' Talkxbox spoke with someone at EA (who's developing 'Need For Speed Most Wanted') '
I asked about PGR3 and how they are planning to market Most Wanted with another racing title launching so close. The answer: most everyone there at EAX doesn’t expect PGR3 to make launch.
' I’m here at Games Market Europe in the Business Design Centre, Islington, London, where the first UK games trade since the ECTS/Game Stars! fiasco last year, is starting to kick off. '
Here’s my first photo of note from the show, a real live Xbox 360 marketing booth! This was in the Gem Distribution section of the show. Come Christmas 05’ they’ll be the ones setting up Xbox 360s in game retailers and passing on units from Microsoft.
Apparently the marketing booth shown at the show was not a final model. The Xbox 360 wasn’t real (or plugged in). However, the controllers were real and they were wireless.
I was starting my Monday morning sniffing of events other than hurricane Katrina and came across a story that you may find interesting. It appears to be an exclusive courtesy of that ol' sneak HSDEMONZ at the scene indicating that he obsconded a brochure that is different from the marketing brochure leaked last week. He went to a conference and was given this brochure that was to be turned back in at the end of the session. Low and behold, he forgot and took it home instead then proceeded to take shots for the scene.
Mountain Dew and xbox 360 are teaming up. someone will win an xbox360 every 10 minutes. the countdown to the first winner is 15 hours. enter your codes now for a chance to win the untimate gaming machine.
' Team Smartxx managed to get their hands on several XeDKs (Xbox 360 Development Kits). They opened the box and removed the heatsink to show you the full motherboard with over 40 High-Res pictures! '
The dev kit shown below is very recent, anonymous sources told us it was produced on August 18th 2005.
3 Xbox360 Dev Kits next to each other, controller, headset and a SmartXX LT OPX
On the leftside image you see a Toshiba-Samsung TS-H943 DVD-ROM and in the background the aircooled heatsinks of CPU (left) and GPU (right) (the final retail Xbox360 is expected to be watercooled according to the ourcolony movie).
The right image shows the the southbridge made by SiS.
On the left you see the top of the motherboard with both the heatsink of GPU and CPU removed: you can see the IBM PowerPC CPU on top and the ATI Xenos GPU (with its EDRAM) below. On the right of the GPU you can see 2 Samsung memory chips.
The right picture shows the bottom of the motherboard
From left to right:
(1) The (proprietary?) power connector, clear change from the connector of the current Xbox - let's hope Microsoft won't have to recall these. On these Dev Kits the AC adapter is external, the final retail will probably have it internally.
(2) Special outputs on the Dev Kits (won't be on retail units)
(3) Chip with a "VER 1839.2" sticker on. Could this be a kernel/firmware/bios version?
(4) There's a 2nd smaller PCB inside the Xbox 360, I think (if I see correctly) it's placed on the front, just behind the power button (ring of light). It also handles the wireless controllers.
Many more pictures are available showing specific parts of the XeDK motherboard and also the dvd-rom, cables, controller, memcard, headset, plugs, ports ... you can download the whole set of pictures on smartxx.com website, smartxx.com forums.
Japanese development company Tecmo, already onboard for the Xbox 360 and currently looking at becoming a developer for the PS3 as well, had to justify itself to shareholders who asked the key question of whether or not development costs would rise with the next generation of hardware.
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