Rumored Technical Details For Next Xbox Rounded Up

Thanks to the San Jose Mercury News for its article summing up many of the rumored technical details for Microsoft's next Xbox console. The author argues: "The details suggest Microsoft is far more concerned about keeping the cost of its Xbox Next console low than it is with including dazzling technological features or driving its rivals out of the business", and goes on to discuss the possible chipset ("Three IBM-designed 64-bit microprocessors... [as] used in Apple Computer's high-end G5 PowerMac machines"), and alleged hard disc removal for Xbox's sequel ("[Microsoft] seems to have decided that saving the $50 the hard drive costs outweighs its benefits.") The piece ends with the claim that "Microsoft has begun developing game prototypes, and it is using [Apple] G5 systems to do so."

Re:Flash Memory instead of HD?

[meta-monkey]

Probably not. A 10GB HDD in quantity is less than $50. A slow 1GB compact flash card is about $180, or $275 for a high-speed one.

Re:I want HDTV resolution games for my HDTV!

[brienv]

99% of the games are only 480 so I wouldn't call that true HD support. There's a big difference between 1080i and 480p. I want the next gen consoles to have enough power (and memory) so that all of the games actually support the high resolution modes of HDTV. Hopefully that will make split-screen multiplayer a little more palatable, as well.

Brien Voorhees

Re:return of the Halo promises

[antime]

However, the PPC970 does *not* support little-endian mode and to date, Microsoft has never released a big-endian version of Windows.

Re:$50 HD my foot!

[dackroyd]

But itgets around the fact that am trying to point out that Ms did not PAY $50 for each harddrive.

If by 'gets around' you mean directly refutes with a reasoned argument then yes, I did 'get round' the fact that Microsoft pay approx $50 per hard drive.

And I think you can guarantee a supply for much less if you guarantee a large purchase.

Yes and as I said, the cheapest hard drives you see being sold are being sold at below cost to get rid of them. You certainly do get some discount for purchasing large numbers - but the manufacturers aren't going to sell anyone a couple of milion hard drives at below cost price.

Every component of the Xbox was supplied with some kind of pre-determined volume and cost structure. They squeezed NV so badly NV wanted to get out of it. NV wouldn't have complained if they were making phat loots off of MS.

Cost structure yes, pre-determined volume no. Nvidia assumed that many more Xboxs would be sold than actually were - and so didn't recoup as their R+D costs as quickly as they thought they would.

The real reason why they want nothing to do with Xbox 2 is because Microsoft tried to fuck them in the ass. When Microsoft finally did the sums and found how much money they were losing per Xbox, they asked Nvidia to change the contract so they'd pay them less per chipset. Nvidia said no. Microsoft said do it or we'll shut you out of the DirectX development. Which is why the last version of DirectX was designed explicitly to take advantage of Atis latest card but not nVidias.