One of the issues many people had with the original Xbox console was it's size and weight, and it struck me as odd how it's one of the few home consoles to never get a redesign during it's life. I think a new model would have gone a long way to keeping the console active in the market, and marketing it better to Japanese gamers who were put off by it's bulky size. I also think Microsoft should have done more to secure titles like Resident Evil 4 and Devil May Cry, among other heavy hitters of the era. If they can't have many true exclusives, at least double down on being THE platform for third party games. Having them run and look better than on any other console. Also, instead of wasting resources on shit like Blinx the Time Sweeper, Microsoft should've made a proper deal with Sega that ensured Sonic would remain exclusive to the Xbox. Acting as an unofficial mascot alongside Master Chief. This would have had the effect of improving Sonic Heroes as well, since the devs had to use RenderWare and develop for multiple platforms in a short amount of time, which compromised it's quality in our timeline. Microsoft rushing the Xbox 360 also hurt it immensely too, since that console had notorious hardware issues for years up until the 2010 redesign. A refreshed Xbox would have allowed for the 360 to be delayed until 2006, to release alongside the PS3, or even to 2007 to guarantee Halo 3 as a launch title.
Fricking homosexuals with their weak tiny girly arms. As someone that use to drag a full tower and crt to lan parties I never had a problem with the Xboxs weight
Chad
>Another what if thread
Only /vr/, a board dedicated to retro video games, would have a problem about threads relating to retro video games.
fiction writing is not video games
Ok anon, make a thread about the Okama Gamesphere, the best retro console ever
Let's talk about Legend of Final Fantasy VII: Crono's Awakening instead.
Let's talk about battered sausages
What if you weren't a homosexual? Oh I get it, why talk about shit that won't happen?
There was no need for an Xbox Slim. Gamecube didn't have a slim. PS2 original was better than PS2 slim. And the Xbox's size and weight wasn't even an issue.
What would they even do anyway? Make the power supply external and pretend it's more technologically advanced? It's not like they can remove the HDD like the PS2 Slim with the bay.
Basically, you're moronic.
PS2 slim ran (much) cooler, used less energy, was roughly 60 percent smaller, and had less points of failure. It is the best console redesign in history succeeding completely both mechanically and aesthetically.
Forgot to post pic. Seriously I don’t think there will ever be a “slim” revision that outdoes this.
The PSOne (2000) revision is also amazing IMO, granted the original PS1 wasn't all that bulky to begin with. It's unfortunate that the PS2 Fat is more "slim" than the slim revisions of consoles today. I assume because we are reaching the ceiling of silicon technology.
Meh. Most of the space is taken up by the front loading disc drive. Once they switched to a top loader DVD drive, then they could shrink it down a lot. Plus getting rid of the empty space with the empty hard drive bay.
Your big fat ass is about to get rolled down a hill
>roughly 60 percent smaller
they removed the hdd bay and made the power supply external. of course it's 60% smaller lol.
it also came out 4 years after the PS2 so ofc it was more efficient as time went by. do you know what came out 4 years after the original xbox? the xbox 360.
If anyone doesn't understand this guy, the expansion bay is unironically almost 25% of the volume of the original PS2 and the SCPH-70000 power supply is around 1/3 the size of the console, so if you took away those two factors you're looking at closer to a 1/3 reduction of the actual internal hardware. The late model slim with an internal power supply is pretty neat but those also have the later hardware revisions with reduced software compatibility so they aren't -good- aside from one hardware exploit.
PSOne is actually pretty similar where a ton of the size reduction comes from an external power brick. Like that entire left side bulge the power button is on is just the power supply, they had to move it outside just to get the rest of the case to not be oversized for the boards they were using by the SCPH-9000.
There isn't enough praise heaped onto the slim model PS2s. The engineering is insane. The 70ks? Half the console is the disc drive. 90000s? They jammed the PSU, optical drive and motherboard all into one ultra thin piece of equipment.
Never realized that the 9000 is even smaller. I always thought it was a super minimal hardware revision but yeah, they managed to make it even slimmer. It’s only a few millimeters at most but still, that’s fine tuning they didn’t need to do.
Aesthetically I prefer the 7000x series still though.
Duke has better b/w button placement for fighters (and in general), and the thumb sticks have superior texture to them.
The left stick is concave while the right stick is textured. You need literal baby hands to think it isn’t comfy, and I have medium hands.
You arent allowed to compliment snoy around here anon
You've mistaken /vr/ for Ganker
>the expansion bay is unironically almost 25% of the volume of the original PS2 and the SCPH-70000 power supply is around 1/3 the size of the console
That's why I always wonder why Sega didn't make a Slim Saturn. Just by making the power supply external and removing the MPEG card slot, you can make the console lose 1/4th its size.
Wowee $4 saved every year!
And by less points of failure do you mean a ribbon cable on the laser head that scratches discs?
Or maybe the dumbass tweak Sony did to the drive to stop it from reading burned discs, but actually it stops it from reading scratched discs too. Even better, it can actually break the laser when a badly scratched enough disc is used.
Also no hard drive and stuff yadayada
PS2 slim has a way faster Ethernet port so you don’t need a HDD for OPL. You can get faster than disc read speeds through Ethernet on a console that is far less likely to fail, and never need to use the disc laser for anything, which is why you’d even want an HDD in a fat PS2.
Videos never ran good on my slim, just got a fat and the hdd, even using an old ide hdd the videos of games run fine
I have a 700xx slim and the Ethernet has never given be a problem with video playback. Someone once challenged me to take a video of Gradius V intro video playback here since it has high bitrate video and it was flawless. You either set your network up badly or were using an outdated version of OPL.
The dvd read spead of a ps2 disc drive is 5.25 mb a second, the Ethernet transfer speeds are 12.5mb a second but top out around 7.5-8mb, meaning you get 40 percent faster reads than playing through an official disc.
>Microsoft should have made poorer business decisions so I could have a slightly better Sonic game
Quality board content.
Small penis vibes.
a woman's only "insult". It's a shame you will never pass
>mad
Chopped dick post
>Why was there no "Xbox Slim"?
I stopped reading there… because we’re American you frickin’ jap squid.
The Xbox was only on the market for four years before they launched the 360.
Microsoft was in a lawsuit against Nvidia over the original Xbox. Nvidia made the GPU for the Xbox. Nvidia was unhappy with the money they were making and wanted more. Microsoft said no. Nvidia somehow sued for breach of contract. They settled out of court.
Microsoft then immediately dumped Nvidia as their GPU partner. AMD (formerly known as ATI) stepped up and took the place of Nvidia. AMD made the GPU for the Xbox 360 and worked with Microsoft on a fair price. Microsoft has been working with AMD ever since on all Xbox consoles.
That's why the original Xbox only lasted 4 years before being discontinued. It had at least another 1 to maybe 2 years left of life imo, but Microsoft was done with Nvidia. They didn't want to give them anymore money. It was a bitter split.
Oh shit, I totally forgot about that lawsuit. I don’t know how the frick Microsoft just brushed that off like nothing.
I suppose that settles it then. It's a shame because the original Xbox was the most powerful in it's generation, and games like Conker still hold up to this day. Keeping the OG Xbox going for a few more years would have given us a better 360 as well.
360 RRoD and PS3 YLoD are basically the same thing It's more well known for the 360 as much as anything because they were selling a lot more consoles and had more popular games in those years, you would have had to delay halfway through the generation until suppliers figured out how the frick to fix their solder to really avoid it.
Ultimately Microsoft launching the 360 early was the right choice because XBL was way ahead of Sony’s online service even though it wasn’t free. Sony was forced to play catchup for the first few years of the PS3 life cycle.
My god they literally explained what happened and there are still people spreading the solder nonsense
So when MS' engineers tell you that chip connections were failing from being heat cycled and MS shows you a picture of solder balls breaking what exactly the frick do you think they mean moron?
The solder balls was an excuse, the real problem was inadequate cooling. They put in chips generating 150W in heat and put a small b***hass aluminium block to cool them. The problem only fixed itself once they made 65nm and 45nm die shrinks for the hardware which generated far less heat; same for the 360 and ps3.
PC hardware even as far back as 2006 used exact same engineering EXCEPT they put giant vapour chambers and 8+ heatpipes and 5000rpm radial fans to make sure the hardware stays cool, and those things still work today. But good luck finding a Fat PS3 that still functions.
The heatsink is tremendous in PS3s. The problem with early consoles comes from a mix of the aging of early lead free soldering and indeed, the heat being transferred through it. It did need more cooling but what was in the PS3 was engineered to pass.
>The heatsink is tremendous in PS3s.
Tremendously heavy, but in reality it is an inefficient piece of shit with only 2-3 flat heatpipes. I've seen laptops with heavier cooling.
>2-3 flat heatpipes
Those are used to transfer the heat to the enormous amount of spreaders
>good luck finding a Fat PS3 that still functions
The initial 20gb and 60gb models aren't the only variants, anon. My later 160gb fat is still chugging along just fine, although it doesn't have the vaunted backwards compatibility like the 60gb or software b/c like the 80gb. I just keep a fat PS2 around too, so I don't really mind.
>The initial 20gb and 60gb models aren't the only variants, anon.
I have 6 different version PS3s including two with the card reader and three without, and the only one still working is the slim one.
Actually scratch that. Two of the card reader versions are the same version. However they are all the "later" version with backwards compatibility reduced, not the launch consoles. Either way, they are all dead.
iirc the PS3 generations are
- fat with full hardware backwards compatibility
- fat with partial backwards compatibility
- fat with no card reader, no backwards compatibility, and a smaller heatsink. these weigh a third of the original model
- slim
- super slim
there are other sub-versions for each one of those, and also regional versions too, etc, but I THINK these are the major steps.
and yeah, all but the Slim/Super Slims are ticking time bombs today.
Have they ever had the dust cleaned out? I took mine apart about 12 years ago just to blast all the dust out which made it run significantly cooler and quieter.
They all yellow light a second after powering on, so that wouldn't make any difference. But yea, I tried most things, from cleaning, to treating the cpu/gpu with hot air.
They are just fricking dead. The early 90nm chips just roast themselves. Only way to fix them is to harvest 65nm/45m parts from later units and replacing them, but that requires moronic amount of effort for zero gains since the later models are better in all regards.
I have two 80GB fats with and without card reader/PS2 GPU (CHECHE and CHECHL) and both work besides the older one's disk drive eating shit from it getting jarred trying to plug an HDMI cable in while it was running. The older one sat for a long time and runs the fan at roughly the volume of a vacuum cleaner if you do anything though.
Functionally it's more complicated than that, and card reader doesn't say anything about the internal hardware because 20GB models didn't have them (mind you those are all clearly identified by black trim). Reduction in USB ports from 4 to 2 does coincide with a major hardware revision though.
90nm CPU 90nm GPU Emotion Engine+Graphics Synthesizer NAND memory fats (200W)
90/90 no-EE, yes-GS NAND fats (200W)
65/90 no-EE, no-GS NAND fats (160W)
65/90 NOR fats (160W)
65/65 fat (130W)
45/65 slim (100W)
45/40 slim (85/80W)
45/40 super slim (80W)
45/28 super slim (75W)
65/65s (CHECHJ to CHECHQ, basically all the consoles that came with DualShock 3s and most of the ones with satin trim) are plenty reliable. It's usually the GPU that's the issue and that's the same in the early slims and they already have a massive reduction in overall heat generation.
https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/SKU_Models
The lead free solder will kill your xbox 360 or ps3, that is a fact
what's your reasoning?
It cracks and is shit to resolder shit to it
what sort of shitty leadless solder do you use that cracks straight after soldering?
was this lawsuit the reason all 3 went to amd?
>was this lawsuit the reason all 3 went to amd?
Yes.
But also...
...historically, AMD has been willing to accept less short term profits if it meant establishing a long term friendly relationship with a company. AMD generally are also willing to work with companies budgets to design their GPUs/CPUs to be more affordable - even if it means sacrificing some performance. AMD prefers to take a more stable long term approach. AMD loves that their brand is in almost all consoles. It's great advertising for them.
Nvidia has always been about immediate big profits, and making the BIGGEST and BADDEST most powerful GPU graphics on the market. They want to have the title of best #1 GPU graphics card in performance. And to their credit, Nvidia are the best (most of the time). But the downside is that their graphics cards are usually the most expensive. Very premium price.
Nvidia's deal with Microsoft fell through probably because both companies wanted to be the dominant force. Nvidia didn't want to sell their GPUs for less than the premium price. Ans Microsoft wanted to negotiate a better deal. Neither company was willing to be flexible. It wasn't a good match. Both companies were at eachother throats. It was best that they split.
Was the PCB even custom? I thought OG XBOX was just a PC in a console shell.
Basically just the cpu gpu and hard drive were off the shelf
Why was there no gamesquare?
>Sega that ensured Sonic would remain exclusive to the Xbox.
Unless Microsoft was willing to pay an absolute metric shitload of money to Sega, then this wouldn't have happened. Sega had just barely survived bankruptcy. They wanted to make as much money as possible as 3rd Party game developer and wanted to publish on all platforms for maximum money. Microsoft would have to shell out billions and buy out Sega to ensure they remain exclusive.
This. MS already had a good working relationship with Sega anyway so they were able to secure exclusives like JSRF and at that time the only official North American release of Shenmue II.
>Desperate for cash
>Only accepts high offers
Do zoomers really think like this?.
Wait till they learn about how hard up Marvel was back in the early 90s.
Being a 3rd Party game developer that is multi-platform is more profitable than sticking to a single console system.
The only exception is if big companies like Sony or Microsoft pay a massive amount of money to keep a game exclusive. So much money that it's greater than the profit generated from being multi platform.
Got it?
Because the disc drive and HDD are big
xbox without HUEG is like a Q without a U.
It wasn’t around long enough basically four years
.. anon, that WAS the slim version.
The original Xbox is a great console, at the time it gave gamers a premium experience for a fair price with lots of interesting exclusives and the hardware was reliable it’s a shame they didn’t maintain that spirit going forward with future consoles, the early years of the 360 were okay too
Personally I still prefer Microsoft’s consoles to Sony’s, especially this gen.
>the early years of the 360 were okay
nah man, that was the RROD years, they fixed it on later models
For starters, I never lived in a tiny ass studio so size has never been a factor when ot comes to consoles. I don't have little anime girl hands either. The original XBOX is perfectly acceptable. Maybe lift some weights.
Anyone who says that probably needs to walk around the block a few times themselves. Amerimutts really must be 250lbs+
He was talking about the size of the controller, I've only ever heard limpwristed manlets complain about the Duke.
The redesign of the Duke into the S was mainly for the Japanese market and then it just became the default pad in 2002. The Duke is cool and if you have gorilla hands then you probably love it, but I always thought the S was quite a nice pad. Lack of any kind of shoulder bumpers was odd though considering even Nintendo had the Z button on the GC controller.
Why would they redesign a controller that was modeled after a Japanese controller for the Japanese market?
Have you held either a Duke or this one?
they are not close in design at all
Because Asian people have smaller hands than Westerners and they complained that Xbox controller was too big for their hands. So Microsoft redesigned for Asia.
Then Microsoft decided in order to save money, they didn't want to have have 2 production lines going for 2 different controllers. They shut down the Duke controller production line. So for the final 2 years of systems life, they just came with redesigned S controller.
a lot of people in America complained about it being too big, including in magazines, about it being like holding two quarter pounders or something. The smaller controller became the standard based on feedback, and the Japanese market probably got it before then based on testing.
Eh..those complaints were more of a funny meme to make fun of Xbox. Probably made by limp wristed "Game Journalists" with tiny hands.
beating a dead horse with this nonsense now. They replaced your beloved fat controller and that's the end of it.
those oblong face buttons were also a mistake
I liked the Duke Controller. It felt rugged and powerful.
Most people in America were fine with it though made some jokes about how large it was. It was Japan that REEEE'd and acted like it was too big to fit inside their homes.
The Duke is still the best controller that I've used in my life even 20+ years later. If it had bumpers I'd still use it now. And no, that Hyperkin Duke does not compare. The only drawback is the D-Pad, but the badness of it is overblown.
And yes, I have pretty big hands but that's only part of it. The controller was well-built and sturdy, the face buttons felt good because they weren't in that stupid + layout, 6 face buttons, best triggers I've used (haven't used DualSense yet), best analog sticks I've used until the recent push for hall sticks, and the best vibration even though I disabled that these days.
No way, that dpad is based.
I basically only use the Hyperkin Duke for PC and it’s the best “modern” controller currently available. What are your issues with it? As far as I can tell it’s extremely faithful, even the jelly bean buttons feel perfect.
>Button for your index finger? Nah, here's four buttons for your palms!
I'm a manlet with little girl hands even now as an adult and I played with the DUKE just fine as a tiny tot. Even as a kid I preferred the Duke to the S model
I hated how smaller models of consoles all became "slim" versions. The PS3 and 360 redesigns were smaller but it damn sure wasn't "slim". The smaller PS3 was still a fat bastard.
Because back in the day, getting a console redesign halfway through its life wasn't that common. Only the PS2 really did it.
>marketing it better to Japanese gamers who were put off by it's bulky size
People in the west also made fun of its size. I remember tons of websites and forums joking about that when the XBox was announced.
And the Atari and the intellivision and the master system and the NES and the Genesis and the SNES and the PS1...
>Because back in the day, getting a console redesign halfway through its life wasn't that common. Only the PS2 really did it.
Atari 2600 4 switcher (original was the Atari VCS 6 switcher)
NES Top Loader
PC Engine Shuttle, TurboDuo, TurboExpress
Master System 2
Genesis 2, Genesis 3, CDX, Nomad
SNES 2
PSOne
Saturn Model 2
actually I think the N64 was the only one without a redesign, unless you count the Pikachu model which was LARGER.
Those aren't slim versions. Those are re-designs for a different market. For example, the Super Famicom looked like a baby's toy and Nintendo ordered it to be redesigned for Western Markets. They went with a more industrial case design to evoke power.
Genesis 2 was a different market?
Model 2 is far more memorable to Americans and Canadians. Most kids who grew up in the 90s think of the Model 2 when thinking of Sega Genesis.
>Model 2 is far more memorable to Americans and Canadians.
um, no, model 2 was plenty memorable, especially since it was bundled with Sonic 2.
Megadrive 2 was also more well known in some markets as a Dendy (Famiclone).
They didn't call them Slim because that was a term Sony introduced with the PS2, but they were for all intents and purposes the same thing: a cost-reduced, smaller version of the console, released throughout the lifetime of the console, superseding the original version. The Genesis 2 was literally a slimmer version of the Genesis 1 for fricks sake. It was so slim, that you could actually see the front artwork of the cartridge in it, the Genesis 1 obscured the bottom half of the carts.
>No one said Sega Genesis Slim. Or SNES Slim.
No one I know called them PSOne or PS2 Slim either, we just called them by the console name, and nobody gave a shit what model it was because it played games the same. The only people who gave a shit were those who installed modchips and had to understand the versions.
2 is far more memorable to Americans and Canadians.
>um, no, model 2 was plenty memorable, especially since it was bundled with Sonic 2.
Reading comprehension...
The NES Top Loader and Snes Jr was not a different market, it was literally a slim version. I think you may be pretty confused.
Not to mention the Sega CD Model 1 vs Model 2.
They were never marketed as Slim models. Stop trying to force modern terms that never existed back in the 90s for game consoles. No one said Sega Genesis Slim. Or SNES Slim.
Yeah.
The PS2 was really the first true slim console.
It was literally in the name.
The others that came before were just hardware revisions.
Getting smaller was just a byproduct and not the goal. And they didn't even get that much smaller in hardware revisions.
>The PS2 was really the first true slim console.
Genesis 2 was literally slimmer. Plug a cart in and check how much of the cart is visible compared to the Genesis 1.
Or compare a NES (it's the size of a VCR) to a NES toploader (it's the size of a Famicom)
That was not a smaller version of the console, it was in fact larger.
Also the Famicom AV/top loader NES. Even older would be the Atari 2600 Jr.
>t was in fact larger.
True. There was iQue, however. But that was only for China.
>Those aren't slim versions. Those are re-designs for a different market.
If your criteria is
1. same market as original console (ie. not a handheld/mini conversion and released while the console was still supported)
2. smaller than original console
3. production of the original version was halted in favour of the new version
Then we still have the following:
- Atari 2600 4 switcher
- Master System 2 (this was PAL only but probably only because the console sold like shit everywhere else)
- Genesis 2
- Sega CD 2
- NES/Famicom top loader
- SNES/Super Famicom Jr.
- PSOne
- Gameboy Pocket (and also does the Gameboy Advance SP count?)
So basically EVERY major 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit console except the Saturn and N64. Not sure about the PC Engine but that one was a clusterfrick of different hardware models.
No matter what way I look at it, "slim" hardware versions are still the norm for every console that's popular enough, and has been ever since the dawn of console gaming.
>except the Saturn and N64
>Gameboy Pocket (and also does the Gameboy Advance SP count?)
Why are you talking about handhelds in a console thread?
Yeah that was pretty stupid. Handhelds are a completely different category. There's a lot of bleed over with tablets these days too.
>list of consoles.
None of those got a worldwide release. Only the PS2 Slim was released worldwide. I agree with other anons. The PS2 slim was the world's first slim console.
>None of those got a worldwide release. Only the PS2 Slim was released worldwide.
Genesis/Megadrive 2 was worldwide.
Mega CD 2/Sega CD 2 was worldwide
PSOne was worldwide
GB Pocket was worldwide
NES Jr. and SNES Jr. was missing a PAL release but it was released in Japan and USA.
Stop being so fricking moronic.
>Genesis/Megadrive 2 was worldwide.
>Mega CD 2/Sega CD 2 was worldwide
>PSOne was worldwide
Not worldwide. Do better research. I'll wait.
>GB Pocket was worldwide
It's a handheld. We're talking consoles.
>NES Jr. and SNES Jr. was missing a PAL release but it was released in Japan and USA.
Then its not worldwide.
>Not worldwide. Do better research. I'll wait.
All of those consoles got NTSC-J, NTSC-U, and PAL versions, which covers basically every console region. Unless we are talking some bullshit like "PS One was never officially released in Tierra Del Fuego and Antarctica".
>It's a handheld. We're talking consoles.
Moving the goalposts.
>Then its not worldwide.
It was still released in all the parts of the worlds that matter.
>Moving the goalposts.
Lmao. The goalpost was always consoles. Look at the first post of the thread. Learn to read next time.
>It was still released in all the parts of the worlds that matter.
Now you're seething. If you want to argue technicalities, then do better research.
You still haven't posted any actual argument why the MD2/MCD2/PSOne/GB Pocket aren't the same type of revisions as a PS2 Slim.
nta but you're such a moronic disingenuous homosexual that I had to take a moment out of my day to tell you.
>nta but
You are that anon. So obvious
Just tell him already. Sony had more worldwide distribution channels than other companies.
Because you dudes are gays, factually here is the history of Xbox controllers
>one dude designs SUPER COOL GAMEPAD FOR GAMERS concept art
>Microsoft for some god forsaken reason has PCBs made based on this that are fugging hueg
>another contractor comes in and has to somehow shove this thing into the smallest controller they can manage while still being comfortably shaped
>Microsoft Japan and Japanese developers insist they can't sell this thing, make them agree to design a new controller for the Japanese launch
>regular MS staff designs a new controller for them that comes out 3 months later (presumably why the Controller S is shaped much more like a contemporary Sidewinder) with a new PCB that gets brought back to the west and eventually phases out the Duke because everyone makes fun of how fat the Duke is
Funnily enough the Duke's 6 button layout -is- for fighting games despite it having that wack Sidewinder d-pad.
https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-23-xbox-controller-retrospective-hyperkin-duke-gamepad.html
https://www.shacknews.com/cortex/article/119/exclusive-long-read-chapter-my-old-friend-duke
They wanted to make sure you could fit the cases for all their exclusive games worth playing inside the console itself and they succeeded. Xbox FTW!
Actually they probably could have made it smaller thinking about it.
Archaic x86 architecture, it was essentially an old PC in a box. It needed the big power supply, the big hard drives, etc., no way to make it smaller. Slim also wasn't really a thing back then.
Slim has just become a marketing tool these days. They put out a console first with intentions of releasing the "slim" version of it later, because every time they release something it makes the news = free advertising, extra push for people to get a console. They don't make the components smaller in a way similar to how smartphones these days are as powerful as old computers at all, it's a marketing thing.
You are a fricking moron
eh? Explain yourself please. I doubt you can.
Have you taken apart an XBox?
The 360 had an external power brick so that's a non issue
The only real issue is the HDD, which could've been removed all together for maybe flash memory
The disc drive could be pop up as well
>Have you taken apart an XBox?
Yes.
>The 360 had an external power brick so that's a non issue
What's the point of having a "slim" console if the PSU is just as large but outside it?
>The only real issue is the HDD, which could've been removed all together for maybe flash memory
No it couldn't - flash memory costs vastly more, especially back then.
>The disc drive could be pop up as well
Wouldn't save much space.
>No it couldn't - flash memory costs vastly more, especially back then.
Lol, OK mate
Obviously it's not gonna be as large as the IDE, but it only needs to save
>The disc drive could be pop up as well
wut
>T-T-THE PSU!!. THE PSU!!!
An external PSU is far superior to an internal one, for one reason- easy to repair/replace. You assume the internal PSU for the PlayStation 2 wasn't the source of headaches when it came to system problems?. These things wear out, these things break, and having an external power supply is always better due to the ease of use alone.
>for one reason- easy to repair/replace
Another is heat
It helps console heat but I think internal PSUs with a fan tend to themselves be better cooled than super tightly packaged bricks that get chucked into a cable mess at the back of a shelf or something.
you'd think, however you'd be wrong
any heat removed from the mainboard is a positive
Anecdotally I feel like I've seen a lot more bricks fail but maybe that's because when an internal PSU goes on most electronics people never identify what actually broke.
What I do know is it adds an annoying premium to PSOnes to actually come with the goddamn brick as if it's some sort of extra compared to a regular PSX.
They just turn AC to DC anon, they're just transformers
If any had issues it would be due to bad components or plugging them into the wrong location
>They just turn AC to DC anon, they're just transformers
Everything about this sentence is wrong.
A transformer is AC to AC. AC to DC is done by a rectifier.
The important thing is stepping down the voltage.
And excessive heat isn't good for transformers either.
And power supplies for decades have been much more than just transformers.
They're SMPS, which basically go AC in -> rectify to DC -> invert to higher frequency AC -> (much smaller) transformer -> lower voltage AC -> rectify to DC (plus regulation, feedback shit, etc.).
You’re absolutely right, I’m a moron
But there is no reason it can’t be external
Nope. Power bricks suck for cooling because zero air flow.
Powerful PSUs need a fan, even modern highly efficient external power bricks struggle with more than 200W.
While internal PSUs of gaming pcs and current-gen PS and Xbox have something like 400-500W, thanks to the active cooling.
And yet they keep releasing new consoles with an internal power supply only to release a new SKU down the line where it's external and they can market it as slimmer and better, even though they were definitely capable of it earlier.
>The only real issue is the HDD, which could've been removed all together for maybe flash memory
The original Xbox had something like a 3GB drive, that much in flash memory would have cost more than the entire console. SSDs only started becoming a thing in the tail end of the decade. I remember buying a 40GB X25-V drive in 2010 and that was maybe the first commercially affordable SSD (you had earlier 80GB and 160GB models but they were prised for enterprise space).
>Obviously it's not gonna be as large as the IDE, but it only needs to save
One of the major good points of the Xbox was that you could use the drive to do all sorts of shit, not just saving but crap like saving mp3s on there and have games use your mp3s as a custom soundtrack, install emulators, even load games from the HDD, and so on.
speaking of which, this reminds me, I need to find a IDE to SATA adapter so I can install a decent sized drive in my old OG Xbox. The DVD drive is dead and it only has a 6GB drive, only enough to store one game.
>that much in flash memory would have cost more than the entire console
I never said anything about it needing that much, a slim redesign would be cheaper and have some cutbacks, ie storage size
I do recommend chucking in a 1-2TB drive and softmodding though
FTPing games to your console and being able to download game patches and DLC is very handy
This is just straight up fricking bait
Because Nvidia had a huge falling-out with Microsoft which led to the premature discontinuation of hardware manufacturing since Nvidia refused to supply the required parts, this is also why no Xbox since then has used Nvidia hardware (and likely never will again) and why the 360 was fast-tracked to a 2005 release because Microsoft simply didn't have enough OG Xbox stock to keep it as their flagship console for another year.
By the end of the xbox's lifespan M$ wanted to get the frick out of that mess as soon as possible. They were insanely expensive to produce, took a huge loss on every unit sold and they had already started development on the 360. They even pulled the huegbox off of shelves once the 360 was ready.
There were no die shrinks at that point in x86 CPU development that would have allowed for a slim, lower power version of the same board. Everything was going bigger, hotter and more power hungry until AMD came up with their notion of x86/64. The GPU was kind of esoteric and they would have had to pay nvidia an arm and a leg for a tidier version of it.
In some kind of way, the 360 was their idea of the "slim" version of it, since they tried to give it backwards compatibility.
360 has no real BC, just a pretty shitty emulator.
>just a pretty shitty emulator.
it's far from shitty, it's actually pretty impressive
In some ways yes it's a technical achievement, but overall compatibility and accuracy are both shit. Even the biggest ones Halo and Halo 2 have obvious issues and you have shit as bad as FMVs just outright not playing even in the list of supported games that is less than 50% of the original Xbox library. The PS3's PS2 emulator is probably better actually and that's kind of an incredible thing to say with those fricked up machines.
That's cause Nvidia were dicks, that wouldn't allow MS to adapt their proprietary drivers to ATI. They really thought they had MS by the balls, but MS just reverse engineered their shit and made it work.
It was the early 2000s and BIG was in.
Hummers, XXL sized fast food, the smith and wesson 500, etc. The obesity epidemic was initially embraced.
It was big because the xbox was literally an m-atx computer slapped into some generic case. Would not be surprised if that case was some repurposed chinese subwoofer or some shit. Microsoft had no manufacturing capability in the 2000's to go slim. Even the xbox 360 looked like a mid-2000's Dell computer.
It was big because they failed to consolidate the dvd drive and hard-drive space appropriately. It has giant cages for both inside and it didn't need that.
why would the size/weight of a console matter? It's a piece of AV equipment, it sits in your entertainment center and doesn't move. Have you seen how big a VCR or tape deck or stereo receiver is? It doesn't fricking matter. You're not moving that shit around. The only time a slim variant actually matters is when the new model fixing a previous issue like PS3 fat YLOD or 360 RROD or adds extra functionality like PS2 slim having a built-in ethernet jack
>b-b-but muh japanese market!
irrelevant. They make up a small fraction of the market as a whole, and the fact is that even if the console were tiny, they wouldn't have bought it anyway because it was made by gaijin piggus. To this day it's demonstrably true. PS3 was bigger than the 360 and sold more in japan, for instance.
>the "Japanese don't buy hardware by gaijin" meme
Apple has a huge presence in Japan though.
Because there's no jap brand. The only thing nips hate more than white piggus are samsung koreans
>Sony is not a Japanese brand
android = samsung to normal people
Android is google
No one thinks it’s Samsung
for the hardware, yeah, it's samsung
?
>Sony is not a Japanese brand
The Apple IPhone beat Sony to the Japanese market, and offered major exclusive deals to Japanese cell phone providers that no other company did. Sony dropped the ball massively. It's their own fault.
But…but…
Thing, Japan! THING, JAPAN!!!
Sony is not a trend setter in Japan when it comes to phones.
By the time they made their own smartphone, the market belonged to iphone.
Sony was very late to market.
Although I do give Sony credit. They've clawed their way up to 2nd place when you don't count the iphone.
Apple iphone = gold standard for phone in Japan. It's like KFC chicken being the best chicken brand in Japan. They won the chicken war with good timing and good deals. Same with Apple iphone
Sony/Japan brand= best non-apple phone. Japan still supports their companies
Korea brand = shit
China brand = extra shit smeared on flaming poop
Zoomer moron. Japs bought ipods like crazy before smartphones were a thing
Size/weight matters because it's moronic to have something so massive in your home. We may not live in the pods yet, but that doesn't mean you should just fill up space for no good reason. Small consoles are also more aesthetic, period. It's better to have something sleek and minimal than hauling a massive piece of plastic around. The Xbox could have used a massive overhaul, it's just a shame Nvidia was so shit.
>It's a piece of AV equipment
No, it's a fricking toy, and kids sometime like to bring over their toys to their friends house so they can play it there. We used to do that all the time with the Megadrive, SNES, N64, Saturn, Playstation, etc. when we were young. A guy brought his Playstation around on a field trip after hearing we got rooms with TVs in them. We all played Tony Hawk 2 there..
People even chugged Xboxes around to do LAN parties, but that was more prevalent in colleges.
This whole "It's not a console, it's a multi media experience" idiocy started out later, with the PS3 where they had to go on overdrive with the marketing bullshit to justify the moronic pricing.
people weren't normally carrying around their fricking home consoles on a regular basis, homosexual. Some niche exceptions don't change that. It's a home console. It sits in the entertainment center no different than stereo or a VCR or a DVD player. This has nothing to do with later consoles being marketed as multimedia devices. It's not a portable.
>people weren't normally carrying around their fricking home consoles on a regular basis, homosexual
Not regularly, but occasionally. Why do you think the Playstation even had the link cable?
is a lunchbox in you are path
>adds extra functionality like PS2 slim having a built-in ethernet jack
Not that anon but I agree on this point. The PS2 slim was the real slim console that both shrunk down the console and added functionality.
>irrelevant. They make up a small fraction of the market as a whole,
Yeah this was Sega's downfall. They made a ton of money on worldwide sales, but made a console (Sega Saturn) that no one in the West liked. And developers didn't want to program games for because it wasn't a well thought out design. The Saturn made developers do extra work that was easier on other consoles.
>and the fact is that even if the console were tiny, they wouldn't have bought it anyway because it was made by gaijin piggus. To this day it's demonstrably true. PS3 was bigger than the 360 and sold more in japan, for instance.
Yep. All the b***hing about the Xbox being too big was just Japan trying find an excuse to hate on a foreign brand. But look at how MASSIVE the Playstation 5 is. It's bigger than the original Xbox but Japan loves it. So the whole thing aboi the Xbox being too big was just a lie.
>The PS2 slim was the real slim console that both shrunk down the console and added functionality.
Genesis 2 added stereo output on the a/v output. Genesis 1 only had the headphone jacks for this.
Yeah but they removed the headphone jacks. I remember some people being upset at that. So it's more of a trade off.
>I remember some people being upset at that
no you don't
You are too young
Nope, you just made up some shit that you thought
>Yeah but they removed the headphone jacks.
And the slim ps2 removed the expansion port. I remember some people being upset at that. So it's more of a trade off.
what?
Stoners?
Oh right for clarity all models with card readers are 90/90s, but 65/90s (the earlier and presumably most common 40GBs, which I want to say were one of the more prolific variants because it coincided with the PS3 ceasing to be a no games machine) have no card reader and still have the most failure prone RSX.
Am I the only one who lived in an apartment with paper-thin walls and preferred playing with headphones on the Megadrive so the neighbors wouldn't get upset? My TV didn't even have a headphone jack.
Mega Drive* two words.
Dont sweat the small stuff
Yes you are, thirdie
>One of the issues many people had with the original Xbox console was it's size and weight
No. This is only a problem for a handful of beta b***hes right now.
Xbox weighed 9 lbs. Nine pounds.
>noooo my entertainment stand couldn’t possibly hold my 150 pound television AND a 9 lb box!
Its size was part of its marketing. It was the man’s console, biggest and most powerful.
Btw, the PS5 is a 1lb heavier and dimensionally larger than the original Xbox. It’s also 20 times uglier.
You all gotta realize that Xbox and Playstation are huge money pits. The only reason these consoles even exist is because the companies making them can afford to lose billions of dollars. Microsoft and Sony are extremely wealthy companies that make absurd amounts money outside of video games.
Nintendo, Sega, Atari, etc...could never afford to make the same consoles without bankrupting themselves. Retro gaming ended when big companies got involved in the console war and just used money to brute force themselves into the market.
I gotta give credit for Nintendo naming smart decisions. They are winning.
Makes you wonder why Sony and Microsoft continue to pump out new hardware on an almost yearly basis despite losing money. I think Sony is in especially terrible shape, because they still have no games worth buying a PS5 for 3 years into the console's life. Compare the library of the PS2 in 2003 to the PS5 in 2023, it's a complete joke. Iwata must have been a prophet sent by God, because everything he said was bang on and nobody respected him for it. It's all about the GAMES, not graphics. Microsoft and Sony have relied on graphics to sell their hardware for decades now, and it's stopped working. Microsoft is now competing with their Game Pass value proposition (Own nothing and be happy etc etc), but what will Sony do?. With the PS5 being as bad as it is, will there be a PS6?. What's the end goal here?. Their exclusives no longer appeal to anybody, it's amazing how piss-poor their recent PC versions have sold. Back in the day people would have lost their minds at the idea of playing a game like Uncharted on PC. Now?, nobody really cares. The fire has died out. These companies chose to bet the farm on cinematic slop, and well, people are tired of the same old story.
>despite losing money
You clearly don't know how scale in manufacturing works if you think they weren't making a profit through the whole gen
What are you talking about?, they've been very vocal about how they lose money on every console sold. It's been going on for a long time.
https://gamerant.com/xbox-console-sales-losses/#:~:text=Contrary%20to%20what%20a%20lot,software%20sales%20and%20subscription%20services.
Isn't the point that they sell the consoles at a loss and make a profit through games/peripherals/subscriptions/etc sales
>Isn't the point that they sell the consoles at a loss and make a profit through games/peripherals/subscriptions/etc sales
Nintendo doesn't sell their consoles at a loss. They design every console to sell for a profit. So even if they sell 30 million or 100 million, Nintendo still makes money.
It depends on how much money you are losing on each console sold. Sega lost way too much money on the Sega Saturn that it crippled the company.
In the first year or two sure
Parts don't cost the same during the entire lifespan of the console anon
They cost savings later in the console's life absolutely does not make up the billions of dollars lost early on. Microsoft has stated that the original Xbox lost them billions of dollars after it was all said and done.
Correct
Because they included a large HDD in every console
Nvidia was also charging a premium to use their GPUs. ATI was cheaper.
That is a necessary expense for the console and as I said the cost would've dropped after a couple years and by the sheer amount produced
The HDD would've been the extra money they needed for profit
Even if the hard drive was sold separately, Microsoft would still lose money.
Microsoft would have needed to sell the hard drive seperately, sell the ethernet adapter separately, use a different cheaper GPU manufacturer, and lower the graphics quality of all Xbox games to be closer to the PS2 or Gamecube. They would need to do all that and more for the console to be profitable.
Microsoft didn't want to do that because they wanted to market the original Xbox as the most powerful console and push Xbox Live. They couldn't do that if all the components were optional and the graphics were weaker.
Again, on the first year or two
I guarantee if the HDD wasn't included they'd be sold for profit in the 3rd year
No. You are wrong.
The original Xbox cost $425 dollars to manufacture, and Microsoft sold it for $199.
It's going to take more than removing the hard drive to make up the difference. Let alone turn a profit.
It was 300, not 200
They made a loss of 125
If they excluded the HDD they would’ve saved at least 80 from each console
By the third year the cost would’ve absolutely dropped by another 50 at least
Incorrect.
Microsoft marked down the price of the original Xbox to $199 only 5 months after the launch of the console.
They were doing it to aggressively push the Xbox to customers. Microsoft felt they were a new untested brand to customers. And they needed to do this price reduction to compete with established brands like Nintendo and Sony.
It worked, but this price reduction killed any chance of profit from console sales like you are suggesting.
Then I guess the rest of the world subsidised America
Damn. Microsoft must have lost billions to sell it at that price. Nintendo and Sega could never do that. Console wars stopped being fun when hardware manufacturers joined and just brute forced their way in.
In Europe xbox hueg was too expensive
What the frick are you supposed to call this thing nowadays? XBOX 2001?
OG Xbox
Classic Xbox
Playstation consoles make profit on hardware for the majority of their lives
>Playstation consoles make profit on hardware for the majority of their lives
No they didn't. Sony just ate the loss. Sony is worth 110 Billion dollars. So losing a few billion to establish the Playstation brand, crush Nintendo and Sega, and sell DVD players is totally worth it.
>No they didn't.
They did, Even the PS3.
Certainly not initially. I’d imagine their consoles aren’t generating a profit until the slim models. They’re sold at a lost for the majority of the generation.
sold at a loss*
>Certainly not initially
That's what I said. If they were running on a loss, it changed shortly into the generation. PS5's have been making money per unit for years now.
Anyone has ever seen the original power cable?
I use a generic one
The controller got a slimmer redesign, which is more important than the console bulk.
Why invest more resources than necessary in a failing console? Microsoft may be an endless money pit, but a better choice is to take it on the chin and invest in the next generation.