Microsoft moves into chip world with Xbox

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RE: It's a game console...

>"It's a game console", you claim repeatedly. To which the average experimenter or hobbyist will reply rhetorically, "So what?" Practicality isn't foremost on their minds. Accomplishment is.

Totally agreed, and I applaud everyone out there who have found ways around the technical barriers to make do this sort of thing. I wasn't trying to imply that hoobyists and experimenters shouldn't attempt this sort of thing or take pride in their accomplishments. My remarks were in direct response to the post that made it sound like MS was making some terrible businees blunder by not endorsing the installation of any other OS on the XBox... statements like "the much more open archtecture of Sony will probably be more widely used and therefore become the defacto standard in cheap cluster node additions..." as if this was some untapped market that Sony, Nintendo or MS have ignored in the design of their game consoles.

>If Microsoft wanted to be intelligent about the experimenter's needs; they'd simply sign a Linux bootloader from a third party, allow the product to be sold and collect a royalty on the sale - just as they do with games.

That's not a bad idea. If (and that's a big IF) MS did ever decide to encourage this type of behavior at all on the XBox, a great way might be to release their own Linux distro specifically for the XBox... similar to the Sony Linux kit for the PS2. The kit could simply include a disc that could load Linux (possibility that it would have to make the hard drive unusable to normal XBox games) and 1 or 2 XBox-to-USB adapters (Sega even distributed several thousands of those already.) They could sell it for $20 or $30 as a Microsoft direct-only item.

Posted by: JakAttak   Posted on: 11/10/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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