Bill Gates to unveil Xbox 2 at CES 2005?

By Games Industry.biz Published 19 October, 2004

The Consumer Electronic Show has confirmed that the Microsoft chairman will deliver a pre-show keynote address.

The Consumer Electronics Show has confirmed that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is set to give a pre-show keynote speech in Las Vegas on January 5th next year - with a public announcement of Xbox 2 widely expected.

Gates will speak on Wednesday, January 5th at 6.30pm PST, the night before the opening of the CES event - which is the largest trade show of any description in North America, and is expected to attract 130,000 professionals from 110 countries over its three-day span.

The Xbox 2 announcement, which was originally rumoured to be planned for the Game Developer's Conference earlier this year, is now hotly tipped to feature in Gates' keynote, after the GDC announcement turned out to be regarding Microsoft's XNA development platform.

Gates has always taken a direct interest in the Xbox project, and originally planned to announce Microsoft's entry into the console market in his CES keynote in 2000; the announcement was ultimately delayed to the Game Developers Conference that year, but Gates used his CES keynote a year later to show off a near-final design for the system and exhibit early game software, including Munch's Oddysee and Malice, for the first time.

Many of Microsoft's key game development partners already have early versions of Xbox 2 development hardware, with the platform - codenamed Xenon - thought to be based on a multi-processor design using IBM's Power5 CPU architecture and ATI's next-generation Radeon graphics unit.

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Comments (26) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • bionutz #1 7 years ago

    Bring it on pal! Microsoft may be hated by many but knows where the real thing is!

  • Moe Foe #2 7 years ago

    I think the animosity to Microsoft is fading away as they begin to show they are learning what a certain demographic of gamers really want and are delivering AAA titles that cater to that demand.

    (edit: I say 'certain demographic' not as an insult, but because otherwise a Nintendo fanboi will jump down my throat saying it's not what they want!)
    Edited by 2 at 19/10/04 @ 10:32

  • Khanivor #3 7 years ago

    I for one welcome our new console overlords.

  • Blerk #4 7 years ago

    they are learning what a certain demographic of gamers really want and are delivering AAA titles that cater to that demand.

    Shame I'm not in that demographic, really. They'll need to do a lot more next gen to get my money.

    Still... here we go! Very much looking forward to seeing it! Hope they have something to actually show rather than just a big list of specs or some tech demos - I want to see a real game in action, even if it's only a snippet.

  • Eraser #5 7 years ago

    "I just hope it will not be a true multiprocessor machine... memories of the Saturn failure due to the difficulties had by the developers spring on my mind.. "

    For the PS3 that worry is a very valid one. However, with Microsoft, having a huge amount of experience developing development platforms and tools, I don't think there's much to worry about, especially not considering MS developed the XNA platform.

  • jawolf #6 7 years ago

    XNA - VB for game developers? *

    Erasor: have a look at the old article
    http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=55590
    "The raison d'etre for XNA, in a nutshell, is that Xbox 2 is going to be incredibly tough to develop for with a six-processor design..."

    *cough cough* Six processor power 4 or 5 or 6... maybe 3 maybe 7 maybe 5 maybe 2.1 design. But definately more than the PS3 design.

    Hey programmers are you thread safe?

    If you developed well for a PS2 you will be in a better position than an XBOX programmer to progam the XBOX 2.

    *metaphorically speaking at least.

    (edit: decreased rant size by 3%)
    Edited by 1 at 19/10/04 @ 11:49

  • Blerk #7 7 years ago

    i'm just wondering if despite the sales they are making profits for all that research, or if Gates just wants to mock nintendo and sony.

    Xbox is still losing Microsoft a bucket-load of money. Big, big losses. But they can afford it. :-)

  • t #8 7 years ago

    jawolf: see, what i think is happening is the xbox2 is going to be like the supercomputer ibm built for the american department of energy.

    power4 or power5 or power in general base designs don't have any vector processing units, rembember that it was motorola who came up with altivec as implemented on the g4... and efficient it was.

    the g5 on the mac is basically a cache starved power4, with altivec strapped onto it.

    now, back to the DOE. IBM allocated a unit of 64(IIRC) cores to function as a virtualised vector processing unit..... kinda cell like really.

    so, xbox2 may have 3 chips/6physical cores... 2 of those chips/4 cores will be a vector unit :)

    which means that the base OS for xbox2 will be AIX. :p

    edit: no altivec on g3
    Edited by 1 at 19/10/04 @ 13:32

  • Lutz #9 7 years ago

    I replied and he gave me $5,789.98 for forwarding the email onto 4 people. You missed out on THAT one buddy...

  • Moe Foe #10 7 years ago

    Me too. I didn't believe it at all, but I got a cheque for $6,745.34. I also got a case of Vevue Clique and a free iPod.
    Edited by 1 at 19/10/04 @ 12:14

  • jawolf #11 7 years ago

    If only Microsoft got away with selling commodity processors coupled to a cheap LCD screen in a portible device for a huge profit, could they laugh at Nintendo. _AND_ not just sell only an OS for one to third party vendors (which seems to manage apointments and not be used for games).

  • valli #12 7 years ago

    Gates will speak on Wednesday, January 5th at 6.30pm PST, the night before the opening of the CES event

    What's with all these speeches before the opening of the event itself? Didn't Nintendo and Sony do the same at E3 this year?

    I bet Sony will go out announcing a press event about the PS3 a day before the Gates speech. Then Nintendo will have something to say about the GameCube2 a week before both their competitors.

  • jawolf #13 7 years ago

    Hey T:... if you have one CPU(2 core) being main processor it will be like a P4 with H/T technology... and the other cores would be like the Emotion engine. VU0 and VU1 (and VU3 and VU4)!

    Cool.

    But it would be easier to code for 'cos of XNA.
    Edited by 1 at 19/10/04 @ 12:36

  • t #14 7 years ago

    jawolf:
    this could be true

    however, due to the complexities of running an x86 emulation layer on ppc hardware thru AIX, the resulting performance would mean the xbox2 would be a direct competitor for the game&watch

  • jawolf #15 7 years ago

    But wouldn't there be a .NET layer over the XNA layer which in turn resides over the TCP/IP layer managed through the AIX layer? .NET has performance increases over Visual C++ at least on the X86 platform, and that indeed is what it is emulating, the optimal .NET environment so it should speed up things considerably. Does it emulate one P4 with H/T technology, but due to applications running quicker with H/T off, they sort of disable the 2nd core, to get performance gains?
    Edited by 1 at 19/10/04 @ 12:43

  • t #16 7 years ago

    jawolf:

    are u saying that the xbox2 will run xbox1 games at roughly the speed of a 386sx25 with a tsenglabs et4000 video card?

    thats a 2mb et4000, what with the .net optomisations.

  • jawolf #17 7 years ago

    T: it would actually be like a 386sx25 ... but as it has 4 vector units, it would be like have 4 387 maths coprocessors. And it would be like they are on like steroids 'cos the XNA would power them just like a WHQ Certified driver.

    The graphics card you should know is ATI's next gen unit so, that would mean that there could be at least "P+1" Radeon graphics units. Where P in the equation above is "PS3 cell processors". Remember 1 upman ship wins the race. Bigger numbers = a more compelling gaming experience. And NVidia is the way it was meant to be played.

  • t #18 7 years ago

    jawolf:

    yer, 'next gen'... meaning it's the same as the last 2 gens, but wider.

    nVIDIA must be really sorry they lost that money losing contract :)

    as to the cell proc in the ps3....you know it's not even going to ship with it, it's all hype. The ps3 will come out with a 350mhz 'ultra emotion, oscar winning edition' engine.

    i hope the xbox2 is watercooled like the dual g5 is :)

  • jawolf #19 7 years ago

    If it is T... then you could do home brew development on it: like brew some coffee from the heat it generates.

  • t #20 7 years ago

    on second thoughts, the xbox2 will come not with water cooling, but with TE (peltier) cooling.

    that way, it will also come with both a ceiling mounting unit and a pot plant.

    you mount the xbox on the ceiling, inverted of course, place the pot plant directly underneath, and the constant stream of condensation that drips from the unit serves to water the plant.

    microsoft - eco friendly gaming for the green generation

  • GTBurns #21 7 years ago

    "jawolf: see, what i think is happening is the xbox2 is going to be like the supercomputer ibm built for the american department of energy.

    power4 or power5 or power in general base designs don't have any vector processing units, rembember that it was motorola who came up with altivec as implemented on the g4... and efficient it was.

    the g5 on the mac is basically a cache starved power4, with altivec strapped onto it.

    now, back to the DOE. IBM allocated a unit of 64(IIRC) cores to function as a virtualised vector processing unit..... kinda cell like really.

    ...so, xbox2 may have 3 chips/6physical cores... 2 of those chips/4 cores will be a vector unit :)

    which means that the base OS for xbox2 will be AIX. :p

    edit: no altivec on g3"

    I agree with you on all these theories, t - not sure about the potplant, however. Are you related to q?

  • jellyhead #22 7 years ago

    I think the pot-plant idea is a great one, would look a bit better than a snot coloured box under the TV. Just think you could mod the stream of water by putting neon tubes etc in it.
    Ha, i'd buy one for sure.
    Edited by 1 at 19/10/04 @ 16:32

  • Psi #23 7 years ago

    If their next gen console's anything like their nextgen OS expect to feel somewhat ripped off

    /me heads out to get his MC(XBox)E certification

    /lick xbox sp2

  • nintendo_gamer #24 7 years ago

    Oh man, that would be great. I so want to see a 2005 launch date for xbox 2, and the sooner they unveil the console, the more likely that would seem.

  • 3william56 #25 7 years ago

    This is all very well, but what's the battery life like...?

    /runs away cackling

  • Kavvy #26 7 years ago

    "I think the animosity to Microsoft is fading away as they begin to show they are learning what a certain demographic of gamers really want and are delivering AAA titles that cater to that demand. "

    I have no animosity to Microsoft at all but I had to get rid of the xbox in favour of my second PS2 simply because the XBOX doesn't have *any* quality fringe titles.

    When XBOX gets REZs, ICOs and Katamari Damacys then I'll be rushing out to get one, it was the onslaught of PC style run and gun to a machine that just wasn't up to the job that put me off in the first place.

    See, (and this may shock you), not *everyone* wants to play the mainstream run-of-the-mill stuff, whether they be AAA titles or not.

  • #27 7 years ago

    Not every 'good' game is perceived as 'good' by everyone, but you'll probably never understand this.