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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."
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.
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What are dots per second? I can't tell if they're better or worse than the 700 MNz (meganerdz?) memory.
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.
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.
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.
Paul Lenhart writes words!
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.
The Tech Terminal
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.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
Great, I'm gonna need more speakers and wire now, damn it.
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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 *
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
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?
Dear diary: Today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats I put in the blender.
Some people are so naive.
Does this put the rumors of "multiple versions of XBox 360" to rest? This spec sheet says the hard drive is "removable," not "optional"......
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!
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
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.
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.
This comment was formatted for readability, but I forgot the line break tags
What you expected me to welcome an XBox?
Slashdot is kind of like Playboy; we aren't here to read the articles.
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...
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
Here is a thread from early March regarding the "World's First Physics Processing Unit"...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
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.
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.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
Support for DVD-R/RW does NOT means a DVD-RW drive.
Do we have to save on DVDs now?
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.
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.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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.
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.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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?
"3 symmetrical cores at 3.2 GHz each"
The heat is on. I guess the Xbox fanboys finally will live up to their name.