[url="http://xbox.gamespy.com/xbox/microsoft-xbox/594331p1.html?fromint=1"]The Guts of the Next Box[/url]
# CPU - Xenon's CPU has three 3.0 GHz PowerPC cores. Each core is capable of two instructions per cycle and has an L1 cache with 32 KB for data and 32 KB for instructions. The three cores share 1 MB of L2 cache. Alpha 2 developer kits currently have two cores instead of three.
# GPU - Xenon's GPU is a generation beyond the ATI X800. Its clock speed is 500 MHz and it supports Shader 3.0. Developers are currently working with an alpha 2 GPU. Beta GPU units are expected by May and the final GPU is slated for a summer release. The final GPU will be more powerful than anything on the market today; in game terms, it would handle a game like Half-Life 2 with ease.
# System Memory - Xenon will have 256 MB of system RAM. Keep in mind that this number should not be equated to typical PC RAM. The Xbox has 64 MB of system RAM and is a very capable machine.
# Optical Drive - As many have speculated, Xenon will not use Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Games will come on dual-layer DVD-9 discs. While the media is the same as that of the current Xbox, the usable space on each disc is up to 7 GB. The drive is slated to run at 12X.
# Memory Units - Xenon will use 64 MB to 1,024 MB memory cards. 8 MB is reserved for system use, leaving a 56 MB to 1,016 MB for user data.
# Hard Drive - As many have speculated, Xenon's hard drive is optional. 2 GB of the drive will be used as game cache. The final drive size is still being determined.
# Camera - Xenon will have a USB 2.0 camera. It's capable of 1.2 megapixel still shots and VGA video. Photos can be used in-game and for gamer profiles. The camera can also be used for video chat. It's unknown if the Xenon camera will allow for EyeToy-like gameplay. Developers are currently using a simulated camera driver.
# Sound Chip - Xenon does not have an audio chip in the traditional sense. Decompression is handled by hardware, while the rest of the chores are handled by software. DirectSound3D has been dropped in favor of X3DAudio. The former was deemed too inflexible.
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not quite xbox stuff, but i read an article on ibm and sony's cell processor (the ps3 is going to have 3, i think) in a science mag and it looks quite interesting. im no computer whiz but it seems that it is quite revolutionary in terms of engineering, and there is talk that it may give amd and intel a run for there money once it reaches the pc market or possibly through apple. it should be interesting to see what its like in the ps3 though as it is particularly suited multimedia tasks.
Sony promises it'll be [url="http://gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=7352"]easy to develop for[/url] though [:D]
In other news, it looks like Nintendo Revolution will be [url="http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/36085"]backwards compatible with Gamecube games[/url], which is a good thing. Plus it'll have wi-fi capabilities. Will be interesting to see what Nintendo have up their sleaves.
Sounds good... but I've got a few problems with some of the specs etc.
quote:
# CPU - Xenon's CPU has three 3.0 GHz PowerPC cores. Each core is capable of two instructions per cycle and has an L1 cache with 32 KB for data and 32 KB for instructions. The three cores share 1 MB of L2 cache. Alpha 2 developer kits currently have two cores instead of three.
Hokay, judging by the fact that the alpha kit has 2 processors, and the final is slated to have 3, it implies that it will internally control processor scaling (e.g. evenly distribute threads across processors). I'm intreguied to see their system of controlling this - whether it's the simple case of "we've got lots of power, so we can just distribute as we please", or whether it's something more advanced (e.g. the ability to run physics calcs on one CPU etc).
quote:
# GPU - Xenon's GPU is a generation beyond the ATI X800. Its clock speed is 500 MHz and it supports Shader 3.0. Developers are currently working with an alpha 2 GPU. Beta GPU units are expected by May and the final GPU is slated for a summer release. The final GPU will be more powerful than anything on the market today; in game terms, it would handle a game like Half-Life 2 with ease.
See end rant.
quote:
# Memory Units - Xenon will use 64 MB to 1,024 MB memory cards. 8 MB is reserved for system use, leaving a 56 MB to 1,016 MB for user data.
Sounds like Microsoft are again going down the path of using specialised memory cards. Such a large variation means we're likely to see some games requring a minimum of xxxMb to play (similar to some games on the GameCube requiring the 251 block memory card). At least if they utilised USB-based flash disks, people would be able to afford large-sized cards.
quote:
# Hard Drive - As many have speculated, Xenon's hard drive is optional. 2 GB of the drive will be used as game cache. The final drive size is still being determined.
Optional? So what happens, with regards to cache, when you don't have one of these? Slow access times as it has to continually spin-up the DVD drive? Surely if it's being used for something like cache it would be mandatory.
The thing that gets me most is the "if we make it powerful enough, games will be awesome" philosophy. For the moment I'll forget the actual game-design element, and concentrate on the nuts-and-bolts aspect of game engines.
Even now, having been out for many, many months (not sure on the exact timeframe, so I wont quote figures), Shader 2.0 hasn't reached its full potential. There aren't really any game engines out (yet!) that truely revolve around completely programmable graphics pipelines (Doom 3 and Half Life 2 still have fallback to GeForce 4 hardware, and as a result, have compromises). Many tricks are still yet-to-be discovered, and a lot are still in the research-paper stage.
Yet, we're about to have a system n-times more powerful thrown into the market - multiple systems in fact. Photorealism is the dream, but it will be interesting to see how long it will take before we're truely close.
I guess that with having systems with those levels of processing power, the software development emphesis won't be on efficiency, just trying to get-the-code-done. I'm just trying to compare development times of great engines like Doom3 and HL2, to the time developers are going to have to release products on these new platforms.
With the power available, and the changed design goals (hell, why not go for photorealism finally?), I don't believe it's a simple case of "scaling up" current engines.
Which brings me to another point - and that is game media. One of the main elements that made HL2 so great, was the excellent game media (textures, sounds, models). The more realistic we try to make these games, the more difficult it is to provide this information. Consider 1024x1024 textures for most surfaces that are specular mapped, horizon mapped, glossiness mapped etc - how long will it take to actually produce and collate all this data. Then, they've got to be put into a useful form (i.e. levels).
I'm not trying to be a Doom-sayer (no pun intended), but it seems like now, more than ever, we need to draw a line in the sand to let the software catch up to the hardware. At least, for the sake of software development for these consoles, one does not have to worry about backwards-compatibility, which makes life a little easier.
And to end, I'll be interested to see when user-interaction systems are developed to even a tenth of what the grapihcs/processing industry has. At the end of the day, it's all well and good to have a game which looks and acts realistic, but if you're still inputting to it via a stick on a pad, it dulls it significantly.
Just my 2c (which probably makes no sense - it's been a long day).
- Tim
There's some surprising (or perhaps not so surprising) news on the format of games on the Xbox 360. You could say the Xbox 360 is paying the price for jumping the gun a bit early and not having the chance to use a HD format at launch, and that it'll be making some serious limitations on the kind games expected for the Xbox 360.
[url="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=12661"]Xbox 360 games will never use HD-DVD[/url]
Considering that Microsoft wants developers to make games for high defination TV, therefore requiring higher resolution textures and movie files, does anyone think that this was a huge lack of forsight by Microsoft? Games spanning multiple DVD discs on the Xbox 360? Not good. [:0]
Perhaps it might be wise not to get too excited, wait and see. I've heard some rumours that they ran out of die space for this multicore CPU, and that in addition to sharing cache they share registers, which means massive stalls with multiple threads.
If its true, far from being 3 CPUs it's likely to be much more like 1 in terms of performance: for the non-programmers registers are really, really fast memory where the most commonly used variables are stored. Sharing them between multiple cores means each core will often have to wait for registers to become free, or use slower memory.
People are saying wait until the second generation of games to see something more representative of the capabilities of the machine, and I agree.
[url="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27359"]Why the Xbox 360 has three cores[/url] (according to The Inquirer)
quote: It seems that flat out, the graphics pipeline takes two cores, both threads from each, to 'fill'.
If you code things right, that will leave you with a single core for the 'game' parts, basically everything but graphics. According to another MS person, a single core is more than sufficient to make a great game, and you have effectively double that if you are exploiting every last drop of GPU capability.
I've read elsewhere that this doesn't really make any sense, so take it with a pinch of salt. [;)]
I remember attending a talk from a Euro PS2 optimiser at AGDC ('02 or '03) where he mentioned that only the 3rd or so generation games started using the PS2 to its capacity. Previous games just woefully under-used the PS2's available hardware.
Now if that's the case then I think it might even take more than 3-4 generations of games to get decent usage of the XBox 360's hardware. The only way we'll get to see decent usage of the resources for games within the first few generations is if some company creates an engine that is near optimal and other companies actually buy it. Though I would imagine that creating such an engine would take about two years in itself.
Personally I think I'll just get a PS2 now and some fun games to muck around with occasionally.
Ah, interesting. [url="http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/sep/EEFyukAFAZgurkTXZB.php"]External HD-DVD drive coming for the Xbox 360[/url]...
quote:Xbox 360 Leads the Way in High-Definition Entertainment
Just a month after the global launch of the new Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system, Gates discussed the product?s strong momentum in delivering high-definition hardware, games and digital entertainment experiences. Xbox 360 is on track to be the fastest-selling video game console ever, forecast to ship between 4.5 million and 5.5 million units worldwide by the end of June 2006.
Gates noted that Xbox 360 has also become a powerful application for high-definition television, adding that nine out of 10 Xbox 360 owners currently own or intend to purchase a high-definition television set.* He announced that more than 50 new high-definition Xbox 360? games will be available by June 2006.
Building on Xbox 360 leadership in high-definition experiences, the company announced plans to deliver a new Xbox 360 external HD DVD drive in 2006. The new drive will offer millions of Xbox 360 owners the ability to easily enjoy HD DVD movies and will provide consumers with even more choices for experiencing high-definition content, in either physical or digital form.
Using Xbox 360 and the Xbox Live? service today, consumers are already able to access high-definition entertainment such as Xbox Live Arcade titles, game demos and high-definition movie trailers. Consumers can also use their Xbox 360 system to access high-definition television and movies from their Windows XP-based Media Center PC.
Gates? keynote also showcased the momentum behind Xbox Live, announcing that more than half of all Xbox 360 owners are already connected to the online games and entertainment service, which boasts a worldwide community of more than 2 million members. He demonstrated Electronic Arts Inc.?s forthcoming EA SPORTS? ?Fight Night Round 3,? scheduled to be available in February 2006, and announced that a free, playable high-definition demo of the game is now available at the Xbox Live Marketplace, a one-stop digital download center where consumers can access high-definition games, music and movie content from leading industry partners
[url="http://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/billgates.mspx"]CES 2005 opening presentation with Bill Gates[/url].
quote:Originally posted by Souri
Sony promises it'll be [url="http://gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=7352"]easy to develop for[/url] though [:D]
After having developed for ps3 this makes me cry [:(]
Mmmmmm another step closer to my dreams when I was about 9 years old. I'm on the edge of my seat [:D]