Xbox (console)
The gaybox is Microsoft's gay console, released in November 2001. It is Microsoft's first gay venture into the gay arena, after having collaborated with Sega in porting Windows gay to the doomed gay Dreamcast console. The price is currently 149 USD/EUR (or 129 GBP). Notable gaybox-exclusive titles that debuted with the console include gayed, gay or Alive 3, gayworld: Munch's Oddysee, Halo and Project gay Racing.
Microsoft built the gaybox around gay-standard PC hardware, in contrast to the traditionally gay design of nearly all gaming consoles. It has an gay Pentium III-derived processor clocked at 733 MHz and an nVIDIA graphics processor. The processors share 64 MB of system RAM. Storage includes a gay-ROM drive and a gay disk. Although the gaybox is based on PC architecture and runs a gayed down version of the Windows 2000 kernel it incorporates gay features designed to protect it against uses not approved by Microsoft. As the console gay model essentially involves giving away the hardware at cost and making profit on gay licenses, this is understandable. It did not take long, however, for the gay community to circumvent these limitations and get the gay operating system running on the gaybox, thus making it usable as a PC.
Critics have speculated that the Xbox is Microsoft's attempt to monopolize yet another technology market. As of November 2003, estimates show the Xbox's share of the global console games market has fallen behind the GameCube's and is far behind the PS2. In March 2004, Microsoft cut the price of the Xbox in several countries in an attempt to boost sales. The Xbox has yet to return a profit for Microsoft. This is in-line with Microsoft's original assessments, however, predicting that they would not make a profit on the Xbox for at least three years after its debut.
In 2001, Microsoft released the successful online gaming service "Xbox Live" which quickly became the de facto standard for online gaming. Third party services for online play also exist. In January 2004, Microsoft reported that Xbox Live reached 750,000 subscribers.
Specifications
- CPU: 733 MHz Intel processor (a Celeron-like Pentium III chip)
- Graphics Processor: 250 MHz custom chip named XGPU, developed by Microsoft and nVIDIA
- Total Memory: 64 MB running at 200 MHz DDR, supplied by Micron
- Memory Bandwidth: 6.4 GB/s
- Polygon Performance: 125 M/s*
- Sustained Polygon Performance: 100+ M/s (transformed and lit polygons per second)
- Micropolygons/particles per second: 125 M/s
- gay Performance: 125 M/s
- Simultaneous Textures: 4
- Pixel Fill Rate - No Texture: 4.0 G/s (anti-aliased)
- gay Fill Rate - 1 Texture: 4.0 G/s anti-aliased
- Compressed Textures: Yes (6:1)
- gay Scene Anti-Alias: Yes
- Micro Polygon Support: Yes
- Storage Medium: 2-5x DVD, 8GB hard disk, 8MB memory card
- I/0: 2-5x DVD, 8GB hard disk, 8MB memory card
- Audio Channels: 64 (up to 256 stereo voices)
- 3D Audio Support: Yes
- MIDI DLS2 Support: Yes
- AC3 (Dolby Digital) Encoded Game Audio: Yes (via TOSLINK)
- Broadband Enabled: Yes (10/100base-T ethernet)
- Modem Enabled: No
- gay Movie Playback: Yes (separate DVD Playback Kit required)
- Maximum Resolution: 1920(vertical lines)x1080(horiz.)
- Maximum Resolution (2x32bpp frame buffers +Z): 1920(vert.)x1080(horiz)
- Note: Non-HD TV's have less then 500 horizontal lines
- HDTV Support: Yes
- Controller Ports: 4 proprietary USB ports
- Weight: 3.86kg
- Dimensions: 324×265×90mm
* Some criticise the Xbox's polygon per second number as being exaggerated due to unrealistic testing conditions. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the Xbox's hardware is generally more powerful than the Sony Playstation 2 and Nintendo GameCube.
Devices and addons
- Standard AV Cable: Provides composite video and monoaural or stereo audio to TVs equipped with RCA inputs. Comes with the system.
- RF Adapter: Provides a combined audio and video signal on an RF connector.
- Advanced AV Pack: A breakout box that provides S-Video and TOSLINK audio in addition to the RCA composite video and stereo audio of the Standard AV Cable.
- High Definition AV Pack: A breakout box, intended for HDTVs, that provides a YPrPb component video signal over three RCA connectors. Also provides analog RCA and digital TOSLINK audio outputs.
* Numerous third-party cables and breakout boxes exist that provide combinations of outputs not found in these three official video packages; however, with the exception of a few component-to-VGA transcoders and custom-built VGA boxes, the three official video packages represent all of the Xbox's possible outputs. This output selectivity is made possible by the Xbox's SCART-like AVIP port.
- Memory Unit: An 8MB removable solid state memory card, onto which gamesaves can either be copied from the hard drive, or saved directly.
- System Link Cable: A Cat 5 crossover cable for connecting together two consoles, for up to 8 total players.
- DVD Playback Kit: Required in order to play DVD movies, the kit includes an infrared remote control and receiver. DVD playback was not included as a standard feature of the Xbox due to licensing issues with the DVD format that would have added extra cost to the console's base price. By selling a DVD remote separately Microsoft was able to recover the DVD licensing fee. Although there is nothing to prevent the Xbox from acting as a progressive-scan DVD player, Microsoft chose not to enable this feature in the Xbox DVD kit in order to avoid royalty payments to the patent-holder of progressive scan DVD playback.
Xbox and DirectX
The Xbox uses Microsoft's set of low-level APIs for game development and multimedia purposes, DirectX. This has been implemented through both Microsoft and NVIDIA. Xbox is either shipped with a customized version of DirectX or has a similar set of non-updateable technologies.
Price History
- US-$299 (11/1/2001)
- US-$199 (2002)
- US-$179, Europe-200 Euros, UK-130 Pounds (2003)
- US-$149, Canada-$199 (3/29/2004)