Xbox 2 will NOT be backwards compatible

[AXmichigan]

yea its completely stupid
if it stays this way
tyler, i hand the torch to u

[AXmichigan]

Xbox 2 Backward Compatibility Rumors Debunked?
>> From TeamXbox.com:

After a swell of controversy from yesterday’s article at Gamesindustry.biz regarding no backward compatibility between the Xbox 2 and the current Xbox platform, we have received an official statement from Microsoft that appears to deflate many of the claims as pure speculation:
“Recent stories in the press about future Xbox products are nothing more than pulp fiction. Microsoft hasn’t made any announcements regarding the next generation, so it’s far too early to speculate about specifics, including backward compatibility. In fact, this media conjecture is irresponsible. The credibility of any publication willing to compromise fact in favor of a catchy headline must be questioned. Xbox fans are smart enough to distinguish truth from sensational reporting.”


While this statement doesn’t definitively state that the Xbox 2 will or will not support backward compatibility, it appears that the feature is still up in the air at this point.

[Pop Smith]

Strange indeed, its a good thing they mention that article i quoted
Looks like we need to wait for the official word from M$

[AXmichigan]

hehe yea thats y i posted it
we'll see.. as usual

[TylerDurden]

Its all hype people, Im betting they will have backwards compatiblility. Its like they say bad publicity is still good publicity.




Tyler!

[AXmichigan]

Xenon Docs Leaked?
>> Thanks to some people who bombarded my email account with this info. Wish I could give credit where credit is deserved.. but oddly enough their email addresses are from an anonymous remailer.

Some interesting quotes..

Basic Hardware Specifications
Xenon is powered by a 3.5+ GHz IBM PowerPC processor and a 500+ MHz ATI graphics processor. Xenon has 256+ MB of unified memory. Xenon runs a custom operating system based on Microsoft® Windows NT®, similar to the Xbox operating system. The graphics interface is a superset of Microsoft® Direct3D® version 9.0.

CPU
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.

GPU
The Xenon GPU is a custom 500+ MHz graphics processor from ATI. The shader core has 48 Arithmetic Logic Units (ALUs) that can execute 64 simultaneous threads on groups of 64 vertices or pixels. ALUs are automatically and dynamically assigned to either pixel or vertex processing depending on load. The ALUs can each perform one vector and one scalar operation per clock cycle, for a total of 96 shader operations per clock cycle. Texture loads can be done in parallel to ALU operations. At peak performance, the GPU can issue 48 billion shader operations per second.
The GPU has a peak pixel fill rate of 4+ gigapixels/sec (16 gigasamples/sec with 4× antialiasing). The peak vertex rate is 500+ million vertices/sec. The peak triangle rate is 500+ million triangles/sec. The interesting point about all of these values is that they’re not just theoretical—they are attainable with nontrivial shaders.
Xenon is designed for high-definition output. Included directly on the GPU die is 10+ MB of fast embedded dynamic RAM (EDRAM). A 720p frame buffer fits very nicely here. Larger frame buffers are also possible because of hardware-accelerated partitioning and predicated rendering that has little cost other than additional vertex processing. Along with the extremely fast EDRAM, the GPU also includes hardware instructions for alpha blending, z-test, and antialiasing.
The Xenon graphics architecture is a unique design that implements a superset of Direct3D version 9.0. It includes a number of important extensions, including additional compressed texture formats and a flexible tessellation engine. Xenon not only supports high-level shading language (HLSL) model 3.0 for vertex and pixel shaders but also includes advanced shader features well beyond model 3.0. For instance, shaders use 32-bit IEEE floating-point math throughout. Vertex shaders can fetch from textures, and pixel shaders can fetch from vertex streams. Xenon shaders also have the unique ability to directly access main memory, allowing techniques that have never before been possible.
As with Xbox, Xenon will support precompiled push buffers (“command buffers” in Xenon terminology), but to a much greater extent than the Xbox console does. The Xbox team is exposing and documenting the command buffer format so that games are able to harness the GPU much more effectively.
In addition to an extremely powerful GPU, Xenon also includes a very high-quality resize filter. This filter allows consumers to choose whatever output mode they desire. Xenon automatically scales the game’s output buffer to the consumer-chosen resolution.

Memory and Bandwidth
Xenon has 256+ MB of unified memory, equally accessible to both the GPU and CPU. The main memory controller resides on the GPU (the same as in the Xbox architecture). It has 22.4+ GB/sec aggregate bandwidth to RAM, distributed between reads and writes. Aggregate means that the bandwidth may be used for all reading or all writing or any combination of the two. Translated into game performance, the GPU can consume a 512×512×32-bpp texture in only 47 microseconds.
The front side bus (FSB) bandwidth peak is 10.8 GB/sec for reads and 10.8 GB/sec for writes, over 20 times faster than for Xbox. Note that the 22.4+ GB/sec main memory bandwidth is shared between the CPU and GPU. If, for example, the CPU is using 2 GB/sec for reading and 1 GB/sec for writing on the FSB, the GPU has 19.4+ GB/sec available for accessing RAM.
Eight pixels (where each pixel is color plus z = 8 bytes) can be sent to the EDRAM every GPU clock cycle, for an EDRAM write bandwidth of 32 GB/sec. Each of these pixels can be expanded through multisampling to 4 samples, for up to 32 multisampled pixel samples per clock cycle. With alpha blending, z-test, and z-write enabled, this is equivalent to having 256 GB/sec of effective bandwidth! The important thing is that frame buffer bandwidth will never slow down the Xenon GPU.

Audio
The Xenon CPU is a superb processor for audio, particularly with its massive mathematical horsepower and vector register set. The Xenon CPU can process and encode hundreds of audio channels with sophisticated per-voice and global effects, all while using a fraction of the power of a single CPU core.
The Xenon system south bridge also contains a key hardware component for audio—XMA decompression. XMA is the native Xenon compressed audio format, based on the WMA Pro architecture. XMA provides sound quality higher than ADPCM at even better compression ratios, typically 6:1–12:1. The south bridge contains a full silicon implementation of the XMA decompression algorithm, including support for multichannel XMA sources. XMA is processed by the south bridge into standard PCM format in RAM. All other sound processing (sample rate conversion, filtering, effects, mixing, and multispeaker encoding) happens on the Xenon CPU.
The lowest-level Xenon audio software layer is XAudio, a new API designed for optimal digital signal processing. The Xbox Audio Creation Tool (XACT) API from Xbox is also supported, along with new features such as conditional events, improved parameter control, and a more flexible 3D audio model.

Input/Output
As with Xbox, Xenon is designed to be a multiplayer console. It has built-in networking support including an Ethernet 10/100-BaseT port. It supports up to four controllers. From an audio/video standpoint, Xenon will support all the same formats as Xbox, including multiple high-definition formats up through 1080i, plus VGA output.
In order to provide greater flexibility and support a wider variety of attached devices, the Xenon console includes standard USB 2.0 ports. This feature allows the console to potentially host storage devices, cameras, microphones, and other devices.

Storage
The Xenon console is designed around a larger world view of storage than Xbox was. Games will have access to a variety of storage devices, including connected devices (memory units, USB storage) and remote devices (networked PCs, Xbox Live™). At the time of this writing, the decision to include a built-in hard disk in every Xenon console has not been made. If a hard disk is not included in every console, it will certainly be available as an integrated add-on component.
Xenon supports up to two attached memory units (MUs). MUs are connected directly to the console, not to controllers as on Xbox. The initial size of the MUs is 64 MB, although larger MUs may be available in the future. MU throughput is expected to be around 8 MB/sec for reads and 1 MB/sec for writes.
The Xenon game disc drive is a 12× DVD, with an expected outer edge throughput of 16+ MB/sec. Latency is expected to be in the neighborhood of 100 ms. The media format will be similar to Xbox, with approximately 6 GB of usable space on the disk. As on Xbox, media will be stored on a single side in two 3 GB layers.

Industrial Design
The Xenon industrial design process is well under way, but the final look of the box has not been determined. The Xenon console will be smaller than the Xbox console.
The standard Xenon controller will have a look and feel similar to the Xbox controller. The primary changes are the removal of the Black and White buttons and the addition of shoulder buttons. The triggers, thumbsticks, D-pad, and primary buttons are essentially unchanged. The controller will support vibration.

[AXmichigan]

MORAL OF THE STORY
NO POSTING ABOUT XBOX 2/XENON/XBOX NEXT.. whatever the hell its called
till we get actual
MS info


Xenon Leaked Doc's Real or Fake?
>> Seems the media have been busy making up their minds and putting forth their theories, in reference to the Leaked Docs News posted less than 24hrs ago...

From www.1up.com:

The rumor mill churning out speculation and supposition about Microsoft's next game console received another hearty turn of the crank today, with the publication on several message boards of a white paper purportedly running down specifications for the successor to the Xbox. Attributed to Peter Isensee of Microsoft's Xbox Advanced Technology Group (he's real, even if nothing in the document is), it describes in general terms the capabilities of a system code-named "Xenon," in anticipation of a planned 2005 launch.

Xbox Nation's Che Chou offers the interesting theory that the document could just as easily be a viral marketing plant by Microsoft itself, designed to reinforce popular belief in certain areas (i.e., that its next console will possess plenty of raw technical power) and counter rumors shaping the conventional wisdom in others (particularly persistent reports that the console won't be backwards-compatible with the current Xbox).

Microsoft itself, of course, is offering no comment either way on the subject.

Whether a genuine glimpse of the future or a clever exercise in fine-tuning the public's expectations, it's an interesting read.

From www.engadget.com:

Speaking of the Xbox 2 and what features it is or is not going to have, Xbox-Scene has posted up some new, probably fake, leaked specs for it (and we think we’re starting to get a little obsessed over the minutiae of a console that won’t be out for at least another year and a half). We wouldn’t necessarily give these any more credence than any of the other “leaked” specs which have surfaced, but these ones seem at least vaguely plausible, listing the next-gen Xbox as having a 3.5GHz IBM Power PC Processor, a 500MHz ATI graphics processor, 256MB of RAM, and a 12X DVD drive. No internal hard drive is listed (”the decision to include a built-in hard disk in every Xenon console has not been made”), though gamers should be able to add their own external USB drives or use the hard drive on a PC in a local network.

From www.eurogamer.net and www.gamesindustry.biz:

Although the document, which claims to have been authored by Pete Isensee at the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, admits that many of its figures are subject to change, developers working on Xenon technology have confirmed to us today that the details it contains are genuine.

Developers working on Xenon technology to whom we showed the document today confirmed that it tallies with what they have been told by Microsoft about the specification of the new console - even down to the continuing procrastination over making a decision on RAM size and the inclusion of a hard drive, both issues which have not been solved as yet.

"I've not actually seen this specific document coming from Microsoft," one developer told us this afternoon, "but there's certainly nothing in there which doesn't fit with what they've been telling us. If this is a hoax, which I doubt, it's a hoax so close to the truth that it hardly makes any odds."