Introduction
I guess being that this is an Xbox 360 site, I should give a pretty good overview of the Xbox 360.
Many of you have been following the developments of the console for some time now. A few of you maybe were even dreaming of it just after unwrapping your original Xbox console.
Well, in a few short months it will be hitting the shelves. Microsoft has lined up some great games, and accessories that will be taking our pay cheques for many months to come. The Xbox 360 will be available in fall/winter of 2005 and will have tiered pricing packages to try to have an Xbox 360 for any gaming budget.
The Console
The first showing of the console was on MTV, which is a strange departure from the E3 launches that many consoles have.Microsoft ran the special on Thursday, May 12, 2005, and ever since then the world has been buzzed about the Xbox 360.
The console was made to be more than just another game machine as the 360 in its name is supposed to imply. The idea was to put the player in the middle of their digital entertainment world, and give them full control over their experience.
At first I was a little cautious about Microsoft’s offerings as most of my friends are Sony and Nintendo fans who were quick to point at the Xbox and say “it’s just a computer for the livingroom”. I agree with them that it is, but where Windows has never really been made for multimedia in my opinion, the Xbox 360 certainly is. The dashboard used in this release is just amazing, giving an almost endless amount of control to the user.
The Xbox will be launched with two different boxes available to be picked up. One is called the Core System, and the other is the Premium Edition. Different price points are attached to each box, and with it are very different setups.
The Core System:
- Console
- Wired Controller
- Composite Cable
- Xbox Live Silver
- Xbox Live Gold 30-day Trial
Price: $299.99 USD
The Premium Edition:
- Console
- Wireless Controller
- Component HD AV Cable
- 20 GB Hard Drive
- Ethernet Cable
- Headset
- Composite Cable
- Xbox Live Silver
- Xbox Live Gold 30-day Trial
- Premium Chrome Details
Price: $399.99 USD
Electronics Boutique’s “Ultimate Bundle”:
- Console
- Wireless Controller
- Component HD AV Cable
- 20 GB Hard Drive
- Ethernet Cable
- Headset
- Bonus Media Remote
- Composite Cable
- Xbox Live Silver
- Xbox Live Gold 30-day Trial
- Premium Chrome Details
- Perfect Dark Zero Limited Edition
- Dead or Alive 4
- Kameo: Elements of Power
- Project Gotham Racing 3
- Extra Wireless Controller
- Play & Charge Kit (for extra controller)
- Extra Rechargeable Battery Pack
Price: $699.92 USD
At any time the Core System can be upgraded with any of the features and accessories of the Premium Edition or the items listed in the Ultimate Bundle from EB Games. I am also very sure we will see many competing packages created by different companies. The addition of the Ultimate bundle to this post is not an advertisement for EB Games, but just a notice that their are going to be packages that will contain much more than the basic boxes from Microsoft.
Specifications
CPU
- Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
- Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total
- VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total
- 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
- 1 MB L2 cache
Graphics Processor
- Custom ATI Graphics Processor
- 10 MB of embedded DRAM
- 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines
- Unified shader architecture
Polygon Performance
- 500 million triangles per second
Pixel Fill Rate
- 16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA
Shader Performance
- 48 billion shader operations per second
Memory
- 512 MB of 700 MHz GDDR3 RAM
- Unified memory architecture
Storage
- Detachable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive
- 12x dual-layer DVD-ROM
- Memory Unit support starting at 64 MB
I/O
- Support for up to four wireless game controllers
- Three USB 2.0 ports
- Two memory unit slots
Online
- Built-in Ethernet port
- Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g
- Video camera ready
Media Support
- Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD
- Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PCs
- Ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive
- Custom playlists in every game
- Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
- Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers
High-Definition Support
- All games supported at 16:9, 720p, or 1080i, with anti-aliasing
- Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported
Audio
- Multi-channel surround sound output
- Supports 48KHz 16-bit audio
- 320 independent decompression channels
- 32-bit audio processing
- Over 256 audio channels
Physical Specs
- Height: 3.26″ (83 mm)
- Width: 12.2″ (309 mm)
- Depth: 10.2″ (258 mm)
- Weight: 7.7 lbs.