Interesting XBox Next rumor

[HaemishM]

Thanks to Penny Arcade, I saw this article about possibilities for the XBox 2 or XBox Next as it's being called. Interesting concept, but it'll all depend on what games are available.

[schild]

Yea. I saw that. The Xbox Next PC version scares the hell out of me. Modded out of the box plz more thx? Microsoft sure is doing it's work to help pirates. They truly are humanitarians.

[stray]

It's on a variant of the PPC chip right? So these means it's not the standard x86 Windows either. How is it going to run PC games and apps as well as Xbox games? Virtual PC? Lame.

[WonderBrick]

Let me buy a version that lets me plug it into my exist PC, using my PC CPU, RAM and supported videocard, and I would be happy.

[HaemishM]

For XBox Next PC, think Windows Media Center, only with Neon Green instead of pastel shiny blue.

[Sky]

Man, I wish I had a way to play pc games and watch movies on my home theater, and a way to listen to my audio files over my audio receiver!

Oh wait, I already do. Yay marketing!

Sure, I know it'll be 'inexpensive' compared to a pc. But if you have an hdtv, bitching about the price of a pc is rather foolish. May as well gripe that you can get a tv for $150 at walmart. I see a lot of this kind of 'discussion' at the avforum.com. Crazy, man, crazy. My xbox languishes in the corner because it simply can't feed a beautiful picture to my hdtv.

I just don't get the convergence market, it makes no sense. Trying to make cheap, unified components to feed an expensive display. But I guess people buy it, so more power to MS, eh? I'll stick with my homebuilt pc...

[HaemishM]

The convergence market is all about getting Ma and Pa Kent to buy a device that allows them to:

1) Purchase other things over the Internet, including intangible things like pay-per-view entertainment, information documents, as well as actual deliverables
2)Market to said demographic about anything and everything in a somewhat "closed loop" scenario, where the media delivery maker controls the message

And do all that with a device that requires little setup or foreknowledge. Think LCD.

[Sky]

Yeah, sorry. I keep thinking like myself and forgetting I'm eminently the minority.

You're definitely bang-on about the future being about subscriptions, as much as I despise the idea. That's all fine as long as you have enough disposable income to keep up your subs. I'll go down in the basement and grab my old vinyl metal albums, something I wouldn't be able to do in 20 years with a lapsed subscription to media that may or may not exist anymore.

If cd/dvd represents the final stage of physical media distribution, which I find unlikely to foolish, then I'll be all about buying up cd/dvd drives for a few years.

Looking at my budget, I want LESS subscriptions, not more. Every additional subscription fee I pay pushes me one step closer to the cabin in the mountains with my acoustic guitar and shotgun :)

[Kageru]

That's been the plan since the beginning. The original X-box was largely in response to one of the consoles getting a browser (playstation I think) which at the time was thought to be `the future'. That and Microsoft have always wanted to own the hardware and well as the software and they adore the idea of subscription services.

You'll probably find the decision to use the PowerPC chip is done with that in mind. Not only does it work as a blow to Intel it automatically segments their market. 80x86 on the desktop, PPC in the Xbox and two completely independant software markets for each. I detest Microsoft, I try not to support predatory monopolies, but you really have to admire their skill in market manipulation.

[WonderBrick]

That's been the plan since the beginning. The original X-box was largely in response to one of the consoles getting a browser (playstation I think) which at the time was thought to be `the future'.

Sega Dreamcast, with dialup or ethernet support.

[Righ]

This is the beginning of the end times for Microsoft Game Studios. When they decided to name their ill-considered foray into computer hardware after NeXT some alarm bells should have rung. That there would be three models should have really set the deja-vu off. I dare them to name them Xbox NeXTstation, Xbox NeXTcube and Xbox NeXTdimension. The Intel coprocessor board in the NeXTdimension will allow it to play PC games. The irony.

[Alkiera]

*equips tin-foil hat*

Perhaps the delay is that MS plans to push the PC market onto PPC before the XBox NEXT PC comes out?  There've been rumors, given that the XBox 2 dev stations are WinXP running on what amount to Apple PPC machines.  The x86 chips are starting to hit a speed cap as well, they haven't had a cpu actually run x86 code in years, and emulation can only speed up so much.  Going PPC might at least delay the inevitable while the micro-e's figure out how to leap the barrier around 5-7 nanometers(IIRC, semiconductor physics gets odd/breaks down when the wires get that small).

*removes tin-foil hat*

Really tho, other than a few applications, we aren't touching the potential of the CPU's we've got.  Most CPU performance escallation these days is pushed by the CPU makers, since they need to 'innovate' to make more cash.  Moore's Law is actually starting to fail, with increases in speed taking longer and longer.  Of course, Moore's Law is somewhat limited by the measuring stick you use, and many common measuring sticks don't apply to more than a single family of chips any more.

The alien mind controls lasers are making me type that the revolution to quantum computing will be here soon!

Alkiera

[Righ]

XBox 2 dev stations are WinXP running on what amount to Apple PPC machines

They are Apple G5 2.5GHz dual processor systems with modifications. The modification amounts to software, which is essentially Windows XP MSE for Macintosh. It will be amusing if they have to license Apple ROM logic for NeXTbox.

x86 chips are starting to hit a speed cap as well

As indeed are current generation PPC processors. Both Intel and IBM are looking at dual-core solutions to allow more compute power from the same clock speeds. However, the roadmap for PPC is somewhat better than x86. Intel are over-invested in the largely failed Itanium.

It doesn't take a tin-foil hat to see that MS are studying their options.

[MrHat]

It doesn't take a tin-foil hat to see that MS are studying their options.

The question becomes, does the world go where Microsoft goes?

[stray]

The question becomes, does the world go where Microsoft goes?

It would take someone like Microsoft to cause that kind of migration, I think. I don't think they'll abandon x86 outright though, else they would have announced...something. Besides, there are many Linux heads who want to do just that, move to PPC. They just need a push. Apple's already there, a gazillion devices are there, all 3 game consoles will be there in one way or another (actually I don't know wtf Sony's Cell really is, but I heard it was PPC based), and if Microsoft made more steps there in home computing, so would others.

It will be amusing if they have to license Apple ROM logic for NeXTbox.

I would think Windows/PPC would just boot from Open Firmware. That would either come from Freescale or IBM. If these Xbox's are running a G5, then it's IBM. Either way, these things are going to be nice.

[Kageru]

Mmmm... I don't believe there's some massive, and long term, technical advance that would see Microsoft do a complete transition. It's much more in their favor to keep multiple hardware platforms alive so that no vendor gains any sort of leverage over them. I still think hardware incompatibility will be used to stop a bleed of Xbox++ games to the PC and PC apps to the Xbox++. Microsoft wants both power users and the console casuals. Especially since it knows lots of people could end up owning both, and paying 2x for their software that way.

[Moroni]

Convergence on stuff like this always scares me. I remember when it was just a dream to have a shitty fax machine, printer, and scanner in one flimsy piece of low grade plastic. I am always ready to be wrong about this stuff, though. Sometimes merging different faculties into the same hardware yields good results.

[Alkiera]

Convergence on stuff like this always scares me. I remember when it was just a dream to have a shitty fax machine, printer, and scanner in one flimsy piece of low grade plastic. I am always ready to be wrong about this stuff, though. Sometimes merging different faculties into the same hardware yields good results.

I currently have a Lexmark all-in-one printer/scanner/copier thing, that seems to do fairly well for all three, tho the computer needs to be on to copy, as it doesn't have the ram to store the image internally.

I've gotten nice scans, nice prints, and decent copies out of it.  And it doesn't screw up all the time like most of the HP printers I've owned.

Alkiera