Inside Microsoft’s Xbox 360
Posted on | November 19, 2005 | 3 Comments
Microsoft’s first try at a gaming console amounted to essentially a very affordable PC. It used standard PC components, including a mobile Intel processor (a hybrid Pentium 3/Celeron), a desktop NVIDIA chipset, a Western Digital hard drive and relatively standard PC DVD-ROM. The original Xbox was such a PC in fact that there were quite a few users that wanted to mod it simply to have a cheap PC, not even for gaming.
Before the Xbox was launched, Microsoft was very concerned with users thinking of the Xbox as nothing more than a PC branded as a gaming console, so it went to great lengths to reduce the association. For example, the strict ban on keyboard and mouse support, despite the fact that the console implemented the standard USB interface.
With the Xbox 360, Microsoft gained some benefits of the original Xbox success. Xbox didn’t win the sales battle against Sony’s PlayStation 2, but the first Xbox was strong enough to cement Microsoft’s name in the world of console gaming manufacturers. For their second time around, there is less worry of the Xbox 360 being viewed as a just a PC, so Microsoft took a bolder approach.
News source: AnandTech
So what’s the difference between a well-setup PC gaming rig (powerful graphics card, 64-bit CPU, fast DDR RAMs and the likes) to this gaming “console”…Microsoft should have thrown in a keyboard, mouse and monitor as well
If this becomes powerful enough, might as well get this instead of upgrading part by part every year, to assemble a powerful PC gaming rig …but then again maybe not…
At $299 (w/o hard drive, headset and remote) or even $399 (with hard drive, remote and headset), you probably have a whipping gaming rig…minus the ability to do office-related work.
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3 Responses to “Inside Microsoft’s Xbox 360”
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Etcetera
November 20th, 2005 @ 4:02 pm
ps2 forever! ahahaha. but seriously, i still prefer PC as a gaming console over ps2 or xbox.
November 25th, 2005 @ 7:17 pm
Hehehe, I agree. PC is still the best gaming console to date.
February 25th, 2008 @ 6:04 am
If you ever have any issues with the three red light error or the Red Ring of Death as a lot of people call it, then check out my site. Just click on my name and I can show you how to fix it.