“This is probably the greatest week ever for gamers. The Xbox and GameCube will be launched while the PlayStation 2 is at the top of its game. Will players buy Microsoft’s deal: a CPU based on a 733MHz Pentium III, 8GB hard drive, ethernet port and strong game lineup? Physically, this is probably the largest video game console ever and Bill Gates and the WWF’s The Rock will attest that it’s the best. See what’s inside that makes it rumble.” Special on ZDNews.
Microsoft Unpacks the XBox
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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call me a cynic, but I’m still looking forward to it blue-screening
i saw screenshot somewere from green-screen-of-death ;]]
screenshot was taken from tv (with tv box shown) so it would be too much work to make it just a small joke… although it could be a joke…
Your telling me 30 games is a strong game line-up?! I would hate to see what a weak game line-up would be?!!
Check out what GameCube is starting off with. Much less than 30, if I remember correctly.
Still, I think I’m picking one up. I don’t play a whole lot of games but Rogue Squadran II looks unbelievable…
30 games is an amazingly strong line-up for a launch. The Game Cube had something like 5 in the Japanese launch?
you can already see that M$ is here to kill Sony and not at all to be a player in the VG industry. Nintendo launch in Japan = 3 game M$ in US = 30 game. Many developper will make NO money on that launch. They use again their monopoly on OS that allow them to make load of money with office to kill an uprising competitior that is Sony.
Bad to say but, bye bye Sony. When a electronic maker say it’s not sure if it must make itself of subcontract it’s next console something is dangerous.
Here we see the genious of nintendo. They are letting M$ and Sony battle alone. I expect to see M$ mad about that and try to attack the big N very hard in early 2002.
The winner of that console war anyway is Sega. They will make so much money it’s not even funny. Third party always was competition for them anyway because they sold 60% of their console game. Now they will have to pay 10% royality to other console maker but most of them will pay for sega add and pay prime for some exclusive game. It’s just like if sega found a way to kill all competition (they enjoy each console sold watever the brand).
You seem to be forgeting that Microsoft is up against the 2 biggest players in the Game Console Arena and both have been Empires in their day… Sony is still relishing as the Game Console Empire now and will be hard to beat just because they are ahead of the ball game! Nintendo (NES) was an Empire until Sega (Genesis) knocked it (Super Nintendo) back down to size in the 16-bit wars, though I think NEC’s Turbo Graphix 16 had them both beat… it was ahead of its time and I owned both the Sega Genesis and TG-16 so I know what I’m saying! The truth is that Nintendo will get the games out quick and they have proven that in the past and they already have titles that are legendary. Sony has a helk of a library now and some people are still playing their original PlayStations will more than likely switch to PS2 since they can’t get enough of it… my younger brother sure did and he loves it.
If Microsoft doesn’t take this launch seriously they are going to end up like Sega and Atari where the Jaguar and Dreamcast was doomed from! I am seriously looking at the PS2 myself, I wasn’t much of a Nintendo freak since I had went from an Atari 2600/5200 to the TG-16, but I did buy a NES-8 used because I really loved the game ‘Super Tecmo Bowl’… that was an awesome game in its day!
>Turbo Graphix 16 <— WRONG!
actually spelled “Turbo Grafix 16”
Sorry NEC, I goofed again 🙁
Not sure if this matters, but I’ve heard that PS2 is very difficult to develop for. All kinds of proprietary low-level stuff to deal with.
X-box is supposed to be something like win32 programming and GameCube is supposed to be the easiest of the 3 to develop for.
I agree with CattBeMac and expect lots of games to start showing up for GC.
Alien Soldier: They use again their monopoly on OS that allow them to make load of money with office to kill an uprising competitior that is Sony.
Mmmm, how exactly is MS using an OS monopoly to build the XBox? I’m not quite sure I follow the logic here. You could just as easily claim that Sony is using a monnopoly on the flat-screen 35″ TV to fund the PlayStation, or maybe it is their monopoly on MiniDisc?! This accusation makes no sense.
CattBeMac: If Microsoft doesn’t take this launch seriously they are going to end up like Sega and Atari…
Microsoft is going to clobber the gaming market with this product. They have **30** games! There are two classic mistakes made in the console industry:
1) Not enough games
2) Not enough supply (i.e. Sony circa X-Mas 00)
Microsoft is NOT making either of these mistakes. Anyone who believes the XBox will not be a serious competitor in this arena has not done any research on the subject. The device itself is posting numbers in the range of 5x performance improvement over the PlayStation II. Microsoft as a company has put tremendous support behind this, enlisting as many top-name video game manufacturers as possible. Did I mention EA is signed to produce XBox content? EA, that’s right the largest game manufacturer of all is going to be putting out XBox games. This is on top of the starting lineup of 30 games.
I have not played a GameCube, but if Nintendo makes their classic mistake of allowing other platforms to dominate the older market (e.g. bloody carnage killing games), then they cannot possibly hope to be dominant in the market. Also keep in mind: Nintendo makes Nindendos. Microsoft is a HUGE multinational with subsidiaries on every continent, and the marketing clout to sell ice to Eskimos.
To recap:
1) Competitive Games (Superior in the case of Halo)
2) Superior Hardware
3) Far Superior Marketing
I think anyone who doesn’t see Microsoft as a major player in the video game space has not got their head screwed on straight. After all, why do all the people running an alternative OS on their home system also have Windows? To play games!
There may be 30 games by X-Mas, but there are only 19 today.
You mean PC Engine, right? That’s what it was know as here. Come to think of it, the Genesis was called the Megadrive here, a much cooler name too.
>>You mean PC Engine, right? That’s what it was know as here. Come to think of it, the Genesis was called the Megadrive here, a much cooler name too.<<
Helk Yeah it was an awesome game system!
PC Engine is what is was called in Japan and Europe
Turbo Grafix 16 was what it was called in the US and I had it decked out including the Turbo CD Port for CD gaming which was out 3 years before Sega CD which was called Megadrive in Japan as well!
>>After all, why do all the people running
>>an alternative OS on their home system also
>>have Windows? To play games!
Yeah…Welcome to Wintendo!
>To recap:
>1) Competitive Games (Superior in the case of Halo)
>2) Superior Hardware
>3) Far Superior Marketing
I would argee with numbers 1 and 3, although Halo looks like same old FPS stuff to me. Superior Hardware is a hit or miss. It’s all about the games and how they are marketed.
At the local store, they had a xbox for demostration, which you could play. I also have a PS2 at home, which kicks butt by the way. Anyway, I did not see anything extra spectacular about the game that was playing at the store. The graphics did not look any better than say the graphics on my PS2, plus with my PS2, I not only have 50+ PS2 games, but a 100+ ps1 games to choose from. And, it’s half the size, and I haven’t had to download a service pack yet
You won’t be downloading any service packs for XBox either, as the system ROM will not allow alteration of the OS on the disk (this is accomplished through a 3 level checksum).
Well each to his own I suppose, but I’ve played both, and I can tell you that with native support for HDTV and pc-level graphics rendering capability XBox is definitely the better piece of graphics hardware. I’m not sure which game you were playing, but (once again) Halo shows the capabilities off pretty well.
So if you want to see high resolution graphics, either go buy an expensive HDTV, or plug into your computer monitor? Why not just run PC games? Most people at this point only have regular old tvs, so the better resolution of the system is almost mute. By the time HDTVs become affordable, the PS3 or 4 will probably be out. As someone else stated, the xbox only seems to be for serious gamers, who don’t mind blowing there money on a new system. And, as TaCo said, to each his own, and for me, well, I’ll stick with my PS2!
the Game Cube seems the one with the TOP video quality.
look at RE for the GC^^
Unfortunately the only game I’ve been able to play on the XBox was NFL somethingorother … which was nice, but didn’t really show off the console.
The complaints I’ve been hearing about the gamepad on the XBox didn’t apply to me … I liked the oversize controler and had no problem. However, the GameCube’s controller is much more comfortable.
And yes, RS2 was fantastic. Was able to play 15 minutes of it at my local Best Buy and was amazed. If only the GameCube could play DVDs :/
I’m not a console person, but the Xbux has one interesting possibility: I expect that within 3 months a group of hackers will figure out a way to replace the ROM with a custom build ROM which acts like a BIOS (or Firmware). This will in turn boot an OS which lives on the hard disk, and with USB keyboard/mouse drivers you essentially end up with a P3@733, GeForce3 system with 64Mb RAM, 5xDVD, 10Gb hard disk and an ethernet port. Nice little system for $350 US (with USB keyboard/mouse). I guess Linux or OpenBSD will be the first systems on this machine.
>I’m not sure which game you were playing, but (once again) Halo shows the
>capabilities off pretty well.
I have Metal Gear Solid 2 and it crushes anything else out there on any console, in graphics, sound, and gameplay. The X-Box may have a better graphics card, but the PS2’s CPU is easily more powerful. Halo is an FPS, and playing it with the X-Box controller, i.e. the worst I’ve ever used, doesn’t sound fun at all. Put MGS2 on a PS2 next to Halo on the X-Box in a store and I guarantee that the PS2 will sell far more units. Besides, the main draw of Halo is multiplayer games online, which most people won’t get to play anyway. I think a lot people who want Halo will just wait for it on PC or Mac (myself included).
The configuration is a little unusual for a game console.
I believe it has only an ethernet port and no modem port (correct me if I’m wrong) so MS is playing the broadband card strongly. Notice also they are sticking to intel architecture where they are already giants and have been spending a lot of resources on service delivery of late. They have the right pieces to put together a very useful multimedia delivery system. The gfx stuff is to give it the kind of interface that the public finds appealing.
I think the game market just a front. These things are a way to get pervasive power computing into households for the next generation of multimedia and domestic computing. I bet with its MM cpabilities and a broadband connection, these things would be well capable of delivering digital multicast TV and a range of other services that MS would like to push down our throats. I can foresee the outdated cable delivery mechanism being replaced by more powerful fibre or DSL systems. MS tries to see the big picture and realizes its software empire is diminishing. They wish to replace that by that something bigger and with a more constant revenue stream, that others see as the future but have failed to deliver yet because of market forces and consumer perception. Only MS has the right combination of software and financial muscle to make such a grand scheme work. Let us only hope that they have the requisite skills to put together content. I think they probably have AOL – Time Warner, FOX, CNN etc in their gun sights, not Sony. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that the other media empires are likely to be able to compete with this kind of thing.
P
As all analysts have said, they are going to loose money big time on the box up front to build a user base and then take over the whole market. Their competition is asleep and they will use it to their advantage. Did it with Apple, did it with Palm, and now they’ll do it with Sony. Blame no one but their competitors for giving them an opportunity to get an edge. You can then later blame them for exploiting it illegally, as they have in the past. By then, of course, it’s too late to cry about it however.
Welcome again big brother!
It doesn’t blue screen it does this.
http://www.msu.edu/~danalexa/setup.jpg
http://www.msu.edu/~danalexa/lemon.jpg
>>Did it with Apple, did it with Palm, and now they’ll do it with Sony.<<
I am not sure what you are talking about… but as for Palm, they still own 86% of the PDA market while Microsoft has 12% and the other guys has 2%!
I don’t think Microsoft is going to out do Sony, but then again I said that Sony wouldn’t beat the Sega DreamCast either, so it’s a 50/50 chance here and one day we will remember this post saying either way… I told that guy darn it 🙂
>>Did it with Apple, did it with Palm, and now they’ll do it with Sony.<<
I am not sure what you are talking about… but as for Palm, they still own 86% of the PDA market while Microsoft has 12% and the other guys has 2%!
I don’t think Microsoft is going to out do Sony, but then again I said that Sony wouldn’t beat the Sega DreamCast either, so it’s a 50/50 chance here and one day we will remember this post saying either way… I told that guy darn it 🙂
>I think a lot people who want Halo will just wait for it on PC or Mac
There are no plans to release Halo for these platforms. Microsoft owns Halo, and it is the Mario of the XBox. I think it is unlikely that you will see PC availability of this game before Halo 2 is released on the XBox, and I don’t think there will ever be an Apple port.
I’m too old to get arosed by console games.
I’m waiting for BIOS rippers too. And e-bay flood too.
As you can see – it’s connected to SONY Trinitron TV.
That’s why.