Microsoft Officially Unveils the Xbox 360

Here's a detailed rundown of everything that's important about Microsoft's bold bid for living room domination, from its unthinkable graphical horsepower to its sleek, redesigned case and wireless controllers.

First and foremost, Xbox 360 is an immensely powerful gaming console. That doesn't mean that Microsoft won't allow users to download music and movies in the future; for now, the focus is strictly on cutting-edge games. And for gamers, that's great news, as the Xbox 360 will allow for the most ridiculously decadent video games ever seen. Just wait til you get a peak under the hood of this monstrosity!

Technological Shock and Awe
The Xbox 360 is decked out with high-tech computing components; its graphical performance will easily demolish that of even the highest-end gaming PC (and keep in mind, cutting-edge PCs can cost several thousand dollars). So it's definitely really, really powerful. Okay, but what does this white-hot performance mean to gamers? Stay tuned: the answer is about to become obvious.

For a gaming console, the first and most important barometer of graphics performance lies in RAM. Simply put, the Xbox 360 has an insane amount of RAM. Early speculation suggested that the Xbox 360 would feature a robust 128 megs, or at most, 256 megs. In reality, Microsoft has soared far above those perfectly rational estimates: the Xbox 360 packs in a mind-blowing 512 megs of high-performance RAM.

To put this in perspective, remember that the original Xbox weighed in with just 64 megs of RAM (a huge amount by 2001 standards). By going with 512 megs, the Xbox 360 is boasting eight times as much RAM as its predecessor. It's a bold, expensive move on Microsoft's part, and has almost certainly thrown a massive monkey wrench into Sony's and Nintendo's next-gen plans--in light of this news, they may have to rethink their hardware specs entirely.

But what does the Xbox 360's huge cache of RAM mean for gamers? Simple. More RAM equals sharper visuals, cleaner textures, and more detailed game environments. The Xbox 360 will be able to render massive environments loaded with an eye-popping level of detail. The Xbox 360 could run Halo 2--one of the most visually demanding games on the original Xbox--by using just a tiny, tiny fraction of its immense power. And there's good news for owners of High Definition TV sets: Xbox 360 will fully support all standard and HD TV modes, with 2 levels of anti-aliasing. The end result will be the crispest, sharpest, cleanest visuals ever seen on a gaming console (especially if you've got an HD TV set).

Phew. Now that some of the shock from that RAM announcement has worn off, it's time to delve deeper into the high-tech guts of the bleeding-edge Xbox 360. Frankly, it's like looking two or three years into the future of PC gaming. The system's state-of-the-art graphics chip, developed by Canadian graphics giant ATi, runs at an impressive 500 Mhz (in comparison, the original Xbox's brawny nVidia graphics chip ran at just 233 Mhz). The chip will also handle an astonishing 48 pixel shader pipelines, empowering developers to create jaw-dropping special effects and a dizzying array of stunning environments. Pipelines has often been seen as the bottleneck to graphics card performances, and the next-gen Xbox more than doubles what's currently out in the market.

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