|
The Xbox is Microsoft's game console, released on November 15, 2001. It is Microsoft's first independent venture into the console arena, after having collaborated with Sega in porting Windows CE to the Sega Dreamcast console. The price is currently 149 USD, 149 EUR, 99 GBP, 200 CAD and 249 AUD. Notable Xbox-exclusive titles that launched with the console include Amped, Dead or Alive 3, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Halo, and Project Gotham Racing.
Hardware
Microsoft built the Xbox around industry-standard PC hardware in contrast to the traditionally proprietary design of nearly all other gaming consoles. In spite of (or because of) this, it is the most powerful console when compared to its main competitors, the PlayStation 2 and Gamecube, while remaining price competitive.
Hardware Parts:
The inclusion of the hard disk not only serves as a disk cache for faster game loading times compared to the PS2 and GameCube, it also allows users to download and save new content for their games from Xbox Live and copy music from standard Audio CDs so players can partially or completely replace the soundtrack of Xbox games that support Custom Soundtracks, all a first in console history. Custom Soundtracks are usually supported in non-cinematic games (e.g. racing/driving games) where the music is inconsequential to what's happening in the game.
Although the Xbox is based on PC architecture and runs a stripped down version of the Windows 2000 kernel it incorporates restrictions designed to prevent uses not approved by Microsoft. It did not take long, however, for the hacker community to circumvent these limitations and install a customized distribution of the Linux operating system on the Xbox, thus making it usable as a fully featured PC (without eliminating its gaming and its online capabilities).
The Xbox has been criticized for its large size and weight compared to other consoles, mostly due to its inclusion of a full sized hard disk drive and DVD-ROM drive; exaggeration of its size is a common running joke amongst gamers. Even so, it is considerably smaller and lighter than most desktop PCs which contain similar hardware. The inside of the Xbox is also rather packed in due to the full size drives and flat motherboard. A warning in the Xbox manual that a falling Xbox "could cause serious injury" has been taken lightly by some; while the Xbox is certainly heavy enough to hurt a small child if dropped from a sufficient height (like any other console if dropped), all controllers are equipped with break-away cables to help prevent this occurring. Another common problem are disk reading errors (DRE). This can occur when you place a game (new or old) into the Xbox, and it will give you a "Can't Read Disk" Error. This is usually treated by ejecting the disk and reinserting it again.
Another common complaint about the system was that the original game controller design was seen as too large for some people. For the Japanese Xbox launch, a new and smaller controller was introduced, a design which was subsequently released in other markets as the "Controller S," eventually replacing the original design. Now all Xbox consoles come with a "Controller S", officially making the original launch controller obsolete, although many users still prefer the larger version.
History While some critics, particularly those who support alternatives to Microsoft operating systems were initially concerned that the Xbox would allow Microsoft to extend its dominance of the PC software market to consoles, as of November 2004 estimates show the Xbox's share of the worldwide console market is slightly ahead of the Nintendo GameCube but is still far behind the PlayStation 2. The Xbox has not sold well in Japan, due to the Japanese people's poor acceptance of non-Japanese consoles, which gives the Japanese rivals, Sony and Nintendo a distinct advantage. In much of Europe, the Xbox is currently slightly ahead of the GameCube, but is still far behind the Playstation 2. What mainly helped worldwide sales of the Xbox were, ever since March 2004, price cuts of the Xbox in several countries, such as the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and many other nations, which has substantially increased its sales outside of Japan as well as increasing software support from third party publishers. However, the Xbox has not returned a profit for Microsoft, and according to the 2004 Annual Report (http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/doctrans/finSys_main.asp?formfilename=0001193125-04-150689&nad=) the Xbox division is the largest profit loss of any Microsoft division with $1.2 billion in losses. Microsoft predicted that it would not make a profit on the Xbox for at least three years after the console's debut, but those 3 years have occurred and the next version of the Xbox may debut in 2005.
In November 2002, Microsoft released the successful Xbox Live online gaming service, allowing subscribers to play online Xbox games with (or against) other subscribers all around the world and download new content for their games to the hard drive. The milestone of 1 million subscribers was announced in July 2004.
As with all consumer electronics, several internal hardware revisions have been made to discourage modding, cut manufacturing costs, and to provide a more reliable DVD-ROM drive (the early units' drives were prone to failure).
Detailed specifications - CPU: 733 MHz Intel Celeron processor with a 133MHz Front Side Bus
- Graphics Processor: 250 MHz custom chip named the NV2A, developed by Microsoft and nVIDIA (comparable to a low-end GeForce 4 Ti card)
- Total Memory: 64 MB DDR SDRAM running at 200 MHz, supplied by Micron
- Memory Bandwidth: 6.4 GB/s
- Polygon Performance: 125 million flat-shaded polys/second
- (Microsoft figure. Some critics assert that the Xbox's polygon-per-second number is exaggerated by unrealistic testing conditions.)
- Sustained Polygon Performance: 100+ M/s (transformed and lit polygons per second)
- Micropolygons/particles per second: 125 M/s
- Particle Performance: 125 M/s
- Simultaneous Textures: 4
- Pixel Fill Rate - No Texture: 4.0 G/s (anti-aliased)
- Pixel Fill Rate - 1 Texture: 4.0 G/s anti-aliased
- Compressed Textures: Yes (6:1)
- Full Scene Anti-Alias: Yes
- Micro Polygon Support: Yes
- Storage Medium: 2-5x DVD, 8 or 10 gigabyte hard disk, 8MB memory card
- I/O: 2-5x DVD, 8GB/10GB hard disk, 8MB memory card
- Audio Channels: 64 3D channels (up to 256 stereo voices)
- 3D Audio Support: Yes
- MIDI DLS2 Support: Yes
- AC3 (Dolby Digital) Encoded Game Audio: Yes (via TOSLINK)
- Broadband Enabled: Yes (10/100base-T ethernet)
- DVD Movie Playback: Yes (separate DVD Playback Kit/Remote required)
- Maximum Resolution (2x32bpp frame buffers +Z): 1920(vert.)x1080(horiz)
- Note: NTSC (Non-HD) TV's have less than 500 horizontal lines. PAL TV's have less than 600 horizontal lines.
- HDTV Support: Yes
- Controller Ports: 4 proprietary USB ports
- Weight: 3.86kg
- Dimensions: 324 × 265 × 90mm (12.8 × 10.4 × 3.5 inches)
Official Xbox accessories
Audio/video connectors - Standard AV Cable: Provides composite video and monoaural or stereo audio to TVs equipped with RCA inputs. Comes with the system. European systems come with a RCA jack to SCART converter block in addition to the cable.
- RF Adapter: Provides a combined audio and video signal on an RF connector.
- Advanced AV Pack: A breakout box that provides S-Video and TOSLINK audio in addition to the RCA composite video and stereo audio of the Standard AV Cable.
- High Definition AV Pack: A breakout box, intended for HDTVs, that provides a YPrPb component video signal over three RCA connectors. Also provides analog RCA and digital TOSLINK audio outputs.
- Advanced SCART Cable: The European equivalent to the Advanced AV Pack, providing a full RGB video SCART connection in place of S-Video, RCA composite and stereo audio connections (composite video and stereo are still provided by the cable, through the SCART connector, in addition to the RGB signal), while retaining the TOSLINK audio connector. As Europe has no HDTV standard, no High Definition cable is currently provided in those markets.
Numerous unofficial third-party cables and breakout boxes exist that provide combinations of outputs not found in these official video packages; however, with the exception of a few component-to-VGA transcoders and custom-built VGA boxes, the four official video packages represent all of the Xbox's possible outputs. This output selectivity is made possible by the Xbox's SCART-like AVIP port.
Networking - Ethernet (Xbox Live) Cable: A Cat 5 cable for connecting the Xbox to a broadband modem or router (note that there is no "official" Xbox Live cable; any PC ethernet cable can be used)
- Xbox Wireless Adapter: a wireless bridge which converts data running through an ethernet cable to a wireless (802.11b or 802.11g) signal to connect to a wireless LAN. While the official Wireless Adapter guarantees compatbility with the Xbox, almost any wireless bridge can be used.
- Xbox Live Kit: A subscription and installation pack for the Xbox Live service, as well as a headset (with monaural earpiece and microphone) that connects to a control box that plugs into the top expansion slot of a controller. The headset can in fact be replaced with most standard earpiece-and-microphone headsets; headset specialist Plantronics produce various officially-licenced headsets, including a special-edition headset for Halo 2.
- System Link Cable: A Cat 5 crossover cable for connecting together two to four consoles, for up to 16 total players.
Multimedia - Xbox Media Center Extender: A kit that allows a Xbox to act as a Media Center Extender to stream content from a Windows Media Center Edition PC. It can also be used for DVD playback.
- DVD Playback Kit: Required in order to play DVD movies, the kit includes an infrared remote control and receiver. DVD playback was not included as a standard feature of the Xbox due to licensing issues with the DVD format that would have added extra cost to the console's base price. By selling a DVD remote separately, Microsoft was able to bundle the cost of the DVD licensing fee with it. Although there is nothing to prevent the Xbox from acting as a progressive-scan DVD player, Microsoft chose not to enable this feature in the Xbox DVD kit in order to avoid royalty payments to the patent-holder of progressive scan DVD playback.
- Xbox Music Mixer: A utility software bundled with a microphone that connects to an adapter that plugs into the top expansion slot of a controller. Provides a music player with advance 2D/3D visualizations as well as basic karaoke functions. It also allows users to upload pictures in JPG format (to create slide shows) as well as audio in WMA and MP3 format (for karaoke or a game's Custom Soundtracks feature) from a Windows XP machine running the Xbox Music Mixer PC Tool (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/musicmixer/pctool-overview/).
Controllers and removable storage - Standard Xbox Controller (AKA "Controller O"): The normal Xbox controller for all territories except Japan, this has since been replaced in Xbox packs by the controller S, and due to its increasing rarity, is believed to have been discontinued. It is considered to be bulky. The black and white buttons are located above the ABXY buttons, and the Back/Start buttons are located between and below the d-pad and right thumbstick.
- Controller S: A smaller, lighter Xbox controller. Once the standard Xbox controller in Japan, it was released in other territories by popular demand, and eventually replaced the standard controller in the retail pack for the Xbox console. The white and black buttons are located below the ABXY buttons, and the Back/Select buttons are similarly placed below the left thumbstick.
- Memory Unit: An 8MB removable solid state memory card onto which game saves can either be copied from the hard drive when in the Xbox Dashboard's memory manager or saved during a game. Note that some recent games (e.g. Ninja Gaiden and DOAX) do not support this accessory as a cheat prevention measure.
Xbox and DirectX Microsoft's set of low-level APIs for game development and multimedia purposes, DirectX, was used as a basis for the Xbox's hardware programming (as well as its name, which implies "DirectX Box"). The API was developed jointly between Microsoft and NVIDIA, whose chips power the Xbox graphics. The Xbox API is similar to DirectX version 8.1, but is non-updateable just like other console technologies.
Modding the Xbox The recent popularity of the Xbox has inspired efforts to circumvent the built-in hardware and software security mechanisms (often in order to use the Xbox as a low cost web server), as well as to add customized design touches to the console's case (similar to PC case modding). Hardware modding can involve anything from simply replacing the console's green decorative "jewel" with a custom-designed one to opening up the case and installing a modchip (However, there are many reputable sites in the UK (where overall, it is still technically legal) selling pre-loaded modchipped Xboxes).
Software modding is much less intrusive, and only involves running software exploits to trick the Xbox into running unsigned program code. This allows running an alternate dashboard such as Avalaunch or Evolution-X and in turn makes playing original (free) homebrew games such as Star Wars or various older games through arcade and games console emulators possible. This is especially attractive as the Xbox is designed to output to TVs, and high-quality controllers and arcade sticks are available for it.
The original hard drive can be replaced with a larger one. Then Xbox games can be copied from the DVD to the hard disk and then played directly from the hard drive. This requires a modded Xbox using one of the altertive dashboards and reduces game load-times.
Beyond gaming, a modded Xbox can be used as a media center with the Xbox Media Center (http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/) software (XBMC) allowing the playing of DVDs without the $30 DVD dongle/remote and streaming of music and video files from the hard drive or from another computer over a network. A modded Xbox can even be configured into a computer running Linux or Microsoft Windows CE operating systems.
Modding an Xbox may require opening the Xbox case, and would certainly void the Xbox's warranty. Also, most internal hardware modifications will render an Xbox unable to participate in Xbox Live which is why many modders use a switch to turn on and off their modifications to the Xbox. But as of November 2004, Microsoft has been taking new actions for banning Xboxes with hard drive modifications from the Xbox Live service. There has been several theories on how banning in this new method is done. One theory is that there is a "marriage" of your hard drive serial number and your Xbox's serial number, and banning if one of those two change due to part replacement. Another is that it might check for modified files, and another suggesting that Microsoft is detecting if the unique hard drive key of every Xbox has changed.
Currently, it is believed that Microsoft compare each Xbox's serial number and hard drive serial number upon connecting to Live, and that any "unpairing" of the two will result in a ban for the user associated with the console; it should be possible for a modded Xbox to be used on Live, if the hard drive is either unchanged, or changed before the Xbox's first use on live.
Price history North America Europe Oceania Of note is the high European launch price. As with many games consoles (for example, the PlayStation series), the Xbox was launched with a price in GBP equal to its US price in USD (in this case, $/£299), and this price then converted for the rest of Europe. Obviously, ignoring the GBP-USD exchange rate in the way gives the impression of a 100% mark-up for Europe.
With a price-dropped PlayStation 2 and a comparatively inexpensive GameCube as competition, many users were naturally reluctant to invest in the console (interestingly, the PS2 had faced similar attacks during the UK tabloids' preoccupation with "Ripoff Britain"). Microsoft countered with a £100 price drop (and its equivalent in the rest of Europe) some scant months after launch. To avoid frustrating early adopters, they offered a bundle containing two games and one controller for free to any purchaser who could provide a sales receipt showing the original higher price.
Future Microsoft is widely expected to release a new generation of Xbox hardware, variously referred to as Xenon, Xbox 2, Xbox Next, or Xbox 360 in fall 2005. It has rumored that Microsoft will be releasing three versions of this new console. One will be without a hard drive and is basically an improvement of what the Xbox can do. Another will include the hard drive and offer more features over the basic Xbox Next model. The last design will be a full computer, able to play both PC and Xbox Next games as well as have the features of the more basic models. It will also be able run software that a normal computer could install and run. Judging from history, the original Xbox will likely continue to be sold for some years after this at a steadily decreasing price point, and with a decreasing number of new titles as game developers focus on the newer hardware.
See also
External links - Official Xbox website (http://www.xbox.com)
- Xbox Community/Modding/Tutorial/News site (http://www.xbox-scene.com)
- Xbox Community/News site (http://www.xboxgaming.com)
- XLink Kai global gaming network (http://www.teamxlink.co.uk/) - Allows free online Xbox functionality as well as GameCube, PS2 and recently Sony PSP and Nintendo DS all from a single application.
- Console Database (http://www.consoledatabase.com) — Xbox Info
- Xbox Directory (http://www.dmoz.org/Games/Video_Games/Console_Platforms/Microsoft/Xbox/)
- Xbox Media Center (http://www.xboxmediacenter.de) — play almost any kind of video and audio formats with a modded Xbox.
- Xbox Central (http://www.xboxcentral.net)
- Gentoo for Xbox Wiki (real Gentoo) (http://gentoo-wiki.com/Gentoo_for_Xbox)
- Leading Xbox Homebrew Game Devs (http://aftershock.xbox-scene.com)
- Gentoo Linux for Xbox (GentooX) (http://gentoox.shallax.org/)
- Emulating the Xbox (http://www.caustik.com/cxbx/)
|
Feeds |
Contact