Xbox 2 Plans on Schedule

Thanks to GamesIndustry.biz for their article regarding the manufacturing plans for the Xbox 2. "Speaking at a press conference, senior vice president Kenneth Kin said that ... manufacturing plans for Xbox 2 chips is 'proceeding according to plan,' scotching recent murmuring about a possible further delay to Microsoft's schedule for the system."

Comments

Text of the article

[TrafficGeek]

Reassurance on next-gen development progress

A representative of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the company tasked with fabricating the chips being used in Microsoft's next Xbox console, has told the media that the development of the console is proceeding to plan.

Speaking at a press conference, senior vice president Kenneth Kin said that the firm's manufacturing plans for Xbox 2 chips is "proceeding according to plan," scotching recent murmuring about a possible further delay to Microsoft's schedule for the system.

TSMC has been tapped to develop the core chipsets for the Xbox 2 platform, including ATI's GPU chip, which the graphics company said was nearing the end of its development stage earlier this month.

It's believed that Microsoft is planning to launch the Xbox 2 in late 2005, which would give it a significant headstart over its rivals, as neither Sony nor Nintendo is expected to have a new home console ready until 2006.

Xbox 2 - which is reportedly codenamed Xenon in the development community - will feature multiple IBM Power5 processors, an SIS motherboard chipset and the aforementioned ATI graphics unit. Early development kits for the hardware have already been sent to selected developers, based on Apple PowerMac G5 units running a custom version of the Windows NT kernel.

Re:Text of the article

[unclethursday]

You do realize that Sony hasn't even had a prototype Cell chip made yet, right? And they don't expect the first prototype CHIPS to be ready until late this year or early next year.

Even considering they get the prototype chips ready by say November, they won't have final versions and manufacturing ready until early next year at the earliest, which means developers won't be able to get development kits until after that.

Sorry, there's no way in hell that sony is going to launch in 2005 with the PS3, provided it uses the Cell chip. Or, if it does, it'll have to survive for a good long time on PS2 games while developers learn the new chipset and architecture. In other words, if they launched at the end of 2005, their launch games would be worse than their PS2 launch games.

As for Nintendo, we don't know if they have sent out development kits or not, yet. They may have, but have the companies under a strict NDA until they unveil the console publically.

3 announcements

[Phil Wilkins]

Nintendo: $149 DS!
Sony: Slimmer PS2!
MS: Err... umm...

Re:3 announcements

[karnal]

Maybe Microsoft could get some weight-loss shakes for it's XBox....

Re:3 announcements

[StocDred]

This is modded Troll? He's making a point about the press release war. Nintendo reveals the DS, Sony immediately reveals the PStwo... and Microsoft has jack shit, so the best they can come up with is "Chip production is on schedule."

Chip production is on schedule! Get me to the fanboy forums immediately! OMG!

Re:I just had a "Aha" moment.

[33degrees]

I have to disagree; I really enjoyed to single player, so much so that I actually played the entire game through in a single sitting(!), and I subsequently finished it several more times with friends in coop mode, which is a LOT of fun.

I do agree that the game is repetitive at times, but that's the only complaint I would make, and the story was engrossing enough that the repetitive level design didn't bother me. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what makes the game so good despite it's flaws, but it remains my favorite FPS game ever, and considering that most of the flaws were due to the pressure to release the game in time for the xbox launch, I think it's safe to assume that halo2 will be even better.

Re:I just had a "Aha" moment.

[andy_fish]

Why does everybody on Slashdot trash everything that Microsoft ever did like it's worse than slime, but celebrate the X-box because of Halo and some other mediocre games? Why does everybody overgeneralize like that? Everybody in the ENTIRE WORLD. Overgeneralizing CONSTANTLY. It's like all they ever do. Always and all the time.