Nintendo Revolution

April 29, 2006 - Graphical calculators JPEG added to "Some Pictures"

I am probably not the first to know it's name on here, but Nintendo announced on their webpage that Wii is the Revolution. Nintendo Go was valid, but was a very, very old name. Nintendo has probably changed it because like I said before I rather call it the Rev.

Wii definately comes from WiFi and Revolution is entirely WiFi if you got a Wavebird wireless Gamecube controller. This comes after seeing Ubisoft's Red Steel First Person shooter. A xbox game with much better antianalysing.

The only thing revolutionary about the Wii is the fact Nintendo got it thru their thick brains that DVDs should be their format after failing to see this with Gamecube. It's made a laughing stock out of Gamecube. Once again the MiniDVD didn't fit enough video. Gamecube games had little video in them. Their stupid thinking of piratcy resistant miniDVDs were putting them in last place. Why didn't Nintendo bring Panasonic Q to Wisconsin? Probably a bad decision on their part.

Nintendo fans once were waiting for the Nintendo 64 Disc Drive, but it ended up to be the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive. And game developers used the Doctor V64 to extract ROMs to CD using the expansion port and you could even play the ROM off CD by using it (sound familar?). Sega saw this with Saturn and dropped support the Sega Jupiter (A cartridge-based Saturn) Saturn was too difficult to program for so the obvious choice was develop for Playstation and it was $299 instead of $399. PS2 inhirined the back catalog of Playstation games.

Arena Football

When is Arena Football Pro League coming to Minnesota? The Minnesota Vikings and Minnesota Gophers play in the Metrodome which is an ‘arena’. Gophers get twice the attendance then the Vikings. Gophers don’t have their own arena due to cuts in state budget. New stadium funding is unpopular with Minneapolis even if St. Paul built a state-of-the-art hockey arena. (only 15 miles a way). Minnesota fans are already seeing arena football. So MN Vikings must be an unofficial arena football team when playing home games? Will this prevent Arena Football League coming to Minnesota? Minneapolis is closer to where I live then Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Green Bay Packers sell out tickets in every game in every year meaning football is “that word again” in my state. No doubt. An arena football team could surely survive in Green Bay or Milwaukee and be popular after NFL season.

FOOTBALL ALL-YEAR!

Electronica songs i listen to Paul Oakenford - Ready Steady Go, the thrillseekers - synaesthesia, bt - godspeed, bt - Mercury and Solace, Southside Spinners - Luvstruck, Oceanlab - Sky Falls Down.

I'm going to Game Stop to purchase two more videogames which takes 2 hrs.

Bars in my area

PS3

The PlayStation 3 (PS3) will be Sony's seventh generation era video game console in the PlayStation series. It is the successor to the PlayStation 2 and will mainly compete against the Nintendo Revolution and the Xbox 360. Sony has announced that the PS3 will be backward compatible with earlier PS1 and PS2 games. At the moment, little is known in public about the PS3 apart from its hardware specifications and the reports that it will be based on open APIs for the game development.

The PS3 was officially unveiled on May 16, 2005 by Sony during an E3 conference, where the console was first shown to the public. A functional version of the console was not at E3 or the Tokyo Game Show in September 2005, although at both events, demonstrations were held on devkits (for example Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots) and comparable PC hardware, and video footage based on the predicted PS3 specifications was produced (for example for Mobile Suit Gundam).

Pricing

Sony was originally aiming for a spring 2006 launch as announced at the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo, but Sony revealed during a press conference in Japan on March 15, 2006 that there will be a delay due to issues over the finalization of Blu-ray disc copy protection technology, and as a first for any PlayStation console, Sony is now aiming for a worldwide release in early November 2006.

Sony has not yet announced the pricing for PlayStation 3. Sony Computer Entertainment president and "father of the PlayStation" Ken Kutaragi has been quoted as saying "It'll be expensive" and "I'm aware that with all these technologies, the PS3 can't be offered at a price that's targeted towards households. I think everyone can still buy it if they wanted to" and "but we're aiming for consumers throughout the world. So we're going to have to do our best in containing the price". Ken Kutaragi believes that customers would be willing to pay extra for a superior product, as they had in the past for the original PlayStation (¥39,800 vs. ¥12,500 for the Super Famicom).

Games in development

As of March 2006, there are already over 230 PS3 games announced by multiple developers and publishers, like SCEA, Electronic Arts, Konami, Namco, Capcom, Square Enix and many others. As well as announced titles there are likely to be many 'secret projects' already under development. Since then the PS3 will be delayed until November.

Most developers have already announced games for the PS3. Some anticipated ones include Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Killzone PS3, Resident Evil 5, Devil May Cry 4, Shin Megami Tensei, Armored Core 4 , Unreal Tournament 2007, Resistance: Fall of Man, Grand Theft Auto 4 (provisional title), Sonic the Hedgehog (tentative title), and Tekken 6.

At the E3 2005 Press Conference, Sony showed some pre-rendered and some real-time videos of games in development with the codenames Eyedentify, Vision Gran Turismo and MotorStorm. Also shown at E3 was a Final Fantasy VII technical demo of the opening sequence remade for the PlayStation 3 system. Square Enix stated afterwards that there isn't any plans for a remake at the moment, but it is in consideration. However, recently a magazine reported that Square would indeed remake Final Fantasy VII for the PS3.
At this time, three games have been mentioned as PS3 launch titles: Lair from Factor 5, Warhawk from Incognito Entertainment, and Unreal Tournament 2007 from Epic Games.

Backward compatibility

The PlayStation 3 will be compatible with PlayStation 2 and PlayStation. In a recent interview Ken Kutaragi stated that backward compatibility will be achieved through a combination of hardware and software.

At the PlayStation briefing on March 14, 2006 in Japan, Sony revealed that the PlayStation 3 will display legacy recoded PlayStation titles in high-definition resolutions. However, backwards capability will be limited to only games that have passed Sony's TRC (Technical Requirements Criteria). Estimates by game developers put the number of PS and PS2 titles that have passed the TRC to be around 50-85%.

Peripherals

The PS3 will not be backward-compatible with some of the hardware peripherals of the PS2. For example, memory cards for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 will not work on the PlayStation 3 hardware. Instead it was announced that the PS3 will use the Sony Memory Stick, and SD/MMC memory cards to save games. The Memory Sticks will be able to store saved games for both PS1 and PS2 games, unlike the PS2's memory card. However, with the announcement of a standard 60 GB HDD with the PS3, a hard drive game saving system is very likely.

Peripherals such as MaxAction for PS2, are able to transfer PS1 and PS2 saves to a PSP Memory Stick, making the saves compatible to be read from the PS3.

Online services (PNP)

To answer to Microsoft's Xbox Live, Sony has confirmed a unified online service at the 2006 PlayStation Business Briefing meeting in Tokyo. The name of the service has been given the working title "PlayStation Network Platform". Sony has confirmed that the basic online service will be free and will have sufficient functionality for online gaming. The online service is being developed jointly by Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Online Entertainment.

Online features

Communication/Community:

* Voice/Video chat
* Messaging
* Lobby/Matchmaking
* Score/Ranking
* Friend list/Avatar
* Game data upload/download

Commerce:

* Shop (accessible from inside games)
* Content Download
* Micro Payment
* Subscription
* Entitlement (user access rights) management

Account:

* User Registration
* Login ID/Handling of name issues


Interface and operating system

According to DevStation Conference, the PS3 will use the Cross Media Bar already used in the PlayStation Portable and PSX devices. The hard disk will come pre-installed with a Linux distribution, possibly with Cell extensions developed by IBM and Sony.

Hardware specifications

According to a press release by Sony at the May 16 2005 E3 Conference, the specifications of the PlayStation 3 are as follows:

Central processing unit

3.2 GHz Cell BE multi-core processor: PowerPC-based 'Power Processing Element' and 7 Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). The PPE has a 512 KB L2 cache and one VMX (AltiVec) vector unit. Each of the eight SPEs is a RISC processor with 128-bit 128 SIMD GPRs and superscalar functions. Each SPE has 256 KB of software-addressable SRAM.

Only seven SPEs are active; the eighth is redundant, to improve yield. If one of the eight has a manufacturing defect, it is disabled without rendering the entire unit defective.

Graphics processing unit

Custom RSX or "Reality Synthesizer" design co-developed by NVIDIA and Sony:

* Clocked at 550 MHz
* 1.8 TFLOPS
* 136 shader operations per clock
* 74.8 billion shader operations per second (100 billion with CPU)
* Full high definition output (up to 1080p) x 2 channels
* Multi-way programmable parallel floating point shader pipelines
* 128-bit pixel precision offers rendering of scenes with high dynamic range imaging
* 512 MB Graphics Render Memory
* Sony has hinted it may also handle audio (possibly Nvidia's Soundstorm 2) PS3 Block Diagram


Memory

* 256 MB Rambus XDR DRAM clocked at CPU die speed (3.2 GHz)
* 256 MB GDDR3 VRAM clocked at 700 MHz

Theoretical system bandwidth

* 25.6 GB/s to Main Ram XDR DRAM: 64 bits × 3.2 GHz
* 22.4 GB/s to GDDR3 VRAM: 128 bits × 700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge)
* RSX 20 GB/s (write), 15 GB/s (read)
* SB 2.5 GB/s write and 2.5 GB/s read
* 204.8 GB/s Cell Element Interconnect Bus (Theoretical peak performance)
* Cell FlexIO Bus: 35 GB/s outbound, 25 GB/s inbound (7 outbound and 5 inbound 1Byte wide channels operating at 5 GHz) (effective bandwidth typically 50-80% of total)


Audio/video output

* Supported screen sizes: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
* Two HDMI (Type A) outputs (Dual-screen HD outputs)
* S/PDIF optical output for digital audio
* Multiple analog outputs (Composite, S-Video, Component video)

Sound

* Dolby Digital 5.1 minimum, DTS, LPCM (DSP functionality handled by the Cell processor)
* May be handled by a Soundstorm 2 embedded in the RSX link Article
* Sampling Frequency: 44.1/48 kHz.


Storage

* Blu-ray Disc: PlayStation 3 BD-ROM, BD-Video, BD-R, BD-RE.
* DVD: PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW
* CD: PlayStation CD-ROM, PlayStation 2 CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-DA (ROM), CD-R, CD-RW, SACD, SACD Hybrid (CD layer) SACD HD
* Hard Drive: Standard 60 GB, 2.5", detachable/upgradeable, with Linux pre-installed.
* Memory Stick standard/Duo and standard/mini slots
* CompactFlash Type I and II slot
* SD/MMC slot

It was announced on the 14th of March 2006 that all PlayStation 3 games will ship on Blu-Ray Rom discs.


Communications

* Gigabit Ethernet Hub (one IN and two OUT connections)
* IEEE 802.11 b, g Wi-Fi
* Bluetooth 2.0
* USB 2.0 (four front and two rear ports)


Networking

SCEI's press release indicates that controller connectivity to the PlayStation 3 can be provided via:

* 802.11b, g Wi-Fi. Integrated for mesh networking and connectivity with the PlayStation Portable
* TCP/IP networking (wired ethernet)
* USB 2.0 (wired)
* Bluetooth 2.0 (up to 7 controllers)

Controller

On 23 March, 2006 at the Game Developers Conference, Phil Harrison announced that the "boomerang" design has indeed been scrapped and that a new controller design will be revealed in May at E3.


Physical dimensions

* 32 cm (L) x 24 cm (W) x 8 cm (H)[13]


Overall floating-point capability

In a slide show at their E3 conference, Sony presented the "CPU floating point capability" of the PlayStation 3's Cell CPU, and compared it to other CPUs. In their official press release, the same statistic regarding the PS3 as a whole was reported to be 2 TFLOPS[7].
The figures are rounded estimates based on addition of the theoretical maximum floating point performances of the processing units in the Cell CPU and those of the RSX GPU. Inevitably, real-world performance for both systems will be lower. Additionally, programmers may find it difficult, initially, to optimize their game engines to make the best use of the highly parallel architectures of both systems, further reducing real-world performance.

Miscellaneous

* Two simultaneous High-definition television streams for use on a title screen for a HD Blu-ray Movie.
* High-definition IP video conferencing.
* EyeToy interactive reality game, Eyedentify.
* EyeToy voice command recognition.
* EyeToy virtual object manipulation.
* Digital photograph display (JPEG).
* MP3 and ATRAC download and playback.
* Simultaneous World Wide Web access and gameplay.
* Hub/Home Ethernet Gaming Network.
* Parental Controls
* The ability for the PlayStation Portable to connect to the PlayStation 3 as a video-enabled controller.
* up to 7 wireless controllers at once.
* up to 6 wired controllers at once.
* evidently up to 13 (likely more) controllers at once, from a total of the known seven wireless Bluetooth ports and six wired ports.

X360

The Xbox 360, known during development as the Xenon, Xbox 2 or the Xbox Next, is the successor to Microsoft's original Xbox video game console. The Xbox 360 console was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detailed launch and game information divulged later that month at the prominent Electronic Entertainment Expo. Upon its release on November 22, 2005 in North America, December 2 in Europe, and December 10 in Japan, the Xbox 360 became the first console to have a simultaneous launch across the four major regions. It also serves as the first entrant in a new generation of game consoles and will compete against the forthcoming PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution.

Microsoft's current retail strategy involves two different configurations of the Xbox 360 in most countries: the Xbox 360 SKU, frequently referred to as the "Xbox 360 Premium Package"; and an Xbox 360 Core System SKU. The Core System is not available in Japan, instead Microsoft offers a package identical to the Xbox 360 SKU for ¥37,900. Japanese pricing of the console has drawn some criticism, as customers there are able to purchase the Xbox 360 full package, albeit one region-coded for Japan, for a lower price than in other countries. Additionally in Australia and New Zealand the Xbox-Live Headset in the Xbox 360 "Premium Package" is replaced with the Universal Media Remote.

BusinessWeek magazine compiled a report that estimates the total cost of components in the "premium" bundle at $525 USD, sans manufacturing costs, meaning that Microsoft is losing money on every Xbox 360 system sold. It should be noted that the strategy of selling a console at a loss or near-loss is common in the console games industry, as console makers can usually expect to make up the loss through game licensing. Furthermore, since Microsoft owns the intellectual property rights to the hardware used in the Xbox 360, they can easily switch to new fabrication processes or change suppliers in the future in order to reduce manufacturing costs. This flexibility stands in contrast to the situation faced with the original Xbox, which contained a processor from Intel (a slightly modified Pentium III) and a GPU from NVidia (a modified GeForce 3), both of which were proprietary processors sold to Microsoft at an inflated market price. Because of the added expense of these chips and the inclusion of a hard drive component, Microsoft was never able to reduce Xbox manufacturing costs below the break-even point. As a result Microsoft's home entertainment division posted a loss through nearly every quarter of the console's lifecycle. Microsoft is predicting that with the Xbox 360 a greater market share and falling hardware costs will eventually make system sales profitable.

The Xbox 360 was released on November 22, 2005 in United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, December 2, 2005 in Europe, December 10, 2005 in Japan, February 2, 2006 in Mexico and Colombia, February 24, 2006 in South Korea, March 16, 2006 in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan and March 23 in Australia and New Zealand after a 3-week delay.

Because of a manufacturing bottleneck Microsoft was not able to supply enough systems to meet consumer demand in Europe or the United States. Many potential customers were not able to procure a console at launch and the dearth of availability led to Xbox 360 bundles selling on eBay at grossly inflated prices. By year's end Microsoft had sold only 1.5 million units; including 900,000 in North America, 500,000 in Europe, and a meager 100,000 in Japan. Low Japanese sales are partly attributed to the poor selection of launch titles in the region - only six games were initially offered and eagerly anticipated titles like Dead or Alive 4 and Enchant Arm were not released until several weeks after launch.

Controllers

Up to four controllers are supported by the Xbox 360, including wired and wireless gamepads. The wired gamepads may be connected to any of the three USB ports located on the console, or to a USB hub. A USB keyboard is also supported, but only for inputting text.

Gamepad

The Xbox 360 gamepad design is similar to the Type-S gamepad from the original Xbox. Unlike the Type-S, the Xbox 360 gamepad features only two analog (pressure sensitive) buttons - the left and right triggers. Also the black and white buttons have been replaced with the right and left bumpers and an Xbox Guide button has been added to the center. Wired gamepads feature a nine foot (2.74 m) long cord with a break-away feature. They can be used with any USB and Windows equipped computer. Wireless gamepads have a range of about 30 feet (~9 m) and use either two AA batteries or a NiMH rechargeable battery pack. When a gamepad is plugged in, or - in the case of wireless gamepads - turned on, a quadrant of the LED "Ring of Light" around the power button is lit up, indicating connection and ordering (1st player corresponds to the upper-left quadrant, 2nd player to upper-right, etc.) The "Ring of Light" also adorns the Xbox Guide button; it will flash in case of a low battery warning on the wireless gamepad.

Xbox 360 faceplates

The default white faceplate can be replaced with a range of custom designs, each to be sold separately. Microsoft has also distributed two promotional faceplates, one for those present at the E3 2005 unveiling and one for VIP X05 attendees. The prices of these custom designs are around $20 with more to be released by third party manufacturers.

AV connection

Adapters and cables are available for TOSLINK, RCA (audio and video), S-video, Component video, VGA, D-Terminal, and SCART connections, depending on regional standard.

Other

* Detachable hard drive: An optional detachable SATA 20 GB hard drive is used for the storage of games, music, downloaded trailers, levels, demos, player preferences, and community-created content from Xbox Live Marketplace; it may also be used to transfer such content between Xbox 360 units. It will also be used for backward compatibility with original Xbox games. Only 13 GB of this hard drive are available to the user; the rest is reserved for the system and games. According to J Allard, the chief of Microsoft's Xbox division, Microsoft may sell larger capacity detachable hard drives for the Xbox 360 in the future, and territories outside of North America may have a differently sized hard drive in the retail unit.
* Rechargeable battery pack: This nickel metal hydride battery pack provides up to 30 hours of continuous gaming for the wireless controller. It is recommended in place of disposable AA batteries (which differ slightly in voltage). It also ships as part of the Play & Charge Kit.
* Play and Charge kit: allows the controller to be recharged while "playing" by plugging the wireless controller into one of the USB ports used by wired controllers. Also includes the rechargeable battery pack.
* Memory Unit: a portable 64MB device which allows the transfer of saved games, in-game achievements and unique gamer profiles to other Xbox 360 consoles.
* Wireless Networking Adapter: The Wi-Fi (802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g) adapter is sold separately and will be sold for $100/€80/£60/C$130/¥8,925. Using an official or third-party wireless bridge the console will automatically detect and link up with other Xbox 360 consoles that are within range and form a mesh network.
* Headset: allows gamers to talk to each other when plugged into the controller's expansion port and connected to Xbox Live. Some upcoming Xbox 360 titles may benefit from voice command too. It has an in-line volume control and a mute switch.

* Universal Media Remote: assists in the playing of DVD movies and music (although the console can play such media without the remote), and offers controls for a TV or Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005-based PC. The universal media remote is a bigger version of the media remote that was initially shipped with the premium version of the console (which is no longer available). Both remotes allow basic control of games, along with being able to navigate the dashboard. The remote controls interface with the Xbox 360 via infra-red.

Hardware Speculations

Central processing unit



The central processing unit (CPU), named Xenon (Microsoft) or Waternoose (IBM) is a custom IBM triple-core PowerPC-based design.

* 90 nm process, 165 million transistors
* Three symmetrical cores, each one SMT-capable and clocked at 3.2 GHz
* One VMX-128 (IBM's branding for AltiVec) SIMD unit per core
* 128×128 register file for each VMX unit
* 1 MB L-2 cache (lockable by the GPU) running at half-speed (1.6 GHz) with a 256bit bus
* 51 gigabytes per second of L-2 memory bandwidth (256bit x 1600 MHz)
* dot product performance: 9.6 billion per second
* 115 GFLOPS theoretical peak performance
* ROM storing Microsoft private encrypted keys


Graphics processing unit



The graphics processing unit (GPU) is a custom ATI "Xenos" chip. (Developed under the name "C1", sometimes "R500")

* 325 million transistors total
* 500 MHz parent GPU (90 nm process, 235 million transistors)
* 500 MHz 10 MB daughter embedded DRAM framebuffer (90 nm process, 90 million transistors)
o NEC designed eDRAM has internal logic for color, alpha blending, Z/stencil buffering, and anti-aliasing.
o 8 Render Output units
* 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically-scheduled shader pipelines
o 3 groups of 16 arithmetic logic units
o 1 ALU per fragmentpipe for vertex or pixel shader processing
o Unified shader architecture (This means that each pipeline is capable of running either pixel or vertex shaders.)
o Support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0, limited support for future DirectX 10 shader models
o 2 Shader operations per pipe per cycle
o 96 Shader operations per cycle across the entire shader array
o Shader performance: 48 billion (48,000 million) shader operations per second (96 shader operations x 500 MHz)
o Xbox 360 GPU is capable of doing two of those shaders per cycle. If programmed for correctly, the Xbox 360 GPU is capable of 96 billion shader operations per second. Compare this with ATI’s current PC add-in flagship card and the Xbox 360 more than doubles its abilities
* 16 Filtered & 16 unfiltered texture samples per clock
* Maximum polygon performance: 500 million triangles per second
* Texel fillrate: 8 gigatexel per second fillrate (16 textures x 500 MHz)
* Pixel fillrate: 16 gigasamples per second fillrate using 4X multisample anti aliasing (MSAA) or 4 gigapixel per second without multisample anti aliasing (8 ROPs x 500 MHz)
* Dot product operations: 24 billion per second or 33.6 billion per second theoretical maximum when summed with CPU operations
* 1 TFLOPS theoretical peak performance of CPU and GPU combined

Memory

* 512 MB 700 MHz GDDR3 (1400 MHz effective) RAM (Total system memory is shared with the GPU via the unified memory architecture.)


System bandwidth

The system bandwidth comprises:

* 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth (700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge) on a 128 bit bus)
* 256 GB/s eDRAM internal logic to eDRAM internal memory bandwidth
* 32 GB/s GPU to eDRAM bandwidth (2 GHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle on a 64 bit DDR bus)
* 21.6 GB/s front side bus (aggregated 10.8 GB/s upstream and downstream)
* 1 GB/s southbridge bandwidth (aggregated 500 MB/s upstream and downstream)

Audio

* All games must support at least six channel (5.1) Dolby Digital surround sound
* Support for 48 kHz 16-bit audio
* 320 independent decompression channels
* 32 bit processing
* 256+ audio channels
* No voice echo to game players on the same Xbox console; voice goes only to remote consoles
* Voice communication is handled by the console, not by the game code. This allows players to communicate online even if they are playing different games.
* Uses XMA codec (based on WMA Pro)

Video



All games must support a 16:9 aspect ratio, and a minimum of 720p HD resolution with 2x full-screen anti-aliasing enabled. The GPU can downsample the native 720p to lower display resolutions (including 480i SDTV and 480p) and dynamically crop or scale 16:9 to fit 4:3 screens. Some games will optionally support native 1080i and 480p video resolutions as well.

Supported codecs

* VC-1 at non-HD NTSC and PAL resolutions
* VC-1 or WMV will be used for streaming video
* VC-1 or WMV HD supports DVD quality and high definition quality video
* Bink Video is licensed for games like Project Gotham Racing 3
* additional MPEG2 decoder for DVD video playback


DVD drive

A 12X DVD-ROM SATA drive, capable of reading DVD+R/DVD+RW discs and DVD-R/RW, is part of the console, with game titles shipping on single or dual-layer DVDs. Due to storage restrictions imposed by the dual layer DVD format and increased memory requirements of high resolution full motion videos and textures, future Xbox 360 games may span multiple discs. The disc drive also supports the CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R/RW, WMA-CD, MP3-CD, and JPEG Photo CD formats as well as DVD movies.

Bill Gates has confirmed during his keynote speech at CES 2006 that an external HD-DVD drive will be released for the 360 during 2006.[8] However, Peter Moore has stated that if HD-DVD loses the format war, Microsoft may also release an external Blu-Ray drive. According to Japan's chief of Xbox operations Yoshihiro Maruyama, Microsoft will not release Xbox 360 games in the new disc formats.

Cooling

Both the GPU and CPU of the console have heatsinks. The CPU's heatsink uses heatpipe technology, where a hollow copper pipe containing a substance with a low vaporization point transfers heat from one end to the other very efficiently . The heatsinks are actively cooled by a pair of 60mm exhaust fans that push the air out of the case (negative case pressure). Active cooling makes the Xbox 360 considerably louder than the original Xbox. There have been third party modifications that watercool the console.

Physical characteristics

Console

* Weight 3.5 kg (7.7 lb)
* 30.9 cm (L) x 25.8 cm (W) x 8.3 cm (H) (12.16 x 10.15 x 3.27 in)

Power supply

* 21.3 cm (L) x 7.6 cm (W) x 5.7 cm (H) (8.4 x 3 x 2.25 in)


Miscellaneous

* The option to apply a regional lockout to games is available to publishers. Most titles do not use such restrictions, see List of Xbox 360 games without region encoding. DVD region codes are always enforced.
* An external A/C adapter supplies power to the console and its connected accessories, it is the largest power supply to ever accompany a gaming console. The North American adapter is rated at 5 amps / 100-120V A/C input and has a D/C output of 203W.
* 3 USB 2.0 input ports, 1 RJ45 ethernet port.

With the launch of the Xbox 360, Microsoft's online gaming service, Xbox Live went through a major upgrade adding a basic non-subscription service (Silver) to its already established premium subscription-based service (Gold). Xbox Live Silver is free of charge and allows users to create a profile, join on message boards, access Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade, and talk to other members. Silver members are not allowed to play any games online. Microsoft has also announced there will be trial weekends for Silver members to access the full features of Gold service temporarily. Xbox Live is supporting a few features, such as the headset, or an Xbox Live webcam that will come out in the Spring of 2006, according to Xbox 360 kiosk stands and Official Xbox Magazine. Xbox Live Gold has the same features as Silver plus online game playing capabilities. Microsoft has allowed for previous Xbox Live subscribers to maintain their profile information, buddy lists, and games history when they make the transition to Xbox Live Gold. To transition an Xbox Live account to the new system the user needs to link a Microsoft Passport account to their gamer tag on Xbox.com. Then when the user goes to add a Xbox Live enabled profile to their console, the user just needs to provide the console with their passport account information. An Xbox Live Gold account costs $49.99 USD, £39.99 Pounds Sterling, €59.99 per year.

Procedural synthesis

In traditional video games, all content is statically stored and generally immutable; that is, textures, meshes, and other game content is stored on a storage medium. As complexity in each rises, the demand for storage rises as well. A newer approach to generating content is utilised for Xbox 360 titles, a method referred to by Microsoft as procedural synthesis. Procedural synthesis is an approach to generating game content via algorithms. For example, trees are one of the most complicated objects to render in a game, due to their organic complexity. A game with only one model for a tree will appear odd, as nature is far more random; the game loses some of its immersion as a result. Instead, a general recursive algorithm will generate the tree's model and textures, so that each tree looks different from the next, and do so with high efficiency.

Backward compatibility


Backward compatibility is achieved through software emulation of the original Xbox hardware. Emulated games offer minor graphical enhancements because they are rendered in 720p resolution with anti-aliasing enabled rather than the Xbox standard of 480p. Some games also benefit from a subtle improvement in the rendered draw distance, possibly due to the system's greater memory bandwidth. However there are also games that do not perform well in emulation, these often exhibit a lower framerate on the Xbox 360.

A hard drive is required to enable backward compatibility. Hard drives purchased separately or as part of the console package include an early version of the emulator that includes emulation profiles for games Halo and Halo 2. Updated emulation profiles can be obtained through Xbox Live, by burning a CD with profiles downloaded from Xbox.com, or by ordering an update disc from Microsoft.

The full list of backward-compatible games is maintained at Xbox.com. Although the current U.S. list includes over 200 games, fewer titles are listed as backward compatible in European and Japanese markets. Microsoft has stated that they intend to release more emulation profiles as they become available, with a goal of making the entire Xbox library playable on the Xbox 360.


Overheating

Because of its high power consumption and limited capacity to dissipate heat, the Xbox 360 console poses a substantial risk of overheating if users do not follow the guidelines prescribed by the user manual. Users are advised not to obstruct air flow to the enclosure vents or power supply. Problems associated with overheating include reduced system performance and instability that may result in crashing or hardware failure. Some Xbox 360 owners have even installed custom cooling solutions in their consoles as a preventative measure.

Disc scratching

When a user moves the Xbox 360 from its vertical position to its horizontal position and vice-versa while the system is reading from a disc, the angular momentum of the disc causes it to brush against the drive's pickup-assembly and results in scratches. The manual that comes with the Xbox 360 specifically warns against moving the system while it is powered on. Microsoft cannot replace scratched discs, by simply replacing the media, because they do not own the rights to the games, however they do offer a free copy of a Microsoft Game Studios Xbox 360 title as a replacement for scratched disks.

Disc drive noise

Compared to previous generation game consoles the Xbox 360 is quite loud, much of this noise is produced by the disc drive when it reads a game disc. Due to the fact that games can be played both with and without the detachable hard disc the drive spins close to its maximum 12X speed to reduce load times. The drive generates less noise while reading video DVDs, audio CDs, or other non-game discs since these do not require as high of a transfer rate and are not spun as quickly (lower scanning velocity, see also constant linear velocity).

With the third, and most recent, production run of the Xbox 360, the original Hitachi DVD drive (model GDR-3120L) was replaced with a quieter Toshiba/Samsung DVD drive (model TS-H943). The Toshiba/Samsung model uses the same laser unit as the old LG/Hitachi drive, so the reading capabilities remain identical between the drives.

Watched Jonny Quest

Randy, I really miss you. You were by friend since BSA in 6th grade. Now, on Good Friday, you didn’t call back. I am only able to play Atelier Iris Eternal Mana. I am approx at the beginning. I learned that you can get free elements by smashing it with a alchemist mace. It’s a high res 2D RPGs with 2.5D backgrounds. The story line is okay. The anime inspired vector art is cute. It’s a story line an average 14 yr old would think is cool. I gave this game a chance because it’s there even if there are much better games.

Yesterday, I decided to watch 1965 Jonny Quest episodes I have on VHS. It’s true you got Jonny, the protagonist, Race, the ex-CIA agent, Dr. Quest, the brilliant scientist, Hadji, the adopted Indian, and Bandit the family bulldog in exotic Cold War era locations. I watched 8 or 9 episodes before stopped playing it. The VHSs is old enough that it gets off track at moments (air pockets most likely). I taped this before it aired on Boomerang during the 3 day marathon sometime in 1996.

There is a 26 episode DVD box set of Jonny Quest for $29.99. It’s even digitally remastered, much better then low-res VHS. I am undecided if I want it because it’s sort of waste. It got good reviews at Amazon.com. 1964 is suppose to be the best. I taped all these episodes on three blank VHS tapes on lowest quality. My favorite must’ve been “The Robot Spy” Quite interesting.
1964 – 1965
1. ”Mystery of the Lizard Men”
2. "Arctic Splashdown"
3. "The Curse of Anubis"
4. "Pursuit of the Po-Ho"
5. "Riddle of the Gold"
6. "Treasure of the Temple"
7. "Calcutta Adventure" (origin of Hadji)
8. "The Robot Spy"
9. "Double Danger" (first episode produced)
10. "Shadow of the Condor"
11. "Skull and Double Crossbones"
12. "The Dreadful Doll"
13. "A Small Matter of Pygmies"
14. "Dragons of Ashida"
15. "Turu the Terrible"
16. "The Fraudulent Volcano"
17. "Werewolf of the Timberland"
18. "Pirates from Below"
19. "Attack of the Tree People"
20. "The Invisible Monster"
21. "The Devil's Tower"
22. "The Quetong Missile Mystery" (title card shows 'The "Q" Missile Mystery' for the 1964-65 season's re-run of this episode)
23. "House of Seven Gargoyles"
24. "Terror Island"
25. "Monster in the Monastery"
26. "The Sea Haunt"
1986
1. "Aliens Among Us"
2. "Deadly Junket"
3. "Forty Fathoms Into Yesterday"
4. "Vikong Lives"
5. "The Scourge of Skyborg"
6. "Monolith Man"
7. "Peril of the Reptilian"
8. "Nightmares of Steel"
9. "Skullduggery"
10. "Temple of Gloom"
11. "Creeping Unknown"
12. "Secret of the Clay Warriors"
13. "Warlord of the Sky”

PS2 Emulation!

Yesterday, I went into Game Quest and asked this black guy (working there for 2 yrs) to give me Kingdom Hearts II…the most popular game right now. People like Final Fantasy so they’re treating KH II as any Final Fantasy game.

And I finally got to emulate the rendered cut screen of Final Fantasy X with PCSX2 at 9 fps. It’s not in playable form until 686/786 CPUs are 11 times more powerful then The Emotion Engine. The latest version 0.9 (major release) was on the internet for 4 days.




Download PCSX2 0.9
PS2 NTSC BIOS (put into BIOS Directory)
PSX NTSC BIOS (put into BIOS Directory)


So far PCSX2 0.9 runs:

Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X2
Ridge Racer 5

And I learned that you can dump PS2 game images onto a 200 GB hard drive with HDAdvance 3.0 using a PS2 network adapter while at Game Quest in River Falls, WI. It caches loading times instantly so no loading times are existent. This is supposedly illegal to have because PS2 isn’t meant to be played that way. Sony knows about this because they’re doing a download service for PS and PS2 games the same way. I am sure this makes the experience better, but I am not doing it.

Today, I decided to stay home read how Sony Computer Entertainment may or may not go bankrupted eventually after bank reserves costing them $850 to manufacture each PS3. One site quotes,“ PS3 production pricing at this point has been laid out to be anywhere from $850 - $956 per unit, meaning there will be a loss on each machine of approx $250 - $350 per console sold. If one million consoles sell in the first day of availability Sony will have wiped there entire financial gain for all of 2005 in under 24 hours.”

Played Metroid Prime Hunters and Elder Scrolls IV | catagorized computers from worst to best

Friday, I purchased Metroid Prime Hunters at Wal-Mart because I like Samus Aran. I’ve played this first person shooter (Nintendo’s very first one) and Nintendo done great with the graphics. I took the stylist in the right hand and held the DS while strifing with my left hand. The stylist feels like a mouse cursor driven by a pen. I don’t go as far back to Metroid although I have Metroid Zero Mission for GBA and have Metroid unlocked in Metroid Prime. I like oldschool games which is why I decided to support Nintendo and GBA. I’d use my Gameboy Player for Zero Mission because I can enjoy it on my 25” LCD TV if I ever complete MP Hunters! Frame Rate is really smooth, no noticeable gfx glitches, but I constantly loose the grip with my left hand so I have to hold it at the perfect angle. The music is near CD quality having professional remixes of Super Metroid music. The game fits on a 256 MB (1 Gigabit) SDcard. This online multiplayer deathmatch aspect will never be played online.

I tried out some more Elder Scrolls IV by playing it roaming around collecting money. I am a barbarian got a long sword in the sewer so I could level up to the point of killing an Imperial guard so I could loot him for his plated armor and not be seen. He is too skillful for my primitive character level. The draw rate is just as amazing as the PC version of Elder Scrolls III Morrowind. I am on level 2 and I got some swords from the sewer and I ready to fit animals. In Morrowind, if I jumped and looted at the same time, my chances of being seen were minimal. It’s a glitch I read about in a FAQ. This cheat may or may not work in Elder Scrolls IV. The game is great. There is plenty to do. The replay value is immeasurable!

Last week I purchased the other best game for Xbox 360….G.R.A.W. Note that the Xbox, Gamecube, and PS2 versions are all mediocre. I was smart enough to stay away from them. There are many graphical glitches, bad generic textures, robotic movement, poor ally or enemy AI making these them all uninteresting. As you might know this is a tactical first person shooter (ie Battlefield 2.)

I am looking forward to that aircraft simulation Ace Combat Zero: The Belkin War for PS2. Some ways I’d rather have it then Kingdom Hearts II. I haven’t played Ace Combat 5 since it came out last year which doesn’t bother me because I will still buy Ace Combat Zero when it comes out on the last week of April. I save $10. That’s a long time to not spend money I know. I’m sure it plays better then Ace Combat 5. The graphics look amazing for PS2 which is dated. And believe it or not there isn’t nothing for current generation I don’t already have that I want.

Here is what I believe is the worst to best computer list. All I remember is Sega Dreamcast ran on the Sega Naomi with Hitachi SuperH 4 128-bit RISC clocking at 206 MHz and Sega Saturn ran on two 32-bit Hitachi SuperHs and a 32-bit SuperH 2.

Friday, I purchased Metroid Prime Hunters at Wal-Mart because I like Samus Aran. I’ve played this first person shooter (Nintendo’s very first one) and Nintendo done great with the graphics. I took the stylist in the right hand and held the DS while strifing with my left hand. The stylist feels like a mouse cursor driven by a pen. I don’t go as far back to Metroid although I have Metroid Zero Mission for GBA and have Metroid unlocked in Metroid Prime. I like oldschool games which is why I decided to support Nintendo and GBA. I’d use my Gameboy Player for Zero Mission because I can enjoy it on my 25” LCD TV if I ever complete MP Hunters! Frame Rate is really smooth, no noticeable gfx glitches, but I constantly loose the grip with my left hand so I have to hold it at the perfect angle. The music is near CD quality having professional remixes of Super Metroid music. The game fits on a 256 MB (1024 Gigabit) SDcard. This online multiplayer deathmatch aspect will never be played online.

I tried out some more Elder Scrolls IV by playing it roaming around collecting money. I am a barbarian got a long sword in the sewer so I could level up to the point of killing an Imperial guard so I could loot him for his plated armor and not be seen. He is too skillful for my primitive character level. The draw rate is just as amazing as the PC version of Elder Scrolls III Morrowind. I am on level 2 and I got some swords from the sewer and I ready to fit animals. In Morrowind, if I jumped and looted at the same time, my chances of being seen were minimal. It’s a glitch I read about in a FAQ. This cheat may or may not work in Elder Scrolls IV. The game is great. There is plenty to do. The replay value is immeasurable!

Last week I purchased the other best game for Xbox 360….G.R.A.W. Note that the Xbox, Gamecube, and PS2 versions are all mediocre. I was smart enough to stay away from them. There are many graphical glitches, bad generic textures, robotic movement, poor ally or enemy AI making these them all uninteresting. As you might know this is a tactical first person shooter (ie Battlefield 2.)

I am looking forward to that aircraft simulation Ace Combat Zero: The Belkin War for PS2. Some ways I’d rather have it then Kingdom Hearts II. I haven’t played Ace Combat 5 since it came out last year which doesn’t bother me because I will still buy Ace Combat Zero when it comes out on the last week of April. I save $10. That’s a long time to not spend money I know. I’m sure it plays better then Ace Combat 5. The graphics look amazing for PS2 which is dated. And believe it or not there isn’t nothing for current generation I don’t already have that I want.

Here is what I believe is the worst to best computer list. All I remember is Sega Dreamcast ran on the Sega Naomi with Hitachi SuperH 4 128-bit RISC clocking at 206 MHz and Sega Saturn ran on two 32-bit Hitachi SuperHs and a 32-bit SuperH 2.

37.) Gizmondo
36.) Tapwave Zodiac
35.) Atari Jaguar
34.) Commodore Amiga CD
33.) 3DO
32.) Sega CD
31.) Sega Nomad
30.) Sega 32x
29.) Sega Masters
28.) Sega Saturn
27.) Sega Game Gear
26.) Atari ST
25.) Atari 7800
24.) Acorn Archimedes
23.) Apple II
22.) Ngage
21.) Atari Falcon
20.) Commodore 64
19.) Sinclair ZX Spectrum
18.) Commadore Amiga
17.) Neo Geo or Neo Geo CD
16.) Neo Geo Pocket
15.) Sega Genesis
14.) Gameboy
13.) NES
12.) Super Nintendo
11.) PSP
10.) Gamecube
9.) Nintendo DS
8.) Nintendo 64
7.) Gameboy Advance
6.) Sega Dreamcast
5.) Playstation
4.) Xbox
3.) PS2
2.) Xbox 360
1.) PC

This is Ian signing off bored as hell.