Next-Gen Console Wars | home

X box, made buy Microsoft. 1st of all this is just Microsoft trying to expand into new markets, so they can all get more money, I say, that supporting Microsoft is supporting Big Business and Corporate America, which is trash. They don't need the money, and more importantly they don't need to get there greedy fingers all over the gaming world, they already own the computer world, what more do they need? Another thing is the questionable area of how many consoles are actually going to make it to launch. As of right now it's somewhere between 300,000, and 600,000, which is a big gap. Why so big a gap?, I think it's because they don't want to make too many systems in case they don't sell, so they don't lose as much money. Because their 3rd party support is ok, but X Box doesn't have the kind 3rd party support like Playstation 2 has. Anyway, in other news, like the old Sega slogan, "X Box got what Nintendon't." The X Box comes with a built in ether-net port, and an 8 Gig hard drive. The nearly bottomless Hard drive, is going to come in handy for those of you who don't want to buy, 3,4,5 memory cards over the next few years, the hard drive will pay for itself after a little while. You can also Rip CD's onto the X Box, so if your playing a game and you don't like the music, you can change it. The X Box can play DVD movies just like PS2 only if you buy the X Box remote($30), it won't play with out it. (The PS2 plays DVD's right out of the box.) Looks to me like Microsoft looking for even more money... Then again Nintendo can't even play DVD's at all let alone DVD movies, what a let down. The X Box uses the DVD format for games as well, which can hold up to 4.7 gig. and that is so nice!

Now, the controller, the thing that you are suppose to "control" the game with, how can you do that if you don't have a good one? X Box's controller is way to big, and once you do get used to the sheer size of the thing you've got to worry about the button layout. The 4 face buttons are too big, and too close together, trying to hit the yellow Y button with your thumb without accidentally hitting the red B button is really tricky. Then there is the mysterious mini black and white buttons, which will mostly end up being used for secondary functions.

X Box is planning to go online by mid-2002. A once a month pay plan is being set up to play all of X Box's games online. At least they are getting their stuff together.

With 64 MB of double data rate synchronous DRAM , X Box has the most memory of any console. One thing though, it's not as fast as the 1T-SRAM in the GameCube, then again it's not all that much slower. The X Box graphics processor can draw four texture layers in one render pass, while GameCube can do eight, and PS2 only 1. ( Don't count PS2 out though, remember that inside of the PS2 there lies the VU0 and the VU1 chipsets) That means texture effects can all be rendered on in game models with out taxing the X Box CPU. More so the X Box can complete 2 render passes in the same amount of time that it takes the GameCube to do just one.

The games, it's all about the games. While X Box does have more games then Nintendo for it's launch line up, and more variety then Nintendo, it just comes up short when compared to Playstation 2. No other system can match PS2s line up. X Box is trying, and it's doing WAY better then Nintendo, but even then that's not saying much.

CPU: 733 MHz chip crafted by Intel

Graphics Processor: 250MHz custom chip named XGPU, developed by Microsoft and nVIDIA

Total Memory: The RAM in the Xbox will be supplied by Micron, it will be 64 MB running at 200MHz DDR (Double-Data-Rate)

Memory Bandwidth: 6.4 GB/sec

Polygon Performance: 125 M/sec

Sustained Polygon Performance: 100+ M/sec (transformed and lit polygons per second)

Micropolygons/particles per second: 125 M/sec

Particle Performance: 125 M/sec

Simultaneous Textures: 4

Pixel Fill Rate - No Texture: 4.0 G/Sec (anti-aliased)

Pixel Fill Rate - 1 Texture: 4.0 G/Sec (anti-aliased)

Compressed Textures: Yes (6:1)

Full Scene Anti-Alias: Yes

Micro Polygon Support: Yes

Storage Medium: 2-5x DVD, 10GB hard disk, 8MB memory card

I/0: 2-5x DVD, 10GB hard disk, 8MB memory card

Audio Channels:64 (up to 256 stereo voices)

3D Audio Support: Yes

MIDI DLS2 Support: Yes

AC3 Encoded Game Audio: Yes

Broadband Enabled: Yes

DVD Movie Playback: Remote control package required

Maximum Resolution: 1920x1080

Maximum Resolution (2x32bpp frame buffers +Z): 1920x1080

Controller Ports: 4 USB Ports