Interesting news on XBOX 2 (System Specs)

[dream431ca]

The Xbox 2 will not come with a hard drive...you will have to buy it seperatly...when you buy it you can play your XBOX 1 games and hook it up to XBOX live...but only after you buy the hard drive. The system will be in-between the size of the slim PS2 and the regular PS2...the XBOX 2 will not use Blu-ray disks or some other special kind of media..it will use DVD-9 disks which can hold up to 7 Gigs. The XBOX 2 will need memory cards but the memory cards can hold up to a GIG of memory..but you can avoid that if you buy a hard drive...

There you go.. some interesting facts..oh ya..it's also slated to come out this fall.

Here's the link to all the information

http://xbox.ign.com/articles/595/595535p2.html?fromint=1

 

[smwScott]

This entire console sounds like a huge money whore. They probably lure you in with a reasonable price, then make you buy all sorts of accessories to get full functionality. Not only that, but its likely that developers will intentionally leave out features so that they can sell them later over X-BOX Live's new system. All this coupled with the fact that its sure to be technically the worst console seeing as it comes out at least a year before all the competition.

MS probably thinks getting a jump on the competition will do for them what it did for Sony, but I doubt this console will catch on. People won't want to just keep feeding it money to make it stay functional. Not to mention that releasing it so early will make the X-BOX one of the shortest lived consoles ever. The PS2 came out a year earlier and its successor will come out a year after the X-BOX 2.

I predict it will go the way of the Dreamcast, but who knows. It certainly isn't a good direction for games.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

Saw it when it was first posted, all good stuff

smwScott: Did you play Playstation fine without a hard drive? Of course you did.... The xbox isn't depending on it... Casual gamers don't _need_ it like my uncle doesn't have a single thing on the hard drive... He bought a memory card and that's all the stuff he needs, so the extra money M$ spends on hard drives (to make them standard) would again be a waste of space/money...

I think M$ understands things a lot better...

 

[smwScott]

Unless I misread the article, a hard drive would be required for online play. And if Halo 2 is any indication online play appeals to a large percentage of casual gamers. Plus most of my friends who own an X-BOX, who are by no stretch of the imagination "hardcore" use it for music and whatnot. Also, its required for backwards compatability as well. It's a definite step back from the X-BOX, and it's probably going to be a necessity to enjoy the majority of X-BOX 2 games.

 

[<RJMC>]

if the xbox2 whiout hardrive is a lot more cheaper them it dont sound bad

 

[DeusExMachina]

Lets just hope Xbox 2 won't have a camera...

 

[thehunter1320]

didn't microsoft say they were withholding all info on Xbox 2 til E3? :dozey:

 

[Axyon]

If this is true, it's interesting to note that the Xbox 2 will run Xbox games, even though it's different GPU architecture (and company) altogether. Would have thought they'd have big problems with that.

 

[DarkStar]

Look who's definitely NOT gonna be getting an XBOX 2 HD!

That's right, meeeeeeee!

 

[thehunter1320]

Look who's definitely NOT gonna be getting an XBOX 2 HD!

That's right, meeeeeeee!

i am... modded xbox 2 already

 

[jonbob]

If this is true, it's interesting to note that the Xbox 2 will run Xbox games, even though it's different GPU architecture (and company) altogether. Would have thought they'd have big problems with that.

I should think that a triple-core POWER running at 3Ghz would be able to emulate a 733 Celeron reasonably well, but as you say the GPU will be another story. Having said that, the original was very much a showcase for DirectX, which is pretty much backward compatible.

 

[nutcrackr]

Xbox 2 being backwards compatible is a very smart idea, as it stands consoles on release often have a poor or limted lineup.

Microsoft themselves said that they will only worry about backwards compatibilty if the initial lineup for the console is poor or small.

So we can conclude...

 

[PickledGecko]

Have Sony scrapped the idea of being able to link a number of PS3's together for added computing power? As I understood it when I heard about it a few years ago, a game could require the computing power of 2, 3 or 4 PS3's plugged into each other sharing the load. I'm pretty sure I heard recently that the cell chip is designed with this sort of functionality in mind. That to me sounds like a much bigger money whore. Looks like I'll be buying a Nintendo this time round, unless of course they also feel like ass raping my wallet too.

My view is, I spend a lot of money on a computer that can do many things and the games are (well, were) much better. With the rise in popularity of consoles, most PC games have been console ports, which really pissed me off. I spent a lot of money on this rig only to be fobbed off with 2nd rate games. I did think about just moving to consoles permanently, but if this is the case, a PC would probably work out cheaper.

 

[destrukt]

dual layer dvd's hold up to 9gb and the hard drive isn't a separate purchase, it's a different 'version' of the xbox.

there are supposedly going to be 3 versions: xbox /w hd, xbox w/o hd and an xbox media centre/pc.

Lets just hope Xbox 2 won't have a camera...

i think it was a recent gamespy article where they spoke about a rumour of a camera being an accessory for xbox 2, to mainly to be used on xbox live.