Microsoft unveils gorgeous blue-tinted Xbox 360 dev kit and no, you can't have one
By Ross Miller 
posted Mar 25th 2009 6:44AM
posted Mar 25th 2009 6:44AM
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Dam that is so much nicer looking than the units they release to the public.
Yeah, and that somehow is ironic, isn't it? Because "noramlly" (if there is something like normally), dev kits are just made to work great and they don't care about the design, right?
Who cares about the X360.. we have OnLive now :)
Wahh... o 3o It's so prettyyy~
Tooouuuccchhhhh~
-gets shot and dies- ;___;
@MeisterDon
O.O
It would be wise of them to bear this in mind for their next Xbox iteration..!
So f-ing sweet! Why is it that the dev's get such a sweet Xbox360 and we have to settle for the Red XBox 360 with Resident Evil 5. Seriously weak.
I guess I'll have to take up modding if this is never going to make it to the masses.
Even if it RRoD, it's still a thing of beauty.
Holy Sweetness!
Why can't they make something like this for the masses? They'd kick Wii's cute little ass out of the ballpark!
Its the first time i've actually wanted to buy a 360......
It actually looks gorgeous ! They'd be stupid not to release this as a retail model.
This is actually the first time I wanted to tell you to shut up xbox 360 has always been a good sytem. With the expection of the red ring of death.
The red ring of death will no longer be an exception!
What? The existing Elite is a great looking system, and I sure as hell wouldn't be motivated to buy a game console based on looks.
I want to know why the dev consoles have more RAM.. don't tell me they're gonna come up with a 'refresh' to make the old systems obsolete.. if the coders start writing games for more RAM than we have in our systems.. weak.
If you squint enough, it says XNO on the bottom...
What a fool I am! I bet it looks like a riced Civic in broad daylight. Why would I want these grapes anyway?
I believe it says - XNA.
Holy shit, he's right. I wonder if they'll be available to XNA developers like myself? That extra RAM would be quite useful.
The extra ram is to run debugging applications on the 360. It wouldn't give you more room for your games. And it wouldn't matter if you did. Would you want a game that only runs on your console?
@tiptup
So you can trim it down during the development cycle.
I guarantee the room you typed your post in was bigger than your body. You need space to move while getting your efficient on. Most of us will only reside in a room little larger than ourselves when we're buried in it.
What's up with the humungous hard drive? I'm not knocking, just curious about it's form factor. Wonder if it's packing more then just a single 2.5" HDD in there.
Theres a harddrive plus the game development stuff I think. I remember seeing one at an expo and it has one or more connectors on the backside for hooking it up to a pc.
Isn't that what Sony did to win the format war over HD-DVD? Still not selling well.... And yes, I have an xbox 360 which i got RRoD a week before Halo Wars came out... what did I do? Buy another xbox 360!
Haha Microsoft. When will they ever learn to make good hardware and software. Windows, Zune leap year fiasco, Xbox 360 RROD fiasco. What a joke. Never buy hardware from MS.
Who should we buy hardware from? Sony have an even worse track record and well ... There's nothing in a Wii to start with ;p
jap fanboi
Zune leap Year fiasco? Inform yourself bevor writing in open public...That wasn´t MS´s Problem...
@jamesr: WTF are u talking about? The 360 has one of the highest produc failure rates of anything. EVER. Where is this worse trackrecord that Sony has? It's quite the opposite, and to a rather extreme degree.
Shhh. Down fanboy.
@NoAndThen: Hrmm...Just going to point out that despite the stupid design flaw in the 360 which causes the system failures, the 360 has still handily outsold the PS3 despite being much older...And still continues to do so...Most people will go out and buy ANOTHER 360 if their old one breaks...So yea, the hardware might have quality issues...but the software on the platform, and the platform itself apparently keeps bringing people back...
@neomatrix: That's only because MS bought out all the developers. Typical MS business strategy. When you can't innovate just buy everyone out.
@neomatrix:
You are right. The 360 has outsold the PS3. You proved that yourself. Most people go out and buy *another* 360 if their old one breaks. No wonder the sales are higher. People have to buy 2 or 3 of them to keep gaming.
Funny, since the Xbox 1 was built like a tank. I actually have one that my old manager at CC took in a store meeting complaining about the break room, and held it up 8 feet in the air then sent it flying down to its doom, only to have the front plate pop off which easily reattached and boom, it worked.
Then again, this is the guy who went thru a lot of PS1/PS2 consoles due to DREs.
Dude. They fixed all of that.
Im gonna go out on a limb and say you're a linux whore.
@neomatrix724
So. The PS2 is older than the Xbox360 and you know...
Playstation 3 owner, here to say those colors are tight.
I dont get it.....yeah it looks nice, but why put in double the RAM?
Wouldent you then be relying on having that much ram when your game ships out to all of the people that only have 512 MB of RAM in their systems?
They must know something I don't.....
Maybe to run debuggers or other processes while running the game? Just a stab in the dark..
Debug code is considerably larger than release code. This is not unusual. The PSP dev kit also has twice as much memory as the retail PSP. Adding more memory allows the developer to get closer to the memory limit of the retail console once the application has been compiled in its release configuration.
I'm only guessing but maybe the extra RAM covers the overhead of the development tools (debugger etc.) ?
I'm sure they can run it in a mode which limits the game to 512mb, at the very least, anyway.
look at the earlier article and the 360 won't matter anymore
Yeah, running your code in debug mode chews up a lot more memory than running it in release mode. Profiling while actually running the game is tough on a system. More memory makes sense to me.
It looks like the blue static cling wrapping that you take off of electronic equipment ...
Do all game developers develop games in near darkness?
If so, I'm in.
If not, this probably looks fugly in normal lighting.
it works for CSI investigators :p
When it chokes or overheats do you get a blue ring of death?
What is wrong with you people? "Oh, it's blue! I must have one!" Same thing with the red one. Would someone actually by another Xbox just because it's a different colour? Complete loblox.
There are plenty of us that don't have one. The family had one and I moved away = time to get my own. There is always a customer.
Yeah, people actually do go out and buy another box because of the different color. Why? Originality. Out of all the console, Microsoft has released so many different colors and combinations with their limited edition consoles, that people eat these up and will go out and buy one even though they have a perfectly working system. Sony has only released one color of the PS3, Nintendo only one color of the Wii. By my count and feel free to jump in if i forget one, we have the XBox Core/Arcade with White Matte finish, Premium with the Chrome styling, the Halo 3 Limited Edition with the Orange Anodized Trim, the Red Resident Evil 5 Elite with Black Trim, not to mention the Rockstar GTA4 Edition, now we have the Dev Kit Edition with Blue Anodized Trim. Make the trim in different anodized colors and people will eat these up.
It's clear, is for games that will be available for the 'new' generation XBOX, a Gig may be good.
Let me get this straight, MS changes the exterior casing to some shiny color, and Engadget as well as many people here go crazy over it???? Oh, and they increased the RAM to 1 GB, ok.... You all are worse then some other fanboys out there who like shiny fruit.
what are you -smoking-?
blue changes everything. blue makes compact discs hold over 50 gigs of swag. blue turns hedgehogs into hyperactive speed demons that break the sound barrier. blue will even up -your- chances of getting laid by 5 percent. blue changes -everything-.
alot more black than blue but good enough. jose consenco the janitor down at sega of japan'll hook me up :)
after 4 xbox 360 dead , they can launch a gold xbox 360 im not getting it..
they need to look gorgeus inside not outside.
No they don't! Giggidy giggidy goo!
hope it doesnt have e74 problem...
Developers developers developers get a sweeeet looking piece of kit
For how long are they going to facelift and sell a 2005 model?
Possible Blu-ray?
I make movies, can I have one too?
Pretty please, with cherry on top...
its so beautiful! I shall call it The Jacksonville Jaguar Edition
I have the Halo Wars Custom Edition. Only 8 in the world. Won it over a competition on Strategy Informer, not available at retail.
Check it out here:
http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/3515/halo-wars-competition
What's the deal with releasing a new dev kit now that the console's been out for years? Rather bizarre.
Come on Microsoft, make it secretly an Xbox the 3rd dev box.
Sure it looks good, but I'd be more interested if they released a 360 that didn't have the RRoD issue and and didn't sound like an airplane taking off in my living room.
I love the colored chrome. They did an orange tinted chrome for the Halo edition and it looked awesome. Why not do more of these. Just painting it red isn't very exciting.
I shall have to see if Microsoft loves me or not so I can get one. I'm not one of their "certified" developers, but...
wouldnt an alternative just be to paint your current 360 to get that blue portion. easier for elite owners since we only have to paint one part of it.
Much better than the resident evil edition
Xbox 361
I really don't understand Microsoft's logic, why wouldn't they release this to the public? Having a white console was cool for 2 months after launch, but it's the ugliest now by far.
Mr. Ballmer, I will lick your head if you let me have one of these.
In before someone make a similar casemod.
Yeah but how reliable is that? If I was a developer and got RROD...I'd be pissed at that price.
Isn't it kind of silly to use an enhanced and more capable unit for development work?
"Uh.. I'm not sure why it doesn't work as well on the retail model... oh yeah I forgot I have twice the specs under the hood!" Dur...
Easy.
"The game is running and everything's fine."
"Wow! Looks good. Any trouble to report?"
"RAM usage is a little too high, but we're cutting textures and optimizing models to meet the target."
"Excellent."
Donkey Kong Country was designed on a bank of SGI workstations and a supercomputer in 1994. It ended up being the most clever use of optimization for extremely tight constraints I've seen to date. Those computers had hundreds or thousands of times the power and RAM of the SNES and the game was still killer after optimization trimmed it by about 99%.
I know you all think that, 'wow a dev box would be so awesome,' allow me to let you in a little secret.
no
dev boxes won't play retail games, only games still in dev. So unless you can get your hands on the dev copies of a game, you aren't going to beable to play anything on it.
That literally took my breath away...man that's nice.
i give it 1 week and Red Ring lol would suck badly =[ the fact that one of ma friends is on his 8th one lolz
FUCKING GAY I CANT HAVE ONE WELL MY BUDDY DOES WHAT IS MICROSFT GONNA DO AND ITS THE ONE IN THIS PICTURE I CAN WAIT TO BUY ONE WHILE YOU GUYS JUST DROOL OVER THE PICTUERS HAHA SUCKS FOR YOU
They can't release it to the public because like all devkits it doesn't even connect to xbox live, and it probably can't play retail games.. It's for Developers... It can connect to partnernet.. But good luck ever finding someone to play with. The reason Devkits are so cool, is because you can enhance the game in any ways you want. You can skin any map, change projectiles in guns, ECT... It's the ultimate modders XBOX lol. They should release this design on a regular xbox to the public though... Ohh and if anyone actually finds a place to buy one of these machines good luck paying any less than 4G's for it lol.
Looks like it's time for a new generation of Xbox's!! introducing... the... BLUE RING OF DEATH!!! otherwise known as BROD. I gave up on Microsoft after 3 of my Xbox's died... they make crappy stuff. Sure it LOOKS pretty but how does it actually preform? I'll let you fill that one in for yourself.