X-Box hacker interview

[BenSkywalker]

If you are running a business and have so much capital at your disposal that your focus is not on generating profit but merely on establishing market leverage and driving out competitors, is that really aneconomically viable practice?

In the abstract sense I agree with that, but it isn't quite so simple. First off, MS is looking to have a record year for profit this year, the XBox isn't hurting their bottom line very much at the moment. Even assuming that it was, the console market last year was ~$20Billion on a global basis. A viable question is if it is worth it to lose a few billion short term for a shot at taking a good chunk of one of the largest and fastest growing technology sectors. It is within the realm of possibility, however unlikely, that everyone could stop buying XBoxs and the entire venture would turn out to be a rather sizeable net loss for them. I think the more likely scenario is that they will continually inch forward in market share in Europe and, although slower still, Japan with them continuing to make strong gains in the US market.

MS has comitted to $3Billion in write offs for the XBox by '04. If they reach an installed base of 25Million(which is likely quite a bit lower then what it will be) with a tie in of 6(again, likely quite conservative) by that point they would have made back $1.5Billion if all of their titles were third party(which we know they are not) and that is assuming they don't make a cent on Live!. Going in to next generation they would have proven that they are a player and will be ready to launch a console along side Sony which will take out two major obstacles they had this generation.

Long term I think they are making good business decissions in terms looking at their own market, which is facing very slow growth ATM, and their share holders. This gen is likely to see ~200Million units installed base. If MS can grab 20% of that, which I think most people would agree is reasonable, they could break even on the XBox while building a considerable amount of market and mind share. Long term it is likely money very well spent.

Our economy has ballooned to enormous prportions because people are spending money they don't have. Everyone is moving faster and faster towards a big brick wall.

The statistics you quoted are a bit misleading as they don't take into account assets which offset the overwhelming majority of the debt figure(actually, taken as a whole assets win by a huge margin). As of right now I'm "in debt" due to my mortgage although I'm actually ahead of the curve a bit right now which is likely the case with a large portion of the population.

 

[archie4oz]

Real quick- what is the laymen's definition for "render to texture"?

Dynamic texturing... Basically rendering an image then creating a texture from that image. It's actually quite handy (a good example would be constantly changing reflections in mirrors, e.g. car mirrors in racing games) but can be a real performance bottleneck. However the PS2 happens to be very adept at doing it quickly.

It's usefull for all sorts of effects like imposters, anything than needs feedback, dynamic cube/environment/mip-map generation, dynamic normal map generation, volumetric fog, procedural texturing, image processing (handy for NPR), physical simulation (atmospherics, DOF, blurs, etc.)...

In case you haven't noticed, it's standard operating procedure in console markets.

Actually it's not, and it's relatively new. Neither Nintendo, SEGA, Magnavox, Atari, Coleco, SNK, 3DO subscribed to that model. At least not voluntarily...

 

[randycat99]

OK, thanks for the info. Sounds like very useful, powerful stuff. From the things you described, it seems like those kinds of effects are quite in force in the latest NFS for PS2 (from what I have experienced while playing it).

 

[marconelly!]

The cost (being end result) means little to me. I would gladly pay twice as much if the end result of an Xbox was a small, stylish package vs what they made.

Why?

Why do people like pretty women? Logically, the ugly ones have just the same 'performance' in every way.

Would you wish Eifell's tower, Louvre, Taj Mahal, Hermitage, Smithsonian, Kremlin, St. Basil Cathedral... have never been made?

Perhaps you would rather have the world where every single building looks like a dome, being the most efficient and resistant design?

I know I wouldn't.

 

[randycat99]

I'd like it if they cloned Charlize Theron a million times for the world population. No, better make it a billion.

 

[Steve Dave Part Deux]

I hear what you're saying, but I'm saying that people could not turn the majority of their assets into cash since most are techically the property of creditors.

 

[mech]

The cost (being end result) means little to me. I would gladly pay twice as much if the end result of an Xbox was a small, stylish package vs what they made.

Why?

Why do people like pretty women? Logically, the ugly ones have just the same 'performance' in every way.

Would you wish Eifell's tower, Louvre, Taj Mahal, Hermitage, Smithsonian, Kremlin, St. Basil Cathedral... have never been made?

Perhaps you would rather have the world where every single building looks like a dome, being the most efficient and resistant design?

I know I wouldn't.

Mate... do you look at your console while you're playing it? Mine sits hidden away anyway. 99% of people out there wouldn't want to pay double the cost just so it was smaller... trying to compare a console's looks to a building's or woman's is a bit weird.

 

[randycat99]

Actually, being a compact package is somewhat enviable. If it is small enough or can stand upright to fit in a non-standard space, that is a good thing. If it is as big as a VCR, but isn't even a truly stackable component, that can be a problem. Of course, if you have it sitting out in the middle of the floor, it probably doesn't matter at all.

Of course, having cool LED colors is a bonus, too!

 

[PC-Engine]

Of course, having cool LED colors is a bonus, too!

My DC has a clear shell and I replaced the orange LED with a white LED 8)

 

[Legion]

Why does it seem that everytime some one with some "credibility" mocks the xbox kooks come out of the wood works to join in? i am not trying to disparage people from making honest complaints against the xbox, but comments as "uma is inferior" and "steaming pile of dung" are nothing more than ammunition for people wanting to take pot shots. I have noticed that a number of people in here have already brought to light that though the xbox may not have the theoretical statistics of the other systems in various fields it still vastly outperforms them regardless. Why doesn't anyone seem to address this? Yippie the GC has extremely low THEORETICAL memory latency on its 1t-sram. However one can see in a number of benchmarks (ie EA's) the Xbox beats the GC's performance by a wide margin. The same holds true for the PS2.

darkblu

stop picking on m$, you're hurting xbox fans' feelings, for g's sake! ..and providing good humour for the rest of us

Thats a bit asinine don't you think? I favor Ben's response to this kind of nonsense:

When he can point to a console that outpowers the XBox by a clear margin he can start to talk and have some credibility on the subject.

How is uma inferior? what is it inferior to? The system used within the xbox performs at least as well as the PS2 and its dynamic structure does in terms of noticable latency issues. Not a single developer here has agreed with this statement Bunnie made. Bunnie is simplying promoting ideological bs. Yes it is possible to make a rig with lower memory latency then consoles on todays market but does that automatically make their architectural concepts inferior? Bunnie doesn't even address the issues of real world performance.

The entire Xbox console is unoptimized for gaming.

WTF. And yet its stomps the other two in actual performance. Go figure. Imagine if it were optimized..... . This seems more like a compliment then anything else .

latency is 10x worse than the competition

Of course. In bunnie's world 10ns is in fact 1/10 of 30ns. Silly people, didn't any of you know that? Damn xb0xer fanb0ys. Xb0x is the sux0rs.

I would not use a standard PC architecture, and go for a more
integrated, lower-cost design.

Who's a jigga what? Damn Nvidia and their nforce nonintegrated boards...it all came from the xbox you know. Nonintegration is the key to the xbox's lack of performance...UMA is the best example of the xbox's nonintegration that bunnie provides. And whats with that NV2A? YEAH....it doesn't even have an AGP slot....

and that the available bandwidth is being split among the processor, video....

.

at 640x480 there shouldn't be much of a problem. But, then again it is relative to the game and various situations. I could have sworn we've had this discussion before somewhere else.

....and audio.

and we all know that the audio unit is a center for mass bandwidth saturation.

 

[Mr. Angry Pants]

Why do people like pretty women? Logically, the ugly ones have just the same 'performance' in every way.

Would you wish Eifell's tower, Louvre, Taj Mahal, Hermitage, Smithsonian, Kremlin, St. Basil Cathedral... have never been made?

Perhaps you would rather have the world where every single building looks like a dome, being the most efficient and resistant design?

I know I wouldn't.

This is the very problem Bunnie's detractor's have been touching up on: We're talking about a video game console. Not a work of art. I want my electronics--my practical items--to perform as best as possible. I don't care if my video game console looks like an over-grown VCR so long as it gets the job done as cheaply and effectively as possible. The pretty lady analogy (besides exposing how shallow we all are ) is absurd. Are you going to sleep with your Xbox?

Oh, and whoever thinks the PS2 or even the Gamecube are 'pretty' is a nutcase. The PS2 looks like a space heater and the Gamecube is.. a cube.

 

[wazoo]

This is the very problem Bunnie's detractor's have been touching up on: We're talking about a video game console. Not a work of art. I want my electronics--my practical items--to perform as best as possible. I don't care if my video game console looks like an over-grown VCR so long as it gets the job done as cheaply and effectively as possible. The pretty lady analogy (besides exposing how shallow we all are ) is absurd. Are you going to sleep with your Xbox?

That is the main point of Sony achievement in console marketing. When casual people think about sony console, they think in terms of "cool", "hype" and so on. Rereleasing the ps as the psone was marketing genius. I know people who bought the playstation twice (the second being the ps1), just because it looks so cool and cute (maybe not cute, but you got the idea). A console is not a fridge, you care about its look, especially when you do not understand anythink about its inner working (99% of the population).

I agree that the lady analogy was a bit hummm

 

[-tkf-]

I'd like it if they cloned Charlize Theron a million times for the world population. No, better make it a billion.

Just one... for me, and she shouldn't tell my girlfriend

 

[-tkf-]

I want my electronics--my practical items--to perform as best as possible. I don't care if my video game console looks like an over-grown VCR so long as it gets the job done as cheaply and effectively as possible. The pretty lady analogy (besides exposing how shallow we all are ) is absurd. Are you going to sleep with your Xbox?

Oh, and whoever thinks the PS2 or even the Gamecube are 'pretty' is a nutcase. The PS2 looks like a space heater and the Gamecube is.. a cube.

So while you don't care about looks you still bash the PS2 and Gamecube?

I guess Microsoft knew who they targeted with the X-Box, single 20-40 year old pc nerds. Surely they didn't expect their target audience to have a girlfriend or wife with that design

 

[BenSkywalker]

I hear what you're saying, but I'm saying that people could not turn the majority of their assets into cash since most are techically the property of creditors.

That's true but the problem with the oft quoted statistics is they assume that debt as a whole not factoring in assets at all. If you have $100,000 left in principal on your mortgage and your house is worth $200,000 then as a statistic you would be $100K in debt despite having the ability to quickly turn that around in to $25K(perhaps $50K or even the full $100K depending on the market conditions in your area at the time).

Perhaps you would rather have the world where every single building looks like a dome, being the most efficient and resistant design?

My PC externals are the shell of a case. No sides on it, ever. Your comparisons don't work because what we are talking about is a tool used to play what matters, the games.

Do you care if the hammers used in making the Eifell tower were attractive? Should anyone?

 

[Fafalada]

For example drawing a shadow projection ( rmw incrementing or decrementing a stencil buffer ) will run faster on PS2 than Xbox, as the Xbox is likely to be constrained by external memory bandwidth

Of course stencil volume operations have more then just bandwith advantage on PS2 - as a color only operation they are rendered at full 2.4gpix, as well as they can be a single geometry pass.

Also render-to-texture starts becoming your friend, and you start getting really creative with it.

As well as 'frame/z buffer' math so to speak, which is basically an extension of render->texture ops. Helps to work around some of those missing rasterizer features

Ben,

Your comparisons don't work because what we are talking about is a tool used to play what matters, the games.

You shouldn't leave yourself that wide open.
Do you care if your car looks cool/attractive?
Does anyone?
And yet, it's just a Tool we use to drive around...

 

[Tagrineth]

Real quick- what is the laymen's definition for "render to texture"?

When you're playing a game like Unreal Tournament (just a quick example), all the graphic data is processed, rendered, then sent to the monitor as a final image that you, the player, sees.

So the process is triangles created -> static textures applied -> rasterisation -> final image.

Render-to-texture changes the process slightly... instead of rendering what's in the viewport and sending it to your display, it renders whatever the dev wants (often data for a reflection or something) and saves that as a brand new, dynamically created texture for use in the next frame

 

[marconelly!]

We're talking about a video game console. Not a work of art. I want my electronics--my practical items--to perform as best as possible. I don't care if my video game console looks like an over-grown VCR so long as it gets the job done as cheaply and effectively as possible.

It sits in your living room. You are looking at it every day. If it's good enough for you, that's fine.

My line of reasoning is - I pay for something once (and, usually, pretty soon forget how much money it was) and then it sits there for years to come - right there in my living room. I'd much prefer it to look nice, then.

The pretty lady analogy (besides exposing how shallow we all are) is absurd. Are you going to sleep with your Xbox?

Are you going to sleep with ugly lady or with the pretty one? Why? Is pretty lady a 'work of art'? Is the ugly one somehow defunct and unable to perform sexual activities?

Everyone likes prettyness, there is nothing superficial or shallow about it. It's in our genetic programming as many experiments have proven.

Oh, and whoever thinks the PS2 or even the Gamecube are 'pretty' is a nutcase. The PS2 looks like a space heater and the Gamecube is.. a cube.

Again, your opinion. I very much like how PS2 looks.

My PC externals are the shell of a case. No sides on it, ever. Your comparisons don't work because what we are talking about is a tool used to play what matters, the games.

That's fine - it tells me that you value functionality over everything else. But as Faf said, you then probably don't care how the car you drive looks, how you dress, is your house and garden complete slump. Because, why would you? Those are just tools and serve the purpose anyways.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

The appearance of the console matters. The Xbox is too big for some consumers right now. Microsoft knows this. Wait until 2003 to see what they do about it.

Sure there are many people who don't think the Xbox looks "cool" right now, but Microsoft can just hit that demographic on the second pass. If you want an elegant Xbox just be a little more patient. 8)

Btw, I don't know if you agree with me or not Ben, but I figure that run-rate is the only thing that really matters long-term. As long as MS can weather the first 2-3 years, they should be able to capture 20% of the market on a run-rate basis. They should be able to get to 30-35% by 2005. That has to worry Sony a little bit.

My personal theory is that Sony really only has one shot at stopping MS from grabbing 30+% of the market and this window is closing fairly fast. As soon as the Xbox has the same brand awareness as the PS2, Microsoft money will take care of the rest.

They're learning from Sony's biggest mistake - their inability to create many break-away 1st party success stories and their over-reliance on 3rd party support.

Nintendo has Mario, Zelda, Pokemon and other huge franchises.

Sony really only has Gran Turismo. That's not very good for 7 years in the business.

Microsoft already has Halo and Project Gotham as potentially huge franchises + the purchase of Rare will surely bring more. Microsoft's sports lineup is actually good (7.5/10 caliber) as opposed to 989 studios (5/10 caliber) and they should be able to go it alone on sports with Xbox 2.

I think it's crazy that Sony has been in the business for 7 years and has very little first party success to talk about. Long-term they're going to wish they had more than Twisted Metal and Gran Turismo.

 

[marconelly!]

Microsoft knows this. Wait until 2003 to see what they do about it.

I hope so, but the guy who works for MS gaming division, and frequents GA board (Oxygen) has already said they don't have any plans to do that, as far as he's aware.