Don't tell us this is really the Xbox 360's adapter
By Ryan Block 
posted October 18th 2005 5:00AM
posted October 18th 2005 5:00AM
We saw a lot at Microsoft's Xbox 360 preview event in New York last week and we asked more questions than were probably actually welcome (you can usually tell when the otherwise totally ingratiating Microsoft peeps start wincing and tapping their toes at you). But the one thing we didn't think to ask about was the power adapter. It was missing from sight (how convenient!) and we're sure hoping to god the one that comes with the system isn't the freaking insane brick you see here, which is rumored to be the AC adapter—at least the adapter for the dev kit boxes, anyway. Believe us, by our approximations the thing pictured here is roughly the size of a small nation-state.
Well after the fiasco of the power adapter of the Xbox 1 it seems like they are probably putting all sorts of protection around this one.
On a more humerous note:
So thats where they hid the rest of the Xbox!! Wot next...a controller the size of Mexico... wait a sec...
:)
This is real. I got it here ... It's big and it's heavy.
sometimes i'm really glad i don't play games
I recently attended the first official UK Xbox 360 playtest in London. I asked Neil Thompson, the Xbox UK boss at the event and he confirmed that is the final version of the Xbox 360 power supply unit. The reason they are so large is because they have their own individual fan inside, as well as a similar powerbreaker to one that was shipped out to older Xbox's earlier this year.
Neil also stressed that the majority of PSU's shipped with consumer electronics from now on will be around that size, everything from HDTV's, laptops etc...
The label reads "Work in progress. 80% complete code."...or something like that
At that size, it had best be a UPS, too.
Man that power supply looks like something the ghostbusters used to trap ghosts. Nah for real I don't care as long as the console is good. I think I might wait until all of the glitches are out. Or at least until Halo 3 drops.
Takes me back to the days of owning an early Commodore Amiga 500. If it gets warm during use I'll be able to put my feet on it to keep them toasty during the winter months.
man that's one big ugly piece of black plastic and is it me or is that thing connected at the front?
Great. "Xbox si hueg" has made its way to Engadget, too. Just great.
Back on topic: external power supplies are good, especially for consoles. I'm glad Microsoft did SOMETHING right.
well the xbox aint no low power subnotebook, right? its basically a pc, isnt it?
and when i take a glance at my 150W dell laptop-power-supply-brick (no fan) this picture seems reasonable...
i guess if you shrink it too much, you gotta come up with some serious cooling, IMHO not really the way to go...
and if you got an ac adapter with lots of metal in it (i cant say about any electronical solutions), you can expect a tiny UPS like funtion. it has a certain "inertia" so _maybe_ it can smooth out 0.5sec voltage drops.
ben feur...
laptops etc...
This will NEVER happen for laptops. It just can't. you coulnd't have a laptop with its power supply needing a truck to carry. The trend for laptop power supplies in the last few years has been smaller, not bigger
no wayyy, i didnt believe when i hear that the xbox 360 was a pc, now that i see they use big power supply like all pcs with fans, and come with a flavor of xp media center, i believe, well, i you thing for a moment ,a pc with a good graphic card for $300, is good deal.
im guessing if my electric bill will go up, 50 Watts that the previous consoles consumes, and if the pc xbox 360 start in 500 Watts (3 processor (110 watts each) + ati card + dvd + hdd + etc) , i must reduce my playing time by 10 or increase my electric bill by 10.
to #4.
If this will happen to all of our future appliances, where the hell will i put all those then?
"
-oh yeah, look at my designer living room, there's my couch, a chair, see my big screen hdtv, stereo and concole? what about the media center?
-nice, what's that pile ?nk in the corner with all the wires sticking out?
-oh, that's the mess of power supply's that came with it. i am using it as a heated form of abstract art..
if this is the way we are going, i see an upcoming market for designer entertainment furniture cabinets with peltier cooled double backdoors to store all the power hungry mess that comes with the slimmed down aplliance you have just bought..
sigh..
We are never happy!!
When the XBOX came out everyone complained about the very loud fan (me too)
I assume the power supply is so big so the 360 itself is quiet (please!!)
I have a Shuttle ZEN XPC and it is very quiet but the power block is the size of an IKEA
I don't care - it is hidden out of the way
Hopefully we will all do that with this one
>>laptop power supplies in the last few years has been smaller, not bigger
If you've seen the brand new HP laptops - the power supply has tripled in size.
This makes me laugh..
I hope the people that throw Xbox 'Lan Parties' has plenty of room to store the suitcases you have to put these things in to pack them around...
I don't mind the size, as long as it is out of sight and the quality of the adapter/power supply is good.
I honestly don't see what the big deal is with a big external power supply unit (PSU). I'm sure Microsoft didn't purposely make it big so they can have bragging rights over Sony -- "My PSU is bigger than yours!"
In any case, I think Sony's PS3 will probably have a big PSU as well, but who cares. Thats why you hide your cables behind the TV/AV cabinet.
Granted it will now be more inconvenient to carry your XBOX 360 with you with all the added bulk of the bigger PSU, bummer.
In summary, I'd rather take a bigger, more durable and ->SAFER<- PSU than to skimp on a more 'fashionable' anorexic version. Maybe as technology progress, they'll come up with a smaller version with the same type of power protection in the future; but this is not a deal breaker, IMO.
That's definately a dev kit PSU. It's not only big, it weighs a ton. The 360 itself is nice and quiet but I can't imagine the box+PSU being any lighter than an original Xbox, if anything it's heavier :(
The dev kits have extra stuff in them so in theory, require more power. Hoping to god that's not the retail PSU but that picture doesn't look promising :(
Didn't we learn anything from Chernobyl?
i thought that all of the possible natural resources where depleted with the release of teh XBOX HUEG ONE1!!!1!
Bill is lucky he has access to the national reserve! Perhaps teh guverment is now mining asteroids without telling us again.
man, a requisite for posting here should be that you can't post if you are an employee of the company thats being talked about, stay away you microsofties!
how can people be so short sigthed as to say that this is a good solution? can anyone really defend this as being a good design?
"external power supplies are good, especially for consoles. I'm glad Microsoft did SOMETHING right." please desides, stay away from these posts, your fanboyism is quite lame
I don't own any console and I'm not planning to buy one but I can recognize a poorly engineered product when I see it. that awful power supply is pathetic.
Do these MS guys know what industrial design means? the idea is that you should have a functional device in a good looking package and no geekie explanation about fans and heating will overshadow the fact that they spent too little time thinking about it.
You can take the PSU out of the computer, but that doesn't alleviate the need for the PSU. You put it externally and it makes your product looks smaller and the box it comes in bigger. Plus it makes it easier to change a bad PSU.
God this site has gone downhill. Actually, let me rephrase: The intelligence of the average Engadget commenter has really decreased as of late.
Yes, a large power supply is normal. Don't believe me? Go buy a HIGH-END laptop.
The person who said this is normal for all appliances is full of shit. TV's, Refridgerators, Microwaves, etc. are all already large enough to house the power supply within the primary unit. Generally people aren't worried about having an extra inch on the back of their microwave for the power. Game consoles lately have been more concerned with physical size than they used to be, and they've been getting increasingly more powerful... well, dipshits, you have to power it somehow.
Also, the person who said it was 110W for each processor is full of shit too. It's 1 processor with 3 cores, not 3 processors. I know you probably read an article or two in PC World... that doesn't make you a hardware engineer. Having 3 Processing Cores IS different than having 3 complete Processors. I'm sure most people will read that and argue... go ahead and prove your ignorance. (If 2 processors are the same as 2 cores, why the fuck are dual-cores now becoming popular? Why the hell didn't we all just put 2-4 CPU's in our computers 5 years ago?)
Back to my point, generally a high-end laptop, even a dual-core one, has a 150W power supply. It pulls about 60% of that consistently, with peaks and valleys. On average, it's probably around 100W, if not less. If you spend 8 hours a day, every day, playing the Xbox 360, that's 240 hours per month (8 hours X 30 days). 240 Hours X 100 W = 24,000 W. 24,000W / 1000 = 24KW. Generally electricity costs about 10 - 15 CENTS per KW. That means that every month, you're paying all of $3.36 to play your Xbox. Oh damn. Guess you better get a fucking job. You better get a bike too, because if you're bitching about $3/month to play video games, there's no way in hell you'll be able to afford gas.
Oh, and by the way, put the power supply behind the TV, under the couch, behind the chair, etc. This isn't rocket science people. Get over it. God you sound like a bunch of little babies.
#19 must be a Republican.
"Neil also stressed that the majority of PSU's shipped with consumer electronics from now on will be around that size, everything from HDTV's, laptops etc..."
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Hey, I just came into some real estate and I'm thinking of selling. It's on the east side... the Brooklyn Bridge. Maybe you heard of it?
"I don't own any console..."
That's abundantly clear. I'd also be willing to bet you don't own a laptop, a PDA, or any kind of portable (or semi-portable) device that requires power.
"Do these MS guys know what industrial design means?"
Maybe you should look inside the unit before spouting off at the mouth about something you obviously don't have the slightest clue about.
"the idea is that you should have a functional device in a good looking package and no geekie explanation about fans and heating will overshadow the fact that they spent too little time thinking about it."
This is too easy. The idea is that you should have the most powerful gaming console yet released (until next year) in a good ENOUGH looking package that's still powered well, cooled enough, and easily fixable if something were to break. Doofus.
I don't see what the big deal is....It's a power supply....It's going to be hidden behind your TV. The size of the PSU isn't going to hinder how much fun you have playing games.
I dont think its the size of it that bothers me that much (although lets face it...its big) but just the fact that it looks bugger all like the xbox 360, couldnt they at least make it appear that someone made the effort to make it look good. Maybe a clip to neatly secure/store the cable? To me it screams cheap plastic, cheap components. I just hope it comes with a mega long cable so it can sit on the floor and the xbox can be mounted elsewhere.
You should have seen the adapter they had before that one. It was a beast. And, it gets nice and hot after playing for a short time.
Is anyone seeing the money being spent on
"sellyourxbox" @ gmail email addresses? My friend just sold one on ebay for $100 USD HAHA what a scammy scam.
Who really cares... those that buy it, will willingly tuck the PS behind the tv and begin playing immediately... and soon forget about size, or anything else, for that matter, regarding said power supply.
Must be a slow Tuesday.
#22 stfu
holy crap...
i swear that thing's bigger than my computer
#20, is there a reason why you woke up angry today?
This affirms that the first xbox360 virus will be aptly named : XB360.BRICK
Guys, relax. Are you really that concerned about what the bloody A/C adapter looks like? Stuff it behind your gear like everything else.
it's just a power adapter who cares
Is it that hard to put the adapter inside the console? It's not like they are gonna come out with a battery for the thing. My computer doesn't have a big block dangling on the power cord & its got 4 fans inside to keep it cool. It just appears the Microhard is trying too much to release this system befoe it's ready.
Wow. I didn't think so many people would care what the A/C Adapter looks like. Its not like you actually have to see it. My power outlet is behind my TV and even if it wasn't, big deal. I'd rather have a big A/C Adapter than a bigger XBOX360. I think thats the rationality behind it.
That is abnormally large. I'm disturbed.
Laptops won't have power supplies that big, they don't use nearly the power that an HDTV or gaming console does. That's just executive hornswaggling. My laptop is all but the highest-end Dell. PSU is 1/3 the X360's PSU size.
All my gadgets are hooked up to the same power strip. Of them all, the laptop, the PSP, the PS2, the GameCube, and the printer have external power supplies. They are all piled up neatly along the mold of the wall underneath my desk. But I'll be the first to admit they look funny and take up too much room. How do the Japanese get by?
Oh for the love of god...I've seen smaller power supplies on desktop hardware. Please people. Stop making excuses...that being said does anyone actually think MS is going to ship such a brick with a WHITE console. And notice we aren't seeing the cable lead into the system. I'm thinking fake.
A next gen powerplant requires a lot of power - live with it...or don't.
I agree with #36, 37. All consoles should have an external AC adaptor. It makes for a smaller and better looking console. You're not going to see it anyway.
Maybe 360 is the temperature their power supply reaches when playing. Seriously though ... who gives a crap?
"Maybe 360 is the temperature their power supply reaches when playing. Seriously though ... who gives a crap?"
The people who have to stuff all these cables into an entertainment center give a crap which includes me.
I think the only people to be concerned are those who plan on traveling with their Xbox frequently.
Black adapters are bigger...
I'm not sure why this is a surprise to anyone. Do these things run on air? Ever seen the size of the powerbrick that comes with fast laptops these days?
What are the chances that the PS3's is the same size?