Hurray, Hurray gaming coming back to America, where it all started via
Ralph Baer.
X-Box Is Official
Bill Gates committed Microsoft in a face-to-face showdown with video game
giants Sony, Sega, and Nintendo today by unveiling the long-awaited X-Box
video game console at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California.
The X-Box will run on a custom Intel Pentium III processor. The graphics
processor will be based on a custom design created by Microsoft and Nvidia.
It will be capable of more than a trillion operations per second, and will
come with 64MB of DDR DRAM with a memory bandwidth of 200 MHz. The operating
system will be the Windows 2000 kernel with DirectX extensions. Sound will be
handled by a 64-voice, I3DL2 audio processor. The system will come with a DVD
drive capable of playing DVD movies.
In a first for a video game system, Microsoft is incorporating an 8GB hard
drive, which will allow players to save games, download mods, and store trial
versions of games downloaded from the Internet. In addition, the drive, Gates
said, will let developers take advantage of the increased storage capacity to
create more-detailed worlds. Connectivity will be provided by an Ethernet
card, with support for broadband connections. The X-Box will come with four
game ports and a custom A/V connector to allow the system to connect to
next-generation displays. According to Gates, the X-Box will be capable of
resolutions beyond that of HDTV.
Gates emphasized that the X-Box was not just a PC, but also a console system.
It will not need to boot up, nor will games need to be installed. Though the
X-Box will use Windows and development tools, players will not be able to
play X-Box games on a PC.
Microsoft demonstrated the X-Box with a prototype box using an NV-15 graphics
processor. The chip, at present, has approximately 10 percent of the
capability that the final X-Box chip--the NV-25--will have. Dan Vivoli,
Nvidia senior vice president of marketing, told Gamecenter that the X-Box
graphics chip was approximately two generations beyond the NV-15 and three
generations beyond the latest PC graphics processors, in terms of technology.
The X-Box's graphics power appears to be at least as powerful as the
PlayStation2's. In a twist, Microsoft took a demo that Sony used last year to
demonstrate the PlayStation2's graphics power, and improved upon it by adding
new features. One of the most impressive demos showed the rendering of a
Japanese garden with a rippling pool and hundreds of butterflies flying
through the air. The company also demonstrated simulations of the X-Box's
capabilities, including the rendering of a boxing arena with a fully animated
Afro Thunder, a character from Midway's Ready 2 Rumble Boxing video game.
]--- Turbo List Information ---------------------------------------------
Has anyone else noticed that Bonk looks suspicously similar to Dopey
from the Walt Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? Perhaps
this is one of those "Separated at birth" things.
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