X boss. Xbox One game consoles

Stay connected with your friends and gaming community everywhere you go across Xbox One andWindows 10 PCs, tablets, and phones. See what your friends are playing, view your achievements, get notifications, send messages, share game clips, and much more. You can even party chat with gamers across Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs.

Play in more places

Enjoy the freedom to play your favorite games in more places than ever. Easily access your games, friends, and community across Xbox One, Windows 10 PC, tablet, and phone. Wherever you go, your games and achievements go with you. And when you stream your Xbox One games to your Windows 10 PC, you can continue to play with your friends and record your best game moments.

Build your gaming legacy

Earn Achievements and add to your Gamerscore across Xbox One, Windows 10 PC, tablet, and phone. Take screenshots and capture your best gaming moments with built-in Game DVR. Use the footage to create amazing videos, add commentary, and share them with your friends. You can also broadcast gameplay live from your Xbox One via Mixer for the world to see. Create your own identity as a gamer. Customize your Gamertag, create your own Xbox Avatar, and bring together everything that matters to you in your Gamer Profile.

It’s no longer a secret or news that the electronic entertainment market is growing primarily thanks to consoles - game consoles, the main purpose of which is electronic entertainment itself. Over the past five years, growth in PC game sales has virtually stalled, and most latest achievements market is driven by the success of a variety of specialized gaming systems - from “large” home “consoles” to handheld gaming computers.

Fixed, standardized gaming platforms are better suited to survive in competition with universal ones - they have lower costs, are easier to sell, are easier to make games for, and are easier to use. Finally, their development is easier to control and direct in the right direction; making serious changes to them does not require many years of coordination of the points of view and positions of dozens of clumsy transnational corporations.

It is not surprising that the market for specialized gaming devices constantly becomes the object of close attention of companies that have achieved success in any area and are trying to diversify their activities, find new profitable areas and market niches. In the last decade of the last century, such a company was the Japanese corporation Sony, which released the PlayStation game console. And at the beginning of the 21st century, the ubiquitous Microsoft corporation decided to try its hand at this market.

The birth of Xbox

Entering the console market, Microsoft followed its usual path: abundant financial injections, careful copying of the main characteristics of successful competitors' products, reliance on recognized technology leaders in the industry... The Xbox project started like most other projects of the corporation, and therefore no one in particular I was not surprised when it became known that the project was bringing total losses to the company. Microsoft has impressive reserves that allow it to carry out, in essence, dumping campaigns again and again - to penetrate the market by selling (or even giving away) its product at reduced prices. And here the qualities of the product itself are no longer so important - even if they are, as a rule, comparable to or superior to the qualities of competing products.

Since its appearance on sale in the fall of 2001, the Xbox has brought its owner significant profit only once - on the pre-holiday December 2004, when the number of consoles sold and the release of the sequel to the main headliner of the platform, the shooter Halo, resulted in a peculiar New Year's gift. Pretty soon everything returned to normal, and Xbox again became a loss-making product for Microsoft.

Here, however, it is necessary to remember what we said a little higher: Microsoft never skimps on financial investments in a new market for itself. And therefore, it is very likely that Microsoft did not expect to make a profit from the first version of the Xbox - it was supposed to “capture a springboard”, serve as a loud, but unprofitable advertising campaign for herself.

In part, this is apparently true, but a number of indirect signs (Microsoft’s reluctance to lower the price in order to increase sales, litigation with component suppliers, as well as some characteristics of the successor console, Xbox 360) suggests that even Microsoft did not count on such unprofitability project.

Therefore, when creating the second version of Xbox, the corporation completely changed the list of companies that supplied components, the relationship with them, and significantly revised the background philosophy of the platform.

The first and most obvious victim of the new marketing philosophy was the name - in order to avoid an unpleasant numerical comparison of the Xbox 2 with its main competitor, the PlayStation 3, they decided to call the second version of the Xbox Xbox 360, which, according to the company’s marketers, should mean something like “all Xbox all around.”

The new console was first presented to the public on the eve of the E3 exhibition in May 2005. Microsoft chose a very aggressive pace of promoting the second version of Xbox to the market: the May announcement was followed by an active campaign in the summer and the start of sales of the new console simultaneously in three “main” regions (North America, Europe and Japan) in the fall, in November 2005. (The reader can find out more in the Xbox 360.) Such an active market launch new version Xbox was mainly driven by Microsoft's desire to overtake its competitors and be the first to introduce a next-generation gaming console.

And, yes, the appearance of the Xbox 360 on store shelves led to the death of the first Xbox - both in terms of sales of the console itself and in the sense of the development of any new games for it.

Comparison of Xbox and Xbox 360 characteristics

First, let's look at how the basic technical Xbox specifications and Xbox 360:

	Xbox	Xbox 360
CPU	Single Intel Coppermine core, 733 MHz, 128 KB L2 cache	3 cores of IBM PowerPC architecture modified for Xbox 360, frequency 3.2 GHz, 1 MB L2 cache
Video chip	modified for Xbox version of the NV2x architecture (GeForce 3/4, functionality complies with API DirectX 8.0), frequency 233 MHz	ATI C1/Xenos video chip created specifically for the Xbox 360 (functionality complies with the DirectX 9 API with a number of additional features), frequency 500 MHz
RAM	64 MB UMA	512 MB UMA
Audio system	NVIDIA Soundstorm version	CPU audio processing
HDD	standard, 8 GB	optional, 20 GB (can be replaced with more capacious models)
Main storage medium	DVD-ROM	DVD-ROM

We have already mentioned that when creating the Xbox 360, Microsoft decisively severed ties with the two main technology partners involved in the development of the first Xbox - Intel and NVIDIA. And, apparently, in both cases, such a gap was the result of Microsoft’s consistent move to reduce the unprofitability of the entire Xbox project as a whole.

CPU

Intel processors are quite expensive because they carry a lot of functionality that is redundant for a game console - functionality designed to simplify the work of programmers and speed up the execution of many versions of x86 code created over the two decades of the existence of this architecture. And since the console will predominantly run programs created specifically for this console, there was no particular point in “dragging along” the entire legacy of the x86 architecture, and Microsoft turned to IBM with a proposal to create a processor specially “tailored” for the game console.

IBM, of course, did not create a processor from scratch, and instead implemented in silicon a new variation of the long-familiar PowerPC architecture (until recently, processors of this architecture were used in Apple computers). This variation differed from previous “incarnations” of the architecture in its simplicity, thanks to which it was possible to “squeeze” as many as three processor cores into a rather modest number of transistors (the complexity of the crystal of a triple-core Xbox 360 CPU is comparable to the complexity of the crystal of a single-core Pentium 4 on the Prescott-2M core) and significantly increased their clock frequency.

In particular, the blocks that dynamically optimize code execution have fallen victim to simplification; programming for the Xbox 360 processor has become more difficult, but with the right approach, this processor should deliver impressive performance at a relatively low cost. Which, as we said, is exactly what Microsoft needed.

At the same time, comparing Xbox processor 360 with modern x86 processors, it should be remembered that the latter, despite their comparatively lower peak performance, often approach it than the Xbox 360 processor. Thus, we can assume that this code, being compiled for modern dual-core x86 CPUs ( Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Athlon 64 X2) will generally show no less performance than the triple-core Xbox 360 CPU.

Video system

With the Xbox 360 video system, the situation is more complicated: it is not entirely clear how much of the decision to abandon NVIDIA’s services was dictated by economic and technological feasibility, and how much by behind-the-scenes political battles. The fact is that, on the one hand, at the time the development of the Xbox 360 began, NVIDIA was in a rather unpleasant technological state - the NV3x architecture could hardly withstand the onslaught of the competing ATI R3x0 architecture. On the other hand, today's confrontation between the 3D technologies of ATI and NVIDIA occurs, rather, with the superiority of the latter's video chips, and it is difficult to judge how technologically the Xbox 360 would lose if it again had a video chip from the Californian company.

Economically, the choice between NVIDIA and ATI also seems rather vague: both companies develop video chips in North America, i.e., R&D costs are comparable; both companies then place orders for the production of video chips at external independent semiconductor factories (TSMC, UMC, NEC, etc.), i.e. production costs are also comparable; both companies are at the same stage of development of 3D technologies, and neither of them is significantly ahead of the other in this.

That is why we are inclined to the version of a “political” choice in favor of ATI. The fact is that at one time Microsoft and NVIDIA were suing each other over the cost of components supplied by NVIDIA for the Xbox console. NVIDIA won the case, dooming Microsoft to further unprofitability of the Xbox project as a whole. It is quite natural that Microsoft did not want to continue cooperation with NVIDIA after this incident. Moreover, the scheme of working with development companies has changed, and Microsoft no longer buys the components themselves, it buys technologies created by partners that allow it to independently order the production of components from independent semiconductor factories. ATI (more precisely, now AMD) agreed to a similar operating scheme, and therefore its video chip found its way into the Xbox 360.

As for the ATI Xenos (or C1) video chip itself, it is the first representative of new unified shader architectures. In such architectures, the same pipelines handle vertex and pixel processing.

According to the unofficial information we have, this video chip was originally developed for computer video cards, but the complexity of creating a unified architecture, as well as its excessive flexibility in the era of the DirectX 9 API, led to the fact that the chip was first released as part of a console from Microsoft. The appearance of computer video cards based on the improved successor to Xenos - the R600 video chip with DX10 support - is expected in the first quarter of 2007.

One of the unique features of Xenos (which, by the way, is unlikely to be inherited by its computer descendants) is its dual-core nature: the ROP unit, which works with the frame buffer (writing values, calculating antialiasing), is placed in a separate chip, which also contains 10 MB of memory, connected to the ROP unit by a wide internal bus. By using a special algorithm for rendering a frame in parts (tiles), the Xenos chip is capable of providing almost free antialiasing, which does not load the system memory bus bandwidth, since it is entirely carried out inside the auxiliary smart memory chip.

According to estimated performance characteristics (it is, of course, not possible to conduct normal testing), the Xenos video chip is somewhere at the level of computer video cards built on NVIDIA G70 and G71 video chips (GeForce 7800 and 7900) and ATI R520 and R580 (Radeon X1800 and X1900) . Roughly comparable and functionality all these video chips.

HDD

Another comparative surprise was the elimination of the standard hard drive present in the console - comparative, because from the point of view of reducing the cost of the set-top box, it was the elimination of the hard drive that acted as one of the main options. The main problem with the elimination of the HDD from the second version of the Xbox was the loss of the ability to provide backward compatibility with Xbox games - most of them were developed taking into account the ability to access the hard drive available in each console at any time.

Microsoft found a way out of this situation by ensuring backward compatibility with Xbox only if the Xbox 360 has a hard drive, and by simultaneously introducing two versions of the console - cheaper and more expensive - differing, in fact, in the absence and presence of a hard drive. At the same time, owners of the cheap version of the Xbox 360 (the so-called Core System) can later purchase HDD separately, after which their console will also be able to provide backwards compatibility with certain Xbox games (the list of these games is constantly growing).

In general, we note that by abandoning most of the architectural solutions used in Xbox, Microsoft doomed itself to constant problems with backward compatibility. Full backward compatibility It couldn’t be in principle, because the Xbox 360 CPU is simply not capable of executing x86 code, and the executable files of Xbox games require recompilation. No fewer problems - admittedly more legal than technical - arose when it was necessary to run games created for the NV2A on an ATI video chip. But, apparently, Microsoft considered that reducing the cost of the console was more important than potential negative reviews of incomplete backward compatibility.

There are, however, some advantages to using software emulation of the old platform that are not available for “hardware” backward compatibility, implemented, for example, in Sony PS2 and PS3. So, in particular, most Xbox games that can be run on the Xbox 360 run in HDTV resolution (1280x720) and with anti-aliasing, which is a direct consequence of software emulation of the Xbox video chip on the significantly more powerful Xenos video chip.

Main storage medium

Another controversial aspect of the Xbox 360 is the use of an outdated dual-layer DVD-ROM with a maximum capacity of 8.5 GB as the main storage medium. It is likely that after some time, games for the Xbox 360 will be released on two or more DVDs, which clearly does not add any advantages to the console in the eyes of ordinary consumers (the need to change the disc in the middle of a game is difficult to count as an advantage of the first console of the new generation). Moreover, one similar game already out! So far, however, only in Japan - JRPG Blue Dragon takes up as many as 3 (!) DVD9 discs.

However, Microsoft's decision here was driven by its desire to overtake its competitors in terms of time to market: in November 2005, there were simply no alternatives to DVD, and the company had to take a potentially erroneous step in order to achieve its main goal - to appear in stores significantly earlier than alternatives gaming platforms of the same generation.

Key platform innovations

But the main innovations of the Xbox 360 lie not so much in its hardware (it is still hidden from the eyes of the average user, who, by and large, does not care what processor architecture is in the console he purchased, as long as it works normally and does not break down), how much in the new philosophy of the platform.

New design

The first thing that catches your eye, of course, is new design: instead of a “puffy” black box with light green inserts, there is a “concave” snow-white matte case with silver and gray elements. The design of the Xbox 360 is influenced by the success of Apple's device design. Fewer gloomy technogenic devices; more living, light, organic forms, pleasing to the eye and touch.

In addition to its “neutrality” to living nature, the design of the Xbox 360 is very thoughtful and functional: all buttons and connectors are in their places; the possibility of both horizontal and vertical installation of the console is provided; On the back and side walls there are mounts for some accessories sold separately (hard drive, Wi-Fi adapter).

The only thing that gets negative reviews is the DVD-ROM drive - a mechanism with a retractable tray, familiar to everyone from computer optical drives, is not the best fit for a game console. More successful here is the slot-in mechanism with a shutter that protects the insides of the drive from dirt and dust (a similar mechanism can be seen, for example, in the Nintendo Wii). However, this is not the worst of the options - the top-opening drive used in the Sony PStwo is even less suitable for use in standard racks and cabinets for consumer electronics.

New gamepads

Another innovation that becomes obvious a few seconds after connecting the console to power, screen and speakers is the new gamepads. Microsoft was not afraid to redesign the Xbox 360 gamepads, abandoning the bulky, plump, angular predecessors in favor of sleek, matte white successors that fit comfortably in the hand. At the same time, followers were provided with the ability to wirelessly communicate with the console, the benefits of which become more than obvious within an hour after launching the first game.

Note, however, that wireless controllers are another option that distinguishes the more expensive version of the Xbox 360 from the Xbox 360 Core System. The cheap Core System uses regular wired gamepads that plug into USB ports on the console. But again, no one and nothing prevents the owner of a cheap version of the Xbox 360 from purchasing additional wireless gamepads later.

New Xbox Live!

The latest obvious innovation for the Xbox 360 is the redesigned Xbox Live service! After the Xbox 360 went on sale, Live! was divided into two components - Silver and Gold. The first of them is free and available via the Internet to every Xbox 360 owner. It allows you to communicate with other players (text messages or voice), download updates and additions for the console operating system and games launched on it, download demos, videos and other promotions -materials. This version also allows you to make electronic purchases small games(the so-called Xbox Live! Arcade), add-ons to your existing “big” games and in general everything that can be sent via the Internet (in particular, a video file store was launched in the fall of 2006; and in the future, an analogue of Apple iTunes may appear) .

Part two, Live! Gold, is paid (subscription for a year) and allows you to play multiplayer games over the Internet in addition to the opportunities listed above.

Xbox Live! at the moment is, perhaps, a unique entertainment service of this scale and scope. At the time of writing these lines, the Xbox Live! significantly superior in stability and ease of use to a similar PlayStation service Network, launched by Sony along with its new PlayStation 3 console. Time will tell what will happen next, but the consumer, as a rule, benefits from competition;-)

Accessories for Xbox 360

We decided to devote a separate chapter of our review to accessories that Microsoft offers to all owners of the Xbox 360. We, however, will not concentrate on things that are insignificant in our opinion, like the replaceable front panels of the console itself, and will talk about what can be really useful to Xbox 360 owners (For a complete list of all accessories, see Xbox 360.)

The first line to purchase are accessories that distinguish the more expensive version of the Xbox 360 from the Xbox 360 Core System: wireless gamepads, a hard drive and cables for connecting to an image display device.

Wireless gamepads We described it in sufficient detail above. Here we only note that these gamepads, of course, require their own power supply, which is available in two versions: AA batteries (batteries or accumulators) and Microsoft branded batteries. If everything is more or less clear with the first ones, then branded batteries have a number of features that are worth talking about separately.

Firstly, you can charge the branded battery directly while playing by connecting the gamepad with a special cord (Play"n"Charge Kit) to the USB connector on the console. Regular “fingers” will not provide you with this opportunity, but we assume that the price of 4 AA batteries will be lower than the price of one branded battery and a Play"n"Charge Kit for it. We also admit that some people will be quite satisfied with ordinary AA batteries.

Secondly, you can charge branded batteries using the branded Quick Charge Kit, which allows you to quickly charge two batteries at the same time, but to recharge they must be removed from the gamepads and, as a result, it is impossible to play.

HDD for the Xbox 360 is a regular 2.5" hard drive with a SATA interface (the same drives are used in laptops) with a capacity of 20 GB, which is housed in a beautiful metal-plastic case and is connected to the Xbox 360 through a special converter. Despite the fact that the drive itself is quite is standard; as far as we know, it has not yet been possible to replace it with a larger HDD. Microsoft itself does not yet offer hard drives with a capacity other than 20 GB for the Xbox 360.

The reader probably understands that 20 GB in our time is quite small (especially considering that about 6 GB of hard drive space is taken up by system files, and no more than 14 GB of disk space is available to the owner of an Xbox 360). Therefore, Xbox 360 owners may well be faced with a situation where there is not enough space on the HDD and the need to delete something from it in order to download from Live! new files. Unfortunately, Microsoft did not even provide the ability for the Xbox 360 to transfer files from the Xbox 360 HDD to other network media - for example, to the hard drives of a PC connected to the same local network.

Concerning video cables, then the Xbox 360 is able to connect to display devices via:

• composite SDTV cable (regular RCA bells, the cable comes with the Xbox 360 Core System);
• component HDTV cable (RGB or Y"PbPr, the cable comes with the more expensive version of the Xbox 360);
• S-Video cable;
• VGA cable;
• all possible local geographical options for connectors for component connection (SCART, D-Terminal).

Please note that the Xbox 360 does not currently support connections to digital DVI/HDMI ports and is unknown whether it will in the future.

Also of note among the accessories available to Xbox 360 owners are:

HD DVD Player, which connects to the console’s USB connector and allows you to play HD DVD video discs. Its main advantage is the price, which is at least half as much as that of full-fledged HD DVD players.

Memory cards at 64 MB. Necessary if you do not have money for a HDD for Xbox 360; are useless if you already have a HDD.

Wi-Fi adapter for connecting to Wi-Fi networks of the 802.11g standard. Installed on the rear panel of the console, above the LAN and USB connectors, connected to USB. Enough useful thing, if you don’t want to clutter the room with unnecessary wires. But we will talk about some of the features of his work below.

Headset and wireless headset for voice communication in games and outside of games via Xbox Live! The thing is absolutely indispensable for multi-user games cooperative games. A regular headset connects to the jack on the gamepad. The wireless one does not connect anywhere - and this, in fact, is its only difference from a wired headset connected to a wireless gamepad.

Universal remote control, with which you can control not only the playback of movies on the Xbox 360, but also, for example, a computer running Windows XP MCE. The usefulness of this remote control is rather questionable in the presence of a wireless gamepad, but white people may have a different opinion ;-)

The last accessory worthy of mention is camcorder, connects to the USB port of the Xbox 360. The video camera allows you to take photos that you can then use in Xbox 360 games. Also in the Live! Arcade has several games available that use this camcorder, similar to the famous Eye-Toy for Sony PS2.

However, enough theory, let's move on to the practical exploration of the new gaming platform.

Xbox 360 experience

So, we have in our hands an expensive European version of the Xbox 360 - with a hard drive, wireless gamepads and a silver DVD tray cover.

In addition to the console itself, we purchased:

• second wireless gamepad (for two-player games);
• Play"n"Charge Kit (battery for the gamepad and a cord for recharging it while playing from the USB port on the console);
• separate battery for the second gamepad;
• VGA cable for connecting to the DSUB connector on the monitor;
• Wi-Fi adapter for wireless connection to your home network and the Internet.

The console comes in a relatively small, but almost cubic box with a convenient plastic handle - the handle allows you to carry the box without much difficulty or thinking about what kind of bag this box will fit into.

Inside the box was the expected set of the standard delivery of the PAL version of the Xbox 360:

• the console itself with an installed hard drive;
• one wireless gamepad with two AA batteries for it;
• wired headset (headphone and microphone);
• HDTV component cable and SCART adapter;
• Ethernet cable for connecting to a local network;
• power supply with two cables (to the mains and to the console).

Installing and connecting the console

Connecting the console is not particularly difficult: all cables and adapters can only be plugged into the correct connectors, each of which is marked with a graphic icon that does not require knowledge of any language at all.

In our case, the gamepad, after installing the battery in it and turning it on, immediately found the switched-on Xbox 360, but if this had not happened, then it would be necessary to press the round button to search for gamepads on the front panel of the console (there are only two of them, one of which is large, with “on” icon), and then press the same button on the gamepad itself (on top, between the left and right shift keys). We had to do a similar procedure to connect a second gamepad to the console.

Note that up to 4 wireless gamepads can be connected to one Xbox 360, and the corresponding indication is available both on the front side of the console itself (a glowing green circle around the console power button) and on the gamepads (a glowing green circle around, um, the gamepad power button) . If several gamepads are connected, several sectors of the circle (a quarter, half, three-quarters or the entire circle) light up on the console, and on the gamepads - the sector next to the number under which this gamepad is registered in the console.

The connection of the console to the audio system deserves special mention. You have two options: either connect to the stereo input of your amplifier or speakers (standard RCA bells); or connect with an optical cable to a Dolby Digital 5.1 digital stream receiver-decoder. In the second case, the Xbox 360 provides 5.1 channel sound in both DVD movies and games. Note that the TOSLINK cable for connecting to the receiver must be purchased separately (but, as a rule, it comes complete with VGA or other HDTV cables, because the optical port for connecting it is not on the Xbox 360 itself, but on these very cables).

After physically connecting and turning on the set-top box, you are taken to the initial console setup wizard, which will sequentially guide you through the basic settings - selecting the interface language, creating your profile, selecting screen resolution, audio signal type, etc. The process is very clear and does not cause any particular difficulties.

Unless you have to struggle with choosing the optimal resolution for your screen later - depending on how and to which screen the console is connected, different options provide different quality. For example, when connecting the Xbox 360 via a component cable to a widescreen HDTV monitor with an SDTV tuner from ViewSonic with a native matrix resolution of 1280x720, we unexpectedly discovered that setting the Xbox 360 settings to 1080i resolution eliminates some image scaling artifacts in the game Saints Row, observed when setting the “native” resolution for the matrix to 720p.

Operating system interface

At this stage, the owner of the Xbox 360 is already quite familiar with the interface of the console's operating system. The interface is quite simple and it's not difficult to navigate at all.

Along the horizontal axis of the interface (left to right), you have a choice of four main pages (each with its own background color for easy identification):

• xbox live
• games
• media
• system

Along the vertical axis of the interface (up and down) you select options and sub-items within the main page you have selected.

The xbox live page is where you log in to the Xbox Live services! - here you can chat with friends, from here you can download demos and videos, buy add-ons for your existing games and the games themselves on Xbox Live! Arcade.

The games page contains options related to the games you own - here you can look at your achievements, what games you play most often, launch a game downloaded from Xbox Live! Arcade or demo version of the “big” game.

On the media page, you can launch a video or photo viewer or a music player, and the source can be either a DVD or a portable storage device connected to the console’s USB port, or the console’s hard drive or the hard drive of a computer connected to the console. the same local network as the console itself (the computer must be running Windows XP MCE, Windows XP with Windows Media Connect, or Windows Vista). From the same page you can get to the Xbox Live section! A marketplace that sells a variety of video files.

The system page contains console settings. Most of them do not require frequent changes, so you will rarely look at this page.

It is worth noting that the interface and the location of items on the main pages, not to mention the subsections of these pages, have been slightly modified several times over the year since the Xbox 360 went on sale - Microsoft is constantly improving the console’s operating system, and its updates also affect the interface .

Gamepad ergonomics

After getting acquainted with the interface and the first hours spent studying the games we bought, the owner of the console pays attention to the ergonomics of the new gamepads.

The standard Xbox 360 wireless gamepad fits very comfortably in your hands (its sharpened, rounded shape is evident); you don’t have to form your fingers in a “zy” shape to reach the button you need at that moment.

The minijoysticks have round guides and move smoothly in them with a clear fixation in the center of their holders. Still somewhat far-fetched, but already traditional for Xbox consoles It looks like moving the left ministick to the top of the gamepad and installing the cross-pad in its “traditional” place, but they say that this arrangement of ministicks is better suited for games of certain genres.

Unlike PlayStation 3 gamepads, the new Xbox 360 gamepads retain the power function feedback(Force Feedback) or, more simply, vibration motors. Judging by our feelings in comparison with gamepads of other consoles (Sony PS2, Nintendo Wii), as well as with computer gamepads (Logitech RumblePad 2), the Xbox 360 wireless gamepads vibrate quite strongly - your hands shake noticeably, bodybuilders will be happy ;-)

But the digital eight-way cross is disappointing - unlike the four directional buttons that are probably familiar to many readers, available on the gamepads of Sony consoles, the cross on the Xbox 360 gamepad is implemented as one large plastic circle-on-a-leg, pressing on the edges of which you press on the hidden ones underneath There are contact buttons all around.

The advantage of this implementation is that you don’t have to press two buttons at once if you need to get diagonal movement. The downside is that pressing the edges of the circle is not nearly as obvious as pressing regular buttons. When you press on its edge, the circle tilts and moves relative to the vertical axis, which somewhat confuses the person pressing - we press down, and for some reason the circle moves to the side. In this case, the circle often hits its edge against the annular base of the cross, suddenly stopping and causing not very pleasant sounds. In total, all this leads to the fact that clicks on the cross-pad are not tactilely felt - whether the contact button under the circle was pressed or not can only be determined by what is happening on the screen, which is not always convenient.

But the wireless Xbox 360 gamepads also have one significant and unique advantage at the time the console went on sale: they allow you to turn the console on and off, no matter where the console itself is located - there are advantages of radio contact and a special communication protocol between the gamepad and the console.

True, if you don’t touch the gamepad for a while, it turns off to save battery power, and in order to reconnect it to the console you have to press the “X” button in the middle, initiating a relatively long (5-10 seconds) process of the gamepad searching for its base station . And when you have to observe this process ten times a day (say, you went out to have lunch, then drink coffee and finally just smoke, and the gamepad turned off every time), then in the end it begins to irritate.

But in general, the new Xbox 360 gamepads should be considered practically standard in their ergonomics and significantly superior in this regard to their predecessors from the previous generation of Xbox. And wired Xbox 360 gamepads differ from their wireless counterparts only in the absence of a battery compartment “under the belly”, as a result, slightly less weight and, of course, the presence of a long wire.

Noise and heat dissipation

Finally, the last characteristic that is of interest to buyers is the noise of the console and the heat that is always wandering somewhere near the noise. And, unfortunately, the Xbox 360 has nothing special to boast about in this area: the console gets hot and makes noise, and the noise is a very unpleasant “walking” ringing of a spinning small fan (or rather, two) on roller bearings.

This ringing is especially annoying, firstly, against the background of a practically absent stream of “exhaust” hot air. We are ready to forgive the noise if it is caused by fans that cope effectively with cooling, but in the case of the Xbox 360 the noise is great, and for some reason the air flow through the console is rather modest. Secondly, the noise emitted by the Xbox 360 seems excessive compared to the computer case standing next to it with more than ten low-speed fans, which together provide a lower noise level under complex system load modern games, rather than two Xbox 360 fans when the console is completely idle...

Of course, if there is a DVD in the console drive, then the noise of the fans immediately fades into the background, drowned out by the noise of the disc spinning in the drive, which in turn is successfully covered by the soundtrack of a game or movie. But the problem is that the Xbox Live! implies that the console will be turned on quite often even when no one is playing on it - downloading multi-megabyte demo versions, video files and other add-ons is not a quick task, and the ideal night time for this requires silence, which the Xbox 360 does not seem to provide capable.

Other operating features

Among other surprises revealed during the operation of the Xbox 360, we can note some peculiarities in connecting the console to a computer monitor with a 4:3 screen aspect ratio and some unpleasant surprises in the operation of the proprietary Wi-Fi adapter.

The screen connection situation is as follows: all (literally) Xbox 360 games are designed to run on a wide screen with an aspect ratio of 16:9 (standard HDTV resolutions are 1280x720 and 1920x1080). When you connect your console to a VGA connector (note that this is true not only for computer monitors, since many HDTVs have a VGA connector for connecting projectors and computers), you can specify the resolution at which the console will output a signal. These resolutions include both traditional “computer” resolutions (for example, 1280x1024) and “widescreen” HDTV resolutions. Also in the console settings, the aspect ratio is set to 4:3 or 16:9, which has a corresponding effect on the pixel format (in a picture with an aspect ratio of 16:9 on a 4:3 screen, interface elements look elongated vertically).

The problem is that not all games can adequately perceive these settings. Some games (for example, Perfect Dark Zero) run correctly in 1280x1024 resolution with a 4:3 aspect ratio. But there are games (for example, Project Gotham Racing 3) that ignore the settings specified in the console itself and set the pixel format incorrectly, resulting in them appearing stretched vertically. Unfortunately, this annoying feature can only be corrected by adjusting the monitor settings - that is, compressing the image vertically using the monitor, if it allows it.

This feature should be kept in mind for those who plan to connect the Xbox 360 to a 4:3 aspect ratio screen.

The second problem we identified concerns the operation of the “branded” adapter for connecting to Wi-Fi networks. The fact is that when connecting to the Internet through this adapter, for some reason unknown to us, the connection with Xbox Live constantly breaks down! — the connection itself is fine, the Internet works continuously (on a computer connected to the same network, the download is not interrupted during such disconnections), the connection with Xbox Live is lost! Moreover, this is observed only when connecting via Wi-Fi; when connecting with a regular network cable directly to the router, the connection lasts for many days.

It is difficult to say what causes this behavior during a Wi-Fi connection - the features of the Xbox 360 software, the features of the Wi-Fi adapter, or problems in its operation with our access point (Zyxel Prestige 662HW), but for those who plan to connect the Xbox 360 to the network using a proprietary Wi-Fi adapter, it will be useful to know about this problem. Moreover, there are already alternative and less expensive options for wirelessly connecting the Xbox 360 to your home network.

At the same time, we want to express our “feel” to the Microsoft programmers who did not provide an option for the Xbox 360 OS to automatically restore the connection to Live! in case of its loss. Perhaps they should pay attention to this point when developing the next console OS update.

conclusions

Microsoft's new gaming console undoubtedly turned out to be very successful. The combination of hardware specifically designed for the console and the right approach to marketing and positioning will undoubtedly allow the Xbox 360 to win more fans than the first Xbox managed to do.

A fairly powerful and, importantly, non-standard video chip will allow games for the Xbox 360 to stand out graphically among games for other platforms - and we are talking not so much about the quality as about the graphic style of X360 games. However, we will tell you more about this in reviews of the games themselves.

Advanced media capabilities (DVD video playback, photo display, music playback, interaction with personal computers and portable media devices such as iPod) will certainly appeal to those who like to use game consoles not only for their intended purpose.

At the same time, the early entry of the Xbox 360 into the market, although it gave Microsoft almost a year's head start, had a negative impact on its functionality. It is not yet entirely clear how much Microsoft's attempts to supplement the console's functionality with external devices (in particular, an HD DVD drive) will help it in competition with young and innovative rivals (in particular, the PlayStation 3 and Wii).

However, at the moment, Microsoft Xbox 360 is perhaps the best console of the new generation - in a year it has managed to acquire a serious game library, and the projects already announced for it will be of interest to the vast majority of gamers in the future. How can the recently released Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation compare to the Xbox 360? We'll talk about this another time.

pros

• The first console of the new HDTV generation on the market
• Several very good exclusive games have already been released (Gears of War, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Saints Row, Dead Rising, Project Gotham Racing 3, Dead or Alive 4)
• Extremely useful, convenient and universal service Xbox Live! Silver - global player profiles, planet-wide achievement lists, voice communication (and fun as hell mini-games Xbox Live! Arcade)
• A thoroughly thought-out and unified Xbox Live service for all games! Gold is a universal environment for multiplayer games and everything for players to communicate with each other
• Gamepads that are standard in their ergonomics
• Very good console design
• Simple and convenient operating system interface
• Advanced media capabilities (displaying video, audio, photos; network telephone; interaction with PCs and mobile devices)
• A large number of various accessories that significantly increase the capabilities of the console
• Two versions of the console, differing in price and functionality

Minuses

• Lack of any major innovations except network services Xbox Live! — most of the changes compared to the first Xbox are purely quantitative
• Relatively few exclusive games - most Xbox 360 games are also released on other platforms (Windows PC in particular)
• Extremely reduced functionality of the cheap version of the console - lack of backward compatibility, hard drive and wireless gamepads
• Console is noisy
• High percentage of breakdowns in the first year of console sales

XBox consoles are one of the most popular gaming device models. The XBox One stationary console is the latest development, characterized by excellent quality and wide capabilities that go beyond simple gamer fights.

The case and joystick are made in a laconic futuristic design, in white or black. Their configuration and design are minimalist and have perfect ergonomics. The dynamics of the game are ensured by an 8-core processor and 8 GB of RAM. At the same time, the device is produced in versions of 500 and 1024 GB of internal memory with the possibility of additionally connecting an external removable drive.

If desired, players can take screenshots and record videos gameplay followed by uploading to the Internet. There are many options available for device users free games and applications.

Gaming consoles XBox One at a bargain price

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