Held each year in California, The Game Developer Conference (GDC) is the meeting place for game developers looking to learn of new programming techniques and tools, schmooze with the best in the biz, see cutting edge hardware and check out what the competition is sporting. This year's GDC ran from March 8th through March 12th, and we were there to do our share of learning, schmoozing and mostly seeing.
On March 10th, Microsoft unveiled their upcoming console, the X-Box, slated to launch in 2001. Here are the specs:
- 600 MHz Pentium III
- Custom 3D NVIDIA graphics processor (the web site states it will deliver more than 300 million polygons per second, but a hard copy press release we have states 200 million polygons per second)
- 64 MB of RAM (unified memory architecture)
- Custom 3D audio processor
- 8GB hard drive
- 4X DVD drive with movie playback
- Four game controller ports
- Expansion port
- Proprietary A/V connector
- 100 Mbps Ethernet
Right up to the last minute, speculation was flying about what vendors would end up with their hardware inside the box. We don't know if Microsoft purposefully leaked incorrect information to misdirect the rumor mills (or perhaps to get a better price from Intel & NVIDIA), but the announcement did come as a surprise to many. Even AMD and GigaPixel expressed surprise.