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O.P. Official Specs and Info on the Xenon (XB2)
Recent games consoles have enjoyed a lifespan of about 5 years, which even in dog years is tragically young to die. The Xbox, by contrast, is a mere stripling of 3 and half, making Microsoft's formal announcement of a replacement at the trade-only Game Developers Conference all the more surprising.
Following a leak earlier this year in which an Electronic Arts press release inadvertently outed Xbox 2's probable launch date by describing a game in development as an "Xbox 2 launch title" and then going ahead and giving its likely release as "late 2005", Microsoft needed to quell growing Internet rumours.
The newly revealed company line is as doughy as ever, favouring multiple references to HD technology (High Definition TV presumably being the very pinnacle of any gamer's hopes and dreams) and slightly woolly feature descriptions, accompanied by the usual raft of statistics.
Up against PlayStation 3's highly PR-able Cell Processing infrastructure, Xbox 2 clearly needed to talk the talk, and here it is:
* CPU: three 3GHz PowerPC chips
* Graphics: 500MHz ATI
* Controllers: wireless as standard
* Output: 1280x720 (High Definition standard widescreen)
* Storage: DVD/CD drive
If you care about most of that, the chances are you've already memorised the entire, unabridged list during the Game Developers Conference.
For the rest of us what really matters is the games, and although EA's highly competent sports titles are a sign that Xbox 2 will have mass market appeal in America at least, it's tales of Halo 3 and a mystery role-playing game from the creator of Final Fantasy that get gamers' pulses racing.
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