Microsoft studying combining an Xbox 1 & 2 in a real PC

[Ed Oscuro]

http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/26/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm

Thanks to Vermouth from GameSpy Forums for grabbing this link.

While it's quite obvious that nothing may come of this and details aren't set in stone, this looks like it'd be a real PC as much as Intel's PCs were real PCs; it's a real PC in the way the Sega/IBM Teradrive was (and possibly more, if it's upgradeable and will surely come with up to date hardware). It's fascinating to think what this might mean for game performance if the NeXtBox comes with a current processor to play original XBox games...no more will Morrowind lag and I'll be able to turn on shadows! Hoping that the design is somewhat elegant, doesn't have three logic boards and a tendency to burn the house down.

I'm guessing the system will have a seperate board for said NeXt games, though, and it's always possible the main processor will be 64-bit which would complicate things for original XBox titles. Probably could be solved with some hardware-assisted emulation.

[roxybaby]

Wow. Very interesting idea and a unique way to spin the "game consoles will die because everyone will play on their PC/handheld/whatever" theory on its head. How different are PC games and console games? I know Ed Oscuro alluded to it, but would Microsoft be able to fit all the necessary parts into a console about the size of what we see now?

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, I'd imagine you could put some hardware assisted encryption stuff in there so that a 64-bit processor could work with it; you'd have the RAM right there (though there's also the problem of the XBox RAM architecture - all RAM outside of processor cache RAM is in one place), you'd have the hard drive, and resolution wouldn't be much of an issue.

Forgot to add a zinger, by the way -

"Now Microsoft will be able to do something will all those surplus floppy-to-TV picture viewers and sound cards!"

[thegreatescape]

Its a shame they couldn't make something in the same style of the 3DO blaster- they looked pretty cool. Then again, an x-box on a pci card would produce a Voodoo5 type monster so maybe its not a shame LOL

[Flack]

$599 for an Xbox/Xbox 2/PC game playing tower. Hm.

Sounds like someone over at MS saw the ApeXtreme at E3.

There are a ton of posts here at DP from people who keep saying, "oh, I don't know, I'll buy $console_x when it drops in price ... again ..."

My experience has been that at launch, the console price is between 60%-75% of what I spend that day. When I bought a launch PS2 for $299, my total bill was close to $500 after picking up a second controller, memory card, and two games. If that monster launches for $599, and people buy a couple of games and a controller or something, you might be approaching the $800 mark. Ouch.

[Ed Oscuro]

If you actually buy two NeXtBox (is anybody annoyed by my use of that faked-up acronym? Just asking :) ) games, that is. That's an interesting comment, though, and I've never thought about a method to figure something like that out - I'll have to remember that.

I'm wondering if it won't let you play XBox FPSes such as Halo with the keyboard + mouse combo, though. That would be nice.

I'm also wondering if the original XBox games will be run via hardware-assisted emulation or what. With the specs posted for the 'Box 2 I also have to wonder why they don't throw the ability to boot into the Mac OS as well LOL

[Flack]

I was just thinking, my $79 Gamecube cost me almost $350, after adding in a $20 memory card, 3 more $25 controllers, $40 broadband adapter, and two $50 games, plus tax.

That's how the man gets ya.