Leer esto...da de pensar!!
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This was posted on Slashdot, and since parts of it have already been verified independently, I thought you might all appreciate it:
Microsoft recently gave a presentation at my school on how the XBox works. I don't know how much of this information is available elsewhere, but here is what we were told:
DVD is not included because it would have cost $8 more per box. They decided to let the people who wanted it pay for the license. The DVD codec is stored in the dongle.
The controllers are big because printing smaller circuit boards is expensive. There is a Japanese controller that about half the size of the US controller and they said it would work on the US version.
A guy named Horace designed the logo (he's also done branding work for Nike) and working on the branding. The first concept sketch was done with a green highlighter marker. The color stuck.
The XBox allows ripping of CDs into 128 bit using WMAC codec. The CD tracks can be used to replace game music streams (perhaps by choosing a radio station in your racecar). Volume level is normalized when ripping CDs.
The strategy for the XBox is to provided ease of development. Single platform. No plans to upgrade since that would destroy ease of development.
The XBox uses an extremely stripped Win2K kernel. The original was something like 12MB. The stripped version is around 28kb (I didn't get the exact number). When the XBox boots, the kernel is running in ring 0 and nothing else is running. The game loads all of the remaining libraries. A game could also use completely custom libraries.
No dynamically linked libraries. All libraries are statically linked into games during development. Driver upgrades will only be on new games to prevent DLL incompatibility hell.
The XBox has "strong security". They do a lot of tricks to make sure that you cannot hack the box (regions, copy protection, unauthorized software). A comment was made about unsoldering three chips. Microsoft does all production of disks and all games have been 'encrypted' to run on the XBox. It sounds similar to the DVD encryption, but Microsoft is holding all the keys so that they do not leak.
The developer talking to us said he would like to see Linux running on the box, but thought it unlikely that anyone would get past the security schemes.
They said that no mouse or keyboard would be released. "Not a Trojan horse".
The hard drive has three 700MB partitions that are allocated to the three most recently played games. These partitions are used to cache data from the slow DVD drive. After loading onto the drive, subsequent loads will be must faster.
4.5 MB are allocated for each game to store persistent world data and save games. For example: If you crash into a coffee store in a driving game, the next day you play the windows might be boarded up. A few days later the store has a "Closed for Repairs" sign on it. These world details would be up to the game developer to implement of course, but the potential is there.
Ethernet is enabled out of the box for local networks. The presenting developer was aware of software allowing internet play and seemed happy about it. Microsoft has an online program in the works where you will be able to get software updates for the XBox. Something was said about providing emulators and MAME was mentioned.
They will release a voice-peripheral with hardware compression that plugs into the controller. This could be used in multiplayer games like Halo for communication. This was described as a work around for not having a keyboard.
The Devkit does not have the security lock on it (which is why MAME was only on a Devkit - I don't think we'll be seeing a consumer version until MS authorizes it). The Devkit has a 9GB hard drive that acts as a DVD simulator. The developer downloads their executable to the hard drive then reboots and the XBox loads it. It can simulate DVD load time too. There is an extra serial port on the Devkit, which is used for kernel debugging. There is also a way to set the game region. The game region might be software settable on the consumer boxes too.
There is a 64MB memory limit. The XBox will crash if this is exceeded. More memory will not be available in the future.
System menus use a vertex shader to do green x-ray effects. The entire vertex shader is stored on the GPU and only polygons are sent to the card once the shader is loaded.
DOA3 has the best 3rd party utilization of the XBox and it uses pixel vertex shaders.
Halo has 8 texturing passes. One of the MS developer beat Halo on the hardest level using only pistol whip.
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Si es verdad eso de la Criptografia de los juegos con claves guardas a punta de pistola en MS, estaran hablando de algoritmos de CLAVE PRIVADA, lo que indica que para desencriptar eso necesitariamos forzadamente las claves, en caso contrario no existe forma de crackearlos...Joder, estamos jodidos!!!!!
A que mola eso de los 4.5MB para guardar informacion del entorno en que has jugado!! Mola mucho!!
Eso del Teclado la verdad, me da rabia, porque al menos, para jugar a juegos tipo FPS necesitariamos el raton.
. En este caso son muchas las barreras, aunq no parecen demasiado fuertes...
), en este caso la clave la sabe la Xbox, y eso significa q la guarda en algún sitio... 
