Intresting News

Sunday May 22, 2005

Microsoft and Mountain Dew have announced that starting August 28th they will be giving away an Xbox 360 every ten minutes for nine straight weeks. That is over 9000 Xbox 360s total.



Despite Microsoft's best efforts to try and debut the next Xbox on their own terms, it was only a matter of time before pics started trickling out onto the internet. Please keep in mind that nothing is final yet and the design might change slightly when the system is officially unveiled.



Now, you've got to remember one thing when speculating on upcoming (and as-of-yet unannounced) new hardware: things change. In fact, things are almost guaranteed to change. It's a long time from the beginning of the development process to the end of manufacturing, and as companies see what their competitors are doing, or as they take feedback from fans, they'll tweak their plans accordingly. That's how it's always been, and how it will probably always be. So, please, don't be mad at us if we seem somewhat ambiguous at times, or if we turn out to be wrong about certain things. We're only human (as far as you know).



With that said, let's take a look at some of the things we know about the next game console from Microsoft.



What's in a Name?



The first thing that needs to be sorted out is a name for the new console. People have been referring to the console by a lot of different monikers, but nothing has really stuck so far. Xbox 2 has been a popular (and logical) one, but there is a lot of speculation that the folks at Microsoft don't want people to look at the number and think that it's inferior to the PlayStation 3. A lot of people have also been calling it Xbox Next, or in some cases, NeXtBox. While this makes sense, it may be more appropriate for Microsoft to try to set the console apart from its predecessor, which didn't do quite as well as everyone had hoped.





Thanks to our friends at GamePro, we can show you the launch screen for the console codenamed Xenon.





So far, the leading candidate for the console seems to be Xenon. For anyone out there who might have skipped chemistry class, xenon is a noble gas, like neon, and it's pronounced with a Z sound, like xylophone and xenophobia. Of course, there has been no official word from Microsoft regarding this name, but a few internet news sites have posted screenshots of the launcher screen of the console's development kit, and the name Xenon is featured prominently on the top. This indicates that, at least for now, the codename for the system is Xenon, although that could change at any time.