The X-Box 360

[RangerWickett]

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/factsheet.htm

Find specs there. It was apparently announced just yesterday. The thing that stuns me is the three 3.2 GHz processors. I honestly don't understand a lot of the rest of terminology, but that's just an impressive number.

 

[KenM]

I'm a little surpised they are only going with 512 of RAM, most gamers run a gig of RAM these days. More memory is always good.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Don't know too much about the system. Could it possibly be used as a PC?

 

[Enforcer]

No mention of backwards compatibility that I saw.

 

[kingpaul]

No mention of backwards compatibility that I saw.

I didn't either. I hope that it is backwards.

 

[spider_minion]

Don't know too much about the system. Could it possibly be used as a PC?

I've heard that people have modded their (normal) XBOXs and installed Linux on them. It's a lot cheaper than buying a normal PC, if you know what you're doing.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I've heard that people have modded their (normal) XBOXs and installed Linux on them. It's a lot cheaper than buying a normal PC, if you know what you're doing.

Unfortunately I am one of the people that would not know how to do it. I have thought about having a friend that is tech and computer savvy build me an NES PC.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Does anyone know the streetdate and price on this badboy?

 

[drothgery]

Don't know too much about the system. Could it possibly be used as a PC?

Not in any conventional fashion. The CPU is a custom PowerPC variant designed for Xbox 360; at least right now, the only operating system that runs on it is the one Microsoft built for the system. It's probably sufficiently powerful to emulate a PIII-class PC (which is how they'll get backward compatibility, if it happens), but emulating another architecture is always slow.

Really, I'm not a big fan of the Cell or the Xbox 360 CPU; current game programmers don't know how to deal with highly parallel systems, and in most applications (including games) paralellization has diminishing returns (each additional core adds less value). The Xbox 360's three symetric cores are probably easier to deal with than the Cell's 1 primary core/8 secondary (and very specialized) cores, but it's going to be a difficult transition. If Nintendo decides to buck trends and go with a single or dual-core CPU, expect the Revolution to have better games for the first year or two.

Other notes - 512 MB of RAM is more than enough for a console, and is almost certainly more than PS3 and Revolution will have next year. When you have almost no operating system overhead (because only one configuration has to be supported, and you're never running more than one app at a time), you can get by with far less RAM. The current Xbox has 64 MB; the GameCube ~40 MB; and the PS2 only 16 MB.

 

[LrdApoc]

There is no streetdate or price yet.. the MTV thing was not meant to reveal this.. someof the detailes were saved for E3 next week.

Current speculation:
Wireless adaptor is optional for networking
Backwards compatibility is not confirmed at this point
Release should be around November with a $300-$400 price
There is no indication other than the Samsung TV bundle that the camera or DVD remote will be included with the system, and right now it looks like just a 20GB removable HD and one wireless controller.