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X B O X
Presentation
Microsoft Xbox™ Technical Specifications
- CPU type: Intel Pentium III Processor technology with Streaming SIMD Extensions
- CPU Clock Speed: 733 MHz
- Memory: 64 MB of RAM (unified memory architecture), 8GB Hard Drive
- DirectX API game development tools
- 233MHz custom-designed chip, developed by Microsoft and NVIDIA
- 3D Audio Support in Hardware (64-bit)
- 2X-5X DVD drive with movie playback (Additional Remote Necessary)
- Four game controller ports
- Expansion port
- Proprietary A/V connector
- Game controller x4, Ethernet (10/100)
- Broadband enabled
- Modem enabled (optional)
- 6.4GB/sec Memory Bandwidth
- 150 million micropolygons/particles per second
- 150 million transformed and lit polygons per second
- 100 million polygons per second sustained performance (shading, texturing)
- Pixel Fill Rate 4.0 GB/sec
- 4 simultaneous textures
- Compressed textures available at 6:1 compression
- Full-scene anti-aliasing
- DVD movie playback
- 1920x1080 maximum resolution
- Maximum resolution (2 x 32bpp frame buffers + Z) 1920 x 1080
- HDTV support (Games and Movie playback)
- 256 Audio channels
- 3-D Audio support
- Midi/DLS2 support
History
The XBox marked Microsoft's entry into the world of video game consoles in 2001. The North
American release was November 15th 2001, the Japanese release was February 22th 2002 and other releases March 14th 2002.
With their experience with computers, they made a super console using many computer elements. That's why some people
said it was too much like a computer.
The console features an Intel 733 MHz CPU, a much higher speed than other 128-bit consoles.
It has also four controller ports, a front-loading DVD tray, Ethernet port (for online games) and a 8GB hard drive.
The hard drive is an excellent idea. The Saturn had one, but it wasn't very big. Other consoles relied on memory
cards (XBox still has these as well).
Develop for XBox
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Like every game consoles development, it's necessary to get a license from
the constructor. It will provide you the official development kit and all the technical
documentations. You can get this license, if your project is approved by Microsoft, at this
address :
http://www.xbox.com/dev/regdev.htm
However, there is another way to develop for XBox. Microsoft provides to
the small development teams another solution called :
Incubator Program.
The XBox console is like a PC and uses a Windows 2000 environment. The XBox
development kit (XDK) is also derived from DirectX 8.0 with some additional librairies exploiting the
different components of the console.
See details about the XDK
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Other solutions start to appear, like for example the project
OpenXDK under GPL license.
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