X-Box Takes Gaming to the Next Level

This article comes from Highwaygames.com

Xbox is first and foremost a superior gaming machine — and like traditional game consoles it'll run through a TV. Out of the box, it will come with four game controller ports, a DVD player, a hard drive, broadband Internet, modem add-on support and much more.

The benefits as explained by Blackley is that the XBox has been developed from the ground up by game players for game players.

Through advances in technology, the XBox is hyped as the next level in gaming with many companies signing on to develop games. These include; Konami, Activision Inc., Bandai Co. Ltd., Capcom Co. Ltd., Eidos Interactive Ltd., Hudson Soft Co. Ltd, Infogrames, Konami Corp., Midway Home Entertainment Inc., Namco Limited, Sierra Studios and THQ.

The specifications of the XBox are;

Intel Pentium III 733MHz processor technology with Streaming SIMD Extensions

300MHz custom-designed X-Chip, developed by Microsoft and nVidia

64 MB of RAM (unified memory architecture)

Custom 3-D audio processor

8GB hard drive

5X DVD drive with movie playback

Four game controller ports

Expansion port

Proprietary A/V connector

10/100 MBps Ethernet

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)

4 simultaneous textures

Compressed textures available at 6:1 compression

Full-scene anti-aliasing

DVD movie playback

1920x1080 maximum resolution

HDTV support

256 Audio channels

3-D Audio support

Midi/DLS2 support

At the present moment there is no announcement for use of XBox in arcades.