Xbox

From Sega Retro

Microsoft X-Box console

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 CAN and 249 AUD. Notable Xbox-exclusive titles that debuted with the console include Amped, Dead or Alive 3, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Halo, and Project Gotham Racing, which almost all now have sequels, including Halo 2.


Overview

Microsoft built the Xbox around industry-standard PC hardware in contrast to the traditionally proprietary design of nearly all other gaming consoles. It has

  • An Intel Celeron (Coppermine) based processor clocked at 733 MHz
  • An nVIDIA NV2A graphics processor which in terms of its PC brethren lies somewhere between the GeForce 3 and 4 lines
  • 64 MB of system RAM.
  • A DVD-ROM drive
  • An 8 GB hard disk.
  • 10/100 Ethernet.

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).

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. 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 (so can any other console if dropped), all controllers are equipped with break-away cables to help prevent this occurring.

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", offically making the orginal launch controller obsolete and unsupported.

While some critics have speculated that the Xbox is Microsoft's attempt to monopolize the game console market due to heavy media critism, 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 Sony PlayStation 2. But the Xbox has very rarely sold in Japan, due to the Japanese people's poor acceptence of an American console in Japan, which gives their rivals, Sony and Nintendo a big advantage. But, in much of Europe, the Xbox is currently ahead of the GameCube, but is still far behind the Playstation 2. What mainly helped worldwide sales of the Xbox was, ever since March 2004, Microsoft cut the price 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. The Xbox has yet to return a profit for Microsoft, though this is common for a console company, this is in line with most other console marketing strategies in which the console is sold almost at cost, and profit is made on software licensing fees. Microsoft itself has predicted that it would not make a profit on the Xbox for at least three years after the console's debut.

In November 2002, Microsoft released the successful Xbox Live online gaming service, allowing people to play games with people all around the world. The milestone of 1 million subscribers was announced in July 2004.

Specifications

  • CPU: 733 MHz Intel processor (a Celeron/Pentium III hybrid chip)
  • Graphics Processor: 250 MHz custom chip named the NV2A, developed by Microsoft and nVIDIA (comparable to a low-end GeForce 4 card, but without DirectX 9.0 support)
  • Total Memory: 64 MB DDR SDRAM running at 200 MHz, supplied by Micron
  • Memory Bandwidth: 6.4 GB/s
  • Polygon Performance: 125 M/s*
  • 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, 8.5GB 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
  • 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: Non-HD TV's have less than 500 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)

* Microsoft figure. Some critics assert that the Xbox's polygon-per-second number is exaggerated by unrealistic testing conditions.

Devices and addons

  • 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 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.

  • Memory Unit: An 8MB removable solid state memory card, onto which gamesaves can either be copied from the hard drive, or saved directly. Note that some recent games have dropped support for this accessory as a piracy prevention measure; I.E: Ninja Gaiden.
  • System Link Cable: A Cat 5 crossover cable for connecting together two consoles, for up to 8 total players. Also used to move Xbox Live system information between consoles.
  • 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)
  • 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 recover the DVD licensing fee. Although there is nothing to prevent the Xbox from acting as a Progressive scan|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 Wireless Adapter: a wireless bridge which converts data running through an ethernet cable to a wireless (802.11b or 802.11g) signal. Adds wireless internet capabilities to the Xbox. Note that while there is an official Wireless Adapter, 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) which connects to a control box, which in turn connects to an accessory slot on the controller. The headset can in fact be replaced with most standard earpiece-and-microphone headsets; a special-edition headset for Halo 2 is being released.
  • 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.

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, 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. 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 various older games through arcade and games console emulators possible. This is especially attractive as the Xbox is designed to output to TVs, and has high quality controllers and arcade sticks available for it. The user can also replace the orginal hard drive with a larger one and copy an entire Xbox game to the hard disk to and then play it from the hard drive of a modded Xbox using one of the altertive dashboards (often extremely reducing DVD load-times). Beyond gaming, a modded Xbox can be used as a media center with the Xbox Media Center 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 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 Xboxs with hard drive modifications from the Xbox Live service. There has been several theories on how banning in this new methoid is done. One theory is that there is a "marrage" 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

  • US$149, Canada-$199 (March 29, 2004), Europe-149 Euros (€), UK-99 Pounds (August 27, 2004)
  • US$179, Europe-199 Euros, UK-130 Pounds (2003)
  • US$199 (2002), Europe-479 Euros (Launch Price March 14, 2002), 299 Euros (April 26, 2002), 249 Euros (August 30, 2002)
  • US$299 (November 15, 2001, launch price)

Future

Microsoft is widely expected to release a new generation of Xbox hardware, codenamed the Xenon, possibly called Xbox Next, in fall 2005. This is expected to be based around a customized, multi-core processor from IBM and an advanced GPU from ATI Technologies. 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. This new XBox has been released under the name XBox 360.

External links

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