Key Xbox2 Briefing Stated

[Xenon]

Revealed: Key XBox 2 Briefing Slated



http://news.spong.com/x?art=8075



some crappy rumor-mill website can exclusively reveal this morning that
Microsoft is planning to lift the lid on its most sensitive XBox 2 plans
next month, with various media and software partners scheduled to attend a
keynote briefing in the US.

At the meeting, to be held in Seattle on January 17, Microsoft's Xbox team
will seek to outline its key branding direction, underlining launch plans
and what it perceives as its target demographic.

It is expected that some sort of launch line-up will be offered, as well as
a breakdown of the next-generation Xbox's primary unique selling points.

It's worth bearing in mind that this news, 100% confirmed this morning by a
senior source under conditions of anonymity, does throw weight behind the
new console seeing daylight on January 5 at the Consumer Electronics Show,
where Bill gates is set to make a keynote address. It would make sense to
fill in the gaps to close partners within this two week window, or at least
it makes more sense than to brief attendees three months bfore a public
showing.

Although all attendees will be NDA'd up to their eyeballs, expect a good
trickle of information right here in the days following the 17th.

 

[Jeremy Reaban]

Xenon wrote:

It is expected that some sort of launch line-up will be offered, as
well as a breakdown of the next-generation Xbox's primary unique
selling points.

Let's see, weakest of the next 3 consoles

No hard drive, no backwards compatibility

Based on the PowerPC, so no more easy PC ports.

I'm sold!

 

[Zackman]

some crappy rumor-mill website can exclusively reveal

Why do you call Spong, in your own words, a "crappy rumor-mill website" and
STILL cut and paste this days-old news? Basically you're saying you have no
standards whatsoever, is that it?

Spong IS shit. And you just smeared that shit on the walls like a
brain-damaged chimp. Well done.

-Z-

 

[Licantrop0]

Jeremy Reaban ha scritto:

Based on the PowerPC, so no more easy PC ports.

rotfl, do you forgetted XNA platform?

 

[Jordan]

Xenon wrote:


Let's see, weakest of the next 3 consoles

You can't say that until it comes out. Given the success of the PS1 who
knew that the PS2 would be the weakest of the current consoles?

No hard drive, no backwards compatibility

Considering how few developers actually used the HD to its fullest
extent I'd say that it's irrelevant. Almost as irrelevant as backwards
compatability. Anyone who wants to play Xbox games has an Xbox to play
them on, they don't need another machine to do it.

Based on the PowerPC, so no more easy PC ports.

How many PC ports does the Xbox currently have? Morrowind, Enter the
Matrix annnnd.... ???

- Jordan

 

[Dave]

here is the thing that i do not understand about not being backward
compatible:

sure i still have my xbox that will play the old games, but if xbox2 is not
even backward compatible, it is a whole new system. it might as well be put
out by sega or some other company. what does it have to do with xbox 1? over
the years my current xbox will get old, might even stop working. if xbox2
would play the old games, at least i could use it for that, even if the new
system is not good and the games suck.

sure the new system will be capable of rad graphics and the games will most
likely be incredible, but i'm sure ps3 will do the same, what is the benefit
of me going with xbox2 and not ps3?

i just do not understand the concept of putting out a whole new system that
has nothing to do with the previous one, except for the fact that it is put
out by the same company. there just seems to be no connection to build upon
what i have come to be familiar with.

it would be like me buying a new computer and every program i ever purchased
previously would not run on it.

am i completely alone on this?

 

[Mike Kay]

it would be like me buying a new computer and every program i ever purchased
previously would not run on it.

am i completely alone on this?

nope i hear you!

i guess its purely down to the fact that M$ feel they can get a better
deal bang per buck going powerPC/ATI over intel/Nvidia & that its
proving to be too difficult to get backwards compatiblitly.

personally i dont care too much, although it would be nice to have
backwards compatibility even if only so the xbox can go to another room
or be sold to pull a few quid back, however i do hope my specialist
controllers will still work on the new unit (FF wheel/light gun etc)
like the psone ones do on PS2.

 

[Jordan]

If you're worried about your Xbox breaking you can always buy an extra
one when the price drops below $100 and stick it in your closet.
Working machines won't be in short supply for years. It's only just now
getting hard to find working Atari 2600 machines, NES, SNES and Genesis
machines are all plentiful.

So why should you buy the next machine in a series if it's not
backwards compatible?

Well, remember, the PS2 and the Gameboy Advance are the exceptions, not
the rule. No other machines have been backwards compatible since the
Atari 7800 and Commodore 128.

The benefit in buying the next level of hardware is that you get to
continue with the exclusive franchises that you enjoyed on on the
previous platform. Project Gotham 3? Not going to be on the PS3. Halo
3? Not going to be on the PS3. Similarly Gran Turismo 5? Not going to
be on the next Xbox.

- Jordan

 

[Scott H]

here is the thing that i do not understand about not being backward
compatible:

sure i still have my xbox that will play the old games, but if xbox2 is not
even backward compatible, it is a whole new system. it might as well be put
out by sega or some other company. what does it have to do with xbox 1? over
the years my current xbox will get old, might even stop working. if xbox2
would play the old games, at least i could use it for that, even if the new
system is not good and the games suck.

sure the new system will be capable of rad graphics and the games will most
likely be incredible, but i'm sure ps3 will do the same, what is the benefit
of me going with xbox2 and not ps3?

i just do not understand the concept of putting out a whole new system that
has nothing to do with the previous one, except for the fact that it is put
out by the same company. there just seems to be no connection to build upon
what i have come to be familiar with.

The connection, prior to Sony and Microsoft's entrance into the market
is that you could expect a certain focus to the games, and exclusive
titles from certain companies. This hasn't necessarily changed, but to
me, MS and Sony have far less in the way of distinctiveness to their 1st
party titles. What you can expect from next gen consoles from MS and
Sony is similar 3rd party support to that of the previous console.
As a contrast, when companies like Atari or Sega tried to poke back
into the market, 3rd parties simply didn't bother releasing titles that
were up to the system's capabilities. This is because doing so would
take more time than they were willing to invest, because they had no
confidence that the console manufacturer was going to stick it out, or
because the console wasn't selling well enough month-to-month, or a
combination of these and other confidence related issues. Brand
recognition is the name of the game, and MS and Sony now have it.
Consumers and the media will see, and market, their consoles favorably
because of the *perception* that things will continue along a similar
path as the predecessor console. Therefore, you, as a consumer, can
expect similar numbers of releases in similar genres on the next gen
consoles, because developers anticipate that you will continue to buy
what was bought on the predecessor.

 

[Brian Kvalheim [MSFT MVP]]

Hi Jeremy Reaban ([email protected]),
in the newsgroups
you posted:

|| Let's see, weakest of the next 3 consoles

How is that?

|| No hard drive

Where did MS say that?

||no backwards compatibility

Where did MS say that?

|| Based on the PowerPC, so no more easy PC ports.

Where did MS say that?
--
Brian Kvalheim
Microsoft Publisher MVP
http://www.publishermvps.com
~pay it forward~

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and
confers no rights.

 

[Green Shampoo]

here is the thing that i do not understand about not being backward
compatible:

sure i still have my xbox that will play the old games, but if xbox2 is
not
even backward compatible, it is a whole new system. it might as well be
put
out by sega or some other company. what does it have to do with xbox 1?
over
the years my current xbox will get old, might even stop working. if xbox2
would play the old games, at least i could use it for that, even if the
new
system is not good and the games suck.

But what good will the Xbox 2 be if you can play Xbox 1 games, but not use
your Xbox 1 game saves?

 

[A man, just like other men]

here is the thing that i do not understand about not being backward
compatible:

sure i still have my xbox that will play the old games, but if xbox2 is
not
even backward compatible, it is a whole new system. it might as well be
put
out by sega or some other company.

sure the new system will be capable of rad graphics and the games will
most
likely be incredible, but i'm sure ps3 will do the same, what is the
benefit
of me going with xbox2 and not ps3?

am i completely alone on this?

Can any technical folks in this group reply to this? Given:

1) Xbox2 will have more horsepower than Xbox and
2) therefore Xbox games won't use all of the horsepower Xbox2 offers and
3) ATI doesn't run Nvidia commands

what if someone wrote a Nvidia emulator for the ATI card, and thus Xbox2
could run Xbox games? The emulator would use up the extra horsepower of the
Xbox2 that the Xbox games don't need.

 

[Tom Lake]

Let's see, weakest of the next 3 consoles

No hard drive, no backwards compatibility

According to OXM, there will be three models of Xbox Next. Two of the three
models will have a hard drive.

Tom Lake

 

[cowboyz]

Can any technical folks in this group reply to this? Given:

1) Xbox2 will have more horsepower than Xbox and
2) therefore Xbox games won't use all of the horsepower Xbox2 offers
and 3) ATI doesn't run Nvidia commands

what if someone wrote a Nvidia emulator for the ATI card, and thus
Xbox2 could run Xbox games? The emulator would use up the extra
horsepower of the Xbox2 that the Xbox games don't need.

It is trickier than it sounds.

Think about the Xbox running at 733Mhz and based on a GeForce3 with the
windows 2000 core and how difficult it has been to emulate it even though we
have machines many many times faster than that these days. Same with the
Psone. It has been done, yes. But it is not easy.

 

[Doug Jacobs]

Jeremy Reaban ha scritto:

rotfl, do you forgetted XNA platform?

They renamed "Direct X" - big deal. That's not a selling point.

 

[Doug Jacobs]

Considering how few developers actually used the HD to its fullest
extent I'd say that it's irrelevant. Almost as irrelevant as backwards
compatability. Anyone who wants to play Xbox games has an Xbox to play
them on, they don't need another machine to do it.

If XBox2 was backwards compatible with XBox, I'd buy an XBox2 near its
initial release while waiting for PS3 to hit its first price drop.

How many PC ports does the Xbox currently have? Morrowind, Enter the
Matrix annnnd.... ???

KOTOR, Halo(ok, a year later), Finest Hour, Splinter Cell, and I'm sure
others.

 

[Doug Jacobs]

i just do not understand the concept of putting out a whole new system that
has nothing to do with the previous one, except for the fact that it is put
out by the same company. there just seems to be no connection to build upon
what i have come to be familiar with.

it would be like me buying a new computer and every program i ever purchased
previously would not run on it.

am i completely alone on this?

Backwards compatibility is fairly new to the console market. So far, only
the Playstation and Game Boy Advance has managed to do it.

I can see advantages going either way:

Argument for backwards compatibility: Insures that the new console has a
large, established library from day one. May entice people who didn't buy
previous generation console to buy the new one so they could get access to
both libraries. Larger library of cheaper games also a good selling point
for newcomers to the console market (eg. parents looking for a console for
their kid.)

Argument against backwards compatibility: Can increase cost of console -
especially if you have to include older hardware architecture to support
older games. Locks you into same media format, or you'll have to include
separate media reader for the older generation games. You could also
argue that most people aren't going to buy a new console to play games
that are 3-5 years old. Those who bought the last generation will retain
their hardware, or dump the whole thing without ever looking back.

 

[Doug Jacobs]

Can any technical folks in this group reply to this? Given:

1) Xbox2 will have more horsepower than Xbox and
2) therefore Xbox games won't use all of the horsepower Xbox2 offers and
3) ATI doesn't run Nvidia commands

what if someone wrote a Nvidia emulator for the ATI card, and thus Xbox2
could run Xbox games? The emulator would use up the extra horsepower of the
Xbox2 that the Xbox games don't need.

While it should theorhetically be true to write an emulator for XBox2 that
would allow XBox1 games to run on it, the performance of the XBox1 games
would be horrendous.

In general, emulation requires a hardware platform many times more
powerful than the platform being emulated. If the only difference between
the XBox1 and XBox2 was the video chip, then you could simply write some
software that would translate ATI calls into NVidea ones. However, that's
not the only place where the two consoles differ. The XBox2 is based on
an entirely different CPU - meaning that XBox1 game code won't even
execute on it without writing another layer of emulation software.

It probably could be done, but it'd be very very slow. For one thing,
you're doing things in software that are usually done with hardware -
things like writing to registers, cache, etc. would all have to be
implemented in software using the system's RAM - which is usually much
much slower than the original hardware.

Even then, software emulation is rarely as accurate as using original
hardware. Sony's PS2 accomplishes its backwards compatibility by actually
including the guts of a PS1 on a single processor chip. So in reality,
each PS2 is actually a PS1 + PS2.

 

[Doug Jacobs]

According to OXM, there will be three models of Xbox Next. Two of the three
models will have a hard drive.

True, but since the processor is PowerPC, not Intel, the chances of Xbox
Next being backwards compatible are pretty close to nil...

Maybe the 3rd version which is supposed to be an XBox2+Media Center PC
might be backwards compatible, but since that model isn't due out for at
least a year after the first XBox2 models debut, I'd reccomend buying an
Xbox separately.

 

[USAF LM]

They renamed "Direct X" - big deal. That's not a selling point.

Yep, simple name change.

http://www.microsoft.com/xna/

Sounds to me like XNA will help with the porting process.

Swi