»Playstation 3 and XBOX 2--Next Generation consoles«

Gates Talks with CNET at CES
Several topics are discussed, but here are the Xbox 2 Q & As:


What are some of the primary goals with Xbox 2?
Broadening the market, having media capabilities that when there's a PC, we connect up to that. This whole story of the Windows Media Connect and how all the formats and rights management and that simple Media Center menu that's just got TV, photos, music right there--those are common elements we're bringing to all the home devices.
We didn't do Xbox just to do a video game; we did it to be part of our vision of the digital lifestyle, and with the next generation, we really get to go there. In the first generation, we had one simple goal, which was to establish credibility as a great video game platform. We've done that. Actually, the last few months in the United States, we outsold Sony with the PlayStation. So even though they have the biggest installed base, we are a very strong, credible No. 2 in that. As we go into this next generation, it's much broader.

Yes, great video gaming but videogaming for a broader set of people, more communications, more media, more connectivity. And at the same time, we move up to things like high-definition graphics and wireless that the chip breakthroughs allow us to get to.

So just for the games alone you'd go, wow, but the concept now of bringing in your music, your media, connecting to the PC, connecting Xbox Live to Messenger--that just makes it a very big deal.

It's a full entertainment center, basically.
That's right. So Media Center PC and Xbox become totally complementary. You've seen a bit of that, where we let you take music from PCs and put it into game titles, and we have this extender concept where the Media Center can project through the Xbox, but that's just the start of what we can do there.

One thing that's kind of intriguing in Xbox 2 is you're participating a little more on the design of the silicon.
Well, we have some key partners that we've announced. ATI and IBM are the key chip partners, and there are some others. But I'd say our sophistication is much higher in this second generation. So every level, what we're doing in tools, what we're doing in Live, the way we're working with the publishers, the way that we've gotten involved in the hardware design--we're being very coy about when and all that, but I'm certainly excited when it comes time to show at how much smarter we are getting to do it a second time with the team that's been built there.

Any interest in handhelds?
We are not in the handheld space. We watch the intense competition of Sony, Nintendo, Nokia--whoever comes along with interest. Our portable gaming will be focused on things like getting onto the phones, getting onto portable PCs, but our Xbox team is focused on the TV-connected console. And the fact that Sony's a little distracted with that may let us do all the better in the next generation.

Some details of the chip inside Sony's PlayStation 3 have been revealed.
Sony, IBM and Toshiba have released limited data about the so-called Cell chip that will be able to carry out trillions of calculations per second.

The chip will be made of several different processing cores that work on tasks together.

The PlayStation 3 is expected in 2006 but developers are expecting to get prototypes early next year to tune games that will appear on it at launch.

Early glimpse

The three firms have been working on the chip since 2001 but before now few details have been released about how it might function.

In a joint statement the three firms gave hints about how the chip will work but fuller details will be released in February next year at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.

Current PC architecture is nearing its limits

Ken Kutaragi, Sony
The three firms claim that the Cell chip will be up to 10 times more powerful than existing processors.

When put inside powerful computer servers, the Cell consortium expects it to be capable of handling 16 trillion floating point operations, or calculations, every second.

The chip has also been refined to be able to handle the detailed graphics common in games and the data demands of films and broadband media.

IBM said it would start producing the chip in early 2005 at manufacturing plants in the US. The first machines off the line using the Cell processor will be computer workstations and servers.

A working version of the PS3 is due to be shown off in May 2005 but a full launch of the next generation console is not expected to start until 2006.

As well as being inside the PlayStation 3, the chip will also be used inside high-definition TVs and powerful computers.

"In the future, all forms of digital content will be converged and fused onto the broadband network," said Ken Kutaragi, Chief Operating Officer of Sony.

"Current PC architecture is nearing its limits."