With the state of the world's patent system I wouldn't doubt removing HD saved them some serious cash per console. Besides saving money on IP, support, and hardware they will also have better looking games on standard TVs since developers don't have to mess around with HDTV resolutions.
The highest resolution you are going to get with SD NTSC is 720x480(basically 480i). There are 6 times as many pixels on a 1080i/p display than a 480i/p display. The higher resolutions don't only tax the GPU more, they also eat up more shared RAM. FPS will be MUCH lower when developers decide to support the high resolution HDTV outputs. If a game supports the higher resolution then it must be playable at that resolution so something has to be sacrificed that could be included in a 480i/p only version. I'm guessing almost all XBox360 and PS3 games will only support 480p because of speed issues. 480p does look noticeably better than SD TV on a good HDTV, however you have to decide if it is worth the extra money, especially when you probably don't own a HDTV yet.
Nintendo is trying to put out a budget console so this makes sense, but if I had already bought a HDTV I'd be bummed.
I think Sony has picked stable and cheap with an option to customize. They are shipping a console without a HD, but still leaving a bay where you can add one.
You still couldn't run MacOS LEGALLY. The Licence for every version of MacOS I've seen (6-X) includes a part that says you can only run it on an Apple Macintosh or certified Apple clone.
True, but finding a really good deal at a local shop can be pretty hard. Most online stores have preset limits where they will take back monitors (besides that you pay for return shipping).
Walmart also doesn't have restocking fees, or at least in my experiences.
I just picked up a Balance 19" 1280x1024 LCD w/ DVI & VGA at Walmart for $300. The nicest thing about it was that I could take it back for ANY reason for 2 weeks(it had a sticker saying so).
My Balance LCD is pretty nice, it has excellent contrast/brightness, but does have some color shift starting at about 45 degrees and has some reallllllly pitiful speakers.
I believe you are looking for QEMU, but as the last poster pointed out it isn't 100% perfect(although it is quite good). Depending on how you use QEMU it can be quite fast, however nothing is going to beat testing on real hardware.
You can have an operating loss and still make a profit because of the "Other income and expenses" item on the Income Statement(negative numbers are in parenthesis). Operating Loss/Income is only income directly related to their primary businesses. However, Sony buys/sells stock in other companies, buys/sells factories, pays tons of taxes, pays/collects interest on loans, and does a zillion other things that generate profits/losses.
When you want to say whether a company was profitable or not, you look at the net income on the Income Statement.
Their income statements don't have anything about losses in 2002 or 2003. I haven't read Sony's SEC filings and haven't had enough accounting classes to fully understand them anyhoo.
The 360's CPUs are pretty mundane when compared to the CELL. The CELL is quite exotic and turns a lot of principles(hardware and software design) on their heads.
The 360's CPU is just a 3 core PowerPC with huge Altivec(128 registers instead of 32). Mhz are totally meaningless, the fastest Power/PowerPC CPU is IBM's Power5 @ 1.65ghz. Performance stats for the 360's CPU would be interesting, but a marketing teraflop isn't.
I think being last out of the gate may really work for them.
A LOT of people are just going to be waiting for the PS3/XBox2 price to drop and/or for a game that they want to be released before jumping to the next gen. If Nintendo prices the Revolution low enough($150 less than PS3) I could see them outselling Sony this time. Price is going to be the biggest factor for me. My XBox1 w/ EVOX already does everything I want in a media PC(without any DRM).
If Microsoft continues to burn money like they did on the XBox1 then I don't see who can stop them from getting another monopoly.
That's also what they would say if they were designing APIs in a XBox1 work-alike setup. Recompiling an Xbox1 game doesn't mean a complete rewrite. A lot of what they would be doing to get Xbox1 games to compile for the XBox360 is writing APIs that act exactly like they did on the XBox1. The XBox360 development enviroment is going to be very similar to the XBox1.
Creating a work-alike API for the XBox1 would be very hard, but definately possible. I'm not sure with the hardware they announced that a simple binary emulator(like the current Virtual PC) would work at all.
If they go with an emulator I'd guess they would pass as many API calls to the host as possible, similar to what DarWine is trying to do with QEMU. You can currently only use DarWine to compile windows programs on MacOSX, but x86 binary compatability is planned for the second phase.
Microsoft definately has their work cut out for them wether they are emulating or recompiling. If they can't get at least 75% of XBox1 games working on the XBox360 at launch, then announcing backwards compatability is going to hurt them rather then help them.
Sorry, but I'm surprised none of the people here who got 3+ for their comments have read this article.
They clearly say they are going to EMULATE the top titles.
That article says no such thing!
Emulation isn't even mentioned in the article. The interview is vague as Hell on how they are going to get bakcwards compatiblity and ends with "the execution [of XBox compatibility] will speak for itself".
HEY!!!, I paid for 2 of those games. Of course one of those was Mechwarrior for the express purpose of installing linux and then later installing EvolutionX.
I'm guessing I'll pick up a Revolution in about a year. I'm REALLY hoping this NES/SNES emulation stuff carries over to the DS.
Actually I watch FAR less TV now then before setting up MythTV, I know I more than halfed the time I watch TV even while watching more shows. I do waste some time searching TV listings online.
The funny thing is that the thing I miss most about watching TV the old way is the commercials. Commercials are a part of society and not seeing the latest funny beer ad will make you an outsider in many situations. I can't force myself to watch commercials anymore. Sitting through an entire block of commercials is unbearable now, even when watching TV at someone else's house I just want to hit Z and continue with my show.
I'm thinking of trying to implement a feature in MythTV that takes all the commercials out and lets me watch them without the shows. If they weren't interupting my show I think I could watch them again.
The Xbox has definitely lost Microsoft a HUGE wad of cash. MS is a large publicly traded corp and has to file all kinds of financial reports, including what their different divisions profits were. It was big news when the Xbox division finally made a profit for one quarter.
Whether MS loses money per XBox is questionable, but whether the "Xbox venture" has been financially profitable is not.
For any company but Microsoft the Xbox would have been an unmitigated failure. I just hope they don't kill off the real video game industry.
Do you really think IBM would put all the R&D of putting SMT into an old core? Power5 already has it.
The Xbox 360 CPU is a castrated Power5, like the G5/PowerPC is a castrated Power4.
Wow, sorry for the sarcasm, but WTF?
The G5(PPC970) is just a single core of the Power4 with Ativec(VMX) bolted on.
The Power5 currently maxs out at 1.65ghz.
It is odd that they bothered to put SMT in the XBox360, but that's hardly proof that the design is ANYTHING like the Power5. The only reason I can fathom SMT made it into the CPU is because they made some serious short cuts elsewhere that make it really hard to optimize for(no out of order execution, extremely small caches, etc).
With multi-threading, strange altivec, and 3 cores per chip these don't look like they will have much in common with the G5 or Power4.
The only thing I could see resmbling specs for the CPU are at IGN:
Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU:
3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
2 hardware threads per core; 6 hardware threads total
1 VMX-128 vector unit per core; 3 total
128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
1 MB L2 cache
VMX is IBM's name for Altivec. Does each VMX unit on the Xbox360 have 256 registers(128 per hardware thread)? The G5(PPC970) has 2 VMX units with 32 registers each(64 VMX registers total). Up until now I think all VMX/Altivec CPUs have had 32 registers per unit.
If the PS3's CELL CPU is going to have 1024 128bit registers per CPU then the Xbox360 may have 768 total.
The amount of RAM is really impressive to me, having 512MB+10MB to play around with is going to make for some pretty crap.
The US puts out these neat Special 301 Reports that tell all about the things countries are doing about IP that upset the US. If you read through you can find a couple countries that would be suitable, Jamiaca and Peru look like they might work to be patent havens.
I really doubt it, audio CDs just contain the uncompressed audio(like a WAV file), however DVDs are MPEG2. Encoding to MPEG2 from MPEG4 without losing much quality is a pretty CPU intensive task(doing it in real time takes a fast computer).
It's not impossible that Apple would do it, just that it's not trivial like CD burning.
She's not bitching that iTunes doesn't support WMA, but that the iPod doesn't support WMA. According to what she says in the article, she is bitching about the poor online music stores that are using WMA and can't compete. While not a huge difference, it does add to irony that is already there.(i.e. poor Apple can't sell music to people that own Microsoft approved players)
I'd rather own a CD and the rights to the music on that CD
You know Apple lets you legally burn CDs from your iTunes purchased songs?
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With the state of the world's patent system I wouldn't doubt removing HD saved them some serious cash per console. Besides saving money on IP, support, and hardware they will also have better looking games on standard TVs since developers don't have to mess around with HDTV resolutions.
The highest resolution you are going to get with SD NTSC is 720x480(basically 480i). There are 6 times as many pixels on a 1080i/p display than a 480i/p display. The higher resolutions don't only tax the GPU more, they also eat up more shared RAM. FPS will be MUCH lower when developers decide to support the high resolution HDTV outputs. If a game supports the higher resolution then it must be playable at that resolution so something has to be sacrificed that could be included in a 480i/p only version. I'm guessing almost all XBox360 and PS3 games will only support 480p because of speed issues. 480p does look noticeably better than SD TV on a good HDTV, however you have to decide if it is worth the extra money, especially when you probably don't own a HDTV yet.
Nintendo is trying to put out a budget console so this makes sense, but if I had already bought a HDTV I'd be bummed.
Stable, Custom, Cheap. Pick two
I think Sony has picked stable and cheap with an option to customize. They are shipping a console without a HD, but still leaving a bay where you can add one.
But the more I thought about it the more putting linux on the PS3 makes sense.
You still couldn't run MacOS LEGALLY. The Licence for every version of MacOS I've seen (6-X) includes a part that says you can only run it on an Apple Macintosh or certified Apple clone.
True, but finding a really good deal at a local shop can be pretty hard. Most online stores have preset limits where they will take back monitors (besides that you pay for return shipping).
Walmart also doesn't have restocking fees, or at least in my experiences.
I just picked up a Balance 19" 1280x1024 LCD w/ DVI & VGA at Walmart for $300. The nicest thing about it was that I could take it back for ANY reason for 2 weeks(it had a sticker saying so).
My Balance LCD is pretty nice, it has excellent contrast/brightness, but does have some color shift starting at about 45 degrees and has some reallllllly pitiful speakers.
This is really just a fancy recruitment drive with open source as an excuse to keep the "do no evil" flag flying.
so?
If Google didn't have anything to gain from this I'd be very worried.
I believe you are looking for QEMU, but as the last poster pointed out it isn't 100% perfect(although it is quite good). Depending on how you use QEMU it can be quite fast, however nothing is going to beat testing on real hardware.
You can have an operating loss and still make a profit because of the "Other income and expenses" item on the Income Statement(negative numbers are in parenthesis). Operating Loss/Income is only income directly related to their primary businesses. However, Sony buys/sells stock in other companies, buys/sells factories, pays tons of taxes, pays/collects interest on loans, and does a zillion other things that generate profits/losses.
When you want to say whether a company was profitable or not, you look at the net income on the Income Statement.
Their income statements don't have anything about losses in 2002 or 2003. I haven't read Sony's SEC filings and haven't had enough accounting classes to fully understand them anyhoo.
You seem to be wrong Sony Corp hasn't been unprofitable for a LONG LONG time. Profit slumps yes, but not in the red.
The 360's CPUs are pretty mundane when compared to the CELL. The CELL is quite exotic and turns a lot of principles(hardware and software design) on their heads.
The 360's CPU is just a 3 core PowerPC with huge Altivec(128 registers instead of 32). Mhz are totally meaningless, the fastest Power/PowerPC CPU is IBM's Power5 @ 1.65ghz. Performance stats for the 360's CPU would be interesting, but a marketing teraflop isn't.
I think being last out of the gate may really work for them.
A LOT of people are just going to be waiting for the PS3/XBox2 price to drop and/or for a game that they want to be released before jumping to the next gen. If Nintendo prices the Revolution low enough($150 less than PS3) I could see them outselling Sony this time. Price is going to be the biggest factor for me. My XBox1 w/ EVOX already does everything I want in a media PC(without any DRM).
If Microsoft continues to burn money like they did on the XBox1 then I don't see who can stop them from getting another monopoly.
That's also what they would say if they were designing APIs in a XBox1 work-alike setup. Recompiling an Xbox1 game doesn't mean a complete rewrite. A lot of what they would be doing to get Xbox1 games to compile for the XBox360 is writing APIs that act exactly like they did on the XBox1. The XBox360 development enviroment is going to be very similar to the XBox1.
Creating a work-alike API for the XBox1 would be very hard, but definately possible. I'm not sure with the hardware they announced that a simple binary emulator(like the current Virtual PC) would work at all.
If they go with an emulator I'd guess they would pass as many API calls to the host as possible, similar to what DarWine is trying to do with QEMU. You can currently only use DarWine to compile windows programs on MacOSX, but x86 binary compatability is planned for the second phase.
Microsoft definately has their work cut out for them wether they are emulating or recompiling. If they can't get at least 75% of XBox1 games working on the XBox360 at launch, then announcing backwards compatability is going to hurt them rather then help them.
Sorry, but I'm surprised none of the people here who got 3+ for their comments have read this article.
They clearly say they are going to EMULATE the top titles.
That article says no such thing!
Emulation isn't even mentioned in the article. The interview is vague as Hell on how they are going to get bakcwards compatiblity and ends with "the execution [of XBox compatibility] will speak for itself".
So, have you read this article?
HEY!!!, I paid for 2 of those games. Of course one of those was Mechwarrior for the express purpose of installing linux and then later installing EvolutionX.
I'm guessing I'll pick up a Revolution in about a year. I'm REALLY hoping this NES/SNES emulation stuff carries over to the DS.
Actually I watch FAR less TV now then before setting up MythTV, I know I more than halfed the time I watch TV even while watching more shows. I do waste some time searching TV listings online.
The funny thing is that the thing I miss most about watching TV the old way is the commercials. Commercials are a part of society and not seeing the latest funny beer ad will make you an outsider in many situations. I can't force myself to watch commercials anymore. Sitting through an entire block of commercials is unbearable now, even when watching TV at someone else's house I just want to hit Z and continue with my show.
I'm thinking of trying to implement a feature in MythTV that takes all the commercials out and lets me watch them without the shows. If they weren't interupting my show I think I could watch them again.
mini-CDs work fine in slot loading drives. I've been using mini-CDRs in my slot loading iMac for years without any problems.
I know some slot loading mechanisms have problems, but nintendo designs their own drives.
The Xbox has definitely lost Microsoft a HUGE wad of cash. MS is a large publicly traded corp and has to file all kinds of financial reports, including what their different divisions profits were. It was big news when the Xbox division finally made a profit for one quarter.
Whether MS loses money per XBox is questionable, but whether the "Xbox venture" has been financially profitable is not.
For any company but Microsoft the Xbox would have been an unmitigated failure. I just hope they don't kill off the real video game industry.
It's not a dreamworld.
Do you really think IBM would put all the R&D of putting SMT into an old core? Power5 already has it.
The Xbox 360 CPU is a castrated Power5, like the G5/PowerPC is a castrated Power4.
Wow, sorry for the sarcasm, but WTF?
The G5(PPC970) is just a single core of the Power4 with Ativec(VMX) bolted on.
The Power5 currently maxs out at 1.65ghz.
It is odd that they bothered to put SMT in the XBox360, but that's hardly proof that the design is ANYTHING like the Power5. The only reason I can fathom SMT made it into the CPU is because they made some serious short cuts elsewhere that make it really hard to optimize for(no out of order execution, extremely small caches, etc).
What an interesting dream world you must live in...
The only thing I could see resmbling specs for the CPU are at IGN:
Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU:
- 3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
- 2 hardware threads per core; 6 hardware threads total
- 1 VMX-128 vector unit per core; 3 total
- 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
- 3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
- 1 MB L2 cache
VMX is IBM's name for Altivec. Does each VMX unit on the Xbox360 have 256 registers(128 per hardware thread)? The G5(PPC970) has 2 VMX units with 32 registers each(64 VMX registers total). Up until now I think all VMX/Altivec CPUs have had 32 registers per unit.If the PS3's CELL CPU is going to have 1024 128bit registers per CPU then the Xbox360 may have 768 total.
The amount of RAM is really impressive to me, having 512MB+10MB to play around with is going to make for some pretty crap.
The US puts out these neat Special 301 Reports that tell all about the things countries are doing about IP that upset the US. If you read through you can find a couple countries that would be suitable, Jamiaca and Peru look like they might work to be patent havens.
it has a clock
I really doubt it, audio CDs just contain the uncompressed audio(like a WAV file), however DVDs are MPEG2. Encoding to MPEG2 from MPEG4 without losing much quality is a pretty CPU intensive task(doing it in real time takes a fast computer).
It's not impossible that Apple would do it, just that it's not trivial like CD burning.
She's not bitching that iTunes doesn't support WMA, but that the iPod doesn't support WMA. According to what she says in the article, she is bitching about the poor online music stores that are using WMA and can't compete. While not a huge difference, it does add to irony that is already there.(i.e. poor Apple can't sell music to people that own Microsoft approved players)
I'd rather own a CD and the rights to the music on that CD
You know Apple lets you legally burn CDs from your iTunes purchased songs?