IBM To Design Technology For XBox 2 CPU

An anonymous reader writes "According to Biz Ink, 'Microsoft has licensed leading-edge semiconductor processor technology from IBM for use in future Xbox products and services to be announced at a later date..' IBM are already working on the PlayStation 3 CPU alongside Toshiba, and have a relationship with Nintendo after making the GameCube CPU, though there's been no official announcement on GameCube 2's hardware. Is the next-gen hardware war heating up?"

Comments

um...i don't think so....

[Blob Pet]

Under the agreement, Microsoft has licensed leading-edge semiconductor processor technology from IBM for use in future Xbox(R) products and services to be announced at a later date.

That's all the detail that the article really gives. The rest is typical corporate marketing. No where did I see anything that says that IBM is designing the central processing unit for the XBox 2.

It makes perfect sense

[GreatDrok]

Why should Xbox2 use x86? The x86 32 bit family will still be around, or a 64 bit decendent anyway, but I think the experience with the Xbox is that building a games system based on commodity PC hardware actually works against you in the long run as it doesn't get cheaper over time in the same way that the more custom designs such as PS2 and GCN have. Besides which, the next Xbox will likely not be a 32 bit chip so it is sensible to move to another platform and use x86 emulation (eg virtual PC/Xbox) to allow the playing of old games. A move to something based on Power5 would likely give the necessary increase in processing grunt to take on the PS3 and that is going to be something MS will really want to do. The only reason the Xbox was slightly more powerful than the PS2 was it was so late.

Of course, it is still debatable that MS should even bother to do an Xbox2. The move into media PCs, along with a standardisation on games that can run directly from a DVD-ROM rather than installing on the HD would negate the need for the expense of selling an Xbox system. Get a standard PC into the living room and make it play games as well as a console and you would have a winner........