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Games Entertainment

Tom's Hardware Reviews the Xbox 390

Posted by michael from the borg-nanoprobes-entering-the-home dept.
steddyj writes: "Tom's Hardware released this article which looks deep into the Xbox, its peripherals, and just about everything from every angle, and compares it to the PS. Incredibly detailed article."
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Tom's Hardware Reviews the Xbox More

Tom's Hardware Reviews the Xbox

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  • I wonder how long it will take for someone to port xbill [xbill.org] (which would be more popular than Quake according to the xbill homepage) to the XBox... there is a port for Win32 available, so it shouldn't be too impossible.
    • I would focus on porting XBill to DirectX 8. Then, we can all play XBill all day long on our XBox!

    • I wonder how long it will take for someone to port xbill [xbill.org] (which would be more popular than Quake according to the xbill homepage) to the XBox

      For one thing, xbill is a heavily mouse-oriented clickfest similar to Hampsterdeath [rose-hulman.edu], and the Xbox doesn't come with a mouse.

      For another, Microsoft must approve every piece of software that runs on a home XBox so that the company can make up the money it spent marketing the console. (Console makers make a slight profit on the console itself but take a loss in initial marketing that they make up with software sales.)

      • For another, Microsoft must approve every piece of software that runs on a home XBox so that the company can make up the money it spent marketing the console.

        That's not the problem. Swap penguins and Billies, have Microsoft gratefully approve it (I bet they won't even demand any money for it) and include a hack for the icons to switch back after a fixed date.
        • Or just find a developer willing to hide it in their game as an Easter Egg feature and slip it past MS 'quality' control. A developer who doesn't mind never working in the industry again, of course... ;)
          • I struggled half way through it before giving up, this article is riddled with factual innacuracies, grammatical gaffs (excusable if it came from Germany) and outright marketingspeak shite. Read at you peril, or go and look at anandtech's excellent appraisals of the machines in question instead.

  • MS Tactics (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @09:06AM (#2954728) Journal
    I can think of several things in this bit that people will disagree with:
    Microsoft has made a study of the situation. Its activities as system provider and manufacturer of office automation products alone will not be enough to keep its dominant position. Bill Gates understood early on that tomorrow's stakes will be based on communication, whether it is on the Web or interactive TV. However, Microsoft's difficulties in establishing a monopoly on the Web are well-known. Government regulators even feel endangered by media manipulation, and this has created a rather hostile relationship between the regulators and the corporation. The alternative? To tackle this challenge from the other end. And launching an Internet-ready console seems quite sensible within the scope of the company's global strategy. Microsoft has all the necessary resources at its disposal: it produces games and designs systems. But above all, it is has the best programming kit in the world with DirectX. All that's left is to assemble the console, connect it to the Internet and, once again, everything is in place to be the leader in the online gaming and communication market of tomorrow. Without a doubt, the final goal is, on one hand, to dominate massive multiplayer gaming and, on the other, to integrate this console into an Internet-connected living room. On the practical side, in order to build the console, Microsoft chose the obvious: it turned to PC components, which it masters through Windows and Direct X.
    Although I can see this easily how the world is, at least according to MS.

    feh

    • Re:MS Tactics (Score:3, Funny)

      by jmccay ( 70985 )
      I don't think Microsoft studied the history of the gaming systems market. Anybody remember some of the failed systems. I beleive there was the NeoGeo. The wasn't a whole lot of games out for the system. THe graphic rocked for the time, but the just wasn't that many games. (Of course, I am also ignoring the high cost of the system.) Sega also had a few failed systems becuase they just didn't have the games.

      The PS II has been estimated to have 400+ games including PS I & PS II games. I know the XBox doesn't have that much games out. There are more likely to be games I like when there is a lot of them. I know I am thinking about getting a PS II. I won't consider an XBox. It just isn't worth playing the waiting game for games!

  • Where is Linux for XBox? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @09:09AM (#2954742)
    It's been out for ages. Why no version of Linux for the box yet? I remember lots of little penguin people claiming it wouldn't take long to crack the box and get their favorite kernel running on it. So where is it? Or are Microsoft actually smarter than the smelly unwashed masses?
    • The fact that microsoft encrypted the bios and obfuscated everything has made it alot more difficult to get a foot in the door, but once the hardware hackers get past that, porting the code over will be childs play.

      • Re:Where is Linux for XBox? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @09:31AM (#2954831)
        "porting the code over will be childs play" Yes, of course it will. And there you will be, leading the pack... I look forward to seeing your name gracing the credits for the first port...
        • Remember that the X-Box is basically a proprietary PC. Porting *will* be childs play!
          • For all reasonable values of "PC", the X-Box isn't one. I don't know why people keep saying that it is.
            • Amen. Remember kiddies, PC once meant "Personal Computer"; IBM released a Personal Computer called the IBM PC based on an Intel 8086; IBM's PC/AT became the jumping off point for cloners when Compaq started up their clone-a-thon; PC should mean these days something that is compatible with that ancient PC/AT system - but it REALLY means Windows to most. X-Box is neither Windows nor PC/AT and is therefore not a PC. It is vaguely Direct X and x86 based, but is really a proprietary design exploiting customised mass market PC components (you could also describe a Mac in such terms, especially as a Mac is MUCH more PC compatible than an X-Box).
            • Well, lets take a look.
              Let's look at what's in my PC right now.

              x86 processor by AMD
              Geforce series video chipset by nVidia
              Windows operating System
              DirectX 8.0
              USB which works with many peripherals
              ATA-100 IDE controller
              Ethernet card
              128 MB of DDR RAM
              ATX power supply
              TV-Out by conexant

              Let's look at what an X-Box has in it right now.

              x86 processor by Intel
              Geforce series video chipset by nVidia
              Windows Operating System
              DirectX 8.0USB which works with MS peripherals
              ATA-100 IDE controller
              Ethernet Card
              64MB of DDR RAMTV-OUT by conexant
              ATX Power Supply

              I'd say that the comparison is a fair one -- how close do we have to get to a bootable PC which accepts RH7.2 CDs on autoboot before people will concede that it's a broken, proprietary PC?
              • >Let's look at what an X-Box has in it right now.

                OK

                >x86 processor by Intel

                Granted, not found in much else except PCs

                >Geforce series video chipset by nVidia

                Only it's quite different to the Geforce 3. As for the Geforce 4, well I dunno yet, 'cos you can't get them yet...
                Also you can get GeForces in Macs, can't you?

                >Windows Operating System

                Nope

                >DirectX 8.0

                Nope, although it is similar

                >USB which works with MS peripherals

                PS2 has USB... Is the PS2 a PC?

                >ATA-100 IDE controller

                Nice cheap way to run a standard IDE drive... Commodity hardware... Lovely

                >Ethernet Card

                Lots of devices have Ethernet capability

                >64MB of DDR RAM

                Wow, it has some RAM, never would have guessed!

                >TV-OUT by conexant

                Wow

                >ATX Power Supply

                Who cares who makes it? Everything needs a power supply.
                • First: It does run Windows. It's OS is the win2k kernel.

                  Second: The point of my long post is that it uses virtually the same hardware as a PC -- especially with regards to things which make coding easy/difficult. The largest difference between the X-box and a regular PC seems to be the BIOS.

                  What you see as merely using commodity hardware, I see as MS once again taking a well-established standard, perverting it to break compatibility with everybody else, and marketing it as something 'new' or 'innovative'.
  • http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/02q1/020204/i ndex.html

  • Perpetuation of Nintendo myth... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rkischuk ( 463111 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @09:19AM (#2954791)
    "Sony practically has a monopoly with Playstation 1 and 2, especially since Sega has abandoned Dreamcast and withdrawn from the market, and Nintendo has settled for Game Boy."

    Implied: Nintendo is not a player in the console market.

    "Nintendo... attacked the market with the GameCube. This console, based on an ATI graphics chip, surprised the whole world with its capacity. However, it targets a younger audience that remains faithful to the Nintendo tradition with its Mario Kart-inspired key titles."

    Implied: Nintendo is only for Pokemon and Barney loving children.

    Good God - it seems like any time anyone mentions a Nintendo system, they need to put in an aside about it being for kids. You never even see a shred of a veiled compliment suggesting that Nintendo might focus on gameplay, and not on making the most "mature" game. The mass media seems intent on further pigeonholing Nintendo every chance they get, is it any wonder that they are perceived as "kiddie" and that it's tough for them to shake the image. Photorealism and gore have their place in games, as do style and gameplay. When it comes down to it, the latter two have the bigger influence on my enjoyment of a game. Even on a Nintendo system, I'd rather play the latest Mario game than Turok 12, because while one has the wow/blood factor, the other is much more polished all-around.

    I'd like to see media writers focus on the enjoyability of the games, for just once, instead of leaning on the tired-but-apparently-mandatory "Nintendo is for kids" appositive.

    • And how soon they forget - wasn't all that long ago that *Nintendo*, not Sony had a monopoly on the console market.

      Still, Nintendo have shown that even with this child-friendly aura around them and without quality third-party support they can do perfectly respectably in terms of sales figures, and make more profit than their competition, so at the end of the day, who cares?
    • "Nintendo... attacked the market with the GameCube. This console, based on an ATI graphics chip, surprised the whole world with its capacity. However, it targets a younger audience that remains faithful to the Nintendo tradition with its Mario Kart-inspired key titles."

      Implied: Nintendo is only for Pokemon and Barney loving children.

      Obviously the parent realizes that Nintendo is not just for Pokemon, but doesn't point out the one thing that I feel is especially glaring in that comment.

      "Younger Audiences", as THG states, would not have a "Nintendo Tradition"; Owning one previous Nintendo console != tradition! The people who truly remain faithful to Nintendo started playing back before Mario Kart ever existed (MK was for SNES). Nintendo claimed its market share with the 8-bit NES console, not with SNES or N64 or Gameboy. Those systems helped to expand on what the NES started.

      IMHO, people remain faithful to Nintendo because they make good systems, with excellent gameplay. The failures of N64 aside, NES, SNES, and GameCube are all excellent systems, and have titles for almost every age. I'll take my original NES over an Xbox any day.
      • You're right. Nintendo did earn my respect and loyalty back in the NES days -- then they threw it all out the window when they put out that junk heap called the Nintendo 64.
        There were only 4 games that I could remember that were worth playing on it, and the rest were stupid things like Banjo Kazooey, and the hundreds of Mario clones. I liked Mario back in the day, but there is only so much that a guy can take...
        Take a look at the Gameboy. At first, the games were interesting.. Then came the cheap Game Boy Pocket, and with it, Pokemon. It's amazing what a silly fad like that can do to profits. It's just too bad for Nintendo that it didn't die out. Most games for Gameboy nowadays are Pokemon or clones of it, and/or remakes of games most people already own.
        Remaking old games is all well and good, but something should be added to them besides just putting a done-to-death character in a 3D world and making him collect a new type of item...
        If you like Nintendo -- Good for you. But don't pretend that they didn't earn their place in people's hearts as Kidtendo. Maybe they'll be smart and focus more on their Metroid line. (I think it's their last hope :))
        • Unfortunatly metriod is only a hit in the US ( maybe europe). The Japs don't like metriod very much. Maybe the new Metriod FPS will be more like half life,and less like quake, but I want an old school version of metriod, not a FPS.
      • Yeah, that N64 thing was useless.

        If only I'd know how bad it was I wouldn't have had to play through Mario 64, Goldeneye, Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, Blastcorps, F-Zero X, and of course Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Zelda Majora's Mask. What a jip.

        The N64 may have had crappy 3rd party support, but there's no denying that it had more AAA titles than any other system of its time.

    • very true.. I bought a gamecube for one game... picmen good god that game is addictive and cool. kinda like evil lemmings with a twist.

      and the funny part... my gamecube+2 games and an extra controller came in less that the price of a Xbox or my beloved PS2. this is what is going to kill everyone else. the damned thing is affordable compared to what is available.
      • Dunno... a friend of mine bought a GC and had to buy two of those teeny 512Mb memory cards just for the four games he had (Madden is quite the memory card hog). That brought his purchase to $250. So for $50 more you can have a more powerful system that has ethernet built-in and can play DVDs AND outputs true Dolby 5.1 audio (not Pro Logic II) and doesn't require memory cards. Hmmmmm....

        I'm not saying the GC isn't a very powerful system. It's just that the price differential isn't as great as people make it out to be once you add in those $%#^@ memory cards.
    • But Nintendo *is* for kids. They've argued it a million times over in their products (Pokemon stadium, Pokemon league, Pokemon stores), their practices (no blood in games up until Nintendo 64) and their policies. Nintendo knows where their bread basket is and, unfortunately, it's not for adults. By their argument teenagers spend more money - and they have a point, they do spend a great deal of money. But for my market demographic, XBox or PS2 is it.
  • As the article says, the controllers are NOT USB, which is a really bad thing.
    I wonder how long would it take for fellow electrical geeks to hack up an XBOX2USB adapter...
    But to the point, I find the standard controller to be not big at all, if you forget how ugly it is (I know, I have BIG hands =) )
    The Thrustmaster, OTOH, is maybe a little bit small, but it's ergonomically (and aesthetically) much nicer!

    I think I'll have to wait for the ultimate controller to be released (the Coleco dual controllers ([pic here [atarihq.com]] ruled, you could put your hand INTO the controller and use all your fingers and your palms too... but those were the days).

    • They are USB. (Score:3, Informative)

      by Pope Slackman ( 13727 )
      At least as far as I can tell.

      I came upon an XB controller last month, and did exactly what you said - hacked a USB connector

      on to the cable.

      On plugging it into my machine (WXP), it was detected, and two devices showed up:

      1) Some sort of hub-type gadget (possibly for the "card slots" on the bottom of the controller?)

      2) An "Unknown Device", which I'm assuming to be the actual control interface.

      If I knew anything about writing USB device drivers,

      I'd try to hack one up, but I don't, so I haven't.

      I prolly should try plugging it into a Linsux box just for shits and giggles, might at least be able to get the device ID or something else interesting.

      C-X C-S

      (Posting with a text browser, so the formatting might be fucked up...)

  • Graphic power is not everything (Score:5, Interesting)

    by entrox ( 266621 ) <slashdot@@@entrox...org> on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @09:22AM (#2954805) Homepage
    I think it's quite sad that people put so much emphasis on raw power of the consoles. Personally I don't care how many million polygons a console can churn out, I don't care how much memory a console has, I don't care .. (well you get the point). What I DO care for are the games, and I think the X-Box seduces developers to concentrate more on graphical whizz-bang than on actual gameplay. Personally I'd go for Nintendo (being a former Sega fanatic) just because of their history and their past games: Zelda, Metroid, Mario Kart etc. I'm _still_ playing those games which can't be said about Max Payne for example, despite it being aimed at 'adult' players (like the X-Box).

    Note that this is a purely personal oppinion :-)
    • Yes, I know where you and the other poster replying are coming from. Pop in a CD, start playing, and the game is ridiculously hard. They require major investments of time to play, much less complete. However, the hard core gamers are driving the market, and they want challenges that don't take them 15 minutes to beat, wasting the $40 - $70 per game. As for polygon counts, speed, etc, thost are the only parameters that allow for direct comparision. It's the same old 'XXX + YY Mhz is better than XXX Mhz' that the PC magazines have been putting up for years. Many of the games are unique to one console, so at best you get rough parallels. That leaves raw hardware performance. Never mind the fact that it takes time for the game developers to get up to speed on the tricks and techniques to bring out the best in a console.
    • Certainly, having the graphics power there does seem like a temptation to obsess on that part of the hardware. And we've seen some games that are impressive graphically, but lacking in gameplay. (Cel Damage comes to mind.)

      Yet, if I had to defend the console on this point, I would say "That the graphics are so easily impressive on the Xbox means that a smart developer will use a moderate amount of time on the visuals, confident that the hardware will make up for some shortcomings. Then, with graphics a previously solved problem, simply focus on making a solid game with a deep story, replay value, and responsive, intuitive controls."

      Then again, I'm not an Xbox fan at all, so what do I know?
    • I've chosen XBox for most of my gaming because most of the stellar Dreamcast titles (NFL 2K2, Jet Grind Radio, Shenmue, etc.) are going to it and not Nintendo. I'm going to miss Sonic Adventure 2, but outside of this every game that Sega makes that I want to play is on the XBox.

  • Some technical innaccuracies (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @09:23AM (#2954806)
    A couple of untruths in this article...

    1) XBox has UMA, PS2 has dedicated RAM for various bits of the system. 32Mb main RAM, 4Mb gfx RAM, 2Mb Sound RAM, 2Mb IOP Ram, + other bits'n'bobs hidden around the place :-) In total, there's just over 40Mb of RAM in a PS2. Kind of evens it up a bit.

    2) The article claims that there is no T&L on the PS2. The 2 Vector Units (VU) chips can handle a lot of the T&L. VU1 is tightly coupled to the GS, so all you have to do is pump a display list to VU1, and off it goes, doing all the 3D donkey work.

    P.S. I'm not claiming either XBox or PS2 r00lz, just setting the record straight!

    • tell me about it... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by TheBigDinK ( 462123 )
      There are also things like giving blatantly false numbers.

      Example: "As far as memory is concerned, the PS2 has a 250 MHz processor, even if the two are not comparable. "

      A google search for "PS2 CPU Specs" turns up the first result having the clock speed of both the CPU and GS to six digits.

      He also doesn't know the difference between 'B' and 'b'. He mixes them like the difference is negligible. Did you know that your DSL needs half a meg downstream to play xbox online? =)

      There seems to be a big xbox bias over the whole thing, where he goes through some strange reasoning to get to the results he needs. I'm sure many others have already commented on how trustworthy they think Tom's is.
    • The 2 vector units on the PS2 are robust (they can perform a lot of different calculations) but from what I've read many developers are using them as a) extra registers for handling more polygon mathematics or b) simulating Dolby 5.1 sound (EA, I heard, is doing this in some titles). Outside of this, though, I've heard very little of any developers using the VUs for T&L.

      As for your memory comparison, I'm a bit at a loss as to how these two systems are "even". Putting aside the obvious advantage of greater total system memory, a more direct pipeline, and greater bandwidth, the XBox allows programmers to shuttle memory where they need it. If they want to devote more memory to sound calculations they can. If they want to devote 48-60 megs for textures alone (they'd be crazy...) they can do that too. The memory for PS2's various functions is fixed and (as so many people have argued before) the 4 MB of VRAM is really, REALLY skimpy.

  • Using PC for games. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mgv ( 198488 ) <Nospam,01,slash2dot&veltman,org> on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @09:26AM (#2954815) Homepage Journal
    The most interesting aspect to this article is the hardware. If the X-box takes off, which it has a real chance of doing, then it will further entrench the PC as a major hardware base for set top boxes.

    Its not the cpu and 3d visual hardware that interests me (although they appear well up to standard).

    Its the use of PC parts such as (modified) USB and a hard drive, all on a system that essentially boots from a dvd.

    This can be configured in many ways potentially (if not locked out by microsoft) - the article doesn't really go there. I am thinking here of non games applications such as file and print server, etc.

    After all, its a rather cheap box - and it will get much cheaper soon. Even the limitations of poor keyboard etc could be easily resolved by having a web server on the dvd and controlling everything remotely.

    I'm wondering how long before someone gets linux running on it.

    (I'm sure the games are going to be plentiful and high quality already from the article - its the possibilities I'm interested in here)

    Michael

  • Tom's Problem (Score:5, Funny)

    by zerocool^ ( 112121 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @09:32AM (#2954835) Homepage Journal
    The only problem


    with Tom's hardware is


    the ammount of information

    that they display


    per page, in order

    to get as many
    advertisment

    views as possible

    .

  • They're wrong about the PS2. (Score:5, Informative)

    by wadeb ( 147504 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @09:34AM (#2954845) Homepage
    - It has two fully programmable 300mhz T&L coprocessors, of which 1 is really usable, the other just supports the main CPU (but can run independently).

    - They wonder what people are doing with the 16 pixel pipelines, as if implying that it renders 16 layers or something. The PS2 fills 16 individual textured alpha blended pixels per cycle at 150mhz. In single texture mode the PS2 has far more fillrate than the XB, but scales linearly with extra passes.

    - He complains about the 4mb video RAM. After framebuffers and Z buffer, you're left with about 1.5mb, at which point you realize they didn't intend it for actual storage, it's a streaming buffer. The bus bandwidth to transfer 18mb textures/frame at 60hz also helps make that a possibility.

    I think people should take a look at the games and decide which platform they would rather play, and quit bickering over meaningless specs. They're both graphics monsters :)

    -Wade
    • >- It has two fully programmable 300mhz T&L coprocessors, of which 1 is
      >really usable, the other just supports the main CPU (but can run
      >independently).
      >- They wonder what people are doing with the 16 pixel pipelines, as if
      >implying that it renders 16 layers or something. The PS2 fills 16
      >
      >
      What do you expect from a site that focuses on the shoddy hardware and processors typically found in the PC market? These guys are a lot like the "reviewers" working for ZDNet. If it's not found in a PC they don't know shit about it. Want a really good laugh? Just wait till these guys start reviewing the processors and hardware found on *Mainframes*....

    • Vector units, really (Score:2, Informative)

      by Visoblast ( 15851 )
      Vector units, not really T&L coprocessors. The difference is that vector units have no specific purpose other than to do lots of floating point math. On the PS2, each VU has 4 FMACs and 1 FDIV (one VU has one more of each), each operating on 4 pairs of 32-bit floating point values stored in 2 128-bit registers, and each capable of operating independently and simultaneously.

      MMX and its successors pale in comparison.

  • Fragmentation on Xbox Drives (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I knew we'd have this problem, and Tom's doesn't mention it...

    Performance sucks on Xbox after a while as it starts to swap on the HD. It looks like stuff becomes fragmented.

    Anyone want to comment on how we can correct this?

  • Japan (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Wind_Walker ( 83965 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @09:42AM (#2954872) Homepage Journal
    It's going to be a moot point, anyways. Once the Xbox launches in Japan (February 22, if memory serves) and it flops, you're going to see all the 3rd party developers in Japan jump ship faster than... something really fast.

    Games are what matters on a console, not how many polygons it can push. The Japanese launch lineup for the Xbox is pathetic. There are 4 snowboarding games, DoA3 (a practical port of DoA2, a launch game for PS2 a year ago), and Genma Onimusha, when Onimusha has been out for more than 6 months on the PS2.

    When the Japanese launch of the Xbox flops, the Japanese developers will jump ship. When the Japanese developers jump ship, the Xbox will lose about 60% of its title lineup. When 60% of the titles go to other platforms, people will stop buying the Xbox. When people stop buying the Xbox, the other 40% will jump ship to either the PS2 or the Gamecube.

    To be a big player in the console industry, you have to have both countries. As a corollary, just because something does well in one country does not automatically spell success in the other country.

    In 2 years, nobody will remember the Xbox. It will have entered the Gaming Lore books right along side the 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Atari Lynx, Tubro Grafix 16, and dozens of other systems that went obsolete because they had no games.

    • Yeah, DOA2 was even a Dreamcast game first. DOA2 Hardcore was the PS2 release, which was almost identical in play, just as DOA3 is just a prettier DOA2HC.

      I think it would amuse me greatly to see Microsoft fall flat on their faces after spending as much money as they did on the xbox. The Japanese release teasers on xbox.jp look quite lame, and almost all of them come from puny no-name development teams that seem as if they are just trying to make names for themselves on the xbox, while the big boys play wait-and-see with the thing. I even hear that the only people interested in the special edition xbox package are Americans. Hehehe.

      BTW, WTH is up with the Japanese controller? It's smaller but definitely not saner -- the buttons are laid out in a very odd manner.

      < tofuhead >

    • You forget XBox is a 1.0 product... Microsoft will keep trying until XBox 2.005 (supposing one revision each three years) finally succeeds because Sony failed to open enough the PS line to make it viable as a platform.

      The fact is that XBox gets lots of crosspolination from PC games, and is poised to get even more as the world upgrades to XP, thus converging the platforms... OTOH, Sony attempt at making PS2 a viable platform is half-hearted, since PS2 still lacks some goodies that come standard with XBox, the Linux port is half-hearted due to the proprietariness of the hardware specs, and anyway it's not a standard (RH-compatible, Debian or Slackware) distro.
      • Linux port? what does that have to do with the success or failure of either box. That will not be the leverage that Sony needs to kill the X-Box.

        How many really awesome games come out for the PC every year? 2? 3? Let's face a simple fact, the PC has crappy games compared to most consoles. The thing that makes PC games good is that the really good ones have almost infinite replay value (Quake FPS, Sim games, Civ, SC, Diablo, Sports) and the ones that don't usually have some underground group that does a conversion for it. PC games are released with more bugs then they should be. You may be able to blame this on crappy hardware, but the quality games ( Quake, all blizzard games) have a tenth of the bugs of 99% of the PC games on the shelves today. PC game developers need to spend more time in the QA department, and become perfectionists rather then letting crap get on the shelves.

    • Actually, to be a big player in the console industry, you just have to have Japan. Most console games are developed in Japan, or if not, they're at least developed with a Japanese audience in mind. All of the really good console games for the past five years or so have come from there, with the exception of Rare's games. IIRC, the Sega Saturn managed to hang on there and made Sega quite a nice chunk of money even after it flopped in NA.

    • "To be a big player in the console industry, you have to have both countries."

      Actually, this isn't so true as that you have to have the right games for both countries. The two cultures have totally different gaming lifestyles and, as evidenced by the Japanese XBox site, completely different ways of looking at games.

      I actually expect the Japanese launch to be tame but kind of successful - probably 500,000 units through the first year.

    • I'd like to think you're right, just on general Micro$oft Sucks principles, but I'm not so sure.

      Apparently there are 250 X-Box games in development, and it is a LOT easier to develop for than on the PS2, due to the richly featured and mature DirectX 8, and also that you have make shit multi-threaded on the PS2 to take advantage of its architecture.

      You're absolutely right that the console will rise or fall based on its game library, but MicroSoft also knows this, and has gone to great lengths to make this box a developer's dream system, and from all reports (including Tom's) they've succeeded at this.
    • Yeah, the "your system won't sell well unless it does well in Japan" argument has always been the Conventional Wisdom, but I'm not sure we should accept that as a given fact. It's often been true in the past, but let's also remember that the console market is still in its early stages -- a few generations of consoles don't neccessarily dictate the rules for all time.

      The U.S. and European markets have certainly grown in the last few years -- to the point that it can certainly sustain a console platform. (Hell, they've been doing that for PC games for years now.) So even if the Xbox doesn't do well in Japan, that doesn't mean Japanese game manufacturers are going to jump ship. Remember, they're businesses. If they think they can make a profit developing games for the Xbox, they will.

      (And hey, let's not dismiss all those fine U.S. and European developers that have been making some darned tasty games. Yeah, the Japanese have some great fighting games and FFX, but no PS2 is complete without Tony Hawk and GTA3.)

    • Re:Japan (Score:3, Insightful)

      by garagekubrick ( 121058 )
      Great points all, but missing out on what it really means. The Japanese games market is stagnant right now, but the fact is the real killer AAA 1 million shipping console games almost always come from Japan.

      The real problem is that MS is going to flood the console market with lazy PS2 ports, and games developed by fledgling PC development houses. Console gaming and PC gaming are two totally seperate beasts, psychologically, aesthetically, and in terms of what they deliver to the home audience.

      Sony's real genius was in marketing the PS family to 18-24 year olds - they're the ones who created what we now call casual gamers, the wide installed user base who only purchase big event titles and franchises that are known. People looking for a thumb candy fix, and not a tactical simulation of group dynamics in a shooter environment. For better or worse, this completely changed the market for games and how successful a title can be.

      I'd like someone to name for me an American videogame character who resonates in pop culture as deeply as Mario or Lara Croft or Solid Snake. American game development has never excelled at these concepts, rather excelling at heavy titles. Japanese designers seem to understand the aesthetic of creating knowable characters and the simplicity of console interfaces and games.

      What failure in Japan means is no future Metal Gear or Final Fantasy for Xbox. That's what will kill the system.

      And we're also forgettting Europe, one of the fastest growing games markets. Having lived over there with friends who worked in games, let me offer this as a warning to any console creator in future: Never, ever, ever, ship a console in Europe that doesn't have a name brand soccer title with licensed players. At least they got this right.

      In fact, the more I think of Xbox the more it reminds me of Dreamcast. Hell, they even managed to rip off the controller and make it worse. Two many crappy titles that confuse the consumer when groundbreaking titles appear on the system, and a lack of AAA third party titles that are known franchises.

      And yes, I own an Xbox and a PS2. It's a very powerful machine with great capabilities. And the number one biggest thing they did wrong - the controllers. They're enough to convince me to forget the machine. As much as I like Halo, it's a PC game and it shows. Imagine playing that over the Net right now, coop, in a resolution I choose, rather than on a dodgy split screen, and with a mouse to aim no less. That's the Xbox's biggest problem. The best title is a PC game, and it shows.

      • Re:Japan (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mr3038 ( 121693 )
        And we're also forgettting Europe, one of the fastest growing games markets.

        Well, at least in Finland you can be pretty sure that Xbox is going to flop. In the US you see Xbox priced at $299 which makes it equally priced to PS2. In the forthcoming Europe release Xbox is going to be £299 that is 479 euros. Compare this to 300 euros including 22% tax for PS2 in Finland right now and it's a no brainer to get PS2. In the US, I would definately get Xbox because it clearly has better hardware and therefore I could expect longer usage time from it without extra investments.

  • Blah blah blah (Score:2, Informative)

    by Gehenna_Gehenna ( 207096 )
    blah blah blah solid hardware blah blah blah superiour graphics blah blah blah get linux running on it blah blah blah whatever...

    at the end of the day Games Sell Consoles. Microsoft has made a solid first attempt, but untill the games for the system begun to mature (mature as in quality, not as in pokemon) I can remain comofrtable in my choice to purchase the PS2. What is more interesting is thet the timing in the industry is now off. The game cube & XBOX were released a full year after the ps2, which means
    1. The PS2 has more variety of stable, entertaining, and visually stunning games than any other console and
    2. The PS2 is significantly behind when it comes to console tech. There is already talk of SONY shortening the PS2's life cycle to come out with a more davanced box earlier to compet with the other consoles that will be most likely coming of age at that time. A shortening of the console lifecycle from 5 years to, say, 3 years may have a detrimental effect ob the console market, much like it has to the pc market.

  • Milking the Europeans again (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Max von H. ( 19283 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @10:07AM (#2955015)
    "...the announced european price of 480 is way too much. Microsoft has a strange way of computing the exchange rate between dollars and euros... Games with a maximum price of $50, or 65 in Europe, are expensive, but those prices are the same ones PS2 uses, at least in the United States. In Europe, PS2 games are cheaper and Microsoft should bring its prices into alignment."

    Indeed, condidering $1 = 1.15 at today's rate, that's $417. In the USA, the Xbox is $300, which is 345. This is a complete ripoff! The days electronics were over-overpriced compared to the US are gone, this is pure extorsion(sp?)! How do they justify the extra $117? Shipping fees? Let me laugh...


    For this price I can build a complete PC with a Duron 1GHz and a good graphics card (GF2 ultra or so), so COME_ON! Who's gonna pay that price for just a game console? PC prices have crashed to a point the PS2 itself is now a mere $235 where I live (Switzerland, outside the EU, I know :) so it can be sold, but the XBox will be twice the price with a hundred times less games to start with... The PS2 is hugely popular whereas Microsoft is still unknown on that market... No doubt the Xbox is a lot more powerful than the ps2, has a HD, etc... But when for the same price you could get a real PC that'll play games even better, and with which you can do whatever you want, I think M$ is trying hard to rip-off markets on which it can (still) freely impose its monopolistic dirty hands.

    /jabba

    • You live in Switzerland? (Score:2, Informative)

      by laetus ( 45131 )
      You live in Switzerland and have a hard time understanding why the European X-box might be priced higher than in the US? It's stupid to do currency conversions on the boxes for two simple reasons: cost-of-living and cost-of-doing business. Both are much higher on the European continent compared to the U.S. A simple currency conversion doesn't do justice to the extra costs Microsoft has to absorb to do business in Europe.
      • That's a lame excuse, as almost everything else is almsot the same price here than in the USA (give or take 15%). Since the introduction of the Euro, electronics prices seem to have gone down in the EU (which is only 2 miles up the road for me). Furthermore, MS has an even wider hegemony on european markets than on the US one and obviously is trying to cover its US losses with an outrageous pricing policy in Europe. It will only encourage parallel imports of both the consoles and the games, the way it happened with the ps2 until the price went down and/or was available in quantity.

        For your point of view to be valid, everything should be overpriced consistently, which is not the case.

        /max
    • How do they justify the extra $117? Shipping fees?

      It shouldn't be due to shipping fees - Flextronics is manufacturing the European XBoxes in Sárvár, Hungary. [electronicstimes.com] Not a country known for it's high cost of labor.

      -Russ
    • If I hear this crap about "I can make a gaming PC for less than $300" one more time...

      Ok, dude. Give me a price list with all specs and hardware. Don't forget to include connections to my HDTV set, a hub for four controllers, 5.1 dolby sound card, etc.

  • I'm use to their sometimes poor reporting standards, but this one had way too many errors in it even for me to be bothered to finish reading it.
    Also, has anyone else noticed that Tom's stuff really isn't up to snuff when compaired to his compeditors?
  • "A quick peak over to GameSpot to sneak a peak at the previews. After you remove the previews for games already out, you come up with the following:

    GameCube has around 60 titles previewed.
    Xbox was around 140 previewed.
    PlayStation2 has more than 300 previewed."
    taken from
    http://www.actsofgord.com/Proclamations/chapter0 1. html

    I think this really says it all .People buy console's for games not to boast about how powerfull there console is .The playstation 2 has
    the huge back library of ps1 games and the most new titels in the works. There are far far more playstation 2's siting in peoples house at the moment than xbox's, hence a far bigger market for
    developers to sell to.
    By the time the xbox is able to take full advantadge of its enhanced graphical abilities it will be to late and the ps3 will be here which
    will raise the ante in terms of tech specs even more.

    another point which is this also taken from the afore mentioned site,(actsofgord.com),:
    "To date, Sony has sold nearly 100,000,000 PS1's. That's a lot. And for the
    sake of the argument, we'll pretend Nintendo sold nearly 30 million N64's
    (though sales data suggests between 20 to 24 million, but who cares). So,
    assuming every N64 owner also bought a PS1, that means 70% of the market bought ONE console. One console. Just one.

    Now, obviously this didn't happen. Somewhere near half of N64 owners bought a PS1. Now, so we have 15 million N64 owners who remained exclusive, and 15 million who were multi-console (and 15 of the 100 million PS1 owners).

    So, you've got 85 million PS1's who belong to one system owners, and 15
    million N64's who belong to one system owners. That's, well, 100 million.
    Add in the 15 million owners who bought multi-systems, and there you are at a market peak of 115 million users.Basic math shows that 87% of owners owned one system."

    I think this shows quite clearly that the majority of people will not buy a playstation2 and a xbox ,because for one thing I do not think people are willing to spend money as freely as they once were due to the present economic climet and back when people were willing to spend more
    ,(ps1 v n64 days), they only bought one console.
    Now back in the ps1 v n64 days a console cost alot less,(stating the obvious I know), NOW look at the price i.e back then ps1 + n64 = $200 maybe a little more , now ps2 + xbox = $650 or more and this without any games?

    For that sort of money required to buy two consoles you may as well go the extra inch and just buy a gaming pc.What graphics power the xbox appears to have now has already been surpased by the pc (nvidia g4),and this gap will continue to grow as more and more 3d cards are developed by the hardware industry.The upgrade ability of the pc will mean that in the end it will surpass any console currently on the market in terms of graphics.The question I am trying to raise is is there room on the market for the xbox?The xbox will not be bought en mass by playstation2 users
    as it does not offer enough NEW and signifigantly different games or features which would make the
    averedge ps2 owner fork out the extra money.
    I personaly think that the xbox will not gain enough of the market share to pose a serious treat to sonys domination of the console market.

  • Tom's VaporWareGuide (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aphor ( 99965 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @10:33AM (#2955132) Journal

    I was repeatedly dissapointed on each and every repetitive page of prediction after prediction of what the XBox *WILL* be and what it *WILL* do, and how cool games *WILL* be. It all adds up: Xbox is SUPPOSED to be the coolest console ever, but even Tomshardware.com can only say that it's SUPPOSED to be the coolest console ever. There is precious little hard empirical truth to demonstrate any of the projections made in the pages. Here's what I mean. If these way-cool features are really available, where are the games that demonstrate them? How do we know it works as described? If a feature never appears in a single game you want to buy, then it doesn't add to the value of XBox does it?

    Having read a good many well informed articles there, I kept clicking the next page links thinking Tomshardware was teasing me before he got to the meat of the article, but I wore through 2/3 of it before I gave up looking for the gritty pull-no-punches analysis. This is NOT journalism, it's advertisement, and it's wrong to print it without the "Sponsored by Microsoft" disclaimer. I will never feel the same about Tomshardware again.

    I've read past Slashdot flames toward Tomshardware, but I had to reserve judgement for myself. Granted, I deserve it; you told me so., but please try to add something more if you reply to this.

    • I was repeatedly dissapointed on each and every repetitive page of prediction after prediction of what the XBox *WILL* be and what it *WILL* do, and how cool games *WILL* be. ... There is precious little hard empirical truth to demonstrate any of the projections made in the pages. Here's what I mean. If these way-cool features are really available, where are the games that demonstrate them?

      Patience, aphor-san.

      Watch the console industry, and you'll see a pattern. When a console is first released, the launch titles are small evolutionary steps from the previous generation's titles. Some of those launch titles may have been started for the older system in the first place, so they were planned with fewer features in mind. So, they do a hasty port with as many eye-candy up-tweaks as the schedule permits. Other games may have been started for the new sytem, but with conservative estimates of how far the new system can be pushed. Developers haven't yet had time to grok all the features available to them, but they know enough to show some tangible improvement over ye olde system.

      It's usually about one calendar year before the real envelope-pushing stuff appears. By that time, studios will have had time to see how far they can take the new system, and plan games around that. The coders will have had time to read all the specs and play around with the new toys. Then, you'll start seeing sky-high polygon counts, shaders out the wazoo, and hear it all in 5.1 digital surround.

      This is NOT journalism, it's advertisement, and it's wrong to print it without the "Sponsored by Microsoft" disclaimer. I will never feel the same about Tomshardware again.

      #include <std_slashdot_rhetoric/pro_microsoft_eq_shill.h >

  • Exhaustive in its irrelevance (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fondue ( 244902 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @10:42AM (#2955167)
    Great... another in-depth article by someone who knows a great deal about hardware but sadly nothing about games. Just some of the problems (note that these mistakes are being made time and time again, while articles are quick to hype up the elements Microsoft percieve they have strengths in: playiing into MS's hands by carelessly ignoring the gapiung holes in their 'strategy'):

    Network Gaming is *so* important: It didn't save the Dreamcast though, did it? The PC will always be the superior online gaming platform, unless the Xbox suddenly grows a keyboard, a dozen well-established MMORPGs, and a modding community. Also, bear in mind that Allard's "broadband vision" will exclude the vast majority of gamers especially in Europe (only 50% can get broadband in the UK, at a massively optimistic estimate).

    Discounting Nintendo out of hand: The largest games publisher in the world, the only games company to make a consistent profit throughout the market 'downturn', a company shipping a console at half the price of the bloated Xbox. They're not aiming it at kids- no Nintendo console ever has been- they're aiming at *everyone*. If you think a game is 'kiddie' because of its graphics, you shouldn't be playing games, you should get a hobby you can easily understand.

    None of the games covered were evaluated by any metric other than their 'dazzling' (640x480) graphics. No games were compared to the benchmark titles in their genres. (As always, DOA3 is taken on face value to be any good- which it might be if Tekken, VF, Soul Calibur didn't exist.) Blinkered, to say the least.

    It really is Atari all over again. The pushing of gimmicks like the Game Voice is especially reminiscient of a company floundering for a new angle, while ignoring the fact that they need decent games and have priced themselves out of the market. Outclassed, outgunned, only selling to the most credulous of casual gamers. I'll be picking up a Gamecube, then a PS2 if I have any spare cash, then upgrading my PC, then picking up a DC with a dozen quality titles on ebay, before even considering an xbox.

    • I'm with you all the way. It's an extremely in-depth discussion of the hardware, but the hardware is not what's most important.

      Remember all those SNES vs Megadrive/Genesis arguments -- at the end of the day, the power of the hardware wasn't what was important, it was whether you prefered Sonic or Mario.

      You might be wrong about DOA3 though. Yes, it's very pretty. I've never played 3, but DOA2 is a far better fighter than any iteration of Tekken.

  • The Slashdot Hive-Mind Hath Spoken (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JimPooley ( 150814 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @11:02AM (#2955285) Homepage
    XBox = Microsoft = Bad, OK?
    And to think Bill Gates is drawn as a Borg...

    Personally I'm reserving judgement until it's been out for a while, there are more games available and I've actually seen one in action.

  • Pretty marketing speak (Score:2, Interesting)

    by sph ( 35491 )
    Funny, that Tom's article sounds very much like MS marketing speak, with everything being "milestone", "extraordinary" or "unrivaled". It even goes as far as telling that there is no lack of good titles. As far as I know, that's the biggest problem of Xbox. It has only a very few exclusive titles that have been hailed as interesting. And yet, Tom couldn't even spell PS2 game names right.

    This is my favourite: "the xbox is definitely a generation ahead, compared to the ps2 at least"

    It *is* next generation! It's funny how people are still comparing *everything* to PS2. So, you're telling me Xbox or Nintendo GameCube has better technology and more processing power than almost TWO YEARS older PS2? Ooh, *gasp*, I'm shocked! Seems like PS2 really is technically pretty revolutionary, if it's still the comparison standard for new consoles. I'd be really, really worried if that much newer machine wasn't technically superior...

    And in any case, it isn't technology that matters, it's the games. Original PSX was technically the weakest of its generation, Sega Saturn (released the same year) and Nintendo 64 (released about a year later) are both far superior, but PSX reigned because of the games. They still make games for PSX (and N64 as well, but in smaller scale), though it was released in 1994!

  • Xbox linux (Score:2, Interesting)

    by svara ( 467664 )
    Also check out xbox-linux.org - It' run by h07 (h07.org) and aims at eventually getting apache to run on linux on the xbox. They already got apache to run on the xbox os (a stripped down win2k) using microsofts xbox sdk.

  • I couldn't help but wonder whether the name of the "Mad Katz Control Pad Pro" was a nod to the Slashdot community...

  • What a badly written article... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lazy Jones ( 8403 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @11:40AM (#2955494) Homepage Journal
    Let me quote:
    "The cache has been reduced from 256 to 128 KB/sec, which shouldn't be overloaded. "
    ???
    "As far as memory is concerned, the PS2 has a 250 MHz processor, even if the two are not comparable. "
    Huh?
    "The wait times in dedicated programming on a dedicated platform have nothing to do with the PC, where the CPU spends its time fishing for information, in every sense of the word. To better understand this, it's enough to compare it with the Mac, which, because of its more closed architecture, also makes do with less cache. "
    ??? I stopped reading there. I already have a headache. :-)
  • Sega has abandoned Dreamcast and withdrawn from the market
    Huh!? Who makes NFL 2K2? NBA 2K2? Jet Set Radio Future?

    and Nintendo has settled for Game Boy.
    So N64 and GameCube are just figments of everyone's imagination?

    But above all, [Microsoft] has the best programming kit in the world with DirectX.
    *giggles*

    As far as memory is concerned, the PS2 has a 250 MHz processor, even if the two are not comparable.
    Um, what does internal processor speed have to do with memory in this context?

    Technically, I think the Xbox is great console--Microsoft almost got everything right. But as we all know, it is not always the "best" technology that wins...

  • Kichir Kichir Bom Bom Taay Taay Fizz (Score:5, Informative)

    by PhrozenF ( 205108 ) on Tuesday February 05, 2002 @01:49PM (#2956448)
    When it comes to Gaming consoles, looking at what has been done in the past would give you a fairly clear idea that they are all about "one-processor-for-each-medium".

    Starting from the NES (or even Atari, for that matter), all these "computers" have different chips to process each element of a game, those being, graphics, physics/gameplay/backend work and sound.

    Looking at the original playstation, and comparing it to a PC in the same era, let's see what you get. It had a 33 MHz core processor (CPU) for doing the I/O/Physics/backend work, a seperate GPU with its own memory for graphics, and a seperate SPU (Sound processing unit)for the audio. All well balanced, and each part doing its job individually, controlled and piped by the IO processor, are capable of beating the shit out of a P-200 with a Voodoo graphics accelarator (which was commonplace when the PS-1 came out).

    The whole point being, "BALANCE"....

    If you look at PS2, it has a very well balanced architecture. The CPU is capable enough to max out the GPU, and the sound engine supports what can usably be classified as "best in gaming audio". The DVD ROM has enough storage to pack in all hi-q cutscenes you would ever want, eliminating the need to have in-game rendering, which is both hard to make, and not so good looking.

    XBOX, although flaunts so much high tech stuff, it isn't well balanced. The CPU - a 700 MHz intel P-III equivalent, is hardly capable of pushing the graphics unit to 60% of its usability, so even though the theoretical graphical fill rate/texel/pixel pipelines might be capable of a lot more, it will never actually deliver those rates because the CPU isn't capable enough to pump those bits to the GPU fast enough. Same for sound, XBOX supports "so many channels" of audio, but to put all that through the sound processor, you would need to dedicate a major chunk of CPU processing power to that thread, bringing down the available CPU power once again. Not to mention the overheads the XBOX carries as it has to address far more hardware devices than the PS2.

    Well integrated design, balanced specs = cheap/decent performing architecture

    high specs, no balance, bloatware = inconsistent performance, scalability issues

    you decide....hack your XBOX, benchmark everything, and prove me wrong....i guarantee it doesn't even perform as much as 55% of the claims the specs make..
  • Yesterday I zapped through the German TV-Channels and then I just decided to watch NBC Giga. They wanted to show a game, tried to load it 3 times and only a black screen was there. Of cource it wasn't blue :-) Another game needed 4 Minutes to load!! But when the intro was successfully loaded it was time for commercials. Just have fun with that xbox *lol* So how stupid do I have to be to tell the people that the xbox is a must?

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