The 360-PC speculation.

They can release patches for whatever software that can make use of the GPU games or otherwise.

 

Sounds a bit impractical if you think about the end result. Not likely to catch on if you ask me.

 

It would only be for a few PC games since it's already a game console. It wouldn't be designed for full blown PC gaming.

 

So what's the point? Why pay the extra price for something that can't really do what a normal PC does, if its main selling point is PC features or games?

 

What's the point? Uh the point is you don't have to buy a PC AND a console.

 

But you obviously do, cause you just said a X360-PC might not be able to do whatever a PC can do, which at this moment in time is a hell of a lot.

 

It should be possible to have both a X86 CPU(dual core),for running Windows and other apps , and a XeCPU in the same box.
A modified Xbox 360 mother board with a X86 CPU,a second pool of RAM(1 GB?) and PCI Express between the Xeno and the main CPU.
This XB360 would have 2 modes:
*PC mode to run as a normal PC
*Xbox 360 mode to run as a XBox 360
In one or two year seach a design should be affordable,shouldn't it ?

 

It seems that Microsoft wants to divide the PC in 2 different platforms. The first is the business and profesional platform and the other is the gaming and multimedia platform.

The business of games on Linux is 0%, the business of games on Mac is ridiculous and Microsoft has the monopoly of the PC gaming platform.

The only that I see is that Microsoft wants the total monopoly of the PC in the homes.

 

No you obviously don't, cause nobody is pointing a gun at your head to force you to play PC games...

I for one don't play PC games...and I'm sure many other people who own PCs don't either.

 

Which brings me back to the question, why would you buy a X360-PC? You don't play PC games. And a X360-PC would play "some" PC games and run "some" PC applications. According to you anyway.

 

You don't make any sense at all...

It makes no difference to people like me that this Xbox 360 PC did play some PC games because people like me won't be playing PC games period. People like me want to play console games and we also want a cheap PC. If we can have both in a single unit then great.

 

The X360 CPU is not binary compatible with x86 processors. Additionally, there may be endian issues (if X360 is big endian and the CPU cannot switch modes). From a development standpoint, porting PC software may be a more significant challenge than mere recompilation due to the use of third-party libraries.

Games developed primarily for the PC market may not be well-tuned or optimized to run on the Xbox 360 platform. Retailers would have to allocate shelf space to yet another platform. If you own a PC that plays X360 games, why would you buy the PC version of the game and then try to download a different binary -- if one was even offered?

 

Pretty cool idea..but I think there is probably 0.00001% chance that MS will make XB360-PC. MS basically entered gaming market to prevent Sony from doing any potential damage to PC market.(PS2 sure looked threathening so MS had to make Xbox..lol) MS wants to separate console market with PC market by all means while Sony wants PS3 to become PC alternative...MS will not make product that will compete with its own share.

 

Why do you think MS is pushing .NET so hard?

 

I once remember hearing that MS's new .Net platform is actually hardware indepedent, ala Java, and I guess can be recompiled at runtime?(which is something I'm sure the x360 cpu would fair well at......yeah right......recompiled at installation maybe? or maybe fat binaries like Apple?)

 

Heh.. read Fafs sig... LOL

 

Yes, it is platform independent, however the game has to written specifically for the .Net runtime. If game developers would right for the .Net framework, the game(using OpenGL) could run on any OS, Hardware, etc. The performance may not be on the same level as a game developed for a specific platform, but the difference is said to be 5-10%. I think this is a worthwhile tradeoff for everyone because you would not be limited to windows anymore for gaming.

 

The .NET performance runtime shouldn't be much different than regular C++ at runtime, if it's compiled during installation or using JIT.

Of course, it's a new environment so there are bugs and quirks, but it's improving quite nicely IMO.

 

A talk I went to about 4 years ago pretty much said that on average, it would be within 5% of native code. A few things are apparently out of reach -- I don't remember what it was, but at the time, there was a built-in quirk to the IL that made self-modifying code impossible. There was something else that escapes my mind right now, but I can't remember everything from 4 years ago. I found it interesting that the one thing that was noticeably faster in IL happened to be memory allocation. But when he explained why, it made sense (relating back to the methods they use for garbage collection and classing-on-use of primitive types).

One of the biggest new pains he mentioned (as if to suggest it supplants "DLL Hell") is that it's perfectly valid to run a single app using multiple versions of the JIT runtime at once (e.g. the executable was updated, but not some of the local DLLs it uses). Actually, that versioning applies all the same to system libraries that you might use, but it's less of a performance issue there than using multiple versions of the JIT.

 

Some food for thought, but after nearly everyone here at this site has just got done assessing how a PPE/X360 CPU will be "horrid" at general processing, what makes you think it will pull off realtime compiling or even one-time compiling jobs with any sort of practicality? (This is not to say it couldn't be done, but they may need to rename it as "Just-In-Time-for-Dinner" or something, and it becomes fairly obvious that a conventional PC that you already have will do the job far better, anyway) I think that is about as much a long shot as it would be running the latest Windows OS over VirtualPC on a CPU that is supposed to eat it when it comes to branchy/spaghetti code. Seriously folks!

I'm just as curious about a Linux-based PS3 computer, fwiw. However, that doesn't sit well with the prevailing understanding that general processing is as hampered as some here expect it will be. I believe this is one of those things where you can't have it both ways. Either the general processing issue isn't as bad as we thought it was or any of these console-based home computers will turn out mediocre at best for actual desktop work.