Well obviously not a lot of information is apparent yet.

It seems the Xbox 2 specifications will be kept under wraps until 2005 - all the ones that are floating around on the net and press today are nothing but un-founded rumours. Yes it does seem that the Xenon (the development kits) did have PowerPC chips in them - but this is no way an indication that the actual retail next generation Xbox will feature such architecture.

J Allard has confirmed Xbox 2 hardware specifications are finalised, but warns against expecting Microsoft to go public this year. "The next-generation is the hardware manifestation of the XNA platform; think of XNA as the successor if you will of DirectX. - That's how we're thinking about it; and if you think about it being a software platform driving hardware, it allows you to think about hardware differently so I think there will be a couple of surprises. We've made decisions and the team is locked.".

It definitely seems that 2005 is the year for the Xbox 2 (or whatever it ends up being called) unveiling, fingers crossed with may even be able to get our hands on them the same year..

There are some XNA screenshots and videos on Microsoft's XNA website also mirrored in our media section, these are basically technology demos of the new XNA platform which will power the Xbox 2, these are from the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2004. Also up is a new updated "Crash" video created for E3 2004..

CNN has an article up about Microsoft doing research into a hybrid Xbox PC device..

"If you put two and two together, there's no doubt there's a great opportunity to put the two platforms together," said Moore. "Obviously with a company like Microsoft this is something we have to look into and ask about. Is it actionable today? Probably not, but it's something we need to look at.".

"There will come a day – in the not too distant future – that [PC] games will be interchangeable between Windows and the Xbox"..

On the manufacturing front - both ATI (supplier of the graphics technology) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (the company tasked with fabricating the Xbox 2 chips) have both made positive noises about the status of the next generation Xbox. ATI CFO Terry Nickerson speaking at the Smith Barney Citigroup 2004 Technology Conference. "The other one that's starting to become, I think, a factor when you're looking at it from an investment point of view, are game consoles" he told the conference. "We're actually winding down development on some of the Microsoft product"..

More news and content as it comes in..