Microsoft Xbox 360 Officially Revealed!

May 13 2005, 12:15am EST | by Luigi Lugmayr

The Microsoft Xbox is officially announced and the MTV Xbox 360 show ran on MTV in the USA.

To Xbox 360 is dramatically more powerful than the current Xbox. There are 3 3.2Ghz PowerPC CPUs with 6 hardware threads, compared to a Intel 733Mhz PIII with 1 hardware thread. This enables the Xbox 360 to have a about 100x higher Floating Point Performance (115.GFLOPS). The Polygon Performance is about 5x higher and the Pixel Fill Rate about 4x higher than the Xbox. See Xbox 360 Specifcations below.

Besides this raw gaming power the Xbox 360 supports media (video and audio) streaming via the wireless network from PCs in the home network.
Now it is Sony's turn to impress us with what the PS3 with the Cell chip can do. I buy the Microsoft Xbox 360 story so far. For people in Europe, you can watch teaser video about the Xbox 360 revealed on OurColony.net. See a hi-res photo of the Xbox 360.

Microsoft Xbox 360 Games at Launch:
2K Sports’ “NBA 2K6”
Activision Publishing Inc.’s “Call of Duty® 2” and “Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland™”
id Software’s “QUAKE 4™”
Electronic Arts’ “Madden NFL 06,” “Need for Speed™ Most Wanted” and “Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 06”
Majesco Entertainment’s “The Darkness”
Microsoft Game Studios’ “Perfect Dark: Zero™,” “Kameo™: Elements of Power™,” “Project Gotham Racing™ 3” and “Gears of War”
THQ Inc.’s “Saint’s Row”
Ubisoft Entertainment’s “Ghost Recon 3.”
More details on Xbox 360 Games page.

Microsoft Xbox 360 Specification:

Xbox 360 System Performance Specifications
Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU	Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread 1 MB L2 cache
CPU Game Math Performance	9 billion dot product operations per second
Custom ATI Graphics Processor	10 MB of embedded DRAM 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines Unified shader architecture
Polygon Performance	500 million triangles per second
Pixel Fill Rate	16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA
Shader Performance	48 billion shader operations per second
Memory	512 MB of 700 MHz GDDR3 RAM Unified memory architecture
Memory Bandwidth	22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM 21.6 GB/s front-side bus
Overall System Floating-Point Performance	1 teraflop
Storage	Detachable and upgradeable 20GB hard drive 12x dual-layer DVD-ROM Memory Unit support starting at 64 MB
I/O	Support for up to four wireless game controllers Three USB 2.0 ports Two memory unit slots
Optimized for Online	Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features with broadband service, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, gamer profile for digital identity, and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies, or listening to music Built-in Ethernet port Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g Video camera ready
Digital Media Support	Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD • Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PCs Ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 hard drive Custom playlists in every game Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers
High-Definition Game Support	All games supported at 16:9, 720p, and 1080i, anti-aliasing Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported
Audio	Multi-channel surround sound output Supports 48KHz 16-bit audio 320 independent decompression channels 32-bit audio processing Over 256 audio channels
System Orientation	Stands vertically or horizontally
Customizable Face Plates	Interchangeable to personalize the console

Microsoft also fully updated its xBox.com site with details on their new xBox. Microsoft also setup the xbox360.com site where the company will provide game teasers and more about the Xbox 360 in the future.

where to buy

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Luigi Lugmayr
Luigi is the founding chief Editor of I4U News and brings over 15 years experience in the technology field to the ever evolving and exciting world of gadgets. He started I4U News back in 2000 and evolved it into vibrant technology magazine.
Luigi can be contacted directly at ml@i4u.com. Luigi posts regularly on LuigiMe.com about his experience running I4U.