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Is the Xbox the Amiga of this gen?

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
I know some people think that, for some reason - but to me that's a very misguided and downright wrong thought. Xbox is as far is humanly can be from the Amiga's fresh and innovative hardware design. You might as well say, 'is PC an Amiga of the 21st century'.
 

DarienA

The black man everyone at Activision can agree on
The Xbox is the only system capable of playing Xbox games this generation.
 

Blackace

if you see me in a fight with a bear, don't help me fool, help the bear!
Amiga equal powerful computer for its time

Xbox not equal that.....
 

bishoptl

Banstick Emeritus
Marconelly said:
Xbox is as far is humanly can be from the Amiga's fresh and innovative hardware design. You might as well say, 'is PC an Amiga of the 21st century'.
it's like you're in my head, reading my thoughts and posting them
 

Lazy8s

The ghost of Dreamcast past
The initiative that Commodore/Amiga hardware used to take is embodied most closely this generation in a lot of ways by the DC and Xbox. Both have creative and ambitious console hardware designs for gaming with features like their built-in network functionality. They both also have very nice fully-featured sound chips, in the tradition of SID.

The platform ideologies Sony has professed for PlayStation - their vision for game publishing to become the work of only five or so massive companies in the future - feel the furthest from the Amiga/Commodore days when even amateurs and hobbyists were programming with the system, freely distributing and exchanging work and ideas with each other.
 

djtiesto

is beloved, despite what anyone might say
Gamepark 32 and Dreamcast are probably the closest systems to Amiga this generation...

Amiga is cool, MOD music kicks ass

Though I thought Halo sucked as much as Shadow of the Beast :p
 

bishoptl

Banstick Emeritus
Lazy8s said:
The initiative that Commodore/Amiga hardware used to take is embodied most closely this generation in a lot of ways by the DC and Xbox.
DC? Perhaps. But the Xbox is a glorified PC and so far removed from the Amiga in both design and spirit, it's not even funny.
 
V

Vennt

Unconfirmed Member
The party line from Lazy8s, who'd have thought it... I can't wait for further episodes where we see him attribute the birth of the industrial revolution to MS & Sega, hell how about the birth of civilization? :p

The answer is no!, emphatically.

The Amiga was about soooo much more than games, I learned 3D modelling on an Amiga, I learned C programming and API's from reading stolen Intuition documentation, I started doing graphics with DeluxePaint long before a PC could display more than 4 colours at once.

Again, becuase it needs saying, the answer, as a fact - not opinion, is NO.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Lazy8s ? What ?

PlayStation 2 is the system that most closely resembles the Amiga: actually it has closer ties to the Amiga than the Xbox does having some of the people behind it with good experience with the M2 platform.

You really should get the Linux kit for PlayStation 2 and get down with the Hardware: the larning curve is high as the system is not too forgiving, but it offers some rewards :).
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Lazy8s said:
The platform ideologies Sony has professed for PlayStation - their vision for game publishing to become the work of only five or so massive companies in the future - feel the furthest from the Amiga/Commodore days when even amateurs and hobbyists were programming with the system, freely distributing and exchanging work and ideas with each other.

http://playstation2-linux.com

Call me when Microsoft opens a similar Xbox site ;).
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
bishoptl said:
ARR MATEY

'fraid I'm going to have to ban you, friend

Bishoptl, I am sure we can work something out... it happened long time ago prolly... hey it is Amiga... we are all Amiga lovers... he edits.... you ooops missed his post...


*plays Godfather music*
 
V

Vennt

Unconfirmed Member
bishoptl said:
ARR MATEY

'fraid I'm going to have to ban you, friend

Har Har Arrrrr ;)

Heh, full story: The guy I bought my 1st Amiga from was a regional commodore sales rep who was visiting my local computer store while I was there (The 'tower' A1000), he had been given the intuition documentation set to learn & understand what he was supposed to be selling the trade (hahahaha).

In order to secure the sale to me he offered to throw them in the box, I didn't refuse - however the retailer later told me that once I'd left the rep told him that he'd have to report them as lost/stolen in order to get another set, and it didn't matter anyway because the Intuition documentation was useless without the header files which were not publicly available, well, unless you include their accident inclusion on a set of "test disks" that sat inside the documentations cover jacket :p (Oops... Wheee! :D)
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
snapty00 said:
I don't get it. Is there some type of prestige that goes along with being associated with the Amiga?

Maybe because it was one of the best designed and forward looking computer systems you can think of ?
 

KAOS

Member
LOL at some these responses! I was thinking more along the lines of what Project Midway suggested. You have developers outside the U.S. like Starbreeze, Dice and others creating original content and pushing the system forward. You have a home brew scene albeit the mod scene with some incredible apps like XBMC and Avalaunch. Much like the Amiga the Xbox has taken on a life of it's own and in terms of functionality it is the the Amiga of this gen!

MS haters be damed! LOL!
 

bishoptl

Banstick Emeritus
You have developers outside the United States making console games and somehow that's "pushing the system forward" in a similar manner to the Amiga? That's the dumbest thing I've read today. :D

Hey, I guess those other foreign devs on the PS2 and Nintendo are also "pushing the system forward".

Brilliant.
 

GDGF

Soothsayer
I'd actually rather have a brand new high end Amiga and all those nifty software programs that I couldn't afford at the time (like video toaster) than an XboX.


Amiga fo life, yo!


(still got my 500, actually)
 

bishoptl

Banstick Emeritus
You're missing the point.

To state the the presence of foreign developers on a console is a prerequisite for comparison to the godliness of the Amiga is a non-starter. Japanese and European developers create games for the PS2 and Gamecube, as they did for the DC, Saturn, PS One, and so on. According to your reasoning, all of these other consoles should also favourably compared to the Amiga. Ridiculous.
 

Keio

For a Finer World
even amateurs and hobbyists were programming with the system, freely distributing and exchanging work and ideas with each other.

Well, at least people "exhange" "work and ideas" on the Xbox-Scene quite a lot :p

But really, how far must weak analogies be stretched?
 

KAOS

Member
bishoptl:
The Amiga didn't need Japan to exist or reinvent itself. The Xbox as a machine ready to be exploited by non US developers and people in the home brew scene is where the comparison to the Amiga stems from. It was because of that support that the Amiga thrived. The Xbox thrives in a similar fashion.

keio:
All joking aside about the pirate scene there's is some pretty cool stuff you can do with a modded Xbox as a novice{hence once again with the Amiga memories}.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Pretty cool stuff ? Oh I bet.... almost all illegal ;).

Do you want to do some nifty stuff legally, with some form of support behind and hardware documentation and samples ?

That is what PlayStation 2 can provide: PlayStation 2 Linux is the answer you seek ;).

Architecturally wise Amiga was not known for pure off the shel hardware and a genertic programming model: you could go down to the metal and you used to have (since the C64 days) dedicated hardware for dedicated functions as much as the technology permitted.

The Amiga for its days was very fast and allowed the programmer to find all sort of unique tricks to use the machine's capabilities and features in different ways.

Pogramming for Amiga could be done legally, C compilers were available (I have a Amiga C manual by K&R which pre-dates ANSI C ;)).

PlayStation 2 has a very high learning curve at the beginning, because to achieve performance you have to learn about what sits inside the platform (it is the point behind developing for it IMHO).

DMA tags, GIF tags, VIF codes, VU micro-code, VU dual buffering, etc... at the beginning trying to piece all of the stuff togetherwill cause you a headache and more than once you will say "%$%^ $^, who is the 34%!@R#ERFD that complicated things this much".

The console did grow on me, it has its defects, but I can also see its merits.

http://www.playstation2-linux.com

There are some nice tools available: you can use Visual Studio .NET with plink and puttygen to compile from your PC, you can use tools like ccache to reduce compilation and re-compilation time, distcc to distribute compilation beteen computers (provided you download the avilable cross-compiler suite [pre-compiled for you ;)]), GSVNC to see the frame-buffers, any off-screen surface and the Z-buffer from any PC in the network using a client like Tight VNC, SVVUDB a nice visual debugger for the VUs (Memories [code and data], registers and even a GIFTag viewer, etc...

You have manuals for the complete EE and GS chips basically: including things like the IPU (MPEG2 decoder, Vector Quantization block, etc...) and the GS Interface (GIF).
 

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
MS haters be damed! LOL!
It really has noting to do with "MS hate", it's just that your reasoning makes very little sense.

Let's see, even withough going into any company politics, or hardware design philosophy...

First of all, European developers have done very little for the prosperity of the Xbox. Most of it's heavy artillery is coming from the US (and before you complain, we have yet to see if Fable will classify as heavy artillery). Games like Rallisport or Riddick (made by excellent Digital Illusions and Starbreze) while technically impressive, haven't sold much, and the Xbox would enjoy about the same success without them.

On the other hand, you have a team from Scotland called DMA Design, who made this little game called GTA3 and GTA:VC, that single handedly changed the way the games are being looked at and developed, this generation. Needless to say, they had almost nothing to do with the Xbox, and have become famous on to PS2, and pushed that console further to the stratosphere of popularity.

Then you talk about the homebrew development scene. Xbox has it, that's for sure. Completely unlicensed and illegal, but it's there. But so does Dreamcast. So does PS2, and part of it is evel legal and heavily encouraged by it's manufacturer. Awesome things have been done on both those machines on the homebrew scene. Amiga used to have the whole religion of codes and artists doing amazing things in the audiovisual demos. That was one of the things that truly defined European Amiga scene. Where are those things on Xbox? There are barely any. As a matter of fact, the only great looking console scene demo I've ever seen is Soopadoopa's PS2 production called "Aura for Laura".
 

KAOS

Member
Marconelly:
Valid points of which I think I heard you make before. I don't know about original demo's being created on the Xbox per se. But I do know that the apps available for the home brew scene have made it easier for gamers to be creative{in what ever form they wish to be creative regardless of whether it's legal or not}.

When you have a popular console like the ps2 it's almost a given that a game like GTA would be made for it. For the most part developers who take in interest in the Xbox do so to exploit it technically. If Microsoft were to leave the gaming business today like Sega did, I believe that it would be non US developers and the enthusiast that would keep it alive.
 

DrGAKMAN

Banned
Duckhuntdog said:
I hear the Xbox is the only system capable of playing Xbox games NEXT generation as well :D

Ooooooooohh no he di-en

it is ON now-a

shit-son...whatcha gonna do yo

ya'll just got F'd in the A
 

MC Safety

Member
This thread is our generation's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Or, at bare minimum, its Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo.
 
Alot of those European exclusives were originally PC properties but various money hats deals landed them into the "Xbox timed exclusive" category.

If anything the PC is the Amiga of this gen but modern PC's have already gone far beyond what the Amiga ever accomplished.
 

DrGAKMAN

Banned
Let me say something bold. Xenon will be MS's GAMECUBE. Focused less on graphics, less on features, more on games. Will be seen as the least powerful of the three (wether it's true or not in Xenon or GAMECUBE's case). Coming off a dwindling system (X-BOX, you must admit, is alot like N64) which will have alot of projects moved to next generation. Same partners. Same aim at profitable cost effective hardware. Even the controller is going from N64 style (bigger, more face buttons, expansion slots) to GAMECUBE style (smaller, less face buttons, no expansion slot). There's other comparison's I'm sure and I'm wondering if these moves will mirror performance-wise?
 
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