Xbox 2 in 2006?

[zurich]

Chap,

MS would rather die than try to have a year long headstart on Sony. The PlayStation hype machine would steam roll it to death. That said, MS will launch within 3-4 weeks of the PS3 (which is smart).

So we'd be looking at:

PS3
2005 March/Q1 Japan launch
2005 November/Q4 North America launch
~sometime 1H 2006 - PAL launch

(I don't think even Sony could launch PS3 in 3 territories in one year)

Xbox2
2005 November/Q4 North America launch
2006 March/Q1 Japan launch
~sometime 1H 2006 - PAL launch

This way MS achieves retail parity with Sony in their 2 most important markets, NA and Europe. As for lagging a year in Japan, well.. I don't think anything short of a Squenix purchase will save the Xbox there

 

[Brimstone]

Nvidia not wanting a X-Box 2 contract is fine as long as they have some way to get the same amount of revenue following a different path. I don't see what else Nvidia could do to replace the revenue from a X-Box 2 contract unless they partner with Nintendo or Sony. I doubt that is going to happen.

Right now they're selling all the FX chips they make, they can't even make enough to meet demand.

This is a little confusing...since Nvidia is fabless, and outsource to TSMC/IBM, shouldn't they be able to ramp up or ramp down production as necessary? My guess is Nvidia is much more flexible in terms of production volume. They don't have production lines that have to justify their operating cost - so they aren't as revenue dependent.

While I do believe that Nvidia will get Xbox2 in the end, I think the final contract will be more favourable to Nvidia this time around - Nvidia can afford to walk way.

I don't know if a contract will be more favourable one way or the other. Microsoft never launched a console before, and Nvidia had never been involved with a console before the X-Box either. They both have probably learned a lot from their experience and communication between both MS and Nv would be much better a second time around. Also Nvidia was working on its first generation of N-Force which probably created more pressure to meet deadlines. Microsoft was probably being distracted by a lot of problems dealing with so many new companies for the first time, and plus the lack of experience had to make things difficult internally and externally.

 

[Paul]

Kutaragi himself just stated that Cell's on time, on task.

Indeed, he said expect a working model AKA what PS3 will be able to do, specs and all march 2004.

I'm ready for the comments "oh but it could be a Cell for a handheld"

BS, when they show cell it's going to be the MOST powerfull version of it, 4 year of anticipation and wondering and they are going to show a cell with just 1 PE first? I don't think so.

So we take this march 2004, add a year to it and this is when a Japanese launch could take place, march 2005 if not a bit earlier.

Than, a USA launch fall 2005.

There is no evidence to support the fact that PS3 is "late" or that Cell is having "problems" as Kutagari the figure head just stated otherwise.

I think everyone should stop reading spong and the inquirer as a news source.

I don't think anything short of a Squenix purchase will save the Xbox there

Xbox 2 will fail in Japan, maybe not by as much but it will still get killed in Japan.

When you have people lining up in the streets for just a upgrade on the PS2 unit.. You wonder what will happen when ps3 comes along, something tells me the ps2 launch will seem like nothing.

 

[Grall]

This current gen, XB never was very appealing to me. Not only is both the console itself and original controller big as a feckin' house (controller: outhouse ) and ugly as hell to boot, it's powered by a weak-ass celery processor too.

Next generation however will most likely be VERY different. Hopefully XB2 has an at least sleek-ISH case with some real design (not just a BOX of black plastic with some tacky green gob of phlegm-like logo stuck to it), and the hardware inside is likely to be very kickass on all fronts, including CPU.

There is little doubt in my mind I will get either Sony's or Nintendo's next offering first, but then, if M$ does a decent job on XB2, I will keep my options open.

Would just be so totally awesome if someone released a proper OS for next-gen units, the thought of having a PS3 with Linux running on it sit on my desk folding@home or such while I'm not playing games is enough to give me wood.

Just kidding about the wood of course, hehe, but why NOT use these pieces of equipment to do useful tasks? They will have awesome computational capabilities all of them. Heck, even if Cell hits just half a Tflop, that's a minimum of 25 times peak that of a fast P4 of today. Certainly nothing to scoff at!

*G*

 

[Josiah]

They might not even want to launch in 2005...if PS2 is still selling strong, they would just be cannibalizing their own sales. If that's the case, they could easily just sit on PS3 until 2006.

 

[function]

This current gen, XB never was very appealing to me. Not only is both the console itself and original controller big as a feckin' house (controller: outhouse ) and ugly as hell to boot, it's powered by a weak-ass celery processor too.

Yeah, the Xbox is ugly and the original controller on the large side, but I wouldn't agree with the "weak ass celery" comment. Weak compared to an Athlon 3200XP w/400mhz FSB? Certainly. Weak compared to what's in the GC and PS2? Certianly not.

And I'm sure you already know it's not a standard Celeron (or P3) in there anyway.

 

[Grall]

Weak celery is definitely true. While it may beat PS2 CPU on integer performance, it certainly doesn't come near in floating point. How it compares to GCs CPU I can't say, considering the differences not just in clock speed, but also register count, L2 cache size, bus speed and general overall architecture as well.

It's probably not that big a difference between these two chips when all things are considered, and the celery is probably a bit faster in most circumstances. What annoyed me though was that M$ went with the celery when they could have had the overall (far) superior AMD Duron powering the box instead. With say an 800MHz chip, the XB would have performed significantly better across the board!

But noo, M$ had to be cheap bastards and ruined their design with an old antique of an Intel chip instead. And the celly in the XB is no different compared to any other celly at the same speed, except its multiplier is halved so it can run at 733MHz with 133MHz bus instead of 66MHz bus.

*G*

 

[zurich]

Grall,

Well for one, the difference between a Celeron at 66mhz FSB and 133mhz FSB is quite large, performance wise. Second, NV2A is able to handle virtually all the graphic chores while MCP does all the sound work, so the load is a lot lighter on the CPU compared to the PS2 (all T&L, DTS encoding) and GC (all non-fixed function T&L). That said, you can't penalize the Xbox design for falling short in the CPU catagory when it has a very capable chip doing its relatively small part (AI, physics, in comparison to PS2/GC).

And btw, the Duron that was to be in the Xbox was rated at 600mhz, not 800mhz.

 

[qwerty2000]

They might not even want to launch in 2005...if PS2 is still selling strong, they would just be cannibalizing their own sales. If that's the case, they could easily just sit on PS3 until 2006.

I wouldnt be surprise if that happened

 

[Grall]

I don't think Sony would push the PS3 back because PS2 still sells well, it wouldn't sell THAT well that they'd move their entire launch campaign. Remember, advertising and such has to be planned months in advance, as does telling software houses when to get their titles ready etc etc.

If PS2 is still selling well, they'll simply launch a cost-reduced "PSTwo" version like they did with the original PS, or simply drop the price to gather up the last few stragglers who don't want or can't afford the newest.


Zurich:
Regarding the XB CPU... Don't forget M$ bumped the celery's speed relatively late in the game before launch when they had to scale back on the XGPU clock. I have no doubt they'd have done the same if the CPU in it had been a Duron.

As for CPU not having to do much, well... *ahem* Not sure I totally agree there. The XGPU doesn't run the 3D engine for example, it just transforms the finished vertices it's sent. Sure it runs LESS than the GCs CPU, and somewhat less than PS2 (remember; VU0 is only a part of the CPU if the programmer so desires, and VU1 is completely independent!). It's still a disappointingly poor choice of a chip though, like finding a V6 in a Ferrari. Sure it's still a fast car, but not what you expect in what is supposed to be a top performer. A Duron would have been better.


*G*

 

[Josiah]

Usually with PCs, upgrading the graphics card usually makes a bigger difference than upgrading the CPU (in regards to gaming performance). It's likely that X-Box would have seen a greater benefit from a higher clocked GPU than from a fast Duron/Athlon (although that would have been nice to).

 

[randycat99]

Forget all this about a 733 Celery. It should have been a 1 GHz Pentium (with the full-size cache, proper). XBox hype is all about out-specsmanship. So settling for the 733 Celery was a cheap-out manuever- plain and simple. You can argue till the sun goes down that it would never make use of it (never mind that no hardcore PC gamer in their right mind ever puts together a system and starts with a 733 Celeron...), but the fact remains, they need not have stopped just at 733. (At the very least if they went with a Celeron, they [the DIY PC gamer] would still be overclocking the piss out of it as part of the deal. Choosing a Celeron was questionable, making it only 733 was just laughable.)

 

[Saem]

Actually, except for physics the majority of work being doe the XCPU is likely integer. That said, the Celery would whoop the Duron, seeing as the poor branch predictor paired with a lower clock rate would have sucked.

Then there is SSE. Regardless of what many think this provides significant speed increases. I wouldn't be suprised if there are a lot of libraries for the XBox that take VERY good advantage of this. Additionally, the XCPU's speed increase was afforded by it's power characteristics.

Besides, much of this AMD could have had the contract is bunk. The heat dissapation figures and the spec of the part clearly show that's all garbage. Not to mention the higher cost.

 

[MfA]

No different from games which run all T&L on the graphics card on the PC, where it didnt beat the Duron clock for clock either.

 

[chaphack]

Weak ass celery or not, Xbox certainly is the king of console graphics today. A 1Ghz Pentium would have blaze the competition even more!

I think it is more laughable for Sony to have a weak ass GS!

 

[randycat99]

Evidently the King is wearing no clothes again.

 

[Vince]

You need to learn when to not post, you killed their conversation (which I enjoyed reading) by dragging it down to little-kid style arguing.

 

[notAFanB]

We shall see....we shall see
I have my sources.

are you serious or are you just trying to priovoke a response here (much like this one).

pls share info.

 

[notAFanB]

Weak ass celery or not, Xbox certainly is the king of console graphics today. A 1Ghz Pentium would have blaze the competition even more!

I think it is more laughable for Sony to have a weak ass GS!

I think their just dicussing whether a faster CPU would have allowed the XBox to evolve into a simple desktop.

your GS comment is irrelevent to this aspect of the discussion, are you looking to turn this into a flamefest?

 

[chaphack]

No.

A 733 celery might not be the hottest CPU back then, but for a game console(versus the competition) coupled with the latest GPU, a 8GB HDD, Network Card, 5.1 Audio and Nforce Mobo, it is excellent, more than enough. I dont see why the usual people are laughing at MS choice for a 733 celery. They are giving you an unbeatable deal at just 299.

Would i want a faster CPU or GPU? Sure i would, but looking at all conditions available, i am pleased with what Xbox has given me. Cant say the same for some other systems.