CONSOLE NEWS: XBOX 360 News
Microsoft to launch Xbox 360 in Japan, Europe in '05
Microsoft today announced it would launch its new Xbox 360 game console in Japan and Europe in time for the year-end holiday shopping season.
Xbox 360 news from Japanese Xbox Summit
Microsoft Japan hosted this morning (5.30 am in the UK, 1.30 pm in Japan) in Tokyo the eagerly awaited Xbox Summit 2005. The event was used to announce a number of new Xbox 360 titles, most of which are in development by Japanese development studios:
- The big news is the announcement of Ridge Racer 6 for the Xbox 360. Namco also announced Love Football, due in time for next years football world cup, and showed a new trailer for the previously announced Frame City Killer
- Team Ninja announced that they have five games in development: Dead or Alive 4, Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball 2, Code Cronus, Project Progressive, and a secret game.
- The other big news that will please European gamers is the announcement that Winning Eleven (Pro Evolution Soccer) will appear on the Xbox 360 in autumn 2006.
Xbox 360: Enter The Beta Kits
The chaps over at IGN has posted an extensive article detailing the Xbox 360's Beta Development Kit. With the exception of the audio chips (this chipset isn't complete), the Beta Kits contain about 90% of the console's chip set. They comprise the specialized three-CPU core processors and the graphics GPU.
We asked the teams how much more powerful the Beta Kits are then the P5s they're been working on, and what the significance of that additional power is. We learned that they're still exploring the Beta Kits' power and limitations, and that while there is nearly twice as much graphic power, the way in which coding passes from the triple core processors through the systems, it's got to be cleaner than on single processing machines. One North American developer had this outlook. "On our side, we've been working very hard to tap into the full power of the Betas. On a technical side, while the GPU is nearly twice as powerful as the Alpha kits, the CPU architecture requires very clean logic coding in order to take advantage of its full potential." (We'll get to the clean logic bit later on in the story.)
Another developer explained the differences this way: "The major difference is in the video chipset, which is pretty different from anything you can find on the PC (or alpha hardware). It does some slick bits of load balancing between pixel performance and vertex performance, which helps us make sure that we're maxing out the video hardware no matter what we're doing. HDTV looks spectacular on this thing.
Microsoft still losing money on Xbox
DESPITE posting a 22% increase in revenue for its Home & Entertainment division Microsoft continues to make an operating loss on the arm amounting to $179 million, bringing the yearly loss to $391 million. This is down from a loss of $1.2 billion last year, so not too bad, but the Xbox remains a big money loser for Microsoft.
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Xbox 360 Hard Drive Content Revealed
Microsoft has submitted the media content of the Xbox 360 hard drive to the British Board of Film Classification for the organization to classify the age-rating.
Microsoft mulling HD-DVD in future Xbox 360 revisions
"The initial shipments of Xbox 360 will be based on today's DVD format," Gates confirmed at the time, speaking at a conference co-hosted with HD-DVD creator Toshiba in Tokyo. "We are looking at whether future versions of Xbox 360 will incorporate an additional capacity of an HD-DVD player or something else," he continued.
Xbox High-Definition Videos
The minimum requirements for viewing high-definition (720p) videos are: Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Media Player 9 Series, a 2.4 GHz processor or equivalent, 384 MB of RAM, a 64 MB video card, 1024x768 screen resolution, and a 16-bit sound card with attached speakers.
Download: Xbox High-Definition Videos
Microsoft hires third co. to build Xbox 360
Microsoft Corp., which has used two companies to build its Xbox game console, said on Tuesday it is expanding that roster to three for its next-generation Xbox 360 due out later this year. The software giant said Toronto-based Celestica Inc. will join Xbox manufacturers Flextronics International Ltd. and Wistron Inc..
Microsoft said Xbox 360 remains on track for a launch this holiday season in North America, Europe and Japan. It is widely believed Microsoft will release the product in November.
"With three contract manufacturers on board, we're poised to have the flexibility and efficiencies we need to keep up with the consumer demand," said Todd Holmdahl, corporate vice president of the Xbox Product Group. Plants for each of the three companies building Microsoft's newest game console are located in the Pearl River Delta region in southern China.
News source: Reuters
New Tech Specs Details Surface
- This new picture also reveals, for the first time, the transistor count for each part of the two-die design. The parent die has a total of 232 million transistors while the daughter die has 100 million, making the whole package a 330+ million transistor design.
In comparison, an AMD Athlon 64 processor has approximately 205 M transistors while the PlayStation 3 Cell processor has ~234M and the RSX GPU designed by nVIDIA has some 300M.
EBGames Online Xbox 360 Preorder
New Xbox Live Pricing Revealed
- The packages start at US$7.99 for a basic 1 month subscription, and go all the way up to US$69.99 for a full 12 months. This last package, the "12 Month Premium Gold Pack", is also the best value, with a headset, $20 game discount voucher, free Xbox Live arcade game, and 200 XBL marketplace points all being thrown in as extras. Once you take away the price of the headset ($19.99) and the games voucher ($20), it is really only costing you US$30 for the entire year including the arcade game and marketplace points.