Xbox 360: Difference between revisions
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* [http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/xbox360.asp Paul Thurrot's Supersite Xbox 360 Review] |
* [http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/xbox360.asp Paul Thurrot's Supersite Xbox 360 Review] |
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*[http://community.teamxbox.com/xbox/1369/TXB-Community-The-Need-of-RPGs-on-the-Xbox-360/p1/ The Need of RPGs on the Xbox 360] |
*[http://community.teamxbox.com/xbox/1369/TXB-Community-The-Need-of-RPGs-on-the-Xbox-360/p1/ The Need of RPGs on the Xbox 360] |
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*[http://xbox360.tamilar.org/ The Xbox 360 Blog] |
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==See also== |
==See also== |
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Revision as of 19:58, 24 November 2005
The Xbox 360 is Microsoft's successor to their Xbox video game console, referred to during development as "Project Xenon", "Xbox 2", or "Xbox Next". The console was released on November 22, 2005 in North America, and will be released on December 2 in Europe, December 10 in Japan, March 2, 2006 in Australia and elsewhere in early 2006. The Xbox 360 will compete against the upcoming generation of consoles, including the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution, and was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, a week before E³.
In most countries the console is sold in two different configurations: the "Xbox 360" and the "Xbox 360 Core System". The Xbox 360 configuration, often referred to as the "Premium Edition", includes a hard drive and additional accessories.
The console hardware is based on a custom IBM PowerPC-based "Xenon" central processing unit (CPU) and a custom ATI R500-based "Xenos" graphics processing unit (GPU). It is equipped with 512 MiB of RAM and uses the DVD-ROM storage medium for Xbox 360 game software.
Retail configurations and pricing
Microsoft's current retail strategy involves two different configurations of the Xbox 360 in most countries.
In United States and Europe, the console will be offered in two versions: an Xbox 360 Core System SKU; and an Xbox 360 SKU, frequently referred to as the "Xbox 360 Premium Edition". The Core System will not be available in Japan, instead Microsoft will offer a package identical to the Xbox 360 SKU for ¥37,900 ($343.20). Japanese pricing of the console has drawn some criticism, as customers there will be able to purchase the Xbox 360 Premium Edition for a lower price than in other countries.
Microsoft's decision has also allowed Japanese developers to fully utilize the hard drive to optimize game performance, since it is part of the default system configuration in their market. However because of the existence of a Core System edition, many games do not require a hard drive.
BusinessWeek magazine compiled a report which estimates that the total cost of all of the components in the "Premium Edition" is $525 USD, aside from additional manufacturing costs, meaning that Microsoft is losing at least $126 on every Xbox 360 system sold in the US, and at least as much in Japan. The strategy of selling a console at a loss is common in the console games industry, as console makers can usually expect to make up the investment with revenue from game licensing. Also, since Microsoft owns the intellectual property rights for all custom hardware used in the Xbox 360, they can easily switch to new fabrication processes or change suppliers in the future in order to reduce manufacturing costs. This flexibility stands in contrast to the situation faced by the original Xbox, which contained a processor from Intel (a slightly modified Pentium III) and a GPU from NVidia (a modified GeForce 3). Both of these were very similar to "off the shelf" PC hardware and were therefore sold to Microsoft at inflated market prices. Because of these chips and the added expense of a hard drive component, Microsoft was never able to reduce the cost of manufacturing an Xbox below the break-even point. Microsoft's home entertainment division posted a loss through nearly every quarter of the console's lifecycle as a result. Microsoft hopes to avoid such a predicament with its new console, the company is predicting that a greater market share and falling hardware costs will make the Xbox 360 a profitable venture.
| This is a comparison table showing the differences between the packages. | Xbox 360 Core System | Xbox 360 |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Detachable hard drive (20 GB) | No | Yes |
| Controller | Wired with 9ft break-away cable | 2.4 GHz Wireless |
| Xbox-Live Headset | No | Yes |
| Cables | Standard AV cable | Component HD-AV cable |
| Xbox Live Silver membership | Yes | Yes |
| One month limited trial membership for Xbox Live Gold | Yes | Yes |
| Ethernet cable | No | Yes |
| Media Remote (included in the initial shipment) | No | Yes |
| Pricing on release | ||
| Australia (Australian dollars) | $499.95 | $649.95 |
| Canada (Canadian dollars) | $399.99 | $499.99 |
| Europe (Euros) [1] | €299.99 (€309.99 for Finland, Ireland and Portugal) | €399.99 (€409.99 for Finland, Ireland and Portugal) |
| Japan (Yen) | Not available | ¥39,795 |
| New Zealand (New Zealand dollars) | $549.95 | $719.95 |
| United Kingdom (Pound sterling) | £209.99 | £279.99 |
| United States (USD) | $299.99 | $399.99 |
Software pricing
First party (developed by Microsoft Game Studios) and second party (published by Microsoft) launch titles, such as Perfect Dark Zero and Project Gotham Racing 3, are priced at $49.99 USD, while some third party (outside publishers) titles such as Need For Speed: Most Wanted and Quake 4, are priced at $59.99 USD. Several first party titles will also offer a "Limited Edition" packaging at a $10 USD price premium, these will include extra features such as bonus game content, videos, screenshots, and special casing.
Launch details
Dates
The Xbox 360 was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, a week before E³. The first area to see the machine released was North America on November 22, 2005, with Europe following just over a week later.
| Date | Location |
|---|---|
| November 22, 2005 | North America |
| December 2, 2005 | Europe |
| December 10, 2005 | Japan |
| March 2, 2006 | Australia |
| 2006 | Elsewhere |
Available titles
Eighteen launch titles were available for customers in the United States on November 22, 2005. The European countries will have fifteen titles available by the launch date of December 2, 2005. Japanese customers, however, will only have seven titles to choose from by the time the Xbox 360 is released on December 10, 2005. This discrepancy is partially accounted for by the time needed to localize the games.
| Title | North America | Europe | Japan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amped 3 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Call of Duty 2 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Condemned: Criminal Origins | Yes | Yes | No |
| Dead or Alive 4 | No | No | Yes |
| Every Party | No | No | Yes |
| FIFA '06: Road to FIFA World Cup | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Gun | Yes | Yes | No |
| Kameo: Elements of Power | Yes | Yes | No |
| Madden NFL 06 | Yes | Yes | No |
| NBA 2K6 | Yes | No | No |
| NBA Live 06 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Need for Speed: Most Wanted | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| NHL 2K6 | Yes | No | No |
| Perfect Dark Zero (LE available) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Peter Jackson's King Kong | Yes | Yes | No |
| Project Gotham Racing 3 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Quake 4 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Ridge Racer 6 | Yes | No | Yes |
| Tetris: The Grandmaster Ace | No | No | Yes |
| Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 | Yes | Yes | No |
| Tony Hawk's American Wasteland | Yes | Yes | No |
Components and accessories
Controller
The Xbox 360 has the ability to support up to four wireless controllers. Additionally it can support two wired controllers through the use of its USB ports at the front, the USB port on the back will support a third controller. The wired controller is compatible with Windows XP USB-equipped PCs and has a nine foot (2.74 m) long cord with a break-away feature. This version of the controller sells for $39.99/€34.99/£24.99/C$49.99/¥3,675. The wireless controller has a battery life of up to 25 hours on the NiMH rechargeable battery pack (optional and recommended) and a recommended range of up to 30 feet (9.14 m), although it has been tested to work at a greater range. The wireless controller will be sold for $49.99/€44.99/£32.99/C$59.99/¥4,725.
The controller for the Xbox 360 is a similar version of the Type-S gamepad for the original Xbox. The Xbox 360 controller adds a Xbox guide button, which has the appearance of the Xbox 360 emblem and is surrounded by a ring of neon green light. Pressing the Xbox guide button will bring the Xbox 360 out of sleep mode, turn the console on or off, and bring up the "Xbox Guide" for access to digital movies, music and games libraries. The ring of light lights up the quadrant (on the controller as well as the console) that correlates with the quadrant of the screen you will be playing on (if more than one person is playing the game). The black and white buttons have been redesigned as shoulder buttons, now referred to as bumper buttons ("LB" and "RB"), located above the left and right triggers. The rear of the controller includes a port where the player can connect a headset. This port replaces the two non-standard USB connectors on the front of the Xbox controller.
Detachable hard drive
A detachable 20 gigabyte hard drive is used for the storage of games, music, downloaded trailers, levels, demos, player preferences, and community-created content from Xbox Live Marketplace; it may also be used to transfer such content between Xbox 360 units. A hard drive is also required for the user to be able to play backward compatible Xbox games. The individual drives will come pre-loaded with a promotional video about the making of the Xbox 360, additional Dashboard skins, songs, additional Xbox Live Gamertag images, and Hexic HD, an Xbox Live Arcade game from Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov. This content will be included on both the bundled hard drive and the stand alone product. The detachable 20 gigabyte hard drive will be sold for $99.99/€99.99/£69.99/C$129.99. This drive will not be included in the Core System bundle at launch, and also will not be sold separately in Japan.
According to J Allard, the chief of Microsoft's Xbox division, Microsoft may sell larger capacity detachable hard drives for the Xbox 360 in the future, and territories outside of North America may have a differently sized hard drive in the retail unit.
Faceplates
The default faceplate (Xbox 360's Chrome or Core System's Chill) can be replaced with a range of custom designs, each to be sold separately. Microsoft has also distributed two promotional faceplates, one for those present at the E3 2005 unveiling and one for VIP X05 attendees. The price of these custom designs are $20.
AV connection cables
- Xbox 360 Component HD-AV Cable
- This set provides component RCA cables for both high and standard definition output to TVs.
- This set of cables connects to high-definition as well as standard-definition TVs that have S-Video or composite video inputs. The SCART AV Cable allows an RGB connection via the SCART connector. All the connectors also offer an optical audio output jack for connection to surround sound systems. They will be sold for $29.99/€24.99/£17.99/C$39.99/¥2,625.
- VGA HD AV Cable
- This set of cables allows for high-definition on flat-panel TV or computer monitors that have a VGA connector. It has 2-Y RCA male jacks for audio connection. It will be sold for $39.99/€29.99/£19.99/C$49.99/¥3,675.YEA
Other
- Rechargable battery pack: This nickel metal hydride battery pack provides up to 30 hours of continuous gaming for the wireless controller. It is recommended in place of disposable AA batteries (which differ slightly in voltage) and will be sold for $11.99/€14.99/£9.99/C$14.99/¥1,365. It also ships as part of the Play & Charge Kit.
- Play and Charge kit: allows the controller to be recharged while playing. Also includes the rechargeable battery pack. Sold for $19.99/€19.99/£14.99/C$29.99/¥2,100.
- Memory Unit: a portable device which allows the transfer of saved games, in-game achievements and unique gamer profiles to other Xbox 360 consoles. The 64 MB version will be sold for $39.99/€34.99/£22.99/C$49.99/¥3,360.
- Wireless Networking Adapter: The Wi-Fi (802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g) adapter is sold separately and will be sold for $100/€80/£60/C$130/¥8,925. Using an official or third-party wireless bridge the console will automatically detect and link up with other Xbox 360 consoles that are within range and form a mesh network.
- Headset: allows gamers to talk to each other when plugged into the controller and connected to Xbox Live, and has an in-line volume control. It will be sold for $19.99/€19.99/£14.99/C$29.99/¥2,625.
- Universal Media Remote: allows the user to play DVD movies and music, and offers controls for a TV or Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005-based PC. It will be sold for $29.99/€29.99/£19.99/C$39.99/¥2,625. The universal media remote is a bigger version of the media remote that will initially be shipped with the Xbox 360 version of the console.
Hardware specifications
Specifications are also available at the official Xbox website.
Central processing unit
The central processing unit (CPU) is a custom IBM PowerPC-based "Xenon"
- 90 nm process, 165 million transistors
- Three symmetrical cores, each one running at 3.2 GHz
- Two hardware threads per core; six total
- One VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total
- 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
- 1 MiB L2 cache (lockable by the GPU)
Graphics processing unit
The graphics processing unit (GPU) is a custom ATI R500-based "Xenos"
- 337 million transistors total
- 500 MHz parent GPU (90 nm process, 232 million transistors)
- 500 MHz 10 MB daughter embedded DRAM framebuffer (90 nm process, 105 million transistors)
- NEC designed eDRAM has internal logic for color, alpha blending, Z/stencil buffering, and anti-aliasing.
- 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically-scheduled shader pipelines
- 4 arithmetic logic units per pipe for vertex or pixel shader processing
- Unified shader architecture (This means that each pipeline is capable of running either pixel or vertex shaders.)
- Support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0, limited support for future DirectX 10 shader models
- 2 Shader operations per pipe per cycle
- 96 Shader operations per cycle across the entire shader array
- Shader performance: 48 billion (48,000 million) shader operations per second
- 16 Filtered & 16 unfiltered texture samples per clock
- Maximum polygon performance: 500 million triangles per second
- Pixel fillrate: 16 gigasamples per second fillrate using 4X MSAA
- Dot product operations: 9.6 billion per second theoretical maximum, 33.6 billion per second theoretical maximum when summed with CPU operations.
Memory
- 512 MiB 700 MHz GDDR3 RAM (Total system memory is shared with the GPU via the unified memory architecture.)
System bandwidth
The system bandwidth comprises:
- 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth (700 MHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle (one per edge) on a 128 bit bus)
- 256 GB/s eDRAM internal logic to eDRAM internal memory bandwidth
- 32 GB/s GPU to eDRAM bandwidth (2 GHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle on a 64 bit DDR bus)
- 21.6 GB/s front side bus (aggregated 10.8 GB/s upstream and downstream)
- 1 GB/s southbridge bandwidth (aggregated 500 MB/s upstream and downstream)
Overall System Floating-Point Performance
- 115 GFLOPS theoretical peak performance for CPU
- 1 TFLOPS theoretical peak performance of CPU and GPU combined
Audio
- All games support at least six channel (5.1) Dolby Digital surround sound
- Supports 48kHz 16-bit audio
- 320 independent decompression channels
- 32 bit processing
- 256+ audio channels
- No voice echo to game players on the same Xbox console; voice goes only to remote consoles
- Voice communication except during games or applications that do not support voice.
- uses XMA codec (advanced audio technology from Microsoft)
Video
- VC-1 at non-HD NTSC and PAL resolutions
- VC-1 or WMV will be used for streaming video
- VC-1 supports DVD quality and high definition quality video
- Bink Video is licensed for games like Project Gotham Racing 3
- additional MPEG2 decoder for DVD video playback
DVD Drive
A 12X DVD-ROM drive, capable of reading DVD+R/RW discs, is part of the console, with game titles shipping on single or dual-layer DVDs. The other supported formats are: CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R/RW, WMACD, MP3CD, and JPEG Photo CD.
Recently, it was announced that future revisions of the Xbox 360 may include HD DVD drives as part of Microsoft's partnership with Toshiba. The source of this information is the following statement made by Bill Gates on the 28th of June in Japan:
- "The initial shipments of Xbox 360 will be based on today's DVD format. We are looking at whether future versions of Xbox 360 will incorporate an additional capability of an HD DVD player or something else."
However, as confirmed by Yoshihiro Maruyama, Japan's chief of Xbox operations, Microsoft will never release games in a format other than DVD. [2]
The HD DVD and Blu-Ray Disc formats have already developed an intense rivalry to become the de facto successor to DVD for high-definition video, and if Microsoft chooses to add HD DVD it could make the Xbox 360 a more competitive multimedia device from a marketing perspective.
Xbox 360 games are limited to the 8.5GB of storage available on a dual-layer DVD. This storage space limitation is a concern to developers, and some games made for the system may span multiple discs. The Nintendo Revolution uses a similar size of disc while the PlayStation 3 uses a 25GB or 50GB Blu-Ray Disc.
Physical characteristics
- Weight 3.5 kg (7.7 lb)
- 309 x 83 x 258 mm (12.15 x 3.27 x 10.15 in)
Miscellaneous
- Support for WMV HD and progressive or interlaced DVD video playback.
- Media Center Extender capability
- The console makes use of regional lockout. Games bought for the console in a specific region can only be played in a console from the same region. DVD playback on the console has similar lockouts.
- All games must support a 16:9 aspect ratio, and a minimum of 720p HD resolution with 2x full-scene anti-aliasing enabled. The embedded Microsoft WebTV chip can downsample 720p to lower display resolutions (including 480i SDTV and 480p) and dynamically crop or scale 16:9 to fit 4:3 screens. Some games will optionally support native 1080i and 480p video resolutions as well.
- 3 USB 2.0 ports
- Microsoft claims all games will support custom soundtracks. (This requirement may have profound effects on the business model for music video games.) There are several ways to utilize the custom soundtrack option: by ripping music from audio CD's, stream music directly from your PC (Windows Media Center Extender), plug in a USB Flash Drive, or plug in an MP3 player that is USB-capable (including any Apple iPod models which support USB) into the system to use custom soundtracks. However, you can only store music on the system's hard drive by ripping your audio CD's.
Software development
XNA
In March 2004, Microsoft announced a new game development software strategy dubbed "XNA", which Microsoft claims would enable game studios to cut development times by up to a third if developing across multiple Microsoft platforms, by means of tools created with the increasing difficulty of programming for a machine with three processor cores in mind. The Xbox 360 game development will be centered around the XNA Studio game development platform. XNA Studio covers three areas: Content Creation, Production Processes and Game Technologies. XNA Studio will enable collaboration between content creators, programmers, management and QA staff to speed the game production process. Based on Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 Team System, the XNA Studio is the Visual Studio for game development; an integrated, team-based development environment tailored for game production. XNA Studio will provide versions of key production tools such as asset management, defect tracking, project automation and work lists. These tools are designed to work together to automate common development tasks and present interfaces tailored to the different functions within the team. XNA Studio will allow team members to collaborate using familiar techniques and tools, even when elements of the team are distributed geographically, an increasing trend in game development. Microsoft believes that this will give developers more time to generate unique content and reduce time running the content process. To date, some developers have endorsed XNA Studio. For example, John Carmack stated at QuakeCon 2005 that the Xbox 360 had "the best development environment" he has seen for a console.
Procedural synthesis
For the Xbox 360, Microsoft has drawn on recent research in computer graphics to enable a new method for game programming. In traditional games, all content is statically stored and generally immutable; that is, textures, meshes, and other game content is stored on a storage medium. As complexity in each rises, the demand for storage rises as well. A newer approach to generating content is utilised for Xbox 360 titles, a method referred to by Microsoft as procedural synthesis. Procedural synthesis is an approach to generating game content via algorithms. For example, trees are one of the most complicated objects to render in a game, due to their organic complexity. A game with only one model for a tree will appear odd, as nature is far more random; the game loses some of its immersion as a result. Instead, a general recursive algorithm will generate the tree's model and textures, so that each tree looks different from the next, and do so with high efficiency. The Xbox 360's architecture was designed with this approach in mind.[3] When running procedural synthesis algorithms, one of the Xenon CPU's cores may "lock" a portion of the 1 MB shared L2 cache. When locked, a segment of cache no longer contains any prefetched instructions or data for the CPU, but is instead used as output space for the procedural synthesis thread. The Xenos GPU can then read directly from this locked cache space and render the procedurally generated objects. The rationale behind this design is that procedurally generated game content can be streamed directly from CPU to GPU, without incurring additional latency by being stored in system RAM as an intermediary step. The downside to this approach is that when part of the L2 cache is locked, there is even less data immediately available to keep the 3 symmetric cores in the Xenon CPU running at full efficiency (1 MB of shared L2 is already a rather small amount of cache for 3 symmetric cores to share, especially considering that the Xenon CPU does not support out-of-order execution to more efficiently use available clock cycles).
Procedural synthesis is also found outside of the Xbox 360 in the advanced freeware FPS game .kkrieger, where such techniques have reduced the size of the visually stunning game to a mere 96 kilobytes. Other interesting examples of procedural synthesis are shown in various demoscene demos. The Playstation 3 also has impressive procedural synthesis capabilities, but the technical implementation differs significantly.
Backward compatibility
The Xbox 360 is partially backwards compatible, being able to play certain Xbox games through emulation at the CPU level [4]. Hard drives purchased seperately or as part of the console package will include a certain number of "emulation profiles" for games, including Halo and Halo 2. Other profiles are available as auto-updates over the Xbox Live network, provided that there is a hard drive component to store them to. Users may also download the profiles from Xbox.com and transfer them to the console via a burned CD, or order such a CD from Microsoft for a nominal fee.
The list of backward compatible games for the U.S. market was released on November 11, 2005 and is maintained at Xbox.com. Although the U.S. list includes over 200 games, fewer games are listed as backward compatible in the European markets, and the Japanese Xbox site shows only 12[5]. Note that these figures are current as of November 2005, more emulation profiles will be made available in the future.
Xbox Live on the Xbox 360
With the launch of the Xbox 360, Microsoft's online gaming service, Xbox Live will go through a major upgrade adding a basic non-subscription service (Silver) to its already established premium subscription-based service (Gold). Xbox Live Silver is free of charge and allows users to create a profile, join on message boards, access to Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade, and talk to other members. Silver members are not allowed to play any games online, aside from massive multiplayer games like Final Fantasy XI. Microsoft has also announced there will be trial weekends for Silver members to access the full features of Gold service temporarily.
Xbox Live Gold will have the same features as Silver plus online game playing capabilities and video conferencing. However, video conferencing will not be available when the console is first released. Microsoft has allowed for previous Xbox Live subscribers to maintain their profile information, buddy lists, and games history when they make the transition to Xbox Live Gold. To transition your account you have to sign up for a .net account on Xbox.com and link it with your gamer tag. Then when you turn on your 360 console you will be asked for your .net account and your information will transfer. An Xbox Live Gold account will cost $49.99 USD, £39.99 Pounds Sterling per year.
Xbox Gamer Guide
The Xbox Game Guide is a tabbed user interface that can be accessed instantly by pressing the Guide Button on any Xbox 360 controller. It offers the following selections:
- Xbox Live
- Marketplace
- Favorites List
- Custom Playlists
- Friends Lists
- and others
Marketing
The official unveiling of the system occurred on Thursday, May 12, 2005 on MTV in a program called MTV Presents: The Next Generation Xbox Revealed hosted by actor Elijah Wood with a musical performance by the band The Killers. The Xbox 360 was also featured on the cover of Time magazine's May 23, 2005 issue with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates holding up one of the units. In the article he says "It's perfect...The day Sony launches [the new PlayStation], and they walk right into Halo 3." [6] Read more at wikiquote. Microsoft executive Robbie Bach later clarified this statement, saying "Philosophically the point Bill was trying to make is that we’re not just going to ship and not have great stuff coming up."[7]
The system, along with some playable games, were shown off at E3 2005. The demos were running on "Xbox 360 Alpha Development Kits" which were Apple PowerMac G5s, chosen due to the PowerPC processor architecture that machine shares with the Xbox 360. Microsoft claims that most of the games were running at 25-30% of full capacity because they were not running on actual systems.
In October/November 2005, Wal-Mart's North American stores received kiosks to demonstrate games like Call of Duty 2 and Kameo: Elements of Power. In the first week of November, the Xbox 360 screen of death was reported.
Certain EB Games locations began displaying the Xbox 360 in their stores just over a week prior to its release.
Xbox 360 Lounge
To boost marketing and Xbox 360 awareness in Japan, an "Xbox 360 Lounge" has been constructed for $410,000 and officially opened on November 2 2005 [8]. It is situated in the Aoyama district in Tokyo, close to Omotesando, a popular upscale shopping area. The lounge has three main areas: a 256 square meter event space that offers five large display screens, an area containing Xbox 360 game kiosks, and a 70-seat café. Doors are open daily from 10:00am to 11:00pm.
Viral advertising and alternate reality games
The promotional campaign for Xbox 360 began on March 14, 2005 with the opening of an alternate reality game called OurColony. Throughout March and April OurColony.net offered challenges to its community, rewarding solutions with cropped pictures of the console and game screenshots. On May 12 the ARG section of OurColony closed, visitors were instead greeted with a promotional video hosted by J. Allard.
OrigenXbox360.com was the next viral marketing campaign from Microsoft. Unveiled on September 27, 2005 the website, hosted by talking rabbits Boss and Didier offers visitors an opportunity to enter in various contests. The initial contest was a raffle that required participants to answer three trivia questions regarding the Xbox 360 for a chance to attend a promotional pre-launch event. New contests include a Halo 2 tournament and a competition to design a "Gamertile" (an avatar icon). Design for the website employs flash animation of a Bonsai tree and bland elevator music to create a serene environment that is punctuated by visually intense psychedelic episodes involving the host rabbits.
October 2005 saw the appearance of "Hex168", another viral marketing campaign commissioned by Microsoft and executed by the Marden-Kane advertising agency. On October 13, 2005, members of the TeamXbox forums were directed to the Hex168.com website through mysterious messages posted by someone called "Lutz". [9] This website hosted a number of images that appeared to perpetuate obscure conspiracy theories, but sometimes contained obtuse references to Xbox 360. The campaign was later revealed to be a U.S. contest that offered participants a chance to win one of three hundred and sixty Xbox 360 console bundles six days before the official launch.[10]
Console Launch
United States (November 22, 2005)
Bloomberg News reported that Microsoft shipped between 500,000 to 700,000 units of the Xbox 360 console to retailers all over America for its launch.
Peter Moore, Microsoft corporate vice president, predicted that shipments will reach 10 million units worldwide by the end of 2006. [11]
Immediately after the launch, reports about the new machine's technical glitches started coming out. Some reported the Xbox 360 crashing with errors, some reported the hard drive does not respond in certain situation while others report error messages during various games or unusually fast overheating.
Microsoft has stated that they will look into the reports and has offered assistance reachable by phone.
People who want to get their hands on an Xbox 360 should not worry, despite reports claiming there are shortages, it is most likely orders for the Xbox 360 will start coming in some time in the first week of December 2005.
Further reading
- Official Xbox 360 site
- XBOX 360 & XBOX Games, Reviews & News site
- Games.net-Reviews, Screens, and News
- Video of J Allard presentation at the GDC 2005
- GamePro-Reviews, Screens, and News
- The Xbox Reloaded - Wired Magazine
- GameInformer information on Xbox 360
- Taking a spin with the Xbox 360 - Team Xbox
- Xbox 360 Inside & Out - Gamespot
- Xbox 360 FAQ - IGN
- OurColony Xbox 360 Video
- PowerMacs Running the XBox 360
- ATI Xenos: XBOX 360 Graphics Demystified
- A side-by-side comparison between Xbox 360 and PS3
- Xbox 360 Price: The Industry Reacts
- Paul Thurrott's WinSuperSite - Information and images
- Michael Brundage on backward compatibility
- Xbox 360's stealth weapon - media functionality
- Xbox 360: Dreamcast 2.0? 23 Eerie parallels between the two consoles (humor)
- Paul Thurrot's Supersite Xbox 360 Review
- The Need of RPGs on the Xbox 360
- The Xbox 360 Blog
See also
- List of Xbox 360 games
- List of Xbox games compatible with Xbox 360
- Xbox Live
- Xbox Live Arcade
- Xbox 360 screen of death