The Next Xbox

The San Jose Mercury News reported this week that Microsoft has begun circulating design specifications for its Xbox successor to publishers and developers, and that low cost and early launch seem to be the company’s main priorities.

A Microsoft spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

According to sources quoted by the Mercury News, Microsoft hopes capture market share and get the jump on Sony by releasing the Xbox successor in the fall of 2005.

As a cost saving measure, the next Xbox will reportedly not include a hard disk, but instead use flash memory to save game data. The information cited by the newspaper also indicates that the next Xbox will be powered by not one but a trio of IBM-designed PowerPC processors and carry 256 MB of RAM.

Some features, including the exact amount of RAM and the DVD technology standard to be used, have still not been frozen, and Microsoft is evidently soliciting feedback from publishers before locking down the design.

Another open question is whether the Xbox successor will be compatible with existing Xbox software, and Microsoft is evidently not committing to backward compatibility due to the significant hardware and licensing costs involved.

Given that compatibility with its predecessor is partially credited with making the PS2 successful, there could be huge ramifications to the decision.

“I can’t imagine that Microsoft would be so insanely stupid as to make it incompatible,” said Jon Peddie, an analyst at Jon Peddie Research told the Mercury News.

SOURCE: NewsNow