Slashdot Mirror
More on the MS "X-Box"
The Hulkster pointed us at an article at sharkyextreme that talks about microsoft's rumored X Box, their x86/WinCE gaming box designed to compete with the Playstation/Dreamcast home gaming console market. The most interesting tidbits are the rumors that will use a
.18 micron K6-2+ and possibly a GeForce 256. Its all speculation, but its still interesting.
What's so cool about the letter 'X' anyway? Now we have X Windows, MacOS X, ActiveX, DirectX, X-Box,... anything else?
I think that when the X-Box is out, Dreamcast will have a lot of users and games. It won't be easy to win Dreamcast, i think
microsoft rules man
Yeah. Microsoft will "compete" with their "innovative" hardware and software.
...till something's shipping, or at a minimum available as a list of chips used or code, it doesn't matter.
This is a consumer device.
As we know, porting from one platform to another isn't impossible; most code under Linux compiles under a variety of platforms.
If this is a WinCE based device, why not go with a bank of ARM chips or some other RISC processor?
Puzzled, confused, this just doesn't make any sense.
Microsoft is just trying to get back at intel for pushing Linux. The same way Intel is trying to get back at Microsoft for pushing NT on non-Intel platforms. Does it really surprise anybody that microsoft would be trying to punish Intel for supporting Linux?
Given the number of trolls & "First posters" that seem to infect /. like so many maggots in an apple, maybe every thread should automatically delete the first three posts, or at the very least moderate them down to -1...these idiots annoy the hell out of me...
This is nothing new, people. Way back when in the 80s, Microsoft helped develop a microcomputer system called the MSX that was supposed to be a home PC like the Tandy or Commodore 64. It failed pretty miserably and I think that taught Microsoft a lesson: stick to software. I guess that lesson needs re-learning. *sigh* BTW if you don't believe me, I have an emulator for it. It proudly displays the old Microsoft logo on boot-up! :^)
[obligatory comment]
and will it make a nice Beowolf cluster?
[/obligatory comment]
Anonymous Kevin
hehe
Someone'd better moderate that up to funny, *fast*.A lot of good talent went into that.
Good job, mike.Oh yeah, extend, enlarge the company so when
one branch stops making money, there's still
ten more left.
But imagine some cow at pasture somewhere, say
in a place called Redmond. It has four legs, how
many legs do you think the cow needs to keep
standing? Alright, chop one off, no problem,
chop TWO off, the cow will fall on its face.
Moral? Can you think of any?
Your kind isn't welcome here. Nintendo, SOny, and yes even Sega. BUt no micr0osoft. We don't want you F*Cking up this market too with your inferior technology. Yes it is inferior. WHo would want a machien full of glitches like windows. THe whole reason game machienes work so well is because they are specialized. IT took a long time to develope this technology. For example. the N64 runs at 96mhz. I know a guy who is lagging 16 bit games on a 200mhz box. why. because computer technology wa not intended to run only games. and aside from that Companies like nintendo take extended amounts of time making sure the code is absolutely perfect. Microsoft just throws something out as soon as it boots. could you imagin not only shelling out for the games but paying the price over and over to get the "upgrades" which should have been the origional. and even if it were a perfect game the system would constantly be crashing because windows is so full of bugs. Other problems include microsofts tendancey to throw money around in order to dominate the market with shuch inferior products. then once the competition goes down, making stedilly worse and worse products. so BIll Gates needs to know his role.
who's with me yea or nea?
Nintendo's Dolphin will kick everyone's ass including microsoft if it has to. If you don't want a good ass womping gates stay out.
If Nintendo can't get developer, what make you think Bill Gates can? You talk as if indenpendent films will run over Studio productions the moment cheap DV equipments come out (That is, now.) Chack your facts, there hasn't been an new studio successfully eatablish itself in the last 3 decades, with the exception of DreamWork. I expect that it will be acquired by Universal in 10 to 15 years.
CY
Microsoft wants to make X-BoB with a Vengence after the unexpected B.O. diappointment of Bob Harder: Wince
CY
That's possible, yes. I wouldn't be suprised at all if Linux/BSD didn't run on it right out of the box. BSD runs on Dreamcast now, right? I think if they can pull that off, they can do it with a semi-familiar architecture.
There's this distressing "cave man grunt" mentality to the way a lot of people just dismiss the notion that Microsoft is successful because they competed and won in the marketplace.
I've not been able to really figure out where it comes from. Possibly these folks feel an affinity for all the competitors that have lost in competeing with Microsoft.
Then again, there's a certain sort of person who gravitates to anything that lets him/her be contrary. It's a shame those sorts don't have the Mac to rally around anymore. (or, rather, not much of a Mac to rally around...)
Well, anyway, have fun, folks.
We all know what Nintendo did to destroy the competition in the late 80's. We know how evil Microsoft and Sony (to a lesser extent, of course) are. The Sega Dreamcast is here now, and it's drop-dead gorgeous. Why wait? It was an easy choice for me.
In my opinion console people are loyal to a platform, but they always switch every time a new generation of hardware comes out. Everyone owned a Nintendo back in the mid 1980's. When Sega Genesis and NEC TurboGrafx-16 came out everyone got a Genesis and Super NES only took over once Genesis became too old (and Sega started working on Saturn). Then Sony Playstation became the big thing. If people were that loyal, Sega would have went out of business, and Sony wouldn't have bothered trying to overthrow a Nintendo 95% market share (like they had back in the NES days). But I am really interested in anyone (even Microsoft) in trying to free up those ridiculous third party licensing rules that have always been in the console industry.
Whats the point of AMD releasing two chips at the same price/speed point???? Just because the machine will use PC style components doesn't mean it will have PC style costs. It's alot cheaper to build a closed box with no/limited upgrade then one with alot of slots. Not to mention much lower support worries. Just one more reason to boycott AMD.
I think the direct competition of X86 and PSX2 will show that the x86 platform is overrated.
CY
Unfortunately the "gift culture" that people like ESR are always celebrating doesn't develop FPGAs, low level hardware, and can't afford to pay for the tooling for a single plastic part of the enclosure for a game console. As for multiple hardware vendors... are you proposing a game-console version of the PC Clone? Who gets to decide what the 'footprint' for the 'motherboard' will be? The people who pay to design the enclosure?
Just doesn't seem very realistic to expect any of this.
AFAIK, Q1 was developed on nextstep and ported to DOS.
.plans for further info. theres some hand-tuned asm in there too, but that scres me.
Q2 and Q3:a are written on MSVC++. read JC's
It's a conspiracy by a few rotund participants who somehow have managed to always post at a default of two. They want to annoy the rest of us into always read the discussion threads at a setting of 1 or above. I think it's THEM posting all the off-topic "first post" comments to try to drive everybody into a state where they only read the comments of the nicked class.
I've already thrown away a half dozen nicks here on Slashdot, because I don't think this is a community worth developing a "personae" in.
Oh Lord, another Playstation fanboy.
Hello,
:-)
:-) The answer is: if you build a console with the need in mind it's (in first) for 3D games, you will have possibilities for the hardware you would never imagine with a PC. You don't have to care about any standard except the video-output, which is fixed to the TV-resolution (!), you don't have to care about PCI and other interfaces, supporting over 128 MByte RAM and all this stuff. Also beer in mind that PSX2 will have a CPU which is 10 times faster and has over 10 times more memory than a PSX1. And now imagine a PSX1 with this specs...
;-)
I doubt Microsoft can compare with PSX2.
- PSX2 is a console with an OS in it only made for games and for the very specific PSX2-hardware (no it's not Linux; Linux is "only" the OS to develop for the PSX 2). Who needs preemptive multitasking, who needs a COM-based DirectX with HAL and all this crap on a GAME-CONSOLE please? So in first the power of a Windows CE-console can't compare with the power of a pure game-console no matter what they do. Maybe a DOS-based could compare...
- A Windows CE-console has to keep standards and has a big overhead which is not useful for this kind of applications. If someone doesn't believe me, then please explain why a console is so fast in real 3D with a 33 MHz CPU?!?? (before someone says now "my PC is faster than any PSX" then please downclock your PC first to 33 MHz internal CPU-speed and try again...
- Windows CE eats too much memory. Compare Windows CE handhelds with a Palm Pilot and you know what I mean... So another reason why PSX2-games will be looking better than Windows CE-games. PSX2 will use the memory for other things...
- Does someone remember MSX? yes, the "MS" stands for Microsoft and this computer was for competition with C64. I think this console can have the same problems.
- No matter what happens, if a MS WinCE-box comes, MS will kill Sega first... (who needs a Win CE-box from Sega which will be incompatible to a future MS-standard?). Dreamcast is the most selled Windows CE-box on the world... So what happens if Microsoft begins to kill their own partners on the not very well selled Windows CE-market?
Go on, Microsoft. I begin to like your ideas...
Cheers
Boessu
well if its a games console, you could put linux on it and play, what, 10 games? 4 of them nethack vaianats, 3 that dont compile, quake 1,2 and 3
The only factor common to all "winning" console systems is a high number and variety of games.
Nintendo screwed up with its "quality, not quantity" philosophy for the N64 which was just the opposite of that of the original NES.
Sega survived with the SMS because of a small but wide variety of games but was getting 1/20th of NES market share. The Genesis had all the games and was a huge success then lost quickly to the Super NES when Genesis game development slowed down and Super NES game development remained high.
Sony won the next round because there are so many more games than N64 and Saturn.
I think the philosophy that wins is "We'll come out with a ton of games. We don't care if we think they are good or bad, we'll let you, the customer, decide what you want to play. We'll just make sure you have a lot of choices."
My prediction: Sega has not learned this lesson entirely, and will not reach the level of dominance it had with the Genesis, but will have respectable market share. Sony will be a little behind Sega because it will probably want to milk third party developers for all they can because they think they've won. X-Box is kind of a mystery to me. I think Nintendo has learned its lesson. Nintendo will have the same type of success as Super NES, a struggle at first, but when Dreamcast and PSX2 start losing steam, all the cool stuff will start coming out on Nintendo, but it all depends on whether or not Nintendo wants to shed its "kiddie" image.
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
FIRST POST - NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do you actually own a Dreamcast? I'm turning mine around right now, and I don't see squat. There might have been some WinCE logo somewhere on the Japanese model, but there's nothing on the US model.
Regarding WinCE...I read in the Wall Streetb Journal a few days ago, that the M$ was _NOT_ planned on going with WinCE in the X-Box...
Normally I don't read the Wall Street Journal, but it was just hanging on the rail there next to the toilet paper and I couldn't resist...
name a browser thats better that IE?
:O)
opera? nah,
lynx? BZZZT!
netscape - *crash*
mozilla - we'll see daikatana first!
You can play 'Moulder and Scully' with it, and NEVER find the truth about this Box.
Did anyone read the rest of this article?
M$ is apparently reviving the Optical Mouse. This is much more significant news than the silly X-Box. Apparently they are claiming it will be revolutionary to the mouse industry. I'm only wondering why the mouse industry wasn't revolutionized the first time optical mouses came around. Still...I've wanted an optical mouse on my little PC for quite some time. Now maybe I'll be able to get one (with 5 buttons to boot)!
That's a ridiculous argument. You show me a truly "moral" company, and I'll show you a business that will probably be bankrupt in under a year.
does this finally constitute a monopoly? a very large, very wealthy company trying to use it's dominance in one market to monopolize another. the idea is real interesting, but so is MCA and token ring.
Your prices are screwed up - first off, you're quoting retail costs... Microsoft would probably pay *half* of that at MOST. And an Athlon 500 for the processor? Major overkill. The dreamcast does wonderfully on a 200Mhz chip. With consoles, the bulk of the processing goes on in the video CPU. Not to mention, why would they need 64 megs and a *motherboard* - especially one that costs $140?????? You need to learn how consoles are made before making stupid posts like this.
Sony is the clear winner, my ass. When there's actually product on the shelves to buy, maybe *then* you can declare a winner.
The whole point of MS "making" (actually, the speculation I've read has other companies building boxes to MS specs) a console box is to provide a low-end machine that has the same APIs as a Windows Gaming PC. Even if they don't go for binary compatibility and settle for mere recompilation, they've got a built-in developer pool that outstrips all the current consoles.
Logitech is a competitor to Microsoft in the mouse business, they don't design mice for Microsoft. Microsoft designs its own hardware in house (and then farms manufactoring out to offshore factories).
Considering what MS tends to do to its competitors (think IBM) does anyone else think that sega were being less than clever when they decided to license Windows CE for the dreamcast?
In any case Netscape sucks, the only reason it got the marketshare it did was because of their subversion of STANDARDS that let them add more flash to web pages that used Netscape only tags.
Well, what if Microsoft's tactic is to leverage all the PC games into their console. If the console is basically a PC with the keyboard removed and an enhanced joystick (and best of all, a tightly focused single hardware spec. to support), and the OS is derived from Windows, then vendors can basically port their Windows-based games to a closed non-general-purpose game console with a few changes to the source. Viola! Instant portfolio of pretty good games for the X-Box as it enters the market.
...are in way too many pies. I wonder when we'll hear about the involvment in this company. I know the rumors I've heard are very interesting (and, for all you astro-turfers, yes, the source was reliable.... don't be fooled by the lack of mention on the site, and don't be blinded just because they sign your paycheck...)
No matter how many times its repeated on /. it won't change the fact that Windows doesn't crash daily for most people and in fact is hundreds of times better than described by /. posters.
A PC based box won't do this - lets face it - if you had the ability to do this on a PC you would.
You are forgetting that the PC platform is an open platform, and vendors producing games to run on the PC have to contend with many, many combinations of hardware/other-software. A closed box based on an optimized PC platform allows the OS, and the games to be tightly integrated to the hardware. There's a performance boost in being able to do that, needless to say.
Nobody cares.
Uh, how can Intel continue without MS? Because they are working with Linux (which has less than 1% of the OS market?)
Get a grip.
I read information about x-box a few weeks ago in a magazine put out to all game-selling companies (I work for best buy). It claimed that xbox would have athlon 500's in them.
From what I've heard, Redmond is in an absolute panic.
Apparently, Ballmer has issued strict orders that everyone is to install W2K on their machines, but most of the development organizations have refused because it's so unstable nobody can get any work done.
There have been low level mutinies all over the company because groups have been missing deadlines directly related to the use of W2K.
When you program a PC game, you know that there are a lot of hardware possibilities. You cannot optimize your code for Pentium III (not everyone has one). But with a console is different. The hardware of the PSX is the same (at least for the programmer) since 1994, and is easier to have a fast game (the CPU is ALWAYS the same, so Sony can develop a better compiler every year)
I hear the occational protest from Microsoft slave that they don't have to reboot their computers that often.
I say to you: Yeah, Right
The problem is, you have to reboot so often that you probably just don't remember. I've been with people and watched them reboot there machine, and they'll say, "yeah, well, it wasn't the OS's fault; the app hung the machine."
So they'll do a reboot and not register it as a reboot of the OS because "it wasn't the OS's fault."
A reboot is a reboot.
We only use NT if we need to trash a hard drive for testing purposes.
An oft perpetuated myth. They do make money from the console, although it's certainly not their primary source of revenue.
If they allowed "unencumbered" environment, they'd be crushing themselves!
Perhaps, but only because they've set themselves up in that position. The C64, Atari ST and Amiga all did tremendously well without restricting development (the fact that they all later died due to management incompetence is irrelevant). It's certainly possible to make money from unencumbered console sales. They may have to change their business strategy to do it, but that's not the issue. The point is that one day, someone will do it. When they do, the others will all fall. Consumers like choice, and open development gives them all the choices they could want. Remember, the playstation sold so well because of its range of software, not on technical merit.
Yes, Age of Empires and Age of Kings were developed by Ensemble Studios and distributed by Microsoft. Microsoft had very little to do with the development of those games besides lending some beta testing support.
X Windows is an accepted term now. Even Alan Cox uses it. People know what I mean when I say "X Windows".
So some of you think X-Box would be cool, eh?
No sh*%!
What about Playstation 3?
700,000,000 milion polys/sec.
And no x86 architecture can top that!
That alone can beat all the dream-mares, fleX-boxes and all the other stupid whale/dolphin/penguin animals out there.
I stand corrected. However, this is a far cry from what I consider "plastered all over it."
uh.. we can do this on our machines and we do this already.. i have a more powerfull gaming system than a dreamcast.. maybe you don't but i do..
I've seen lots of posts saying that the X-box or PS2 is going to be the godsend if the console runs Linux or open sources. Now my question here is, why? What do you gain by running one OS over the other on a console, or opening the code to the world? I'm not talking here about those who want to use the console as a low-cost server, which is a separate issue, but of the console as a gaming machine.
First of all, the OS. While it might be beneficial to the Linux community for game developers to be working on Linux so that they can port to the PC for the PC players, why does this matter for the console? The OS on a console is burned into the medium (call it a CD) that the console uses to play its games. Thus, the OS that the console uses is independent of the machine. There are no monopoly issues with the software itself, because the user is constrained by the hardware they are using. If the OS is loaded on the CD, then so long as it has the right commands it should run any OS it gets.
As for open sourcing, it is my belief that there are some industries where open sourcing is just not viable, and games are one of them. The idea of open source is to give public access to code. However, with games too many designers will simply spoil the broth/game, so to speak. This could be done also for stability purposes, but this is also made moot on the console. The game is hardcoded by the time it reaches the console, so there can't be any patches for errors the public finds. Of course, the game could be open sourced in development, but this brings the sticky issue of intellectual property, which is quite important in gameland; if you are trying to create a new genre of gaming, the last thing you need is to clue people in as to what you are doing, since if it's any good there's going to immediately be tons of clones ready to take away your market share.
There is also the problem of where one is to make money on the game. Red Hat can get by by offering bundled extras, installation guides, technical support, manuals, and so on, but this won't fly with games, because the console player simply shouldn't have any technical issues or extras when the only thing needed is the game CD (and the manual is always included). The development code could be open sourced, but since developers have to pay a hefty licensing fee for the system beforehand, to me it doesn't seem to make a difference if they get the development kit before or after they pay. The console makers could get rid of the licensing fee, but then where are they going to make the money? They don't make money on the hardware itself, so all the money is made from the software. Trying to take a cut on each game sold is a risky manuever at best.
Console games on CD-ROM (Sega, Sony) include the OS with the executable on the disc, so OS incompatibility problems are non-existant. Excuding the hard drive, as Sony does with the PS2, reduces the bill of materials and thus allows a lower price to be set. Sony will sell a combination HDD/cable modem for the PS2's PCMCIA slot, but this will be an extra cost option so the PS2's retail price remains unaffected (apart from the slot hardware). One thing should be remembered: despite the PS2 development platform running under Linux, Sony's policies make Micros~1 look like an Open Source angel in comparison. Sony, Sega, and Nintendo also charge exorbitant licencing fees to game publishers, and this is an area where, mirabile dictu, BorgSoft could increase competition and decrease costs by entering the market. Consoles will never go away, but the X-box could help level the playing field by increasing the number of players, which tends to destabilize oligopolies like the current Big 3 game manufacturers.
Um, I use/used (use a lot of Linux now too) Windows a lot, and I reboot well, at least twice a day........because I switch OS's: ) Seriously though, Windows crashes on me at most once a week. And most of the time it's a buggy FTP program that causes me to reboot. If Windows had a kill command like Linux, I'd reboot maybe once or twice a month. Which doesn't bother me a bit because it only wastes 2 minutes of my life. Big fscking deal. If you ask me, for the home user, having to reboot is way over rated as a gripe.
I've used win2k heavily on my primary machine for 6 months now and have only had one blue screen ( I kicked the computer over and knocked something loose) And no, there aren't any mutinies, just a few testers here and there with p133's bitching about no hardware.
Don't get me wrong, I love /. to death, but major headlines based on 'speculations' should NOT make the cut. Without hard evidence, running a story like this may compromise integrity in some form or another down the road. Just watching /.'s back here, but what do you think?
They want to participate from all that,
...
what _X_ (like in uniX, Xwindow...) stands for.
But while they have problems to do it by content,
they are doing it by name adoption and are calling
their stuff direct_X_ active_X_, _X_box,
But despite all their efforts, their stuff
still su_X_ much to often. An old plumber
doesn't become a young princess after she
has sexified her name.
The xBox is a bit permutation algorithm for use in crypto's, created by me in ~February 99.
http://www.geocities.com/P entagon/Barracks/3030/xBox.doc
MS - go and steal someone elses stuff!
Ha! Idiot. You've been hanging around the Linux groups a little too long.
As proof, notice the lack of developers swarming to writing games for Sega Drewamcast. It supports CE, whose primary development platform would be, you guessed it, Visual Studio.
Boy, you sold your argument there. Yup, the developers choose their targets based upon the development environment. That's good, sound thinking.
In any case, Direct3D was "beaten to death" by one Mr. Carmack whose main beef was not that it offered nothing (at the time..we're talking three or more YEARS ago) OpenGL didn't support. Since then Direct3D has grown by leaps and bounds are no one who knows has a beef with it. It doesn't replace OpenGL...however be aware that OpenGL games on Windows use plenty of DirectX. DirectDraw is superb and is responsible for a hugh number of advances in the video hardware department. DirectSound is singularly responsible for the superb sound cards we now have (i.e. Live!)...if it weren't for them every game would strive to the lowest common denominator and we'd still be using Cirrus Logic 5460's and Soundblaster 16s. I have a Microsoft Sidewinder Precision Pro sitting on my desk and it is wicked the support it has in gaves via DirectInput the moment I plugged it in. All these things require a standard API, of which DirectX is it.
In any case, statements like And Quake is most CERTAINLY not written in Visual Studio prove that your just performing some verbal masturbation and you really don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about. Pray tell what super features a "game development" IDE should have in it? MSVC is a brilliant IDE and although it isn't perfect and there'll always be Linux yokels yibbering about some minor quirk or other, it is definitely #1.
Why do you think they announced it? It's vaporware to kick at the shins of Sony... it's a knee-jerk reaction maneuver.. there is nothing to this announcement at all.. Microsoft doesn't want to be at all involved with hardware... profit margins are too low.
Dude is M$ makes a machine its bound to suck who doesn't know that!
Microsoft is an immoral company.
I have taken a solemn vow to never use any of there products for any reason whatsoever.
Most of us know the kind of damage using their products can cause; the wasted time, the miserable interfaces, the throw-it-over-the-wall slipshod programming behind it. Why anyone would humiliate themselves to even boot-up a machine with Microsoft software on it is beyond me.
I won't use a Microsoft mouse either.
It needs something to read the OS off the disk. Think BIOS in a PC, only you can cut down on the functionality even more. That doesn't count as an OS.
..had it left the direct hands of MS when it became a huge hit in Japan? The MSX2, MSX+, etc. standards don't seem to have that much of MS's hands in them, and since the two Metal Gear games and the Gradius/Nemesis sequels were for them...
--
As someone on a different message board pointed out, many DVD players have support for DTS, and wear it proudly. But discs don't always use it.
Heck, there are cases out there with "Designed for Windows 95" plastered on and people are running Linux on the computers inside. It's all about marketing.
--
Then when do they make their money? They don't. This is a loss leader for the PC platform, but there are some _fatal_ problems with this approach:
- people don't necessarily trust Windows and Microsoft well enough to consider them a competitor in consoles- consoles are about not having to reinstall Windows on, about being troublefree. The perception will be that it's a PC with the floppy drive welded shut
:) - although they can get some development by making it appealing to develop for Windows and ship on this as well by clicking a few checkboxes in the IDE, again, this is a loss leader strategy. Why are they acting threatened in this area? It looks very much like the only way they can make it fly is to take _serious_ losses on it for the sake of proliferation- and they can't reasonably be doing that. MS can't afford to squander its money- that money is the sole source of its power.
- finally, the biggie: every single one of these things made and sold, assuming a world in which all or most of the Windows games are also released for this thing (i.e. marketer's wet dream of _success_ for it), means one more reason to not run a PC with Windows on it. If you can get The Games on a little box with a CD-Rom slot in it, you don't need to beat yourself into the ground making a Windows PC do both that and email and web browsing and spreadsheets etc etc. You can specialise and use something else for the 'real computer' stuff- a Mac, Linux, Be, whatever!
Microsoft can't afford to do this. At all. Not even a little bit. I wonder if this project is even real, or if they've considered the implications: "Get Windows- you need to be able to run the games, games are only for Windows!" "But wait, I got a *whatever-it's-called*, and it can run all the Windows games, so I don't need to run Windows anymore!" "Oh." It seems unbelievable that they wouldn't clue to this problem. I guess we'll see, or not see, in the long run. Might be the purest vapor... if they know what's good for them. They _must_ maintain the PC or basically die. There are too many other things that are a lot easier to manage and keep happy than a PC for consumer computing purposes, and giving away the dominance of the PC in numbers of games is a _bad_ mistake.Direct3D, as far as I can tell, is just much, much easier to write drivers for--more stuff is left to the game developer to implement. Are there any experts out there who can verify?
John Carmack hates Direct3D. While his original rant seems to have disappeared from ID's page there is a news article here. John's arguments basicly centered around that A) Direct3D requires you to write more lines of code and B) The lines of code are significantly harder to read.
The point was that Direct3D was mush lower-level than OpenGL, and was a bad choice because of software manageability issues. So it would appear that you have your argument mixed up. :^)
It should also be noted that MS is trying to "fix" this by either funding or actually working on getting OpenGL to work on top of Direct3D with some sort of abstraction layer. I haven't been tracking this, so I could be wrong (or the effort may have been abandoned).
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
So, um... why? Why is VS ill-suited, as you say, to game development? What IDE is better suited for game development anyway? CodeWarrior? Emacs???
I happen to like Emacs... Emacs is well-suited for everything (hence its bloatedness). Yet Emacs is minimal. It doesn't assume anything (well actually assumes a lot but you can redefine the assumptions in your .emacs file (what's that I hear? you don't want to learn E-LISP? neither do I, but I manage okay anyways setting up my own colors and funkified emacsisms. so there's no excuse for not learning a language that you can put in your resume and impress employers with (hey I know a heavily parenthisized scripting language (hmmm it appears that I have gratuitously nested too many parentheses (this is a joke only we E-LISP'ers know... get used to it))))).
Certainly you can't create texture-maps in VS, but that's not a function of the IDE, and I wouldn't want it in mine.
I would definitely choose GIMP. Yeah yeah I hear everyone crying "Photoshop is so much better!!!" Other than support for hardware, I believe GIMP has some really funky features that blow photoshop away (can I use photoshop to write my own perl scripts to automagicly process images?). Now all GIMP needs is support for printers and scanning devices, but from what I hear from time to time things like this are coming along.
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
Most of Microsoft Games (the good ones anyway, not the "Return of the Arcade" serieses) are licenced by Microsoft or published through them. I wonder why such a large company can't get its shit together when it comes to actually making a good game.
(Although they do make a good flight game, MS Flight Simulator being this one exception, though my coworker who works on the project says there are so many people working on it, it's any wonder things get done. It would be cheaper for them to outsource it as well.)
I don't know in fact, but it's likely the hardware is made by a seperate entity. Anyway, the hardware is decent, but definitely not ergonomic, it just looks that way.
"The only problem with it is
that it's tied to Windows. But if this console runs it... Well that's fine by me"
well, it's NOT fine with me. I don't care if Bill Clinton's cigar runs it, if it's tied to Windows, it's just not good.
The EVIL is - single-platform dominance, it allows monopolies, from which follow all kinds of abuses.
To eliminate that EVIL, the market needs multiple platforms, and developers have to "buckle down" and write for and support multiple platforms. It's the only way to avoid the obvious abuses that come with a monopoly that single-platform dominance brings with it.
NOT convenient for developers.
Not really convenient for consumers (faced with having to make technical choices they're not really qualified to make).
But definately beneficial to us all in the long run.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"and she'll claw the eyes
.45, is still illegal. Or, we'll find out when Judge Jackson renders his judgement.
out of anyone else who tries to do the same on her corner. "
needless to say, clawing another hooker's eyes out, or having her pimp chase the others away with a
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Did MS destroy the Spreadsheet market?
Did MS destroy the Messaging market?
Did MS destroy the Word Processor market?
Did MS destroy the Compiler/IDE market?
There are many, many, many good examples. I wonder why the DOJ limited their case only to the browser market?
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Aw, fresh out of moderator points eh? Well, at least you have the tag. Not quite as obnoxious as ALL CAPS - but we get the point. You're shouting.
Okay, so if this console ran only programs that used OpenGL, I'd be fine with that, because OpenGL is cross platform, so if Google Games wanted to write a game for this box, they could fairly easily port their code to other platforms, at least computer platforms where there are OpenGL implementations, or where Mesa works.
But we're talking about tying developers into a platform-specific API that was designed first and formost to lock people onto one platform (DirectX). Games written first for DirectX will rarely get ported to other platforms, because they'll cover 90% of the PC market, and the rest is economically inconvenient for developers. So, say you buy a PSXII. Google Games writes a killer game for X-Box, and you have to buy X-Box to play that game, or, you can play it on your PC if you have one. Either way, it's Microsoft leveraging their PC platform dominance to edge out competitors in the game console market. It stinks, and if you've heard this argument a few times before, it's because there are a bunch of folks out there like you who just don't seem to "get it".
It's more than just hating Microsoft. It's fearing the likely future that's in store if Microsoft "wins". If you're not afraid of the kind of world that will likely be, then you have no imagination.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
um - no more cc:Mail or Lotus Notes. Pretty much the game is owned by MS Exchange. Although Notes seems to pretty much have bottomed out and stabilized. . .
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
No, it'd simply take Microsoft to add a few hardware specific catches in there, and not publish them. Offer an SDK, and do the same thing 3dfx does with Glide.. FORCE them to use it. If another company truies to write something compatible, sue their pants off.
And this has NOTHING TO DO with OSS. Personally, I see more promise in OpenGL then DirectX. I see better hardware support for OpenGL, and I see better performance out of OpenGL.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
If you consider autocompletion and MSDN 'invaluable' tools, you're programming style needs work.. ;-P
A) Autocompletion is a new addition to 6.0. It also happens to slow down actual work you're trying to do.
B) Integrated docs is really, REALLY nothing to brag about. It's nothing more then a bloated addition to something that already has a HUGE footprint.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
An 'Invaluable Tool' is NOT a 'handy feature', as you now call it.. ;-P
MSDN IS a hog for what it is. It's simply a library of Microsoft documentation, that's it. Visual Studio shouldn't 'require' it for operation, as it does.
And the reason I rank on Visual Studio is becouse Microsoft takes the opertunity to customize it for every little Microsoft component, and tries to basically shove MFC down your gullet. Granted, it's a damned nice IDE, but that's the ONLY nice thing about it. That was my original point. It's nice to use for pretty much RAD design, but getting down and dirty with it can get bad, 'spec when you start messing with things it's 'automagically' generated for you..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I do find it interesting that they are supposedly looking at an AMD chip, much to the chagrin most likely of their long time buddy Intel.
;-P
But I must say, WinAMD isn't nearly as catchy as Wintel..
You also have to wonder what they want to use for graphics on this machine. Even with a 500Mhz processor, they really would also need a dedicated graphics processor to stand ANY chance of beating something like the PS 2. zthis machine may be able to compete with current game consoles out there, but they will all soon be in a whole new playing field then the one they are in now..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
I disagree that this will ever be as 'open' as you say, and certainly no more open then Sony using Linux as it's primary development platform for the PS 2.
You automagically locked in to, more then likely, Visual Studio for development, and Direct X as the primary graphics library, neither of which are noted for being superb for game development.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Yes, but at the same time, it'd most likely run Windows CE, which anyone can develope for, as long as they (*TADA!*) buy Visual Studio. Not to mention the likelyhood that they sell Microsoft Office, etc, to run on the beast. It's a system that they can NEVER WORRY ABOUT THE MANUFACTURES with, as they are them, and they can PUT that roadblock up that says they will ALL run Windows..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
DirectX has been beat to death my many of todays leading game developers as being one of the worst systems to work with. I'll have to dig thru some pages to find exact stories, but I can, and most certainly will. Carmack himself slaughters it regulary when people ask him about it.
And Quake is most CERTAINLY not written in Visual Studio. Some of the Windows specific code is, but not the primary codebase. And the IDE is very, VERY nice, but the actual environment is ill suited for game development. I use Visual C++ 6.0 regularly, and I simply LOVE it, but it is not a very good system for game development. As proof, notice the lack of developers swarming to writing games for Sega Drewamcast. It supports CE, whose primary development platform would be, you guessed it, Visual Studio.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Having said that, the console market is very restricted. I know of one company in the UK that sells (unlicenced) games, and has made itself a fortune. I believe they were taken to court, but the restrictions were (I believe) deemed too restrictive to be legal.
However, if a GPLed console were to be produced, THAT could turn the entire market upside-down. It shouldn't be too hard, either. There are plenty of very powerful GPLed graphics toolkits, and no shortage of affordable high-speed graphics cards. Plug in a real-time Linux kernel, or (better still) an Exokernel, and you'll have something that can blow the socks off anything already out there.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
www.kdevelop.org
It's close enough to visual studio that I think you would be satisfied.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Whoaoooaaaaa, Sharky's missing a bit of history in their report.
3dfx' partnership with SEGA for the Dural (Sega's code name two years ago for the Dreamcast) fell apart some 18 months ago and although both parties seemed to be satisfied with the end result the real reason for the 'split' then came down to capabilities in terms of supply and yield levels.
Oh, my ass both sides were satisfied!
This was nothing short of a minor scandal some time back. Turned out Sega got some pressure from someone, somewhere, and decided to go with a Japanese company(NEC, in a beautiful twist of irony for those who remember the NEC TurboGraphix 16) for the core chipset in their Dreamcast.
This was after signing with 3DFX and extracting detailed technical specifications out of them.
Needless to say, 3DFX went ballistic, and (probably correctly) accused Sega of delivering their prized designs to NEC, who at the time was still theoretically going to release their tile based PowerVR2 monster chip.
I actually don't think that chipset ended being used in the DreamCast(I lost track--so sue me), but I definitely remember a pretty massive settlement for breach of contract etc. against Sega for their 3DFX fiasco.
Lots of drama, somebody go post some links.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I disagree that this will ever be as 'open' as you say, and certainly no more open then Sony using Linux as it's primary development platform for the PS 2.
You automagically locked in to, more then likely, Visual Studio for development, and Direct X as the primary graphics library, neither of which are noted for being superb for game development.
Those are the standard development tools. If other people want to use other environments, it would take some serious anticompetitive hardware that wouldn't survive a moment of legal/PR scrutiny to literally MANDATE the usage of the Windows OS on otherwise standard PC Hardware.
Microsoft is likely to actually Do The Right Thing for one reason or another here and posit that game developers would rather develop their high end code using the many services embedded in DirectX7 than use whatever the OSS guys are doing.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
No it won't. The idea is that it will be on millions and millions of homes and will run _Windows_.
It'll run an open PC platform. Whatever OS is loaded is whatever OS is loaded.
The anticompetitive hardware that would prevent this would attract farrrrrr too much legal/PR flack that MS doesn't need for any reason.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I'm confused.
Don't worry about it. Understanding the "enemy" is much more fulfilling than hating a bogeyman. I actually agree with most of your analysis.
You think MS should be credited for competing?
Heh, when did I say this? I said it's cool that they're creating a much more open platform than what we've got now.
What's so noble about that?
Cool Product != Noble Aims. Embrace and Extend is about as ignoble as it gets.
The only reason MS is offering this "open and free" development platform is because they have no choice. Sony and Sega have the market locked down. Microsoft's original plan to make the PC the premier gaming platform hasn't exactly panned out and they're not too happy about that.
Sure, they've got a choice. Kick Sega, Sony, and Nintendo around for their relatively ridiculous developer relation$, or don't.
Look. The X-Box isn't something like...say, removing Knowledge Base entries that help Windows work with Samba. Or removing critical files from their online archives, demanding that you call tech $upport to get the patch to a PPTP bug. Or revoking Compaq's right to sell Windows because they dared to remove the Internet Explorer icon.
Complaining about the X-Box because it's a Windows compatible platform is kinda like complaining about those FreePC deals because, my god, they're free PC's that can run WINDOWS!
MS is in this to make sure that developers work on MS platforms, using MS development products. They only care about openess and freedom when it's the only way to enter a market.
MS keeps you as open and free as possible as long as you're using their tools. Openness and Freedom is historically their major selling point, and they'll be as closed and violent as they can get away with to prevent others from intruding on their domain in this regard.
[WARNING: THE FOLLOWING ANALOGY IS OFFENSIVE BEYOND BELIEF.] Microsoft is really no more complicated than your average hooker--she's got the goods, it's $49.95, and she'll claw the eyes out of anyone else who tries to do the same on her corner.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Most of Microsoft Games (the good ones anyway, not the "Return of the Arcade" serieses) are licenced by Microsoft or published through them. I wonder why such a large company can't get its shit together when it comes to actually making a good game.
According to John Carmack, size is actually a detractor in making really good games. He's been quoted as saying that "Three programmers, three artists, and three level designers can make the greatest games in the world."
Too many designers spoil the vision.
(Although they do make a good flight game, MS Flight Simulator being this one exception, though my coworker who works on the project says there are so many people working on it, it's any wonder things get done. It would be cheaper for them to outsource it as well.)
Flight Sim is a legacy game--it's part of the definition of what Microsoft is. It may be an albatross of a division, but most of the people in there probably grew up playing it. It's part of their corporate identity, I'm sure.
I don't know in fact, but it's likely the hardware is made by a seperate entity.
It's definitely separately managed; they don't do everything perfect but their quality is noticably higher than the software divisions'.
Anyway, the hardware is decent, but definitely not ergonomic, it just looks that way.
No, the iMac mouse is definitely not ergonomic. What complaints do you levy against MS hardware?
The scrollwheel is just brilliantly implemented, down to the steppage to provide the stop.
The Windows key is tragically named but is an amazing concession to a design concept I wish Linux subscribed more to--everything should be doable via keyboard. I use the Windows key all the time in 98(is there a KDE patch yet?), and respect the Right Mouse Key for what it is.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
No, it'd simply take Microsoft to add a few hardware specific catches in there, and not publish them.
Hardware specific catches break compatibility, lead to lots of headaches down the road, and don't even stand up to a decent amount of reverse engineering on a (wide) open platform like Windows, where every call is just a SoftICE away.
Offer an SDK, and do the same thing 3dfx does with Glide.. FORCE them to use it. If another company truies to write something compatible, sue their pants off.
Not their style. They're using standard hardware for a reason.
This isn't the first time MS has entered a market with overly restrictive incumbents. They're counting on the fact that they'll be much more open than their competitors to make them money.
And this has NOTHING TO DO with OSS. Personally, I see more promise in OpenGL then DirectX. I see better hardware support for OpenGL, and I see better performance out of OpenGL.
I don't know about this. OpenGL seems to be all about having the driver authors do more work, presuming they're much more knowledgable about how their product wants to draw a primitive.
Direct3D, as far as I can tell, is just much, much easier to write drivers for--more stuff is left to the game developer to implement. Are there any experts out there who can verify?
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
John Carmack hates Direct3D. While his original rant seems to have disappeared from ID's page there is a news article here. John's arguments basicly centered around that A) Direct3D requires you to write more lines of code and B) The lines of code are significantly harder to read.
.plan remains one of my favorite flamages of all time.
The article is from 1997. Things change.
Give MS some credit. Carmack ripped DirectX a new orifice back in the days of DirectX1. By DirectX3, they ditched their horrific Talisman-defined Execute Buffer architecture(which even Carmack had problems figuring out) for a rather standard interface game designers could just throw tri's at.
Yes, that specific
It should also be noted that MS is trying to "fix" this by either funding or actually working on getting OpenGL to work on top of Direct3D with some sort of abstraction layer. I haven't been tracking this, so I could be wrong (or the effort may have been abandoned).
Ah yes, Fareinheit(I'm too lazy to spell this right at the moment). Standard MS Vapor, best I can tell. Too bad, it'd be *very* nice to have standard things like Interface Enumeration for OpenGL games.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I've been saying this for a while: Most actions of Microsoft can be analyzed under a "Chains For Freedom" Philosophy: Microsoft wants to make the general public as free as possible, as long as they're the ones to deliver the freedom.
That in mind, consider the values of the X-Box. Whereas most console makers tightly restrict development on their machines, game developers will likely be free to release whatever they like for the X-Box.
Expect, of course, an extremely quickloading and game-customized version of Windows to have a per unit cost on each Game DVD. Also expect this to be significantly cheaper than Sony or Sega mandates per unit.
Don't expect non-standard media. Microsoft, for all the embracing and extending it's accused of(justifiably), has an excellent hardware department. I've never, ever been more embarassed of Slashdotters as when I watched them rip apart the touch-mouse--this was an impressive technology that would have been worshipped had it come from Logitech and shipped with Linux drivers. Anyway, expect their department to build in an industry standard DVD-ROM, likely one that can play DVD-RAM disks so as to facilitate ease of use for system developers.
Developers become "free" from propietary startup hardware costs, and "shackled" by having to code to Microsoft standards. It's pretty interesting to watch.
Linux is the wildcard. While Sony is releasing Linux development code for PS2, Linux should actually *run* on this K6(!!!) based system. This, above all else, should excite the heck out of us. Here we have a cheap system that will very likely be in millions and millions of homes, have 10/100 Ethernet built in(oops, Sega!), significant processing power($20 says they put the SB Live audio chipset in it, btw), and will run Linux.
Beyond the fact that we will see developers using Linux as their game OS rather than the one-off Windows from MS, here's a console that one can actually pawn computational work on. It's a console free of almost any legal demands and enforcements of its creator.
It's an open platform, from Microsoft.
Recognizing that this is a cool thing gives us more credibility when we accuse MS of the kind of junk described in the Halloween papers.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
How on earth will Sega compete against the company that owns the OS they are using?
Ouch! Wince is definitely the right word for it.
Deleted
Gday Tet.
In that case, why does the dreamcast have the MS logo plastered all over it?
Deleted
Or WIMD
Deleted
No, we don't. We have "The X Window System", alternatively called "X11" or just "X", but never "X Windows".
Pedant, and proud of it :-)
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
The console manufacturers have had it coming for a while now. Unless they open up development for their machines, they're going to be crushed by someone that does allow free (as in unencumbered) development. The disappointing thing is that it looks like Micros~1 will be the one to do it.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
No, not really. Since the dreamcast OS is supplied on each disc, rather than in the console itself, game developers can choose whether to use WinCE or Sega's own OS. So far, it looks like most developers are avoiding CE.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
MicroSoft is supposedly planning to release a gaming system:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/991026 -000014.html
Didn't they learn from their DreamCast fiasco? Anyway, I'm predicting that this project will be killed anyway and if it does make the light of day it will be lackluster. It's way too late for MicroSoft to get into the game.
Sony is the clear winner in this space and the fact that they already have a base for connectivity with their consumer appliances makes them tough to beat. Sony is very serious about becoming not only the defacto standard for gaming but the defacto standard for home entertainment. They've been putting FireWire (a method of connecting media devices) into their digital cameras, PCs, Laptops, televisions, stereo components, etc.. The (MIPS-based) video chip in PlayStation has nothing that comes close to it. This could also be used to make a settop box out of the PlayStation II as well.
Let's also not forget that PlayStation I has about 80% market share. I believe the new PlayStation II will blow away the records set by DreamCast.
That said Sony is forecasting lower than expected earnings due to PlayStation's costs and competition:
http://dailynews.yaho o.com/h/nm/19991026/tc/japan_sony_1.html
I was hoping something like this would drive the stock down but I'm having no luck there. I guess no one's buying it. I'm not either.
You can read about Sony's plans in this month's Wired (which I still haven't read myself ).
"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."
--
And Justice for None
"Here we have a cheap system that will very likely be in millions and millions of homes, have 10/100 Ethernet built in(oops, Sega!), significant processing power($20 says they put the SB Live audio chipset in it, btw), and will run Linux. " No it won't. The idea is that it will be on millions and millions of homes and will run _Windows_. Linux or any other OS won't have a chance
---
Microsoft are very good at hiding the bodies from their previous failures.
Back in 90-91 they announced (and developed all the way to release) the same thing, back then it was a 286-tweaked Windows-3.1-in-ROM based console with a CD-ROM.
Anyone remember what it was called ?? I don't think it was the "3DO" failed console, but it was about the same time.
The idea was the same, leverage all those MS developers and tools to dominate the consumer games market.
The only thing left of that is the "autoplay.inf" mechanism that tells Windows machines what to do when you insert a CD-ROM.
Anyone remember Pen Windows, Microsoft Bob, the first attempts at PDA's (jaguar was it called?), the Microsoft Programmers Editor, OS/2, Lan Manager (LanMan for HP-UX), MSN ?
They might recycle the ideas, but don't think there'll be anything new in it. And when it dies, it'll disappear without a trace.
Tim
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
So true! But wouldn't MS name it something like Active Toaster ?
Could this be some extremely belated (like 2 years) news/rumors about the Sega Dreamcast? That runs WinCE and seems to be positioned as a PSX-killer...
The one and (thankfully) only,
LafinJack
we are building a religion
a limited edition
we are now accepting callers
for these pendant key chains
Hey kid, here's a nickel. Go get yourself a Slashdot login id.
(Poor paraphrase of my favorite Dilbert Cartoon!)
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
That means the plethora of PC game development teams would have a lower barrier to enter the console market, which has a history of making money (unlike PC games).
Personally, I prefer the standard PC, and I'm willing to fork over the extra money to have one. I'm also more excited about PSX2 in theory. But in practice, the PSX2 development boxes are still nowhere to be found. Your hair doesn't even need to be very pointy before you start to look seriously at this rumor.
I think if you want to look at what consoles systems will sell, you have to look at little bit of history, and why the current systems are where they are. In cronological order......
1) Saturn - failed, why? Sega of America. Every good Japanese game that came out for Saturn never made it to the US. The old CEO of SOA is no longer there, and the Dreamcast will get it's Japapnese games that caused the Saturn to fail in the US(by the way, it's still somewhat stong in Japan)
2) the PSX - success, why? Timing Timing Timing. and don't forget Marketing Marketing Marketing. Sautrn is still waivering there, but people want something better. Sony comes along with a brilliant marketing campaign and gets all the people that wanted a "next-gen" system, but didn't like the Saturn. And don't forget that cd-r prices are comming down and copying doesn't seem so impracitcal. So Sony already has a decent market now thanks to Sega and our next company, Nintendo.
Ninendo 64 - surviving, why? Nintendo. Nintendo is always late with systems, and this time they were too late. Sony picked up loyal Nintendo fans because the 64 was so late. And lack of games didn't help sell may 64's either. With the goof-up of Nintendo, someone has to pick up the customers, and they went to the system with the games. Sony. And lets not forget the goof-up of using carts over cds so they could try and make more $$ in cart production.
Dreamcast - success - Due to Sony FUD, every videogame mag and site said it was doomed from the start. And so-so sales in Japan of the DC, and the failure of the Saturn didn't do much to change their minds. Before realease people had one thing on their minds..PSX2. The Dreamcast is breaking sales records beause it's delivering what the other promise "next-year" now. And at $200, it's not out of anyone's price range. And not to mention the US is getting the Japanese releases the Saturn ddn't get.
X-box - will fail, why? Because people want a console, not a computer. The people that don't have a computer they could upgrade to X-Box power for $300 or less, and want to play PC games is small. Too small. And that Microsoft can't make a good game to save it's life, and it you can't push out good titles for your own system, it will fail. And PC games don't really go well with consoles. Play Quake2 on the psx or 64? that anything close to what the PC is? Starcraft or C&C 2? And for those couple games that will be decent, people will just get thier PC port.
PSX2 - survive, but won't be another psx-like success. Sony is getting away from the "console" now. They want an "all-in-one" unit that plays games, dvds, cds, surfs the web, washes your dog, and clears your house. These kinda of things never really sell, and at the $400 price too far out in price, when the DC will be in full swing and probably at $99. Their saving grace maybe Squaresoft(FF7 sold ALOT of PSX units), but there are rumors that they be going DC(they dev for whatever sytem is big)
"Project Dolphin" - ??? - it's Nintendo, it will do at least as well as the N64 did now. There are always a huge group of people that will buy anything Nintendo. And Nintendo can bring out it's own good games to try and sell the system based on that and do well. Microsoft can't do the same. And at what's rumored to be a $99 pricetag, people will hold off on getting the $400 psx2 and see what turns out.
So my call is the DC will be here for years to come, the X-Box is doomed to fail(not only because of MS) PSX2 will probably do about what the N64 is now. and what Nintendo does is all up to them.
Anyone here remember the Apple Pippen? When it was announced, the specs looked pretty decent (basically a PowerMac 6100 minus the keyboard), however by the time it shipped it looked pretty weak compared to the then current 604 Macs. The titles that shipped for Pippen were largely edutainment, not games.
A 500Mhz machine might look appealing to developers right now, but what about in 2 years when games target 1 Ghz CPUs and Voodoo 6000s? Would it worth it for developers to downgrade their PC games for the XBox? Only if the installed base is really large.
(Of course, they could solve this dillema by making the box upgradeable, but then you have a PC again, with no savings in cost or simplicity.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Yes, we all want competition. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't compete. They destroy.
-Brent--
If Microsoft was successful because they competed in the market and won, then there'd be no problems. I mean, consider AOL. They were successful. They competed in the market, against all odds, and won. But they didn't win by preventing Prodigy and Compuserve from competing, or use their market dominance to prevent competition.
Microsoft's idea of competition, really is to buy or bury all competitors. IOW, Microsoft has convinced themselves and other that anti-competitive practices is really competition. You notice that both Compuserve and Prodigy no longer exist. This is the goal that they, of course, wanted, yet they didn't have to do things like prevent Prodigy bundling their software with OEM's, or other things like that.
Also, note that AOL has competition that is vying to replace AOL's market dominance. Yet even with that we see nothing from AOL indicating that they are using their market domenince to keep others out. AOL could do things like prevent OEM's to bunding other online services software, or prevent it from being bundled with magazines and other marketable areas. But they don't.
You see, it's not success that's a problem. If Microsoft were just successful like AOL is, I'd probably still be using some of their products that are better then the competition. But when they do things like prevent Compaq from bundling Netscape, charge IBM 4 times the amount to license Windows 95 as they would have if IBM didn't sell OS/2, developed Windows to be "incompatible" with competing DOS's, and force ISV's to ship unnecessary Microsoft products with their software, then I think that's going beyond what a successful, competing company would do.
-Brent--
I didn't do to well piecing sentences together there. I didn't meant that Compuserve and Prodigy crumbled because Microsoft had anything to do with it. I meant that they didn't crumble because AOL was dominant and used that anti-competitively. AOL was better, but they did nothing to prevent CIS and Prodigy from being better. That they were failures, is purely their fault.
Unlike several of Microsoft's customers, who did fail, not solely of their own mistakes, but due to Microsoft preventing them from competing.
Note that Bill Gates wanted to buy or bury AOL too, but AOL trounced MSN easily. Notice the surprising failure of Windows CE. I predict that Microsoft's console box will be a failure too. So Microsoft doesn't have the power to destroy every market, but they do all they can in the market they do have power in to prevent competition. Even then, Linux, Mozilla, Samba, KDE/Gnome, have the ability to compete, against all odds and beat Microsoft. But simply because Microsoft can be beaten doesn't mean that they didn't do anything wrong. And it doesn't negate wrongs they've done in the past.
Then how come I can't use my MSN Messenger to talk to my AOL IM buddies?This has been bashed out in the past. That's like asking how come Dominoes won't delivery Pizza Hut pizza's for free. After all, who's to deny Pizza Hut to right to have delivery service. AIM is AOL's Service. Like a delivery service, they provide value, and like a delievery service they can work with however they want, but on their terms.
There are many IM services that I could use that I'm able to communicate with AIM users with. I'm not talking about the open source clients. I'm talking about, for instance, Real's IM service? You heard of it before? If you have the G2 player, you can see the icon for the service in the player window. See it there? Yep, that's right, it's the standard AIM service, licensed from AOL. AOL has licensed their IM service to many commercial companies.
It's not AOL who's preventing Microsoft from interopolating with AIM users. It's your bright shining company, Microsoft themselves that prevents this from happening. Microsoft needs to do what the others have done, go to AOL with the dollars, and set up a licensing deal. Of course, that doesn't mean that AOL *has* to accept it. Seeing Microsoft's so-called "licensing" agreements in the past (Spyglass anyone?), I'd make sure that there was a lot of good stuff for me, before accepting anything from Microsoft.
And no, you can't use the excuse that because AOL freely allowed Open Source clients to use their service that they *must* allow anyone to freely use their service. The local pizza shop may give free pizzas to the local childrens foundation, but I've still got to pony up the cash.
I'm not saying that MS is a paragon of virtue -- but holding AOL up as a respectable model is just ludicrous. I was going to add additionalI looked through the list and didn't see anything that had anything to do with the subject at hand. You show me one thing that AOL did that was solely anti-competitive, and served nothing but preventing better online services from competing in the market.
-Brent--
The other companies that bundle AIM compatible clients, worked out deals with AOL. (ie. licensed, paid, partnered, worked with) Microsoft, on the other hand didn't talk to AOL at all. They just barged their way in and did what they wanted.
Also, just because AOL chooses to let some clients freely connect, does not demand that every client must be allowed to freely connect. Think of it this way. Microsoft gives software to educational facilities, and other "charitable" causes. Yet if Dell were to insist that that means that Microsoft *must* license Windows to them for free also, we'd all be having a good laugh. We should have the same response when Microsoft implies that AOL must "license" access to the AIM service for free.
Now, if when Microsoft would talk with AOL about licensing the AIM service, AOL would demand that Microsoft shut down MSN to license it, then I think we'd all agree that that is going beyong natural competitive practices. Yet it is actions like that that Microsoft has taken that they are now being sued for.
-Brent--
I profess to know none of the details of Microsofts rumored gaming system, but here goes...
We've seen great progress in the gaming market due to the battle of equals in Nintendo and Sega... Sony hopped into the fray as well, and though they dwarf the other two in size, they play by the rules (my idea, anyways) of releasing better hardware rather than simply lowering prices.
If Microsoft indeed enters the market, I wouldn't be suprised if they delivered an inferior solution which they sold at cost or at a loss in order to gain market share. They'ed somehow make their systems require WinCE disks... It'd be trully embarrasing for them if Linux somehow runs on it. Plus, their revenue stream from such a device would be solely from WinCE royalties from game developers. So, don't expect Linux disks for this machine.
So far as hoping for a Microsoft machine to support both DVD and DVD RAM, dream on. Their entire revenue base is from OEM deals. If they let their machine read DVD RAM devices, then that can shoot themselves in the foot so far as capturing revenue from developers.
Though the system will be built from "commodity" parts, I highly doubt one will ever be able to call it "open". It's just not in Microsoft's interest to have a trully open platform.
And they've been missing out all these years. The only thing I use my Windows box for is playing games.
I am skeptical about Microsoft's success in the console world against established vendors like Nintendo, Sony, and Sega. Who knows.
A Microsoft console could definitely sell. It can compete with the Sega's, Nintendo's, and Sony's just fine. Here's why:
1. Microsoft has a track record of out-selling most publishers out the gate with a new product solely on the strength of their branding. Even as a newbie game publisher, they consistently outsold the leading game publishers by a factor of 2x out of the chute.
2. Game developers love developing games for fixed architectures. Designing games for "PC"'s is a nightmare by comparison. With a fixed architecture, you can really push the game design, which is why Playstation titles often seem so much more exciting and complete than PC titles despite running on a gutless 34MHz MIPS R3000 with 2Mb of RAM.
3. The first game developers to ship product for a system, no matter how lame that system is, will sell close to a 1:1 ratio with the platforms. That means even if the product is a real stinker, like the Atari Jaguar, and it only ships on the order of 100k units, you'll sell 100k games. That's considered to be near-hit volume. Why do you sell 1:1? It's a weird phenomenon which I associate very much with being American- buying a new platform gives you a kind of "fever" to buy any available titles for it immediately.
4. A console architecture based on an x86 means game developers don't have to learn a new asm, and they can probably enjoy far more mature debugging tools. Debugging is the biggest pain in the butt when it comes to consoles. The tools are usually really weak, so it takes a strong (and expensive) coder to successfully write them.
So if Microsoft approaches EA and says, "We're making this console, here's the architecture, would you please write games for it," you'd better believe they'd get started immediately. You don't need to retool, you don't need to rehire. The race is on. Can you be one of the first titles out there? If not, you have to make a quality game, which is a lot harder, but either way, you win big. That can't be said of a mature medium where the competition is incredibly fierce and profits are dwindling.
The reason you don't see 20 different consoles popping up all the time is that it takes a huge investment. Most consoles sell for cost or even at a loss, and the advertising campaigns are incredibly expensive because they have to reach children and 20-somethings everywhere. All the money is made in licensing fees, so you have to wait a while for the profit to roll back in, and if you're up against a monster, odds are good you'll fall over in the long run.
In Japan, by the way, consoles dramatically outnumber PC's. PC game sales in Japan are completely limp. But if you can make a hit console game in Japan, it's possible to beat both the worldwide sales and the worldwide margins in a single territory. Final Fantasy VII (albeit an extreme example) sold over 7M units in Japan. That's more volume than any PC game, including the undying sales of Myst, has ever sold worldwide.
Console game development is really interesting and responsible for most of the $6B+ game industry.
If you get the opportunity to be the first to write anything for any new Microsoft platform, frankly, whether a Linux weenie like me or not, you'd be daft not to sign the paperwork immediately.
I hope this gives a better idea of why Microsoft might be considering such a product. They're in an unusually strong position to deliver a successful console platform.
I thought that Flight Simulator was originally written by someone other than Microsoft and MS bought the company?
I thought some other company wrote Age of Empires (same for Close Combat) and MS just distributed it? Or perhaps they have bought them now?
In any case, why does it matter what games Microsoft makes? What good games does Sony make for their Playstation? It is the other developers that matter.
Long drawn out games? Final Fantasy isn't a long drawn out game? It is fast-paced? Baldur's Gate is coming out on Dreamcast. There are quite a few RTSs for consoles -- Age of Empires is just another RTS.
Game developers are also in direct competition with Sega yet they have written games for Sega platforms. Of course, those developers are also in competition with Microsoft, yet they write games that run on a Microsoft OS. I don't see how writing games that also run on MS hardware is any different.
Why will the first batch of games make of break the X-Box? IIRC, the first batch of games didn't make or break the Playstation.
Think that's being a bit unfair on good ol'Bill.
I didn't know if this was being ironic as AFAIK Microsoft already has investments in NTL (a Cable company in the UK).
Microsoft and Bill have their fingers in a lot of interests apart from software. Don't they also have a big stake in NBC in the US. They have to do something with all that money they've earned!
[not normally a Microsoft supporter]
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I don't really think all the parts would be bought off of places on pricewatch. Microsloth would be buying everything in such large quantities and things would be custom. They will end up paying less than the places you found that sell those items pay for them.
From the article:
.18micron process. This CPU, which will harbor 128K L2 cache on-die will hit the market in Q1 of 2000.
"The other CPU of interest at AMD seems to be the imminent K6-2+ 500MHz, running with a 100Mhz front side bus and manufactured on a
Very interesting -- sounds like a good cheap processor to snatch up and overclock. The inexpensive nature of this processor is exactly why M$ is interested, along with myself.
-d9
Why would you want to ?
.. video recording, videoconferencing (how about video IRC on an ADSL set-top-box ?)
So you can run all those cool video apps on it
Guys, who cares if MS makes this thing? If it's as sweet as it's supposed to be (better than Sony), then that's what I'll get.
It's the quality of the games that matter, not who makes it.
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
That seems like a very large assumption, especially considering the lack of information that is out there. I doubt they're going to stick an Abit BH-6, or any other standard motherboard in a console. They'll likely use a proprietary motherboard and chipset, since they are not aiming toward PC compatibility. Without knowing the details, it just strikes me as a very low possibility that you'll be able to run any existing desktop OS (Linux/Win/BSD/Be) on any console.
So, I'll conclude by saying it's all just speculation, and it's not quite as simple as "It should work just dandy with Linux," in my humble opinion.
Can't they think ahead any further than that?
Athlons will be dirt cheap within a year.
But, K6's should be nearly free by then. Maybe
Bill wants to keep his margins as wide as his
ego.
This would be good news for AMD, I'm a fan of AMD.
Next you'll be buying the telephone companies and cable companies.
hate to break it to you but... You remember a guy called Paul Allen? Do a quick search on the name and see how much cable he has bought in the last two years. It's a big part of his company portfolio now.
from here:
Just a year after entering the business, Allen has spent $19 billion in cash and assumed debt to turn Charter Communications into the fourth-largest U.S. cable operator, with 5.5 million subscribers.
+&x
Next you'll be buying the telephone companies and cable companies.
hate to break it to you but... You remember a guy called Paul Allen? Do a quick search on the name and see how much cable he has bought in the last two years. It's a big part of his company portfolio now.
+&x
Geez, Bill. How many markets are you going to destroy in an attempt to stay King of the computing world? Next you'll be buying the telephone companies and cable companies. Geeezzz...
The best example is the web browser market. Did he compete there? Yes. Did he destroy the market? Yes. Netscape started giving away their product to match the Microsoft price ($0.00). The market was destroyed. But it isn't all bad. Microsoft innovated, right?
This is exactly why Open Source beats Microsoft at their own game. Better product. Better price. What would be killer is an open-source hardware and software game console. Multiple hardware vendors, and easy entry for programmers. Could be delicious, folks!
Developer support will come in the form of programmers who already have a vested experience in programming x86 hardware, possibly PC game developers who are interested in developing a console port simultaneously.
This was the purpose of including WinCE as an optional API layer on the Dreamcast. It was supposed to facilitate Pc to dreamcast ports.
Nintendo owns a lions share of Rare.
-- Reverend Vryl
It's a well-known non-secret in the industry that Sony, Sega, and Nintendo sell their consoles for well beneath the cost it makes to sell and distribute them. They lose money on every unit sold.
Fortunately, for them, they make it back since they license (for a fee) the libraries you need to develop and distribute a game, as well as the cost of burning the black CD-Rs or manufacturing the cartridges.
With hypothetical figures, even if they lose $50 on each consoles, if they made $10 in licensing fees on each game bought, they break even at 5 games.
Microsoft is going to find itself in a bind. In order to compete with the other consoles, it's going to have to price them below cost. Folks who have run the figures realize this. But unless they can develop an alternative revenue stream, this is going to be a black hole for them.
Is Microsoft going to be able to convince their developers to pay to distribute their software? They never had to before. But since this unit will most probably boot off of the CD-ROMs, they'll need a small embedded DOS or Windows-CE/95 kernel, so they most probably will have to pay for that.
It'll be interesting once some enterprising developer figures out how to make their own boot disks using DR-DOS or linux. Then what will MS do? Second, Microsoft doesn't have any distribution tentacles in the toy market, so it'll be fun to see them market to 'Toys-R-Us' and so forth.
Karen
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GAT d-- a? C++ UX+ L++ P++ E--- W+++$ N++ o-- !K !w O---- M++$ !V PS++
The history is a little bit longer.
Remember the AMD chips that proudly displayed "Windows 95 Compatible?" That was around the DX4/100 era.
Intel never had a MS logo on their processors.
Lets see how much this bad boy is gonna cost.
...
** If MS used the athlon (cause that is the only way they will be able to compete)**
AMD athlon 500mhz - $ 200
Mother Board - $ 138
64MB - $ 65
DVD drive 6x - $ 77
4Gig - $ 65
a 56K modem - $ 50
GeForce 256 - $ 208
total - $803
And that's leaving out some stuff like power supply, case,
'plug and playability' that other consoles have always had.
What for the controllers? You actually have to reboot the console the get it to recognize the extra controller you just plugged in. So no, its not plug and play. That would be funny if every time you plugged in your joystick to play your favorite X-box game you have to insert the driver CD!
I got all the prices from Pricewatch.com.
>It's a near impossible market to break into.
Um... if that were true the Playstation wouldn't be here at all. It broke into the market when consoles went 32-bit and most people thought Nintendo and Sega still had a lock on the market.
In a market without backwards compatibility, every round of console innovation can start anew. MS has a chance in the current round against the Dreamcast. We have yet to see how the PS2's backwards compatibility helps or hurts it.
>MS need to provide a killer game and a few >killer features on thier box. The killer game is >easy to do, the features are harder to achieve.
How about the ability to play Windows games off the shelf? Surely it won't play them all, but MS is going to great lengths to make sure developers have an easy time putting in X-box compatibility to their Win32 games. That in itself is a killer feature the likes of which has not been seen in the console market.
Oxryly
*nuffsaid*
-- The Sage does nothing, and nothing is left undone. --Lao Tzu
Certainly you can't create texture-maps in VS, but that's not a function of the IDE, and I wouldn't want it in mine.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Game makers can port console-like PC games to this system much easier than they could to, say, the PSXII (unless they had that in mind from the start) because none of the low-level routines need to be re-optimized for a different architechture and the graphics calls are exactly the same.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
DirectX is a great graphics library with a crapload of support from the industry. The only problem with it is that it's tied to Windows. But if this console runs it... Well that's fine by me.
And VisualStudio?? Hello, have you ever used VS?? It's possibly the nicest damned IDE out there. I would give a kidney to have a VS port for Linux that would work with EGCS. You're crazy to think that it's no good. And to say that it's poor for game development -- what do you think Carmack writes Quake in?
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Look, I'm all for diversity on the desktop, but consoles aren't the same thing. What if it only ran programs that used OpenGL? Would that be okay with you? I think -- no, I know -- that this is just about hating Microsoft. Grow up, they're a big company with a lot of clout and, moreover, whining about how evil and unfair they are isn't going to change that. If you don't want to use this system, fine - don't use it, no one is twisting your arm. But spare us all your rantings because, believe me, they're nothing new around here and frankly it's getting kind of -1: Redundant.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
...this is stupid. :P).
It will run on a standard PC cpu, using a standard PC graphics card...which means the software could just as easily be made to run on a PC (given the proper, err, incentive
Realize that most console people that I know are also VERY loyal to their system (more so than Amiga people even...and thats a loyal userbase...)
I know people that have no Playstation or Dreamcast, regardless of the games, simply because it's not Nintendo.
And don't worry, I'm sure Microsoft will hinder development without a hefty liscence.
I'm slightly (negatively) surprised to see MS starting to do more hardware stuff. I've read criticism of it before, that they're slowly but surely trying to eat up the hardware market too. This project hasn't produced a product yet, but I clearly see where the criticism is coming from.
I dropped by StatMarket today, and looking at MSIE's market share now I frankly think MS going into the console market is a seriously bad idea. Geez, can't Bill keep his sticky fingers off of anything?
Rare (they're a subsidiary of Nintendo, so they don't really count)
Actually, I'm pretty sure they are their own company. They just choose to work with Nintendo exclusivly, as a second party developer. They could go to the PSX or such, but I wouldn't count on it.
I know a sure fire way for MS's X-Box to succeed: Get a Pokemon game on it. Unfortunatly, I don't think that will happen.
Who's going to develop games for this?
There's many console companies that are loyal to a single platform. Squaresoft, Rare (they're a subsidiary of Nintendo, so they don't really count) comes to mind immediately. There are others who are already developing different games for different platforms, because each platform has specific features that the others don't have. How is MS going to recruit developers to develop games for an advanced gaming system when there's already 2 advanced (PSX 2 & Dreamcast) console systems on the market, and a third (Dolphin) on the Horizon?
Honestly, it seems like Microsoft is charging into a market where they're very unprepared to compete. If they're the only one developing games for their console, the X-Box is going to go the way of the Atari Jaguar very quickly.
Even if they are able to charge lower prices than Nintendo, Sega & Sony, if they have no developer support, then they are going to fall flat on their face.
Seriously, though, they can throw all the technology they want in this X-Box, but they'll need more than that. Microsoft has done a few good games in the past, but these games worked mostly on a PC platform, and they tend to be long, drawn out games (Ages of Empires, Flight Simulator.) That won't work on a platform, where you want games that are more fast-paced and simpler to control from a controller POV.
And that first batch of games is gonna be what makes or breaks the X-Box. Frankly, I don't think MS has it in them to take the platform market by storm, not unless they begin stealing talent from every other game company out there.
But what about other game developpers? Will they be tempted to develop games for the X-Box? Considering that most of these companies are in direct competition with MS on the PC gaming market, I somehow doubt it.
I predict a flop.
Side note: so they're using Athlons... Is there a bolder statement that Athlons are cheaper than Intels?
"Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass"
Interesting. It will be a box with Microsoft tax but no Intel tax. Not that I think that it will be enough to put AMD in profit....
Anyway, how long do you think it is going to take for someone to port Linux to this thing? I expect WinCE will try and keep user software out of real mode, but there will be a hole somewhere which will allow a loadlin launcher in.
I'm confused. You think MS should be credited for competing? What's so noble about that? The only reason MS is offering this "open and free" development platform is because they have no choice. Sony and Sega have the market locked down. Microsoft's original plan to make the PC the premier gaming platform hasn't exactly panned out and they're not too happy about that.
MS is in this to make sure that developers work on MS platforms, using MS development products. They only care about openess and freedom when it's the only way to enter a market.
Hates people who have stupid little sigs
There are two ways this box could go... it could be a stanard Microsoft pre-announce that doesn't show for several years OR it could be a good box.
Either way I'm not sure if this is an area that MS want to get into - for a start its locked up tight by Sega and Sony, and for once MS will be up against companies that play the same sort of hardball they do, in a market that Sega and Sony understand intimately, and Microsoft are VERY late comeing into this - they could have still done something two or three years ago.
It's a near impossible market to break into. There aren't even any good killer features that I can think of that MS can use to get leverage into the market, they have already all been used in Sony and Sega machines. Sony have the PSX II acting as games machine/home entertainment box, and Sony have the dreamcast doing wonderful net things.
MS can't sell it as a PC games machine - most people that would want this already have a PC that can play games.
They can't sell it as a pure games machine unless the graphics and speed exceed the dedicated hardware of the Playstation II and the Dreamcast. A PC based box won't do this - lets face it - if you had the ability to do this on a PC you would.
I think this project will be steamrolled into market, but I can't see a good reason for it selling.
All MS will be able to do is to copy features (and oddly - they are very good at this) but in the games market gamers are very loyal to thier platform. The Japanese market which is the big one to get, hasn't been very good to MS, and I can't see the trend changing.
MS need to provide a killer game and a few killer features on thier box. The killer game is easy to do, the features are harder to achieve.
In all I don't think this will succeed, and may not even make it onto shelves.
Assuming:
X-Box is reality
AMD Athlon is the processor
Prove:
This means more compilers/support/experience for programming AMD's 3D NOW! instruction set.
The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
I do know the retail markup on Dreamcasts are pennies which most likely means Sega told retailers, "You wanna sell my games, sell my console for nothing." The real money is in the software, which debuts at $40-60 bucks a pop. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Sega does subsidize its consoles by its software prices. In the quest for more 3D/FPS we might be looking at a future where expensive tech will be sold at a loss just to keep up the rep as being the biggest and fastest.
Am I the only one that keeps reading this title as the MS SEX-Bot?
Why buy a product I already have? An x86 based game system sounds a bit lame to me. Heh, I'm sure someone will write a game interpretor for Windows and probably Linux. Buy all the games you want, but never the system... Microsoft, if there is any truth to this, is really going off the deep end.
I don't know if the /. readership is not familar with the console scene or what, but all of these arguments people are making against MS entering the console market were made against Sony before the Playstation came out.
Reality Check #1: Sony was considered that big, massive, evil, money-grubbing consumer electronics company that didn't know anything about video games. It was predicted that they would release a bunch of crap, and that Sega would kick their butt.
In the end, Sony won. They had $$$ in marketing, of course, but a big factor in why they won was that it is easier to develop for the PSX. Saturn was a nightmare to program, and Sega was a pain to work with. PSX was much easier to program, and Sony was much more flexible. As a result, PSX got the titles.
IMO, MS has the two things it really needs to win: major $$$ to shove it down everyone's throats, and an EXCELLENT development story. Their development story will be MUCH nicer than Sony's.
Reality check #2: For all of those people who are saying "oh man, there is no way an AMD/GeForce can compete with the massive power of the PS2" - PLEASE! Stop believing Sony's press releases. For comparison, go back and read the pre-release "specs" of the PSX or the Saturn or the Jaguar or the N64 or ANY of the consoles. Here is a little hint: The PS2 will be slower than a high-end PC is today. Did you catch that? SLOWER.
The most likely failure case for MS is that they are simply unable to get it together in the "squash-the-PS2" timeframe.
Whatta load of horseshit. I mean, someone may leak out that MS (think of them as a big, hungry plant. Don't worry, I'll explain later) is thinking of developing a... let's see... Toaster. Yeah, it's a toaster that... well, they haven't decided yet. And it's capable of... well, since it doesn't exist, the possibilities are endless.
/. post stories on it, thereby qualfying it as "news."
So, the press immediately labels it "X-Toaster," giving it identity. Then MSNBC, Wired and
Then speculation happens. It'll run with a new Motorola chip that actually turns out toast the color you set it for. It may come in blue, it may come in green, it may come is orange, but be called "Tangerine." (every tirade should have a pleasant rhyme scheme in at least one sentence.)
Now, every news site has to have at least one story on it per week. Yup. Someone posts a story (Sharky? Tom's Hardware Guide?) speculating on it with info from "Sources That We've Trusted Before."
Now MS has got press on all of the major news sites, constantly, and before the freaking thing is even a viable idea in the parent company, it's got identity, mindshare and loads of free press.
Feed me, Seymour, feed me.
I'm afraid I beat you to it.
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
For Microsoft's sake, they better come out with it before PSXII or else they are screwed.
Sony will easily beat out DreamCast's sales records in the first two weeks, if not the first.
Besdies, isn't MS getting kickbacks from licensing WinCE to Sega for the DreamCast?
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
Just cause he enters a market doesn't mean he's destroying it. I thought you would like competition.
IE dog slow? Uh...have you ever used it?
Did MS destroy the Messaging market?
eh?
(can I use photoshop to write my own perl scripts to automagicly process images?)
No, but you can use AppleScript to do any amount of scripting not just with Photoshop but between PS and variuos other apps.
---CONFLICT!!---
This MS hardware.
That means they pay someone else alot of money to design/ develope the system.
Think MS mouse. Logitech designed them.. does Logitech get credit? HA!
Personally, I know that the biggest market for consoles is the 13-24 year old market. Wow, aren't a lot of MS-Haters that age-group too? woo.
Since this is a free market(uhm, don't make me go marxist now..) I believe that no amount of MS FUD and marketing genius will sail this ship.
Long live Sony. Long live the Playstation.
--
rJames.org - illustration
This had very little to do with MS.
Compu$erve ran on a very old custom envrionment (VAX clusters) that they couldn't effectively patch up to the Internet. They still had those %#^ numeric addresses -- do you really want to be 77245.3073@compuserve.cis.com?
I think the straw that might have broken their back was that Win95-friendly package the put out right before the 'net hit the consumer market. Can't remember the name right now, but it was a total pile of junk, and CI$ dropped support for it about six months after it came out (shortly after MS had been forced to put it on their desktop as part of the settlement that let them keep the MSN signup in their distro). Shortly after that program failed was when the "Compu$erve for sale" rumours started showing up.
Note that AOL now owns Compu$erve.
Prodigy is a different story -- you can read about one reason for their demise here. I, for one, don't miss 'em.
Also, note that AOL has competition that is vying to replace AOL's market dominance. Yet even with that we see nothing from AOL indicating that they are using their market domenince to keep others out.
Really? Then how come I can't use my MSN Messenger to talk to my AOL IM buddies?
I'm not saying that MS is a paragon of virtue -- but holding AOL up as a respectable model is just ludicrous. I was going to add additional /. articles dealing with AOL here, but there were so many that you might as well just pick some out yourself.
"200 Quatloos on the newcomer!" "300 Quatloos against!"
It's not AOL who's preventing Microsoft from interopolating with AIM users.
You show me one thing that AOL did that was solely anti-competitive, and served nothing but preventing better online services from competing in the market.
I'd argue that locking out the MS client, while not preventing other clients to access the AIM userbase, is anticompetitive.
"200 Quatloos on the newcomer!" "300 Quatloos against!"
The reason why getting into the hardware side of the console world is difficult is because there are only so many big name developers with games that are guaranteed to have a loyal following, and they tend to develop exclusively to one platform. I can't name one extremely popular console game that is cross-platform. You might say that MS can tap into developers of PC games, but what's the point of buying an X-Box if you can just run it on your PC?
Microsoft essentially has to buy a big game company if they hope to succeed. Having a good game come out is the key, and the only real guarantee of this is if the game comes out from a renown developer. This was the secret to Nintendo's success. They develop their own games, and it's probably the only reason they haven't died completely. Who would've bought an N64 is you could get Zelda 64 on the PSX? This is the reason why Sega has always had a hard time despite their technical superiority--no games. The only reason Sony is succeeding is because they have such big names developing on their platform. I really don't think the PSX really blew up until Squaresoft showed up on their doorstep after having a spat with Nintendo. I've heard that quite a few gamers who would've bought an N64 changed their mind when they found out Final Fantasy 7 was coming out for the PSX instead. Should Squaresoft and Capcom ever decide to defect, it will probably mean the end of the Playstation.
MS itself doesn't really make good games, definitely not games that would do well on a console environment. (I shudder to think about how you would play Age of Empires with a gamepad! Or even a flight simulator.) So I wonder which game company will be assimilated by MS.
Sega, Sony, Nintendo, etc. are selling game consoles that range from fairly well (Sega) to highly (the others) integrated systems, with customized CPUs, etc. This is how these machines sell for $99.95-$199.95 today, which is rarely if every making any of them a dime in profit. Even with high integration, you're not making a PClone-ish system any cheaper. And in fact, the emerging specs make it sound much more expensive, but we'll see -- they could and very well might roll special versions of the chips, to keep them out of PCs.
So you have to follow the money. Money is made on software. Sony makes about 1/4 of their total profits on PSX software, even though total income from that market is fairly small compared to the many other businesses they have. Microsoft no doubt wants to make money on the software, and in order for YOU, as a developer, to pay MS for the luxery of supporting the X-Box with a game, you have to license something from Microsoft, or they have no hold over you. For the 3DO box, you had to licence the OS, which was always loaded from disc (probably what MS will do; this lowers the HW costs and eliminates OS compatibility issues). At Commodore, the CDTV and CD-32 had the OS in ROM, and simply required a C= Copyrighted file at a certain location on the CD.
That's not to say you couldn't hack it, just that such a hack wouldn't be legal to distribute.
Of course, if MS is the only one making money, this won't fly. They could adopt a WebTV model -- WebTV is sold roughly at cost, but Microsoft pays vendors a bonus for every unit sold, so they do make a profit (if they sell them, of course). However, this is illegal in many countries. Clearly, vendors can't compete if they have to make a profit on the box, that's what killed the 3DO box, even before Sony and Nintendo came along to bury the body.
MS could manufacture the box themselves, but they don't usually like to get involved in expensive hardware. Look at all the folks who have lost money on WinCE handheld machines -- Microsoft made money in every case, because they sold the software. I suspect they'll want the same thing now.
The X-Box should be well supported for a few reasons. For one, this is PC hardware as PC authors know it, more or less. They'll have to license the Windows or WinCE or whatever you put on disc, but it'll be pretty close to what they're doing in Win9x today. The CPU won't necessarily be fast by PC standards, but then again, the target is the 720x512 or less space of a TV set, not your 1280x1024 monitor. It'll be easy to port Windows-only games to this platform, and quite a few of the older games, not selling for the regular PC, could be recycled here.
On the downside, if you have to use Windows, the system won't kick butt at the same level as the Sega (which can run WinCE, but rarely does) or new Sony/Nintendo machines. Looks aren't everything, though, and much of this market is driven by hype and clever marketing, not just graphics horsepower. Microsoft is a master of this, so far.
-Dave Haynie
Isn't this the same thing M$ did to Sega all those years ago...
Now I have to decide who I hate more: Sega, Sony, or M$...
Nintendo's Project Dolphin will blow all three of them out of the
water.....
Sure, this sounds pretty cool, if any of it is actually true, but is it worth giving money to MICROSOFT for something like this? It will only expand thier ever increaseing empire...
A person who won't think has no advantage over one who can't think. --Paul Lutus
Well pc's bundled with windoze could act as two things: a game console (Like playstation & sega) og as a officetool (like LINUX, solaris and apple). And then we have NT a hybrid between server and workstation (Like the UNIX's).
But in the good olddays before win95 and linux there was a clear barrier between Servers, Desktops and game-stations like(nintendo, sega etc) With win95 this blured out and now people are using the same machine as (a sMALL)server, desktop and gameconsole. (my machine) But now it seems like if M$ is going to revert the changes and making specialized systems again.
Then we the consumers must decide if we want our 2000$ machine to act as a internett server for our house (To save the telephone company of extra stess), Desktop (so the kids could write their school-essays) and Playstation when U want to relax and take a break.
When it comes to cost it is not to expencive to use about 2000$ on a machine that can do all that. (U might not get the newes of the best). Just tink what it would cost to by a playstation, a pc. And yet U doesn't have a server... (The apps to run the server).
PS: I use linux for working, programing, music, netbrowsing, router for my neighbour, (sMALL DNS), and Then I use win95 for playing games!!!! (
can you put linux on it?
It rather depends on how you define better. The qualities that I look for in a browser are speed, stability, and low resource usage in order to work alongside other software. Therefore from my point of view IE is inadequate as it is dog slow and quickly starves other programs that I run of the memory and processor cycles that they require. You may disagree with my describing IE as slow but try running an Amiga browser through UAE and compare the speed! I'm not suggesting you should use this set-up as it's a bit silly but it does show what a bloated waste of resources IE really is.
I'm using it right now as a matter of fact. If you're confused by my describing IE as 'dog slow' then I really think you should have read my post before replying to it.
It's allready been done, and it's failed miserably. Whether or not this is because it was orchestrated by Apple is another issue. People either want a videogame or a PC, they don't want both in the same machine. Will a DVD player make a difference at this point? Allready standalone players are under $199, and should be in the sub $150 range by the time all these new consoles come out. Can MS pull it off? I don't think so...
as of right now, the PSXII's starting price when it hits the shelves will be more than $400. Sony is screwing themselves with this because of the price alone... I dont see it toping the DC sales for stated reason. I plan to get one... but only when the price drops to $200 or less.
The only thing they could have done more would be to type it all in CAPS.
I don't think the world needs a game system whose OS was written by Mickey Soft.
This is along the lines of what Trip Hawkins and his 3DO company tried to say too. He claimed a hardware standard could be created like VHS. Even with the first press release, it didnt feel right to me, and I wouldn't have put money into the scheme even if I'd had any at the time. The problem I have with it, is that consoles are really a different universe to PC's. Standards are fairly irrelevant because the hardware and most of the software is recreated for each product, which is a standard unto itself and is never intended to be compatible with anything else. Maybe next generation chips have the power to stop this cycle, but not at the right price. PC operating systems such as Win2000 or Linux could probably be ported to a console. I dont know if it would be worth the effort. Performance is much more vital in the console arena, and more would have to be taken out than would be left in. By the time youve written the machine-dependant sections, all carefully customised and optimised, you might as well write the rest and make it exactly how you want it. I remain unconvinced of the idea of convergence. I think that at some point, you cant use consoles to perform specific tasks, especially in a manner that is unique to a given user and situation. Likewise, you cant play the one-before-latest-generation arcade games on a $300 PC. Slightly off-topic, but reading some of the material on Linux as a real-time operating system gives me the same sort of feeling. Hard real-time systems arent something that you whack in a module and insmod. Even soft real-time systems arent quite that simple. My point is: horses for courses spooq
I dont care if they just slap their brand on it, when it comes to hardware, they buy the right companies. spooq