New Xbox Reveal at 10PDT/1EDT

[The Minsky Moment]

The Xbox is interesting because it appears to be a windows PC that has been customized as a dedicating gaming machine.  Yet apparently they are not fully integrating it with their Windows 8 app store, which seems odd because it would be an obvious way to boost up Win8.  Perhaps there are technical obstacles, perhaps they just don't want to cannibalize revenue from those expensive optical media games.  It does seem like they aren't taking full advantage of the potentialities of the hardware and OS, which would give them a clear leg up on Sony.

[katmai]

The Xbox is interesting because it appears to be a windows PC that has been customized as a dedicating gaming machine.  Yet apparently they are not fully integrating it with their Windows 8 app store, which seems odd because it would be an obvious way to boost up Win8.  Perhaps there are technical obstacles, perhaps they just don't want to cannibalize revenue from those expensive optical media games.  It does seem like they aren't taking full advantage of the potentialities of the hardware and OS, which would give them a clear leg up on Sony.

Everything I've been reading has been going with Microsoft is trying to introduce a home media platform that plays games where Sony is Game machine that can play bluray

[Syt]

Everything I've been reading has been going with Microsoft is trying to introduce a home media platform that plays games where Sony is Game machine that can play bluray

Good point. I'm thinking that outside U.S. at least this will make the PS4 the more interesting proposition, because games will be the driving factor for sales. I've never heard of anyone over here using their console for media consumption (even though MS at least have their overpriced Zune system here), and a lot of people I know who have consoles (PS3 or 360) have never even once hooked it up to the internet.

[Josquius]

I wouldn't be too sure on games being the driving factor in sales.
Gaming is in an interesting place right now. Increasingly kids don't have conventional consoles. Mobile gaming ( ) really is taking over much of the market.
Its mainly us old folks that are keeping the traditional industry going.
As was seen with  the original wii, if you can somehow tap into the mainstream then you're into the big money.
Microsoft is trying to be 'innovitive' in that its jumping right at the nascant web-tv industry...except this has been talked about as the next big thing for years...and they're being very US centric....and their product costs a lot more than competitors that don't play games....

[Grey Fox]

The Xbox is interesting because it appears to be a windows PC that has been customized as a dedicating gaming machine.  Yet apparently they are not fully integrating it with their Windows 8 app store, which seems odd because it would be an obvious way to boost up Win8.  Perhaps there are technical obstacles, perhaps they just don't want to cannibalize revenue from those expensive optical media games.  It does seem like they aren't taking full advantage of the potentialities of the hardware and OS, which would give them a clear leg up on Sony.

Everything I've been reading has been going with Microsoft is trying to introduce a home media platform that plays games where Sony is Game machine that can play bluray

It's been a stated goal of the Microsoft Brass for a while now, the problems with that is #1 Only works in the US #2 Hardcore are what sell a game to their mainstream friends. It's like they don't remember Vista at all.

[The Minsky Moment]

Everything I've been reading has been going with Microsoft is trying to introduce a home media platform that plays games where Sony is Game machine that can play bluray

My point is a little different though.  As a Windows 8 PC, XB1 seemingly has a potential advantage just as gaming platform.  In theory, would it be possible to run PC games right off the Box?  Seems like it should be possible.  At the very least it should be able to run regular Win 8 apps.  Yet it appears that potential is not being leveraged.

[Grey Fox]

Everything I've been reading has been going with Microsoft is trying to introduce a home media platform that plays games where Sony is Game machine that can play bluray

My point is a little different though.  As a Windows 8 PC, XB1 seemingly has a potential advantage just as gaming platform.  In theory, would it be possible to run PC games right off the Box?  Seems like it should be possible.  At the very least it should be able to run regular Win 8 apps.  Yet it appears that potential is not being leveraged.

It could, this new gen will have an x86 processor for the first time.

[DontSayBanana]

It could, this new gen will have an x86 processor for the first time.

While that's true, this thing has nowhere near the firepower of a gaming rig.

• AMD A4-5000 Jaguar CPU
  
  Yes, it's got 8 cores.  That's the good part.  The bad part is that it's clocked under 2GHz, and a lot of PC game developers don't really use core affinity to get the most out of a processor.  Without program tweaks, this CPU would be hard-pressed to run Team Fortress 2.
  
  
• AMD Xenos GPU
  
  More previous-gen equipment.  The big nicety here is that it's two physical cores, and it includes some firmware updates like current-gen shader model.  The cores are clocked at 500MHz, and since there's no comparable multi-core GPUs on the market, only XBox developers are going to have the instructions on how to set GPU core affinity.  To everybody else, it's comparable to a Radeon X1800 from 2005.  No way in hell would this run a PC copy of Crysis on Extreme.
  
  
• 8GB DDR3 RAM
  
  I was bottlenecking at basically this spec, so I doubled it to 16 for my own system.  Ask your average WoW player how well 8GB of RAM works for them.
  
  SUMMARY: I'm pretty sure the APU/GPU combo is the only way they manage to get multitasking into the system- making beautiful games happen on this GPU is going to require making the most of all the cores available, so they needed the APU to handle the load for OS and video streaming.

[frunk]

You can't run WoW with 8 GB of RAM?  GW2 runs fine with 6 GB, so I have a tough time believing that an 8 year old game requires that much more.

[Grey Fox]

It got updated multiple time tho. WoW was always a game that used a lot of Ram but it's the exception, not the rules.

[frunk]

It got updated multiple time tho. WoW was always a game that used a lot of Ram but it's the exception, not the rules.

Even then I think DsB is setting his expectations too high.  Anybody who expects a $500 console to be as good looking as a custom made $2000-3000 gaming rig is going to be disappointed.

[derspiess]

Everything I've been reading has been going with Microsoft is trying to introduce a home media platform that plays games where Sony is Game machine that can play bluray

My point is a little different though.  As a Windows 8 PC, XB1 seemingly has a potential advantage just as gaming platform.  In theory, would it be possible to run PC games right off the Box?  Seems like it should be possible.  At the very least it should be able to run regular Win 8 apps.  Yet it appears that potential is not being leveraged.

MS seems to like bringing themselves on the verge of doing something extremely cool, then falling short for no stated reason.

[DontSayBanana]

Even then I think DsB is setting his expectations too high.  Anybody who expects a $500 console to be as good looking as a custom made $2000-3000 gaming rig is going to be disappointed.

Not only did you completely miss my point, you just argued it for me.

[frunk]

Not only did you completely miss my point, you just argued it for me.

The new XBox will be perfectly capable of playing most modern pc games, provided you don't expect it to look as good as an expensive gaming rig.  Was that your point?

[DontSayBanana]

The new XBox will be perfectly capable of playing most modern pc games, provided you don't expect it to look as good as an expensive gaming rig.  Was that your point?

Which defeats the purpose of a gaming console.  You could put together something well under $500 that would play the same games with the same performance.  The whole point of the gaming console is that developers get access to the whole hardware without a clunky operating system bogging down the performance of the whole thing.