Paul Fox of Microsoft Europe Comments by Gestalt

Eh?? There's me saying "cheap at twice the price" for 33 years never realising the proper saying was "cheap at half the price" - duh! Well you learn something every day...

Here's another one: for YEARS I thought there was a verb "to misle" someone (pronounced 'my-zal'), meaning bamboozle, fool, cheat them, until one day someone asked me what the hell I was talking about when I said that I'd been my-zald (spelt 'misled')... cue ridicule and laughter at my expense. "Awry" was the other one, I always thought it was 'awe-ree' - this is what comes of reading too much and speaking too little when young.

/me remembers the poor football fan at secondary school not understanding a word of what he read when reading aloud about someone locked up in gaol.

Otto: "Here's another one: for YEARS I thought there was a verb "to misle" someone (pronounced 'my-zal'), meaning bamboozle, fool, cheat them, until one day someone asked me what the hell I was talking about when I said that I'd been my-zald (spelt 'misled')... cue ridicule and laughter at my expense. "Awry" was the other one, I always thought it was 'awe-ree' - this is what comes of reading too much and speaking too little when young."

I thought the exact same thing about misled, and for the same reasons...

I thought I was the only one *sniff*

ADSL & Xbox.
I've posted elsewhere on here a link to a MS development document on how the on-line gaming aspect is supposed to work, but the primary theme was that it was going to be a peer-to-peer connection. (ie not server based gaming, such as you currently get with counterstrike, quake etc).

Now from an infrastructure point of view, I can't see there is any chance that MS will be setting themselves up as a provider of broadband access - or in other words an ISP. Well, maybe possibly in the USA, but not in Europe.

So if they are going to support broadband outside the US (and lets remember what happened with Sega & dreamcast here - online support arrived, late and undersupported) - it's going to have to be via a service. In fact its going to *have* to be in the form of a service - and the service will do player matching (because it's peer-to-peer right?, so how else are you going to find other players).

My personal thoughts on the subject - if you've got a PC with ADSL and a lan card, don't bother with an xbox for on-line gaming. You've already got massive support for on-line gaming, there's a very healthy amatuer and professional lan party community out there already - what is a console going to offer that outguns what you already have?

My personal thoughts on the subject - if you've got a PC with ADSL and a lan card, don't bother with an xbox for on-line gaming. You've already got massive support for on-line gaming, there's a very healthy amatuer and professional lan party community out there already - what is a console going to offer that outguns what you already have?

My computer is a P2 350 with 64 megs of RAM. What can't the Xbox offer with my ADSL?

good point...erm..mind you, you can play counterstrike with that rig, no problems.

Of course, what I should have said was that if you had a *recent* PC, blah blah....

and lets remember what happened with Sega & dreamcast here - online support arrived, late and undersupported

...and expensive. IF they'd let you use your own ISP from the off (cue no phone charges) it may of been more attractive.

"it was going to be a pier-to-pier connection"

I hear pier-to-pier gaming is big in Brighton. ;)

Never had any complaints...!

"I hear pier-to-pier gaming is big in Brighton. ;)"

What the hell are you on about Gestalt ? ;)

I think the chap meant Peer to Peer gaming (direct machine to machine gaming), rather than Pier to Pier gaming (some sort of bizare gaming setup involving long, wooden walkways extending out into the water)

Don't know if this is now "old news", but it appears that the X-box has been chipped. Check out lik-sang or isonews for more details.
Not that I'm condoning that sort of thing of course...

X-box has been chipped

There is a chip, but it won't play pirate games, only make the DVD and games region-x. It ain't out yet afaik.

Nope, there is a chip (not released, granted - the developers are apparently reluctant due to the obvious legal battle that will ensue) which, according to the developers plays games on CD-r, CD-rw, DVD-r & DVD-rw. The games have been available for a couple of days now.
the chip is called Xtender btw

"X-box has been chipped"

people have managed to get the devkits to run games from CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, it was done months ago. we have a copy of mame which runs from a CD-R.

of course, it doesnt work on commercial xboxs and i doubt micorosft will allow any company to manufactor the any chip that does without 10,000 lawyers knocking at there door with tommyguns.

also nobody seems to mention that the gamecube has been hacked already, you can find a pre-release ISO for the actionreply which allows import games to run in 60hz/RGB on a PAL gamecube.

a friend has tried it with Resident Evil and it works fine, apart from the memory card refuses to write :P

It's probably just overloading the memory card. ;) Wasn't there some problem where the standard memory card doesn't have enough room on it for even one Resident Evil save game, or am I just imagining things?

Action Replay for Cube

i think its because the memory cards are region locked, not alot of people know but you cannot use import cards, so you'll either need to import a memory card or let the action reply do a format on it for you. not to sure if the latter is possible tho.

Xbox cracked
This is the story for everyone who wondered:
http://www.headliner.nl/index.php?c=us&p=headliner&storyid=6

My personal thoughts on the subject - if you've got a PC with ADSL and a lan card, don't bother with an xbox for on-line gaming. You've already got massive support for on-line gaming, there's a very healthy amatuer and professional lan party community out there already - what is a console going to offer that outguns what you already have?

Fair point, but if you have ADSL and an Xbox, and if you don't need to pay Microsoft a monthly fee (unlikely but hey) then why not?