X boxing life in contact. Xbox One game consoles. Operating system interface

Stay connected with your friends and gaming community everywhere you go across Xbox One and Windows 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.

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

The body and joystick are made in a laconic futuristic design, in white or black. Their configuration and design are distinguished by their minimalism and perfect ergonomics. The dynamism of the game is provided 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 additional connection of an external removable disk.

If desired, players can make screenshots and record video of the gameplay with subsequent uploading to the Internet. There are many free games and applications available for device users.

Game consoles XBox One at a bargain price

You can buy any XBox One game console you like around the clock and seven days a week in the Eldorado online store. We offer a high-quality catalog of media devices with detailed specifications and many discount and bonus programs. Any purchase can be collected by self or received with delivery to the specified address.

It is no secret or news to anyone 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, the growth in sales of PC games has practically stopped, and most of the latest market advances have been driven by the success of a variety of specialized gaming systems - from “big” home consoles to handheld gaming computers.

Fixed, standardized gaming platforms are more suited to surviving competition with universal ones - they have lower cost, are easier to sell, easier to make games for them, and easier to use. Finally, their development is easier to control, 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 of specialized gaming devices is constantly becoming the object of close attention of companies that have achieved success in any field 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 XXI century, the ubiquitous Microsoft corporation decided to try its hand at this market.

Birth of the Xbox

Entering the console market, Microsoft followed its own 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 especially was not surprised when it became known that the project was causing the company continuous losses. Microsoft has impressive reserves that allow it to carry out, in fact, dumping campaigns over and over again - to penetrate the market by selling (or even distributing) its product at lower prices. And here the qualities of the product itself are not even so important - even if they, as a rule, are comparable or superior to the qualities of competing products.

Since its launch in the fall of 2001, Xbox has brought its owner tangible profits only once - in the pre-holiday December 2004, when the number of consoles sold and the release of the sequel to the main platform headliner, the shooter Halo, turned into a kind of New Year's gift for the company. Pretty soon, everything returned to normal, and the Xbox once again became a loss-making product for Microsoft.

Here, however, it is necessary to remember what we talked about just above: 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 should have “seized a foothold”, served as a loud, but unprofitable advertising campaign for itself.

In part, this, apparently, is 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 a loss. project.

Therefore, when creating the second version of the Xbox, the corporation completely changed the list of companies - suppliers of components, the scheme of relationships 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 name the second version of the Xbox Xbox 360, which, according to the company's marketers, should mean something like “solid Xbox”.

The new console was first unveiled to the public ahead of E3 in May 2005. Microsoft chose a very aggressive pace of promoting the second version of the Xbox to the market: after the May announcement, an active campaign followed 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 check the Xbox 360 software for details.) new version The Xbox was largely 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 selling the console itself, and in terms of developing any new games for it.

Comparison of characteristics of Xbox and Xbox 360

First, let's see how the base specs of the Xbox and Xbox 360 compare:

We have already mentioned that when creating the Xbox 360, Microsoft cut its relationship with two of the 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 loss 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 two decades of this architecture. And since the console will mainly run programs created specifically for this console, there was no point in dragging along the entire legacy of the x86 architecture, and Microsoft turned to IBM with a proposal to create a processor specially "sharpened" for a game console.

Of course, IBM did not create a processor from scratch, and instead embodied in silicon a new variation of the PowerPC architecture, which has long been familiar to everyone (until recently, processors of this architecture were used in Apple computers). This variation differed from the 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 a crystal of a three-core Xbox 360 CPU is comparable to the complexity of a single-core Pentium 4 crystal on the Prescott-2M core) and significantly increases their clock frequency.

In particular, the blocks that dynamically optimize code execution fell 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 its relatively low cost. Which, as we said, is what Microsoft needed.

At the same time, when comparing the Xbox 360 processor with modern x86 processors, one should remember that the latter, despite their comparatively lower peak performance, more often approach it than the Xbox 360 processor. Thus, it can be assumed 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 on a tri-core Xbox 360 CPU.

Video system

With the Xbox 360 video system, the situation is more complicated: it is not entirely clear to what extent the decision to abandon NVIDIA services was dictated by economic and technological expediency, and how much - by undercover political battles. The fact is that, on the one hand, at the beginning of the development of the Xbox 360, NVIDIA was in a rather unpleasant technological state for itself - the NV3x architecture could hardly withstand the onslaught from the competing ATI R3x0 architecture. On the other hand, the current confrontation between ATI and NVIDIA 3D technologies is taking place, 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 a Californian company.

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

That is why we are leaning towards the version of the "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. The court was won by NVIDIA, which doomed 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 work 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 at independent semiconductor factories. ATI (more precisely, now AMD) agreed to a similar scheme of work, 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 the processing of vertices and pixels.

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 API DirectX 9, led to the fact that the chip was first released as part of the 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 design: the ROP unit that operates 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. Due to the use of a special algorithm for rendering the frame in parts (tiles), the Xenos chip is able to provide almost free antialiasing, which does not load the system memory bus bandwidth, since it is entirely performed inside the auxiliary smart memory chip.

According to the estimated performance characteristics (of course, it is not possible to conduct normal testing) the Xenos video chip is somewhere on 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) ... The functionality of all these video chips is approximately comparable.

HDD

Another comparative surprise was the elimination of the standard hard disk in the console - a comparative one, because from the point of view of reducing the cost of the set-top box, it was the elimination of the hard disk that was 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 games for the Xbox - 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 providing backward compatibility with the Xbox only if there is a hard drive in the Xbox 360, and presenting at the same time two versions of the console - cheaper and more expensive - differing, in fact, by the absence and presence of a hard drive. At the same time, owners of a cheap version of the Xbox 360 (the so-called Core System) can later purchase a hard drive separately, after which their console will also gain the ability to provide backward compatibility with some Xbox games (the list of these games is constantly growing).

In general, we note that by abandoning most of the architectural solutions used in the Xbox, Microsoft has doomed itself to constant problems with backward compatibility. Full backward compatibility could not be possible 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 - though more legal than technical - arose when it was necessary to launch games created for NV2A on an ATI video chip. But, apparently, Microsoft felt that lowering the cost of the console is more important than potential negative reviews of incomplete backward compatibility.

There are, however, some advantages in using the software emulation of the old platform, which are not available for "hardware" backward compatibility, implemented, for example, in the 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 the software emulation of the Xbox video chip on the much more powerful Xenos video chip.

Primary storage medium

Another controversial aspect of the Xbox 360 is the use of an already outdated dual-layer DVD-ROM with a maximum capacity of 8.5 GB as the main storage medium. It is likely that after a while, games for 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 a disc in the middle of a game is difficult to write down as an advantage of the first new generation console). Moreover, one such game has already been released! So far, however, only in Japan - JRPG Blue Dragon takes as many as 3 (!) DVD9 discs.

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

Main 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 an ordinary user, who, by and large, does not care what architecture the processor is in the set-top box he bought, so long as it works normally and does not break), how much in the new philosophy of the platform.

New design

The first thing that catches your eye, of course, is the new design: instead of the "inflated" black box with salad inserts, there is a "concave" snow-white matte body with silver and gray elements. The design of the Xbox 360 is influenced by the success of Apple's device design. Less gloomy man-made devices; more lively, light, organic forms, pleasing to the eye and to the touch.

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

Only the DVD-ROM drive evokes negative reviews - a mechanism with a sliding tray, familiar to everyone from computer optical drives, is not the best suited for a game console. The more successful here is the slot-in mechanism with a shutter that protects the inside 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 drive used in the Sony PStwo with a top-opening cover is even less suitable for use in standard racks and cabinets for consumer electronics.

New gamepads

Another innovation that becomes apparent a few seconds after connecting the console to power, display and speakers is the new gamepads. Microsoft was not afraid to redesign its Xbox 360 gamepads, ditching bulky, chubby, angular predecessors in favor of taut, matte white, comfortable followers. At the same time, the followers were provided with the possibility of wireless communication with the console, the benefits of which become more than obvious within an hour after the launch of the first game.

Note, however, that wireless controllers are another option that differentiates 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 the USB ports on the console. But then again, no one and nothing prevents the owner of a cheap version of the Xbox 360 from purchasing wireless controllers later.

New Xbox Live!

The last obvious innovation on the Xbox 360 is a redesigned service. Xbox live! Following the release of the Xbox 360, 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 add-ons 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 of 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 store was launched in the fall of 2006; and in the future, an analogue of Apple iTunes may appear).

The second part, Live! Gold, is a paid subscription (subscription for a year) and allows, in addition to the above possibilities, to play multiplayer games over the Internet.

Xbox Live service! at the moment it is, perhaps, a unique entertainment service of this scale and coverage. At the time of this writing, Xbox Live! significantly superior in stability and usability to the similar PlayStation Network service launched by Sony together with its new PlayStation 3 console. Time will tell what will happen next, but the consumer usually wins from competition ;-)

Xbox 360 accessories

We decided to devote a separate chapter of our review to the accessories that Microsoft offers to all Xbox 360 owners. However, we will not concentrate on things that are insignificant in our opinion, such as replaceable faceplates of the console itself, and will tell you about what may be really useful for Xbox 360 owners (For a complete list of all accessories, see the Xbox 360 software.)

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

Wireless gamepads we have described 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 rechargeable batteries) and Microsoft branded batteries. If everything is more or less clear with the first, then branded batteries have a number of features that should be discussed separately.

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

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 them you need to remove them from the gamepads and, as a result, it is impossible to play.

HDD for Xbox 360 is a regular 2.5 "hard drive with SATA interface (the same drives are used in laptops) with a capacity of 20 GB, which is 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 As far as we know, it has not been possible to replace it with a larger HDD, Microsoft itself has not yet offered hard drives for the Xbox 360 with a capacity other than 20 GB.

The reader probably understands that 20 GB is quite small these days (especially considering that about 6 GB of hard disk space is taken up by system files, and an Xbox 360 owner has no more than 14 GB of disk space). Therefore, Xbox 360 owners may well face a situation of lack of HDD space and the need to delete something from it in order to download from Live! new files. To our great regret, Microsoft did not even provide for the Xbox 360 the ability 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, the Xbox 360 is able to connect to display devices through:

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

Note that the Xbox 360 currently does not support connecting to digital DVI / HDMI ports and it is unknown if it will support it in the future.

Also, of the accessories available to Xbox 360 owners, it should be noted:

HD DVD Playerthat connects to the console's USB connector and allows you to play HD DVD-Video discs. Its main advantage is its price, which is at least half that of a full HD DVD player.

Memory cards 64 MB. Essential if you don't have money for an Xbox 360 HDD; useless if you already have an HDD.

Wi-Fi adapter to connect to Wi-Fi networks of 802.11g standard. Installed on the rear panel of the console, above the LAN and USB connectors, connects to USB. Quite a useful thing if you have no desire to clutter up the room with extra wires. But we will tell about some of the features of its work below.

Headset and wireless headset for voice communication in and out of games via Xbox Live! An absolutely indispensable thing for multiplayer cooperative games. A regular headset is connected to the connector on the gamepad. Wireless doesn't 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 doubtful with a wireless gamepad, but white people may have a different opinion ;-)

The last notable accessory is camcorderplugs into the Xbox 360 USB connector. The camcorder lets you take photos that you can use in your Xbox 360 games. Also in the Live! Arcade has several games available using this camcorder, similar to the famous Eye-Toy for Sony PS2.

However, enough theory, let's move on to the practical exploration of a 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 a second gamepad;
• VGA cable for connecting to the DSUB connector on the monitor;
• Wi-Fi adapter for wireless connection to a 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 and thinking about which bag this box can fit into.

Inside the box, we found the expected set of standard delivery for the PAL version of the Xbox 360:

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

Installing and connecting the console

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

In our case, after installing the battery in it and turning it on, the gamepad immediately found the Xbox 360 turned on, but if this had not happened, then it would be necessary to press the round button for finding gamepads on the front panel of the console (there are only two of them, one of which is large, with the "on" icon), and then press the same button on the gamepad itself (above, between the left and right shifts). 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 power button of the console) and on gamepads (a glowing green circle around, um, gamepad power buttons) ... If several gamepads are connected, several sectors of the circle light up on the console (a quarter, half, three quarters, or the whole circle), and on the gamepads - a sector next to the number under which this gamepad is registered in the console.

The connection of the console to the audio system deserves a separate mention. You have two options: either connect to the stereo input of an amplifier or speakers (standard RCA bells); or connect with an optical cable to a receiver-decoder of the Dolby Digital 5.1 digital stream. In the second case, the Xbox 360 provides 5.1-channel audio for 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 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 - choosing an interface language, creating your own profile, choosing a screen resolution, type of audio signal, etc. The process is very visual and does not cause any particular difficulties.

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

Operating system interface

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

On the horizontal axis of the interface (left-to-right), you have a choice of four main pages (each colored with a different background color for easier identification):

• xbox live
• games
• media
• system

The vertical axis of the interface (up and down) is used to select options and sub-items within the selected main page.

The xbox live page is where you sign in to Xbox Live! - 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 have - here you can see your achievements, which games you play most often, launch the game you downloaded from Xbox Live! Arcade or demo version of a "big" game.

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

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

It should be noted that the interface and arrangement of items on the main pages, not to mention the subsections of these pages, have slightly changed several times since the Xbox 360 appeared on sale - Microsoft is constantly improving the operating system of the console, and its updates also affect the interface ...

Ergonomics of gamepads

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 controller lies very comfortably in the hands (its sharpened, rounded shape affects), your fingers do not have to be folded with the letter "siu" to reach the button you need at this moment.

Mini joysticks 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 mini-stick to the top of the gamepad and installing it in its "traditional" place of the cross, but they say that this arrangement of mini-sticks is better suited for games of certain genres.

Unlike the PlayStation 3 controllers, the new Xbox 360 controllers retain the Force Feedback function, or more simply the vibration motors. Compared to gamepads on other consoles (Sony PS2, Nintendo Wii), as well as computer gamepads (Logitech RumblePad 2), judging by our feelings, Xbox 360 wireless controllers vibrate quite strongly - shaking hands perceptibly, bodybuilders will be happy ;-)

But the digital eight-position D-pad is disappointing - unlike the four directional buttons that are probably familiar to many readers on Sony consoles gamepads, the D-pad on the Xbox 360 controller is implemented as one large plastic circle-on-leg, pressing on the edges of which you press on the hidden under it circle buttons-contacts.

The advantage of this implementation is that you do not need to press two buttons at once if you want to get movement along the diagonal. The downside is that pressing the edges of the circle is not nearly as obvious as pressing regular buttons. The circle, when pressed on its edge, tilts and shifts relative to the vertical axis, which somewhat confuses the pressing one - press down, and for some reason the circle moves to the side. At the same time, the circle often strikes its edge against the circular base of the cross, suddenly stopping and causing not very pleasant sounds to come to life. In sum, all this leads to the fact that pressing the crosspiece is not tactilely felt - whether the contact button under the circle has been pressed or not, it can be determined only by what is happening on the screen, which is far from always convenient.

But the Xbox 360 wireless gamepads have one significant and unique plus at the time the console went on sale: they allow you to turn the console on and off wherever the console itself is - there are advantages of radio contact and a special communication protocol between the controller and the console.

True, if the gamepad is left alone 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 this process has to be observed 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 already starts to annoy.

But in general, the new Xbox 360 gamepads should be recognized as practically reference in their ergonomics and significantly superior in this indicator to their own 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, which is of interest to buyers, is the noisiness of the console and the heat emission, which is always wandering around somewhere near the noise. And, unfortunately, the Xbox 360 has nothing to boast about in this area: the console heats up and makes noise, and it makes a very unpleasant "walking" ringing of a spinning small fan (or rather, two) on rolling bearings.

This ringing is especially annoying, firstly, against the background of an almost absent jet of "exhaust" of hot air. We are willing to forgive the noise if it is caused by efficient cooling fans, but in the case of the Xbox 360, the noise is great, and for some reason, the blowing of the console with air is rather modest. Secondly, the noise emitted by the Xbox 360 seems excessive against the background of a nearby computer case with more than ten low-speed fans, which in total provide less noise under the system load of complex modern games than two Xbox 360 fans in a completely idle console ...

Of course, if there is a DVD in the drive of the console, 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 sound track 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 demos, video files and other add-ons is not fast, and the ideal night time requires silence, which the Xbox 360 seems to be unable to provide capable.

Other features of operation

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.

With the connection to the screen, the situation is as follows: all (literally) Xbox 360 games are designed to work on a wide screen with an aspect ratio of 16: 9 (standard HDTV resolutions are 1280x720 and 1920x1080). When connecting the console to the 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 the signal. These resolutions include both traditional “computer” resolutions (eg 1280x1024) and “widescreen” HDTV resolutions. Also in the console settings, the aspect ratio is set - 4: 3 or 16: 9, which accordingly affects the pixel format (in a picture with an aspect ratio of 16: 9 on a 4: 3 screen, the interface elements look elongated vertically).

The problem is that not all games are able to adequately perceive these settings. Some games (for example, Perfect Dark Zero) work at 1280x1024 with a 4: 3 aspect ratio correctly. But there are games (for example, Project Gotham Racing 3) that ignore the settings specified in the console itself and set the wrong pixel format, as a result of which they look stretched vertically. Unfortunately, this annoying feature can be corrected only by adjusting the monitor settings - that is, by compressing the image vertically by means of the monitor, if it allows it.

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

The second problem we identified concerns the work of the "proprietary" adapter for connecting to Wi-Fi networks. The fact is that when connecting to the Internet through this adapter, for some reason we do not understand, the connection with Xbox Live is constantly broken! - the connection itself is in order, the Internet is working continuously (on a computer connected to the same network, the download is not interrupted with such disconnections), it is the connection with Xbox Live that is lost! Moreover, this is only observed when connecting via Wi-Fi, when connecting with the usual network cable the connection is held directly to the router for many days.

It is difficult to say what caused this behavior with 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 would like to express our "phi" to Microsoft programmers, who did not provide the option for the Xbox 360 OS to automatically reconnect with Live! in case of its loss. Perhaps they should pay attention to this point when developing the next update to the console OS.

conclusions

Microsoft's new game console is undoubtedly very successful. The combination of specially engineered hardware for the console and the right marketing and positioning approach will undoubtedly allow the Xbox 360 to win more fans than the first Xbox ever did.

A powerful enough and, importantly, a non-standard video chip will allow games for Xbox 360 to stand out graphically among games for other platforms - and we are not talking so much about quality as about the graphics style of X360 games. However, we will tell you more about this in the 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 iPods) will surely appeal to those who like to use game consoles for other than their intended purpose.

At the same time, the early entry of the Xbox 360 to the market, although it gave Microsoft an almost one-year head start, negatively affected its functionality. It is not yet fully understood how Microsoft's attempts to supplement the console's functionality with external devices (in particular, an HD DVD drive) will help it compete 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 managed to acquire a serious game library, and the projects already announced for it in the future will be of interest to the vast majority of gamers. How will the recently released Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation be able to oppose the Xbox 360? We will talk about this another time.

pros

• First next generation HDTV console on the market
• Several very good exclusive games already released (Gears of War, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Saints Row, Dead Rising, Project Gotham Racing 3, Dead or Alive 4)
• Extremely useful, convenient and open source Xbox Live service! Silver - Global Player Profiles, Planetary Achievement Lists, Voice Chat (plus some damn fun Xbox Live! Arcade minigames)
• A thoroughly thought-out and unified service for all games Xbox Live! Gold is a universal environment for multiplayer games and everything for players to communicate with each other
• Ergonomic reference gamepads
• Very good console design
• Simple and convenient operating system interface
• Advanced media capabilities (displaying video, audio, photos; network phone; interaction with PC and mobile devices)
• A large number of all kinds of accessories that significantly increase the capabilities of the console
• Two console versions differing in price and functionality

Minuses

• No major innovation except for the Xbox Live online services! - most of the changes since 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 stripped down functionality of the cheap version of the console - lack of backward compatibility, hard drive and wireless gamepads
• High console noise
• High breakdown rate in the first year of console sales