The Xbox 360 Unveiled 675
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!"
But. (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, I would really love to see Tux scream on this thing!
Re:But. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But.- PC Next (Score:2)
Will ANYTHING ever run Longhorn... (Score:2)
(Then again, maybe M$ will escape the x86 arch. [Haaaa!!!!])
Re:But. (Score:4, Insightful)
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).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
PowerPC CPU? (Score:2, Interesting)
faster than 3.0 Ghz. Microsoft had made a deal with IBM to buy them, leaving
Apple to wait? Can anyone confirm or deny this? How "custom" were these
CPUs? Were they so custom that they did not effect the supply of G5's to Apple?
Vaporware (Score:2)
Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:3, Informative)
The heart of the system itself is made up of a custom-designed IBM PowerPC-based CPU with 3 symmetrical cores crunching data at 3.2GHz each (for a total of 6 hardware threads) at any one time.
Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:4, Informative)
login: slashdotnyt
password: slashdotnyt
Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, these are stripped-down CPU cores.
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.
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).
Re:It's a nice thought (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a nice thought (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:3, Insightful)
PC games on the other hand, have to target a wider audience. It will probably be some time before PC games are designed
Re:PowerPC CPU? (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, that explains why the XBox 360 will be shipping with Excel Spreadsheet: The Game.
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
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)
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
Re:For the Trolls (Score:4, Funny)
30 minutes? (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:30 minutes? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:30 minutes? Actually its an infomercial. (Score:2)
Re:30 minutes? (Score:5, Funny)
its MTV what else could you expect?
Certainly not music.
Least... Informative... Site... Ever... (Score:2)
Once every now and then the Slashdot writeup is actually more informative than TFA. This is one of those times.
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)
Re:Backward compat (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Backward compat (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Backward compat (Score:4, Insightful)
Nintendo has NES, SNES and N64 emulators written and used as bonuses in Gamecube games.
Re:Backward compat (Score:2)
Torrent link to the video (Score:5, Informative)
Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, 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:2)
put an OS designed for a PC on there and not only do you lose performance to it but you also rule out any hardware optimisations based on not needing an OS.
it's a bit like emulation - no matter how good your specs are you'll always have far worse performance than the same software running on the correct hardware.
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.
Looks Well (Score:4, Funny)
They should have called it "iBox".
Re:Looks Well (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Looks Well (Score:2)
Why white? (Score:2)
Re:Why white? (Score:2)
for MS the biggest problem from the iPod must be that now everyone can see how much they rip off Apple. this isn't like the old days when you'd look at the file properties of a MS FUD PDF and see it was written on a Mac. this is staring you in the face 24/7.
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.
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.
If your PS1 breaks, what do you do? (Score:3, Interesting)
what percentage of people playes PS1 games on their PS2? If you upgrade from your existing console, why not keep your old console around?
Consoles break, and the makers eventually stop production. Once your PS1 bites the big one, you still have a PS2 to play your existing library of PS1 games (except possibly for Tomba! and about a dozen others that Sony couldn't get 100 percent working). Or where can I buy a new Super NES?
And if you're new to the console, why would you buy old games?
Unlike the Fin
emulation (Score:2)
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.
Re:xbox 360 design...uninspired (Score:2)
Free Jeff Minter VLM with every XBox 360 sold (Score:3, Funny)
Jeff Minter code in millions of households soon
Complete waste (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Massive processor, not much for graphics though (Score:2)
Take a look at this (no, I'm not an Apple fanboy):
http://www.apple.com/powermac/ [apple.com]
It costs an arm and a leg, and requires some seriously powerful cooling. Now compare to the XBox 360. How the hell are they going to get that lot into a case that small, and cool it properly?
Re:Massive processor, not much for graphics though (Score:2)
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.
Re:Massive processor, not much for graphics though (Score:2)
Re:Massive processor, not much for graphics though (Score:3, Informative)
And it has 48 pipelines running at 500Mhz. Current top of the line PC-GPU's have 16 pipelines running at around 500Mhz. So I think it's pretty safe to say that the GPU on this this is a real monster!
$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:
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.
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:2, Insightful)
Taking Advantage (Score:3, Insightful)
No kiddin'. It was years before PS1 games were taking full advantage of the hardware. Same with PS2 games; compare R&C Up Your Aresenal to Rayman or any of the other early PS2 games, or event the first R&C. Big, big difference. The good thing is, it keeps the console fresh.
The XBox wasn't that big of deal because it was essentially a PC. The difference be
Re:boy did it suck! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:boy did it suck! (Score:3)
Underwhelmed is a perfect description of my feelings towards the XBox 360. I watched the videos and looked at the screenshots and was filled with an overwhelming sense of "Meh" and a shrugging of the shoulders.
Previous generations of consoles almost always wowed me from the first moment, this just makes me want to go take a nap.
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)
Re:Every game in the Xbox 360 is Live aware... (Score:2)
The last online game I played was Q3A. I haven't had the time, motivation or desire to ever allow myself to get that hooked with online competition again.
Re:Every game in the Xbox 360 is Live aware... (Score:2)
I haven't seen any info on it, but I'm hoping/guessing the internet hookup will be wireless. This is what stopped me from getting the whole Live thing. Dragging ethernet cables through my living room is not something I'd want to do.
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).
Re:And the winner is... (Score:2, Interesting)
...not Intel (Score:3, Insightful)
And I wouldn't be surprised if the OS of XBox360 is based on Windows. Perhaps Microsoft will follow Apple's example with the 68K to PowerPC transition and release a PowerPC based Windows PC that runs old applications in emulation.
After all, they already own VirtualPC...
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
Guess what a friend of mine just got in the mail (Score:2, Interesting)
MTV Special (Score:3, Interesting)
The 360 definetly looks a little better when there's people standing next to it so you can get a idea what the size of it is. I'm also intreged by the Phantom sounding Marketplace that they talked little about. That's about all you got out of the "Pimp My Crap band and gamers you never heard of with Frodo Baggins and oh. Here's the Xbox 360 show"
Perfect Dark Zero better be in an alpha state, because I've seen Better Graphics in Quake II. And the frame rate it appeared to be getting in the "competition" was worse than what the N64 Perfect Dark used to get. It had to be somewhere around 2-5FPS (which is probably why they kept the camera's off the screens as much as possible). The other previews for games looked promising. Specificially the Project Gotham and the game that kinda had beefed up Doom III Graphics (missed the name).
The Ourcolony.net preview in five minutes gave more infomation about the XBox 360 then the entire 30 minutes on MTV. Frankly the power that is in this thing, especially considering it's size, is staggering. 1TFLOPS of processing power (if that number is true) is nothing to sneeze at. Especially when you start imagining a Beowulf Cluster of these and just 100 of them have a good chance of getting you ranked in the top500 list.
Re:MTV Special (Score:2)
official detailed info (Score:3, Informative)
Why 360? (Score:2, Funny)
It could be 360 degree vision. Does the console have souround video
And, btw, wanna know what happened to Unity?.. (Score:5, Interesting)
The nice Microsoft conspiracy strategy (Score:2)
Actually, I think this console looks quite good, and I'm pretty sure that it will sell very well, as it has the specs to offer some fantastic performance.
What I do wonder though, with Microsoft's switch to PPC in the console and pushing the XBox Live system, is whether Microsoft is planning to sometime start offering online versions of its Office, Browser and IM suites. I know that Microsoft was trying to offer online versions of Office to Internet Cafes back in 2000 but dropped the plans when nobody was i
Ugly "beige box" (Score:2)
This design does not exude coolness. I would've thought it'd have a much cooler appearance -- this physical box alone will not be enough to entice buyers. Better be a good gaming platform.
Sam
Graphics quality (Score:2)
Not about the games?! (Score:3, Funny)
Boy! That's just what us gamers wanted to hear! A new gaming console, but it's not just for games! wiippeee! Yahooo! Yehawww!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And this goes with ??? (Score:2)
would you buy a Dell? of course not.
Re:iPod killer (Score:2)
Re:Introducing a joke you will get sick of quickly (Score:2)
PS2/XBOX are at the point of decent graphics that don't tear away from the gameplay [like the PS1 would] and really the only "better" thing they could have is more ram [for lower load times].
Anyways, I'll hold my breath for anything good to come
Re:Introducing a joke you will get sick of quickly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Introducing a joke you will get sick of quickly (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW the exact reason for the "not yet rendered" [it is actually rendering btw] is CD load time. The model for the city is in memory but not the textures [they're rotated out LRU style]. So if you drive super fast you're going faster than the CD can access/load the data [seems odd]. Thus the game engine just renders transparent surfaces.
If you drive fast enough you can occasionally see the green backing of the interstate signs blank and just hav
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
Re:I hate writers. (Score:3, Informative)
This does differ from what can be done with 'a regular wired ethernet.' How many people have their wireless networks hooked up to their living room entertainment center? To be able to do something like that without 3rd party software or hardware mods is nice.
Re:No video-out... (Score:3, Informative)