Introduction

The Race

Fellow gamers, there is currently fierce competition for our limited gaming dollars. No, we're not referring to showdown between the major gaming consoles this year. The battle between the consoles is but a qualifying event for the larger race between the PC and the console. In this race, victory will come to the side with the most gamer support. So, each side is pushing forward to assemble the best cluster of software developers, both in terms of talent and quantity. The console milieu attracts its developers with its stable platform, specialized gaming-specific hardware, and unique financial organization. The PC team courts its developers by offering infinite flexibility with a high-performance multi-purpose CPU, and access to the dynamism of continuous hardware development.

Which side is a developer suppose to pick? It's as if the PC is offering better equipment, and the console is offering better training facilities. In the midst of this confusion, there exists a third factor with a different idea, a simple idea … something that no Olympian can resist: Gatorade. That team is the Xbox.

The Big Box	Back View
Front View	3/4 View

The Xbox

As dramatic as that intro is, that's not too far from how Xbox should be described. PC manufacturers and console manufacturers have always seem themselves as opposites, yet Microsoft is trying to play the role of the "arms dealer," by having something for everyone. There are enough PC features to attract PC developers and enough console features to attract console developers. It's a PC that's not like any traditional PC, and simultaneously a console that's not quite like any traditional console. Fundamentally, it is a PC running DirectX8 on a stripped Windows 2000 core. Thus, the Xbox has the multi-purpose CPU and access to the most recent hardware developments. However, just like a console, Xbox offers a fixed platform and the special financial networking offered; in the Xbox's case, the specialized gaming hardware are an NVIDIA GPU and APU.

Since FiringSquad, Microsoft, and NVIDIA have historically been seen as being staunch PC supporters, it's worth discussing why Xbox is important before we go onto the technical analysis.