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Getting All 1,700 Parts of the Xbox 360 to Market
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Microsoft is hoping its Xbox 360 will further the company's goal to 'link the Web and entertainment of all forms in consumers' living rooms,' the Wall Street Journal reports, but 'one manufacturing misstep -- a shortage of graphics chips or a recalled hard drive -- could derail those ambitions and drag Microsoft's unprofitable videogame business even deeper into the red.' The WSJ traces the 1,700 parts that go into the device through the supply chain -- from two southern China factories, Rotterdam, and on to Toledo, Memphis, and ultimately, retailers in the U.S. -- and looks at what could go wrong along the way."
Granted I havn't read TFA, but how is this any different from any other relatively complex peice of hardware? And why would it fsck up MS?
Really, so if some hardware in the nex Xbox breaks or is recalled it will derail microsoft - would most other companies not be affected? What the?
I was recently in an IRC channel with basehead (who is an old tracking god, and now works for a video game company and is currently working on one of the 360 launch titles) who said:
The XBox360 does not have any standard stereo output. It either uses the Dolby digital, or it downsamples 5 channels together as 'mono'.
So anyone without a Dolby sound system is going to hear complete crap. Maybe this will change, but it will be launched this way. This sounds to me about as bad as a soundcard recall.
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Probably, but they more than make it up with game licensing/royalties. Just like inkjet printers...cheap as hell, but ink is worth gold to sellers.
OF #12 TORX SCREWS" sources at Micrsoft reveal...
Most things are only made of one or two parts with a very simple supply chain. In fact, the computer industry's previous champion of complexity was the Apple Macintosh which consisted of only two parts: 1 mouse button, and 1 everything else.
Actually this is an area that I hope M$ does well, for the same reason that I dislike their behavior in the OS market. If the Xbox does well and puts some pressure on Sony then hopefully features will be improved and prices driven down for both competitors.
Why would they expect failure now?
Microsoft *DOES* produce other devices and they know the manufacturing/shop floor management. (They run facilities and design the software that manages them)
I think MS knows what they're getting into.
But doesn't this hold true for all cutting-edge devices that rely on a single configuration to work? Dell to a degree are lucky because their inventory is built from off the shelf components which can be interchanged at short notice to give working product, but if you look at shortages of devices such as the Sony PSP, you find that there's a trade-off between time-to-market and component availability.
The upshot of this initial position is that over time the component costs come down, meaning a larger profit margin (or in the case of the X-box, a smaller loss), eventually leading to a machine redesign to minimise component count (look at the original Playstation configurations for examples of that), and eventually reducing the physical plastics cost my changing the form factor (PS and PS2).
Microsoft have chosen an interesting path with the 360; a combination of off-the-shelf components that are almost obsolete in retail channels such as the 20GB drive combined with unique items such as the processor and GPU. It's a neat strategy that reminds me of the way the Commodore Amiga was designed; custom chips for the guts of the machine supported by OTS components to keep costs down. It should be an interesting machine to watch, my only hope being that they aren't daft enough to supercede it too quickly.
Actually they don't fully make up for all the costs, as TFA points out they've lost 4 billion dollars so far.
The short answer is yes, it will run many, but not all XB1 games.
For the long answer, read Microsoft's own compatibility list.
They are supposed to make it up in game sales. In reality, Microsoft is losing money on the Xbox franchise as a whole.
That's right, we got the rights to all the components. That includes the CPU, wireless hardware, the bridges and even the GPU. So, if anyone along the way in the supply chain screws up by providing flakey hardware or limiting supply, we get a new supplier.
If you look at the Anandtech review where they disassemble the 360, you'll notice every component is branded with the Microsoft logo!
A breathless journalist discovers that putting a product thru manufacturing requires coordination of lots of small parts, from many different vendors and countries. Journalist also learns that a screw-up in any of these parts will cause a PROBLEM!
Here is a newsflash for Journalists: The xbox is trivial to manufacture compared to other products. Go tour a plant making large Xerox machines, or a Toyota factory, if you want to see something which actually has a challange to it.
This article seems more like an ad for what is in reality a small, cheap, and disposable PC with some ductwork in it, a technology that was used on mainframes 20 years ago. This smells like an attempt to make people believe in "genius which is xbox"
I think there should be a new rule for journalists (and for school teachers as well): You are not allowed to write/teach about something technical (math, science, engineering) until you have spent time doing it professionaly. No more "how they build the widget" articles unless you are a manufacturing engineer with factory experience. Cut down of some of this fluff.
Bill must really think videogames are super-important; they keep losing billions, but Microsoft just keeps on going back for more punishment.
..... with their natural advantages in productivity software.
So you think the XBox is about games? Hell no. It is about control of the living room. It plays movies, tranfers music from a PC/Mp3 player, plays them, you can send messages to people and maybe even more. It runs a custom Windows 2000 kernel too, for the Power architecture.
It seems so odd that they'd use their monopoly on desktop productivity software to try to build a videogame empire: history says that
So what do you gauge from this? It means the real intent is to be the centre of our digital lifestyle. They make the hardware and the software. Like Apple. Does it get better than that??
The device is pretty cheap, compared to a computer yet more powerful than any out there. Someday MS might decide it can also be used to write emails, create Word documents, play games, and anything you might use a computer today. (And who knows, they might already have word running on it!)
I dare you to disagree!
Life is just a conviction.
You're right. The XBox division has been turning a profit for 2 years. Unfortunately, net loss is still around $4 billion from 2001 to now. My understanding is they didn't even expect to see a net profit for any quarter until later. Given how much an XBox 360 is going to cost and how much it costs to make, it would seem that MS is still going to be dumping hardware in favor of trying to make up for it with game sales. So, I'd expect that hole to get bigger. But yea, they're probably post a net profit in some later quarter when hardware sales go down.
...
But, here's an interesting misconception from the grandparent:
It seems so odd that they'd use their monopoly on desktop productivity software to try to build a videogame empire:
Microsoft isn't trying to make a video game empire. As has been stated many times, Microsoft is more interested in being a home electronics empire. The XBox was just a stepping stone, with support for games and DVD playing (two places in Sony's turf). The XBox 360 seems a further extension of that. And Microsoft's push to get its media format on both new generation video discs only further cements its long term survival. It wouldn't suprise me if Microsoft's long term goal is to take over one of the MPAA companies or to simply join. After all, what better way to form a long-term monopoly than to not only own the software for every system in use but also the content, in an information age?
In the end, the XBox is merely an experiment of diversification. If it doesn't work out, they'll try something else. One thing is for certain: they're going to make damn sure to use their $40 billion to get a good footing in some other industry. Growth in desktop (and even server, assuming they ever get higher penetration rates) computing is a dead-end street. The only way for Microsoft to survive in the long-term, and keep their stockholders happy, is to be involved in a variety of industries. If Microsoft's business practices weren't so scummy, I'd be trully excited about what sort of things Microsoft can do by embrace and extending all varities of otherwise unrelated activities.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Which was a one-off spike attributed to Halo 2 that even their PR droids said wouldn't last and they wouldn't be profitable before 2007.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Doesn't Microsoft lose money on every X-box sold in the first place?
More accuratly, Microsoft loses money on every machine made. More if the machien is unsold.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
"Even the the original XBox could be hacked into such a system, suggesting that MS deliberately crippled their new console."
If you want to do something with the 360 for which it wasn't designed, and if that something turns out not to work, then it isn't a matter of the device being "crippled."
You don't say your car is crippled when you drive it into a lake and find that it doesn't float quite as well as you were hoping. You just get out (if you can), walk up to shore, and say, "Hey - guess it's not one of those floaty car things."
- Rory [Microsoft Employee] | Free dirt: neopoleon.com
What is claimed here seems extremely unlikely for a number of reasons.
/.ers seem to think. They are well aware of the number of people with stereo-only setups, and would have no reason to alienate them.
t connected.htm that's the cable page for the 360. Notice that all the cables there have stereo anologue audio outputs (the red and white RCA cables). Why would they include stereo outputs, if the sound out was only monaural?
/. it's entirely possible.
1) When you have a hardwre sound processor, it's no more difficult to mix to 2 channels than to 1 or any other combination supported. You'll notice that cards like the Audigy can change speaker configuration on the fly with no problems. Thus it would make no sense to deliperatly handicap the system in this manner.
2) Microsoft is not stupid, contrary to what many
3) A quick look at Microsoft's site reveals stereo outputs on all the cables. Have a look at http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/accessories/ge
So I'm going to guess that orignal poster is wrong. I can see one of three situations as to why:
1) The person he was talking to was not who he believed it to be. The number of pretenders on IRC is beyond count. It is easily possible someone was lying about who they were, and had enough knowledge to make it seem feasable to the uninformed.
2) The composer may be misinformed. Being good at composing and tracking music does not make one a sound expert. He may well misunderstand the capabilityes of the X-box.
3) The orignal poster may be lying about the conversation. Given the anti-MS attitudes on
Now of course I haven't had hand on an Xbox 360 so I cannot confirm for certianty that there is stereo output available, but I have a hard time believing there isn't. It wouldn't make sense, and all evidence suggests there is.
Also, even in the extremely unlikely event it was lacking, stereo folks aren't out of luck. All recievers made any time receantly that I'm aware of will happily downconvert 5.1 to stereo if requested. On mine, I simply push the "stereo" button. It disengages all the surround speakers and sub, and mixes everything to the front left and right speakers. The source cab be 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 DD or DTS, it doesn't matter, it will make it stereo at the push of a button.
Either way I would say you should probably not believe something that some random guy claims that some other guy on IRC said.
That, and less is often more. Look at the iPod. Part of its success must be that Apple left out almost anything that wasn't directly involved in its primary function, playing music... the end result is that its a better music player, because you're not being confused by fifteen other buttons and all the features included to perform other functions, e.g. PDA, cell phone, digital camera.
"I pick mine up in two days. Christ, I'm so excited."
Like Christ gives a fuck!
So why restrict movie support on the device? Why can it play movies from DVD but not its own harddrive? Why must movies be streamed from another machine running Microsoft software? It makes no technical sense whatsoever. The only sense it makes is from a marketing perspective - a full-featured XBox 360 would have killed Windows Media Centre stone dead. After all, who is going to buy some crappy TV / PC hybrid to do what they can do with a regular TV and Xbox costing less? Thus the XBox 360 has been deliberately crippled with these artificial dependencies to ensure that both products have a future.
It is crippled, pure and simple. It could be a fully fledged media player, but Microsoft have chosen not to make it so for reasons that have nothing to do with what is best for the XBox.