XBOX

just out of curiosity where in europe?
microsoft is too greedy not to sell it world wide.
just give them a little time to reconfigure and manufacture the hardware for your european power configurations.
in response to question 2: anything with a DVD drive can surely read a regular CDR, how could it not?

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So, I am wondering if the console is localised ?

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Norwegian XBOX importers claim that the XBOX is localized in two zones: 'Asia' and 'Rest of the world'.

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2: anything with a DVD drive can surely read a regular CDR, how could it not?

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Not true.


Edited by - meZmo on November 18, 2001 1:45:05 PM

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Original post by SKSlayer
I am also willing to develop for the XBOX (not paying their SDK), so, does anybody knows if they can read CDR ? Or if there is a way for devs like you and me to work on it?

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Emphasis not paying their SDK...

How, pray tell, would that help you (other than developing for curiosity''s sake in your own home)? If you don''t purchase and license an SDK and you develop and distribute material for the XBOX, you''re going to have the biggest lawsuit (against you) you''ve ever come across in your entire life - and this being Microsoft, they will fuck you over.

But, if you just want to learn to program the XBox so you can show potential employers that you have the skill and experience, give MS a call. They were freely providing information on how to set up a PC to behave like an XBox (under NDA, naturally), so you could do that without the whole "I''m spiting the Man" rhetoric.

Good luck.

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They were freely providing information on how to set up a PC to behave like an XBox (under NDA, naturally).

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Unfortunately, that program has ended. (http://dev.xbox.com/dev/independent.htm) Hope it will return at a future date. (If that was the one you were thinking about, Oluseyi)

Edited by - meZmo on November 18, 2001 1:49:05 PM

Well, it''s like for my own coding purposes, I''ll buy a SDK if I come out with something commercialisable.

But, the CDR question is quite important for me, cuz, look, if I want to share progs like that with friends

MS could have made an antipiracy system that blocks copied games, but not non copyrighted CDR''s. But, did they do that ?

OpenGL all the way - GameCube all the way.

XBox :
a. Is based on Kernel32, meaning it crashes
b. Is based on DirectX, which is harder than OpenGL (GameCube uses OGL)
c. Has parental control :-), and they say GameCube is for kids (which it is NOT -> Eternal Darkness, all the Resident Evil's exclusive, Too Human, Duke Nukem Forever...)
d. Is, according to Microsoft, "a stripped down PC" (they said it themselves).
e. Runs on a 733Mhz 32-bit Pentium III, which is inferior to GameCube's 485Mhz CPU because it has 4 times less on-board cache. (do the math : 485000 times 256K is superior to 733000 times 64K)
f. Has loading that lasts for ages (Oddworld -> 3 minutes)
g. Has the worst controller I've seen since the Virtual Boy (I've played with it, it just plain sucks)
h. Despite all it's downfalls costs 300$, that's 100$ more than GameCube


Edited by - Terran Marine on November 19, 2001 7:04:29 AM

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f. Has loading that lasts for ages (Oddworld -> 3 minutes)

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Really? Cool, it'll be like the old days with a C64!

Edited by - Rudan on November 19, 2001 7:12:28 AM

Hey where can i get game cube SDK?
Thanks

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Original post by Terran Marine
a. Is based on Kernel32, meaning it crashes
b. Is based on DirectX, which is harder than OpenGL (GameCube uses OGL)
c. Has parental control :-), and they say GameCube is for kids (which it is NOT -> Eternal Darkness, all the Resident Evil''s exclusive, Too Human, Duke Nukem Forever...)
d. Is, according to Microsoft, "a stripped down PC" (they said it themselves).
e. Runs on a 733Mhz 32-bit Pentium III, which is inferior to GameCube''s 485Mhz CPU because it has 4 times less on-board cache. (do the math : 485000 times 256K is superior to 733000 times 64K)
f. Has loading that lasts for ages (Oddworld -> 3 minutes)
g. Has the worst controller I''ve seen since the Virtual Boy (I''ve played with it, it just plain sucks)
h. Despite all it''s downfalls costs 300$, that''s 100$ more than GameCube

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a. The crashes were caused by using old buggy libraries. That issues been fixed.
b. xBox has OpenGL support
c. Turn parental control off if you dont like it
d. That makes it a lot easier for developers to develop (funnily enough) for.
e. Dont compare cpu''s based on mhz and cache sizes. Instead compare them on the number of operations they can perform (on average) each second. A 100mhz 486 wont do as many as a 100mhz pentium, and a 450mhz P2 wont do as many as a 450mhz P3.
f. Loading times will vary from game to game.
g. Agreed, those controls must hurt the hand.
h. Cant argue with logic like that. That alone will sell more gamecubes than features of the system. That, and the fact that nintendo have been in the industry for a LONG time and really know their shit.

a. It also crashed at E3. They said it wasn't final hardware.
Now it's old libraries...

Maybe later it'll be because of a bug in DirectX 8.1... I'm not convinced, and Kernel32 is known for crashing.

b. The official XBox SDK only supports DirectX 8 : the last version of OpenGL that Microsoft released was 1.1, and that was years ago. Techincally XBox could support it, but Microsoft, in their attempt to make DirectX the leading API, undermined any possible OpenGL support. There's no way they're gonna make an OpenGL-compatible SDK.

c. About Parental control, it's not a matter of turning it off. Microsoft ran their mouths saying that Nintendo's target audience was kids. So putting parental control is a stupid move after what they said.

d. A "stripped down PC" is just as easy to develop for as a full-blown PC. It's a matter of what features the developer wants to use.

e. It shows you did your research. The number of operations per second DEPENDS ON THE CACHE AND FREQUENCY : it's the number of data processed in a second : that means that it's the amount of times that the data in the cache is processed per second. So in GameCube's case, the processor will do 256K at 485MHz, meaning 256K every 1/485 of a second. The Xbox's CPU will do 64K every 1/733 of a second. So if multiplying the cache by the frequency indicates the performance.

f. Loading times may vary form game to game, but for the moment every single piece of XBox software has between 1 and 3 minutes of loading, whereas GameCube has 0, nada, zilch loading time.

Edited by - Terran Marine on November 19, 2001 8:33:35 AM

Edited by - Terran Marine on November 19, 2001 8:34:18 AM

Edited by - Terran Marine on November 19, 2001 8:35:22 AM

a. Win9x kernel is known for crashing, xbox runs on the NT kernel, as does win2k and XP.. and I have no issues with those crashing at all. Reports from vendors using the new demo discs are that they arent crashing anymore. Funny that.

d. A full blown pc you have to worry about being compatible with a wide range of hardware. Xbox you dont.

e. The cache holds temporary data and saves time that would otherwise be used by the cpu fetching the data from RAM. An athlon 1.2ghz with 512k l2 cache will still outperform a P3 1.2ghz with 1meg of l2 cache, yet going by what youre saying the p3 shoudl kick the Athlons ass. Its not the cache, its the way the cpu has been designed, and how its designed has been implemented.


I wasnt taken a personal hit against you, but that seems to be what youve taken against me with that ''Shows you did your research'' crap. Is that what it comes to when youre wrong? You dont want to say that you were wrong so you try and insult the other person? I find it rather weak that you would come to that.

I don''t see it the way you all do. I''ve owned a sega genesis, then a n64, then a playstation, and now i''m looking for a new system. Sega was good at the time. N64 was even better. Playstation was good too. But now its like space age. Think about it, we can watch movies in better picture on our video game consoles than on our video player.

I have nothing against game cube but it doesn''t look much different than the n64 and i''m deffinetly not gonna buy it because of the "non-differences". If they would have made it look a little less "nintendo-ee", maybe i would.

I was really liking xbox and i still do whether microsoft did only change the look of a computer. Hey, arn''t we all computer people anyway?

PS2 looks very consistant. It doesn''t have very many problems and I don''t know why you never talk about it anymore. The games are great. Seems fine to me, why do you all automatically cancel it out and only compare gamecube and xbox.

Looks don''t count, you might as well stick an Atari under a Playstation 2 hood.

Right now the GameCube has immense support from developers, I know, I''ve been researching the game market for 2 years now.

devinitively!

Buy a console because of its specs, its games or maybe because you like the company, but never only because it looks nice!
BTW. the visual difference (of the console not the games) between N64 and GameCube are really big, so what the heck did you mean?


Yesterday we still stood at the verge of the abyss,
today we''re a step onward!

I''m laughing just looking at the posts. I didn''t mean the external design. I meant the look of the games. They havn''t got much more better in graphics.

Perhaps you should write what you think so we can understand it...


Yesterday we still stood at the verge of the abyss,
today we''re a step onward!

Xbox sucks.... I just read an article about it ... it seems they use a celeron (66Mhz FSB) in this "optimal configured PC" ... If the OS is really based on Kernel32 we might be able to create some flashy and shiny blue screens.

"My software as no bugs ! It just creates random new features.."

Anyone knows why the fuck it will cost much more here in Europe?. I think it is somethig like 330$ in USA and ~500 in Europe!

What the hells!

WTF!

Thats maddening!

£500 is $703.881 ( thats as precise as I''m going )

WTF IS UP WITH THAT!

its like almost two and a half times as expensive!

No fecking way am I paying 250% of what you guys pay just cause I live in the UK!

BAH... BLAAAAAAAAH
I hate Micro$ux.. they have so much money and they still insist on milking the public for everything it has.... IDIOTS... thats why their reputation is going down the shnitter and people are moving away from M$ products.

*wanders off severely pished off*

(note...... fecking, pished and schnitter were NOT typos. I just hate those *''s it puts through "certain" words).

~Cobra~