Microsoft have just sent through a press release announcing the Xbox 360 release dates around the world, except for Australia which has to cop an 'early 2006' timeline.

Xbox 360™ will arrive on store shelves Tuesday, Nov. 22 in North America, Friday, Dec. 2 in Europe, and Saturday, Dec. 10 in Japan. Australian gamers can enjoy the Xbox 360 in early 2006.

Tokyo Game Show 2005 is about to kick off tomorrow and there will be a bunch of Xbox 360 stuff spewing out of there - check out the press release for more information about what you can expect to see.

Yeah, "Worldwide release*" *except you!

We dont even really have a timeframe yet, it's ass. I've heard everything between January and June. June ffs.

Can we like buy them from the US and stuff?

fpot, we can, but you can't

ive got mates ordering them from the states, im thinking of doing the same, but i realised theres no point buying one till the mod scene is cranking which will hopefully be around the time it gets released in oz.. so yeah...

what :(

but i realised theres no point buying one till the mod scene is cranking

What about getting an early revision so that the first round of modding exploits will work? That is, before MS patch newer versions.

22nd nov in the states? sweet, that's my b'day. maybe time to ask my sis in teh states to get me one as a pressie ;)

anyone else getting the feeling that this is going to be only a slightly improved xbox?

Okay, the problems with getting an import system.

1. Ridiculously high postage, you're looking at over $100.
2. US/JP run on 110v, you'll need a step up converter if you buy one from there, at least $50. Better of sourcing from the UK, as they're 240v.
3. US/JP run NTSC, not all aust tvs support this, but any one worth it salt does so you're pretty safe there. Again better of getting a Euro model, since they're already PAL.

And finally, the big one that's really the reason I'm probably not going to bother with importing.

4. f***ing region locking. Firstly it's almost certainly (unless MS have done a serious 360 -heh- on their DRM issues) not going to be able to play any Australian retailed games once the system does finally launch here in 10 years time so you'll be getting all your games from the region you bought the system until decent modding starts happening. And secondly, it will be region locked for video DVD too, so no watching anything you get from blockbuster on it.

Why the hell did they decide we needed our own region, couldnt they have just lumped us in with the euros like they do everything else *PSP.

It's going to be a long wait, especially with all the buzz and reviews the new games are going to generating once it launches EVERYWHERE ELSE BUT HERE.

unless MS have done a serious 360 -heh- on their DRM issues

If they did a 360, wouldn't they be in their initial state?

Are they rushing for christmas or what?

im happy to wait until they hit aus and the aus ones can be modded

anyone else getting the feeling that this is going to be only a slightly improved xbox?

No.

I am getting the feeling you've been paying too much attention to Sony's "XBox 1.5 LOL" smear campaign though.

No real big deal. By the time it comes out here there might be some decent games for it. None of the launch titles seem to be must haves.

I am getting the feeling you've been paying too much attention to Sony's "XBox 1.5 LOL" smear campaign though.

heh i havent read anything about sony since e3. good try though.

to me, the 360 just doesnt seem enough of a leap. i expected a lot more from ms.

last edited by ravn0s at 22:00:49 15/Sep/05

I think the controller will be announced today for the Revolution..Iwatas keynote is in 12 hours or so at the TGS! Woot.


Also, the difference between the Xbox360 vids at E3 and the vids available for games running on final hardware is HUGE. Look for some new vids running on the final hardware and you'll go "woah"...Still..Revolution controller OMG!

last edited by Tim Tibbetts at 22:02:15 15/Sep/05

went searching for some TGS info and found some mgs4 screens. all i can say is wow.

hopefully the revolution controller is totally out there, otherwise ill be disappointed.

I read something on bbc news saying that these Xboxes are gonna be hard as to mod. Now obviously they can and will be modded, but apparently ms are making it as difficult as as costly as possible. so maybe modding them could end up being csoting more than it's worth?

well when the xbox first came out Microsoft said at the time that the disc's had special copy protection and could not be copied or pirated in any way..... how long did it take? couple weeks maybe :) im sure it won't take some ppl long to figure out how to crack it.

How much more of a leap do you want? The Xenon CPU in the XBox 360 impresses me more than Sony's Cell anyway: 3 PowerPC cores in the Xenon, each able to handle 2 hardware threads at once (thats 6 threads executing at once all up), vs the Cell with 1 PowerPC core and 8 smaller supporting processors for doing floating point math. Microsoft are doing some funky stuff with procedurally generated geometry as well with the Xenon which sounds pretty interesting. Bring on the XBox 360 I say!

so q4 is suppose to be a release game for the 360. I hope the intended release date is the 11th of october and not 22nd of november =(

meh that sux with the realse date for aus,was hoping for it like christmas time :(

I was hoping for ~2.30 pm next wednesday.

so it isnt a celeron?

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=ps3+xbox+1.5&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
That was hard!

Dammit, i'm not gonna be in japan till Jan 10, a month after release date. i was so hoping to be able to get my pic taken in a massive line up of jap guys doing a midnight release. i would stick out like a sore thumb :)

In case anyone thought there was any hope. http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/9263/Xbox-360-to-be-Region-Locked/

At the pre-TGS press briefing, Microsoft confirmed that the Xbox 360 will be region locked for both games and DVD movie playback, meaning that you can't play games or watch DVD movies from another region other than the one your Xbox 360 is locked to.

Although the Xbox 360 is being marketed as a global brand, Microsoft has decided to lock the console in regions just like they did with the Xbox. It remains to be seen if Sony will do the same with the PlayStation 3.

So yeah, by an import box from the UK and expect to keep getting all your games from there too, at least until the modchips start rolling in, at which point you can say goodbye to Live! access, if that was ever important to you.

the games look good to me

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=abde1e02-b529-469e-ae6a-7417fcde9e12&displaylang=en

And sif japanese people will be lining up at midnight for an XBox 360. Didn't the original XBox do horrendously badly in Japan?

I guess at least that means we might get a bigger selection of launch titles, maybe. Hopefully.

Khel and Tepid.

thanks for dashing that dream!

/goes and stands in corner :(

How much more of a leap do you want? The Xenon CPU in the XBox 360 impresses me more than Sony's Cell anyway: 3 PowerPC cores in the Xenon, each able to handle 2 hardware threads at once (thats 6 threads executing at once all up), vs the Cell with 1 PowerPC core and 8 smaller supporting processors for doing floating point math. Microsoft are doing some funky stuff with procedurally generated geometry as well with the Xenon which sounds pretty interesting. Bring on the XBox 360 I say!

What are these threads you talk of and what is the equivalent of an xbox 360 if it were a computer?

What are these threads you talk of and what is the equivalent of an xbox 360 if it were a computer?

Threads are execution threads, basically one program can have multiple execution threads that allow it to do different tasks at the same time. For example, one thread might be polling for user input, one thread might be doing network sends and receives, another thread could be doing the rendering, etc. Generally you want most of this stuff happening at pretty much the same time, and you dont want one to hold up the execution of the other, so you split them off into separate threads that can all run at the same time.

Most CPUs in the past have only been able to execute one thread at a time, so they simulate a multi-threaded environment by rapidly switching between the different execution threads to give the appearance that they are basically running at the same time. If you had dual cpus in your computer, this allowed you to run two threads simultaneously, one per CPU, and it also allowed you to split the load by having different threads executing on different cpus. Hyperthreading is kinda similar except it just tricks your computer into think it has two cpus to achieve a similar effect. The Xenon CPU in the XBox 360 can execute 6 threads simultaneously, with the load split over three cores.

As for what that equates to in PC terms, I really dont know. I've got it stuck in my head that its roughly equivalent to dual 3.2ghz p4's, but I have no idea where I pulled that from or if its even close to true.

The Xenon CPU is a custom processor based on PowerPC technology. The CPU includes three independent processors (cores) on a single die. Each core runs at 3.5+ GHz. The Xenon CPU can issue two instructions per clock cycle per core. At peak performance, Xenon can issue 21 billion instructions per second.

The Xenon CPU was designed by IBM in close consultation with the Xbox team, leading to a number of revolutionary additions, including a dot product instruction for extremely fast vector math and custom security features built directly into the silicon to prevent piracy and hacking.

Each core has two symmetric hardware threads (SMT), for a total of six hardware threads available to games. Not only does the Xenon CPU include the standard set of PowerPC integer and floating-point registers (one set per hardware thread), the Xenon CPU also includes 128 vector (VMX) registers per hardware thread. This astounding number of registers can drastically improve the speed of common mathematical operations.

Each of the three cores includes a 32-KB L1 instruction cache and a 32-KB L1 data cache. The three cores share a 1-MB L2 cache. The L2 cache can be locked down in segments to improve performance. The L2 cache also has the very unusual feature of being directly readable from the GPU, which allows the GPU to consume geometry and texture data from L2 and main memory simultaneously.

Xenon CPU instructions are exposed to games through compiler intrinsics, allowing developers to access the power of the chip using C language notation.

That enuff specs for ya? :P

Summary

Xbox 360 games will look pretty
Playstation 3 games will look pretty as well

If there's no def jam on either of em then they're both s*** =(

Summary

Xbox 360 games will look pretty
Playstation 3 games will look pretty as well

BAM! Any self respecting consoler is still going to buy both, so it sort of becomes a moot point.

last edited by Mantra at 11:35:20 18/Sep/05

^^ agreed sifnt get both xbox 360 and PS3 best of both worlds, who cares about specs / teraflops / polygons, its the games that count :)

EDIT: nice avatar booyah. :)

last edited by 0z at 15:40:57 18/Sep/05

Anyone seen the japanese ad recently released for xbox 360? Looks stupid. The main themes of the ad were communication, socialising and having fun with you're friends, in a country where (a)They have some of the largest and best arcades in the world (huge social element in any jap arcade) (b)They have an enormous entrenched mobile phone market (ie they don't need more communication devices) and (c)As shown by the majority of PS2 sales, most console game sales are more derived from epic or highly involving single player games that occupy a single player for large periods of time from start to finish.

Seriously, unless Microsoft changes its ad campaign straight away, or suddenly takes a different tack 6 months a way, I think their marketing strategy will bounce off Japan like a ping pong ball.

The only reason the majority of PS2 sales are derived from high involving single player games is because compared to XBox Live, the PS2 online solution was asstastic. What about FFXI? Thats like an absolute runaway hit in japan isn't it, biggest mmorpg in that country? And considering a large part of mmorpgs is socialising, obviously theres enough people who want to do that online in Japan.