MS talks Xbox and the future with GameSpot

[aaaaa00]

Even better, what if:

1. xbox 2 supports SMB network shares, so you can put your savegames and downloaded content on your PC via network.

2. xbox 2 supports memory cards. big memory cards.

3. xbox 2 supports any USB2 device that exposes a standard USB mass storage interface. For example, USB hard disk, USB memory key, any thing. Say, even an iPod, or any MP3 player that supports the standard USB mass storage interface?

Not to say I have any clue what they're actually doing, but that would really be the best of all worlds IMHO.

 

[London Geezer]

As it is now, very little is stopping Sony to put a USB2 port in there (which will be there most certainly anyway), then include a CD in the PS3 box for Windows programs/drivers. Like they do with their digital cameras, mp3 players and everything else.

 

[rabidrabbit]

xbox 2 could even support PSP
You could use PSP and MemoryStick to store

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Well, I glanced at the article and decided it was nothing more than corporate hype. Statements like...

I'm actually thrilled. It's interesting, I've been on the team for five and a half years now, and it's the first time I can actually say we won. November, December: 40 percent share in the United States. That's a big deal. We took first place.

2 months with PS2 unavailable, only in one terrirtory, and they call that victory, while all the time losing more and more money...

And Xbox live is doing really well as well. We've had over a million unique people play Halo 2 online, which is outstanding. 69 million hours of gameplay on Halo 2 alone.

As I understand it, 2 months free XBLive! was included. Curious people ducked on, gave it a go, and DIDN'T RENEW THEIR SUBSCRIPTIONS! With talk of Live! being such a wonderful thing, how much do gamers actually WANT online gaming? Not as much as MS and Sony seem to think.

And I like the way he seems to attribute PS2's success solely to an 18 month headstart. Backwards compatibility and the legacy of the PS name had a lot to do with it, as well as many other factors.

And his thoughts about a slimline XB seem a bit manky. A HD is only some 5" long. Improved process would slim and cool the chips and something larger than PS2 new but smaller than PS2 old would certainly be possible. I think it's too near the end of XB's lifecycle in MS's eye, and unlike Sony who'll still provide PS2 along with PS3, I reckon MS will drop XB. Otherwise why haven't they made a Sony-style effort to turn the hardware profitable?

All in all, never go to a head of a company division for a decent interview! They're all full of one-sided propaganda and all you ever get is "We're great and we're going to get better".

 

[London Geezer]

^ ^ Yeah, we've been through that already

 

[Gubbi]

I reckon MS will drop XB.

Probably.

Otherwise why haven't they made a Sony-style effort to turn the hardware profitable?

They can't.

They buy the chips from Intel and Nvidia, these companies dictate price. The cost of the harddisk can't be reduced further.

To lower cost they would need to do a Sony style shrink and fit both the CPU and NV2a on one chip, which they can't (because they don't own the IP for these chips).

This is the lesson they've learned for next generation. They've secured the IP for both the GPU and the CPU, and they'll develop the system ICs themselves (or pay someone to do it). This way they'll be able to do revisions of the system and increase IC integration as process tech progresses.

Items that can't be cost reduced (harddisk) will be sold as add-ons

Cheers
Gubbi

 

[accidentalsuccess]

oh yay. . .so we can have zombie xbox2's 'cause they are connected to windowsMCE's w/ ppl who don't update security.

oh, and M$ leaves wake on lan capability accessible (maybe even on purpose).

integrating client/server is completely retarded before longhorn (or some "real" security for joe n00bie) comes out because of the above and probably 10 other things I'm thinking about but too lazy to type.

/me sighs. . . .

 

[Johnny Awesome]

It'll be fine.

 

[Akumajou]

It's safe to say that if Xbox launched at the same time as PS2, with a little more thought into its engineering, that Sony would still have won, but it would have been a lot closer. I'm thinking instead of 78 million to 18 million, more like 63 million to 33 million.

Lets take a look at XBox 2001's specs of a PIII 733Mhz, 64MB unified ram, N-Force custom chipset, Nvidia Nv2A GPU, 5.1 sound and a 8GB HDD, Dx8.0 api, nic 10/100 then lets imagine it if released in 2000 but what would we get???

PII 450Mhz?
32MB unified ram??
Intel or Nvidia chipset??
Nvidia Nv1A aka a GeForce 2 GPU???
4.1 sound??
4GB HDD???
Dx 7 api??
nic 10/100

Now take into accound that software has to be developed in advance and that the 2000 XBox looks almost like GameCube specs.

Would such a console have posed a problem for PS2, the Sony hype machine and the sequel software?

I don't think that even a year 1999 MS XBox could have stopped the Sony hype machine even if it was a DVD based console and player, but thats just me because I would have taken the same "wait and see" mentality I had with both PS2 and XBox but the general hype fodder is a different beast althogether.

As for XBox 2 probably launching close to PS3 like PSX and Saturn did in 1994 (Japan) and 1995 (USA), MS has no choice but to do it that way, the problem is that the hardware (in MS's case) better have more power to make up for the already established dynasty of sequels alot of people are waiting for with the PS3.

 

[Fodder]

It'll be fine.

You'd think XBoxes connected to Live would be susceptible to the big MS-targeted worms, but I haven't heard anything about it. Do they push out security updates?

 

[arhra]

It'll be fine.

You'd think XBoxes connected to Live would be susceptible to the big MS-targeted worms, but I haven't heard anything about it. Do they push out security updates?

They wouldn't be susceptible to the standard windows-targetted worms, since it doesn't run any of the services they target (IIS, SMB, RPC, etc), but they do push out updates. No idea if any of them have been security-related or not, but it's certainly possible. Every time you connect to Live, it checks to see if there are updates available, and if there are, it won't go online before you download them.

Besides which, Live would be pretty hard to exploit - you can't connect a modded xbox to it, so you can only run published game code, and the frontend to the service is just a network client, not a server, the only servers are the games themselves, and you can't fire up a game server without connecting to and authenticating with Live first. So any exploit would have to rely on a game having bugs in both the client and server portions, such that a client could send malformed data to the server in a way that triggers a buffer overrun or something on the server, and even then, you wouldn't be able to deliver any meaningful payload. the other alternative would be to do some hefty packet-rewriting/spoofing, but that would require a significant amount of technical ability and resources, and would be extremely difficult to automate (the only way i can think of would be to rely on people using xboxes in conjunction with Windows ICS, and use an exploit (or social engineering) to install a kernel level driver on the windows machine that does the packet-rewriting).

Of course, i'm a part-time hobbyist programmer at best, so take that with a grain of salt, but i can't see any obvious holes in my reasoning.