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Under the Hood of the Xbox 360
An anonymous reader writes "IBM DeveloperWorks is running a behind the design story for the making of the Xbox 360. The 360 has but a single chip with 165 million transistors for it's CPU " From the article: "This chip is in fact a three-way symmetric multiprocessor design. The three PowerPC cores are identical, except that they are physically reflected through the X and Y axis. Each of the CPU cores is a specialized PowerPC chip with a VMX128 extension related to (and partially compatible with) the VMX instructions in the G4 and G5 CPUs. The three CPU cores share a 1MB Level2 cache. Each processor has 32KB each of data and instruction Level1 cache. The chip's front-side bus/physical interface has a 21.6GB/second bandwidth, and runs at 5.4GHz."
With all the power they could have come up with a nicer crash screen :)
Visit my site @ http://www.madtorrent.com
Hrm... I thought this title was held for the Phantom Console and Nuke Dukem Forever?
What is up with all the posts that link to IBM.com?
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
I haven't been doing microelectronics since my university days (over 10 years ago) and the block named "testing/debug" intrigued me quite a bit: exactly what test/debug functions do you put on CPUs nowadays? do they contain burned in test cases? some sort of programmable logic to get access to internal CPU states? I'd definitely be interested in learning more about this.
-- the cake is a lie
No, it really isn't. The original XBox was. The 360 has quite a lot of custom technology inside it.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
Rather not, otherwise APple would have put it in one of the later models of the iMac or PowerMac series.
Are you blind or retarded? To start with, I would like to know what shelf you find a 3 core, custom powerpc cpu.
What's the deal with the tiny cache? My ten year old HyperSparc has more cache than that... You'd think that when dealing with high throughput graphics applications, a larger cache would make far more of a difference than a few hundred MHz either way.
PowerPC's mainly an IBM-designed and promoted architecture, borne from the Apple-IBM-Motorola alliance.
Apple are simply one of IBM and Motorola's (now Freescale) customers.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
Actually, that was the Xbox. The Xbox 360 had a custom developed CPU and GPU. Show me the shelf where you could find these. The only parts which could be construed as off-the-shelf are the DVD drive and the detachable hard disk.
Where's the 3 core Mac G5 at that speed holy sizzle!
Apple does not make PPC cpus. IBM and Freescale do. Apple is switching to Intel, and they only chose PPC now because it performs better at the moment, at least in this configuration.
I am Spartacus
A year ago this article would have been fascinating. Now it hardly seems to contribute anything new -- unless you've been sleeping for a year.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It has ZERO problems running older games, that is, the ones it actually will play. It won't run all the older ones, just the ones they have emulation for, not every legacy game has an emulation config file.
But when they do run, I hear the run fine.
But for the custom motherboard, custom CPU, custom GPU i guess
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Didn't RTFA, about the design of the custom processor, did you?
IBM manufactures PowerPC chips. So these are IBM CPUs, not "Apple CPUs." Interestingly enough, Apple is now switching to Intel chips, and will no longer be using IBM's PowerPC chips.
I thought Power PC was the mac? Why did Microsoft pick apple CPU's for their Xbox? Is Intel falling out of favor?
The Power architecture is an IBM design intended for use in their large server machines. About the time that Motorola was struggling with producing better/faster 68000 chips, IBM designed a cut-down version of the Power chip called "PowerPC". Apple adopted PowerPC from IBM, thus leaving Motorola behind. However, Motorola realized that they were losing big business and licensed the PowerPC architecture for manufacture. Eventually, Motorola couldn't keep up and Apple started using IBM for the higher end chips. Thus Apple now uses a combination of manufacturers to get their PowerPC chips from.
The chip itself has nothing to do with Apple other than being their preferred platform.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Actually, I was thinking the same thing, and not joking. Wouldn't it be cool to have a $400CDN 3-way compute server on your LAN? You'd have to get around whatever DRM they have to lock you out, and the memory's a little tight, but for compute bound jobs it'd rock.
So let me get this straight: MS is using the Mac processors in their console? I wonder how sweetly it would run Mac OS X...
PowerPC != MAC PROCESSOR!
It is a IBM chip more information can be read here
From the article "The result of these various requirements was the PowerPC (Performance Computing) specification. Everyone seems to have won:
* IBM got the single-chip CPU they were looking for
* Apple got to use one of the most powerful RISC CPUs on the market, and massive press buzz due to IBM's name
* Motorola got an up-to-date RISC chip, and help with design methodology from IBM"
Microsoft went to ATI and IBM in order to "own" the designs for the graphics/processor chips. This way MS is able to get the parts fabbed out without having to get approval from ATI/IBM. (This is from memory of what I've read in the past). The CPU and graphics/bridge design in the XBox are owned and by Intel/Nvidia (respectively). MS had to buy the parts from them, which costs them more in the long run than being able to get their own produced.
Correct me if I'm wrong...
Microsoft also has a history of buying out top software companies and pushing the rest out of business through anti-competitive practices. Sony at least keeps their competition afloat.
Good point. Atleast Sony only puts root kits on their customers computers, which can cause them to be infested with spyware and who-knows-what-else.
No, Microsoft is using the old Mac processors in their console. Apple has decided to move to Intel now, and so PowerPC will be phased out of Macs (eventually, when they get some Intel macs on the market).
The PlayStation 3 will be made by Sony, a company which distributes software that renders a personal computer quite unstable and open to attack by malfeasant users from across the Internet.
The Xbox 360, on the other hand, is made by Microsoft.
The choice is yours.
For more information, click here.
Not too well; I think it is highly a specialized G5. OTOH, there was that article some time ago about a guy that was fired from MSFT for taking a photo of a bunch of G5 Powermacs being delivered to the Redmond campus.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
And Apple is using Intel.. (the room is spinning)
End.
I guess Wine has to be kicked into high gear because how can one actually advocate buying any Sony product? Couple that with a MS aversion and gaming for linux geeks is a difficult issue. I'm not joking here, I'm serious. I like to play games sometimes so I have a PS2 -- I really don't want to support either MS or Sony. They both suck.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
You forgot one for PS3...
11. Hardware rootkit!
My George Foreman grill gave out the other night, so I popped out the 360 so I could fry up an egg! So, I guess the tri-core PPC would explain why it cooked so fast. :D
1. The Next Generation Now
I wouldn't say it's the next generation now if all the stores are sold out until March (which is right around the PS3's launch time...).
It's nice of Microsoft to hype of video games during the buying season, though. Right behind all the "sold out till xmas" posters for Xbox360s are racks of Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, and so forth...
I expected gnomes.
Obviously very testy gnomes
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
A beowulf Heater of these... :)
Which is about as interresting as hyping Intel's 4GHz pentiums.
No one gives a flying fuck about the raw performances of the machine, high definition is not for consoles anyway (hint: my computer yields above twice "HD"), blu-ray blows (not the least because it uses Java as a "mandatory part of the standard).
Three things really matter for consoles:
Now please take your PS-fanboyism back to the Sony board, the numbers will speak when the PS3 is released, until PS3 is live it's mere FUD and vapor wall.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
So from that I can conclude that the only reason to buy a PS3 is that it's a graphical upgrade over a PS2 and can support 7 controllers? Whoop-de-doo.
I'll ignore the fact that most of your points are (a) unconfirmed or (b) simply false, because I have better things to do than argue with some kid who, by the time the PS3 actually comes out in the US might have saved up enough pocket money to buy one.
Oh and you forgot the number one reason to own a PS3 - comes with a free rootkit!
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Perhaps you missed the memo where Macs will soon carry a "Intel Inside" sticker.
Incidentally, this means that when the XBox 3 rolls along, MS doesn't have to go through the nightmare of begging its component manufacturers for a license to emulate the 360 hardware (which seems to have been the major roadblock to Xbox emulation on the 360).
IBM makes PowerPC, not Apple. If it was able to run OSX (possibly), it would run it about as sweetly as any normal to high end Apple machine.
Oh come on. We had the exact same link posted before...
Dupe!
(I can't find the link now because the search page doesn't load on this IE 6.0 P.o.S. computer!)
The hip way to get your IP. No ads, ever.
But that microsoft and IBM can develop such a beast as part of a console with a $300.00 pricepoint.
I'm not sure any of the AC's or MS haters in here have ever seen a 360 or played one yet. It's a miracle of a machine for the price you pay.
so wait... we've got a Microsoft operating system (whatever the Xbox 360 OS is) running on what is commonly considered Apple-type processors *and* we'll soon have an Apple OS running on top of what is commonly considered Microsoft-type processors?
What's next, dogs and cats living together?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
"PS3 will have better graphical performance, up to 2x. High definition. Blu-ray. Up to 7 wireless controllers - those actually mean something. Xbox 360, will just have improved graphics over the original Xbox."
Who says the PS3 will have two times the graphical performace? Speculation does, perhaps.
The Xbox 360 is high definition out of the box.
The Xbox 360 does NOT use proprietary disc formats that can, at the vendor or manufacturers will, brick your box.
WHO NEEDS SEVEN CONTROLLERS ON ONE BOX!? Jesus. What average Joe with a TV is going to be able to support seven players? Maybe the rare Super Smash Bros. style game, but nothing big.
The Xbox 360 has several things the PS3 does NOT have:
1) Xbox Live. The Playstation 3 has no unified online service at all and has no plans to. Xbox Live is an awesome way to play your video games online. One fee. No ten bucks a month here, five bucks a month there... $50 a year.
2) Time. Xbox 360 is here now whereas the PS3 is going to offer comparable hardware and games in a year.
3) Developer backing. Bungie and Rare are both developing for the Xbox 360, and that's only naming two big name developers. Also Final Fantasy will be coming to Xbox 360 too. EA is also signed on.
The question is why NOT buy an Xbox 360? Would you rather wait and get less for the same, or maybe more, amount of money?
-Eric Smith
That's completely wrong, the XBox 360 chip and the Power970 lines, although both being "PowerPC" chips are actually extremely different.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Must be this "reversible computing" I keep hearing about...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
4: Sony, being the #1 home entertainment company, will have that as well obviously.
Sony, being the #1 home entertainment company, will probably have a rootkit included with their console as well. We all know how much Sony loves their customers, and does everything to help them and not just make a profit.
Much like Duffman, Sony promises lots of things. There were a lot of features that were supposed to be available on the PS2 that just never ended up in the final system. Not wanting a 360 because it's not that much an improvement over the current XBox is good reasoning. Not wanting a 360 because you just bought a new console a couple of years ago is good reasoning. Not wanting a 360 because of all the things Sony claims will be on the PS3 is just silly. We don't know the "Top 10 reasons for a PS3" because we don't know exactly what the PS3 is yet.
Also, while the Revolution's controller does pose some unique possibilities for gameplay, it's only a controller. Any of the modern gaming consoles could implement such a controller. If it's that big a deal, expect MS and Sony to have their own versions by the end of 2006.
Are there any reasons to get an Xbox 360 over PS3?
Well considering you can't buy a PS3 yet, if you want a new console why would you want to wait a year or more?
Even forgetting about the Sony rootkit debacle (although it was the nail in their coffin for me), I'd go with the 360 over the PS3 largely because of the online features. I have a PS2 now and every time I get a new online game, I have to go through another signup process and then, depending upon the age of the game, the publisher might not even be running a game server anymore. After that experience, I'm all for a *unified* online experience that brings together lots of gamers from lots of disciplines.
The fact that I can buy games through Live Arcade is a plus...I love the convenience of Steam and this should be at least as promising. In fact, the first thing I'm going to buy is Geometry Wars before even buying anything in a store.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
It's not, it would at best be a heavily stripped down G5, if it were from the Power4 line (as G5's Power970 comes from). It's not. IBM has at least 2 or 3 quite different PowerPC cores from which it builds PowerPC "custom", the Power4 line (that yielded Power970 chips) would be the high end, extremely complex and powerful chips. Xbox360 comes from a far less powerful and complex PPC line, but one that's been heavily tuned for parallelization and high frequencies.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Give it a few more weeks, it will.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
It's fast.
Little endian, or Big endian?
So what you are really saying is that this isnt exactly off the shelf after all ;)
Long answer; yes with an if...
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Neither of those points should have any impact whatsoever on whether to buy an xbox360 or a PS3. If you like playing console games, both systems are sweet. If you have to choose one, it's probably because of a game avaliable on one system and not the other.
"I guess I just dont see anything too interesting..."
I would imagine that's because your anus is obstructing your view.
"Derp de derp."
When will we see a motherboard for this processor? I would love to be aboe to build a system around the Xbox 360s processor. It should be a wonderful Linux box!!!
*sigh*
People, think a little. Sony is a mega corp, and has its fingers in a shit load of businesses. The music business is separate from the Playstation business, and in fact, the Playstation business is supposed to be the biggest breadwinner.
The music division screwed up.
If the Playstation division continues to be successful, which division's vision will win out?
The division that got the world steamed at them, or the division that brought you Linux to the PS2?!
In other words, you want to *support* the Playstation division, while giving the music division the (figuratively) bird.
-B0fh
It wouldn't, it's not designed to run the kind of tasks you run on a regular computer.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
The PS2 Emotion Engine has the same design philosophy: choosing to do small memory/cache in favor for very wide bandwidth. It makes for some interesting programming juggling and kung-fu since the data comes straight from memory dumped to the graphics so nothing is cached. The results speak for themselves since the PS2 is the oldest and the most dated performance the fact that the performance is extremely dynamic and probably *still not maxed*. People are still pulling tricks that no one could predict the PS2 to do. I suspect we wouldn't have games on the PS2 like GT4 or the beautiful Shadow of the Collosius if it had been made with more cache yet small bandwidth.
I'll agree with you about the GameCube. If you don't really care too much about having top of the line stuff, or having certain exclusive games, and just want a machine to play a few video games once in a while, then the GC is the way to go. It's cheap, reliable, and has a ton of really good games that don't require you to spend your whole life playing them just to be able to enjoy them.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The PlayStation 3 will be made by Sony, a company which distributes software that renders a personal computer quite unstable and open to attack by malfeasant users from across the Internet.
The XBox 360 is be made by Microsoft, a company which distributes software that renders a personal computer quite unstable and open to attack by malfeasant users from across the Internet.
From what you're saying, the two will, in practice, be neck and neck (because reading between the lines, Sony is making a lot of promises, but we don't know if the reality will match. I didn't like the way you airily dismissed MS's online features either, that strikes me as increasingly important. Hard to find a PC game without online features these days.)
One's an abusive monopolist in the computer software field, the other is an abusive content producer whose latest trick was to sneak malware into the PCs of its customers.
Nintendo's always produced perfectly servicable consoles. I'm sure the Revolution will be a valid contender. It might, like the Gamecube, end up in third place, but I've yet to meet anyone who bought a Gamecube who was actually unhappy with it. The PS2 and X-Box never got that kind of approval. I'll wait for the Revolution. If it's "Good enough", it's good enough. Know what I mean?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
But it goes up to eleven!?!?!
get a nintendo
Agreeing with you... minor thing to further support your argument:
Xbox360 supports HD out of the box. Today. In stores.
Yet again, no it wouldn't, the Xbox360 CPU is extremely different from Macs' Power970 chips, they're not designed towards the same goals and the Xbox360 CPU doesn't come from the Power4 core line
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
The graphics for each system are amazing, no question.
The difference will be the 360's online abilities. With friend lists, friend finders, instant messaging, competitive smaller 'arcadelike' games, free trailors/demos, etc Sony is in a world of trouble.
When will IBM be pimping these out in blade format? They already have JS20's, which are dual PPC 970 based systems running at 2.2GHz. These new chips are running 3 3.2GHZ cores on the same CPU. That means that with the JS20 form factor, you could get 6 cores altogether (assuming you don't melt the thing first). A rack of 14 of these would mean that you would have a 84 CPU cluster in single Chassis, and IBM puts 6 chassis on a rack, so that would be 504 CPUs on a single rack.
It makes their current PPC blade option look kind of weak...
*Clap clap* I don't like either company. I'm gonna buy one based off the GAMES. If I wanted the absolute best hardware, then I would stay with the PC. But really, flashy graphics only hold my attention for the first couple of hours. If I'm seriously into a game, I turn the graphics WAY down for maximum performance. Actually, the one with better online support is another factor. It seems the Xbox Live is just leaps and bounds above the other services.
I'm sorry, but when one division of a company does something with which I disagree, all subsidiaries and divisions past and present make The List.
When I visit the store (NOT Wal-Mart, KMart, Target, Whole Foods, Kroger, Food Lion, Stop & Shop, or Pathmark), I make sure to take my accordion-style folder (NOT a Mead-brand folder) into my car (NOT a GM car, NOT a Volkswagen, NOT a Toyota, NOT a Honda, NOT a Mitsubishi) as I shop for soup (NOT Campbell's brand) and soy milk (NOT 8th Continent brand).
It's simply common sense.
I agree with most of your points, but you can't use Bungie and Rare as examples of "developer backing." Microsoft Game Studios owns them both. You might as well say, "Nintendo has great developer support - Nintendo is developing for them!"
Now of course, this works for Nintendo. They have a reputation for putting out nigh-perfect titles that seems to win most people over. But even Nintendo seems to be having trouble impressing the hardcore crowd with their first party titles. Rare and Bungie? They seem to have gotten worse since they became part of the Microsoft branding engine.
Of this architecture. First of all, the chip has 3 cores, and each core can handle 2 instructions, and each instruction can get to 5 processing branches.
Also it can handle 2 threads for its vmx engine and fpu engine, this is a LOT of data crunching power...
They have setup special instruction for matrix operations...
I wonder, what would be the processing power of this chip, used for sciences data crunching?
This chip is awsome...
What could be hope for the 7 core chip for ps3, but, I think the 7core ps3 chips is rather different. At xbox 360 you have 3 general purpose power cores, and at the 7 core ps3 architecure, each core is for different tasks? Rigth? Worng?
Â_Â
Not true. The little shield means Windows is protected. Mine is green. I bet yours is yellow or red.
For more information, click here.
They're working on it. IIRC it's called Free60 or something like it.
Not _yet_ ;)
Give it time...
You are all a bunch of idots.
Swifts satire involved a controversy over which end of the egg you consumed it from.
Myself, I've always been and SHALL always be, a Little Endian!
AFAIK the processor isn't owned by IBM (IIRC in the photos you can see "Microsoft" on the chip) and not all processors are created equal. I suspect a 970MP would be faster for almost all applications.
Probably not very. Games have different design constraints from general purpose computers. Part of Apple's reason for jumping ship to Intel seems to have been IBM's recent focus on these game-oriented CPUs.
Love the rocky horror reference ;-)
As someone pointed out, this article really doesn't give anything new.
They at the very least share the PowerPC instruction set. That's more than enough to, say, get Linux running on it since PPC GCC works just fine.
After all, I am strangely colored.
> Any of the modern gaming consoles could implement such a controller. If it's that big a deal, expect MS and Sony to have their own versions by the end of 2006.
Stop me if you heard this one before...
1.) Invent new controller
2.) PATENT
3.) Profit
The PlayStation 3 will be made by Sony, a company which distributes software that renders a personal computer quite unstable and open to attack by malfeasant users from across the Internet. As oppossed to Microsoft maker of windows? Geez, sure sure xp and 2k3 are nowadays a lot more stable then the crash fest that the 9x series and ME well lets just not go there. Yet it is still Windows that is THE zombie paradise. Oh and on wich OS did the sony rootkit install anyway? I wonder wich company distributes software that allows just anyone to install a rootkit? Frankly if you are talking evil empires then this is like choosing between the nazi's and the japs. With nintendo perhaps being the italians. Perhaps the dreamcast relaunch mentioned earlier is d-day? Oh and the 360 stability. I seen it in 3 stores. 2x it was in a crashed state. Wonderfull.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I guess you missed where I said "possibly." The reason I said "possibly" is both due to the things you mentioned and also due to the fact that it is still a PPC chip, and therefore it's possible that OSX would run on it with some modifications.
Either way, that wasn't really my point at all.
Not really. I have a poster from the old Next Generation magazine that shows the development of home gaming consoles from the first Pong game to the Playstation/N64 generation. For companies that have actually been around a long time, ie. Ninteno and Atari, 5 years is the normal length of a console generation. Any attempt to speed that up is grossly manipulative, and frankly unfair to the gamers.
Developers were getting pretty amazing effects out of the original Playstation hardware right near the end of its life since they had had a few years to discover optimizations and special processor tricks.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Seriously, though, these are fascinating little beasts. It looks as if the concept has its roots in the Transputer, which also relied on fast and narrow point to point external links. When I first read the blurb I guessed from the description that there were 4 cores per chip and the bad ones were disabled to get the yield up, but clearly the yield is much much better than that. However, anybody silly enough to think about overclocking will need to note that the working CPU voltage is hard coded; it looks like, to get the yield at the clock speed, each device has to be individually tuned. Which suggests that the tolerances for reliable functioning are tight. Perhaps the overall error rate is not good enough for a truly general purpose computer which needs to be able to tolerate a range of operating conditions without significant error. Which doesn't suggest a range of motherboards and retail boxed processors any time soon. Just like Apple, in fact. This reminds me of good old ECL based computers (whose CPU voltage had to be adjusted on the fly for reliable operation rather than set up once for all, but I'm sure you take the point).
It's perhaps a pity that the design teams for the Mac Mini and the XBox couldn't be locked up in a development lab with a progressively increasing caffeine level in the coffee until they create the hybrid that would really be the future of home computing. Apple's thermal management and sound level control, IBMs obvious chip development capability, and Microsoft's willingness to spend some of its cash pile would be a formidable combination. The trouble is, you'd probably end up with Apple's's ability to design chips, IBMs willingness to lose money, and Microsoft's thermal management and general aesthetics.
Pining for the fjords
Games often have far smaller cache requirements than many other applications, and as a result, it is preferable to go with a higher speed cache and higher CPU speed than a slower but larger cache/CPU.
:)
The Celeron in the 300A era are one of the best examples of this. They had half the cache of their Pentium III counterparts, BUT the P3 cache ran at half the CPU speed while the Celeron cache ran at full speed. The Celeron's performance was crap despite the faster cache for many applications (including server machines and most office applications) due to its smaller cache, but gamers discovered that for games, the situation was exactly the opposite - clock for clock the Celeron was significantly faster than the P3 due to the fact that most games in that era could fit almost all of their rendering pipeline within even the Celeron's small cache. Rare cache misses and twice the cache speed = much better performance. It also happened that that on-die cache allowed the Celerons to be overclocked like crazy, a significant added bonus.
The Xbox 360's CPU takes the whole idea much farther. While most desktop CPUs are designed to perform well over the widest range of situations (with some tradeoffs always being evident - note that Athlons eat P4s for lunch in many cases such as games, while Athlons do actually lose most of their advantages in performance per clock cycle when performing video compression and decompression because most video codecs don't have significant amounts of branching resulting in pipeline stalls from branch mispredictions.) The Xbox 360 CPU goes a step further by optimizing for one thing and one thing only - gaming. Instruction reordering which is critical in most desktop CPUs turns out to be not as necessary for gaming (specifically graphics rendering), and as a result the 360 drops instruction reordering capability completely in favor of having multiple cores at a low cost. (Instruction scheduling takes a LOT of die space in modern CPUs compared to the size of the rest of the CPU core.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The question is why NOT buy an Xbox 360?
Because it's not worth the money. Why pay 400$* for a new system that plays maybe three or four new games while the rest are available for less money for current gen systems? Why do that when the old systems still have good games coming out for them? Why do it when the new system doesn't introduce any major changes to your games but is merely an incremential upgrade? Going with the X360 means spending an additional 400$ for gaming without getting a proportionally large difference in the games. When I bought the Gamecube I did so for the many genres I didn't get on the PC. When I bought the PS2 I did so for the genres that neither the PC or GC covered. I don't see the XBox 360 doing much that my current gaming hardware doesn't.
*= I don't count the core version because it's merely a trick to make 400$ look better to the customer, "oh I'm just paying 100$ more but getting 200$ worth of goodies!". You're still paying 400$ for a console without a game.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
These things will be realy good for gaming, but I wouldn't want to try and run a full OS and applications on them - I certainly wouldn't want to try and run multiple programmes at once on them.
James P. Barrett
That's about as interesting as watching paint dry on a house, in the summer, with a very healthy and green grassy yard.
You forgot the most interesting option...
- The Nintendo Revolution
I don't want to sound like too much of a fanboy, but what can these consoles really give me that my PC can't? I'd rather have a console thats sole focus isn't trying to outpace my PC in terms of graphics... but to push the limits with new controllers, unique games and not costing me my 1st born child or my left arm to acquire.
So, the XBox 360 has 3 hyper-threaded, in-order-execution cores to run games which are primarily single-threaded and would benefit greatly from out-of-order execution. It's almost as if the hardware designers asked themselves, "how can we screw the game developers?"
For all the Sony fanboys out there, the PS3 hardware is just as bad, maybe worse.
While thinking philosophically, we see problems in places where there are none. -Wittgenstein
Not only that... but the X360 programmers will soon know the joys of altivec... whereas the Apple people now have to kiss it goodbye... strange times indeed.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
"But really, flashy graphics only hold my attention for the first couple of hours. If I'm seriously into a game, I turn the graphics WAY down for maximum performance"
Sure, but wouldn't you like to see those graphics without HAVING to turn them off to get performance. I have not bought a console game in years but I can tell you that the ability to have realism is vastly entertaining. Imagine Councilor deanna troy making out with you and you will understand why...
This chip is still a fairly general purpose CPU.
You're talking about it like it's a Cell or something.
I'm wondering, how much work is required to hack into the box, not necessarily to run illegally copied games, but to run Linux or something else? I know there was a lot of talk about hacking into the original Xbox, mostly because the internal guts were primarily OTS PC components. The 360 sounds like a lot more custom work. However, being able to run a triple-core Power box would be pretty interesting, even if it was tweaked out for gaming rather than general purpose programming.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Uh oh guys, there's an honer stewdint in our ranks.
Anybody know where these phrases came from, or the problem they were trying to solve? Did a search and didn't seem to find anything about where it came from.
Tonights forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning
Not true. The little shield means Windows is protected. Mine is green. I bet yours is yellow or red.
Hey you're right my pc is protected too. Oh wait, mine is a Mac.
I don't want to start up the whole "ugly games are automatically better than pretty games" argument, but as an HDTV owner I'd like to buy a console that's actually capable of high definition graphics. Nintendo lost me as a customer when they chose to omit HDTV support. At least the Xbox 360* and PS3 will have support for one of the HD movie disc formats; Nintendo will not support either one.
* in the HD-DVD version slated to come out at some point next year, as opposed to the current DVD-ROM version
For more information, click here.
"The choice is yours."
Nintendo, I choose you!
</pokemon reference>
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
for us to have any interest in the hardware we need to be able to use it. DRM just plain sucks. I think I'd prefer to eat my own testicles rather than purchase TCPA enabled anything, really hope Sony see the light after their rootkit fiasco.
There are so much things you can thread at a game.
You can thread path dicovery, A.I., NPC, genetic algorithms, environmental conditions, data storage, sound controlling, Preloading, randomness...
Each user can be its own thread...
Threading at games, can deliver a new hole experience to the gamer... Real Time Strategy games require multithreading...
Â_Â
it is possible that the revolution controller could be cloned/copied/etc. but it is unlikely that any next gen zelda, metroid, or mario games will be released on xbox2 or the RootKit3.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Thank you! For your edification:
its = possessive
it's = contraction of "it is"
Ever heard of spytrooper?
Look it up on panda, and then tell me if your "shield" is okay or not.
Oh, and don't pay any money for it... I'm sure if you can get it for free if you want. (Or don't want, for that matter.)
-=fshalor
Are there any reasons to get an Xbox 360 over PS3?
The XBox360 is (sort of) available now. The PS3 currently is nothing more than a haze of promises.
Are there any reasons to get an Xbox 360 over the original Xbox aside from graphical performance?
No, and probably not for PS3 over PS2, either. Don't expect a quantum leap in game design, just prettier graphics and more "stuff" on the screen at once.
PS3 will have better graphical performance, up to 2x.
According to Sony, whose advance claims for every previous console have turned out to be widely exaggerated.
High definition.
Also on the XBox360. HD is OK, but I'm actually more interested in the fact that widescreen will now be standard.
Blu-ray.
Every new Sony console seems to have some new, fancy drive design. And they always break down a lot. Be sure to get the extended warranty.
Up to 7 wireless controllers - those actually mean something.
If you can actually get 7 people around your TV. Maybe good for people with big-screen media rooms.
PS3 will come out with games that are just as good, perhaps better.
Perhaps. But the XBox360 games are coming out now. The PS3 won't be competing with XBox360 launch games, but with XBox360 2nd generation games. And the PS3 looks to be more of a programming challenge, so even if the hardware has the potential to match or surpass the XBox360, it may take years for that to happen.
5: PS3 will have better graphics in high definition. Maybe during it's lifetime, High Definition prices will drop sharply, just like LCDs have.
This has already happened. Walmart has rows of HD TVs in the $500-600 range. Many of them even have built-in tuners. If you don't demand a huge screen, HD is only a bit more expensive than SD, with a much better picture.
Yeah you can get it now, but you're basically just getting a graphical upgrade to your existing Xbox.
This is a bit silly. The XBox360 has a completely different processor and architecture than the XBox I, as well as a different graphics system. The PS3 is closer to the PS2 than the XBox360 is to the XBox I--that's why Microsoft has been unable to provide full backward-compatibility.
If you desperately need to buy something now, I'd buy a GameCube. It's dirt cheap, less than $100, and you can always pass it off to your kids, or younger siblings, cousins after you're done with it and decide what you want to buy next year when all 3 next-gen consoles are out.
Just-launched systems are for enthusiasts. The launch games typically barely scratch the surface of what the system is capable of. If you don't already have a game system, I'd recommend a PS2. Lots of games, fairly cheap used (but be sure to get an extended warranty). And promised backwards compatibility of PS3 means developers aren't going to be in a big hurry to switch to PS3 development. GameCube is more for people who appreciate Nintendo's unique game design strengths (I'm actually looking forward to Nintendo Revolution more than PS3).
But mentioning live as the deciding factor is ignoring history. The x-box had it and it didn't sell. Nobody has ever in my opinion come up with a satisfactory reason for the failure of the x-box. The gamecube is easy. It just didn't have the right image. While I thought about 1 or 2 games as worth playing that was it. The rest I considered to cutsey and consoly for my tastes. I don't mind this on my handhelds where it actually helps (don't want to scream like a girl playing fear in public) but not at home.
Another one that amazed me is that one post said the x-box had signed the big names. Bungie and EA. Wtf? Bungie IS NOT a big name. They got 1 game and that is it. EA is big but EA signs on to anything. Getting EA to endorse your new console is like getting a hooker to go out with you for money. Even /.ers should be able to manage that.
The only real advantage that MS has over both Sony and Nintendo that MS doesn't have to win the money race. They can afford to loose money on this generation and the next and the next.
As for the graphics being amazing. Oh please. I already play at higher resolutions on my now 2yr old PC. Richer friends won't accept anything less then 1600x1200 while sony's own games like eq2 can already make use of 512mb video cards despite the fact they were not even out. Other recent games to can make use of hardware features that even top of the range pc's don't have let alone these weak consoles.
I still remember console fans being excited over star fox while I was playing x-wing.
No saying that anyone is going to win the current battle is insanity. The 360 is lacking launch titles and has not got the mindshare with the general public. The PS3 is an unknown quantity and Sony's reputation might be damaged (but this should equally have counted against MS with the X-box) and Nintendo seems to try another gamecube wich didn't work well the first time. The PC (often not counted) has such titles as WoW wich simply cannot run on any of the consoles yet is a huge earner for its parent company. Oh and has all that live crap except at no-charge.
Frankly I find these discussions very amusing but only as an outsider. I remember people defending their console in each of the battles and use the same arguments regardless of the wether they made sense before.
Console fans are like generals. Always willing to fight the last war again regardless of the outcome.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Hate to burst alot of bubbles, BUT:
0 -2.ars/2
The Xenon CPU IS NOT the same as 3 G5's all on one chip! Read the arstechnica article here:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox36
Basically it says: "The basic idea behind both Cell and Xenon is to make the execution core less complex by stripping out hardware that's intended to optimize instruction scheduling at runtime. Neither the Xenon nor the Cell have an instruction window, which means that these two processor designs largely forget about instruction-level parallelism. Instead, instructions pass through the processor in the order in which they're fetched, with the twist that two adjacent, non-dependent instructions are executed in parallel where possible."
This means that standard PPC code (OS X, etc) WILL NOT RUN on this. This is also the reason that IBM is selling these things at only $106 a pop to M$. Have you checked the prices for SINGLE CORE G5s for Apple? Their like $600-700 a piece! So, I am guessing that stripping these down makes them much easier and therefore faster and cheaper to mass produce, and therefore the price difference.
Anyway, there are reports that only one core is availble to intitial game developers, and one of the cores is strictly for M$ bullshit content protection TC such as the hypervisor, etc.
Not to mention from the article:
Microsoft and IBM engineers worked together during the definition phase of the project to specify a design to satisfy the constraints of a mass-produced consumer device
Sounds like a shitload of TC shit build right into the chip, so I am NOT holding my breath for linux to be ported to this (not that I wouldn't be thrilled to see this). Cetainly not when the port to STI Cell architecture has been under dev for what, over a year? Damn, can't wait for PS3 release.
Agreed, the price is a big stopper for some people and, I also agree, there are not a ton of must-have games on the Xbox 360.
:)
However, it does have Perfect Dark: Zero, Project Gotham 3, Kameo (don't knock it 'till you try it) and soon, DOA4 and Battlefield.
Battlefield + Xbox Live = Heaven.
Granted, I don't know a whole lot about what games are coming soon to the Xbox 360 for lack of time, but by the time the Playstation 3 comes out, Xbox 360 will have a lot more games by great developers and I'm going to venture a guess and say the premium system won't cost as much as the PS3 will.
That was my point, was that waiting for a PS3 was stupid. You get less (no unified online service, which is a BIG, BIG portion of why you should get an Xbox 360 over PS3, no titles from Rare or Bungie) and get some things that are somewhat unpleasant (blu-ray: Who really wants a disc format that can brick your system of the manufacturer tells it to? How long before it's cracked and a virus is written? Who really would be angry about getting up every few hours to change a disc? Big deal. None of us had problems with it in the PSX days.)
Just forget for one second that Microsoft makes the Xbox. It's one of the products of theirs I really, really like and is well put-together by a great team.
Go Microsoft?
-Eric Smith
You're still comparing apples to oranges.
This is about the CPU. You can't find a quad core CPU at 3.5ghz for 300 bucks yet alone a console with 512 megs ram, the worlds fastest GPU and a quad core 3.5ghz CPU with a backplane and interconnect speed to boot for 300 bucks. I could care less if ms is loosing 100+ per console that still makes it cheaper then i can get a dual core cpu today.
Comparing that to the NES is like saying console should always be 8 but cartridge based machies. The nintendo found a niche and created a market that they have long since been able to succeed in. However that market has never been defigned until today and if you would rather preach proprietary hardware as being cool and a console built from somewhat reliable and existing technology as a pc in a smaller case then that is your own misconception to deal with. Even the NES is just a "pc" dedicated to gaming.
Show me where i can get a quad (or even dual) 3.5 PC with 512 megs ram an ATI 1800 video card, USB, 20 gig hard drive for 300 bucks.
Hype? the 360 is out, check out the graphics yourself. Try and pick one up before you hypothetically compare things the way you think they are because of whatever bias you have.
Name one thing Microsoft has done.
And that's all I have to say about that.
On one episode of "The Simpsons" (4F07), Ned Flanders asked Rev. Lovejoy a question of faith. That was his reply.
Ned: Rev. Lovejoy, with all that's happened to us today, I kinda
feel like Job.
Lovejoy: Well, aren't you being a tad melodramatic, uh, Ned? Also, I
believe Job was right-handed.
Ned: But Reverend, I need to know, is God punishing me?
Lovejoy: Shooh, short answer: "Yes" with an "If," long answer: "No" --
with a "But." Uh, if you need additional solace, by the way,
I've got a copy of something or other by Art Linkletter in my
office.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
What do you mean it isn't designed for that? It already exists on a motherboard in an Xbox. Also, I suspect in the very near future, we will see Linux running on the Xbox 360. The only thing wrong with that platform is its proprietary nature and its lack of expandability. Otherwise I think it very nicely contridicts your post.
Perhaps because of the huge number of patents and other new technological work IBM does.
coz, like, the other day, a girl smiled at me!
yes!, without pointing her finger!
Damn, I was going to answer the question of what is under the 360's hood by saying:
A cooking burrito!
Get your Unix fortune now!
"and discounts are applied to PC games much sooner than to console games."
Given that the physical manufacture of disks and packaging is $1, it sure would be nice if all the old PS1, and now XBox games would be sold for ~$2. We know this will never happen though because the shaving razor business model guarantees that prices stay high.
Damnit, mod this guy up.
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
So the big difference is that the 360 is more like current multicore PC's while the PS3 seems to lean more towards a cluster setup like openmosix.
As to wich is better? Well look at recent PS2 games. They show such graphical improvement that it might be true that PS2 still has untapped capabilties. The X-box on the other hand is pretty much at its limit. This was clear by developers complaining the PS2 was hard to develop for and the x-box was easy. Same with the next generation.
Given that the cores have the same basic design (64bit power) and Sony claims the same or even higher clockspeeds it would be easy to assume that 7+1 core > then 3 cores. I also seen larger cache sizes being claimed and even faster bus speeds. Is it all true? And even if it is will game developers succeed in tapping those resources? And even if they do, will that result in fun games?
Remember that currently the fast majority of games do not take advantage of dual core PC's even hyperthreading is rarely supported worse having it on can sometimes degrade performance. Now imagine having to write your code in such a way that it can be split across 7 processors. OR is that central core in te Cell processor capable of splitting up non- threaded applications? (Just random quesswork). After all it is supposed to be become more then the current PS3 chip it is supposed to be included in the next generation of TV's and other entertainment products.
That would be a huge advancement. The holy grail of grid computing (the cell is supposed to be like that) were you no longer have to worry about the specifics of your enviroment but can just run your code and the system will take care of it.
What I find a far more intresting proposition that with the PS3 supposedly so powerfull yet also so similar to the 360 is that it might just be possible to run 360 games on the PS3.
As for using consoles for number work. Already being done with both systems. They are so cheap yet so powerfull that all you have to do is wait for someone to break them open. Same as PC GPU's are being used for number crunching work. However GPU's is no problem wereas circumventing the PS3 or 360's protections might be in more repressive goverments (such as found in the west).
All off the above is just random speculation based on hilarious press reports. Any resemblance to the facts is unlikely.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The PS3 will be high-def out of the box. Sony won't stand to release anything less, especially when Microsoft is doing HD. It's already rated for 1080p, which I don't doubt Sony can accomplish.
The XBOX360 is using a dated format that game manufacturers have maxed. I'm sure space even on DVD-9s will become tight as higher res textures and models are packed into games. Speculation states that the DRM system on blu-ray could be used to brick your system (remember, it's the DRM system, not the media), but we've seen no evidence of this yet. I'm sure Microsoft wouldn't hesitate to brick your xbox360 if they found out you had installed a mod (after all, that's why it's a TPM machine from the ground up, designed to protect IT from YOU.)
And Microsoft's game discs are just as proprietary as any other. I don't see how the ps3 using funky-ray media would be any different, considering they're meant for use with their respective consoles only.
Indeed, who needs seven controllers. Who knows, maybe someone will come up with an idea for it.
1) I don't necessarily want to have to pay to play online. With the xbox360 you have no choice, developers MUST go through xbox live. Sony leaves this choice open to developers. Oh it's only $50 a year, so what. It's $50 I don't want to be required to pay.
2) The xbox360 is not available now. Microsoft deliberately made it unavailable to all but the most nutty willing to spend $400 to $800 on it. And now it's sold out and won't be available again until next year or so.
3) Bungie is good, although Halo left me unimpressed. Rare not so, with 2 games since MS purchased them. And FF is only stated to be FFXI, which has been out on PC and PS2 since its inception. And EA will sign on to every console maker, they'd be extremely stupid not to.
Why not xbox360?
Because there's not a damn game available for it that I want. That and it's unavailable and costs $400. And there's no guarantee that it actually is any better than the PS3, considering the PS3 isn't even out yet. And that I won't be getting for a long time either, until the price drops to $200 or so.
Seriously, why defend a piece of hardware and a company that equally wants as much money as the other that you think is bad?
Use whatever suits you. Regardless, I have to add a few things.
WHO NEEDS SEVEN CONTROLLERS ON ONE BOX!?
WHo needs more than 640K of RAM? My point exactly. Although I agree that more doesn't necessarly mean better, you can't say that nobody needs seven controllers as they could somehow make use of that. Instead of 7 controllers, it might be like a few controllers, a remote like you can get for the PS2 for the dvd player and other various devices all plugged at the same time.
3) Developer backing. Bungie and Rare...and that's only naming two big name developers....EA is also signed on.
No I'm sorry but EA Games? What have they seriously fucking done well? Their games are always what they previously released with added trivial modifications like change the color of a hero's pubic hair. Yes, Rare and Bungie are big names in consoles but EA Games is doing exactly what we agreed that is bad, Quantity over Quality. Just thought I'd add that...
Nice PR speak there, I'm sure microsoft has a job for you.
Seriously though, the unified online service is just wrong.
Can't you see that Microsoft is trying to coerce game developpers onto xbox live, adding to the cost of games, and charging the consumer extra for something which adds no benefit? Yes, I said no benefit. People have been playing online computer games for a long time without needing such a service (eg. World of Warcraft, UT2004, Counter-Strike,
This is a fully PowerPC compliant chip. Make no mistake. It WILL run standard PowerPC code, as will Cell BE. From where did you get that the singe core G5 costs 5-600 dollars? An iMac G5 (singe core PowerPC 970FX costs $1300 and that's a complete computer with a GPU, harddrive, DVD-burner, webcam, 512 MB RAM, an 17" TFT, package, shipping, advetising and about 30% margin.
The cost of a processor is directly related to the die size and since the size of the Xenon is larger than the dual core G5 (about 130 million transisotrs compared to 165 million in the Xenon) there's a good chance that Xenon is actually more expensive than the PowerPC 970MP to manufacture.
Linux will run just fine on an Xbox 360 if one would fins a way around the DRM stuff. OSX too if Apple would want to. Same goes with the PS3. Hell.. Sony's boss even said so!
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
Who cares about anything else, have you seen the games?
PGR3 was the only decent game out of all the launch titles (PDZ was nothing more than mediocore), and even then it got boring rather quick. I still prefer Burnout 3 on my original Xbox.
I still don't get why people rushed to buy Xbox 360 as if it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. There's nothing about the console to justify the $400 cost. On the other hand, I'll wait until some A list titles comes out (like the next Halo) and save myself hundreds of dollars in the meantime.
Three identical cores, each with its own embedded vector and fpu units along with 128 registers - the chip sure looks like it's the fastest cpu out there. Wouldn't it be ironic if Apple ends up running on crufty old x86 and Vista ends up running on PowerPc - a proprietary PowerPc to boot?
Yeah you got reamed by a few AC's and I almost posted in response to them but I decided to reiterate your point; there is actually an instance of Sony Music nameing a division of Sony Electronics in a lawsuit over "intellectual properpty". Smashing entertainment if you ask me...
Yeah I know I should find a source, I'm fucking lazy.
Xenon is weaker than the G5 in almost every aspect and IBM will be putting the dual core PowerPC 970MP into their JS-class blades next year. Tehy will probably be called JS40 since they will have 4 cores each. the thermal caracteristics of the 970MP is similar to the original single core 970 so they could probably put two 970MPs in a singe slot blade unit.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
The PlayStation 3 will be made by Sony, a company which distributes software that renders a personal computer quite unstable and open to attack by malfeasant users from across the Internet.
So... how is Sony different than Microsoft?
Perhaps it is that Sony's root kit makes your computer accessable to virus's, while Microsoft Windows is a virus.
You are clearly not a developper. If one is in the middleware business, that is making software libraries for specific hardware or entire engines, the raw performance is very good indicator of the life time of that system. Longer life time means sustained profits.
Quality SDKs are made by the likes of iD, Havok, Epic,
Because the best games, are rushed games? You mean backwards compatibility, right?
Waiting for the competition to show its product is just good sense. No need to spend money on something you might regret later. At least wait until there is a choice.
It's a "thinking-person" thing. You see, these crazy "thinking-people" find the inadvertent support of untenable malfeasance via uninformed spending offensive. This sometimes requires a choice between two evils, developing a better understanding of the situation, etc. Hope that helps.
The Xbox 360 is high definition out of the box.
Yeah, well I don't have an HD television, so I don't care.
Bungie and Rare are both developing for the Xbox 360
Bungie does nothing but Halo, and as we saw, Halo 2 was an incremental improvement over Halo. I don't anticipate any real innovation for the next Halo title. It will just be shinier graphics, an even worse single-player campaign, and even more people trying to tell me how gay I am online. Rare hasn't made anything worthwhile since all their real talent jumped ship when Microsoft bought them out.
The question is why NOT buy an Xbox 360?
I'll tell you why not - because I don't feel like shelling out $400 + $60/game for an incremental improvement in graphics. I'm waiting for the Revolution. The only reason I would buy a 360 if given the option would be to sell it to some moron on eBay for $800.
Your computer "yields" above 3840x2160 resolution? Wow, that's fucking amazing - where can I get one of these fantastical super graphics machines you have access to? Playing F.E.A.R on that sucka with everything turned on?
Hint: You don't know what you're talking about. And I'm not a PS3 fanboy, actually, it's just that your lack of understanding of what high definition is amuses me.
The point is that this isn't something particular to the X360. The original PS2 had many defects early on. The problem rate was reported as being within or less than the industry average for manufacturering defects. If it was a design problem, the incident percent would be much higher.
If you can actually get 7 people around your TV. Maybe good for people with big-screen media rooms.
I've seen a couple of Microsoft-supporters throw this "yeah, like anyone will ever need 7 controllers" argument around now. This has to be the worst use yet.
The 360's biggest selling point, right now, is the HD capability. Are you trying to tell us that people with a widescreen/HDTV setup aren't going to have enough space to accomodate 7 viewers/players?
Personally, I think that the extra controllers are a great idea. I'd love to have games that allowed enough players that *everyone* could get involved. With a wireless connection, what reason is there to *not* allow more controllers?
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
You've got to really believe lots of conspiracy theories to believe that MS would not want to sell as many consoles as possible in pre-Christmass rush. There have been numerous reports of the fact that the factories just can't pump them out fast enough for world-wide release. We are talking selling to three different regions for the biggest buying rush.
I believe some old people in Korea got it working.
We're not talking about middleware business here, we're talking about game consoles. Game consoles work by generations, and even if your gen 2 console is really gen 2.5 because it far outperforms regular gen 2, you still have to release a gen 3 console when you competitors release theirs (within 12-18 months at worst, and use craploads of PR to prevent people from switching to the available alternatives).
Excuse me? iD, Havok or Epic make GAMES, they don't make console Software Development Kits. The one who makes and releases a SDK for a console is the manufacturer of the console, and from the echos I got Sony's SDK for the PS3 is a piece of crap, MS' SDK for the 360 is a really good piece of software and Nintendo's Revolution SDK is average.
No, because good tools make you more likely to get the same quality of games with a less dev and debugging, and because good tools are enjoyed by devs who -- in turn -- are much more interrested in devving for your plateform.
No I don't, backward compatibility is an extremely defensive feature, its main goal is to lock your current customers into your product lines in order to prevent them from fleeing to the opponent's product. It may convert *some* people, but backward compatibility doesn't generate user base growth, at best a transfert of your user base from your old generation to your new generation product. It's a Good Thing, but it's far from enough. And even your old customers ain't going to be interrested in your product if the only thing they can do with it is play previous generation's game. Because they already have a system that can do that.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
It has been done before.
As we say at work; S.O.N.Y. == Soon Only Not yet
Resolution of PS3 is 1920x1080, and your computer does twice that resolution?
It is interesting for people with either HD-LCD monitors, or HD-TV owners. Check resolution of those TV sets and then tell it will be the same. I for example am much more interested in Linux kit on PS3 (It will allow me to get rid of whole bunch of devices and set one PS3 and HDTV only with the same or better functionality than before with whole load of devices).
People using SVHS or composite will probably experience PS2 again. Probably just more elements in games.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Stop it.
However, it does have Perfect Dark: Zero, Project Gotham 3, Kameo (don't knock it 'till you try it) and soon, DOA4 and Battlefield.
Battlefield + Xbox Live = Heaven.
You are quite the hypocrite. You claim the xbox 360 advantage is that it is here and now (as opposed to PS3/Revolution) but then say one of it's advantages is that "soon" it will have a console port of a PC game that's been out for months already. And on the other consoles, too.
As for the other games you mentioned, not a single one of them is worth a $400 console purchase, especially when there are much better and higher rated games out now for PC/ps2/gamecube.
That was my point, was that waiting for a PS3 was stupid. You get less (no unified online service, which is a BIG, BIG portion of why you should get an Xbox 360 over PS3, no titles from Rare or Bungie)
No titles from RARE? Are you joking? What's the last AAA title Rare made? Oh yeah, Perfect Dark on the N64!
And I'd love to see where you got your PS3 online information from.
and get some things that are somewhat unpleasant (blu-ray: Who really wants a disc format that can brick your system of the manufacturer tells it to? How long before it's cracked and a virus is written?
I can't even believe you're making this crap up. By that logic I could say that Microsoft can brick your Xbox if they want to, and that someone will write a virus for Xbox live that will destroy all xbox 360s!
Who really would be angry about getting up every few hours to change a disc?
This has been debated millions of times already. You're not going to be getting up every few hours to change a disc, but every few minutes since many games now use streaming technology for levels. Have fun swapping discs everytime you move between the city and countryside in GTA4.
This is a bit silly. The XBox360 has a completely different processor and architecture than the XBox I, as well as a different graphics system. The PS3 is closer to the PS2 than the XBox360 is to the XBox I--that's why Microsoft has been unable to provide full backward-compatibility.
Err... The PS3 will have a PowerPC architecure and the PS2 has a MIPS architecure, that only thing that these architectures have in common is that they are RISC architectures.
Also, Microsoft already owns and develops a software called VirtualPC that enables x86 code (like XBox I) to run on PowerPC Mac OS X. Adding some
wrappers that intercept the graphic function calls would be fairly simple. Don't forget that you emulate a ~700 MHz x86 on a ~3 GHz PowerPC, so it would be a fairly acceptable emulation....
Personally, I think that the extra controllers are a great idea. I'd love to have games that allowed enough players that *everyone* could get involved. With a wireless connection, what reason is there to *not* allow more controllers?
For most games, the limiting factor on the number of players is not likely to be the number of controllers. I think that it will be a rare game that is able to accommodate 7 simultaneous players with a single display. It's uncommon for that many people to be able to get together in one place to play, so it will never be a big selling point, and there will be little incentive for developers to come up with game designs that can handle so many players at once. I predict that the use of this feature will be limited to a handful of "party" games. Perhaps some sports titles will benefit, although to see all players at once, the camera would have to be so zoomed out that much of the graphical appeal would be lost. There is likely to be far more demand for net play, where each person can have his own display.
I doubt I should even try to put out the good games list of ps2 titles (that will also be ps3 titles when it releases, no questions asked[1]) Needless to say it puts the 360 launch list to shame.
Granted, I don't know a whole lot about what games are coming soon to the Xbox 360 for lack of time, but by the time the Playstation 3 comes out, Xbox 360 will have a lot more games by great developers and I'm going to venture a guess and say the premium system won't cost as much as the PS3 will.
Probably will, as all systems seem to launch at a high price with a mostly crap lineup. However backwards compatability out of the box means that I won't have to switch any plugs around to play games I bought a few months before the system released.
That was my point, was that waiting for a PS3 was stupid. You get less (no unified online service, which is a BIG, BIG portion of why you should get an Xbox 360 over PS3, no titles from Rare or Bungie)
I can get better online service from my pc, and it is free. Rare and Bungie have yet to do anything terribly impressive that is not also available on pc. Name a few games aside from an fps where online service really matters? It just is not the big deal you think it is, unless you are into fps's, where (imo) keyboard+mouse is a better setup anyways.
and get some things that are somewhat unpleasant (blu-ray: Who really wants a disc format that can brick your system of the manufacturer tells it to? How long before it's cracked and a virus is written?
So you think someone will release a program that actually does brick a system?[2] As for "viruses being written" there is the slight problem that you have to PUT THE FREAKIN DISK IN THE DRIVE. Unless you have ninjas slipping into your house while you sleep to brick your ps3 this is a non-issue, and if that is happening you have bigger things to worry about than your consoles.
Who really would be angry about getting up every few hours to change a disc? Big deal. None of us had problems with it in the PSX days.)
I would. People had no problems with traveling for days on end when hitching up to a horse was the only way to go, but society moves past these sort of things. Multiple disks means I have to keep track of more than on disk, and run the risk of renting a game that I can play for two days THEN find out some idiot scratched one of the other disks. It is hard enough to get my roommates to put a single disk back in the case when all the necessary parts are sitting right there, several of them just compounds the problem.
[1] Unlike the xbox, where support for the previous system depends on them figuring out a way to make that specific title work. [2] Not to say that I agree with the concept either, but the backlash against it being used is going to be enough of an inhibitor to keep that from happening.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
If I remember correctly, the PS3 is supposed to support 2 displays, which would explain why they are making it support 7 players. I agree that otherwise it would seem like a completely boneheaded move. I think they are doing this to appeal to the same people who hosted Halo LAN parties.
hackshop.com - My tech hobby project hub
Why not buy both? The Revolution will be cheap enough for that not to be too big a deal if you're already willing to spend ~$400 on another console. I plan on getting a PS3 and a Revolution. That gives me the best of all worlds. I have an Xbox, but it's by far the least used of the 3 consoles I have, so I don't plan on getting a 360.
Cow Cube
Also, Microsoft already owns and develops a software called VirtualPC that enables x86 code (like XBox I) to run on PowerPC Mac OS X. Adding some
wrappers that intercept the graphic function calls would be fairly simple. Don't forget that you emulate a ~700 MHz x86 on a ~3 GHz PowerPC, so it would be a fairly acceptable emulation....
However, game developers often use hardware-specific tweaks, sometimes undocumented, to get maximum performance out of a console. So it is not surprising that Microsoft is needing to come up with tweaked emulators for each title. It's not yet clear what approach Sony will take to emulate the PS2 on the PS3 and whether it will be better or worse than Microsoft's approach; the PS2 essentially incorporated the PS1 hardware, but even then there were some games that wouldn't play; there are even some games that won't play on all PS2 models.
> Atleast Sony only puts root kits on their customers computers, which can cause
> them to be infested with spyware and who-knows-what-else.
Do not confuse Sony Computer Entertainment with Sony BMG Music Entertainment (which, by the way, is only 50% owned by Sony).
This will be even more ludicrous than blaming Microsoft Research for the latest IE exploit.
It's either a conspiracy theory or Microsoft is really just plain incompetent. What did "simultaneous worldwide launching" (minus Australia and Asian countries other than Japan who aren't part of the world apparently) get them really? It got lots of angry customers who went and bought PSPs, iPods, and other electronics with their $300-$400. It got people saying, "well since I couldn't get an Xbox 360 now, I'll just wait and see if the PS3 is any good".
Microsoft should have just launched in one country at a time and built their audiences traditionally in each country. It isn't like the PS3 is launching anytime soon. Now, they have incompetent launches where they shuttled Xbox 360s from a country that was buying them faster than they could be put on the shelves to a country (Japan) that had only 5 launch titles (of which none were fighter games or any game that really appealed to the Japanese demographic), almost no backwards compatibility, and they knew was their worst market to begin with. Did MS really think they would win marketshare in Japan this way?
The fact that the processor executes in-order only affects performance, and not the compatibility. For example, most x86 code runs on in-order cores (such as the 486, Pentium I), out-of-order cores (most modern x86 processors) and even VLIW cores with a translation layer (Transmeta)
The Raven
Because nothing quite compares to playing Nethack in High Definition.
"Battlefield + Xbox Live = Heaven" Battlefield + Xbox Live - Keyboard/mouse = HELL or Battlefield + Xbox Live = 12 year olds calling Nazis "cool" and everyone else "teh gay"
Are there any reasons to get an Xbox 360 over PS3?"
Uh you can buy an Xbox 360 now and you can't buy a PS3.
Some people would like a nice HD outputting console to use with their nice HD screens now.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
"but what can these consoles really give me that my PC can't?"
Well, nothing you can't get working on a PC with effort - but a console setup is geared for ease of use while sitting on the couch. Also head to head gameplay. Huddling around the PC is not so great for that family and friends videogaming experience.
One reason I like using emulators on the Xbox, they are designed to be easy to use with a controller sitting on a couch. No mouse and keyboard required.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
The CPU cores do not support out of order execution. This means that the processor will be more likely to blow extra cycles when used in an unoptimized environment (as on a desktop PC). Whether that would negate the overall benefit of having 3 fast cores, I have no idea.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Well, don't be too harsh on M$ backers. Now it's clear Microsoft will again loose with their el cheapo low-quality crashing and, finally, rushed xbox360. Sony is going to take over again with a robust mass-market product, containing real in-house technology instead of Microsoft's tech buyout. People will buy it either because of some must-have games or blu-ray movies which will surely be available at launch. Next GTA alone is enough to sell tenths of millions of PS3's worldwide. Few good xbox car races here and there aren't going to change that. Simply Sony's franchises are too strong. MS had time window but screw it up. Console was rushed, with only 3 games at start, limited backwards compatibility and not nearly enough units to sell to all interested buyers. When hype wears off and christmas season is over, nobody will care for teh console. Hell, it's not even replacement for original xbox!
No, 1.21 Niggawatts to send yo' white ass black to the futa'.
But seriously, "jigga" was closer to the original pronunciation of giga-.
Now imagine having to write your code in such a way that it can be split across 7 processors.
If you first structure your game loop as a dataflow diagram, you'll see more opportunities for parallelizing your code. Figure out what depends on what, and if two things don't depend on one another early in the computation of a given frame, you can run them in separate threads on separate cores with little or no penalty. Many tasks in a game program are in fact embarrassingly parallel. For instance, if you have twenty different procedural meshes to generate, such as a tree or a character's draped clothing, generate one on each core until they're all generated.
Microsoft will never do anything that goes against their cash cow, Windows.
Microsoft's other cash cow is Office, right?
but as an HDTV owner I'd like to buy a console that's actually capable of high definition graphics.
Many GameCube games already run in 480p (EDTV, better than DVD). All Revolution games can run in at least 480p; some will run in 720p.
I'm sure space even on DVD-9s will become tight as higher res textures and models are packed into games.
O rly? If this first-person shooter fits in 96 KB thanks to procedural meshes and textures, imagine what you can fit in 8,000,000 KB.
[The G5 and the Xbox CPU] at the very least share the PowerPC instruction set.
So do an Intel Pentium 4 CPU and an Intel Pentium M CPU. So do a P4 and an AMD Athlon CPU. So do a P4 and a Transmeta Efficeon CPU. What does that prove?
That's more than enough to, say, get Linux running on it since PPC GCC works just fine.
GCC may support it, but Binutils definitely doesn't. Cracking a game console is more a matter of getting Binutils to work than getting GCC to work.
The CPU cores do not support out of order execution. This means that the processor will be more likely to blow extra cycles when used in an unoptimized environment (as on a desktop PC).
Out of order execution is useful primarily when running code that's optimized for a different microarchitecture that has a different pipeline structure (such as running P1, P2, or P3 code on a P4 or Athlon). Given that all games will be compiled specifically for the Xbox 360, the compiler will have little or no trouble reordering instructions to fill both pipes of an given inorder CPU. And if they do manage to crack the Xbox 360 and install a Linux distro, then Linux, glibc, X, and Free apps will be recompiled specifically for this CPU.
The first part is opinion and the second part happens if you're playing the PC version too. Quality argument.
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
I think that it will be a rare game that is able to accommodate 7 simultaneous players with a single display.
The 7-controller system is the PS2, and rare doesn't make PS2 or PS3 games. Apart from Nintendo handheld systems, rare develops only for Xbox and Xbox 360, which have 4 controllers, and most of rare's recent multiplayer titles have been split-screen (Goldeneye 007; Diddy Kong Racing; Perfect Dark), not shared-view. As far as I know, you have to go back to Battletoads + Double Dragon to find a rare game that could be made to work with more than 2 players in a single view.
It's uncommon for that many people to be able to get together in one place to play
You've never seen my family's Christmas reunions, or even my little cousins' play-dates.
I predict that the use of this feature will be limited to a handful of "party" games.
Except well-done party games are going to be big, big sellers. Look at how fast Super Smash Bros. Melee sold its first million copies. And then look at some X-Men arcade machines with six joysticks. Or see if you can bring in the ultra-casual gamers with a Jeopardy! style trivia game. (But didn't rare develop the Jeopardy! games for NES?) And isn't Mario Party up to 7th edition?
I know the 360 CPU has limitations. Lack of OOO execution makes it useless for use in a family of machines or any machine that would have to run code that was compiled for another chip. That means they aren't good laptop or desktop processors, heck they're bad for Windows in general.
But if you wanted to set up a large compute cluster, and compile code specifically for it (which you would anyway to take advantage of the distributed processing), then these would be great. You'd get great performance at a low cost and with reasonably low power usage.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Waiting to buy the 360 makes sense because:
"Not wanting a 360 because of all the things Sony claims will be on the PS3 is just silly. We don't know the "Top 10 reasons for a PS3" because we don't know exactly what the PS3 is yet."
We know that the PS3 will be a Hi-Def Disc player(Blu-Ray)
We know it should be at least marginally faster from specs
We know it will play nice with PSPs (handheld integration could be very big now that we have wifi)
What features didn't make it into the PS2?
This box needs to be a HTPC, i wish this box could be hacked, it's a fast cheap computer, that would fit well and work great as a HTPC... it allready has HD / oprical output built in and a small enough form factor!
Holding my breath...
Man this is the time we need a +6 funny
I'm sure a lot of people agree with you. Too bad that we can't. I was told by my employer that we might not get more XBox 360's until January, but I hope the memo was wrong.
The products are impossible to differentiate between by description alone.
No smoking sigs indoors.
The question is why NOT buy an Xbox 360?
;-)
I'm not a gamer at all (I use a Mac after all), and I don't have any particular preference for any one console or system, but purely from an consumer perspective I would think it would make sense to wait with one's purchase of a gaming console until all three new consoles are released so that one can compare them for price and features. I don't don't think that throwing around money for three different consoles is good money management (but then again, I suppose one could say that about me and my Mac as well
OK, not a very good joke....but I would have thought obvious enough.
Pining for the fjords
Exactly. What exactly is new and different in X360 and PS3? Well, they have da internet and they have better CPU's and graphics. So they are basically same stuff as PS2 and original Xbox are, just in a prettier package. Hardly anything revolutionary.
Nintendo Revolution on the other hand... Naturally it's faster than it's predecessor, but not as fast as PS3 or 360. But who cares? I like the fact that Nintendo is trying something different, instead of selling the same gaming-paradigm over and over again. Sure, PS3 and 360 are nice machines. But they are basically same stuff as PS2 and Xbox were before them, only with better graphics. Color me un-impressed.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
The Apple people dont have to kiss sweet f**k all goodbye: http://developer.apple.com/hardware/ve/sse.html
The Emotion Engine is the first one to come to mind.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
The guy was fired for taking a picture of Microsoft's campus, period--nothing to do with Macs being delivered. As the worlds largest developer of Mac software, it's not a surprise to anyone that Microsoft has a G5 or a thousand on campus.
Try taking a picture inside any large corporation and watch yourself get canned in an instant.
"I don't want to sound like too much of a fanboy, but what can these consoles really give me that my PC can't? I'd rather have a console thats sole focus isn't trying to outpace my PC in terms of graphics... but to push the limits with new controllers, unique games and not costing me my 1st born child or my left arm to acquire."
This "pushing the limits" thing is just an assumption. People said the same thing about the DS: that the stylus and 2 screens would "push the limits" of gaming. Very few games have actually pushed anything (off the top of my head I can think of Kirby's Canvas curse, that surgery game and that lawyer game where you get to yell "objection" into the microphone). Every other game has treated that second screen and stylus like it's a tacked-on feature, and the best games (Mario Kart DS, Castlevania, etc.) barely use the stylus at all, and pretty much stick a map on the second screen.
There have been a million Nintendo "innovations":
Rob the Robot
The Power Pad (that DDR-style pad for the NES)
The SNES Mouse
Super Scope 6
Virtual Boy
e-Reader cards
GBA connection to GameCube
The list goes on and on. Each device/gimmick only supported a handful of games, and each time it just looked like Nintendo was trying to cash in. (Create hardware on the cheap, create software, bundle the two together and sell at a premium). Revolution looks basically like the same thing.
"Real gamers" buy all 3, regardless. I intend to buy all 3.
Nintendo has done this a million times and they've failed to create much of anything "revolutionary". See http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=17097 8&cid=14246520
Real gamers buy all 3. $300 for a console is not exactly "expensive".
I don't give a flying fuck what they have done in the past. I'm not buying their past products. I'm interested in their CURRENT and upcoming products, because those are the ones I might be buying.
Besides, all those "innovations" listed in the post were optional stuff. In this case, the revolutionary thing is the default method of using the console. You complained that "Each device/gimmick only supported a handful of games, and each time it just looked like Nintendo was trying to cash in". Maybe. And that was because those were optional add-ons that required specific support. This case the "gimmick" is the dominant feature of the console, so the support will be a lot more widespread, and there would not be "cashing in", since it ships with the console.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
The "Emotion Engine" on the PS2 is merely a CPU. The "Emotion Engine" Sony's marketing arm promised was a chip that specialized in rendering emotions on characters in the game and responding to emotions from other characters in the game (and perhaps even the user).
Ah, ok. I wasn't quite sure what you meant there.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
But you just based your entire argument on the older Xbox and PS2. You compare them to this generation, regardless of the fact that the Xbox 360 just came out (barely any have it, so not a lot of informed opinions have been formed). There's next to no details on the PS3 (the picture shown at the E3 was just a plastic case with no ventilation holes.
If you're going to compare the past with the future, you should do it with all systems. Past experiences dictate that Nintendo has good ideas that they don't flesh out. Past experiences also dictate that they have TERRIBLE relationships with most 3rd parties and that the vast majority of quality games for their systems come from Nintendo itself.
Real gamers buy all 3. I see a stellar online system in Xbox 360, some mindblowing visuals with PS3 (which lead to some truly unique games last generation, including Ico), and an innovative controller in the Revolution. $1000 (the total estimated price for all 3) is cheap. Most gamers have that kind of money, as it's equivalent to 20 games (I easily buy that many in a few months). If you don't buy all 3 you're doing yourself a disservice.
We already know what 360 and PS3 offer. 360 is available right now, we know what it brings to the table. And what does it bring? Better graphics, faster CPU, more RAM, improved internet-play. And that's just about it. So it's the same stuff Xbox offered, only in prettier package. The gaming-paradigm is EXACTLY the same.
So, the appearance of the console and "ventilation holes" are the defining characteristics of a console? No wonder that consoles these days are so boring... Just take the current consoles, bumb up the specs a bit, and you have a new console. Where's the innovation? Where's the "revolutionary" stuff? I want something more than mere improvement over current generation. Sadly, that's all PS3 and 360 are, improvements to the current generation. Nintendo tries to something different, and for that, I applaud them.
Xbox had online-support, PS2 had visuals. 360 and PS3 do each of those better than their predecessors did, but that's it. Like I said: same stuff, only in prettier package.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
have u seen the nintendo revolution controller...it is the gayest thing i have ever seen....its like a remote attatched to a joystick....thats whack
I think you are taking chip names a bit too seriously...
You actually thought the Emotion Engine wasn't a CPU??? I guess it would have been cool if Sony had created the Emotion Engine using souls from the recently executed or some other type of dark magic.
Of course it was a processor, but Sony made it out to be a specialized processor for one particular task. It ended up being a general purpose processor (and the CPU for the whole unit from what I understand). We were told it was a chip that specialized (as in that's all it did) in processing character emotions. No dark lords or anything, but nontheless a processor devoted to that single purpose. Promising something like that in your system makes it sound like there's so much processing power in the PS2 that Sony can just devote an entire processor to emotion in characters. No big deal. That's pretty sweet. It's also pretty untrue.
For those who still dream that microsoft will win the consoles war go there : http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3759&lsaid=1 98235 , Im sorry!
I doubt if commercial success of the platform is dependent upon a big launch in Japan.
This is the Xbox360 launch coverage in Japan, for those who still think MS will win the consoles war. http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3759&lsaid=1 98235
I'm a long time gamer, have bought nearly every system till now and am not buying the hype of either system yet. I waited a year or so to buy an xbox till it was cheaper and Jet Set Radio Future was out (I loved the Dreamcast verson). I waited to get a PS2 until Final Fantasy X was released. The last system I bought at launch was the Dreamcast because it wasn't badly priced and had something REALLY nice worth playing at launch (Soul Calibur and soon after NBA 2K and Jet Grind Radio).
The Xbox 360 does NOT use proprietary disc formats that can, at the vendor or manufacturers will, brick your box.
How is Blu-Ray propriatary? I see a bunch of recorders coming out and some major studio and vendor support. (http://www.blu-ray.com/) Sure they may try to lock it so you can't burn discs but what developer hasn't tried? If you think hard you'll remember when dvd recorders and discs were expensive, and if you think really hard you'll remember when cd-r's were expensive. I remember buying a 1X cd burner for $200 when the discs were too expensive to buy to really use. This is a silly argument.
WHO NEEDS SEVEN CONTROLLERS ON ONE BOX!?
Perhaps you don't play sports games Mr. FPS. Most sports games I know have at least 10 people on the field/court/rink. I've easily had 4 buddies over playing NBA 2K* or NHL. You can have direct user contribution in a party environment like this. I've also been at a friends house where they were playing Mario Party and we had 6 people but only 4 could play. Sure you could 'pass' the controller in that game, but I'm it's inconvenient, and I'm sure theres more ideas beyond that if you have a big screen hi-def TV, beyond splitting it into 6 mini squares. Maybe you never played Gauntlet? Or any of Konami's classic (6 player) arcade games like X-Men?
One fee. No ten bucks a month here, five bucks a month there... $50 a year.
Like most other people say, I still play Warcraft 3 and other FPS games on my PC for free, no bucks a month here. Most of the games that are online on the PS2 are free too, I've played a few rounds of burnout 3 when it was popular and even though the service isn't as nice as live you can still get going. It would be nice if microsoft 'had' a free option of some sort.
Time. Xbox 360 is here now whereas the PS3 is going to offer comparable hardware and games in a year.
While X360 has maybe 3 good games, 2-3 in the next 3-6 months and nothing ever comes out in the summer. And developers are still working on PS3 and Revolution games so they'll all be ready to ship at launch. X360 is a test development for 2nd gen X360 and 1st gen PS3.
Developer backing. Bungie and Rare are both developing for the Xbox 360, and that's only naming two big name developers.
Rare is releasing nothing but prettied up versions of old games (Kameo=Banjo Kazooie with transformations and particle effects, Perfect Dark Zero=Prettier Perfect Dark, don't even talk about the xbox games) and Bungie hasn't even shown anything yet.
Also Final Fantasy will be coming to Xbox 360 too.
Yea, Final Fantasy XI, a game thats been out on the PS2 and PC for over a year, WHOOPIE! PS2 is getting XII next year. Dragon Quest 7 is sweeter than any RPG that'll be exclusive anyway for awhile.
I know you're trying to justify your $400 purchase. Next year, when it's head to head with real competition 'MAYBE' they'll have real games, but I look at my shelf And I see some 8 xbox games and around 30 PS2 games. This was most of the 39 PS2 games that averaged over 90% on GR, there are 17 for the xbox.
The only XBOX 'exclusives': Halo 2, Ninja Gaiden, Project Gotham Racing 2, Forza Motorsport, Crimson Skies. (So basically Tecmo, Bizarre Creations, other internal MS teams) So like 5/17 exclusive and at the top.
The PS2 'exclusives': Gran Turismo 3, All the Konami Soccer games (Though most are out on the PC too, and 9 is coming to xbox), God of War, Guitar Hero