Introduction
Apparently, it was a big deal. Two hours before the actual keynote, people started standing in line in front of the Civic Auditorium, where Gates was going to give a first glimpse at the X-Box. Everybody was extremely curious. Was it worth the wait? Well, yes and no.
The hardware and performance data surrounding the X-Box are very impressive, indeed. At the core of the console sits an Intel Pentium III with SIMD and more than 600 MHz clock frequency. The graphics processor, called the X-Chip, is a joint development between nVidia and Microsoft with 64 MB unified RAM, a polygon performance of 300 M/s, a pixel fill rate of 4.8 G/s (two textures, anti-aliased), a texture compression of 8:1, and micro polygon support. The system also comes with 4X DVD, USB, 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet, HDTV support, 64 audio channels and support for 3D audio, DVD movie playback, a maximum resolution of 1920×1080, and last but not least, an 8 GB hard disk.
According to Gates, the X-Box will not be a different looking PC. The operating system of the X-Box is based on the Windows 2000 kernel and the DirectX 8 API. It does not need to be booted. Version 8 of DirectX is slated to ship in August this year, and according to developers, the improved Direct3D component is capable of generating 60 million triangles per second. Current state of the art is about 15 million triangles per second.
The X-Box is supposed to ship in the fall of 2001. Until then, Microsoft wants to get the support of developers, and it seems that the company has already been fairly successful. Quite a few game developers announced their support for the X-Box, among them are for example Electronic Arts, Konami, Acclaim, Infogrames, Activision, Take-Two, Lionhead Studios, Sierra Studios, Midway and Universal Interactive Studios.
The Power of X
At the keynote Bill Gates presented a snazzy looking prototype of the X-Box that actually looked like an X. The demos he showed were also very neat, and according to Gates, they did not even use the full capacity of the X-Box. But at this point we have to take his word for it, because the console is not shipping before fall 2001. Which brings me back to the beginning and the question whether it was worth the wait in line. Since it is hard to say at this point how much of the X-Box is pure marketing hype and what the end result will really look like, it probably wasn’t worth the wait. One other question is whether Microsoft will really manage to get away from the PC model. But the keynote was kind of fun, and it stirred things up a little bit in the game console market.
The main competitor is Sony’s PlayStation 2, and cannot measure up to the hardware power of the X-Box. It currently has one huge advantage, however: It is already shipping – at least in Japan. The US and European versions are coming into retail stores this fall, just in time for Christmas. Phil Harrison, Vice President of Third Party Relations and Research & Development at Sony Entertainment America, reported that about one million PlayStations were sold in Japan during the first week on the market. Japanese fans camped out in front of the stores two days before the launch.
Since Harrison could not beat the performance data of the X-Box, he concentrated more on the business opportunities for PlayStation developers. These opportunities revolve around Sony’s proprietary broadband networking strategy of a networked digital entertainment market. The PS2 does not have an internal modem, but Sony is going to offer a 100 Mbit/s Ethernet adapter, that also comes with – surprise, surprise – a large hard disk. Harrison would not say, when this adapter would be available. He only commented that Sony hopes, third-party companies will offer an USB modem in the interim. More announcements regarding PS2 are scheduled for the E3 Show in Los Angeles in May.
Never-ending Story
Sony’s vision of a networked digital entertainment market includes for example a server that offers all PlayStation games ever developed for downloading, and of course all other kinds of digital content like music, videos and movies.
A way for game developers to make more money would be something Harrison called ‘episodic entertainment’: Games that are released in continuing episodes just like a TV series. Every week consumers could logon to the server and download the next episode. This way, developers would also get instant feedback and could make changes accordingly.
Microsoft’s other competitor, Sega, almost became a partner – at least that was the rumor in Japanese papers. But Sega seems to have put the deal on hold for now.
Apparently Microsoft’s fees for licensing the Windows OS are not to Sega’s liking, and the costs for compatibility between the X-Box and Sega’s Dreamcast are too high. However, according to the latest rumors, there still is a chance that Sega might be manufacturing the X-Box for Microsoft as an OEM partner.
Nintendo, another competitor, currently has bigger problems than the X-Box. The new Dolphin console was scheduled to ship before the end of this year, but is now expected for the first half of 2001. This means that Nintendo is going to miss out on the Christmas season 2000. Good news for Sony…
