New XBox with 3x PPC G5

[mikeymike]

It's a bit of an odd jump for MS, I think they're a bit uncertain about how CPU development will go in the future, with doubt cast on Intel's ability to stay ahead of the market.  AMD and IBM are grabbing the CPU headlines at the moment.

[mikeymike]

I take the "3 PPC" with a pinch of salt as well, and I think having a PPC CPU is still a doubtful move for MS, but maybe they want the X-Box 2 not to be ultra-bulky like v1 was...

PPC must throw backwards compatibility completely out of the window though.  Also an unusual move for MS, and I doubt they're going to play the console market to the same standards that their console competitors do.

[mikeymike]

HEY -- wouldn't the nex-gen Amiga have a chance in this game market especially with the G5 installed?

Ok, you've got an operating system and a CPU so far, what about graphics, the board, mobo chipset etc...

Bear in mind the reason Sony are ahead in the console market is because they designed their own graphics chipset, unlike Nintendo who are happy to go on losing with standard parts...  shades of how Amiga won the market once anyone? :-)

[mikeymike]

You forgot that Microsoft makes VirtualPC, and could run x86 (read, legacy XBox) software on PPC (read, X-box2 if done in PPC) easily.

Yes but could they emulate a game well?  The x86 instruction set is horrendously complicated, I very much doubt a current PPC CPU could do it, not without some especial backup (like dedicated extra hardware that took care of some of the emulation work).

[mikeymike]

I play a few PC games using VirtualPC on Mac OS X on Mac-on-Linux on my Pegasos, and it's acceptable.

What does that mean?

I class Jedi Academy occasionally running at speeds of 20 - 30 FPS on my PC, when generally it runs at ~60 fps as being just about acceptable, but really for a console and games specifically designed for it, that performance loss isn't acceptable.