Nice to finally hear some new rumors on the hardware. Here's my response if anybody is interested:
CPU and GPU specs don't seem to differ at all from previous specs.
RAM is at what I was expecting. Anybody expecting more(not merely wanting more) are delusional.
DVD drive instead of HD-DVD is not too suprising. I was hopeful for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, but timeline doesn't seem to favor it. Weird theory? Maybe they release a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray version in 2006 to compete with PS3? I agree it would only serve HD movies, but personally I don't think games need all that space anyway. Plus, I can see MS doing this to set the LCD(least common denominator) that game devlopers have to support on cross platform games. This could limit the size of PS3 games and thus limit it's appeal to end-users. PS2 had the LCD for hardware specs this gen and it definitely kept the Xbox hardware from being truly tapped in cross platform games.
Hard drive info is interesting. 2gb seems low for caching. Xbox1 supports (3) 750mb partitions, which equals 2.25gb. Maybe they just rounded the number? If so, then I could definitely see them offering backward compatiblity only with the hard drive add-on. Hopefully intro size is at least 4gb.
Camera info was strange. I don't see anywhere in there that says its standard equipment or built-in. Considering Video Chat is only available in Japan currently I could see them waiting to offer it as add-on with the launch of Xbox2 in the USA this holiday. Probably will work on both consoles too.
Sound chip(or lack thereof) is interesting, but after some thinking I'm starting to see why. Although everybody talks about Microsoft having problems with NVIDIA over pricing of the GPU, the chief complaint was supposedly with the MCP(south bridge). It provided for Dolby Digital encoding/decoding, networking and USB communication. This time around Microsoft is enlisting SiS instead. Maybe they have decided in order to cut costs that the CPU or GPU can handle those tasks? Could prevent Microsoft from putting all it's eggs in basket and allow them to shop around for another south bridge if the offering from SiS is no longer good for them. The chip probably would only need to provide wired/wireless networking and USB 1.0/2.0 support. Though looking back at the leaked diagram and leaked notes, it seems that the south bridge was also touted as supporting XMA decoding and XAudio(same as X3DAudio mentioned today?).
HDTV stuff seems to agree with previous speculation(720p default). Although I was expecting them to go full-screen for 480i/p instead of widescreen. I understand that would require some kind pan-and-scan functionality in the game or the hardware, but figured that would be more desirable than widescreen games on standard TVs. Anti-aliasing on 720p also seems questionable, but who knows.
All-in-all looking to meet most of my speculations, but I understand things are not nailed down and any of it can change before it's announced. Can't wait to hear the official word from Microsoft.
Tommy McClain
CPU and GPU specs don't seem to differ at all from previous specs.
RAM is at what I was expecting. Anybody expecting more(not merely wanting more) are delusional.
DVD drive instead of HD-DVD is not too suprising. I was hopeful for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, but timeline doesn't seem to favor it. Weird theory? Maybe they release a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray version in 2006 to compete with PS3? I agree it would only serve HD movies, but personally I don't think games need all that space anyway. Plus, I can see MS doing this to set the LCD(least common denominator) that game devlopers have to support on cross platform games. This could limit the size of PS3 games and thus limit it's appeal to end-users. PS2 had the LCD for hardware specs this gen and it definitely kept the Xbox hardware from being truly tapped in cross platform games.
Hard drive info is interesting. 2gb seems low for caching. Xbox1 supports (3) 750mb partitions, which equals 2.25gb. Maybe they just rounded the number? If so, then I could definitely see them offering backward compatiblity only with the hard drive add-on. Hopefully intro size is at least 4gb.
Camera info was strange. I don't see anywhere in there that says its standard equipment or built-in. Considering Video Chat is only available in Japan currently I could see them waiting to offer it as add-on with the launch of Xbox2 in the USA this holiday. Probably will work on both consoles too.
Sound chip(or lack thereof) is interesting, but after some thinking I'm starting to see why. Although everybody talks about Microsoft having problems with NVIDIA over pricing of the GPU, the chief complaint was supposedly with the MCP(south bridge). It provided for Dolby Digital encoding/decoding, networking and USB communication. This time around Microsoft is enlisting SiS instead. Maybe they have decided in order to cut costs that the CPU or GPU can handle those tasks? Could prevent Microsoft from putting all it's eggs in basket and allow them to shop around for another south bridge if the offering from SiS is no longer good for them. The chip probably would only need to provide wired/wireless networking and USB 1.0/2.0 support. Though looking back at the leaked diagram and leaked notes, it seems that the south bridge was also touted as supporting XMA decoding and XAudio(same as X3DAudio mentioned today?).
HDTV stuff seems to agree with previous speculation(720p default). Although I was expecting them to go full-screen for 480i/p instead of widescreen. I understand that would require some kind pan-and-scan functionality in the game or the hardware, but figured that would be more desirable than widescreen games on standard TVs. Anti-aliasing on 720p also seems questionable, but who knows.
All-in-all looking to meet most of my speculations, but I understand things are not nailed down and any of it can change before it's announced. Can't wait to hear the official word from Microsoft.
Tommy McClain
