Hot rumor is that the Xbox will be cut to $99 by Labor Day, at which
point, I'll definitely pick one up. Actually, if MS is smart, they'll
finally stick Halo into their Platinum Collection (or even pack it in).
Or, alternately, pack it with an Xbox Live trial subscription and an
online-capable game.
The Xbox 2 is sounding very good. Especially that whole HD FSAA angle.
Drool.
- Jim
Gel wrote:
>Yep, it's a Sunday night LNC update, as this one couldn't wait...Team
>Xbox sends along word of this Mercury News article that supposedly
>reveals the specs on Microsoft's next-generation Xbox system. So what's
>the beef? Apparently it will feature three 64-bit processors from IBM
>(said to be the same as those featured in Apple's G5 towers), an ATI
>processor that's more powerful than the upcoming R400, either 256 or 512
>MB of DDR RAM, either DVD or Blu-Ray DVD format discs, and as
>rumored...no hard drive. Instead the current plan really is apparently
>to ditch it in favor of flash memory in an attempt to keep the price
>down. Considering that the hard drive is vital to enable downloadable
>content (not to mention caching for games) developers aren't too
>thrilled at this idea. Epic's Tim Sweeney is quoted as saying, "For a
>console to really have a useful online component, it has to have the
>hard drive to store downloaded maps and other data." Also of note is
>word that backwards compatibility is not guaranteed at this point, and
>that Microsoft is using Apple G5 computers to build game prototypes. Who
>says Mac gaming is dead?
>
>Team Xbox has their own story on this, which contains some additional
>details, including word that the graphics chip is based on the R500
>core. Here's an excerpt of that:
>
>What nobody is telling you and you'll know about this first, here on
>TeamXbox, is the revolutionary approach of the Xbox 2 to deal with
>today's biggest problem in graphics chips: memory bandwidth. The graphic
>chip will contain not only a graphics rendering core but up embedded
>DRAM acting as a frame buffer that is big enough to handle an image that
>is 480i and can be 4 times over sampled and double buffered. Yeah, we
>all remember Bitboys but this time you can bet this is for real. This
>solution will finally make possible HDTV visuals with full screen
>Anti-Aliasing on. The technology also supports up to 512 MB of external
>memory on a 256-bit bus. However, current specs plan to use 256 MB RAM,
>big enough for next-generation visuals which are all about computational
>power rather than large storage.
>
>---
>
>I think it will be a big retrograde step to ditch the hard disk. They
>may intend to force a hard disk purchase with the purchase of Xbox Live
>for the Xbox2 though?
>
>I'm also not happy of the shift away from Intel platform, since it would
>mean that the easy porting path that PC Games enjoyed going to and from
>PC to Xbox would now be gone.
>
>It will take the developers more work to go from a PC title to Xbox and
>vice-versa.
>
>But..we'll see how it turns out. Not due until two years anyways ^_^
>
> -Gel
>
>---
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>
>
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