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Thursday, May 30, 2002Trio of Xbox articles from CNET
Xbox struggling with math test
For the software publishing industry, video games are a numbers game. And for now, Microsoft is on the losing end. Game publishers say it's a simple matter of economics.
It's too early for this sort of article, the Xbox is only six months old. At the one-year mark we should be able to predict the loser, and I strongly suspect that it will be Nintendo (the US console market has never supported three consoles for any significant period, someone will cease production of consoles around the two-year mark).
The first add-ons that purportedly allow the console to play illegally copied game software have gone on sale, but analysts say they're unlikely to inspire a wave of copy infringement.
Mod chips have always had a limited audience, mostly they have been used by hard-core RPG'ers wanting to play titles that haven't been released in their home market yet (if ever). More interesting is the potential to run homebrew software, this is an important step for hackers in completely reverse-engineering the system and replacing the system BIOS. In six months someone will probably have produced an ISO that will boot in a stock Xbox and replace the BIOS with a hacker-friendly one.
Microsoft mulls Xbox-PC connection
An online survey conducted recently by a Microsoft partner indicates that the software giant is considering producing a kit that would let people use an Xbox video game console and a TV to access entertainment files stored on their PC.
Not likely to happen until component prices fall sufficiently for Microsoft to break even on a console sold with such a kit. So long as the Xbox is subsidized, Microsoft will be very cautious about creating compelling non-gaming features. This is why the Xbox doesn't have a good interface for playing ripped CDs.
