Friday, September 03, 2004

Can videogame consoles play PC games? Yes.

Hello, look at my videogame collection! I had some pictures on my personal webpage [http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/] I compressed them the maximum compression without losing much quality. This means you can see the titles on the cases/ cartridges.

Here are all the links. Please click in order. Then comment how big of a videogame collection I have. Gamers - maybe one day your collection can look like mine. Please cut and paste url | I can not auto link these with modblog and have them show up, sorry.

| My Game Collection Pics |

• http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/psonecollectionv2.jpg [102 KB]
• http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/gcncollectionv2.jpg [76 KB]
• http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/ps2collectionv2.jpg [ 102 KB ]
• http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/snescollectionv2.jpg [ 32 KB ]
• http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/xboxcollectionv3compressed.jpg [ 70 KB ]
• http://www.geocities.com/nightwalkers101/dccollection.jpg [ 90 KB ]
• http://www.angelfire.com/blog2/renegadeviking/dccollectionv2.jpg [ 82 KB ] (updated today! has more games)
• http://www.geocities.com/nightwalkers101/segasaturncollection.jpg [ 88 KB ]
• http://www.geocities.com/nightwalkers101/N64collection.jpg [ 80 KB ]

Well today I got back from DVR, and it went well. I meet this Jason, and he’s going to get me a job in the computer biz. He liked what he saw. I told him that I worked at the UofW, and his eye brows raised. He said, “Wow, I am really impressed with you Ian.” And I said nothing for I would only be hurting myself! Works out well. The DVR job center is in New Richmond. First of all I thought this guy would go “the give up something and you shall receive something in return” route. He was a nice guy. I knew he was testing me on my character and attitude towards him. All I had to do is sign a few papers releasing info to my parents and school and I was one of the first ppl subscribed and got registered. With some luck – I’ll have a job and be able to keep it.



Now for the main topic. I found out the 4th competitor in the console market. Known to many as Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony as the only three. I just learned about this today. It’s made by VIA Technologies called the APEXTREME. Yes, this is the name. They named it after the worlds most popular DVD manufacture which so happens to be a silicon chip manufacture, APEX. Okay, I know Nintendo of Japan named it’s consoles: Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 – so it’s nothing new. One thing is this company does not expect too sell millions of consoles – only thousands. As in it’s probably a worthless piece of sh*t that guarantees to sell less than Dreamcast…except I like Dreamcast. Since it already runs on Windows, I’m sure they want to benefit on all the Windows applications that can run on it. It supposedly reads all the EXE files on CD so therefore, it may be able to install emulators like EPSXE and SNES9x. It automatically turns itself into a Playstation or Super Nintendo with a simple program. I don’t know if Nintendo will get in a lawsuit against VIA being able to play special programs allowing ROMS or discs to be played on it or if the whole thing is out of their control. For some odd reason I’d pick the last one. The thing has 4 USB ports (keyboard, mouse, PC gamepad, etc. I could use my Nyko Airflow PC with it and it’ll play PSone games. It’ll automatically install any EXE files for you on the hard drive. So if you play them at full screen then it’ll look exactly like a console. It doesn’t look like the Apextreme has the best hardware yet for home theater – and it doesn’t have to have to power of a fast computer to look good on TV. Xbox looks good on TV and it’s processor is only 733 MHz. VIA wasn’t afraid to release the official specs of the machine. With a simple TV tuner card you can hook up the SVGA output up to your TV. The official Apextreme specs are:

• CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2000 clocked at 1.4 GHz
• Dual Channel 256 MB DDR SDRAM
• Graphics: Nvidia Geforce 4 MX V8 8-pixel pipeline engine (Direct X 9.0a graphics accelerator) Probably a 64-bit GPU
• Hard drive (40 gigabyte)
• Audio VIA ENVY Audio (Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound.)
• DVD playback (more than likely the game media also) manufactured by VIA
• CN400
• Runs on Microsoft Windows R XP
• 10/100 Ethernet
• Four controller ports
• MP3 support in games
• Price $299 - $399 at launch
• Xbox is still going to have better games and a better price than VIA.
• Also plays PC games
• And it can record movies like TIVO
• Release Date Late 2004 (A console this year!!!)

The part that they don’t want you to know is – they say it plays like a pc – this is because it is a PC. Make no mistake. All you’re getting out of this console is a PC capable of high resolution and acts like TIVO – the digital recording console for tvs. I don’t see APEX being the next Sega, but that’s because Sega started out with Masters System 19 years ago and it didn’t sell well.


Alienware DHS

Now, for the extreme high end. Alienware Corporation - the company known for building extremely powerful gaming PCs for customers. If it’s on the bleeding edge of technology…Alienware probably has it incorporated in their PCs already. That’s their motto. I, myself, almost got an Alienware PC as a Christmas present. Now, Alienware is developing a new PC console at around 2000 dollars. Again, 3rd party PC corporations try to amaze you on your medium to low definition TV. Alienware, I heard you make great PCs, why a console that plays PC games? There is no point too it. Sure, it’ll play PC games in better resolution then Xbox – but console games are meant to be played with a controller. Ya, good I’ve straighten that truth out. You’ll never catch me buying a console PC unless it can also play Playstation 2 or Xbox games. This is why you should continue reading - because it will be true for Microsoft's new Xbox 2 / PC hybrid.

The weird thing is Sega of America’s former president, Peter Moore, is the CEO of Microsoft’s interactive software division (controls Xbox software and PC game marketing). Moore did it for money as any greedy money grubbing person would. Microsoft is making a ‘PC console’ of their own that will playPC or Xbox 2 games called the XNA. It’ll work by automatically installing PC games to its hard drive and also boot Xbox 2 software off DVD. This is the only PC console I agree with. I hear the console codenamed Xenon (Xbox 2) is 100% PowerPC. How can Microsoft develop a PowerPC to play PC games? That’s the million dollar question and it sounds like it’ll be answered next year. They would have to port Windows XP for PowerPC!! Is this illegal? They would have to get license from Apple Corperation. Technically Xbox 2 will also run Windows XP at its core. The OS is made by Microsoft and the console is made by Microsoft. Microsoft sounds like they have best of both worlds. I would mean that Microsoft has its own brand PC! Microsoft confirmed the price point of the XNA to be about 599 dollars. If you just want to play Xbox 2 games than it’ll bring it down to the industry standard of 200 dollars. Best of all it’ll come with a SVGA monitor output! The Xbox 2 won’t be called Xbox 2 because Microsoft Corp confirmed that they do not want to be inferior to Playstation 3.

Here are some names I thought up for MS new console code named “Xenon.”

1. Excaliber
2. X-cube
3. Mach 1000
4. Light-speed
5. Panther
6. Nitro X
7. Y-Box
8. Qube
9. Microsoft Q-Box
10. Microsoft Halo
11. Microsoft Supernova
12. Microsoft Jupiter
13. Microsoft Neptune
14. Microsoft Dream-Q
15. Microsoft Centauri X
16. Microsoft Dream-Centauri
17. Microsoft Nova-Matrix
18. Microsoft X-Cluster
19. Microsoft Alien Q
20. Microsoft Alien-box
21. Microsoft Area 51
22. Microsoft Roswell
23. Microsoft Firebird
24. Microsoft Qware
25. Microsoft Mars
26. Microsoft Xclipse
27. Microsoft X-Box 256
28. Microsoft X-Gene
29. Microsoft Blue-Gene
30. Microsoft Voyager

This is Ian signing off.

1 comment :

Order Pills Antibacterial said...

I really liked your article.