X-Box: Time to Worry?

Yesterday we reported on Bill Gates’s appearance on CNBC. Well, he did appear, and it was indeed about the X-Box. Nothing more. And now, we have just learned that, officially, there is no alliance. So, today, at the Game Developers’ Conference, Bill Gates was there, as a keynote speaker, and his topic was indeed the X-Box. It’s confirmed, official, and more or less a monster.

Here are the details: According to ZDTV’s ZDNN, there’s new information about the console’s specs, and it appears an AMD chip will not be used. Instead, a special Intel Pentium III processor made just for the console will be produced. Also, NVidia will be using a special graphics chip, and not the GeForce that was originally rumored. It is rumored to be able to render more than 150 million polygons per second (with most effects turned on, while we’re at it.) DirectX will be used.

It will have a DVD player as well, running at 4X. And what about Internet? Try on a 100Mbps Ethernet port. 64 megs of RAM will be in the console, as will an 8 GB hard drive, according to Yahoo!

Also, there will be four controller ports, plus an expansion port. We’re not sure how this might be used, though.

Finally, because of all this mess, Sega’s stock took a serious tumble in the Japanese stock market, tumbling 21 percent. This might be because of X-Box, or it might be because of the PS2 finally taking its toll on the company.

In any case, X-Box will be able to seriously crush PS2, and because Nintendo is claiming its Dolphin can meet or beat X-Box’s capabilities, Sega AND Sony are in for some serious trouble. A price point is sketchy at this point but we think somewhere in the range of $170-$350 would be optimal. It’s expected to launch Fall of 2001, and we’ll have developments as that launch date looms closer.