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The Xbox 360 Unveiled
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri May 13, 2005 07:46 AM
from the i-have-to-write-xbox-360-for-the-next-five-years dept.
from the i-have-to-write-xbox-360-for-the-next-five-years dept.
You may or may not have caught the Xbox 360 unveiling on MTV Thursday night, but the internet will provide. A plethora of sites have photos, videos, commentary, specifications, and interviews about the new system. Your fellow readers have pulled together to provide links to: 1up.com, Joystiq, Gamespot, The BBC, CNN, NYT, Gamespy, Team Xbox, Voodoo Extreme, Anandtech, and eToyChest. The official Xbox 360 site opened last night as well for word straight from the source. For more official images Ourcolony.net has been 'solved', and now features an OurColony specific video preview. Finally, for commentary on the event, the Video Game Ombudsman provides an alternative to the press releases. From the post: "Kyle Orland (9:28:42 PM): The future of gaming is a girl in a blue dress?
Dan Dormer (9:28:47 PM): The future of gaming is a girl with a bag?
Kyle Orland (9:28:57 PM): She's the Xbox! OMG!"
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But. (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, I would really love to see Tux scream on this thing!
Re:But. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:But. (Score:4, Funny)
Just what I am waiting for, this Mac OS X thing just isn't all it is cracked up to be. I am always happy when I can work at XP here at work (although it looks like Mac OS X for some reason).
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Re:But. (Score:3, Interesting)
For the Trolls (Score:5, Funny)
1. If a game is currently on PS2 and there are plans to bring it out on the Xbox, make sure to claim that no one will want to play that game by the time it gets to the Xbox. For example, by the time Virtua Fighter 4/GTA3 comes to the Xbox, we'll all be playing something new.
2. Use the reverse logic if it is a game only on the Xbox that may be ported to other systems/PC later. Case in point, Halo. Say something to the effect of "I'll wait for the true version of Halo on the PC". "It will be much better than the Xbox version".
3. Constantly complain about FPS on consoles ACCEPT for Goldeneye.
4. Always use Bill Gates name. Act as if he is the one making the games.
By all means, if you run out of clever or interesting things to troll about, just bring up Mr Gates. Lots of people hate him and will be glad to agree with you.
5. Complain about the XBox controller. Even if you have never seen or used it, it won't matter. People will believe you when you say it's big. Be sure and try to provide a testimonial about your wife or girlfriend or kid who complains about the size of it. Also claiming to be injured by the controller can be the foundation of a great troll post.
6. When referring to the Xbox, try to scew the name a bit. Xblox, eggs bocks, the stupider the name, the more favorable of a response you will get.
7. Be sure and mention Japanese and European sales numbers. If you aren't sure what those sales numbers are, go ahead and make something up. Estimate low, most people will believe you.
8. Although Xbox owners seem to enjoy there games, make sure to comment on Xbox not having any games with good gameplay. Although the Xbox does share some ports with PS2 and Gamecube, it's okay to assume that the Xbox version of those ports has poor gameplay as well.
9. Since the Xbox has nice graphics, be sure and find a way to put a negative spin on this. Using the age old formula that states if a game has nice graphics, it must have terrible gameplay, you can convince people that Xbox games are all tech demos.
10. Defective Xbox stories are excellent to use in trolling. The best part is that they require no proof. I find that "the screen just froze up" works great. Occasionally you can use something really bizarre like "My friend bought an Xbox and it caught on fire and burned down there house. Now they are homeless. F*** Bill Gates."
11. When all else fails, lie. There are lots of people who will agree with you just because they hate MS
Re:For the Trolls (Score:4, Funny)
That's just sick dude, leave the kids out of it
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Re:For the Trolls (Score:3, Funny)
I was playing a game with it once, and it started vibrating, jumped right out of my hands, and severely wounded a small child. Also, it's strained my fingers so much, I'm starting to have problems 'viewing' my Nata
Re:For the Trolls (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:For the Trolls (Score:4, Funny)
2. I'll wait for the GNU/Linux version of Tony Hawk American Wasteland, thank you very much!
3. I have yet to see decent FPS in consoles lately, I mean I used to get ~22 FPS in Goldeneye.
4. Besides, Bill Gates writes shitty games.
5. The Xbox controller ate my baby!
6. Also, couldn't they have come-up with something more original than Xbochs? I mean, haven't we all (besides slow-ass Debian) switched to Xorg-bochs now anyway?
7. The Japanese are nuts about consoles, but you know what? Xbox 360 has sold ZERO, that's right, ZERO units there (I'm not making this stuff up!)
8. The Xbox port of GTA ate my baby!
9. Um, Xbox games are all tech demos, very little actual gameplay involved my friend.
10. My mom washed my Xbox, and it BLEW UP!
11. I have an Xbox 360 and it sucks. I use it now for weighing down my paninis.
And may I add, WTF? You know these listed posts are supposed to start with 0, right? HAND
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Re:For the Trolls (Score:4, Funny)
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30 minutes? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:30 minutes? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey don't talk about the Ashlee Simpson show like that, she has feelings too ya know!
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Re:30 minutes? (Score:5, Funny)
its MTV what else could you expect?
Certainly not music.
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Backward compat (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the title the Xbox 360 will play current XBox games. No where does the article provide any supporting evidence to this claim, and in fact largely runs counter to it. Nvidia says all but no, an unknown independent analyst agrees, ATI says that it is statistically possible, and some other unknown agrees with them. Microsoft says... Nothing. According to other sources [designtechnica.com] Microsoft is "not guaranteeing" backwards compatibility, and if they decide not to include a hard drive such compatibility may not be possible at all.
nVidia may very well be playing to the press, but that doesn't mean such a thing wouldn't be difficult or expensive. Most systems achieve backwards compatibility by finding uses for the extra hardware. Software emulation for compatibility has never been attempted professionally in the console arena, but amature software emulation tends to lag two systems behind. You can push an XBox to do a meaningful SNES, but Dreamcast emulation is right out. With the right software the SNES could emulate the 2600, but not the NES.
Personally, I don't see why they don't just include a detachable Xbox chipset as a free add-on with an overpriced "premium" system with two controllers, and sell a regular setup with one controller for 100 dollars less.
But, as I mentioned before, no such thing has been announced yet.
Re:Backward compat (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Backward compat (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Backward compat (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Backward compat (Score:4, Insightful)
Nintendo has NES, SNES and N64 emulators written and used as bonuses in Gamecube games.
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Torrent link to the video (Score:5, Informative)
Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why this strategy from MS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is Microsoft making it difficult to write games that run on both PC (Windows XP) and XBox 360?
One of the primary reasons I use Windows is for games. If game developers stop writing for Windows because they move to XBox 360, then it'll make it even easier for me to go all FreeBSD or Linux or Mac OSX.
Wouldn't it have been easier for XBox 360 to have a Windows XP or Windows Mobile 2005 foundation with just a custom explorer interface to make it look less-PC?
Re:Why this strategy from MS? (Score:4, Informative)
Read up on XNA [microsoft.com] -- they have a new architecture they're pushing that'll do just that.
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Looks Well (Score:4, Funny)
They should have called it "iBox".
Re:Looks Well (Score:3, Funny)
Does it run old X-Box games? (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from that, if the BBC site is correct, it seems that device is not a digital media hub at all. It seems rather stupid (to say the least) that they didn't think to make the thing a PVR. The last generation of boxes had the excuse, but a PVR / media station is almost an expectation of something which expects to occupy a permenant space by the TV.
Still, it'll be interesting to see what Sony produce. If they have sense, they will make it a PVR, and a media jukebox, and a kickass console with backwards compatibility. If it can do all those things when the XBox can't then I don't see they have much to worry about. Better yet if they make it hackable - not so hackable that people can easily pirate games but just enough that people can play around with the box and produce cool things for it.
Re:Does it run old X-Box games? (Score:4, Insightful)
And the reason the 360 doesn't function as a PVR is that there's no way to make money from it. Sure, you sell another 360, but you're probably losing money on that in the first place. Instead, Gates will announce a video-on-demand service at E3, you mark my words. Steal Jobs' thunder AND one-up Sony in one fell move.
Microsoft need one more big announcement to trump Sony at E3. They can't have revealed their hand yet. Likewise, Sony need to out-do Microsoft. And what do they have? Seriously, it feels that Microsoft might win this one.
Of course, Apple and Sony could band together. Jobs could announce video-on-demand for the iTMS (which is widely predicted) and Sony could announce that PS3 will be able to access the iTMS. Furthermore, Apple could license iPod production to Sony, so they can get out of that market as it plateaus to focus on turning iTMS into their primary revenue stream.
Idle speculation, nothing more.
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Re:Does it run old X-Box games? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's interesting that you mention iTMS. Imagine that Apple produced iPod2 which dumped AAC for something else which is supposedly superior. Would that be a dumb thing or a smart thing to do considering how much people had invested already in AAC?
As for the PVR, yes there is a way to make money from it. A shitload of money. You sell listings. You bundle them with your XBox Live Platinum subscriptions and make even more money. You sell video & music on demand. You bundle everything into an MSN sub and make even more money.
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xbox 360 design...uninspired (Score:4, Interesting)
On a different note, congratulations to the xbox 360 marketing team, who pulled out all the stops: constant "leaks" heading up to the launch, the first next-gen console shown off, launched on TV, by a pop show, and by celeberities! Not to mention the whole colony buisness. Full marks Microsoft marketing team.
Free Jeff Minter VLM with every XBox 360 sold (Score:3, Funny)
Jeff Minter code in millions of households soon
Massive processor, not much for graphics though. (Score:4, Informative)
- 500Mhz ATI graphics processor with 10MB DRAM
- Detachable, upgradeable 20GB hard drives
- Three USB 2.0 ports
- Built-in Ethernet port
- Built-in 802.11a, b, and g Wi-Fi
- All games support16:9 widescreen, 720p and 1080i resolution (and standard definition output)
- 48Khz 16-bit audio, 32-bit processing and over 256 audio channels
Re:Massive processor, not much for graphics though (Score:5, Informative)
The 10MB is EDRAM, (just call it cache:) ), and the gpu also has the 20GB/s access to the 512MB main memory.
Plus it has 48 Shader pipelines (although not comparable with cureent GPU numbers because this are unified shaders), so it should be al least GF6800 level.
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$500? (Score:4, Insightful)
How in the hell is this box supposed to sell for less than $500, even after Microsoft's subsidy? I mean, holy crap. I think either of these things is going on:
- Those aren't your father's IBM 970s. How much they bear in relation to the 64bit PPCs shipping in Macs I think remains to be seen.
- Microsoft is going to untold lengths to subsidize these boxes, in the expectation that they'll make it up with Live subscriptions and game licensing. Like cellphone providers.
- Microsoft could have seriously missed the market. I'm sure they've done extensive market research; they're known for that. Even so, I have hard time believing that anyone is going to pay >$500 for a console. Maybe they know that the the Sony PS3 is going to be $500 too, so they feel safe in developing this kinda thing? Anyways, if it it's more than $150 more than the PS3, I think we can kiss it goodbye, no matter how much it rules.
If this ships with three real CPUs that are mostly similar to the ones that Apple uses, for less than $500, lots of Apple fanbois, myself included, are going to wonder wtf is up with that, and why Apple can't do the same. I think there is still a lot that remains to be seen.Parent
Good start (Score:5, Interesting)
The #1 question still is: backwards compatibility. At these specs, there's no reason why a hardware emulator couldn't emulate an older Xbox. And with the Xbox 1 only 4 years old, I believe that backwards compatibility will be a big deal - if not a bigger deal than the other systems. It's the price between $300 - $400 with some games on launch day (of which, if history is a judge from the PS2, Xbox 1, and Gamecube launch, one of those games is worth having, and 6 months afterwards the other "killer apps" show up), or having a good library including the all important Halo 1 and 2.
Enough to make me buy on launch day? No (but then again, with the current 3 consoles I own plus the GBA and PSP, I have too many games anyway), but we'll have to see how it does the next time out. They've fixed a lot of my previous annoyances with the Xbox 1 (the USB system should let me plug in a keyboard to enter in my own music track information - a pain and a half with the Xbox 1 using a controller, and the free basic Live will bring in people who, like myself, are too damn cheap to pay the $60 or so a year to get onto Live, especially considering how little I play online these days. Three kids, wife, blah, blah, blah.)
But it's a good showing. I'll be curious to see how the PS3 and Nintendo Revolution respond. (Psst: Nintendo, DVD movies play out of the box. It's reason #1 why you're tied in second place worldwide with the Xbox.)
Re:Good start (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is with nVidia, and it's not technical but legal. This is an older article [gamesindustry.biz] describing some of the problems. While some of the hardware challenges have been overcome, the nVidia problem remains.
IIRC nVidia has patents on some GPU algorithms in their chipsets that the Xbox used. ATI can't simply copy them without permission, and nVidia is unlikely to give them permission. So the problem is that the Xbox 360 GPU will not respond correctly to an Xbox 1 game. Technically Xbox 360 could emulate the functions before passing commands to the ATI GPU, but it's quite a technical challenge to do this.
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boy did it suck! (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a feeling that Microsoft has screwed up pretty bad with this not being backward compatible- unless they're going to have dual-sytem games, it's going to split their userbase and the developers will not know which unit to design for. People were still releasing games for the PS1 long after the PS2 came out, but they could get away with it because the PS2 was backward compatible.
Here's hoping it's an abysmal flop.
Re:boy did it suck! (Score:5, Informative)
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Every game in the Xbox 360 is Live aware... (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfrotunately, if every game is Live aware, I am affraid developers will tend to concentrate in the Live gameplay while leaving us the poor unfortunate guys that do not have high speed internet or WiFi (does it comes with an ethernet adaptor?) with 1/3 of the "experience"...
I certainly will wait until Nintendo and Playstation release their consoles to make a choice... (as I do not have the money to buy the 3 of them... or even 2)
And the winner is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well lets face it IBM. If XBox 360 wins (anyone noticed that you do 360 to end up back in the same place?) then its IBM processors at the core. If its PS3, then its... IBM processors at the core.
All those box numbers, all that volume, all those cheap servers.
XBox or PS3, doesn't matter as Intel lose.
(But please let it be PS3 that wins as its actually innovative rather than a re-hash of off the shelf stuff and (as ever with MS) no R&D).
Details (Score:4, Informative)
- CPU with three IBM PowerPC 3.2Ghz cores
- ATI 500MHz graphics processor
- 48 billion shader operations per second
- 512Mb GDDR3 RAM of memory
- Removable and upgradeable 20Gb hard drive
- Three USB ports
- Windows Media Extender built-in
- Support for DVD-video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD+R, CD-DA, CD-R, WMA CD, MP3 CD, Jpeg photo CD
And, btw, wanna know what happened to Unity?.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Xbox360 CPU will probably be very fast performing well-defined number cruching tasks with little branching and logic (e.g. physics processing), but bad at game logic (e.g. AI), compared to current general purpose PPC or AMD64 hardware.
I expect the Xbox360 will look very nice as a gaming platform to begin with, but will be quickly outstripped by next generation gaming PCs with dual/multi core CPUs (the same game engines that take advantage of the multi core Xbox360 chip will take advantage of these) and dedicated physics processing units. Which, given the extra cost of the PC platform, is exactly as it should be.
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It's a nice thought (Score:5, Interesting)
The 'nice' thing about consoles (and there are many nice things) is that code can be optimized for the hardware (compare a game running on an Xbox with the PC version running on a machine of the same spec) and that everybody has the same base. For example the Xbox360 appears to be able to support a massive chunk of simple raw processing - you can have a game that has complex physics as an integral part - you know it'll run on all machines. If you tried it on low spec PC it just wouldn't run (and I suspect a high-spec PC isn't going to be showing up the 360 any time soon).
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Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/13/technology/13xbo x.html [nytimes.com]
Sounds crazy to me, but there it is...
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Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:4, Informative)
login: slashdotnyt
password: slashdotnyt
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Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, these are stripped-down CPU cores.
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Re:Windows on the Power Architecture??? (Score:4, Interesting)
PPC can switch big/little endian, and since the low-level bootstrapping and HAL code already existed, it probably wasn't a huge deal to build XNA (this is their new XBox/Win gaming dev platform) compilers for x86, PPC, x64, and maybe even
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Re:Introducing a joke you will get sick of quickly (Score:4, Insightful)
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