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Will the Xbox 720 run Windows 8?
11–20 of 20 posts
Re: Will the Xbox 720 run Windows 8?
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
"As soon as you let a general purpose OS run behind the scenes, you give up that control" That's less true than it used to be. The PS3 certainly reserves resources for the top-level OS, I assume the XBox360 does too. The next generation could easily carve out resources dedicated at the hardware level for the top-level OS while exposing constant hardware resources for the games, and with the further progression of Moo…
It's still true, because the PS4/Xbox720/Whatever run limited hardware specs that basically wouldn't allow enough ram/cpu available for a general purpose OS running at the same time to come even close to replicating the speed of an actual desktop system. On top of that, the processors these game systems use suck for desktop style applications. Right now, the PS3/360 reserves somewhere between 30-50mb of system ram, a…
"It's still true, because the PS4/Xbox720/Whatever run limited hardware specs that basically wouldn't allow enough ram/cpu available for a general purpose OS running at the same time to come even close to replicating the speed of an actual desktop system."
Nonsense. You don't need quad-core 3GHz machines with 4 GB of RAM to run a general-purpose OS. You don't need anything close to it, and you certainly don't need anything close to that when you're running things that, even if written for a "general-purpose OS", will still at least have an optimized mode for this very common case. You're not going to run an unmodified Firefox 2 with its GBs of memory use on these things. Carving out resources equivalent to a 2011 mid-grade smartphone on a machine that won't exist for at least one more year and probably two won't be that hard.
Even "Windows" doesn't have to be that hard to run, if it isn't running every service a desktop needs and the vast swathes of reverse-compatibility code.
How quickly people forget what you can do with even just 256MB of RAM, half-a-gigahertz, and some hardware graphics acceleration.
Re: Will the Xbox 720 run Windows 8?
#13Contrary to the other posters, I think this may actually happen: a little research will show that the xbox 360 OS is based on Xbox OS. Some people say this is a fork of Windows 2000, some people say it is from scratch.
If it's true it's based on Win2K, given the current Windows code base is still very portable - we knows x64 and MIPS are maintained already - it makes sense to have a unified code base and update the NextBox.
Re: Will the Xbox 720 run Windows 8?
#14Wouldn't it be more according to the pattern to call it Xbox 360360 rather than Xbox 720? It went from "Xbox" to "Xbox" + "360" not xbox 180 to xbox 360... so it stands to reason the next release would be "Xbox 360360" or since it is Microsoft we're talking about maybe "XBox 360 R2 Professional Gamer Edition X10"
Re: Will the Xbox 720 run Windows 8?
#15Wouldn't it be more according to the pattern to call it Xbox 360360 rather than Xbox 720? It went from "Xbox" to "Xbox" + "360" not xbox 180 to xbox 360... so it stands to reason the next release would be "Xbox 360360" or since it is Microsoft we're talking about maybe "XBox 360 R2 Professional Gamer Edition X10"
Xbox 0 * 360
Xbox 1 * 360
Xbox 2 * 360
...etc
Re: Will the Xbox 720 run Windows 8?
#16This is something I've been musing about for a couple of years now... ever since I wondered what the next-gen consoles might be like, given their convergence with PCs. What I would really like to see is the reverse of the title - for Windows 8 to run XBox 720. I'd like to see the 720 become a software platform, which could run on both dedicated console hardware and a more traditional PC. The software platform could d…
How is what you described any different than a PC, with the exception that Microsoft is producing the hardware in addition to HP/Acer/etc?
Re: Will the Xbox 720 run Windows 8?
#17This is something I've been musing about for a couple of years now... ever since I wondered what the next-gen consoles might be like, given their convergence with PCs. What I would really like to see is the reverse of the title - for Windows 8 to run XBox 720. I'd like to see the 720 become a software platform, which could run on both dedicated console hardware and a more traditional PC. The software platform could d…
How is what you described any different than a PC, with the exception that Microsoft is producing the hardware in addition to HP/Acer/etc?
With PCs as they are now, there's no base-line, no consistency in what the hardware can do. Sure, games might have minimum and recommended specs, but they're not perfect, and its often a blurry area.
What I was getting at would make it black and white. Either my Win8 PC could play Xbox 720 games, or it wouldn't. So A Win8 tablet, probably not, but a powerful Win8 gaming rig, sure.
Re: Will the Xbox 720 run Windows 8?
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's still true, because the PS4/Xbox720/Whatever run limited hardware specs that basically wouldn't allow enough ram/cpu available for a general purpose OS running at the same time to come even close to replicating the speed of an actual desktop system. On top of that, the processors these game systems use suck for desktop style applications. Right now, the PS3/360 reserves somewhere between 30-50mb of system ram, a…
"It's still true, because the PS4/Xbox720/Whatever run limited hardware specs that basically wouldn't allow enough ram/cpu available for a general purpose OS running at the same time to come even close to replicating the speed of an actual desktop system." Nonsense. You don't need quad-core 3GHz machines with 4 GB of RAM to run a general-purpose OS. You don't need anything close to it, and you certainly don't need an…
We're talking about putting a consumer OS on a console, here. We're not talking about 'what can be done' with limited hardware, we're talking about the viability of a consumer using an OS on limited hardware as if it's full hardware. We're not talking about making a custom version of firefox, we're talking about actually using Firefox.
Re: Will the Xbox 720 run Windows 8?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It's still true, because the PS4/Xbox720/Whatever run limited hardware specs that basically wouldn't allow enough ram/cpu available for a general purpose OS running at the same time to come even close to replicating the speed of an actual desktop system." Nonsense. You don't need quad-core 3GHz machines with 4 GB of RAM to run a general-purpose OS. You don't need anything close to it, and you certainly don't need an…
We're talking about putting a consumer OS on a console, here. We're not talking about 'what can be done' with limited hardware, we're talking about the viability of a consumer using an OS on limited hardware as if it's full hardware. We're not talking about making a custom version of firefox, we're talking about actually using Firefox .
I didn't say Firefox, I said Firefox 2, the memory leaking piece of crap. There's no reason that you won't be able to run Firefox 7 or whatever on the XBox 720. People have forgotten that you don't need huge machines to run this stuff. Anything you see running on a tablet or smart phone today is perfectly feasible on a carved-out, hardware-dedicated element XBox 720, proof by observation (it exists!). Moreover, it's not like I'm hypothesizing the existence of a Microsoft mobile OS... it exists.
In fact this makes the whole Windows Mobile play make sense in a way that it doesn't in any other way; on its own it stands 0 chance of taking over the phone market. Oh, I get it now! Microsoft hasn't let go of a unified OS running on desktops, tablets, consoles, and cell phones. They just realized that they can't just slap the desktop OS on a cell phone and call it a day, but in fact they need to go the other way; take their tech base, build the mobile OS, then extend it for the desktop case for desktop uses.
Hey, that could work.
Re: Will the Xbox 720 run Windows 8?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're talking about putting a consumer OS on a console, here. We're not talking about 'what can be done' with limited hardware, we're talking about the viability of a consumer using an OS on limited hardware as if it's full hardware. We're not talking about making a custom version of firefox, we're talking about actually using Firefox .
I didn't say Firefox, I said Firefox 2 , the memory leaking piece of crap. There's no reason that you won't be able to run Firefox 7 or whatever on the XBox 720. People have forgotten that you don't need huge machines to run this stuff. Anything you see running on a tablet or smart phone today is perfectly feasible on a carved-out, hardware-dedicated element XBox 720, proof by observation (it exists!). Moreover, it's…
You realize that even tiny netbook computers have a gig of ram in them, right? I mean, I don't want to keep this argument going forever, I just think you are woefully overestimating the slice of power that could be spared from a console without making the whole venture kind of pointless.