The Original Xbox Was Announced 19 Years Ago Today (gamerevolution.com) 51
On January 6, 2001, Bill Gates and The Rock debuted the original Xbox, calling it "the most electrifying" games console on the market. GameRevolution reports: The surreal image of The Rock standing alongside Gates, telling the billionaire "it doesn't matter what you think, Bill," was certainly a unique way to debut the console. We're glad Microsoft opted for this unusual route, though, because if it hadn't we wouldn't have video footage of The Rock discussing symmetric multiprocessing.
The original Xbox released on November 15, 2001. [It debuted with a 32-bit 733 MHz, custom Intel Pentium III Coppermine-based processor, 133 MHz 64-bit GTL+ front-side bus (FSB) with a 1.06 GB/s bandwidth, and 64 MB unified DDR SDRAM, with a 6.4 GB/s bandwidth, of which 1.06 GB/s is used by the CPU and 5.34 GB/s is shared by the rest of the system, according to Wikipedia.] Its high manufacturing cost would wind up costing Microsoft a lot of money, with the company losing $4 billion on the console. It would also fall short of its predicted 50 million sales, with Microsoft only shifting 24 million units by the end of its life cycle. For comparison, the Xbox One X, which debuted on November 7, 2017, featured a SoC which incorporates a 2.3 GHz octa-core CPU, and Radeon GPU with 40 Compute Units clocked at 1172 MHz, generating 6 teraflops of graphical computing performance. It also includes 12GB of GDDR5 RAM with 9 GB allocated to games. Microsoft's next-generation Series X console is expected to deliver "four times the processing power of Xbox One X," although technical specs have yet to be announced.
The original Xbox released on November 15, 2001. [It debuted with a 32-bit 733 MHz, custom Intel Pentium III Coppermine-based processor, 133 MHz 64-bit GTL+ front-side bus (FSB) with a 1.06 GB/s bandwidth, and 64 MB unified DDR SDRAM, with a 6.4 GB/s bandwidth, of which 1.06 GB/s is used by the CPU and 5.34 GB/s is shared by the rest of the system, according to Wikipedia.] Its high manufacturing cost would wind up costing Microsoft a lot of money, with the company losing $4 billion on the console. It would also fall short of its predicted 50 million sales, with Microsoft only shifting 24 million units by the end of its life cycle. For comparison, the Xbox One X, which debuted on November 7, 2017, featured a SoC which incorporates a 2.3 GHz octa-core CPU, and Radeon GPU with 40 Compute Units clocked at 1172 MHz, generating 6 teraflops of graphical computing performance. It also includes 12GB of GDDR5 RAM with 9 GB allocated to games. Microsoft's next-generation Series X console is expected to deliver "four times the processing power of Xbox One X," although technical specs have yet to be announced.
Dupe (Score:3)
So, this is a duplicate story---albeit intentional.
Re:Dupe (Score:4, Informative)
https://games.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]
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What blows my mind is that Dwayne Johnson is 47 and still ripped.
Maybe it's something in the baby oil.
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it's called 'taking care of your body'.
it gets harder as you age, but certainly not impossible.
that said, 47 isn't yet that old.
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It's a frigging PC... (Score:1)
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And this comment will spawn a tiresome debate between people who disagree on what the definition of PC is.
I'm a Mac.
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PC == politically correct, also SJF applies, social justice freak. I don't see the problem ;|.
The xbox needed more power to monitor not just everything you do on the platform, every game you play, every contact you have, every message you send or receive and do that for every users but also to monitor everything that is going on in the room it is in, watching all the time.
Soon it will provide corrective messages, letting you know when you are doing something the tech corporate cartel does not approve. XBox
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It may have been used in the limited case of dumping the firmware and getting Linux to run on it, but in general it was not used. The A20 gate also had implications to holes in the bootloader security code, which tried to avoid accessing critical address ranges.
Once the firmware had been dumped and the capability for extra ROM became known, it was game over. All of the original (pre-360) Xboxes could use a chip mod. The only thing MS did to fight chips was to break the traces going to some of the header pi
Re:It's a frigging PC... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not quite. It's a single PC for a specific purpose. It's amazing what kind of performance you can optimise for when you have a single known case to deal with. This is what made consoles so good in the first place.
It's a shame their performance stagnated.
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Not just performance. Compare GT Sport on the original PS4 and the Pro. The Pro has higher resolution and maintains 60fps at all times... But looks worse. The trees in particular look really fake on the Pro. And actually having the exterior replay shots at 30fps made them look more real because TV is 30fps.
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A lot of the games that ran fine on the original xbox had extremely poor performance if you can them on a similarly specced windows system.
Kind of surprised... (Score:3)
There there hasn't been a really good emulator for it yet.
Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey are still some of the best RPGs for the era, and still aren't playable outside that system. Pulled out the old X-Box just last year to give them a go - and they aged surprisingly well.
The thing was almost literally just a PC, and there has been some work done on emulators to the point of being able to play tech demos last I checked, but at this rate I don't know if some of those games might just be lost to time, outside of Youtube let's plays or something.
Ryan Fenton
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Oh - wait, those are 360 games. Ha! Nevermind.
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19 years = 1 Vahid (Score:2)
Does a period of 19 years mean anything to anyone other than those who use a base 19 calendar?
and 19 Vahid s is a Kull-i-Shay
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It's no worse or better than those people who insist on saying 2020 is the start of a new decade. Every year is a start of a new decade.
Personally, I like the sexagesimal system because 60 has so many factors (1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30,60) and because the Sumerians used a pseudo sexagesimal system.
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" Every year is a start of a new decade"
True
Although the 21st Century didn't begin until Jan 1, 2001
(The Christian Calendar had no year 0 )
I covered this for Computer Dealer News: (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft to compete in video console market
By Owen Ferguson
Microsoft Corp. is considering releasing a set-top game console to compete with Sony's upcoming PlayStation 2, according to an American newspaper.
The Wall Street Journal reported that it has discussed the new system, code-named X-Box, with an unnamed Microsoft executive who stated that the device is expected to be manufactured to the company's specifications by PC makers or subcontractors.
The device is expected to go on sale in the fall of 2000, the same time the new PlayStation should be released in the U.S. Sony will be releasing PlayStation 2 in Japan during March, 2000. The X-Box is seen as a hybrid machine, something like a set-top PC, built using PC parts and capable of running PC games.
"If they're going to rely on OEMs, potentially PC OEMs to build these systems, in many ways, the actual marketing and sales of these systems would be up to PC manufacturers," says Kevin Hause, consumer research manager with the Toronto office of International Data Corp. "So it's not just about Microsoft creating support, finding developers to write games and to increase consumer awareness and interest. It's also about computer companies of the world learning how to market and sell a game console."
Microsoft has apparently decided not to use chips from its longtime partner Intel Corp., and is instead strongly considering competitor Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Athlon processors, because of the higher performance to cost ratio they provide.
The X-Box is also expected to use the GeForce graphics processor from Nvidia Corp. The PlayStation 2 has been seen by some as competition for Microsoft, not only in the gaming market, but also in the set-top Internet market. The PlayStation 2 allows users to access the Internet, much like Microsoft's WebTV box.
Microsoft faces quite a challenge moving into this market. It's already dominated by Sony and Nintendo Co., not to mention Sega, which despite a US$100 million advertising campaign, remains a distant third player.
"I certainly don't want to rule out Microsoft in any way, however, traditionally the market has not done well with more than two game console platforms. It's proven difficult," says Hause.
Executives at several software companies and PC manufacturers say they have been briefed on the X-Box, but as of yet none know of any hardware company that has decided to make and sell it.
Once the unit does go into production, it's unclear if it will be sold under the Microsoft name or the name of the hardware manufacturer.
It's also still unclear what operating system the console will use, given that Sega Enterprises Ltd.'s new Dreamcast is already using Windows CE.
There's some speculation the X-Box will use a new hybrid of Windows 98 and Windows NT that's been developed for non-PC applications.
SubjectIsSubject (Score:4, Informative)
There's also addons available now to use XBXO360 controllers on it, alongside the modchips and softmods.
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The Rock has been around for 20 years? (Score:3)
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I feel you there. Can we have an option to hide all the stories from the hey-remember-how-old-you-are-dept?
XBox my box (Score:2, Troll)
coming out (Score:2)
And like The Rock, it will be the most electrifying thing coming out this year.
https://youtu.be/WMZa-tNwAzQ?t... [youtu.be]
Huh
The original Xbox was easily hackable (Score:2)
The new one is presumably locked down tighter than any other PC on the planet.
I'd be interested in one if I could run Linux on it. But ha ha ha.
First time I played Dead or Alive (Score:2)
Jeez, I remember thinking around that time that the old PS2 box was getting a little long in the tooth, waited about a year and got an Xbox half-price in a Toys'R'Us sale, they threw in 3 free games one of which was Dead or Alive 2 or 3, cue much eye-rolling from my wife, ha ha!
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I still haven't seen a non-Microsoft employee... (Score:1)
with one. Everyone I've heard of that has one only bought it since they got an employee discount. They must be horrific devices if no one buys it at full price. My roommate that works on Windows builds at Microsoft just bought the new S model for Christmas, and we still haven't played a game yet since updates are still installing and the F1 game he bought hasn't finished downloading. It is a terrible experience. The last gaming console I played was an Atari 2600, and it was great. It was ready to do a
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By now it’s clear that the current Xbox generation was terrible for Microsoft. A disastrous launch with much backpedaling started out with a lesser powered console that cost more than a PlayStation. After years, MS overcame the technical disadvantages only to face a lack of good games towards the end of the generation.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Now, the situation is kind of the opposite. We largely have enough power to do almost whatever we want even with commodity hardware (and have had enough power for close to ten yea
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There were good reasons for that back then, the biggest being that there was an actual need in gaming for the extra power brought by specialty hardware.
Non-specialty hardware (aka PC components) including CPU and GPUs were faster than console hardware even back then.
Console used non-PC components to save on cost, not to perform better than PCs.
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- The Atari 2600 used an off the shelf MOS 6507 CPU. Its only special hardware was the graphics and audio chip (TIA chip).
- The NES used a CPU derived from the MOS 6502 with a few changes. Again, the video and audio chips are what made it different from the PCs of the era
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you are skipping most of the in between. Super nintendo, playstation 1, Nintendo 64, playstation 2 were quite different from PCs of their time. At least the MIPS based CPU and custom GPU.
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And the answer is .... (Score:1)
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I'm more interested in a Pony Slaystation.
19 years? (Score:2)
Why not wait another year and at least make it two decades, wouldn't that be more traditional?
Maybe. But then it's too late to slashvertise their new console, so...
About xbox (Score:1)
XBMC^H^H^H^HKODI (Score:2)
The only good thing to come out of the whole xbox story is that it gave birth to XBMC, which is now called KODI.
The ATARI 520 ST was annonced 35 years ago. (Score:1)
Oh well (Score:2)
At that point, it was thought a combined set top dvr, dvd, game console, and web surfer would take over, and PCs would start drying up. Hence Direct X or whatever to aid developers making games to cross compile for both.
Well kind of. Then came phones and "me too" Microsoft missed the boat.
Keeping secrets in hardware: XBox Case Study (Score:2)
Keeping Secrets in Hardware: the Microsoft XBoxTM Case Study [mit.edu]