Parts of this
writeup are somewhat
subjective. I speak as a life-long
video games enthusiast, and have reservations about whether the benefits the Xbox platform brings to users and developers outweigh the long-term costs that
Microsoft have made no secret of wishing to impose upon the industry. I have seen far more
lovingly-crafted vessels steered onto the rocks by companies that did not understand the current
climate of the games market. The greatest fear is that
Microsoft have the resources to decouple the fortunes of their machine from commercial realities, thereby artificially influencing the creative and commercial decisions made by third parties, to
Microsoft's gain and all other parties' expense. As
1984's crash showed, the fortunes of the
games industry can be a
fragile thing, and it is not necessarily wise to believe that things will simply work themselves out over time. As it stands Microsoft thankfully do not have a decisive voice in the industry, and are undergoing the new and alien experience of actually having to
compete against powerful rivals.
Never mind that, what is it?
The Microsoft Xbox is a games console (technically, a legacy-free PC with added security lockouts 1 ) created by Microsoft to compete with the Sony Playstation 2 and Nintendo Gamecube. It was launched in November 2001 in North America and early 2002 in other territories. Here are the pertinent technical specs:
- DVD Drive
- 8GB Seagate hard-drive (some models have a 10GB drive, formatted to 8GB)
- 733Mhz Intel Celeron CPU
- 250Mhz NVIDIA GPU (effectively a GeForce 3 chip with an extra shader pipeline)
- 64-channel sound (provided by NVIDIA MCP chip)
- 100Mbps ethernet port
- 4 controller ports (USB with proprietary connector)
- Cut-down Windows 2000 kernel
The machine has gone through a couple of hardware revisions in different territories, switching to a different (and presumably cheaper)
DVD drive and altering the internal layout to thwart the first generation of
mod chips. It is widely believed that
Microsoft subsidise the cost of the Xbox hardware to retailers to the extent that they lose around $100 on every machine sold. (There is some debate as to whether the other consoles are currently sold at a loss, but I personally doubt this. The hardware vendors are unlikely to be very forthcoming on this issue as the perception that they are offering the best possible value for money is obviously favourable to them.)
In territories outside of the Far East, the Xbox comes with a huge controller that is awkward if not actually unusable to many gamers. (My hands are not small, but I am literally physically incapable of reaching the directional pad and the left trigger at the same time. And the less said about the face buttons, the better.) If you find the Western Xbox controller to be more comfortable than virtually any other modern controller peripheral, you should go and see a doctor because there's quite possibly something wrong with your hands. The Controller S (a variant of the smaller, more comfortable controller that shipped with the Japanese Xbox) is a much more promising device, and it seems that Microsoft are slowly phasing out the original controller in favour of this one.
The Xbox cannot play DVD movies out of the box. To allow this the user is required to purchase a small 'dongle' which comes with a handy remote control. This arrangement means that Microsoft do not have to pay royalties to the DVD cartel on every Xbox console sold (the royalty is subsequently taken from the sales of the remotes).
Although it seems a strong possibility that Microsoft will cave in to pressure to release a keyboard peripheral for use with the game Phantasy Star Online, they are strongly opposed to releasing or licensing any general-purpose keyboard, mouse or any non-game software product that would encroach on the domain of the Microsoft Windows desktop. It is unlikely that there will ever be an officially-sanctioned web browser or email package for the machine, although there are rumours of a (DRM-heavy) media player package in the works.
As is the case with its two main rivals, the Xbox cannot play online multiplayer games out of the box, requiring the user to purchase a peripheral (the Xbox Live Starter Kit) to enable this functionality. Unlike its rivals however it requires a subscription to be payed to allow the user to access its closed online gaming network. This system has been invested in heavily by Microsoft and is regarded by them as the feature that best sets their machine apart from the competition. This artificially limited and needlessly expensive system is discussed in detail in my writeup for Xbox Live.
Understandably (considering the massive expenses they have incurred entering the market) Microsoft are vehemently opposed to allowing users to run any software on the Xbox for which they do not receive some royalty. Currently the only way to run unlicensed code on the machine is to install a mod chip. On the grounds that mod chips also allow pirated Xbox games to be run, Microsoft have gone after any retailers who sell these devices, in some cases succeeding in blocking their sale. Modified Xboxes are also banned from using the Xbox Live online gaming service (supposedly on grounds of security).
It is currently thought to be statistically improbable that anyone will be able to break the encryption that allows code to be run on an unmodified Xbox. In a (somewhat optimistic) attempt to break this deadlock, the Xbox Linux project (who have succeeded in porting Linux to the modified Xbox, unsurprisingly considering that the machine is basically a PC) have formally applied to join Microsoft's third party licensing program, but have not received a reply. Barring someone finding an as-yet unknown weakness in the Xbox's security mechanisms, I think that the only way that unsigned code will ever be run would be if some third party software company made a case for being unfairly refused a license that would stand up in court.
Microsoft do not have any interest (bar a little insincere lip service and a thick chequebook) in video games as a creative medium. The Xbox project was driven by a number of factors (the level of importance of each one being debatable):
1. To have a controlled channel from which licensing fees could be extracted from third party publishers, something that is not offered by the Windows PC as a games platform, but is standard practice within the console space. To this end, Microsoft have gone to extreme lengths in trying to ensure that no unauthorised code can be run on an unmodified Xbox. The 'lockdown' even extends to online gaming on the machine (see Xbox Live).
2. To actively take business away from Sony, with the onus of making the system profitable in itself being relaxed to this end. The antipathy between Sony and Microsoft on a number of fronts is well documented. Microsoft see Sony as a threat in the 'war for the living room', especially in Japan where the Playstation 2 seems a much more appropriate candidate for an entertainment hub than the PC. A small yet telling sign of Microsoft's mentality was the code-naming of the Xbox project 'Project Midway', after the pivotal battle in the war in the Pacific.
3. To fuel growth now that the desktop PC market is reaching saturation, and continuing antitrust litigation (not to mention growing corporate unrest at the greedy new licensing programs introduced for PC software) is threatening to jeopardise some aspects of their established business model. (See also Tablet PC.)
Whereas previous contenders in the console hardware market (yes, even Sony) have had a traditional expertise in the field (with it being either actually or closely related to their core business) and a desire to grow the customer base (which led them to actively pursue innovation to appeal to untapped markets), Microsoft have simply waded in with a machine slapped together from off-the-shelf components in a few months and attempted to grab a share of this new gaming customer base. One thing that the Xbox has categorically failed to do that the original Sony Playstation succeeded brilliantly at is introducing gaming to a new demographic.
As of this writing (March 2003), the Xbox lags behind the Nintendo Gamecube (itself dogged by consumer apathy) in terms of global sales 2 . The machine has been a complete flop in Japan, managing only 350,000 hardware sales and one million software sales (yes, that's total sales for all the games on the machine) by January 2003 3 . Interestingly, the Xbox is selling well in Korea (thanks to the national obsession with online gaming). In Europe and the US the Xbox is (depending on who you ask) just ahead or behind of the Gamecube, Microsoft having slashed the price and offered ever-larger bundles of software with the machine. (In the UK over Christmas the bundle included an Xbox console, the old style controller, Jet Set Radio Future, Sega GT 2002, Splinter Cell and Halo for around £180. This offer seems to no longer be running.)
It is the lack of success in Japan that is Microsoft's biggest headache. Although Western developers are now a more prominent force in the console sector than at any time in the past, the giant Japanese games companies (Konami, Capcom, Sega, Square Enix, etc.) command the majority of globally commercially viable product output. Without a healthy user base in Japan, the big titles in key genres will go elsewhere (any major RPG remains absent from the Xbox release schedules). Personally I have no problem with Microsoft pumping money into the video games sector, but would not be terribly upset to see them remain trailing in third place.
1. http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/articles.php?aid=20030051051044
2. http://www.sales-age.com/
3. http://www.d6.dion.ne.jp/~yosou-oh/xboxranking.htm