Microsoft 360 competition. Or something close to it.

[schild]

Over on the Team Xbox forums, “McNasty04” has made a startling discovery:

“After reading the description of the supposed design of the next xbox. I noticed something when I went to look at something on xbox.com. Something about the design of the site caught my eye. In the article the person talks about how it will be able to stand on its side and is concave in the middle aka “sucking in its cheeks”. Could the xbox 360 design have been in front of our faces this whole time? I am just merely brining this up because I found it interesting and thought it might interest a few of you.”

Team Xbox you say? Heh.

[Furiously]

Is it music?

[schild]

For those of you that don't scour the web endlessly in search of drama:

[MrHat]

Is it music?

Binary maybe? || = 1, |  | = 0 ?

[Kail]

(Big Pic)
Is it music?

Binary maybe? || = 1, |  | = 0 ?

To me, it looks kind of like the sheet music you'd run through one of those old player pianos.  But, I don't know how to read that.

[Strazos]

I'm just wondering where my control ports are on the 360....I really hope they are not forcing me to use ghey wireless controllers....

They better at least be rechargable. I don't buy a console to bankroll the battery industry like handhelds (use to) do, kthx.

[schild]

They're wireless. If they get the battery life of the Wavebirds, you won't be bankrolling anything.

[Shockeye]

Enjoy the video.

[schild]

That video streamed amazingly well.

Also, looks like the system is backwards compatible. Well, at least seemingly so from some of the screenshots on the monitors.

[Shockeye]

That video streamed amazingly well.

Also, looks like the system is backwards compatible. Well, at least seemingly so from some of the screenshots on the monitors.

System is not backwards compatible yet according to everything I've read in this "unveiling" phase we're in now. They are working on getting it ready for release of the system, but at this point it is not yet ready.

Also, the only version of the Xbox 360 available at retail this holiday season will be the one with the 20gb hard drive. The sans hard drive version will not be out until next year.

[Murgos]

It will be a good trick to take stuff burned to a disc in IA-32 and make it usable on a Power-PC architecture and not take too much of a performance hit.  Sure, it's just a VM and that stuff is done all the time, but there is a reason it's hardly ever a good idea to do it with any kind of recent game.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

[schild]

I have a feeling that if they can't do it through software, they'll do it through hardware.

[Murgos]

I have a feeling that if they can't do it through software, they'll do it through hardware.

Even if they include a PIII 700mhz CPU and it's attendant interface chipset your talking about increasing the price of the hardware by at least another 75 - 100 bucks.  Thats not even going into the problems of interfacing that system with thier new I/O architecture.

No, it will have probably have to be a software implimentation or I seriously doubt if it will happen at all.

[Merusk]

That video's supposed to hype the 360 and get me all excited about it, but all it did was make me decide I'm not interested in it at all.

I'm still trying to puzzle out the details of why, but I have this sense of 'danger, overhyped underused features' underlying it.  It's similar to the sensation I got when folks were hyping the Dreamcast's "emotion engine".

[Aenovae]

The PS2 has the Emotion Engine.  Which is actually just its CPU and API.

Oh and Xbox 360 will be backwards compatible via emulation.

[Pococurante]

I'm glad the put some aging engineers on to give a spiel.  Generally when I see a shaved-baldy hoop-earring soulpatcher and I figure there's nothing else to sell.

Seriously it looks sharp.  I'm there.

[Shockeye]

The PS2 has the Emotion Engine.  Which is actually just its CPU and API.

Oh and Xbox 360 will be backwards compatible via emulation.

Not yet it isn't. They still don't have it working which is why they have not announced it yet.

[Trippy]

It will be a good trick to take stuff burned to a disc in IA-32 and make it usable on a Power-PC architecture and not take too much of a performance hit.  Sure, it's just a VM and that stuff is done all the time, but there is a reason it's hardly ever a good idea to do it with any kind of recent game.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

On the other hand Microsoft bought Virtual PC from Connectix a while back and this technology is presumably what they are adopting for use on the Xbox 360. And while it is true that emulating other processors through software is a *huge* relative performance hit you have to remember that the Xbox only has a P3-class CPU while the Xbox 360 has a 3 GHz triple-core PowerPC CPU with the multi-core part being key since you can parallelize the x64 to PowerPC instruction translation with the actual game computations.

[Murgos]

You're absolutely right Trippy, the flaw with that though is that if it were as simple as a virtual PC port every Microsoft press-release would have touted thier backwards compatibility.  They haven't done that yet so I'm guessing there is a bigger engineering problem lurking beneath the waves than a fairly straightforward port to thier new chipset.

[Shockeye]

Next Xbox 'backward compatible'? Microsoft still hasn't said
Friday, May 13, 2005
By TODD BISHOP
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Even as Microsoft took the wraps off its new Xbox 360 video-game console last night, the company left a major question unanswered: Will the new Xbox play games made for the old?

The issue, known as backward compatibility, is a key one for game developers and console owners hoping to bring their existing libraries of games along with them to the next generation. One of the reasons commonly credited for the success of Sony's dominant PlayStation 2 is its ability to play games that were originally made for its predecessor.

But as recently as last week, a Microsoft executive said the Redmond company hadn't yet determined whether the new Xbox 360, set for release this year, would be backward compatible.

"We don't know yet, as scary as that is," said Peter Moore, an Xbox corporate vice president. He cited "a host of technical issues" for the uncertainty, without being more specific.

There are fundamental technical differences between the first Xbox and the Xbox 360 in such areas as the central processing unit and the graphics processing unit. In both cases, Microsoft switched to different suppliers in the new console -- IBM for the central processing unit and ATI for the graphics chip.

"We completely changed the processor and the GPU," explained Chris Satchell, general manager of Microsoft's XNA game development platform. "You can imagine that can cause some challenges."

Although Microsoft didn't make any announcement yesterday on the subject, Moore said it should know the answer to the backward-compatibility question by Monday, the day of its briefing at the E3 game conference.

Microsoft plans to continue making the current Xbox even after releasing the new one. But in a research note this week, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter predicted that a lack of backward compatibility would "dramatically reduce demand for current-generation Xbox games" and cause sales of the original Xbox console to "rapidly decline."

Pachter wrote that the situation may come down to whether Microsoft is able to license patented technology from one of the processor vendors for the original Xbox, letting it use that technology to enable backward compatibility in the Xbox 360.

It's not clear how much a lack of backward compatibility would affect Xbox 360 sales. In reality, most people end up preferring games specifically made for a new console even if they're able to play games on it that were made for the earlier hardware, said Michael Goodman, senior analyst with the Yankee Group research and consulting firm.

But it's the type of issue that could help Sony and Nintendo in the public-relations battle over the next-generation consoles, particularly if their upcoming machines are backward compatible.

"If you have the capability, and your competitor doesn't, you hype it," Goodman said. "If it pops popcorn and your competitor's doesn't, then you hype that fact."

[Margalis]

If they don't know by now, there is very little chance it will be backwards compatible.

[Shockeye]

If they don't know by now, there is very little chance it will be backwards compatible.

I'm guessing the problem lies in emulating the nVidia chip specifics of the Xbox. The Xbox 360 should have plenty of horsepower to run x86 emulation at the level of a P3-733.

[Murgos]

There used to be an issue with Virtual PC and endianess on the G5, I don't know if it's still an issue or if it's related to this question.  I assume we will find out in time.

[Trippy]

If they don't know by now, there is very little chance it will be backwards compatible.

I'm guessing the problem lies in emulating the nVidia chip specifics of the Xbox.

If that is the reason then somebody at Microsoft messed up since developers have known since Summer 2003 that the Xbox 2 would be switching to an ATI GPU so either Microsoft botched up their DirectX equivalent for the Xbox and forced developers to write straight to the GPU to get decent performance or they didn't grease enough palms/apply enough pressure to keep overenthusiastic developers from writing native NVIDIA code.

[Trippy]

It looks like the Xbox 360 will be backwards compatible, kind of, maybe, sort of:

Xbox 360 picks up Final Fantasy XI, will be backwards compatible
[...]
Along with a firm release date and price point, the other big question surrounding the 360 was backward compatibility. However, Microsoft would only say that the console will be "backward-compatible with top-selling Xbox games." This ambiguous wording could mean that Microsoft will select which titles will run on the next-gen console. However, it could also simply mean that Microsoft is merely being prudent in case some original Xbox titles don't work on the 360, as was the case with some older PlayStation 1 games and the PlayStation 2.
[...]

[Yegolev]

It looks like the Xbox 360 will be backwards compatible, kind of, maybe, sort of:

Xbox 360 picks up Final Fantasy XI, will be backwards compatible
[...]
Along with a firm release date and price point, the other big question surrounding the 360 was backward compatibility. However, Microsoft would only say that the console will be "backward-compatible with top-selling Xbox games." This ambiguous wording could mean that Microsoft will select which titles will run on the next-gen console. However, it could also simply mean that Microsoft is merely being prudent in case some original Xbox titles don't work on the 360, as was the case with some older PlayStation 1 games and the PlayStation 2.
[...]

They will release ports of the games.  Have fun buying Halo 2 again, bitches!

[HaemishM]

So as I thought, to actually PLAY X-Box 360 games on Live, you will have to pay. Meaning the Silver service is really worthless, which is why it's free, I suppose.