XBox 360: Champion or Thorn?

Here's to IBM's magnum opus, and its $800 eBay pricetag . 3.2 GHz, 3 processing cores, insanely powerful GPU. But how much money is Microsoft losing on the system itself, and how much revenue will its games really bring in over the holidays? None of the games look extraordinarily impressive. Quake is a cult favorite, and Call of Duty 2/Perfect Dark Zero are sure to bring in SOME of the FPS crowd, but when it's all said and done these games will be dust in the wind as soon as something big hits. The question is: before Christmas, will it? Will Microsoft's gaming platform survive the winter without adequate games to feed to its engine? Fortunately for MS, Kingdom Hearts 2 has been delayed yet again, so that destroys Sony's hopes of doing ANYTHING significant over these holidays in the gaming realm. Zelda isn't due out for quite awhile either. What are your thoughts?

On another note, if XBox 360 can employ a 3.2 GHz, tri-core CPU, why can't a PowerMac?

I'd guess too expensive to cool it or the components to support the tri-core in a computer are too expensive.

I've looked at the pics of the inside on engadget it looks like a massive cooling system.

Umm, because those 3 cores would be useless on your Mac? The fact that it's PPC processor doesn't mean it's a G5!!! It's not. It's highly optimized processor for gaming tasks (+multimedia) only. It has many drawbacks and therefore can't even be compared to G5.

Regarding games - there's going to be Dead or Alive 4, which looks amazing and is guaranteed to be really popular. Other than that, there's plenty of stuff on IGN... I'm sure xbox will have enough great games before Christmas.

Mod Note: Moved because this has nothing to do with Apple.

I'm impressed with MS gettin the X-Box out first but that's about the only thing I'm impressed about so far. I've seen clips of madden 06 for the 360 they look pretty spiffy but it drive me to plop down 400 bucks (because I want the wireless controllers and such). I think I'll wait till everything is out, meaning I'll wait till the PS3 drops, which I've read is suppose to be the sexier and stronger of the two systems. That doesn't mean too much since the 360 will have about 6 months of actual games down the pipeline by the time the PS3 comes out and they're dropping Halo 3 the same day.

In short: There's nothing that the 360 is showing me right now that makes me feel I'm missing out. Unless you HAVE to get one, I'd wait.

Tiranis said:

Umm, because those 3 cores would be useless on your Mac? The fact that it's PPC processor doesn't mean it's a G5!!! It's not. It's highly optimized processor for gaming tasks (+multimedia) only. It has many drawbacks and therefore can't even be compared to G5.

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How would it be useless? We have a four core machine out now. What sort of drawbacks? Would it not have been possible for Apple to have included one of these processors, alongside a "normal" PPC processor, like a dual core G5, in answer to all the "Apple sucks for gaming" issues?

Alright, so all you kiddos out there who are hardcore nerd gamers, your forgetting the one game that kept xbox from sinking. Halo. I bought xbox for halo, i did not even buy another game for almost a year after I got it. When halo2 came out, xbox sales spiked again, and halo1 sales spiked again. There is no other game I have ever played for more than a week and not gotten my fill of it. (I play about 2 hours a day max.. between school, parties, girlfriend(s), and workouts). Halo can be played over and over (online of course, single player is a waste of time). When Halo3 is released maybe 2006 probably 2007 or more. 360 sales will spike hopefully the price tag will be lowered. I will not buy that console until halo3 is released, though The New Ghost Recon looks hellza cool.

Ooh, Graphite, you make a good point. The only reason I bought an xbox was for Halo. and when Halo 2 came out i had to get the limited collectors (which was okay, it wasent anything special). The online thing was the thing that got me hooked for so many months, then, when you stop for awhile youll get back into it as if the online the just came out. Im thinking of buying the 360 for christmas and when the PS3 comes out ill get that too because theres a game i want.

The processor in the xbox is built for a very specific purpose: playing games. It's not necessarily suitable for, say, searching through a huge gene-sequence database or running a dozen different applications simultaneously. It's not even completely compatible with the G3/G4/G5 line.

If Apple were to use that processor, it would require re-writing some portions of the OS and applications. To be faster than the G5, applications would have to be optimized for the new processor. It would be almost as much work as switching to Intel.

It's like comparing a Formula 1 race car to a street-legal sports car.

Not talking about the fact that it wouldn't be nearly as fast for the tasks you do on your Mac as G5s are, simply because it does not contain stuff like Altivec and much more. It's highly optimized cpu for only ONE task. And, no, it wouldn't be possible to include it along with current G5s... for various reasons.

I say thorn...

Ooooh, Microsofts in trouble.


I know, some of you may say "that's only a forum post," but look at the links.

Not to mention of the 18 launch games, 11 are available on other consoles, 15 are franchise games, and there are 7 sports games.

Granted, it destroys some others I've seen (remember the PS2 launch anyone?), and it's a big improvement over the original XBox launch, it's just... not what I expected I guess... it was a bit of a dissapointment.

It CRASHED on me and returned it today...the "Ring of Light" turned RED and no response from it.

It was fun eventhough I only played it for 10 hours...!!!

I woke up 5 in the morning to get my hands on this and I won't even bother withe the next shipments until Microsoft responds to these "crashes."

I have 2 360 games here, so I will pick it up.

i-VTEC said:

It CRASHED on me and returned it today...the "Ring of Light" turned RED and no response from it.

It was fun eventhough I only played it for 10 hours...!!!

I woke up 5 in the morning to get my hands on this and I won't even bother withe the next shipments until Microsoft responds to these "crashes."

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Good Idea I'm surprised they haven't annouced any plans for fixing this crash problem.

i-VTEC said:

It CRASHED on me and returned it today...the "Ring of Light" turned RED and no response from it.

It was fun eventhough I only played it for 10 hours...!!!

I woke up 5 in the morning to get my hands on this and I won't even bother withe the next shipments until Microsoft responds to these "crashes."

I have 2 360 games here, so I will pick it up.

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Are you telling me that a just-released Microsoft product crashed? What are the odds?:mac:

Like PS2, XBOX or every other console released I EXPECTED freezes, disc error messages, etc. I really got focked that it just died on me...at Best Buy, I was told I was the first (!) to return it...other forums, stores like Electronic Boutique are scratching their heads about this Red Light/LED.

Microsoft (reported on CNN) wants me to call them, ship it out. No thanks.

Apparently this is from overheating (Not surprising) what is surprising is its from the power converter overheating. You can supposedly fix this by keeping your power converter off the ground.