Slashdot Mirror

Payp points to this Digitimes story which says: "Japanese and U.S. governments have asked Sony to stop outsourcing Playstation 2 manufacturing to 2 Taiwanese companies, Asustek and Acer, in fear that they would do the manufacturing in factories in China, which would give the Chinese government opportunies to gain access to the DVD techonology. (I thought some DVD players are already manufactured in China.) Sony originally planned to use the Taiwanese companies to manufacture PS2 to prepare for Microsoft XBox's arrival, the manufacturing of which is also outsourced to some Taiwanese companies."

chewy_fruit_loop writes "The humorous situation Microsoft found itself in a few months ago regarding the X-Box name already belonging to someone, has been settled. The BBC are reporting it here ,and XBox Technologies have this press release. I wonder how much that cost Microsoft ;-)" Apparently The corporation formerly known as XBox is located like a half hour from here. Congrats guys! I expect to see you in shiny ferarris sometime soon.

X_Bones points to discussion on ign.com, saying: "There's been some amount of talk recently about XBox screenshots being touched up using Photoshop. Apparently a game character was pasted on the scene background and a stock Photoshop lens flare was added (which looks like it centers on the eyewear frame, and not the lens itself). here(1)'s a comparison between the "original" and a lens flare, and here(2) and here(3) are two more detailed comparisons." While companies have long used visual and verbal exaggerations of their products (glass marbles hold up soup veggies, and fruit glistens with baby oil), implying extra graphics capabilities for what is essentially a graphics box seems a little worse than some advertisng slime-tactics, though this too surely isn't new. The screenshots on the XBox site have been updated, but gamers seem to have long, intense, pixel-specific memories.

adpowers writes: "You can find a picture and description of the Xbox at the press release from Microsoft." There's also shoots from Gamespy, news from C|Net, and a report from Reuters - and lastly, a report from MSNBC.

DarkenWood writes "I just got an email from Microsoft about the x-box. They have officially unveiled it." 600mhz, NVIDIA Video, 4x DVD Player.