Microsoft Picks IBM for XBox 2

[silvergunuk]

my 4 quarters and a nickle

Don't count on the Cell being something special. It's just sonys spin doctors at work. I wonder what they will claim for this machine. So powerful they can't release it in afganistan just incase of nuclear war? An engine thats so advanced, it can calculate emotions? This is the chip that will start of war between machinery and mankind..maybe the robots were based off the governor of california...were gonna die! How about the chip that is so advanced it'll beat the virginia G5 cluster on its own? A machine that can see into the future perhaps?

 

[Raidiant]

Re: my 4 quarters and a nickle

Originally posted by silvergunuk
Don't count on the Cell being something special. It's just sonys spin doctors at work. I wonder what they will claim for this machine. So powerful they can't release it in afganistan just incase of nuclear war? An engine thats so advanced, it can calculate emotions? This is the chip that will start of war between machinery and mankind..maybe the robots were based off the governor of california...were gonna die! How about the chip that is so advanced it'll beat the virginia G5 cluster on its own? A machine that can see into the future perhaps?

haha I think they did claim something like that with their emotion engine. Mind you the PS2 preforms remarkably well and it came out first. Look at Final Fantasy X.

 

[Krevnik]

Originally posted by Phil Of Mac
As for emulation, there was a PS1 emulator for Mac awhile ago, Virtual Game Station. It's not that hard.

There is a difference though... the PS1 was a 33Mhz chip with a low-end custom graphics controller. The Xbox is a P3 733Mhz chip with a pretty heavy 3D system.

Considering you have to spend time translating code to execute it, you are looking at a MAXIMUM of 1/2 speed. Then you have translation of APIs and other key things required to get access to the hardware and 3D chipset. You are looking at just BARELY, just MAYBE being able to eek out enough performance from a single proc 2Ghz G5 to emulate the Xbox hardware.

One of those would be too expensive for a 300$ device, so emulation of the Xbox on a PPC chip in a console is out of the question right now.

Virtual PC isn't going to be any help because these numbers I am using are based on Virtual PC's performance numbers.

Virtual Game Station also needed a minimum of a 66Mhz bus to work right, which was far more than the PS1's puny bus. A 233Mhz chip and 66Mhz bus trounces the 33Mhz chip and even slower bus on the PS1... showing that the emulation is not 'hard', but rather resource intensive.

 

[GregA]

Do the console makers make money from the console, or not?

Originally posted by silvergunuk
Maybe Microsoft did this because intels chips are way too expensive and it would be harder to make xbox2 emulators for pc.

A few people have said that the console makers make their money on the games - not the console. If that is the case, wouldn't it be best for Sony to sell (or allow) a PS2 emulator on Mac - thus encouraging more games to be sold, AND they wouldn't lose as much money on console sales.

Or am I misunderstanding something?

 

[Phil Of Mac]

Re: Do the console makers make money from the console, or not?

Originally posted by GregAussie
A few people have said that the console makers make their money on the games - not the console. If that is the case, wouldn't it be best for Sony to sell (or allow) a PS2 emulator on Mac - thus encouraging more games to be sold, AND they wouldn't lose as much money on console sales.

Or am I misunderstanding something?

Sony only makes money on the games it sells. As opposed to the games someone else sells.

 

[johnnyjibbs]

The problem for Sony for the PS2 when it first came out was that the simple games-only model didn't work anymore. Tons of people (particularly the Japanese, where it was launched first) bought Sony's loss-making PS2 hardware simply to play DVDs (there were no good games at the start anyway). That was a big problem for Sony as they were making a loss on the hardware and no money on the software.

Originally posted by Phil Of Mac
Sony only makes money on the games it sells. As opposed to the games someone else sells.

The console manufacturers do make money from all games. The console manufacturers licence out the system to developers. The platform is their own proprietry platform after all. Sony has the cheapest and least restrictive licences (hence many crappy games on PS2) and Nintendo has the highest and most restrictive licence fees (hence less games, more high quality). Microsoft is somewhere in the middle.

Games magazines keep predicting that all consoles will converge to one common platform like VHS and DVD, but I am skeptical due to the technological competition and the stubborness of Nintendo (bit like Apple, in fact!)

 

[kwtneo]

wired article on the subject

Microsoft's next-generation Xbox will ditch its Intel chip in favor of the same kind of chip used in Apple's Macs -- an IBM PowerPC processor

http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,61065,00.html

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

they might as well say G5,who knows maybe i wont need a G5 Mac just a xbox2 and ill still have my G5

 

[the_dalex]

Nowadays, for consoles, the GPU is going to be the most important chip. The CPU is going to handle things like character AI, physics calculations, etc. while the graphic work is all handled by the GPU... that's how systems get by with such slow CPUs. A 733Mhz PIII in an Xbox is doing less work than a 2Ghz machine, because the code is specifically written for the GPU and takes 100% advantage of it. The demands on the processor grow as you start to enrich the game with non-graphical features, such as more characters with better AI, better game physics, and so on.

On a normal PC, games are written to work on older, less-capable 3D hardware and are much more CPU-intensive as a result... game development on the PC is always behind technologically.

 

[Phil Of Mac]

Originally posted by the_dalex
On a normal PC, games are written to work on older, less-capable 3D hardware and are much more CPU-intensive as a result... game development on the PC is always behind technologically.

Always behind? Only if you consider graphics the most important thing, which they are most certainly not.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

anyways it looks like the new xbox will have a type of g6 or rather 980 or modified 980 in it if you can trust mac os rumors. if this is true it would help ibm and apple get the 980 going if all three have the same wants and the wallet for it.