Delta Engine Blog

AI, Robotics, multiplatform game development and Strict programming language

All kinds of XBox News

I'm not a XBox 360 User nor do I want one yet, but that has nothing to do with its great hardware features or that I like any other console better. I never owned any console and I always was on the PC side (or HC side back in the C64 days), just because it is more customizeable. But maybe this will change in the future?

Earlier this week: As many of you propably know already Tom Miller, the great Managed DirectX guy at Microsoft, switched over to the XNA team and is working on the XBox team right now. More information can be found at The Z-Buffer. This lead to some speculations and is now backed up at the GDC 2006, where several XNA sessions are held and at lot of people are bloging about it (and I'm sad I can't be there, too expensive trip for me right now ^^). Some interessting posts: Managed code on Xbox 360 Developer Kits by Dan Fernandez (Microsoft - Lead Product Manager - Visual Studio Express), did you just say .NET on XBox 360! by brains-n-brawn.com and A Market Within A Market (was .NET in HD) by Mike Zintel.

I think this all sounds promising, maybe in the near future .NET games like the Rocket Commander are possible on the XBox 360 without major pain rewriting all kinds of things.


On the other side: Hackers are working for 4 months trying to crack the XBox 360 .. and let just say they were not very succesfull in the past. I saw some videos and webcast about early XBox 360 hacking attempts in January from the 22. Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) and it didn't look very "hacked" back then.
But things have changed. Few hours ago this video was released: Xbox360 DVD Firmware Hacked. Hmm, that does not look good, does it? There are some interessting discussions about it here: XboxHacker BBS. There have not released anything but infos yet, but I don't think this will stop the "evil guys" from making prirated XBox 360 games soon and maybe there will be a "modded" XBox 360 soon too. I just thought this was interessting ...


Btw: I noticed that currently a lot of people are playing Rocket Commander, nearly 1000 games yesterday. Nice .. But there seems to be a bug with the daily details list .. hmm, have to fix that .. bye.

XBox 360 Launch in Asia.
This is a very big XBox in Hongkong:

XBox 360 hacked, the first video: