Xbox

The Xbox is Microsoft's game console, released in November 2001. It is Microsoft's first independent venture into the console arena, after having collaborated with Sega in porting Windows CE to the doomed Sega Dreamcast console. The price is currently 149 USD, 199 EUR or 129 GBP. Notable Xbox-exclusive titles that debuted with the console include Amped, Dead or Alive 3, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Halo and Project Gotham Racing.

Microsoft built the Xbox around industry-standard PC hardware, in contrast to the traditionally proprietary design of nearly all gaming consoles. It has an Intel Pentium III-derived processor clocked at 733 MHz and an nVIDIA graphics processor. The processors share 64 MB of system RAM. Storage includes a DVD-ROM drive and a hard disk. Although the Xbox is based on PC architecture and runs a stripped down version of the Windows 2000 kernel it incorporates security features designed to protect it against uses not approved by Microsoft. As the console business model essentially involves giving away the hardware at cost and making profit on game licenses, this is understandable. It did not take long, however, for the hacker community to circumvent these limitations and get the Linux operating system running on the Xbox, thus making it usable as a fully featured PC.

Critics have speculated that the Xbox is Microsoft's attempt to monopolize yet another technology market. As of November 2003, estimates show the Xbox's share of the global console games market has fallen behind the GameCube's and is far behind the PS2, considering that it only has a strong market in the U.S. and Europe, and it's competitors are strong in the U.S., Europe, and Japan. In March 2004, Microsoft cut the price of the Xbox in several countries which has substantially increased its sales outside of Japan. The Xbox has yet to return a profit for Microsoft. This is in-line with Microsoft's original assessments, however, as they predicted that they would not make a profit on the Xbox for at least three years after its debut.

In 2002, Microsoft released the successful online gaming service "Xbox Live" which has become the de facto standard for online gaming on consoles. Third party services for online play also exist. In January 2004, Microsoft reported that Xbox Live reached 750,000 subscribers. Xbox Live received a major boost in May 2004 when Electronic Arts announced it would support the service for the first time.

As it is essentially a PC, a thoroughly dated jab at the Xbox is its large size and weight compared to other consoles. It was rumoured that buyers were advised that they not be placed on top of televisions (as consoles in the past often were) in case a small child slipped on a cord and set it crashing down on their heads with serious injury.

Table of contents

Specifications

CPU: 733 MHz Intel processor (a Celeron/Pentium III hybrid chip)
Graphics Processor: 250 MHz custom chip named XGPU (Xbox Graphics Processing Unit), developed by Microsoft and nVIDIA
Total Memory: 64 MB running at 200 MHz DDR, supplied by Micron
Memory Bandwidth: 6.4 GB/s
Polygon Performance: 125 M/s*
Sustained Polygon Performance: 100+ M/s (transformed and lit polygons per second)
Micropolygons/particles per second: 125 M/s
Particle Performance: 125 M/s
Simultaneous Textures: 4
Pixel Fill Rate - No Texture: 4.0 G/s (anti-aliased)
Pixel Fill Rate - 1 Texture: 4.0 G/s anti-aliased
Compressed Textures: Yes (6:1)
Full Scene Anti-Alias: Yes
Micro Polygon Support: Yes
Storage Medium: 2-5x DVD, 8.5GB hard disk, 8MB memory card
I/0: 2-5x DVD, 8GB/10GB hard disk, 8MB memory card
Audio Channels: 64 3D channels(up to 256 stereo voices)
3D Audio Support: Yes
MIDI DLS2 Support: Yes
AC3 (Dolby Digital) Encoded Game Audio: Yes (via TOSLINK)
Broadband Enabled: Yes (10/100base-T ethernet)
Modem Enabled: No
DVD Movie Playback: Yes (separate DVD Playback Kit required)
Maximum Resolution: 1920(vertical lines)x1080(horiz.)
Maximum Resolution (2x32bpp frame buffers +Z): 1920(vert.)x1080(horiz)
Note: Non-HD TV's have less than 500 horizontal lines
HDTV Support: Yes
Controller Ports: 4 proprietary USB ports
Weight: 3.86kg
Dimensions: 324×265×90mm

* Some criticize the Xbox's polygon per second number as being exaggerated due to unrealistic testing conditions. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the Xbox's hardware is substantially more powerful than the Sony Playstation 2 and Nintendo GameCube.

Devices and addons

Standard AV Cable: Provides composite video and monoaural or stereo audio to TVs equipped with RCA inputs. Comes with the system. European systems come with a RCA jack to SCART convertor block in addition to the cable.
RF Adapter: Provides a combined audio and video signal on an RF connector.
Advanced AV Pack: A breakout box that provides S-Video and TOSLINK audio in addition to the RCA composite video and stereo audio of the Standard AV Cable.
High Definition AV Pack: A breakout box, intended for HDTVs, that provides a YPrPb component video signal over three RCA connectors. Also provides analog RCA and digital TOSLINK audio outputs.
Advanced SCART Cable: The European equivalent to the Advanced AV Pack, providing a full RGB video SCART connection in place of S-Video, RCA composite and stereo audio connections (composite video and stereo are still provided by the cable, through the SCART connector, in addition to the RGB signal), while retaining the TOSLINK audio connector. As Europe has no HDTV standard, no High Definition cable is currently provided in those markets.

* Numerous third-party cables and breakout boxes exist that provide combinations of outputs not found in these three official video packages; however, with the exception of a few component-to-VGA transcoders and custom-built VGA boxes, the four official video packages represent all of the Xbox's possible outputs. This output selectivity is made possible by the Xbox's SCART-like AVIP port.

Memory Unit: An 8MB removable solid state memory card, onto which gamesaves can either be copied from the hard drive, or saved directly.
System Link Cable: A Cat 5 crossover cable for connecting together two consoles, for up to 8 total players.
DVD Playback Kit: Required in order to play DVD movies, the kit includes an infrared remote control and receiver. DVD playback was not included as a standard feature of the Xbox due to licensing issues with the DVD format that would have added extra cost to the console's base price. By selling a DVD remote separately Microsoft was able to recover the DVD licensing fee. Although there is nothing to prevent the Xbox from acting as a progressive-scan DVD player, Microsoft chose not to enable this feature in the Xbox DVD kit in order to avoid royalty payments to the patent-holder of progressive scan DVD playback.

Xbox and DirectX

Microsoft's set of low-level APIs for game development and multimedia purposes, DirectX, was used as a basis for Xbox. The API was developed jointly between Microsoft and NVIDIA. The Xbox API is similar to DirectX version 8.1, but is non-updateable like other console technologies.

Modding the Xbox

Due to the recent popularity of the Xbox, much work has gone into circumventing built in hardware and software security mechanisms. Hardware modding involves opening up the case and installing a modchip. Software modding is much less intrusive and only involves running software exploits to trick the Xbox into running unsigned code. This allows running an alternate dashboard such as Avalaunch or Evolution-X and in turn makes playing NES, SNES, N64, Gameboy, and Sega games possible through emulators. Some common reasons for modding an Xbox include the ability to save entire Xbox games directly to the built-in hard drive, playing DVDs without the $30 DVD dongle, and turning the Xbox into a computer running Linux and even Microsoft Windows.

Price History

US-$299 (2001-11-01)
US-$199 (2002), Europe-479 Euros (Launch Price 2002-03-14), 299 Euros (2002-04-26), 249 Euros (2002-08-30)
US-$179, Europe-199 Euros, UK-130 Pounds (2003)
US-$149, Canada-$199 (2004-03-29)