Xbox 360 – World’s First Unrestricted Hardware Access – Hot Poop!

Inside the 360 and what that picture of the PSP connecting to it actually meant...

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Yesterday, in a swanky venue in Covent Garden, London, Microsoft fed us very delicious hors d'oeuvres, before Englishman Chris Satchell of Microsoft Advance Technology Group opened up the machine Microsoft wants you to buy this Christmas.

You might have read other such pieces in the last day or two: there was no point, as our journalist colleagues from other publications were too busy ogling mini sausages to report all the facts. Unlike us.

Firstly, let’s talk about elements of the actual box.

The Ring of Light:
We’ve heard plenty of marketing guff about the ring of light. Truth be told, it’s just a very simple, though smart concept. Basically, the ring of light surrounds the power button. It’s split into four sections, each representing one of the four Wi-Fi controllers you can plug into the machine. When they’re on, the ring lights up the quarter corresponding to what pad is turned on. Simple, stylish and quite nice to look at.

The Controllers:
They are very much cordless and rechargeable. You can use two AA batteries or a rechargeable pair of batteries that can be charged by plugging a cable in the top of the pad and straight into one of the USB ports at the front or back of the console. You can also play while recharging. The battery life of the controllers is said to hit the 30 hour mark, with a higher number mooted for controllers using two AA batteries.

You can also turn the machine on and off from the joypad! Excellent news for sofa-dwelling bastards like ourselves.

There are no plans for an adaptor that allows more than four players, but the idea has not been written off either: “It’s all relative to what publishers need to realise their game visions”, said the man from Microsoft.

USB Ports:
There are two on the front and two on the back, the ones on the back placed for hiding uglier connections like wireless adapters and such. You can plug in anything that has a USB 2.0 male connector on it. Digital cameras, iPods, PSPs, whatever.

And now what’s inside the box:

Xbox live:
Same as before, but now with a newly re-vamped gameplay performance recording system and lobbies. You can also bring up the Live menu during any experience – watching videos through Media Centre, listening to music and even when playing games.

Also, your reputation is displayed. After playing with someone, you can give them a thumbs up or down. This accumulates and gives you a total that tells others how much of an angel or arsehole you are in the Live arena.

If you want to play games with people more like yourself, you now have a number of lobbies you can visit. You can play in the kids room for a swear word-free experience, or go all out f’ing and blinding in the underground lobby. There’s a lobby for almost every taste.

You also have a Gamerscore which indicates how good a gamer you are supposed to be. The beauty of this is that it updates offline as well as online, meaning when you enter online games, you’ll will not find yourself typically placed with a bunch of cack-handed losers.

Sadly, none of your Xbox gameplay will count toward this score. On the flipside, you can port over your Xbox Live account across from your Xbox to your Xbox 360. A very helpful menu on the machine takes you through it step by step.

User Favourites:
Do you hate having to set invert the Y-axis controls every time you load up a new game on Xbox? Now you don’t have to. The User Favourites menu on the machine’s control panel now let’s you set up common control favourites that will default across all games. Very nice.

Jeff Minter’s Visualiser Sex-Heaven:

That’s not its actual name, but it might as well be. Very trippy stuff and we very much look forward to taking hallucinogenic drugs while staring at it at some point. Not that you really need to. It’s pretty nuts. You can also alter the visualisation with the controller, and later on, with the Xbox 360 camera and a dance peripheral Microsoft will soon announce.

See the first video footage of Mr Minter's, erm, thingy here:
MPEG4 video (Xvid) (640x480 - 937Kb)
Quicktime (640x480 - 1.2Mb)
Windows Media (320x240 - 896Kb)

Stream music from an MP3 player and take pics from your PSP, though no video streaming yet
Yes. Even an iPod. Chris plugged in his iPod, popped up one of his playlists and played one of his own tunes in record time. Plug and play convenience too.

He then plugged in the PSP and showed us his digital library, including images from FIFA 360 and Project Gotham 3. And his dog.

The plug and play USB also supports hundreds of digital cameras, but is yet to support video playback from a USB device. Reasons cited were that getting the support from all these devices for video playback was not an easy task and it’s being looked at, but nothing’s final.

Media Center:
A digital video recorder similar to TiVo or Sky+, where you can digitally record TV footage and stream it in 720p through your 360. We were shown a recorded TV broadcast of Star Wars: Episode 2, and sadly, there were artifacts (weird, small coloured patches) in the image, but it was mostly promising. He even popped up his Xbox Live menu while the bar scene went on.

Other burning issues!
Backwards compatability – Yes, you do need the Hard Drive…but what did you expect? Xbox games used a hard drive, so of course they’ll need one to run. As to the issue of compatibility, Satchell was reluctant to go into detail, though he did hint that any extras needed would be fed through conveniently placed channels like the Live service (patching?) or other such facilities. There was sadly no comment offered regarding the mystery content that will be packed in on the hard drive

Max players online at once? 16 players online have been seen as have 32. Satchell stated it’s all relative and works fine thus far.

Memory Card freebies - if you have a memory card, steps are being taken so you can take it to a kiosk, either placed in a games shop or elsewhere, where you can grab extra free or paid-for content. Nice touch.

All games will feature HD and 720p: as for frame rate concerns, it will vary from developer to developer. There is no fabled frame rate restriction as per stupid rumours floating around based on low frame rate E3 demos.

Keyboard and Mouse – only for inputting text: a controversial decision has been made to disallow use of keyboard and mouse with games. However, Satchell stated that if demand is high enough, this will change.

DVD – Is it region locked? This is currently unknown, though will be answered soon.

The Xbox 360 Camera peripheral: it supports a 640x480 image at 30 frames per second. It’s also very small and has a built-in microphone. Applications for the device were not divulged, but many speculate EyeToy-style software. Satchell did however confirm that it’s compatible with Minter’s music visualiser, so people can dance like nonces in front of it and affect the images.

There are currently no plans for an Augmented Reality style add-on for the Xbox 360, but Chris likes the technology, so it may happen.

Xbox Live VISA cards that are available in Germany: there are no plans to bring them anywhere else, but don’t rule it out.

That’s it for now. More as it breaks!
Companies:

Comments

supadupagama 2 Sep 2005 13:12
1/11
Does this "rechargeable pair of batteries" & charger cord come with each Wireless Controller (or with the console), or do you need to buy both a Wireless Controller AND a rechargable powerpack seperately?
tyrion 2 Sep 2005 13:17
2/11
supadupagama wrote:
Does this "rechargeable pair of batteries" & charger cord come with each Wireless Controller (or with the console), or do you need to buy both a Wireless Controller AND a rechargable powerpack seperately?

The Play & Charge Kit is listed as a separate accessory to the Rechargeable Controller battery pack in the list of accessories.
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supadupagama 2 Sep 2005 15:12
3/11
Ok, so it doesn't come with it in the box, that's fair. But when you buy the "Rechargeable Controller battery pack", does it come with a charger of it's own or do you really need to buy the "play & charge kit" as well? That was really my question and while it may seem obvious that it's not included, with a £14.99 pricetag I think it warrants the question, since it's not mentioned anywhere and would be less confusing if they sold it as one package.
Joji 2 Sep 2005 15:47
4/11
Well most of it sounds good and I think I'll invest this time. I had a few doses of Live via a friend and it seems to work okay. I'm tired of playing through his connection so I think a 360 is on the cards (I'll try to buy PS3 and Rev too mind).

I just hope that the damn games aren't too pricey. I'm not going on there to play Halo 2 mind like most drones, I feel other games lke Burnout give a better fix of gaming with an even difficulty.

Playing Burnout 3 against some yanks really swung it for me because I'm tired of Halo 2 (even though it's a cool game) and it hype machine, that's not all Live is about. Okay MS, you have another customer.

The ring of light thing sounds cool, I now hope the Rev has some cool blue LED stuff on it's pad too.
PreciousRoi 2 Sep 2005 17:06
5/11
Having said that the kbrd/mouse is for text input, I just hope they are able to defeat anything like the SmartJoyFrag this time around...screw demand, leave it at controllers only.

Also, they prolly sell the packs seaparatly from the charger kit so you can buy extras?

Better question, will play and charge kit ONLY work with MS pack, or will garden variety rechargeable AAs work as well?
Pilot13 2 Sep 2005 21:16
6/11
Damn - double post (delete this)
Pilot13 2 Sep 2005 21:17
7/11
I just hope that the damn games aren't too pricey. I'm not going on there to play Halo 2 mind like most drones, I feel other games lke Burnout give a better fix of gaming with an even difficulty.


Try telling that to my damn brothers. The'yre level 24 or something now in normal deathmatch mode and whenever we have any friends round it HAS to be halo 2. Pricks. They won't let me play it on live any more after I ruined their rank after five minutes. Awesome or what.

It's a shame I'm going to Uni this year, because I'm not planning to take a tv and I'm hoping I'm sharing with a bunch of nerds who are. In fact, I'm just going to find the geekiest society, sit through all their anime and goth crap so I can play their consoles. I'm so tight fisted.
LUPOS 3 Sep 2005 00:07
8/11
supadupagama wrote:
Ok, so it doesn't come with it in the box, that's fair. But when you buy the "Rechargeable Controller battery pack", does it come with a charger of it's own or do you really need to buy the "play & charge kit" as well? That was really my question and while it may seem obvious that it's not included, with a £14.99 pricetag I think it warrants the question, since it's not mentioned anywhere and would be less confusing if they sold it as one package.


it seems to me (and i may well be wrong, who the heck am I) but i believe the 400 system witht he wireless comes witht he cable that is necesary to charge said controller... as im sure all aditional wireless controllers will have... the play and charge is a base station you would, for instance, keep plugged in and sitting on the coffe table, it hold 2 (or ws it 4?) batteries and keeps them ready so when one gets lo you can just drop and reload instead of being tethered to the sytem for a recharge.

so basically the controlelr plus cable = charger
or you charge yourself on the seperat estation...
what i wonder is if i keep the controller plugged inw hen the sytem is off will it still charge it for me? the system must still be "up" sice it can be woke with e press of th wirless controller button so i assuem its never reallf OFF unless you unplug it.

either way... it looks sweet as hell to me and i want it real bad. The graphics whore in me still wants a ps3 as well but the more they talk about the whole convergence thing the mor ei dislike it... look how many great umd games you can play ony our psp's... do i really need a blue ray player that badly? i think ill have to wait and see what sony offers game wise... so far MS has a preety storng launch and soon after lineup.

oblivion
gears of war
condemend
DOA4
perfect dark (still have doubts about that one)

sony better have more substance in the near future or they certainly arent getting my money launch day

and of course ill be a revo (whenever it finaly come sout), cant leave ninty hangin... the DS has reinstilled my faith in nintendo, im sur what ever their revolution is, it will be good.

____________
supadupagama 3 Sep 2005 09:19
9/11
Alrighty that's good news it's included! Thanks :)

I think MS so far has only said it would charge your controller while you play, and since I use a USB charger for my DS, the system will have to be fully on to charge, because I just tested it with the USB port on my PS2 on standby power and it wouldn't charge.
way 3 Sep 2005 13:46
10/11
Jeff's back, haven't heard from him since Jaguar days. Nice enough guy, good to see him again.
fluffstardx 3 Sep 2005 17:53
11/11
The prices listed at Game are £45 and £50 for games, which considering normal launch prices is very decent.

I'm preordering when paid tuesday.
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