Microsoft's X-Box - Doomed to failure?

[U-96]

Well it's official - there is a new games console in development by the unholy alliance of Microsoft, NVidia and AMD.
BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_671000/671973.stm)

Sounds good on paper, but "the fact that we've got a disk so you can download game updates" is disturbing... the main reason Sega, Nintendo and Sony have done so well is that the quality testing of their games is second to none BECAUSE THEY CAN'T BE PATCHED LATER ON.
Will anyone who gets an X-Box be buying games that are little more than Beta versions (i.e. like the current PC market)? I'm sure NVidia may release new drivers at some point. Can you imagine what Joe Public will do if the installation doesn't work? Those phone lines will be busy, and it won't be with multiplayer fragfests...

U-96

[seti]

Well I imagen the x-box's softwear will be streamlined for the average user. I would imagen even though it will be based on ME, <EDIT: now I'm hearing win2k>that it won't just be a set top PC. But it's far to close to Billy boy's keynote later on today for me to speculate. Lets just wait and see!!! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Personly I'm more intrested in hearing ATi talk more about their next gen product. Looks very interesting!

[This message has been edited by seti (edited 03-10-2000).]

[Apostle 83]

Ugh. The xbox, from what I've heard, will use a chopped up version of win2k, an athlon, and a somehwat crappy (by then) vid card. and it is SUB 1000 comp competition.

[bobcat]

Its a Mini-PC. It makes all the sense in the world. All the yahoos out there who do not know a thing will buy into it and MS will make $$$.

[Toadman]

More X-Box stuff from Billy:
http://headline.gamespot.com/news/00_03/09_pc_xbox/index.html

[seti]

I'll be very surpised if it's a "mini-pc". For some reason I highly doubt that people will be able to load photoshop up on there tv.

And about the Athlon's.....in billy's press teaser on thursday he said "x86 compatable". Needless to say intel would like this contract badly.

AHHH, why can't I just keep my mouth shut for a few hours. Ha, I'm probably wrong about everything! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[seti]

X-Box Hardware

DirectX API
Intel Pentium III processor technology with Streaming SIMD Extensions.
Custom 3-D NVIDIA graphics processor
64 MB of RAM (unified memory architecture)
Custom 3-D audio processor
8GB hard drive
4X DVD drive with movie playback
Four game controller ports
Expansion port
Proprietary A/V connector
100 MBps Ethernet
Key Performance Measures

Micropolygons/particles per second: 300 million
Transformed and lit polygons per second: 150 million


From the press release:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2000/Mar00/XBoxPR1.asp

[bobcat]

Seti - Load photo shop up on HDTV?

What about in the future when TV/Internet/GameSystem/Computer will be on one device that everyone will have in every room? ****, if these new device won't be running MS OS.

Unless the API calls are proprietary, in theory, one should be able to take an XBox game and throw it onto their computer too.

Sony/Sega/Nintendo...Better watch out...

[seti]

well I don't know much about HDTV yet....but isn't the primo 1080i or something? Does that mean 1080 pixles hight wise? If my guesses happen to be true then that wouldn't be so great, compared to a monitor, for the size of the display. Keep in mind I don't really know what I'm talking about. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif But that's not what I ment anyway. I don't think someone would be able to load ps up on an x-box because the whole system will be streamlined for games. Microsoft is marketing this as a game console folks. Though you'll probably be able to browse the internet. I don't think it will have the compatability built in the os to do much more than games. I doubt very much that it'll have a mouse where you double click an icon on a desktop to start a game. I doubt you little brothers and sisters will be able to browse around and end up deleteing files in your system folder. I'm pictureing win2k with a MS mars type gui. I doubt that it will have a 1 min. start up time....win2k starts up even slower than 98. I doubt people would buy a pc replica in the mini. I am very interested to see if the games will be able to make the leap between x-box and pc. I'm even more interested if you'll be able to play multi player over a lan with a pc. This will all be extreamly good for the pc gameing community IMHO. As for convergance, I belive there will always be workstations....I know I couldn't get in the mood to work on spreadsheets if I was loungeing on some cushy couch looking at a big screen hdtv. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[bobcat]

Seti: goto www.theregister.co.uk (http://www.theregister.co.uk)

Look for the article "Will X-Box win(X) Windows everywhere for MS?"

[socalgal]

Here's another link.

http://www.gamecenter.com/News/Item/0,3,0-3873,00.html