[X360] Piccolo chiarimento sulle feature, ottimi risultati 2 trim. 2005 per MS

[Turrican3]

Fonte: www.gamasutra.com

Microsoft difende il suo X360 definendolo non inferiore a PS3, specifica che l'HD non sarà indispensabile (nemmeno per il Live!, dove basterà una memory card) e dichiara ottimi risultati per il brand Xbox.

Da notare a fine articolo i 4 miliardi di dollari di profitti dell'ultimo trimestre per le divisioni Windows e Office... 


An interview with Todd Holmdahl, corporate vice president of the Xbox product group, conducted by consumer game site TeamXbox.com has revealed a number of new facts about the exact capabilities of the Xbox 360.

Perhaps the most interesting comment concerns the hard drive, which Holmdahl indicates will not be necessary to play any games. He is cited as explaining: "Xbox 360 games do not require the HDD or a memory unit, but Xbox Live requires one or the other to save the gamers' account information."

This will mean that Xbox 360 developers cannot require the hard drive to be present during gameplay for streaming data from, or for storing other transient information, something that was originally intended to be a selling point for original Xbox games such as Blinx: The Time Sweeper, which recorded your gameplay data to hard disc so you could rewind time. However, since the PlayStation 3 is not thought to include a hard drive as standard, this does not necessarily present a major problem for Microsoft, and may aid multi-SKU releases.

Holmdahl's other comments confirm that the Xbox 360's Ethernet network port can be used to enable two different network connections at one time, and that the console can support four wireless controllers and four wireless headset communicators simultaneously, using custom 2.4GHz technology and not Bluetooth or WUSB.

When asked to comment on suggestions that the PlayStation 3 hardware was more powerful than the Xbox 360, Holmdahl answered, "I dispute the notion that the PS3 is more powerful than Xbox 360. We outperform where it matters, and our system is much more balanced, making sure we can actually harness all the power of the system, unlike Sony. We believe that their teraflop calculations are wrong, and we put them at a similar teraflop number as Xbox 360."

In related Xbox 360, new images first appearing on the GameSpot user forums appear to show a youth playing a copy of Halo 2 on a Xbox 360 console. In his forum post user "Elmojesus" claimed that his stepfather works in Seattle as an Xbox "foreign tester" and lent the Xbox 360 to his stepson. The images of the Xbox 360 hardware seem legitimate, but if the leak is true, then the posting of the stepfather's business card and Microsoft security card are not likely to be viewed with much amusement by Microsoft bosses.

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Microsoft Announces Increased Revenue, Strong Xbox Sales

Microsoft Corp. has announced its financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2005, and revealed revenue of $10.16 billion over the entire company, a 9% increase over the results in the same period of the prior year.

Operating income for the fourth quarter was $2.99 billion, compared to $3.13 billion in the prior year, but this includes a reduction of $756 million related to legal charges for antitrust-related claims, so the fourth-quarter profit, taking this and other factors into account, was $3.7 billion, around 37% higher than the previous year.

The specific results regarding Microsoft's Xbox game console hardware and software were reasonably positive - the company posted a 22% revenue growth for the Home and Entertainment division, particularly referencing "strong results across all aspects of the Xbox business" for this increase.

Microsoft also revealed that, in the 2005 fiscal year, the Home and Entertainment division shipped a record number of both Xbox consoles and software, and also referenced the recently announced two million Xbox Live subscriber milestone as a high point, alongside the unveiling of the Xbox 360, due out in North America this November.

However, the loss for the quarter for the Home and Entertainment division was $179 million, down from $340 million in the same quarter of the previous year, but nonetheless notable. Overall, the division lost $391 million for the year ended June 30 2005, compared to a gigantic $1.22 billion for the year ended June 30 2004.

Nonetheless, given that the profits of Microsoft's Windows and Office-related division were $2.02 billion each for the latest quarter alone, the company is obviously still in a position to continue to invest in Xbox hardware and software as it strives to push the Xbox 360 as the leading next-generation contender.