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XBox (Games)

Gamespy Reveals Xbox Next Specs 171

Posted by Zonk from the that's-a-spicy-meatball dept.
Gamespy's reporters have been on the ground at the GDC, and managed to wrangle specifications for Microsoft's upcoming next-gen console. From the article: "Xenon's CPU has three 3.0 GHz PowerPC cores. Each core is capable of two instructions per cycle and has an L1 cache with 32 KB for data and 32 KB for instructions. The three cores share 1 MB of L2 cache. Alpha 2 developer kits currently have two cores instead of three."
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Gamespy Reveals Xbox Next Specs More

Gamespy Reveals Xbox Next Specs

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  • From TFA:
    The Xenon is an extremely impressive piece of hardware. It will allow gamers to see things like complex lighting in gameplay, amazing details through high-level shading (impeccable clouds ... incredible textures...).

    WOW! All that, plus superlative superlatives!

  • No matter what (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SunFan ( 845761 )

    The next geration of consoles, no matter the brand, will be freaking amazing.

    • Re:No matter what (Score:2, Interesting)

      by drmarcj ( 807884 )
      The next geration of consoles, no matter the brand, will be freaking amazing. The specs are amazing, but of course you could homebrew your own with similar specs provided you have enough money. I'm interested to see if the console prices stay low enough ( $300) for regular folks.

    • Re:No matter what (Score:2, Insightful)

      by SimplePaul ( 807846 )

      The next geration of consoles, no matter the brand, will be freaking amazing.

      Umm... that does sound familiar.
      Did you happen to make the very same post 6 years ago before the PS2 was released? :^)

      I do agree though!

    • Re:No matter what (Score:5, Insightful)

      by swerk ( 675797 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @07:41PM (#11883536) Journal
      I'm looking forward to a time when it doesn't matter what game console you have, any more than it matters what brand TV or DVD player you use to watch movies. As an art form, video games could really benefit from breaking away from the hardware. Plenty of games are cross-platform already, but that's not really the same thing. I don't go and buy Lord of the Rings films for a Sony DVD player or a Panasonic, I get them in a standard format. Sony had plans to do this and turn Playstation into a "platform" a while back, but to my knowledge, nothing ever came from that.

      I think it should not to matter whether there's a Sony or Nintendo machine under my TV. I'd still like to play Nintendo _games_, and fans of Gran Tourismo etc will still want to play Sony _games_, but the machine shouldn't matter. For that to happen, some somewhat arbitrary standards have to be chosen, a bullet none of Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft would be thrilled to bite. There would need to be a standard lowest-common-denominator controller. As much as I like the GameCube controller, I think something like Sony's DualShock2 should be the baseline. If, for example, Nintendo wanted to market a compatible with better ergonomics and a modified button layout, they can have at it, and the market will reflect what shapes/weights people like best. While we're on the subject, the wires have to go; Nintendo got it 100% right with the WaveBird, and four players on one box has to be the minimum supported. No more multitaps; they're ridiculous. A standard memory card is also needed. I'd personally love the ability to use USB thumb drives, but any standard will do. A minimum set of performance specs must also be defined. Three PowerPC's and an ATI something-or-other sounds just fine to me, but it could be anything that reads some standard game executable format and pushes X number of polygons, does Y amount of floating point calculations, etc. The megahertz can't matter anymore, and we're nearly there now.

      Imagine being able to buy a game console anywhere from a no-name brand at $200 to a posh big-name one at $500, with newer, smaller, cheaper models coming out all the time, just as with VCRs and DVD players. Some of these consoles will also play DVD movies, some will also do time-shifting PVR stuff, some will have USB ports, some will include legacy PlayStation or GameCube compatibility (or both!) and you would buy one depending on your needs, just as you do with the rest of your equipment. Whichever one you get, Gran Tourismo 6 and Halo 4 and Super Mario Moonshine will all play on it. Period.

      If and when video game consoles work like that, I'll no longer be cursing Sega for picking the wrong box to put Panzer Dragoon on, or find myself dropping a couple hundred extra dollars so I can play Metal Gear Solid. I wish I had some idea of how realistic this little fantasy of mine is. I never thought we'd have two rounds of consoles from three strong players, but that's what we're getting. Traditionally in video games, the fewer machines, the better (why waste shelf space on three different releases of the same third-party game?) but loads of compatible machines, that could remove the last of the silliness from console gaming.

      • Re:No matter what (Score:2, Insightful)

        by $1uck ( 710826 )
        I may get modded down for this, but you do realize you just described a PC? (well 90% of what you asked for is available in a PC -and more). Eventually the PC will be just what it is your wanting (should I say media center?).

      • Re:No matter what (Score:2, Insightful)

        by sycotic ( 26352 )
        sounds pretty much like a PC to me dude.

        the winning factor of consoles at the moment is that each vendors model (which they usually keep around for a few years) stays *exactly* the same, if we have these machines with varying specs like you say then it's just going to throw everything into disarray.

        I like what is happening at the moment and I think that it works very well.

        Considering the rock bottom cost of each console, the outlay on a Playstation or Nintendo ontop of an XBox to play the latest games fo
      • Went over like a lead zeppelin.

      • Re:No matter what (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Sta7ic ( 819090 )
        That'll never happen. Capitalism actually benefits from this product differentiation: This toy plays this set of games, that toy plays those. The economy actually sees more labor demand and more sales with these non-universal game systems.

        Simple way to verify this: How many people do you know have more than one of the current trio of major consoles?
      • I'd rather we have the console makers as is. When you have people who can deny you a licence to a console, you can enforce certain minimal standards. Yes, even though no one pays lip service to these (although Nintendo still has the Nintendo seal of quality, despite their willingness to vet shit like Superman 64), it's still a point to consider.

        A DVD is an MPEG2 movie with some interpreter code. This should me simple, yet I've had to deal with tons of movies which force me to sit through previews or oth
        • "install latest DirectX and pray older games don't break"

          Actually DX has an excellent track record in terms of backwards compatability.
          • Why can't I play pretty much any DX game released between 1996 and 1999? Because the track record isn't so hot. Only the APIs relating to the keyboard and the mouse (IE: the stuff that didn't change much) works well. Games like FF7 aren't playable on the PC unless you have a very specific mix of drivers.

            DX7 and up have been the ones which seem relatively stable, but even the DX7 emulation in DX9 has the odd bug in it.

  • wait.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @06:28PM (#11882812)

    ..for a modchip before buying. NOT necessarily for stealing games but for all the third party software. The current xbox shines with a modchip. Emulators galore, xbox media center, etc.
    • I don't really know much about processors, but from the speculation I've read on the new Xbox the processors are similar to the G5 processors used by Apple. Is that correct?

      Which makes me wonder, would it be possible to mod the new Xbox's and get them to run OSX?

  • Yeah, but MS still holds all the cards. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @06:34PM (#11882872) Homepage Journal

    Thief: Deadly Shadows had a pretty bad flaw resuming a game saved at whatever difficulty reverted the game back to normal difficulty. I wrote Eidos Customer Support about an xbox live or physical update to T:DS and received this:
    Thank you for your message. An updated version of Thief 3 was made for the Xbox, however Microsoft never gave us approval to release a new version. The game cannot be patched through Xbox Live, as the game was never set up to support Xbox Live. I apologize for the inconvenience.

    "Microsoft never gave us approval to release a new version". How's that for a kick in the pants? So for this new xbox I'm going to sit tight until a modchip is released and do nothing but "try before I buy".
    • If the game had been made Xbox Live Enabled like all games will for the new system, it could have been patched through Live and this wouldn't be a problem.

    • As it should be (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Asmor ( 775910 )
      I'm all for MS's policy. It's my understanding that companies can't release patches via Xbox live which don't include new content (i.e. you can't just release a patch that fixes things). It holds the company accountable to sending out a finished product (or getting tanked in reviews), rather than just figuring they'll release a patch in a couple months.
      • Very true ; But they don't seem be consistent in applying that rule : I am not sure, but didn't they update/bugpatch Ninja Gaiden ?
        • Content update, yes. Bugpatch, no. You probably thought it was because a certain small segment of gamers pretended the camera in Ninja Gaiden was broken and that the content update fixed it. The former was just bullshit and the latter only made the camera slightly more flexible (I only found it useful for setting up more 'arty' screen angles, personally).

          And the content upgrade still left the original game as is, controls and all - it just added new gameplay modes orientated around the online Master Ninja
      • True, but they released a bugfix for Halo 2. And frankly, they really messed up with allowing Halo 2 to be released so buggy, but all things considered it's probably best that they do forgo their policy and fix it. They are going to release far more bugfixes in about a month, albiet along with new content.
    • I've watched the same thing happen with PSP launch titles; two or three bugs were fixed just after sending things in to Sony for final approval, but they'll likely never be fixed even in post-launch copies just because that requires a resubmission, which costs a fee and needs to be approved again by Sony (and they're likely to be harsher when they're not gasping for launch titles).

  • A camera?! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Golgafrinchan ( 777313 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @06:34PM (#11882873)
    Camera - Xenon will have a USB 2.0 camera. It's capable of 1.2 megapixel still shots and VGA video. Photos can be used in-game and for gamer profiles. The camera can also be used for video chat. It's unknown if the Xenon camera will allow for EyeToy-like gameplay. Developers are currently using a simulated camera driver.

    Maybe I'm behind the times, but this is the first I've heard of a camera as a part of the Xbox2. If they make the hard drive optional, it seems they should make the camera optional.

    I can't believe that more people would want a camera in their Xbox2 than a hard drive.

    Great. Now I'm going to have to watch idiots taunt me over Live rather than just hear them.

  • Microsoft is requiring developers to make all Xenon titles Live enabled. One of the key reasons for this will be revealed in the second part of this story.

    This might not work out for some games...

    • Re:Required Online? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mike Hawk ( 687615 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @06:39PM (#11882934) Journal
      Live enabled != Live play. I won't be giving anything about the next xbox since I don't know anything, but even in the current generation a game being Live enabled means that you can receive invites to play games on Live even if the game is single player only. Play Sands of Time and your friend can see you are "Live enabled" and invite you play Halo 2. Its pretty freakin sweet.
      • Which is annoying as hell. If I'm playing a SINGLE PLAYER GAME, then I don't feel like playing an online game, because if I felt like playing an online game, I'd be playing an online game at the time.

        It's crap that I have to go in and then use an option to turn off my online presence, because the game and Xbox put you online by default.

      • "Live enabled != Live play."

        Live enabled == Live Advertising == Live Ad Impression Statistics

        Ahh.. the bright future of ingame advertising.. of course by advertising a product in say GTA and then measuring how much that affects players to buy that product in in-game vending machines could do for some interesting behavioral studies...
    • Being live enabled in this case simply means being able to be talked to by your friends over the network, it doesn't necessarily mean that the games must be multiplayer.
    • This is a GINOURMOUS mistake people.

      OK, what's the main difference between PC and Console game? Give up? It's not the graphics, gameplay, etc - it's the BUGS!

      When Half-life2 came out, there was practically a patch made that day. Same with Battlefield 1942 and most other PC games I buy. This encourages games to be shipped out only 80% done. Console games (used to) never have this problem. They have usually been (for all intents and purposes) bug free. Remember that silly Madden 2005 error? That w

  • That CPU is a very good CPU to run. By comparison, the X-Box CPU was very very dated on release c/t the going CPUs in PCs because everyone was playign MHz catchup.

    These days, there seems to be far less pressure on CPU and more ephasis on GFX chips. I, of course, didn't give a toss and never bothered to read to the article so how about someone tells us what chip it is and then we can bitch about that instead? The CPU is non-bitchable IMHO.

    • Notice how the xbox had a better cpu then the other consoles? That's not outdated. You have to realize that running on OS (and from your response I'm guessing Windows, which makes my point stronger) sucks alot of cpu speed. So 1GHz on a PC doesn't yield the same kind of power 1GHz on an identical chip would for a video game console. Know what your talking about before you post.
      • No mate, I meant that when XBox's CPU was announced everyone bitched and said it was too slow and outdated *because* it was a stripped down Windows PC.

        My comment was to basically skip past that and to compare how these days, CPUs are secondary to performance for graphics and games.

  • great, but ... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by snorklewacker ( 836663 )
    If all I can do with it is see the perfectly-rendered sweat rolling down the forehead of the Exclusively-EA-Branded Linebacker in front of me, with all the control in the world being nothing but a pair of awkwardly placed sticks, what the hell do I care? I will be buying a PS3 solely because the PS2 controller is the only one with actually intuitive control schemes, because of the symmetrical placement of the sticks. But mostly I can look forward to more sports games, more driving games, more awkward TPS
    • I will be buying a PS3 solely because the PS2 controller is the only one with actually intuitive control schemes, because of the symmetrical placement of the sticks.

      You are of course assuming that the other consoles' controllers will be worse than they are now. Hopefully, they will learn from their mistakes.

      • Actually, I rather suspect that Sony has the layout of their controls patented, which is why no other system has a controller layout exactly like that. If so, then yes it's somewhat sleazy (though in truth a really innovative design *is* something that is really deserving of a patent) but the whole industry sort of drips with these sort of lock-ins, so it's down to choosing quality. I couldn't imaging playing Prince of Persia without the sticks just the way they are ... and of course there's simply no oth
    • You actually like the symmetrical placement of the control sticks? Seems to be most people's biggest gripe about the PS2 controller.

      • Re:great, but ... (Score:1, Insightful)

        by thezapper77 ( 842213 )
        First i've heard of someone complaining about them... I happen to love the PS2 controller. I find it fits so well in my hand, and is rather more intuitive than the other systems. The symmetrical sticks make it balance well, rather than having hands in all different places...
    • I will be buying a PS3 solely because the PS2 controller is the only one with actually intuitive control schemes, because of the symmetrical placement of the sticks

      That just means that *both* sticks are in the wrong goddamn place.

      PS2 controller is one of the worst controllers out there. With the analog sticks in an uncomfortable position, and the 4 shoulder buttons that should've been triggers, and the horrible button naming.

      I wouldn't be suprised if the PS3 controller has a special button in the cente
      • You either have the wrong number of fingers, or have them growing out the wrong side of you hand...

        YMMV, but to me, the PS controller is the best controller ever. I just wish it was a little longer for my palms (i've got big hands)...

      • You know, it IS possible for you to take my statement about the controllers as subjective rather than as some revalation of the truth of some platonic perfect controller, that must be rebutted with another assertion of perfect objective truth. Sometimes I slip and don't personally qualify everything with "IMHO", but I assumed perhaps wrongly that the reader might ascertain that my judgement was a matter of personal opinion, and that others would not jump up and take immediate umbrage at such a personal aff
      • I won't call the PS1/2 Dual Shock bad, by any means, and it is a pretty good controller, but I still find the XBox controller far superior, particularly in terms of FPS and Driving games. Triggers equate to actual triggers and pedals, unlike the shoulder 'buttons' on the DS. Othewise, other than some size difference, I find that both are pretty functional, especially since they're pretty much the same aside from the analog sticks and triggers differences.
    • Most Walmarts sell a converter device that allows you to use any PS2 controller with an Xbox. It's about 20 bucks. I use one so I can play Guilty Gear X2 #Reload on my Xbox with a Hori Real Arcade Pro [onlinehome.us]. Works like a charm.
    • the PS2 controller is the only one with actually intuitive control schemes,

      I enjoy the PS controller's arthritis-inducing shape, myself!
    • Symmetric stick placement is only good for people who have thumbs that are an equal length to their fingers (IE: no one).

      Having to shift my hands around and curve my holding so that my thumbs are forced to the middle, instead of having a direct line on the left stick + a direct line on the right stick (with a set of face buttons above) is downright painful.
  • Was it Freescale (formerly Motorola)? IBM? Or someone else?
  • There are already TVs and projectors that can do 1080p, they just cost several thousand dollars. In three years they'll probably be only a thousand. It would be nice if one of the next-gen consoles includes that capability. For that matter, anyone know if next-gen DVD will store the movies at 1080p, but then use hardware to interlace it for the majority of HDTV sets? I'm keeping my fingers crossed, so I can buy a projector and ditch the overpriced theaters.

    Back to the Nextbox, rumor has it there's goin
    • "No more complaining about using a gamepad for shooters."

      Okay okay... but is someone going to make PC class shooters for the Nextbox? No... do not say Halo2. PLEASE do not say Halo2.
    • projectors that can do 1080p "cost several thousand dollars"? They've been available for less than $2k for at least 1.5 years, and are slowly reaching the $1k level now (if they haven't already -- I haven't looked lately).

      As for 1080p games vs 720p, you're right -- there need to be more 1080p games on the market considering the only ones that exist now are Syberia, Dragon's Lair, and Enter the Matrix (I don't recall others - there are websites that have complete lists), and there's a small handful of 7

  • How much? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Oen_Seneg ( 673357 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @06:55PM (#11883078)
    The question is - how much will it cost, and like the original XBox, will it be subsidised by Microsoft again? If so, then either Microsoft is either willing to take risks, or desperate to take over the console market. Three 3.0Ghz PPC cores can't be that cheap...
  • I remember something else that sounded great, too: the first XBox. Microsoft released ridiculous specs that gradually became less and less ridiculous as time went on, right up to the point the system was actually released, when it barely had better specs than either of the two main competitors.
  • Will there be a Linux port? What good is all those processing power with out being able to tinker with it yourself?

  • Why only 256 megs of ram? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by popcultureicon ( 556737 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @07:25PM (#11883383)
    Does anyone know why console makers insist on putting relatively small amounts of ram in their consoles? When the xbox came out, 64 seemed rather conservative and now that 1GB is commonplace, 256MB seems very conservative as well. You'd think since ram is so cheap now that they wouldn't be so frugal.

    • Re:Why only 256 megs of ram? (Score:5, Informative)

      by torinth ( 216077 ) on Tuesday March 08, 2005 @07:50PM (#11883619) Homepage
      1) RAM is expensive. Game developers and console designers, like most other embedded programmers, have an incentive and opportunity to write efficient and well-optimized code to meet specific hardware requirements.

      2) Consoles run very little by way of background processes, and when they do, they're almost always modules relevant to the application (i.e. XBox Live-enabled services). This trims the base requirements down and still leaves a lot of space for the actual application.

      Desktops, on the other hand, run an OS that has a whole bunch of background services running, plus a bunch of preloaded platforms to improve responsiveness when the user wants to start something new. In addition, we expect them to be able to run more than one primary application at a time. They eat RAM for breakfast.

      Even though your stock Windows XP machine may crawl when running a program with 512MB of RAM, a console (or other embedded/dedicated platform) probably wouldn't need a fraction of that to get excellent performance.
      • Not to mention Gui's and File systems.

        These are the memory hogs of the 95age.
      • Definitely agreed that less ram is needed on a console than a pc for a variety of reasons. You don't have nearly as many concurrent processes, you typically deal with lower resolutions (even 1080i will be lower than what most pc games can run at nowadays) and a console game doesn't have to use less efficient code in order to handle disparate hardware configurations.

        That said, PC's have video RAM and (sometimes) audio RAM. So, even though you have windows and it's background processes crowding the system

        • The xbox has two other advantages; hard drive, and unified memory.

          This means that textures can be stored on the HD, read into main memory, and there's no additional 'copy to the video RAM step.'

          This is leaps/bounds over, say, the PS2, which wants you to be streaming textures, constantly, off of the DVD drive.

    • RAM isn't that cheap as far as overall component cost goes in a console. Especially if it is rated at a decent speed. One of the reasons that they use less is that the console doesn't have the operating system overhead that a typical PC does when playing a game. Consider some of the Xbox games which run in 64MB vs. their PC counterparts. They be a bit watered down, but they still look pretty good.
      That being said, if this is 256MB shared with the video controller, I do wonder if it's enough. I guess the text
    • Because a console doesn't run much of an operating system. The more important memory is the video card ram.

    • 256MB is an entire assload when you're talking about a game, unless that memory is shared with the GPU again. I would think they'd be using PCI-E and thus they wouldn't need to share memory, and the video card could have 128MB of its own. Of course, they might decide to go the other way on this one, but there's no real reason to.

      Microsoft's current 64MB is the most anyone has put into a game console yet, anyway. I doubt anyone will have more than 256MB in the coming generation. They're game consoles!

      Mic

    • 64MB was not conservative when it came out. 64MB was the most any PC video card had back then, but the xbox ran at lower resolution. Also, console RAM isn't the same grade as PC3200. This generation it'll be faster, GDDR3, the same as what's in the latest video cards. Like others said, the good stuff is more expensive.

      • In those days 64mb MAIN memory was the absolute minimum for a PC with that kind of cpu power. 128 was far more standard and any halfway serious gamer had more.

        in fact if you had bought 64mb strips then you were being overcharged if you count the price per megabyte.

        Does it hurt? Well yes. Look at the x-box/pc game morrowind. On the PC there was an awfull lot of loading for very small game zones. This was the same as in the x-box version. However the PC only expansion packs had much larger zones using the e

        • So because a small percentage of games need more you think it's worth the cost of having 384 or 512 instead of 356? Without the OS much less RAM is needed. As for price, if Micron is selling GDDR3 to ATI for XX dollars a stick, don't think MS can talk them down too much lower. The good stuff is almost always going to cost more. The few extra dollars then gets doubled when it's sold to Target, and doubled again when we buy the console.
  • Three 3.0 Ghz PPC cores. Wow. And I'm sure it'll be at a standard console launch price point, about $300. That's a whole lot of power. Of course, people said the same thing when the Xbox first launched. 733 megahertz for $300 seemed like a great deal then. But, that was back when becoming obselete used to be a concern when buying computers. Remember when Moore's Law was being upheld? I bought a Pentium IV 2.4C about 2 years ago for $180 dollars. Today, $180 dollars buys you a PIV 3.0. An incremental leap f
    • Moores Law is still valid, how else do you think they fit 3 PowerPC cores on a single die?

      Using the P4 to say that Moores Law is no longer valid is a bad analogy, as the P4 architecture was strongly based on getting as high a clock speed as possible. The roadmaps of CPU manufacturers point pretty strongly to multicore as being the future of processing, for two reasons:
      We can keep cramming more and more transistors into the same space (Moores Law), so we might as well use that space.
      Critical paths can only

  • Specs, whatever. On the Xbox site today they released some screenshots of the upcoming interface for the Next-Generation Xbox Guide [xbox.com].

    Highlights include:

    • Gamer Cards Gamer Cards provide gamers with a quick look at key Xbox Live(TM) information. They let players instantly connect with people who have similar skills, interests and lifestyles.
    • Marketplace Browseable by game, by genre, and in a number of other ways, the Marketplace will provide a one-stop shop for consumers to acquire episodic content, new g
  • Those specs are very, very impressive. It's quite a bit more powerful than anything Apple has out now. Given that the 3 core PPC will be more like the IBM Power5 (dual core) than the PPC970, I wonder how hot this thing will run?

    I suppose though that Apple will have by then released G5 Macs with similar speeds, since there hasn't been any update to the tower line in a while now.

    What is interesting is that Microsoft is doing its level best to capture the game market, and not only the game market. I see wher

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