ATI Wins Next Xbox Contract

[sbp]

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/chi...9115712,00.htm

ATI will produce components for the next version of the Xbox games console, severing Microsoft's troubled relationship with Nvidia

Graphics chip underdog ATI Technologies said on Thursday it has signed a contract with Microsoft to produce components for future versions of the Xbox game console, beating out market leader Nvidia.

more linkage: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1220430,00.asp

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Not much of a surprise. Nvidia wasn't too enthusiastic about doing Xbox 2, but they will miss the revenue. Wonder how much {if any} this will effect ATI's future products {maybe it already has?}. And what about backwards compatibility? Its not just graphics, but also sound and whatnot.

[coleslaw]

Yes, it will definitely be interesting to see how Microsoft handles the whole issue of backwards compatability. If they had been planning on supporting backwards compatability but now are stuck reversing that goal, you really have to second guess this decision. Maybe they will create some sort of an emulator to play first-gen XBOX games?

[gear02]

well...the ps2 used the ps1 CPU as its input controller. With the xbox, they could do something similar, basically shrink the current Xbox board and stick it in in addition to the Xbox2 boards.

[attgig]

with the HD on xbox though, i think emulator would be a lot easier to do.


and considering how long it takes to boot up a game already...can't be much slower!

[gear02]

Originally posted by attgig
with the HD on xbox though, i think emulator would be a lot easier to do.


and considering how long it takes to boot up a game already...can't be much slower!

See...I don't see Microsoft creating an Emulator for their hardware. All you gotta do then is to rip out the code from the device and you've got pure Emulator code that works on the Xbox. All people have to do then is to port it to PC and you've got a full blown Xbox emulator for PC that's pretty much Microsoft certified. They wouldn't put the money into the development and risk this from happening.

[Paymaster]

What's there to emulate? You can pull the Nvidia graphics card out of your PC, and drop in an ATI card, and you don't have to get all new software... I'm sure that the Xbox has some OS level hooks that insulate the code from the nitty gritty details of the hardware.