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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Is the Xbox 360 a Success?

 

Well, answer the damn question.

Yes it is. 333 77.26%
 
No it isn't. 68 15.78%
 
I love it when you recycle, d21! 30 6.96%
 
Total:431
TruckOSaurus on 16 April 2012

How the help did the No option get 50 votes? Anyone considering the Xbox 360 as a failure has serious mental issues.



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Millenium on 16 April 2012
TruckOSaurus said:
How the help did the No option get 50 votes? Anyone considering the Xbox 360 as a failure has serious mental issues.

 TruckOSaurus Joined on June 21st 2007.

You mean after close to 5 years you still haven't learned the way of VGC?! ;)

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I do agree though, it could have been better, but I don't believe for one second that the X360 could be considered a failure, it's probably doing everything MS wants it to do at this point.



Dark_Lord_2008 on 16 April 2012

The XBox 360 has sold over 65 million sales and counting, after 6 and a half years. 40 million sales improvment upon the XBox. The X360 will end up selling 80 million+ console sales. The X360 will become the most successful last placed system, selling more than the console generation winners of the first 4 generations. 



Euphoria14 on 16 April 2012
d21lewis said:

halil23 said:
"and tell me if Microsoft and the gaming world are better off with the 360 on the market."
Really? Truth be told: M$ first introduce pay to play on console, first introduce paid dlc, uses own expensive hhd, (notice the trend, m$ loves stealing money and also shows m$ can turn ordinary consumers into idiots that continue to support them, and supporting rrod) money hat reviewers, they even owns cnet which does reviews especially hardware that lowers score that isn't m$, does dirty tactics to get timed exclusives, has the worst failure rate in gaming history, I remember somewhere (consumer affair or some business association, can't remember) said if a hardware company makes product that has a higher failure rate than 10%, then said company has to cease production!! It shows how corrupt business (m$) can get away with it.

Now lewis (ME?), tell me is m$ really better for the gaming world?  It sad to see people continue to support the corrupted instead of the good...    (What the fuck!?  Now, I gotta get ya!)


Poor guy.  No idea what he's up against.......

First off, Sega introduced pay to play on consoles.  Ever hear of Sega Net?   

*I know Microsoft had a deal with Netflix.  That's why Nintendo/Sony had to use discs (I still have the discs!).  It was their way of getting around Microsoft's exclusivity deal.  Still, Microsoft tested the waters and made Netflix a huge success until Netflix screwed it all up by almost doubling their prices.

Dreamcast's online came to my head instantly when I saw his post.

 

As for the bolded, it can also easily be assumed that the deal had much to do with the Netflix CEO being on the MS Board. I believe that many had the idea and if him being on the board were not the case then it would have been a more simulataneous launch, especially with the sales and marketshare of the Wii at the time, but yes, 360 did get it first.

 

 

I voted "Yes" by the way, just because I believe that is common sense at this point.



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TruckOSaurus on 16 April 2012
Millenium said:
TruckOSaurus said:
How the help did the No option get 50 votes? Anyone considering the Xbox 360 as a failure has serious mental issues.

 TruckOSaurus Joined on June 21st 2007.

You mean after close to 5 years you still haven't learned the way of VGC?! ;)

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I do agree though, it could have been better, but I don't believe for one second that the X360 could be considered a failure, it's probably doing everything MS wants it to do at this point.

Seems like I'm a slow learner. I have trouble understanding how even the biggest Nintendo/Sony fanboy can rationally think Microsoft failed with the 360.



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mjk45 on 16 April 2012
Pemalite said:
mjk45 said:

What nonsense , MS had no hand in the PS3's GPU , the DX argument is irrelevant , for many reasons one being PS3 uses Open GL , that according to nvidia's developer site is the worlds most used api , plus if you used your argument you could say Sony was responsible for the 360's CPU seeing IBM used a variant of the cell architecture to produce its cores , the truth of the matter is MS is responsible for their product , just has Sony is for theirs , I remember bill Gates talking about the success of the PS1 and how the market had grown  and video gaming at that time was well on the way to becoming the biggest thing in entertainment, and since MS was hamstrung with the way the  PC market worked in regards to hardware ownership , becoming a console manufacturer was the best way of getting some of that pie and  with their background , creating a PC in a box was a no brainer , yes they have had the good and bad since becoming a console maker and still haven't made up  completely all their losses from the original X box through , but that doesn't matter any more because that paid for them to now be  entrenched in the business , profitable with a good stable income stream through live, plus anyway  they will eventually see every dollar back and more .


Regardless if the PS3 uses OpenGL or not.
The GPU in the PS3 is a PC part, It's not an actuall Sony design. It came from the PC which adheres to the DirectX standard that nVidia and AMD make great strides into being fully compatible and optimised with, being OpenGL compliant is a side effect of this because that too is a PC technology used by a few game engines, the PS3's GPU is indeed fully Direct X compliant, they just happen to use a different API to access that GPU's features, that is all.

An example of this is 3dc Texture compression that AMD invented, Microsoft adopted it into the Direct X standard in Direct X 10 which then became available in the Geforce 8 series.

If you look back in history every large jump in graphical fidelity in AAA games was because of Microsoft's Direct X, Direct X 7 with TnL, Direct X 8 with programmable shaders, DirectX 9 with more advanced programmable shaders, shadows etc'.
An exception to this is if you go back even farther to the era of 3dfx and their Glide API which was based on OpenGL, but even then their domination in the graphics arena was short lived when they got beaten by nVidia and Direct X.

This generation is a little bit of an oddball, Most developers are targeting the consoles, mostly the xbox 360 then improving them for the PC and Porting them to the PS3, but even the Xbox uses a variation of Direct X which makes porting games to the PC far easier; this is in stark contrast to previous generations where all games were targeted for the PC and then downgraded for the consoles.

OpenGL does not have the penetration like it used to in AAA games on the PC, most AAA developers use Direct X and then port to OpenGL to other platforms.
Which brings up the point that OpenGL used to be a leader in API development, but since probably the release of DirectX 9 has lagged significantly behind Microsoft in feature adoption and market penetration rates.

Sure it might dominate on iOS, Android, Linux, MacOS and other OS's, but those aren't really platforms where you see bleeding edge graphics, it's always on the PC with Microsoft Windows and Direct X.

As for Sony influencing the design of the Xbox CPU, I doubt they would have to any great extent.
IBM was the origional creator of the PowerPC architecture, Sony did collaborate on the design for the Cell processor but mostly it's based on IBM technology at any rate, it's not like Sony made a whole new instruction set, but they may have improved the PowerPC instruction set for all future designs, so next generation may benefit from this. But without more indepth knowledge on PowerPC I can't really say for su

 The fact is Sony and Toshiba , spent 400 mill on R&D creating the cell architecture in cooperation with IBM ,it was a bit more than trying to improve the instruction set , and the truth of the matter is as I stated earlier neither is involved with the other in a direct fashion , sure they both use cpu / gpu so does most consoles so that puts nintendo in there ,  your argument is like saying we have different cars  say racing cars to the pc's every day car , both using similar drive trains but yours uses the oil from MS and that is used in most every day cars so my car which uses a different oil with a long pedigree is some how beholden to your oil company , the truth is you are treating a software choice as if it was the hardware itself .



Research shows Video games  help make you smarter, so why am I an idiot

slowmo on 17 April 2012
Pemalite said:
mjk45 said:

What nonsense , MS had no hand in the PS3's GPU , the DX argument is irrelevant , for many reasons one being PS3 uses Open GL , that according to nvidia's developer site is the worlds most used api , plus if you used your argument you could say Sony was responsible for the 360's CPU seeing IBM used a variant of the cell architecture to produce its cores , the truth of the matter is MS is responsible for their product , just has Sony is for theirs , I remember bill Gates talking about the success of the PS1 and how the market had grown  and video gaming at that time was well on the way to becoming the biggest thing in entertainment, and since MS was hamstrung with the way the  PC market worked in regards to hardware ownership , becoming a console manufacturer was the best way of getting some of that pie and  with their background , creating a PC in a box was a no brainer , yes they have had the good and bad since becoming a console maker and still haven't made up  completely all their losses from the original X box through , but that doesn't matter any more because that paid for them to now be  entrenched in the business , profitable with a good stable income stream through live, plus anyway  they will eventually see every dollar back and more .


Regardless if the PS3 uses OpenGL or not.
The GPU in the PS3 is a PC part, It's not an actuall Sony design. It came from the PC which adheres to the DirectX standard that nVidia and AMD make great strides into being fully compatible and optimised with, being OpenGL compliant is a side effect of this because that too is a PC technology used by a few game engines, the PS3's GPU is indeed fully Direct X compliant, they just happen to use a different API to access that GPU's features, that is all.

An example of this is 3dc Texture compression that AMD invented, Microsoft adopted it into the Direct X standard in Direct X 10 which then became available in the Geforce 8 series.

If you look back in history every large jump in graphical fidelity in AAA games was because of Microsoft's Direct X, Direct X 7 with TnL, Direct X 8 with programmable shaders, DirectX 9 with more advanced programmable shaders, shadows etc'.
An exception to this is if you go back even farther to the era of 3dfx and their Glide API which was based on OpenGL, but even then their domination in the graphics arena was short lived when they got beaten by nVidia and Direct X.

This generation is a little bit of an oddball, Most developers are targeting the consoles, mostly the xbox 360 then improving them for the PC and Porting them to the PS3, but even the Xbox uses a variation of Direct X which makes porting games to the PC far easier; this is in stark contrast to previous generations where all games were targeted for the PC and then downgraded for the consoles.

OpenGL does not have the penetration like it used to in AAA games on the PC, most AAA developers use Direct X and then port to OpenGL to other platforms.
Which brings up the point that OpenGL used to be a leader in API development, but since probably the release of DirectX 9 has lagged significantly behind Microsoft in feature adoption and market penetration rates.

Sure it might dominate on iOS, Android, Linux, MacOS and other OS's, but those aren't really platforms where you see bleeding edge graphics, it's always on the PC with Microsoft Windows and Direct X.

As for Sony influencing the design of the Xbox CPU, I doubt they would have to any great extent.
IBM was the origional creator of the PowerPC architecture, Sony did collaborate on the design for the Cell processor but mostly it's based on IBM technology at any rate, it's not like Sony made a whole new instruction set, but they may have improved the PowerPC instruction set for all future designs, so next generation may benefit from this. But without more indepth knowledge on PowerPC I can't really say for sure.


In the book Race For A New Game Machine it details the creation of the 360 and PS3 Power PC Cores from intial concept all the way through to the finished design and manufacturing by the head of the project for IBM David Shippey.  In summary the initial concept was two similar cores to be optimised differently for each platform.  In the end though the time constraints meant they had to compress it to one core with some lesser modifcations to share between the Cell and Xenon CPU's. 

This resulted in compromises for both the Cell and the Xenon as sometimes they had to make changes to benefit one at a marginal expense to the other.  In the end the designer hit his target that he aimed for (except for the 4GHz clock rate) and you could argue that any design choices made had little effect on the end product for either as they are both great processors.  As such I would say you were right that Sony didn't influence the 360 CPU design, they simply put a requirement for the core they wanted that Microsoft happened to want the same thing also so the project was undertaken by IBM to do both.  IBM actually kept Sony in the dark for as long as possible regarding the other use of the core for Microsoft as they were within their rights under the contract Sony, Toshiba and IBM signed.

IBM had the most input on the creation of the core and influenced the design of both consoles.  In other words I support your stance, I recommend the book mentioned if you ever get the time and money to buy it.



Pemalite on 18 April 2012
mjk45 said:

the truth is you are treating a software choice as if it was the hardware itself .


You're missing my point entirely and are now putting words in my mouth.

Developers want to make a game as cheaply and quickly as possible, designing a game for the plethera of hardware directly is time consuming and expensive.
The solution? An API that sits between the hardware and software with a common feature set, this is where Microsoft enters the arena.
Microsoft works with graphics companies to dictate that feature set on the PC and even invents new technologies to go into that feature set.

Console manucturers pick up the PC GPU's that adhere to that feature set and whack them in their consoles, so Microsoft has a fairly large hand in dictating the capabilities a console has graphically.
That's why the GPU in the PS3 is a Direct X 9 Shader Model 3 specced PC part, because of Microsoft and Direct X and nVidia.

nVidia's first GPU for instance didn't use rasterization, hardly any games supported it, nVidia's second ever GPU then adhered to Direct X's Polygon based rasterization rendering, which then could run any game that adhered to that Direct X standard.

How you can flatout deny that Microsoft has had no part in the development of GPU technology I will never know, They have been doing this for almost 2 decades now.



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d21lewis on 18 April 2012

I wish I knew what the heck you guys are talking about. Me not speak tech jargon so good. It's like you're speaking some strange foreign robot language.



Busted on 18 April 2012
d21lewis said:
I wish I knew what the heck you guys are talking about. Me not speak tech jargon so good. It's like you're speaking some strange foreign robot language.


I feel the same way. x_x