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Games Entertainment Hardware

More ApeXtreme Info 185

Posted by timothy from the dumb-idea-or-bad-idea dept.
Hack Jandy writes "AnandTech has some pretty interesting follow up information to last week's sneak peek and discussion concerning VIA's attempt to penetrate the console market. By the looks of it, the S3 DeltaChrome GPU is horribly incapable of making VIA/Apex a formidable gaming console." More on vaporware at CES: Bob Gortician points to this "interesting, if terse, piece on the Phantom game console's debut..."
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More ApeXtreme Info More

More ApeXtreme Info

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  • high on fumes... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dan2550 ( 663103 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @09:16PM (#7948336) Homepage
    all this vaporware is making me dizzy

  • If it's a hoax... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dilweed ( 698689 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @09:17PM (#7948340) Homepage
    Why would someone go to such elaborate measures and great expense(putting together a prototype, sending exhibitors to CES, et al.) just to fool... whom? If it *isn't* a hoax, how can they possibly compete against heavy hitters like MS and Sony? I don't get it, what's it all about?

    • Re:If it's a hoax... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kenja ( 541830 )
      would someone go to such elaborate measures and great expense(putting together a prototype, sending exhibitors to CES, et al.) just to not demonstrate anything? No one has ever seen this system running, the offices of the company are one empty room in a strip mall. If its not a hoax it would be easy to prove, just show a system that does somthing.

    • Re:If it's a hoax... (Score:2, Informative)

      by MajorDick ( 735308 )
      Ahh, well in the late 70's early 80's a company ran tons of ads in Byte and other computer mags, had nonworking display's at all the major shows, even had "fake" reviews, they pre-ordered and disappeared. I cant remeber the name maybe someone else can I think it was World Compter Systems or something of the like. But anyhow THATS why someone MIGHT want to do something like this, (I am not saying this is what they are doing at all) I am just saying this is why someone MIGHT want to
    • Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this ApeXtreme brand an offshot of the Apex company that puts out those amazingly low priced TVs?

    • Re:If it's a hoax... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Babbster ( 107076 )
      Why? Because if they go far enough to convince one or two venture capitalists that they're serious (this is much harder post-bubble), they can get a nice cash infusion, coast for a while longer, buy Ferraris and then fold, citing technical, competitive and/or licensing problems as being too great to overcome.

      I have a hard time believing in the company's sincerity, if only because they haven't even been able to demonstrate an early prototype, let alone one ready to be put into production. Seriously, even

    • " Why would someone go to such elaborate measures and great expense(putting together a prototype, sending exhibitors to CES, et al.) just to fool... whom? If it *isn't* a hoax, how can they possibly compete against heavy hitters like MS and Sony? I don't get it, what's it all about?"

      Well the Phantom really isn't a console. It's just a broadband device that will be offered in conjunction with the broadband providers (Comcast being one that I can remember at the moment). You download games,movies,music, et

    • Phantom sounds like the right name for this box. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by b0r0din ( 304712 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @10:26PM (#7948765)
      Let's see, it's vaporware except for a big, fairly ugly box which has never been turned on, it's sponsored by a guy whose known for getting capital for loser projects, it's competing against three other boxes which are still going strong in sales...maybe the Phantom is exactly what it claims to be...nothing. A ghost box.

      Besides, Sony will probably have a working prototype of PS3 before it's even released, by which time it'll have no chance, just like Dreamcast.
      • Too bad the Dreamcast was quite successful and hit the market well before the PS2 started shipping. While it could've been more successful if not for the FUD campaign coming out of Sony, it wasn't a complete flop.

        The worst thing about the Dreamcast market is that, after the PS2 shipped, it almost completely dried up, virtually overnight.
        • While you may be one of the sad, sad fans of the Dreamcast, you have forgotten a major reason for Sega exiting the hardware business.

          The hardware business is expensive, and Sega ran out of money. That's all there is to it, no 'sony lied about sega' or 'sony slept with segas wife' or any other crap. After the horrible debacle that started with the 32X and SegaCD, they never really got their footing back. The 32X was a financial disaster, probably second only to the ET cartridges made by Atari. The Sega Sa

  • What were they thinking? (Score:4, Funny)

    by haRDon ( 712926 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @09:18PM (#7948355)
    S3 Deltachrome?
    Competitive Game Console?

    Looks like this is a marketing ploy. Make some money out of suckers by using the cheapest possible hardware.

  • What are they thinking? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BoldAC ( 735721 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @09:20PM (#7948363)
    Sony, Nitendo, Microsoft -- that's it. That's all the market can handle...

    Sorry boys, there is no more room for you.

    They will lose like all the consoles that have come and gone before. Xbox would have lost too... if they didn't have Microsoft's endless wealth behind them.

    Keep it vapor guys... It'll be cheaper that way for you.

    AC

  • S3 can't make a decent gaming chip? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Toxygen ( 738180 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @09:20PM (#7948367) Journal
    I guess I should start knitting that sweater Satan wanted.

    • It depends on the usage (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This is a game console. We're talking TV resolutions here. Something like 720x480 for NTSC? Even mid-level cards will make games go fast. Besides, the level of eye candy can be tuned before release so that the chip will always run fast.

  • Days of old... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MajorDick ( 735308 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @09:21PM (#7948374)
    This whole console thing is starting to make me feel like its the 70's again, or early 80's anyway. Here a console there a console, everyones got a consol either out or coming out.

    Remember some of the oddball consoles (some REALLY cool at the time) that just completley FLOPPED.

    • Hey, the 3D0 wasn't all that bad. Ermm... maybe it was.
    • Remember some of the oddball consoles (some REALLY cool at the time) that just completley FLOPPED.

      As this one runs PC games, it's not likely to flop because of lack of software. In fact, I think it's a brilliant idea, especially as it has DVI-out (hook straight into the DLP rear-projection tv or plasma on the wall) and optical digital out.

      It's bound to be a "must-have" for those of us who never got in to the whole Console games thing, but wouldn't mind having a PC hooked up to the TV. (think network-enab

  • How About This Slogan? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by tb3 ( 313150 )
    The Phantom Game Console - If SCO made game platforms instead of lawsuits.
    • A few hundred bucks to play Zelda: Link's Awakening, the original b&w gameboy version from '93, on UNIX93. It would only cost you a few hundred for software, plus hardware costs. You would give SCO the right to audit your gameboy whenever they chose, and agree never to sue them for exthortion. Furthermore, you would agree that they own the rights to your house, your car, your first born, and your eternal soul.

      But the game, man. The game would make it all worth it.
  • You just don't know!

  • Why is another company with relatively little financial base compared to Sony and Microsoft trying to enter the console market?

    Nintendo is already on its way out to becoming a software-only company like Sega was. Microsoft is doing reasonably well in the US, but flopping in Japan and Europe. Sony dominates in all three areas, because they've been the standard since the PS1 -- which they're still backwards compatible with, by the way.

    With days of software being unportable due to heavy use of assembly langu

    • Re:It will all come down to one system (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Luke the Obscure ( 651951 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @09:37PM (#7948480) Homepage
      "They're too big, and most likely can't be dethroned."

      You could have said that about Nintendo in the 80's and early 90's... Then along came a blunder called the Nintendo 64.

      If we've learned anything, it's that you can never predict what will happen when the next generation of concoles comes out.

      And as far as Nintendo being on the way out... The price drop to 99$ has (arguably) put them back in the #2 spot. They're still the undisputed king of the handheld market (N-Gage being as good as say... N'Sync- AND as cleverly named), and unlike Microsoft, they actually make a profit everytime they sell a console.
      • The biggest thing was adult targeted games. Nintendo really had always been a kids platform. That's not to say the games weren't played by adults (shit I still play orignal Nintendo games) just that the focus really was on kids. They were designed with that audience in mind primarly. Nintendo also placed limitations on their platforms that went long with that such as no blood in Mortal Kombat. Even other companies like Sega still had a heave kid basis in marketing.

        This all seemed to make sense. Videogames
        • This all seemed to make sense. Videogames were primarly seen as a kids thing. Adults didn't play them, by and large. Well Sony decided that adults would like to play games, and released lots of adult target titles. Funny thing, turns out adults have more money than kids and hence can spend more on games.

          This is what people widely seem to believe, but it's only partially right. If you look at Sony's strategy with the PS1, you'll see that they weren't targeting adults just for the sake of targeting adults,

    • Re:It will all come down to one system (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Snad ( 719864 ) <(mspace) (at) (bigfoot.com)> on Sunday January 11, 2004 @09:45PM (#7948544)

      Nintendo is already on its way out to becoming a software-only company like Sega was. Microsoft is doing reasonably well in the US, but flopping in Japan and Europe. Sony dominates in all three areas, because they've been the standard since the PS1 -- which they're still backwards compatible with, by the way.

      Nintendo is hardly on its way out.

      The Gamecube is globally selling as much as, or more than, the XBox (depending on which particular analyst you listen to), and Nintendo aren't pumping cash into it like Microsoft are to prop up the XBox. The Gameboy is of course selling in the millions.

      Sony has certainly outsold both Nintendo and Microsoft, but neither of the second placed companies are going to be moving out of consoles any time soon. Expect to see a new Nintendo box released, along with the PS3 and the XBox 2, and expect it to perform well.

      Contrary to popular belief, a company does not have to be in the number 1 position to be either profitable or successful.

      There is room in most markets for multiple competitors. This is something for which I'm exceedingly grateful given that the current incumbent number 1 companies are producing, invariably, lesser experiences than those on a smaller scale.

      Calls for a Highlander-esque "there can be only one!" death match are usually only by fanboys who can't see that there must be more than a single "winner".

    • Re:It will all come down to one system (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Osty ( 16825 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @10:02PM (#7948635)

      With days of software being unportable due to heavy use of assembly language being a thing of the far past, and games being more modular, people are going to do what they do in the business world and bet on the winner.

      In regards to PC games, you're somewhat correct, as usage of assembly is pretty much limited to discrete pieces that need extreme performance. These pieces are easier to re-write than the entire application. However, console games are a different beast. As consoles age and developers become more familiar with the hardware (and at the same time are required to squeeze more and more out of the hardware, because a third or fourth generation title is expected to be more impressive than a first generation title), developers develop their own libraries for the console using low-level languages. This is especially common on Sony platforms, because 1) the PS1 was alive for so long, the initial development libraries were completely inadequate near its end of life, and 2) Sony totally dropped the ball with the PS2, not even providing a higher-level set of libraries*. Now, a lot of these are portable across platforms with a recompile, because the developers will write the backends for multiple consoles while the library's interface remains the same. These games are not portable simply by putting the disc in a different console, however.


      So, how does the PS2 achieve backwards compatibility with PS1 games? Sleight of hand. The PS2 includes a PSOne-on-a-chip (the development of which made it possible to release the cheap, compact PSOne redesign of the PS1). It shares memory and hardware devices with the PS2 hardware, but when you pop in a PS1 game the Emotion Engine and so forth are not working at all. It's all being done via the PSOne-on-a-chip.


      * Sony saw that 5 years after the PS1 launch no developers were using the Sony-provided tools (well, outside of hobbyist-level startup shops that didn't have the time or money to develop their own libraries or buy a good set from established parties like EA). If no developers are going to use the tools, why should they spend time and money on developing those tools for the PS2? Of course, they didn't look back and see that the PS1 would not have been as popular in its early life if it had not been easy to write for initially. This forced companies to spend millions of dollars and months of work to gear up for PS2 development, and is why there were very few good early launch titles for PS2. The PS2 was almost totally carried by its PS1 compatibility in the first 6-12 months of its life.

    • From your statements, you are obviously not a gamer or even have any knowledge of the gaming industry in general. Nintendo is in no way becoming a software only company like sega, as the GBA is the undisputed champion of the portable console arena, and it's outselling the major console. The Gamecube is in no way dead or dieing, is selling at a dirt cheap price and still making a profit (that is the point of this whole exercise). "Heavy use of assembly language" has never been the reason games were diffic
    • How do you connect "days of software being unportable due to heavy use of assembly language being a thing of the far past" to Sony being the big winner? The architecture of the PS2 and the planned successor are quite complicated and require a fair bit of low-level twiddling to get
      any computing power of the device.
  • And if it isn't vapor, Sony, MS et al will make sure they burn it until it is vapor. And which games vendor is gonna make games for this console anyway. Are they honestly going to spend money porting games to this new console when they are certain to get exposure on PS2, XBOX or Gamecube. Did they seriously think they could compete with the endless money the majors provide. Sorry to say guys, a good console may take you far, but in the end, money talks...

    • Re:Vapor anyone? (Score:2, Informative)

      by TechnoPops ( 590791 )
      RTFA. There's no porting involved. This thing is meant to run regular PC games. The only thing that needs to be done is that DISCover (the company that wrote the "insert and play" software) has to write a script that automates game installation and runs the game when the disc is popped in.

  • The Phantom WAS shown in operation (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dr Reducto ( 665121 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @09:40PM (#7948494) Journal
    It was shown in operation to any press who signed up for the demo. They had a party in a penthouse with the Phantom being demo'd.

    pictures here:
    http://forum.phantom.net/index.php?showtopi c=2048

  • S3 Graphics chips (Score:3, Interesting)

    by UPAAntilles ( 693635 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @09:56PM (#7948600)
    Really, they should just give up. I still have a P-166 with an S3 'Da Vinci' Virge, and for it's purposes it's worked great. However, they've been out of the graphics market for far too long...so unless they can grab some engineers from Nvidia or ATI, I don't see them rolling out anything better in a performance/cost ratio. If they had a lot of money, I could see them pulling back into serious competition, but it would require some serious investment and the understanding that there wouldn't be much payback. Then again, that's on eof the reasons the ApeXtreme is so cheap, the POS graphics card (and processor...and sound...etc etc). They must be able to churn out their components really cheaply for the entire setup to be $399. (especially because it's a PC game running setup, so no licensing profits, the entire profit is from the console sale itself which is counter-intuitive in that market) I don't think it's going to last, and on their next tax filing, the ApeXtreme development is going to be labeled 'capital loss' or something to that effect.
    • I don't get this - I had a S3 Savage and for the most part it was a great video card. It compared rather well to the TNT it was up against. Plus S3TC made Unreal look really cool.

      Their most recent video card reaches a good midpoint in modern video card benchmarks > http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/vga- charts-03.html
    • Great!

      Hell, run glquake or tombraider on that and tell me how great it is?

      I upgraded to a vodoo1 and glquake was fluid and I could run Theif:the dark project and tombraider fun afterwards.

  • How Xtreme are we talking? (Score:3, Funny)

    by DrLZRDMN ( 728996 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @09:59PM (#7948615)
    Very. Assuming that Xtreme means overhyped, pointless, and stupid.

  • Ape X-Treme? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jonboy X ( 319895 ) <jonathan.oexner@ ... u ['lum' in gap]> on Sunday January 11, 2004 @10:00PM (#7948621) Journal
    Sweet! Finally, the Olympics, the circus and the X Games come together for the most exciting simian sporting event ever! I can hardly wait!

    Oh, wait...

    • Re:Ape X-Treme? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Pike65 ( 454932 )
      Yeah, how did no-one notice what a craptacular name it is? Surely someone must have stopped at some point and thought "Woah! It looks like we're trying to market snow-boarding simians over here . . ."

      Everytime I see it I get visions of Monkey Kombat.

      Oop Ack Chee indeed.
    • All I can say is, if it doesn't come with a Donkey Kong game, it's not right.
  • Kind of a tangent, but I've had good experiences with Apex equipment. I've had a few Apex DVD players, I have an Apex TV, and my girlfriend has an Apex TV as well. All for great prices.

    I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but I just wanted to say that they make some quality stuff in my experience- a lot of people might be misled by their low prices. They're not Aiwa... their stuff seems to hold up well. :P
    • I couldn't agree.

      Heck, I had to drill some ventillation holes into my sister's Ape-X to get it working right again. Now, thankfully, it is working more often than not but sometimes the spindle motor doesn't start right.

      I did buy their original AD-600 too. It had inconsistent playback performance, wildly inaccurate component jacks and even crashed in the sort time I owned it.

      I've never had these sorts of problems with any of my other home electronics.
      • There were several that had their sound de-synched on my original AD-600. However, that sort of thing was fairly common on a lot of DVD players form all brands at the time, since DVD authoring and playback technology weren't quite mature yet... I don't think the AD-600's were any worse than any other DVD solution at the time.

        Since then I've owned two different models of Apex players with zero problems. Not doubting your experiences with them; just adding my two cents. :)
        • I owned an AD600A and currently own an AD3201. The AD600A was typical of bargain DVD players of the time. It had excellent high-quality S-Video output, and was a great VCD/SVCD player, and a very responsive DVD player, in that the menu speed was fantastic. This is of course typical of DVD players which depend heavily on the CPU, and thus have a lot of it - because they are made entirely of commodity hardware. Eventually, the DVD-ROM in it got a little flaky, and I sold it to someone more ambitious than I wa

  • Debian based ApeXtreme to take on Xbox Live! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Debian Troll's Best ( 678194 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @10:00PM (#7948625) Journal
    While some posters here see nothing more than a modestly-powered games console, complaining that it is incapable of pumping out >300fps in Daikatana, others see any opportunity for something far more important. Microsoft (to its credit) is bringing internet gaming to the masses with its Xbox Live! subscription service. However, there is a growing community backlash over what is largely perceived to be an overpriced and underfeatured service. Who wants to pay $19.99/month just to download some extra spell updates to Harry Potter III or to patch bugs in Duke Nukem Forever? The emergence of an open PC hardware console now makes it possible to do something which is simply not possible with an Xbox-type console: a Linux-based console system, with an apt-get based Linux Live! type subscription service...for free!

    Let me explain. Many great games are being ported to Linux, and blockbusters are being announced on a practically weekly basis. With a GNU/Debian Linux based gaming system, all the required infrastructure for grabbing game updates and patches would be in place with apt-get. Of course, most consoles aren't going to be equipped with a keyboard, but it is easy to imagine something like dselect being extended with an SVGAlib written wrapper that would allow an inexperienced games console user to 'type' in using an onscreen keyboard commands like 'apt-get update nethack', or 'apt-get install xbill'. Of course access charges to such a service would be completely free. This could be the thing that really blows Microsoft and Xbox Live! out of the water.

    What I want to know is...has anyone tried a Linux-based games console before? Just take some commodity hardware, package Linux, and let the community do the rest? If not, it's high time. I think it would be a massive success. If only VA Linux was still in the Linux hardware game, they could potentially manufacture these boxes and provide support too.

    • Who wants to pay $19.99/month just to download some extra spell updates to Harry Potter III or to patch bugs in Duke Nukem Forever? The emergence of an open PC hardware console now makes it possible to do something which is simply not possible with an Xbox-type console: a Linux-based console system, with an apt-get based Linux Live! type subscription service...for free!

      So who's going to buy hardware and lease bandwidth to run the server?

    • However, there is a growing community backlash over what is largely perceived to be an overpriced and underfeatured service. Who wants to pay $19.99/month just to download some extra spell updates to Harry Potter III or to patch bugs in Duke Nukem Forever?

      I wish I learned how to do math where you did, so I could also divide $50 (cost of XBox Live subscription per year) by 12 (number of months in a year) and get $20.


    • " Microsoft (to its credit) is bringing internet gaming to the masses with its Xbox Live!"

      ??? You can't be serious. I'm all for giving due credit, but MS doesn't get credit for this one.

      Maybe give Microsoft credit for bringing a good online gaming experience to Xbox owners, but the masses have already been online gaming for years now. Also considering how early MS is into their service it can hardly be declared a complete success. They are not even the first console maker to have a bunch of gamers online.

    • Re:Debian based ApeXtreme to take on Xbox Live! (Score:5, Funny)

      by damiam ( 409504 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @10:56PM (#7948944)
      Holy shit. That was nice. +5 Interesting on a post that mentions a groundbreaking Linux console running dselect, nethack, and xbill. I salute you.
    • What I want to know is...has anyone tried a Linux-based games console before?

      Yes, Indrema, and the company went bust. [com.com]

  • Who thought this one up? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AdamHaun ( 43173 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @10:31PM (#7948793) Journal
    So my first thought was "Forget the hardware, where are the games?". Turns out the ApeXtreme is designed to run PC games via special "installer scripts". In other words, it's just like buying a PC to play games...only you don't get any of the benefits of actually owning a PC.

    Riiiight.

    The way the console world works is that you buy one piece of hardware and get 3-5 years of games out of it. If you keep the console around, you can still play those games many years later(raise your hand if you still have an NES/C64/etc). You never have to deal with patches, hardware upgrades, incompatibility, or any of the other woes of the PC. The downside is that you have a limited feature set and no option to upgrade the hardware and remain on the same platform. Since the hardware is fixed, the life and death of the various consoles are determined solely by the choice of games.

    Anyone who tells you that hardware is anything more than a tertiary concern in the console market does not know what they are talking about

    Consider, for instance, the success of the NES against the Sega Genesis, or the utter failure of the Atari Jaguar and countless others like it. Sony took control of the console market by being easier for third party licensees to work with than Nintendo or Sega.

    Contrast this with the PC game market, in which the hardware is king. PC gaming web sites spend lots of time talking about hardware, and game developers write games so that future hardware will be able to take full advantage of them. Games themselves are generally of lower quality upon release than their console brethren, and it's not uncommon for it to take many patches to iron out all the problems. The upside of this is that patches will often improve the game as well as fix bugs.

    Lower quality combined with the ever-increasing cost of hardware upgrades have caused the game industry to decline somewhat in the past few years. Successful PC games will likely have a console port, but the reverse is less often true.

    Into this scenario comes VIA, proposing to combine the worst aspects of a console(non-upgradability, limited functionality) with the worst aspects of the PC game market(low quality, patches, quick obsolescence). Couple this with the fact that for the price of this console you can upgrade your CPU and video card anyway, and I can't see this as anything other than a disaster waiting to happen. There is absolutely no reason to buy this system.

    [1] When I say "PC game market", I mean games like Warcraft and Half-Life, not Snood and its ilk.
    • The Genesis is better considered as competing with the Super Nintendo. And it did really well, in fact... I still have my Genesis with tons of game, and I love it.
    • Your UID is a bit shorter than mine, but I've got to respond because you're just so full of shit.

      [On a console], you never have to deal with patches, hardware upgrades, incompatibility, or any of the other woes of the PC.

      You _do_ have to deal with hardware upgrades (often ugly ones) and incompatibility. Talk to anyone who tried playing import games on their PlayStation. Doing so often requires chipping, a procedure which can be (though just like upgrading the hardware on a PC, doesn't have to be) ver
      • You _do_ have to deal with hardware upgrades (often ugly ones) and incompatibility. Talk to anyone who tried playing import games on their PlayStation. Doing so often requires chipping, a procedure which can be (though just like upgrading the hardware on a PC, doesn't have to be) very tricky to perform.

        I wouldn't consider chipping to be a standard hardware upgrade. It's more like modifying the hardware itself(eg Athlon XP -> MP).

        You also need to upgrade your hardware in the more traditional sense, be
    • "Consider, for instance, the success of the NES against the Sega Genesis"

      Pardon? The Mega Drive/Genesis made the NES virtually obsolete within a year of release.

      The point of sticking a PC under the TV isn't about raw performance, it's about having a common platform. Would you deny that with generation the available console platforms have become similar? It's currently mooted that at least two of the three machines in the next generation will use the same CPU.

      VIA's system is upgradeable. It's a PC. It wou

  • XTREME marketing (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Saeger ( 456549 )
    Why are they still using the word "Xtreme"? I thought that gimmick was worn out by now because of overuse by the marketing bandwagon.

    I hear that word and I almost want to punch somebody.

    --

  • PS3, XBox Next, ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by KrackHouse ( 628313 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @10:43PM (#7948866) Homepage
    ApeXtreme may not have the best specs but a reliable source inside Via told me that the CromagnonXtreme and NeandertalXtreme will have better processors. Those will be followed of course by the 64 bit HomoErectusXtreme.

  • Missed the point (Score:3, Informative)

    by EpsCylonB ( 307640 ) <eps&epscylonb,com> on Sunday January 11, 2004 @10:44PM (#7948870) Homepage
    By the looks of it, the S3 DeltaChrome GPU is horribly incapable of making VIA/Apex a formidable gaming console.

    It quite obviously isn't supposed to be a formidable gaming console. It's a fancy dvd player with some extra gaming functionality.

    The most interesting thing in the article is this...

    Any manufacturer could buy the VIA motherboard, chipset, GPU and CPU that went into the ApeXtreme and design their own solution. If you aren't happy with the way the ApeXtreme was done the solution is simple - make your own. VIA is doing their best to make that challenge as easy as possible for manufacturers, with a fairly large name like Apex taking the first steps we'd hope that other manufacturers will follow - for VIA's sake at least.

    When MS decided to create a console based on a PC lots of people predicted that it might force all gaming platforms to coverge (a little bit like how people thought the 3DO would become the VHS of consoles). But this plan to effectively turn a vanilla PC into living room multimedia machine may actually acheive that kind of convergance. I guess it all depends on whether hardware manafacturers see any profit in it.
  • According to the article: "Infinium Labs' proposed console, the Phantom, has made a showing at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as announced by the company earlier this week, but only in the form of a box which was not switched on."

    Does this remind anyone else of the "three wheeled car" scam they had on unsolved mysteries once... you know the one where they had a big factory and claimed to be making three wheeled cars and had a whole mess of employees and looked completey legit and impressive bu

  • $299 for an S3 POS?? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tuxinatorium ( 463682 ) on Sunday January 11, 2004 @10:51PM (#7948916) Homepage
    S3's latest line of GPU's is utter crap by comparison to anything from ATI or Nvidia, even at similar prices. The flagship is like a geforce 2 Ti but less stable. It won't even run a lot of directX 8.1 games. Geez, by now the radeon 9600 GPU chip is cheap to make and under $40 wholesale. Why didn't they use that to give their $300 console some good performance?
  • I can't seem to say the name out loud without it sounding like "Ape Extreme."

    I'm guessing that English is not the native tongue of the guy who named this thing.
  • I recall going to an E3 show where Nintindo was showing off what they claimed was the N64. Problem was that the so called N64 boxes where not even plugged into anything and all the graphics on the screen where being run from a series of SGI reality engines.
  • what is this about extreme apes?
  • According to this article [reed-electronics.com] Apex already beat Sony on their own turf by selling more DVD players in the US than any other manufacturer.

    Personaly, I think the Apextreme box would make a fine HTPC (like a frontend to MythTV).
  • Why are we still talking about this turkey? It will be overpriced (I've seen numbers ranging from $299 to $399) and undersupported. And on top of everything else it runs a MS OS!!! Hell, Bill Gates will likely make more on each of these sold then he looses on every Xbox sold, but he's certainly be the only one making money on it. A few hackers will snarf one up (you know who you are, you buy one of everything). But all said and done, a PC will be a better choice for hackers, and a Sony or that even that gre

  • Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alex Belits ( 437 ) * on Monday January 12, 2004 @05:21AM (#7950720) Homepage
    I just want to know, how the HECK is this thing going to make money for VIA or Apex? It has enough "asshole technology" to limit its usability to the level that unless nice people at Apex kindly allowed you to play a particular game, it won't run it at all, however PC games give no revenue to the hardware makers -- just the opposite, Apex has to make installer/uninstaller scripts for them. At its $400 price it is barely below similarly-specced PCs, so I guess, there is some slim profit margin in that, considering that all chips are VIA.

    But the problem is, it competes with small PCs made mostly from... VIA's chips! VIA sells the same parts, probably at the same or higher profit, to PC makers, and those produce small "media/games" PCs for a bit higher price and infinitely higher flexibility. So VIA gets an inflexible product squeezed between traditional consoles ($100-$200 price range) and cheap gaming-capable PCs ($400-$600 price range), and to add insult to the stupid situation, the latter, that they are so busy undercutting, is also their best client.

    If VIA just wanted to undercut the PCs it could just produce a fully-functional PC, price it at $400-$500, and enjoy the results. But with $400 thing that costs almost as much as an equivalent $500 PC, but does much less (not to mention, can't be upgraded to be able to meet new games' requirements in a few years), they just can't get enough users that buy that thing instead of either cheaper console, or a PC.

    So why bother?
  • I know this system must be real, I've seen some pictures of a working model running duke nukem forever, the game it will come bundled with.
  • The "Ape Xtreme"? A console named after a primate? How appropriate! Where the hell do I sign up?!
  • That would make a pretty cool home entertainment box and PVR after some hacking =P The Anandtech article didn't mention PCI slots... if there is one I bet a Hauppauge 250 would be a sweet addition!

    e.
  • Okay, I am well aware that posting on a games.slashdot thread makes pissing into the wind look like a noble and life-affirming pursuit, but I'll bite.

    From a technical vantage point, the ApeXtreme/Discover/shiny-PC-DVD-gamebox represents the platform that the console market is inexorably heading towards. The only thing that will slow down the migration to a PC-based gaming platform is resistance from the current hardware vendors (well, Sony).

    The Xbox is already an x86 PC in a console form factor.

    The arcad

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