Slashdot Mirror
The Xbox 360 Unveiled
You may or may not have caught the Xbox 360 unveiling on MTV Thursday night, but the internet will provide. A plethora of sites have photos, videos, commentary, specifications, and interviews about the new system. Your fellow readers have pulled together to provide links to: 1up.com, Joystiq, Gamespot, The BBC, CNN, NYT, Gamespy, Team Xbox, Voodoo Extreme, Anandtech, and eToyChest. The official Xbox 360 site opened last night as well for word straight from the source. For more official images Ourcolony.net has been 'solved', and now features an OurColony specific video preview. Finally, for commentary on the event, the Video Game Ombudsman provides an alternative to the press releases. From the post: "Kyle Orland (9:28:42 PM): The future of gaming is a girl in a blue dress?
Dan Dormer (9:28:47 PM): The future of gaming is a girl with a bag?
Kyle Orland (9:28:57 PM): She's the Xbox! OMG!"
Seriously, I would really love to see Tux scream on this thing!
Maybe this is why Apple wasn't able to sell machines with a CPU
faster than 3.0 Ghz. Microsoft had made a deal with IBM to buy them, leaving
Apple to wait? Can anyone confirm or deny this? How "custom" were these
CPUs? Were they so custom that they did not effect the supply of G5's to Apple?
The following is being offered free of charge to all those who feel the need to troll the Slashdot Games section. Please print out a copy and keep it with you at all times. If you follow these simple steps, you trolling is guaranteed to improve.
1. If a game is currently on PS2 and there are plans to bring it out on the Xbox, make sure to claim that no one will want to play that game by the time it gets to the Xbox. For example, by the time Virtua Fighter 4/GTA3 comes to the Xbox, we'll all be playing something new.
2. Use the reverse logic if it is a game only on the Xbox that may be ported to other systems/PC later. Case in point, Halo. Say something to the effect of "I'll wait for the true version of Halo on the PC". "It will be much better than the Xbox version".
3. Constantly complain about FPS on consoles ACCEPT for Goldeneye.
4. Always use Bill Gates name. Act as if he is the one making the games.
By all means, if you run out of clever or interesting things to troll about, just bring up Mr Gates. Lots of people hate him and will be glad to agree with you.
5. Complain about the XBox controller. Even if you have never seen or used it, it won't matter. People will believe you when you say it's big. Be sure and try to provide a testimonial about your wife or girlfriend or kid who complains about the size of it. Also claiming to be injured by the controller can be the foundation of a great troll post.
6. When referring to the Xbox, try to scew the name a bit. Xblox, eggs bocks, the stupider the name, the more favorable of a response you will get.
7. Be sure and mention Japanese and European sales numbers. If you aren't sure what those sales numbers are, go ahead and make something up. Estimate low, most people will believe you.
8. Although Xbox owners seem to enjoy there games, make sure to comment on Xbox not having any games with good gameplay. Although the Xbox does share some ports with PS2 and Gamecube, it's okay to assume that the Xbox version of those ports has poor gameplay as well.
9. Since the Xbox has nice graphics, be sure and find a way to put a negative spin on this. Using the age old formula that states if a game has nice graphics, it must have terrible gameplay, you can convince people that Xbox games are all tech demos.
10. Defective Xbox stories are excellent to use in trolling. The best part is that they require no proof. I find that "the screen just froze up" works great. Occasionally you can use something really bizarre like "My friend bought an Xbox and it caught on fire and burned down there house. Now they are homeless. F*** Bill Gates."
11. When all else fails, lie. There are lots of people who will agree with you just because they hate MS
Jeez, a 30 minutes show, and no information at all, (except its uglyness and stupid name...)
... oh wait... its MTV what else could you expect?
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
No where is it written that the next XBox will play current XBox games.
According to the title the Xbox 360 will play current XBox games. No where does the article provide any supporting evidence to this claim, and in fact largely runs counter to it. Nvidia says all but no, an unknown independent analyst agrees, ATI says that it is statistically possible, and some other unknown agrees with them. Microsoft says... Nothing. According to other sources Microsoft is "not guaranteeing" backwards compatibility, and if they decide not to include a hard drive such compatibility may not be possible at all.
nVidia may very well be playing to the press, but that doesn't mean such a thing wouldn't be difficult or expensive. Most systems achieve backwards compatibility by finding uses for the extra hardware. Software emulation for compatibility has never been attempted professionally in the console arena, but amature software emulation tends to lag two systems behind. You can push an XBox to do a meaningful SNES, but Dreamcast emulation is right out. With the right software the SNES could emulate the 2600, but not the NES.
Personally, I don't see why they don't just include a detachable Xbox chipset as a free add-on with an overpriced "premium" system with two controllers, and sell a regular setup with one controller for 100 dollars less.
But, as I mentioned before, no such thing has been announced yet.
Here's a torrent link for the OurColony video: XBOX360Vid.wmv.torrent
Nothing like 6 months to a year of lead-time to make yourself the next Dreamcast.
The specs look amazing but I have to ask:
Why is Microsoft making it difficult to write games that run on both PC (Windows XP) and XBox 360?
One of the primary reasons I use Windows is for games. If game developers stop writing for Windows because they move to XBox 360, then it'll make it even easier for me to go all FreeBSD or Linux or Mac OSX.
Wouldn't it have been easier for XBox 360 to have a Windows XP or Windows Mobile 2005 foundation with just a custom explorer interface to make it look less-PC?
Sleek, curvaceous, white exterior with no messy wires?
They should have called it "iBox".
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
Aside from that, if the BBC site is correct, it seems that device is not a digital media hub at all. It seems rather stupid (to say the least) that they didn't think to make the thing a PVR. The last generation of boxes had the excuse, but a PVR / media station is almost an expectation of something which expects to occupy a permenant space by the TV.
Still, it'll be interesting to see what Sony produce. If they have sense, they will make it a PVR, and a media jukebox, and a kickass console with backwards compatibility. If it can do all those things when the XBox can't then I don't see they have much to worry about. Better yet if they make it hackable - not so hackable that people can easily pirate games but just enough that people can play around with the box and produce cool things for it.
On a different note, congratulations to the xbox 360 marketing team, who pulled out all the stops: constant "leaks" heading up to the launch, the first next-gen console shown off, launched on TV, by a pop show, and by celeberities! Not to mention the whole colony buisness. Full marks Microsoft marketing team.
http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/neon-screenshots.php
:)
Jeff Minter code in millions of households soon
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So far, the specs look pretty good. MS is probably allowing it to be a DVD player out of the box without the annoying "remote control must be there". Surprisingly, it still looks pretty modible - you know that people will be dying to make it into a Linux box first chance they get (and with a removable hard drive, even easier to switch between systems and use those USB peripherals), so we'll have to see what anti-mod abilities it includes.
The #1 question still is: backwards compatibility. At these specs, there's no reason why a hardware emulator couldn't emulate an older Xbox. And with the Xbox 1 only 4 years old, I believe that backwards compatibility will be a big deal - if not a bigger deal than the other systems. It's the price between $300 - $400 with some games on launch day (of which, if history is a judge from the PS2, Xbox 1, and Gamecube launch, one of those games is worth having, and 6 months afterwards the other "killer apps" show up), or having a good library including the all important Halo 1 and 2.
Enough to make me buy on launch day? No (but then again, with the current 3 consoles I own plus the GBA and PSP, I have too many games anyway), but we'll have to see how it does the next time out. They've fixed a lot of my previous annoyances with the Xbox 1 (the USB system should let me plug in a keyboard to enter in my own music track information - a pain and a half with the Xbox 1 using a controller, and the free basic Live will bring in people who, like myself, are too damn cheap to pay the $60 or so a year to get onto Live, especially considering how little I play online these days. Three kids, wife, blah, blah, blah.)
But it's a good showing. I'll be curious to see how the PS3 and Nintendo Revolution respond. (Psst: Nintendo, DVD movies play out of the box. It's reason #1 why you're tied in second place worldwide with the Xbox.)
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Was I the only one who was completely underwhelmed by the 30 minute commercial with commercials? Every new generation of consoles prior to this has been a big leap forward from the previous one. There was hardly any in-game footage shown, but what I saw looked more evolutionary than revolutionary. What did Perfect Dark Zero have that you can't get on Halo 2 with the HD cables for the Xbox? "Fully destructable objects"? (did anyone else catch that? wtf?)
I have a feeling that Microsoft has screwed up pretty bad with this not being backward compatible- unless they're going to have dual-sytem games, it's going to split their userbase and the developers will not know which unit to design for. People were still releasing games for the PS1 long after the PS2 came out, but they could get away with it because the PS2 was backward compatible.
Here's hoping it's an abysmal flop.
Well, it seems it the Xbox 360 is the Family All In One multimedia station MS promised it will be...
Unfrotunately, if every game is Live aware, I am affraid developers will tend to concentrate in the Live gameplay while leaving us the poor unfortunate guys that do not have high speed internet or WiFi (does it comes with an ethernet adaptor?) with 1/3 of the "experience"...
I certainly will wait until Nintendo and Playstation release their consoles to make a choice... (as I do not have the money to buy the 3 of them... or even 2)
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Well lets face it IBM. If XBox 360 wins (anyone noticed that you do 360 to end up back in the same place?) then its IBM processors at the core. If its PS3, then its... IBM processors at the core.
All those box numbers, all that volume, all those cheap servers.
XBox or PS3, doesn't matter as Intel lose.
(But please let it be PS3 that wins as its actually innovative rather than a re-hash of off the shelf stuff and (as ever with MS) no R&D).
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
From the BBC:
- CPU with three IBM PowerPC 3.2Ghz cores
- ATI 500MHz graphics processor
- 48 billion shader operations per second
- 512Mb GDDR3 RAM of memory
- Removable and upgradeable 20Gb hard drive
- Three USB ports
- Windows Media Extender built-in
- Support for DVD-video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD+R, CD-DA, CD-R, WMA CD, MP3 CD, Jpeg photo CD
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
A nice commercial DVD about the Xbox from MS (btw he's the webmaster of an Xbox site here in Belgium) and just to make sure that he can play the DVD... MS kindly provided a Samung portable DVD player... and after that we'll all wonder why the Xbox gets good reviews...
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Whoa! I actually felt the 30 Minutes of my life pull from my body after watching that. I don't know which is worse, That Show, The VGA's or G4.
The 360 definetly looks a little better when there's people standing next to it so you can get a idea what the size of it is. I'm also intreged by the Phantom sounding Marketplace that they talked little about. That's about all you got out of the "Pimp My Crap band and gamers you never heard of with Frodo Baggins and oh. Here's the Xbox 360 show"
Perfect Dark Zero better be in an alpha state, because I've seen Better Graphics in Quake II. And the frame rate it appeared to be getting in the "competition" was worse than what the N64 Perfect Dark used to get. It had to be somewhere around 2-5FPS (which is probably why they kept the camera's off the screens as much as possible). The other previews for games looked promising. Specificially the Project Gotham and the game that kinda had beefed up Doom III Graphics (missed the name).
The Ourcolony.net preview in five minutes gave more infomation about the XBox 360 then the entire 30 minutes on MTV. Frankly the power that is in this thing, especially considering it's size, is staggering. 1TFLOPS of processing power (if that number is true) is nothing to sneeze at. Especially when you start imagining a Beowulf Cluster of these and just 100 of them have a good chance of getting you ranked in the top500 list.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
The official detailed info and specs for the xbox 360 can be found at http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/factsheet.htm/ and http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/peripheralsfacts heet.htm/
The music visualiser in the Xbox 360 is being done by Jeff Minter, as a massively enhanced version of the engine that was going to drive Unity. ;)
... and we all know that gamers are statistically savvy about things like home decor.
How do you think its "now much in graphics"?
The 10MB is EDRAM, (just call it cache:) ), and the gpu also has the 20GB/s access to the 512MB main memory.
Plus it has 48 Shader pipelines (although not comparable with cureent GPU numbers because this are unified shaders), so it should be al least GF6800 level.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Not much of a GPU? it has 10MB of EDRAM, and it has 256GB/sec of bandwidth in to it! That's ALOT of bandwidth. No, it's fucking HUGE amount of bandwidth! And in addition, it has the regural GDDR3 at it's disposal as well.
And it has 48 pipelines running at 500Mhz. Current top of the line PC-GPU's have 16 pipelines running at around 500Mhz. So I think it's pretty safe to say that the GPU on this this is a real monster!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I don't know what they've done technically. But the biggest issue is the increased emphasis on Xbox Live. If modding your Xbox means you can't use live it's not going to be a very attractive prospect to most gamers.
The problem with the PC platform is that software is designed to run on 'most' PCs out there. If you've got some bleeding edge number cruncher, then you can probably stick up the resolution, have nicer textures and all manner of extra little bits of gilding - but the basic game running underneath it is still constrained by the weakest PC in their target market.
The 'nice' thing about consoles (and there are many nice things) is that code can be optimized for the hardware (compare a game running on an Xbox with the PC version running on a machine of the same spec) and that everybody has the same base. For example the Xbox360 appears to be able to support a massive chunk of simple raw processing - you can have a game that has complex physics as an integral part - you know it'll run on all machines. If you tried it on low spec PC it just wouldn't run (and I suspect a high-spec PC isn't going to be showing up the 360 any time soon).
... I recall reading that the reason they're calling it "Xbox 360" is because "Xbox 2" would sound less sophisticated than the Playstation 3. Since these two consoles will be duking it out for a while, M$ didn't want to give Sony any advantage. Well that's all well and good, but here's my question: What are they going to call the next iteration of Xbox? They'll always be faced with the dilemma of being one step behind the Playstation. Xbox 3 vs. PS4, you get the idea. How are the going to solve that problem? "Xbox 720," anyone?
10100111001
Everyone can squawk about hardware specs, looks, controllers (which are nothing new at all, ooh wireless!), Media capabilities... NO MENTION OF GAMES ANYWHERE! Anyone notice this? Give me a B.S. vision of the games to come that will be totally amazing, which will never actually release anyhow, as consoles USED to do to promote a freakin GAMING console!
Nothing can be said for the games at all and this is supposed to be a gaming console. Sony and MS have missed the mark by miles with these "next gen" efforts. No real gamer cares one bit about processors or a stupid video camera attachment or even a hard drive really... notice how well the eye toy and PS2 hard drive sold? What makes anyone think people are willing to pay through the nose for a console that supports technology people have no interest in? If there is no interest today, nothing is going to change by next year, in fact there will be less enthusiasm by then.
This will not sell 100 million as is stated by MS, I don't believe the PS3 will even sell 100 million... people are turning away from this rush to produce expensive hardware with no new games and ideas to back them and short life cycles, note the PSP and DS not exactly selling like hotcakes. I can't wait to laugh at the massive losses incurred this round in consoles, Nintendo will also be laughing all the way to the bank by not taking huge losses on hardware and focusing on ease of use and innovative content.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Think about the amount of time game developers would have to spend just to take full advantage of the graphics (forgetting about gameplay).
No kiddin'. It was years before PS1 games were taking full advantage of the hardware. Same with PS2 games; compare R&C Up Your Aresenal to Rayman or any of the other early PS2 games, or event the first R&C. Big, big difference. The good thing is, it keeps the console fresh.
The XBox wasn't that big of deal because it was essentially a PC. The difference between Halo and Halo 2 wasn't really that great. With the XBox 360 being a different beast, there might be a huge difference between the first run games and the later games, as people learn to take advantage of the hardware.
Maybe.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Boy! That's just what us gamers wanted to hear! A new gaming console, but it's not just for games! wiippeee! Yahooo! Yehawww!
How in the hell is this box supposed to sell for less than $500, even after Microsoft's subsidy? I mean, holy crap. I think either of these things is going on:
- Those aren't your father's IBM 970s. How much they bear in relation to the 64bit PPCs shipping in Macs I think remains to be seen.
- Microsoft is going to untold lengths to subsidize these boxes, in the expectation that they'll make it up with Live subscriptions and game licensing. Like cellphone providers.
- Microsoft could have seriously missed the market. I'm sure they've done extensive market research; they're known for that. Even so, I have hard time believing that anyone is going to pay >$500 for a console. Maybe they know that the the Sony PS3 is going to be $500 too, so they feel safe in developing this kinda thing? Anyways, if it it's more than $150 more than the PS3, I think we can kiss it goodbye, no matter how much it rules.
If this ships with three real CPUs that are mostly similar to the ones that Apple uses, for less than $500, lots of Apple fanbois, myself included, are going to wonder wtf is up with that, and why Apple can't do the same. I think there is still a lot that remains to be seen.--
$tar -xvf
Windows NT originally had a kernel that ran on PPC, so this really isn't a huge jump for them.
.Net CLR.
PPC can switch big/little endian, and since the low-level bootstrapping and HAL code already existed, it probably wasn't a huge deal to build XNA (this is their new XBox/Win gaming dev platform) compilers for x86, PPC, x64, and maybe even
Nintendo is also using PowerPC, I believe they're using 4x 2.5 GHz
XBox games don't use a full 3D abstraction layer, like many DirectX or OpenGL games do. They are directly targeted (and optimized) for the Nvidia GPU, and the firmware and GPU compiler technology for the first XBox's graphics system probably belongs to Nvidia.
After such a big embarassing loss to ATI on the X360, it is highly unlikely that Nvidia would agree to license their technology for inclusion in a software emulator on the new platform.
Interestingly enough, MSFT has made some acquisitions over the last couple of years that point to building such emulation (VirtualPC, JIT scode conversion technologies), but it might be for naught if there is a legal barrier on the graphics chip.
I know, sucks.
Chris Morris is one of the better writers out there. He stay's pretty connected to gamers via the shacknews comments community.
This does differ from what can be done with 'a regular wired ethernet.' How many people have their wireless networks hooked up to their living room entertainment center? To be able to do something like that without 3rd party software or hardware mods is nice.
I disagree... GTA:SA is the perfect example of a game that's too ambitious for it's hardware; it would have been much better suited to a next-gen console. The graphics were grainy (although the textures were OK), jaggies all over the place, and you get some serious performance issues in key parts of the game. Don't get me wrong, the game itself is pretty good and a blast, but the lackluster hardware performance (especially texture load time! Driving over not-yet-rendered bridges is weird) seriously hampered my enjoyment of the game.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
What? ok... we obviously play games for different reasons.
... I play to waste time.
BTW the exact reason for the "not yet rendered" [it is actually rendering btw] is CD load time. The model for the city is in memory but not the textures [they're rotated out LRU style]. So if you drive super fast you're going faster than the CD can access/load the data [seems odd]. Thus the game engine just renders transparent surfaces.
If you drive fast enough you can occasionally see the green backing of the interstate signs blank and just have the white wireframe text up... it's funny.
Anyways, I find the game a sufficiently pleasant waste of time even with that shortcomming.
When I look at games like the old Splinter cells [chaos theory is good imo] they're nice looking games that are way too hard to play. I don't play for work
In GTA I can hop on a quadbike and go on a murder spree. That's not only fun but it's educational in case I have todo it in real life.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
It's not blacked out. It's black. That's a custom video port, into which you plug whatever custom adapter/cable you purchase seperately. Exactly like the current Xbox. Expect COAX, Composite (included in the box), S-video, Component, and hopefully DVI/HDMI.
7. Be sure and mention Japanese and European sales numbers. If you aren't sure what those sales numbers are, go ahead and make something up. Estimate low, most people will believe you.
;)
According to this http://game-science.com/news/001076.html/ article, the XBOX sold a whopping 169 units in Japan last week, and 6,529 for the whole year. At the other end of the spectrum, the Nintendo DS sold 67,863 units last week. Clearly the XBOX is not doing very well in Japan.
*** Disclaimer - I own a xb0KZzzz
It is interesting, isn't it, that nobody is now using Intel who is not locked into it by a commitment to legacy code? All 3 new game machines are using PowerPC processors.
And I wouldn't be surprised if the OS of XBox360 is based on Windows. Perhaps Microsoft will follow Apple's example with the 68K to PowerPC transition and release a PowerPC based Windows PC that runs old applications in emulation.
After all, they already own VirtualPC...
what percentage of people playes PS1 games on their PS2? If you upgrade from your existing console, why not keep your old console around?
Consoles break, and the makers eventually stop production. Once your PS1 bites the big one, you still have a PS2 to play your existing library of PS1 games (except possibly for Tomba! and about a dozen others that Sony couldn't get 100 percent working). Or where can I buy a new Super NES?
And if you're new to the console, why would you buy old games?
Unlike the Final Fantasy compilations, not all classic games are re-released for all consoles. Where can I buy, say, Tecmo Bowl for GameCube?
Of course, Apple and Sony could band together.
If Apple and Sony BMG were to enter an agreement with any level of exclusivity, then EMI, Universal, and Warner would feel left out.