a car kit. And even if my HD does crash, I can just DL them all again.

Re:Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[MBraynard]

How can you live with this arrangement, of not actually owning the media you enjoy, knowing it could be gone the next day or after your drive crashes?

My 110GB of mp3s and mp4s is backed up, playable on any computer or portable music device in my house, and the music itself is not going anywhere. You cannot say the same.

If my hard-drive crashes, I DL it all again. I may have to let it run overnight, but it will be restored.

And with the portable kits, I can play my music on any device in my house, too, through the FM transmitter or by plugging it into the device or my computer. Even in the car.

Also, the price just dropped - $5 a month for a yearly sub with Yahoo or $7 a month on a month-to-month basis.

What are you going to do when your collection of CDs is stolen and your HDs get wiped out? Aren't there a limited number of times you can restore backups from stuff you bought from the iTMS?

Re:Single Profile and Mobile Device Music...Great!

[tjhorne]

Who needs to pay for a music service when there is BitTorrent?

Detachable HardDrive

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be surprise it the detachable hardDrive turns into a flash based drive in a year or two to save cost.

Re:Detachable HardDrive

[UWC]

I can't wait until 40GB of flash memory is cheaper than a 40GB hard drive!

I still love how console memory cards are about the worst price on flash memory you can get these days. Sony's are occasionally on sale for $20 (from their normal retail price of $25), and have "8MB" emblazoned on them for all to see.

Meanwhile, a couple of aisles over at Wal-Mart, you can get a 512MB CompactFlash card for $30.

Re:Detachable HardDrive

[Tsunayoshi]

So you do what my friend did (and I am about to do) and take an old controller cable, splice it into a regular usb cable and attach your xxxmb thumbdrive to it and there you go. The controller ports on the Xbox are standard USB with proprietary connectors.

The Xbox memory cards are nothing but a USB device with a funky connector that plugs into your controller's USB hub.

IBMs won the war

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody is talking about who the winner of the console-war will be. Apparently its IBM.

With both MS and Sony wanting g5 processors, maybe Apple could get problems?

Re:IBMs won the war

[fr0dicus]

Neither of those two, nor the new Nintendo (also IBM chips) will be using G5's, the Cell is certainly not a G5, and this article also refers to a custom chip.

Re:Nothing shocking

[justforaday]

Wouldn't that kinda defeat the whole purpose of it being a, y'know, console (ie, a single target platform for the coders to aim for)?

Re:Nothing shocking

[p4ul13]

It is annoying that everythign is custom. That means no upgrading other then by buying a new box from MS.

Well it is a console game system. If you're concerned about upgrading your game system then this might not be your system. A PC gaming rig might be more appropriate.

Myself I'm curious to compare this to the PS3 specs when we see them. I love my PS2. I'm not really a fan of MS software, but am open to the possibility of them producing a good console system.

Hmmm.. wheres the physics card?

[AzraelKans]

I thought that xbox360 was going to use the ageia physics card? (they said at least one console was going to use it) if the console using it is the ps3 or revolution (although I doubt it) I think my money is going elsewhere.

Re:Hmmm.. wheres the physics card?

[Dan Ost]

What's a physics card?

Re:Hmmm.. wheres the physics card?

[Reignking]

Here is a thread from early March regarding the "World's First Physics Processing Unit"...

Re:Hmmm.. wheres the physics card?

[KDR_11k]

A set of false specs for the Revolution listed a PPU but the author admitted that he was just making shit up.

Re:Hmmm.. wheres the physics card?

[Stunning Tard]

I was looking for this too so I guess it's not happening. At least ageia's physics SDK will help developers multi-thread their games for a system with 3 CPU's.

Yeah, but...

[Shook18]

does it run Linux? No seriously this time; if this thing can be modded to run like the last one, this would be a SERIOUS desktop replacement... for a fraction of the cost.

Re:Yeah, but...

[jasonmicron]

No, it doesn't run Linux. It runs games.

Re:Yeah, but...

[shadowzero313]

same with the Xbox...and the PS2...and the GC...and the GBA...and the DS

Re:Yeah, but...

[jericho4.0]

The original XBox was basically an Intel PC. This device is not. The major problem this raises is that binaries will not work, so no flash, games or commercial apps. Still, at the probable price point it's peerless as a personal plaything.

Re:Yeah, but...

[Pepsi__Blue]

From what I understand , the custom PPC processor is dramatically different than a desktop CPU, so much so that it would not be a great desktop replacement. I mean come on not even Microsoft is dumb enough to put out a product that could compete with distributors of Windows (i.e. Dell, EMachines, Compaq, all other bad desktop/laptop computer companies). Not only would it piss of these distributors, unless they made X-Box with a Windows OS, it would facilitate the adoption of Linux by the "average" user. Additionally, if they did make Windows for X-Box it would take some time unless they want to fall prey to new lawsuits similar to the old ones where their OS and software departments shared secrets, and everybody knows the Linux community can develop faster than corporations so it would most likely hurt them anyways.

Re:Yeah, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that is a nice rationalization of the dilemma MS is in with the Xbox. Totally bogus though.

The xbox 360 cpu is what happens when you have your budget cut dramatically. You make do with what you can. The only other option is for MS to just kill the whole xbox project.

I'd say it is 3:1 against the whole thing getting outright canceled at this time. If the current trend of revenue growth continues to fall, I think MS is down to 7 or 8 percent this last quarter, the xbox project is high on the list of projects ready to be jettisoned. They have already been cutting a billion to a billion and a half dollars from the budget the two quarters prior to this current one.

Of course the game developers, ahem, who need to plan their projects out for the next year or two know this and are hedging our bets. Right now Sony is the only company to have both the hardware and infrastructure rock solid. MS is tenuous at best.

Re:Yeah, but...

[0kComputer]

Yeah, thats some nice bullshit you just pulled out of your ass. Last time I checked, MS had 50+ million in the bank, I don't think losing a few hundred million dollars is going to break the bank. Microsoft has been loss leading this entire time, its part of their plan.

As for Sony having the "hardware" and "infrastructure" (whatever that means), I think you need to get a clue. Sony is taking a pretty big gamble using CELL tech, and they are known for releasing faulty garbage (PSP broken pixels, disk read error anyone?)

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out, but don't post PS2 fanboy bullshit here. XBox isn't going anywhere.

Re:Yeah, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have to be fucking retard to own an xbox? Perhaps it just a sampling anomoly today.

Your fanboy "MS has 50+ million, billion actually, in the bank" BS is the old xbox line.

The new BS is some vauge reference to "brand building" or "building a base to grow from" who the fuck knows.

MS has had to hand back almost their entire cash reserves to their shareholders to keep them from dumping the stock. I guess you spend a little too much time on teamxbox and don't bother to read the financial news.

Three quarters ago MS had to cut a billion or so from their expenses, employee perks and benefits mostly, just to meet the street numbers. Two quarters ago they had to cut a billion and a half from R&D, although it wasn't really actual R&D that got cut, to meet estimates, and this quarter they missed badly.

Guess what? The execs at MS are in no mood to blow another 3.5 to 4 billion on another xbox fiasco. This pathetic, and buttugly, piece of hardware is the result of all that mess.

If you are a diehard xbox fanboy, consider yourself lucky MS has yet to pull the plug on the disaster.

If revenue growth continues to fall, it's all the way down to 7% this quarter, say bye bye xbox. There are 10.5 billion or so shares of MS stock out there and they are in no mood to let a bunch of dorks playing mediocre peecee titles in their livingrooms continue to damage their share value.

Re:Yeah, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are thinking of the cell processor that will be used in the PS3. While the cell has 9 cores, 8 of them are designed mainly for SIMD code and the ninth one is a stripped down multipurpose PPC core. This is great for software designed for the box and multimedia software, but not for general software.

The 3 core processor in the Xbox360, however, uses multipurpose cores - so it would be great as a windows/linux general software PC. With only 512 MB RAM, it will be lean on memory. (just as the memory available in the current xbox is lean for todays needs)

Re:Yeah, but...

[Shook18]

"... it would facilitate the adoption of Linux by the "average" user" Sorry but.. the last xbox could run linux, and Linux wasn't adopted by the "average" user...

Re:Yeah, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

i bet you are a linux user....just a crazzzzzy guess.

Re:Yeah, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

(PSP broken pixels, disk read error anyone?)

PSP hasnt suffered from disc read error, and every lcd suffers from dead pixels. Even the DS.

Re:Yeah, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The big difference is that Nintendo has a zero tolerance policy WRT dead pixels. If your DS has ONE measly frickin' dead pixel, you return it and get a new one. No arguments. My DS has none, and I don't personally know anyone who bought a DS with any bad pixels (that's out of only eight friends who have a DS so far, but the data stands).

Probably not a DVD-RW

[Fred Or Alive]

I somehow doubt it'll have a DVD-RW drive, seems a bit odd for a console. It mroe looks like a list of formats the DVD drive can read, and DVD-RW isn't that odd, newer PS2s can read them as well.

The new Xbox Live features sound a bit interesting, I hope they have it so you can have one Live account for Xbox 1 and 2, I don't want to pay twice for Live (not that I'll be getting an Xbox 2 that soon anyway)

Otherwise, looks kinda like what everyones been saying anyway.

[1] I really think Xbox 360 sounds silly. I'm not calling it until Microsoft call it that themselves.

Re:Probably not a DVD-RW

[solowCX]

It is odd for a console, yes, but have you seen the Xbox 360 remote control? I think the Windows Media Center Edition button makes it obviously clear that this will not only be a game system, but a PVR and progressive scan DVD player/burner.

Re:Probably not a DVD-RW

[Hellad]

I don't know. The X-Box is a trojan horse trying to sneak into houses everywhere. With the DVD-RW, it is able to replace standard VCR's and even Tivo's to a lesser extent. MS is hoping to take over the living room, one home at a time.

Re:Probably not a DVD-RW

[MBraynard]

I think you mis-read that. Support for DVD-RW doesn't mean it will burn anything but that it will play DVD-RW.

Re:Probably not a DVD-RW

[badasscat]

I think the Windows Media Center Edition button makes it obviously clear that this will not only be a game system, but a PVR and progressive scan DVD player/burner.

The Media Center button is so it can act as a Media Center Extender, which the current Xbox also does - for $100 extra. It is not going to be an MCE machine itself.

It also does not imply anything about burning discs (which is not even a requirement of a real MCE machine).

Re:Probably not a DVD-RW

[Anonymous Coward]

Xbox 360... hmmm. If something turns 360 deg it makes one revolu... Hey! I think I might have it. But then again maybe they are talking about walking around in a circle and not getting anywhere.

256+ audio channels...

[rsilvergun]

Great, I'm gonna need more speakers and wire now, damn it.

Specs - scary specs.

[Destoo]

live specs are at the bottom. Sorry for the KH post. It seems I need more characters per line.

1. Support for DVD-video, DVD-Rom, DVD-R/RW, CD-DA, CD-Rom, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 cd, JPEG photo CD
2. All games supported at 16:9, 720p and 1080i, anti-aliasing
3. Customizable face plates to change appearance
4. 3 USB 2.0 ports
5. Support for 4 wireless controllers
6. Detachable 20GB drive
7. Wi-Fi ready

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
- 3 symmetrical cores at 3.2 GHz each
- 2 hardware threads per core
- 1 VMX-128 vector unit per core
- 1 MB L2 cache

Custom ATI Graphics Processor
- 500 MNz - 10 MB embedded DRAM - 48-way parallel floating-point shader pipelines - unified shader architecture

Memory
-512 MB GDDR3 RAM
- 700 MNz DDR

Memory Bandwidth
- 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
- 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
- 21.6 GB/s frontside bus
Audio
- Mulitchannel surround sond output
- Supports 48khz 16-bit audio
- 320 independent decompression channels
- 32 bit processing
- 256+ audio channels

Xbox Live, 2 types:

Xbox Live Silver (no subscription required) and Xbox Live Gold (subscription benefits)

Features for Gold service
* Also for Silver # Also for Offline

- Seamless transition to Xbox Live account from Xbox to Xbox 360
- Access to MMOs (additional fees may apply) *
- Free Xbox Live weekends *
- Multiplayer online gameplay
- Avatar for gamer profile * #
- Motto for gamer profile * #
- Personalized look for Xbox System Guide * #
- Offline achievments * #
- Online achievements *
- Access to other players' Gamer cards via Live *
- Cumulative gamer score * #
- Location/language profile * #
- Reputation *
- Enahnced matchmaking using above
- Skill level matchmaking
- Gameplay style profile (casual, competitive, etc.)
- Recent players list *
- Free and premium download game content *
- Free and premium downloadable movies, music, tv *
- Downloadable demos/trailers *
- Microtransactions *
- Custom playlist in every game * #
- Play music from portable devices * #
- View images from digital camera * #
- Strem media from Windows XP * #
- Interactive screen savers * #
- Track info for CDs * #
- Communication with voice, video or text *

Re:Specs - scary specs.

[Wyatt Earp]

I might have missed it, but is it compatable with old XBox games?

Re:Specs - scary specs.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, they have silver & gold? Siiilver & gold, siiilver & gold...the Burl Ives song will be the jingle!

Re:Specs - scary specs.

[MagicM]

Interactive screen savers

WTF?

Re:Specs - scary specs.

[Destoo]

Doesn't look like it.

quoting Zanzibar on EvilAvatar's forum:

"At this point, my guess is that Microsoft will have a team of programmers working on backwards-compatibility...for a price.

MS has tried to make fully-functional backwards-compatibility with Xbox, but haven't been 'entirely successful.' They're probably 90% of the way there, but as with everything, it's the last 10% that's the hardest and most time-consuming. The cost-effectiveness of making it happen at launch just wasn't there.

After the system ships, probably a lot of the programming team will spend time ironing out the last 10%, and they'll probably offer it as a semi-low-cost download for the 360. Would you pay 20 bucks to play all your old games on the new system? For those who already own an Xbox, maybe not. But those whose first MS console is the 360 might want to play Halo 1."

Re:Specs - scary specs.

[jericho4.0]

You have to tap a button every 2 minutes to keep it on the screen.

Re:Specs - scary specs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Scary? More like pathetic.

All the manufactured leaks from the MS PR department aren't doing any good when the machine looks ugly/lame and the hardware is so weak.

The cost cutting in the entertainment division is really showing its damage to the hardware they are going to ship. So much for all the talk about MS being willing/able to spend any amount of cash on the xbox project.

MS will be lucky to keep half their current installed base with this machine.

Re:Specs - scary specs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those specs are HUGE! You're an idiot.

Re:Specs - scary specs.

[KrunZ]

"700 MNz DDR"

OMG it has 700 Mega Nazi. That's a lot of Nazi!

This machine will be a threat to World Peace and should be stopped before it is to late!

Re:Specs - scary specs.

[aliens]

Those are scary specs, but just how much of a loss is MS willing to take on this thing??

The ATI chip & that CPU even in a few months time would run hundreds and hundreds each. This thing is a powerhouse of a computer. If they can sell them cheap enough as a console why not sell them as clusterable workstations?

Re:Specs - scary specs.

[AlexMax2742]

Specs don't mean shit.

It's all about the games. Unfortuniatly, with no Halo at launch, I'm afraid you might be right about "MS will be lucky to keep half its installed base". As much as I love the Xbox's software library, a lot of people just bought the Xbox for Halo and sports games. Sad, really.

Re:Specs - scary specs.

[Destoo]

This thing is a powerhouse of a computer. If they can sell them cheap enough as a console why not sell them as clusterable workstations?

I think we've had that conversation last iteration, and will have it again and again each time MS releases a console.

They sell at a loss because the profit is in the games market.

Hack their box to run Linux, and even though the box you just hacked is not profitable anymore, it still counts in the number of "active consoles", and when they show these numbers to the game publishers, they go "ooooh!" and pay them to release games on their platform.

It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out, becuase due to the fact that Live Silver is free, they will be able to actively monitor more consoles.

Right now, they probably have a very rough estimate on the number of boxes that have been modded. If they allow everyone to connect for free, then that "dark zone" of unconnected boxes will be smaller.

Re:Specs - scary specs.

[Anonymous Coward]

the fact that Live Silver is free

ITYM 'bundled'.

Re:Specs - scary specs.

[aliens]

I know they take a loss on the Xbox's, but when the first one came out it was using a CPU and GPU that lagged behind what a desktop PC had.

This thing is beyond any desktop PC, I'm just curious how much of a loss they take on this box.

Massive Specs

[mconeone]

Those specs are HUGE! What is the price again? Compare that to a pc with comparable specs, maybe take off 25-40% for buying in bulk... It doesn't seem very plausable to me. Can anyone justify the price vs. hardware to me?

Re:Massive Specs

[Retric]

Don't forget:

There selling it at a loss.

It's not in stores yet so PC prices will drop by the time it's out.

Or this could be a lie.

Re:Massive Specs

[chman]

The console market these days works on selling the hardware at a loss, and the software at a huge profit.

MS had a problem with the original Xbox launch in that their hardware was going to cost a fortune compared to the PS2 (which had been out for some time already and I think had come down in price), and it would still lose them money. So they had the idea that they would bundle the console with a load of games and get customers to leave Wal-Mart some $400-500 lighter. That's why around the launch time they kicked up a fuss about their 'attach rate', their marketing term for this tactic.

The problem I see with them trying the same stunt this time is that this tactic relies on high quality launch titles, and since developers would have only had their dev kits for about a year come November when the 360 launches, they might not have anything to launch with.
If it's not backwards compatible, then maybe they'll launch with an updated Halo 2 and some EA Sports titles. People have been buying HDTVs to watch football, so maybe NFL 2006 would be a good title to launch with and show off the HD prowess of the console.

Re:Massive Specs

[rylin]

While expensive, I don't think MS will be the one taking the hit on the price here.
My guess is their deal with IBM in regards to the CPU is something along the lines of X patents, and then Y USD per core.
That way, IBM will take the financial hit - though I'm sure MS have a bunch of patents that would be worth it.

Re:Massive Specs

[Winterblink]

Specs for consoles always seem large before they're released. I remember when they announced the specifications for the PS2 and X-Box, it all sounded impressive enough at the time, but a year or so later? Not quite so earth shattering.

Re:Massive Specs

[MBraynard]

Onething they have going for them is that Xbox has the highest attachment rate of any console. If the same continues, it means they can take a bigger loss than the competitors and still make the same money.

Re:Massive Specs

[jericho4.0]

Easy. Sell the console at a loss, with some kind of mechanism to ensure that only things we approve run on it, and make up the balance in game sales.

This has been the strategy in the console industry for a long time, and one reason why a easy to install, full featured Linux (or other OS) is anathema to the manufactures.

Re:Massive Specs

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget:

They're selling it at a loss.

It's (ed: good job!) not in stores yet, so PC prices will drop by the time it's (ed: wow, a 2fer) out.

Or this could be a lie.

Re:Massive Specs

[Anonymous Coward]

Only Sega and Microsoft regularly launch(ed) consoles at an initial loss. Sony has done this since the PS2, including the PSP. Nintendo has done it with Nintendo DS only (GameCube and previous consoles always broke even at launch price, and GameBoy hardware has always been profitable).

This doesn't equate to a long time; this is a recent trend.

Re:Massive Specs

[Bloomy]

The Sony hype machine was in full gear when they announced the specs for the PS2. I don't remember off the top of my head things they claimed it could do (but couldn't), but it served it's purpose in the end. The Dreamcast never got a chance to take off because people decided to hold off a year and wait for the PS2.

Re:Massive Specs

[Anonymous Coward]

Well... The original XBOX has specs about this time that they couldn't meet. The GPU went from a 300MHz part to a 225MHz part once it shipped.

We'll have to see how well these specs stick.

Re:Massive Specs

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me why would IBM do something so stupid?

Re:Massive Specs

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about IBM's motivations or what the poster was talking about, but just from the pure specs what IBM has given Microsoft just isn't in the same league as what they are giving Sony.

And by not in the same league, I mean there is stuff we are going to be doing that isn't remotely possible or feasible on the new xbox hardware. Such a huge difference in performance that it is in question if it is worth the effort to support the platform at all.

Did I mention just how huge a performance gap there between the MS chip and the Sony chip?

I really don't know why this is all IBM could come up with for MS - maybe it was just the much shorter time frame, the PS3/Cell stuff has been in progress much longer than MS's hardware and it won't ship until after - maybe it was simply a matter of cost and MS is gambling they can somehow steal some marketshare from Sony before the general public just sees how powerful the PS3 is turning out to be.

Re:Massive Specs

[unclethursday]

You obviously didn't read the GP. He/she mentioned the attach rate, and a lot of that attach rate has to do with MS forced bundles at launch (at least 3 games from most specialty retailers, that inflates the attach rate a lot), and many people are pretty sure the free game Xboxes have their free games counted towards that attach rate (as well as the free XBL games with a XBL starter kit).

As for them making the same amount of money... they aren't making any right now on the current Xbox. The Xbox is around $3 billion in the hole. When it was pitched to shareholders, the amount of money that the division said they should lose was $900 million over five years. They're already around 3x+ that amount, and they haven't even hit the four-year mark.

Sure, MS has gained mindshare... but now they're going to be facing the Sony Hype Machine(TM) just like Sega did when they launched the DC a year before the PS2. It'll be interesting to see what happens after Sony unveils their specs for the PS3 and gets that Sony Hype Machine(TM) rolling. Sure, just like the PS2, the PS3 will probably never ever live up to that hype, but the Sony Hype Machine(TM) has a TON of people who listen to it and believe everything it says (unfortunately).

Re:Massive Specs

[Anonymous Coward]

What a sad little fuck you are.

Let's see, we are in the millionth fake leak xbox info story this week from MS's PR cronies and you are posting in the latest one ranting about...

Sony hyping?

Oh god!!! What a loser.

3 PPC's? Damn, bring it on.

[torpor]

.. long as its got linux on it, of course ...

oh, wait. its made by Microsoft. WTF??!?!

Re:Nothing shocking

[generalleoff]

I suspect the PS3 specs will be hard to describe. The base specs will proly be something pretty much close to the xbox360 (the same basic multicore POWER based CPU) but the nature of the CELL is going to make it hard to spit out a real world performance value on paper. Being sony though they will be liberal about it rather then conservative and will spit out some huge number they know damn well the system will never hit in real world use :)

Re:Nothing shocking

[p4ul13]

True, but (and feel free to correct me if I'm way off), but much like the reported specs for the Next Xbox, the PS3 specs could be reported in terms of number of cores and speed of each.

I know that it will never be an apples to apples comparison, but it can give us an idea of what is under the hood comparatively speaking....

CD-RW?! Yeah right...

[ThePolkapunk]

I highly doubt that MS would be including a writeable CD with this. That would only make piracy easier, which MS has been fighting from day one of the XBOX. In fact, with all the hardware changes to mod chips, and booting people from xbox live, I'd say they've been putting up a bigger fight than any other video game hardware company. No, I really don't believe that there's a CD-RW. Frankly, this sounds like just more stupid fud that slashdot is tossing around. Why don't you stop posting random guesses and lies that anyone sees on the web?

"Leaked?" Please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people are so naive.

Re:"Leaked?" Please.

[ameoba]

Regardless of a source, these specifications are completely unrealistic considering that a launch price will have to be around $500, with a launch date at the end of this year. It's one thing to argue that 'consoles are sold at a loss' but another thing entirely to believe that a console is going to ship with hardware significantly better than anything available on consumer PCs today.

If you look at those CPUs, each of them will be faster than the fastest single-core chip available from either AMD or Intel today. A conservative estimate is that, in 6months, you're still looking at three $500+ CPUs.

Next up is the graphics card. If you consider that the current top-of-the-line cards from ATI and nVidia are running 16-pipelines at about 500MHz, again costing $500 a pop, this makes the graphics chip in the new XBox about four times faster than anything available on the market today. This, of course, would be needed to provide adequate performance with AA enabled at 1080i resolutions (1920x1080).

That's already hardware that, compared to PC components, will be worth more than $2000 come launch date, not including any of the other components of the system. As I said earlier, for this to be a viable console, it must sell for $500 or less at launch. With Moore's Law, that puts them at the break-even point at the end of a 5 year production run. Machines would be getting sold for a loss of over a grand at release which would require each console owner to purchase 4-500 game titles to even break even. I find these numbers pretty hard to swallow.

Consider, additionally, that releasing something this much more powerful than what's available on PCs is completely unprecedented. As far back as I as the 2600, consoles have always been a few steps down from what's available on PCs of the day.

All told, I'm suprised that I'm seeing so many otherwise technically savy sites lapping up this, completely absurd, obviously fabricated, 'leaked' information and spreading it as gospel.

Re:"Leaked?" Please.

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you look at those CPUs, each of them will be faster than the fastest single-core chip available from either AMD or Intel today. A conservative estimate is that, in 6months, you're still looking at three $500+ CPUs"

Congrats! You just showed yourself to be an ignorant ass.

So you saw 3.2Ghz and think that has any relevance as a metric to compare with other desktop chips? Fucking clueless clown.

The cores in the 360 are going to be significantly weaker than desktop chips when the thing launches later this year.

Go back to playing games fanboy.

Re:"Leaked?" Please.

[deafpluckin]

Congrats! You just showed yourself to be an ignorant ass. So you saw 3.2Ghz and think that has any relevance as a metric to compare with other desktop chips? Fucking clueless clown.

Actually, the "specs" say PowerPC chips, they don't say what kind of PowerPC chips -- so the 3.2 gHz rating could have any number of meanings. AFAIK PowerPC chips are not even close the 3.2 gHz yet, so the observation that they're higher mHz than current on market CPUs, including those of the same architecture, is still relavent. I -could- be wrong though.

So, please show me charts, benchmarks of these chips you seem to be so keenly aware of.

Aparently you are aware that CPU mHz is not a reliable metric of performance between chips of different architectures. What -you- failed to do was quote anything useful or provide anything constructive, so you're not helping anything. If your aim was to make yourself look smart by insulting someone else, then you've succeeded, congratulations! Asshole.

so only one version, then?

[muel]

Does this put the rumors of "multiple versions of XBox 360" to rest? This spec sheet says the hard drive is "removable," not "optional"......

Re:so only one version, then?

[HAKdragon]

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. It could be removable simply so they could sell a low cost model that lacks the hard drive and a higher cost model that offers the hard drive. Then they could sell the hard drive as a seperate add on and gives you all of the "HDD Required" features that games may offer.

Re:so only one version, then?

[drjenk]

I doubt microsoft will be giving away free hard drives this time around. I'd be surprised if the HD wasn't an extra add on for more $$$

Re:CD-RW?! Yeah right...

[NanoGator]

"I highly doubt that MS would be including a writeable CD with this. That would only make piracy easier..."

Uh. How would that have the slightest effect on piracy? Even XBOX 1 games exceed the size of a CD by ridiculous amounts. That'd be like saying the PS2's memory card will only make piracy easier.

(Heh amusingly, it does, but not for that reason.)

from TFS

[Reignking]

The Xbox 360 iself will have a DVD-RW, be Wi-Fi Ready, contain 3 USB ports, and have 512 GDDR3 RAM.

The iself? That sounds more like an Apple name. I call shenanigans!

Hmm

[CurtDogg]

Looks like Microsoft's feeling the heat from Nintendo :O

Re:Hmm

[stinkjones]

Uhhh...? WTF are you talking about? The Revolution won't be out until next year. Not to mention, why would they feel pressure to get more powerful hardware by Nintendo? If I remeber correctly, Gamecube was the last of the current-gen consoles to be released (maby xbox, they were pretty close), and it had the weakest hardware of all 3. So, no, MS is not feeling any heat from nintendo, nor have they in the hardware department, although they may be shaking in their M$ boots waiting for the PS3 specs to come out.

Re:Hmm

[Bloomy]

The Xbox and Gamecube were released the same week in North America, Nov 15, 2001 for the Xbox and Nov 18 for the Gamecube. The Gamecube had been out since Sep 14 in Japan. And the Playstation 2 is the least powerful machine of the 3.

Re:Hmm

[Hubertus_BigenD]

While i agree whith you're "WTF".You sir have no idea what you are talking about. "Gamecube was the last of the current-gen consoles to be released." -The Xbox and Gamecube were released on the same day(11/9/01 IIRC). "and it had the weakest hardware of all 3". -No, the Gamecube is slightly less powerful then the XBOX and quite a lot more powerful than the PS2.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

The Xbox launched last (the GameCube launched in Japan months before the Xbox launched in the U.S., remember?) and was the least efficient hardware in terms of production cost:retail cost _AND_ design (it's a brute force design - general-purpose desktop PC arch).

The GameCube hardware is many times more powerful than the PS2 hardware (played any games recently?), and is comparable to the Xbox hardware in every way except that the Xbox (A) has discrete digital audio out, (B) has a more capable effects processor, and (C) uses a higher capacity media format. The GameCube was easily the cheapest of all three consoles to produce, but that's only because it was less proprietary than the PS2 and had a much lower parts count than the Xbox.

As for the GP's idea of MS feeling pressure from Nintendo, I also disagree. I think Nintendo's strength has been in underpromising and overdelivering on the hardware side, so it would be Sony that has made sure to paint the bullseye on their own backs for MS to aim at.

Re:Hmm

[rhpot1991]

I am pretty sure he was refering to the free live, as Nintendo has said that their internet services will all be free.

Re:Hmm

[stinkjones]

as i said in my comment, I wasn't sure but I knew they came out around the same day. I'm talking US, not worldwide. I'm very closed-minded apparently

Re:Hmm

[mister_slim]

Price to the consumer? Nintendo wins. Loss per console sold? Nintendo and Sony both look pretty good, but MS can't wait to drop production of the Xbox. I suppose taking a huge loss on hardware for a minimal advantage in power (enjoying those short Fable and Jade Empire load times, btw?) probably doesn't scare MS too much, but notice whose current gen suppliers are being used for the next gen?

Wow

[BrainsVolpe]

I know the PS3 hasn't had as many leaks, and is much farther off, but the Xbox 360 sounds amazing. The PS3 is going to have a tougher time competing if its online isn't as robust. Killer hardware, insane online support, and interesting software. I'm not much of a fanboy, much less of Microsoft, but.... Sign me up!

Re:Wow

[imitier]

Agreed -- I'm very interested to see what Sony's take on online gaming is going to be with the PS3.

I'm sure that the PS3 will ultimately have the kind interesting games that made me glad I own a PS2 (ICO, Katamari Damacy, Twisted Metal Black, etc.) But most of my gaming is done over Xbox Live these days, and the first dollars I spend on a next generation console will go towards whoever has the best online gaming system. So far, it looks like Microsoft is doing everything right to build on the current generation of Live. I hope Sony is watching Live very carefully and learning something from it.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

" I hope Sony is watching Live very carefully and learning something from it."

You mean of course Sony is watching Live and laughing at the all the money and effort MS put into hyping it when they have managed to get only a million or so subscribers.

The only thing positive about Live is it has given xbox fanboys something to talk about other than excuses as to why the xbox was destroyed in the marketplace by Sony.

Re:Wow

[imitier]

If you know of a better online gaming system for consoles, I'd love to hear about it. As it stands, I haven't seen anything better on another console. As long as Microsoft continues supporting Live, which it certainly seem to be doing with the next Xbox, and as long as a number of my friends across the country still use Live, I don't particular care if Microsoft is making money on it or if it has sold less or more consoles than anyone else.

Re:Nothing shocking

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda like how new video cards are $200-$500 and a completely new console has been normally released at $300?

Sounds impressive but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like an impressive piece of hardware but I'm not so sure "horsepower" matters much anymore. Personally, just seeing games like RE4 and Half life 2 makes me impressed at what previous generation systems (in this case the Gamecube) and a 2 year old computer can do.

Honestly all three upcomming systems will be able to produce graphics that are technically impressive; but I'm not so sure that the average game developer can produce the artwork to actually realize this potential.

Re:Sounds impressive but ...

[UWC]

Now imagine RE4 in 720p or 1080i anti-aliased and with all kinds of shaders and bump maps on the character models.

Or Half-Life 2 at 1280x720 at 60fps on a $300 machine.

Re:Sounds impressive but ...

[UWC]

I forgot to note that the $300 machine comes with the OS, so you don't have to buy (pirate) it yourself.

Re:Sounds impressive but ...

[Ark42]

Of course, once you throw in the other 3 players on any game, you are down to 640x360 or less, depending on if your TV really supports 1280x720 (many LCD/Plasma TVs seem to actually have only 1024 pixels across)
And 1080i only gets you to 960x270 @ 60fps.
We're really going to need to get TVs up to about 1440p or so, and have the TVs be affordable too, before 4-player games really start to look good.

Re:Sounds impressive but ...

[UWC]

Agreed. Now go play a 4-player split-screen game on a PC. Oh, yeah, nevermind.

I'll admit that I've never been a fan of split-screen, maybe specifically because I was used to PC resolution advantages. Whatever the reason, my first exposure to 4-player Goldeneye was one of mild surprise that people devoted considerable time to playing it.

That said, I think I can get very used to playing something at 640x360. That's better than standard TVs fullscreen, isn't it? I hope that, by the time the 360 comes out, I'll have a 720p projector (there's apparently a very nice Panasonic one that can be obtained for under $2000, which is more than can be said of 720p LCD TVs of considerable size).

Even at that, your particular argument doesn't really make sense to me; decent-resolution split-screen isn't an advantage PCs offer, and online play is going to be a big feature of a lot of games in the upcoming console generation. Split-screen started initially out of necessity, and only continues because it can still be fun, and much more economical, to have several people crowded around a single screen. With HD, it'll be even better, but online play renders it nonessential.

Re:Sounds impressive but ...

[Ark42]

I don't particularly like split-screen. It especially ruins fps type games when people just cheat and look at your screen, amoung other things. PCs don't split screen because everybody is usually on their own unit, as it should be for those types of games. Multiplayer console games are best when you all share one screen, or take turns, or some other non-split arragement.
Standard TV is 480i which is 720x240 @ 60fps. (The f technically stands for fields, not frames then, but that hardly matters.) Whenever you see the little "i" instead of a "p", divide the height by 2, its much easier to compare then. Many regular TVs have a hard time doing more then 400x300 overall though (400x150 after you take into consideration interlacing). So many people are effectively playing Halo at around 200x75 @ 60fps per-player, but its aliased down from 360x120.

Really though, HDTV will be a big step forward, but the big factor is the TV price, not if the console supports it. Right now almost all of my Gamecube games support 480p (720x480) which is a huge improvement from 480i (720x240) but the cost of a EDTV with progressive scan support is out of my range still when the console cost me $99 and games cost $10-$20 typically.

Re:Sounds impressive but ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn. Call me when it supports 1080p.

Re:Sounds impressive but ...

[UWC]

Alright, I'll just use the number you give me when you call me to let me know that there's a 1080p display that most people will consider affordable. Even 720p/1080i displays can be expensive, but at least you can get a decent-sized one for under $1000.

Oh yeah, I forgot: Yawn. Can't be elitist without feigning intense boredom.

*cough*

[Anonymous Coward]

The Xbox 360 iself will have a DVD-RW

The specs say absolutely nothing of the kind, just that the system will "support" DVD-R/RW, which does not by any stretch of the imagination mean it'll have a DVD-RW drive. Does anybody actually check this stuff before putting it up?

I, for one, ...

[Phu5ion]

welcome our new PS3 overloads.

What you expected me to welcome an XBox?

Economies of scale

[Corpus_Callosum]

Microsoft does have a lot of latitude because of the economies of scale that the XBox 360 will offer. If Microsoft knows for a fact that they will sell 20 million consoles (or 30 million, or whatever), then it gives them pricing power.

Not only power, it gives them the ability to practically dictate prices for parts. Everyone seems awestruck that MS might use DDR3 or a 3core PPC or toss in a DVD burner. Why? Because they are expenseive at frys?

Once past a certain volume, manufacturing DDR3 won't be any more expensive than any other ram. Same with a new processor or even a DVD burner.

This is where economies of scale can be used to crush competitors. MS may have figured out that it can leapfrog the current state-of-the-art by guaranteeing volume to manufacturers of new technology. If so, watch out - they might use this to springboard a play out of Apple's book.

Imagine if Longhorn is released at the same time as a PC that is built out of the same contracted parts (but perhaps more of them and higher clocked) as the XBox 360. MS getting into the hardware business with a system a generation ahead of everyone else?

Frankly, the idea terrifies me. But I wouldn't put it past Bill. He is watching Apple and doesn't want his old nemesis to stomp on his pride anymore.

Whatever the case, this should be interesting...

Re:Economies of scale

[Pepsi__Blue]

30 Million consoles? No way, thats around 1 X-Box 360 for every 10 people in the United States, including the homeless. If I remember correctly (somebody can google if they want) X-Box reached it's 20 million mark globally in January 2005. You are correct that mass production can lower costs significantly, but unless they build millions and millions of X-Box 360s this year and just keep them in a warehouse until they run out, mass production will not lower costs as much as you believe. It's not just about how many you make, but also about the rate at which you make them. Also, FYI don't believe that X-Box 360 will sell as fast as the original X-Box, at least where I live most people were severly disappointed with the X-Box and don't plan to buy an X-Box 360, this is also the feeling I get from talking to friends in other parts of the country.

Also, I doubt that MS will release a PC, they have no expierence in the area and will piss of several of thier supporters (i.e. Dell, Compaq, E Machines, other major PC companies). In addition, I believe I read somewhere that the processor used in the X-Box 360 will be heavily customized so that it will work very inefficently as a CPU for a desktop computer. This technology isn't that advanced really, AMD is just skipping triple core CPUs, as they have announced a quad core for 2007.

Re:Economies of scale

[DeadScreenSky]

Also, FYI don't believe that X-Box 360 will sell as fast as the original X-Box, at least where I live most people were severly disappointed with the X-Box and don't plan to buy an X-Box 360, this is also the feeling I get from talking to friends in other parts of the country.

Interesting. Where I live it's the exact opposite. The Xbox convinced a lot of people that MS was for real in this whole console business. Even just compare the amount of respect it tends to get now on Slashdot of all places (vacation home of POGs and anti-MS people alike), whereas before its release and even for sometime after the Xbox was routinely slammed by practically everybody on here.

This technology isn't that advanced really, AMD is just skipping triple core CPUs, as they have announced a quad core for 2007.

Great argument. Because AMD is planning to release a better CPU in 2007 the CPU that MS is selling in 2005 isn't advanced? (Are you just doing the whole anti-Xbox troll thing?)

You are correct the CPU probably won't be that great for desktop usage, but you hardly need much power for that anyways. For games it will be extremely powerful, and that's basically what you need the power for on a consumer PC, too. I'm not convinced it (or a derivative of it) will be used for desktops, but I think you overstate the problems with doing that.

Re:Economies of scale

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony is putting a friggin' 9-core Cell processor into their console..frankly I'm surprised at nothing anymore. Just really curious what things these babies will be able to render.

Re:Nothing shocking

[bassakward]

Two comments: 1) There are those who want the most tricked-out Xbox 360 possible, even if it costs $1000 in components 2) 3 years later I can probabbly get a graphics card with twice the specs for $100.

Upgrade?

[composer777]

It's a game console. Software makers tune the software to the hardware itself. The only reason that I've ever needed to upgrade my PC is that it was running the software too slowly. I don't see this being a problem with a game console.

Customizable face plates??

[FriedTurkey]

Customizable face plates to change appearance

Is this to appeal to 12 year old girls???

Seriously, is somebody going to change the color of the X-box to correspond to either red or blue based on their Halo team color?

Re:Customizable face plates??

[DrEldarion]

This is to appeal to the same people that put neon lights in their computer cases, which is a pretty decent percentage of the nerd population.

It'll also probably appeal to the MODZZZZZZZZZZZ IMPORT-RACING!!!!!1 crowd.

Re:Customizable face plates??

[bynary]

Last time I checked, cell-phone faceplates were quite the hot commodity. I'm taking a shot in the dark here, but might this not appeal more to the Japanese gaming community? They really seem to be into customizing alot more than their American or European counterparts.

Re:Customizable face plates??

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes. No, I'm serious.
The Xbox and the PS2 don't appeal to girls or women, and they want all gamers they can get.

Re:Customizable face plates??

[Anonymous Coward]

Never underestimate how much money people will spend to be on the same mass-produced products to be "different."

Besides, Nintendo has produced limited-edition custom GameCube case jewels in Japan for years now. I'm surprised they never sold any here in the U.S.

Re:Customizable face plates??

[fwitness]

The last time you checked must be 2000 then, when every mall had 10 cell phone faceplate 'stores'.

Your point is still valid, just a little out of date.

Re:Customizable face plates??

[Jack Sparrow]

Is this to appeal to 12 year old girls??? Seriously, is somebody going to change the color of the X-box to correspond to either red or blue based on their Halo team color?

Maybe.. If they want, they will have the option and that is important. I want to show off my personality through my xbox. I will have a new face plate every year based on whatever..

[Back to real mode] Some of us have wives that want the hardware to go with the furniture and the wall color and it is hell lot easier to change the xbox plate to match the walls than the other way round.

Re:Customizable face plates??

[Lisandro]

Never underestimate how much money people will spend to be on the same mass-produced products to be "different."

Mod +1 Insightful. "Ricers" created a whole new market with that line of thinking; i have a friend who works on a car "tuning" shop and they move quite a lot of money.

If front plates are customizables, people will buy them like crazy; specially kids. Need proof? Check cellphones.

Not a DVD-RW drive

[TD-2779]

Support for DVD-R/RW does NOT means a DVD-RW drive.

DVD-RW?!

[tootbrush]

Do we have to save on DVDs now?

Re:DVD-RW?!

[Anonymous Coward]

To save on DVD's, buy them when they are on sale.

Nice specs..

[CptnSbaitso]

Can't wait to see it under Linux. Does anyone know if the 3 USB ports are real, or are they fake ones like on the current XBox?

Re:CD-RW?! Yeah right...

[jericho4.0]

You're forgetting that Microsoft will control the hardware on this device, and it will have strong Digital Rights Management. The ability to burn copies of stuff MS sold you onto a CD/DVD (that maybe only plays on an XBox?) then looks more likely.

nice specs

[sakura the mc]

i just hope sony started a trend with the psp.
where they finally do away with all these regional lockout bullshit. if i want to play games from japan 5 years before they are released here, i shouldnt have to modify my xbox360 to do so. or buy an xbox360 from japan. regional lockout is bullshit. i hope they cut that shit out.

Re:nice specs

[Anonymous Coward]

All GameBoy games have been region-free since 1989, and Nintendo DS games remain so. The PSP didn't start this trend, it is merely the most recent to follow Nintendo's precedent, just like Sega, SNK, and all the others.

Re:nice specs

[sakura the mc]

whoops, forgot about gameboy. never knew the ds was region free, never gave a shit.

Re:nice specs

[superpulpsicle]

LOL. The DS to my surprise is getting such weak feedbacks even though it is probably tie with hardware sales with the PSP.

Anyways the region bullshit is too much, I agree. They should have standardized on regular movies, not UMD format either.

Re:nice specs

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're in the wrong news article.

Also, the DS has sold more than the PSP. Besides, if you don't like racing games, the PSP probably isn't for you.

Re:nice specs

[Anonymous Coward]

if you don't like racing games, the PSP probably isn't for you.

Or rpgs, or actions games, or puzzlers, or platformers, or...or...

Re:nice specs

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the way that you "never gave a shit." When I read that, I thought to myself, "This motherfucker is one outstanding individual."

* goes back to playing 4-player touch screen Puyo Pop *

Re:nice specs

[mister_slim]

Or rpgs, or actions games, or puzzlers, or platformers, or...or...

Hey, give the PSP some credit. It's got a good puzzler.

DVDs?

[AztecL0B0]

I know most console games aren't that large and those that are, use 2 discs, but HD content takes ALOT of space even if its encoded with H.264 codec. MGS4 could easily take 12 GBs if the FMVs are in HD. Microsoft would be really stupid if they would give all the horsepower to create HD content and give you a tiny space to put it in.

1 Hour of HD video(H.264) = 2.67 GB.

I doubt they are going to use DVD media, but if they are, I will be first one laughing at them.

And 3 cores for PPC would be the greatest achievement known to man (slashdot man). 2 cores I believe, but 3, no. IBM has not been able to even make dual core G5s.

Re:DVDs?

[amliebsch]

I doubt they are going to use DVD media

I'm sure they will. They don't have the experience that Sony does to create their own, proprietary format, and the units have to be built now, before the next-gen format is settled. Sometimes you have to go with the best you have, and right now that's standard DVD. And why not? Plays people's existing library of movies, probably with HD pull-up, and is still plenty for game content. Still "good enough" for playing other compressed HD video - WMV-HD, for example.

Besides, I highly doubt Microsoft wants you to use the gaming console for "content creation" or even movie playback. That's what Windows MCE is for.

Re:DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be a stupid move to standardize on a next-generation DVD at this time. Just now are there talks of combining the two standards into one.

I believe this is one of the reasons why Sony is waiting so long to release the PS3 - they want to corner the movie market like they did with the PS2 while avoiding the BETA/VHS problem.

Re:DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

With the amount of polys and detailed textures and shaders these things are gonna push - what'd be the point of packaging FMV?

They are using DVDs, so if you need to laugh, feel free to start.
The rest of us are waiting to see whether the games are fun. Not doing napkin math to entertain ourselves with absurd theoreticals.

Re:DVDs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Weren't many of the "FMV's" in the last two MGS games just scripted sequences being rendered by the engine? And won't even more games use that technique as opposed to real FMV's in the next generation of consoles, as better graphics will be possible?

Re:3 PPC's? Damn, bring it on.

[Anonymous Coward]

oh, wait. its made by Microsoft. WTF??!?!

What's the problem? Just overwrite windows when you install Linux and dremel the "Microsoft" name off the front. Put a Tux sticker there instead if it makes you feel better.

Then you could call it a "TuX-Box".

Post is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFA it supports DVD-RW it does not say it has a DVD-RW drive.

Can we get the FORKING news post correct please?

512 G?

[koekepeer]

"...and have 512 GDDR3 RAM."

that would be 512 M GDDR3 RAM i presume

else i'd be really impressed *grin*

I was thinking the same thing..

[Anonymous Coward]

HD content without the space is what will eventually be the downfall of this thing. Huge textures, 1080i video cut scenes, etc will take up so much space. The next GTA game is slated for PS3 exclusive, and they expect to fill the disc.

How will this ever get ported to the XBox? Just cut everything out?

I see the XBox 360 as a short term success while everyone waits till the real deal comes out with full HD Discs and content.

Re:I was thinking the same thing..

[amliebsch]

The next GTA game is slated for PS3 exclusive, and they expect to fill the disc.

They expect to fill a 25+ GB Blu-Ray disc? With what, hours and hours of MPEG-2 HD cutscenes? Textures? Half-Life 2, with all of its better-than-HD textures, fit easily on a standard DVD. PC games have barely been released standard on DVD for a year or so, and you seriously think console games are going to need Blu-Ray? Time for a sanity check.

Anyways, if - IF - they needed more than the 8 or so GB available on a dual-layer DVD, you port it to Xbox by including >1 disc, and store some of the game data on the hard drive.

Re:I was thinking the same thing..

[Anonymous Coward]

"How will this ever get ported to the XBox? Just cut everything out?"

Why would Rockstar bother with the next xbox?

Perhaps late in its life if the xbox 360 gets up to 10 to 15 million units they will start putting out ports. The 85 million PS2s and the 85 million PS3s that will be bought over the next five years are Rockstar's prime focus.

Rockstar isn't in the business of providing welfare for xbox owners.

Re:I was thinking the same thing..

[forkazoo]

With lots of expansive, detailed content, I would not be surprised at all if they could fill up a BluRay. Use procedural algorithms to make a stupidly detailed city, and make like the entire state that city is in. Then, store it in a stupidly verbose format similar to the following:

---------------- // The following section declares a point that is part of the current triangle:: // The following floating point value indicates the X axis value of a point:
1.0000000245 // The following floating point value indicates the Y axis value of a point:
1.000000784 // The following floating point value indicates the Z axis value of a point:
1.00000358 // The following floating point value indicates the unused homogenous coordinate:
1.0000000000 // This concludes the point. Points are very cool. The next section will have another point.
----------------------
Multiply by three to get a triangle, use a few billion triangles, and then you can advertise the fact that you used a whole BluRay when telling people to buy your game because it is so immersive!

Never underestimate the power of marketing to cause stupid things to occur!

Re:I was thinking the same thing..

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of stuff is music and videos.

We will have no problem filling up BR disk with movies and high quality music. Paying artist to generate movies is cheap. Paying for original or licensing music is cheap too.

MS really blew it by going cheap on their disk format. The size seems huge now, but in a year or so it is of course going to seem normal. And anything less is going to seem dinky.

Re:I was thinking the same thing..

[ubrkl]

I think the GTA games "cheat" with their content by licensing loads and loads of good music. The last GTA game came with an 8 CD soundtrack, which was awesome. Most people I know have a collection of music that's > 25gb compressed.

Re:I was thinking the same thing..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Paying artist to generate movies is cheap"

LOL, what the fuck are you talking about?

Re:I was thinking the same thing..

[Anonymous Coward]

Artist are cheap.

Welcome to Cluesville dimwit.

Artist supply >>>>>> Artist demand.

I can get a great deal of art for nothing, yes nothing 0 zero, because there are so many artists out there that are desperate to make a good impression on a company in the hope of landing a job with my company.

Now run along little fanboy.

Re:I was thinking the same thing..

[kannibal_klown]

They expect to fill a 25+ GB Blu-Ray disc? With what, hours and hours of MPEG-2 HD cutscenes? Textures? Half-Life 2, with all of its better-than-HD textures, fit easily on a standard DVD.

Not entirely true.

Half-Life install (assuming all of the files were on the DVD and not Steam) would fit on a DVD but at that point the files are compressed. Half-Life 2 uncompressed (ie, what's on the hard drive) is fairly big (more than a DVD).

Take "Far Cry" for example: that thing requires an insane amount of hard drive space for a full install (much more than 4.75GB).

If they want games to be more complex and what-not to take advantage of the more powerful system then they're going to need
a) more content
b) larger content
c) have it uncompressed. (to a degree)

They may not take up an entire Blue Ray disc, but from a marketing standpoint people aren't going to want to swap 2 (maybe 3) DVD's back and forth to play a game.

Why Are They Even Bothering?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't know what the hell they are thinking at MS.

This machine looks like it is only going to appeal the most hardcore xbox gamers - the people who will pretty much buy anything with the name xbox on it.

I had been really hoping that MS had managed to get something competitive with the Cell/Broadband chip out of IBM, but it looks like this thing is going to utterly destroyed performance-wise by Sony.

One has to wonder if IBM is getting their revenge after all these years with such a gimped CPU for MS.

What a fucking disaster. Depressed...

Re:CD-RW?! Yeah right...

[sho222]

I'm pretty sure the "Support for ... CD-RW .. " line just means that it will be able to read those formats, not write to them.

Improved Disc Speed?

[robbway]

As I play Forza, I wonder about disc read speed. Forza loads forever. If complicated and detailed games will be common--and I'm all for it--some optimization needs to be done. Also, in the realm of PS2 downward compatability, will the improved speed enhance load times of XBox games?

Re:Nothing shocking

[Anonymous Coward]

Three seperate cores could also be difficult to predict real-world performance with. And CELL could be all hype (ala emotion). Nobody knows, it's so fun =)

the important question remains unanswered

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no HDTV (720p or anything similar) in Europe yet. Does this mean that we are going to get "special versions" of games that have 1-2 more features and another "feature, ie, graphics downgraded to 640x480...

HDTV isn't coming anytime soon either, so the only answer to this would be to have DVI-out. Or is the Dreamcast still ahead it its time? I refuse to play downgraded 640x480 resolution games when the rest of the world is playing in 1280x780 (720p). Sadly this probably exactly what's going to happen.

No Backwards Compatability???

[Anonymous Coward]

* No backwards compatibility - lame
* Case - lame
* No physics processing unit - lame
* No new exclusives - lame

When this gets close to hitting the shelves there will be big price drops on all the old xbox games I've wanted to play. Now I wil have to have both units around to play them. STupid.

I really,really hope those leaked pictures of the case are bogus. Please - why did they feel the need to come up with something so, I don't even know what.

Where is the physics chip that I was hearing rumors about - things are going to run slow on it now.

Where are all the big name games for microsoft? They have all the best game companies making games for Sony still. Why doesn't microsoft spend some money to take all those good games away from them. Halo is really good, but they need more.

This is turning out just lame.

Re:No Backwards Compatability???

[mconeone]

* No physics processing unit - lame

Why bother with a physics processor when you have a 3 core 3.2 Ghz one?

MNz and Dots

[nick_davison]

You idiot. It's clearly Minnesotan's per second! If you can't speak the l33t speak, you shouldn't be on slashdot!

Either that, or gaminghorizon needs to either wait for the email version of the press release to cut and paste or by a better OCR program for printed ones that can tell Ns from Hs.

As for dots, they're clearly exploring new technologies like Nintendo is rumored to be doing with 3D. In this case it's evidently something based off of Dot Matrix technology. This assumption can be backed up by the need for 256+ audio channels - no one needs that much sound unless they're powering a dot matrix.

Price? Anyone? Bueller?

[aliens]

Yeah those specs are freaking amazing, but uh, it's a console right? How much are they debuting this at? $900?

Re:Price? Anyone? Bueller?

[NeMon'ess]

Not that much if they want to sell lots of em. Try $350 or $300. The Saturn had to quickly drop to $300 after its $400 debut. The 3DO died after opening at $700.

YOU'RE ALL SHEEP BECAUSE YOU WILL BUY THIS

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

Re:YOU'RE ALL SHEEP BECAUSE YOU WILL BUY THIS

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like someone cant afford any new toys....boohoo.

Re:YOU'RE ALL SHEEP BECAUSE YOU WILL BUY THIS

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha, yes, that must be it. He's poor because he doesn't waste his money on Microsoft garbage. That's great logic.

Re:CD-RW?! Yeah right...

[ThePolkapunk]

Sorry, made a mistake, it actually reads DVD-R/RW. Seeing as how the XBOX 360 uses a DVD drive, that should be large enough to stick a game on two DVD's. More than easy enough to make pirating through the system worthwhile.

so BS

[Anonymous Coward]

3 x 3.2GHZ == Way too expensive. There needs to be a low base cost...

Re:CD-RW?! Yeah right...

[drjenk]

Yes that is what I took it as too. Would be pretty stupid to include a writeable dvd drive, the first mod will be an xbox game copy machine.

Wrong

[News for nerds]

>It might as well be. As far as I can tell, each
>core in the XBOX360 should be significantly faster >than a seperate PPC970.

No way. PPC970 has out-of-order execution while Xbox360 CPU is in-order, so PPC970 is generally faster to execute most applications. Xbox360 CPU may be faster only when it's clocked significantly higher than PPC970 or when it has fatter SIMD (AltiVec) registers.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a winner!

PowerMacs are at 2.7 duals as of today. And we already know from the latest tools from Apple that they internally are working on dual dual core PPCs.

The Xbox 360 will be most likely near the performance level of a top of the line PowerMac if Apple doesn't update their hardware between now and the xbox launch date. A dual 2.7 970 will kill the xbox's chip at some tasks and vice versa.

The only thing that will save the xbox from looking very average is the graphics card will probably be stronger for a short time as of the launch date.

5 words "Support for 4 wireless controllers"???

[gmezero]

While I'm quite impressed myself with the specs and the fact that they're going wireless with the controllers... I had this bizarre hope that going to purely wireless controllers would end the stupid limitation of 4 players max on the system. I have five members in my family. We play FIVE player games on the Saturn, Turbo Grafx, and PlayStation systems. I would like to play five player games on new my systems if the hardware guys would get their heads out of their asses.

I also hope this wireless crap like the current crop of 3rd party X-Box controllers. I have so much interference in my neighborhood that none of them work reliably (haven't tried the bluetooth ones yet though). On the other hand, my WaveBird controllers have never failed to perform. Hmmm...

Noise

[KrunZ]

"3 symmetrical cores at 3.2 GHz each"
The heat is on. I guess the Xbox fanboys finally will live up to their name.

Dear Fanboys.... you missed a few things...

[Foo2rama]

Assuming that this info is correct. It looks like xbox live will require the HD. Considering how integrated the HD looks, what makes you think that all 360's will not have an included HD? But ahh here is the kicker could a dvd/rw be used instead of the HD????? hmm folks could it work? So I guess the 360 hd is still up in the air. There is nothing about backward combatibility... but I will bet that MS will have it, the backlash will be to big not to have implemented it. As for the speed vs the cell. Well the first of a generation usally sells the best. Iomega Jazz vs the Syquest Syjet? the jet was way better from a larger company that had dominanted removeable media with syquest drives, but Iomega beat them to market with the jazz which was slower, more expensive, small capacity, and more prone to disk failure. Iomegas hard start.. 3 months. Where is syquest now? Speed vs the PS3 with the cell is a non-starter, it doesn't matter. MS will beat Sony out in this generation of consoles.

Re:Dear Fanboys.... you missed a few things...

[Foo2rama]

Also the cell is going to be very very good at graphics, but how about physics calcs? The next gen of games will no longer be graded on graphics, but on the realism of the world and that implies physics calcs. Cell is skewed to graphics whereas the ppc cores with the ati card will be able to handle complex physics better.

Re:Dear Fanboys.... you missed a few things...

[yakitori]

Yes, much like the Sega Dreamcast beat out the Sony Playstation 2. Or, ummm, the Sega Saturn beat out the Sony Playstation. Hmmm, or the Sega Genesis dominated the Super Nintendo. 3D0 can't miss with thier specs? Neo-Geo anyone? Amiga CD32 or Atari Panther?

Software, software.. It always comes down to software. Why aren't launch titles getting "leaked" out all over the press every 2 days? And with these "specs", how much will this unit cost? $500? $699? Maybe $360?

Re:Dear Fanboys.... you missed a few things...

[inkdesign]

"Considering how integrated the HD looks, what makes you think that all 360's will not have an included HD?"

I don't agree.. Based on the photos seen thus far, the hard drive looks removable. Also, were it a standard component, why put it outside the case (with an LCD display no less??)

Re:Dear Fanboys.... you missed a few things...

[inkdesign]

LED that is... :0]

Re:Dear Fanboys.... you missed a few things...

[jmole]

... yea and Japan will welcome their Xbox overloards...

Re:Dear Fanboys.... you missed a few things...

[Foo2rama]

Easy so you could remove it and, take it over to another 360. Or hook it up to a pc.

This will never happen but...

[el_womble]

I would LMAO if Apple 'leaked' a copy of tiger that ran on this baby. This would make a fantastic xserve farm machine, especially at the loss-leader prices these will inevitably ship for. Does this post fall into the "imaging a beowulf cluster..." catergory?

Oh there's always something to fill the space with

[goldcd]

For example you could ship a single multilanguage disk. Whilst the space for dialogue isn't going to fill a blu-ray disk, if you re-rendered all the cut scenes to lip-synch to the audio, then you've suddenly got a lot of data.
You can also use surplus space to compensate for CPU - why waste resource decompressing something, when it can be spooled off raw?
We've heard the same argument when CDs came out, when DVDs came out etc etc. Having the extra space loses you nothing and gives the developer an opportunity to offer you something you didn't have before.

Source

[superultra]

The source for these specs? The TeamXbox forums. Now I like the staff of TeamXbox. They have created a pretty reasonable and reliable site. But the forum? Let's take a random sample of thread titles:

"a guy where at the mtv show!!!"
"doom 3 @ 400k!!!!!!!!"
"If I have too buy Batterys to play my games on xbox360"
"Can Permanant Marker Wreck Discs?"
"I dreamed I owned an xbox 360 last night"
"Fisher Price is manufacturing the X360 consoles!"
[huge sic]

We need only wait 24 hours before we know the real specs. Maybe these are right, but do you really need to be posting completely speculative specs when the slashdot post is fresh enough that we can all came back and make fun of you if you're wrong?

Re:CD-RW?! Yeah right...

[Toddarooski]

Yeah, if you look at TFA, it says...

"Support for DVD-video, DVD-Rom, DVD-R/RW, CD-DA, CD-Rom, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 cd, JPEG photo CD"

Which the article author reworded as...

"WiFi ready, DVD-RW, 3 USB ports, and 512 GDDR3 RAM."

Which the slashdot contributor reworded as...

"The Xbox 360 iself will have a DVD-RW"

These are how rumors get started, folks.

I say bullsh**

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to vote "bullsh**". Why? 10MB graphics memory, and support for 1920x1080? Lets see.

1920x1080x4x3 (32 bit, front, back, and Z buffers). = 24,883,200.

We've used 24MB and don't have a vertex, index, or texture loaded yet. Anti-aliasing may bump that up even higher still.

Perhaps that's 10MB of cache on chip or something, otherwise it seems ludicrously low.

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the specs about the machine really matter.

How good are the games gonna be?

Even playing Field

[Anonymous Coward]

I like online console gaming. It evens the playing filed. That way you know everyone else is running the same hardware.

when will we "own" one...

[KillShill]

i wonder if our overlords will allow us to "own" the hardware we pay good money for in the forseeable future.

they lock it up tight with DRM and digital signatures to insure that we don't have access to the hardware that we bought. i assume they don't consider us owners, only merely renters.

now that next gen consoles have vast multimedia capabilities, we are essentially being forced legally and technically to give up our rights to our property.

i want full access to all those cpus and video processors. i paid for them. i DON'T want to copy games or infringe on your lousy copyright, i want direct access to the hardware i purchased.

and "mod" chips and the like don't count. they are legally obligated to provide any purchaser the ability to program the machine if they so choose.

and please don't give me the rubbish about how "people except consoles to be closed" deal. if you pay for hardware, it's yours. true, they don't have to provide you documentation, code snippets, etc but they MUST allow you to run unsigned code.

essentially this is illegal as hell by anyone who has a shred of reason/intelligence. but of course, it'll remain unchanged for some time to come.

let me reiterate one more time I DO NOT want to infringe copyright, i just want to own my own hardware.

this is one of the big issues that allows consoles to suck as far as computing devices goes. PC hardware you own, console harware you pay the privilege of renting it.

not buying it is actually not a solution. because unless there is a written contract which i have signed, i am buying the hardware to be fully usable by me. this is definitely against the law... now we just need someone to challenge it.