Microsoft chairman Bill Gates on Saturday unveiled his company’s
new rival to the Sony PlayStation 2, the Xbox, which Microsoft
hopes will give it both entry and an immediate lead in the games
market which was valued at $10 billion last year and is expected to
reach $20 billion in 2002.
The development of Xbox represents a major diversification for
Microsoft from its core software business.
"Xbox is on track for an awesome launch in fall 2001," said Robbie
Bach, senior vice president and chief Xbox officer at Microsoft.
"With more than 200 game companies around the world creating Xbox
games for launch and beyond, the unveiling of the Xbox design is
just the start of great things to come."
The Xbox will be powered by an Intel 733MHz processor, 64MB RAM
and an 8GB hard drive for the storage of game information. It will
also contain an ethernet port for fast on-line gaming via a
broadband connection and a graphics processing unit that Microsoft
claims will deliver more than three times the graphics performance
of Sony’s PS2. Like its Sony rival, Xbox will play DVDs.
Xbox is also backed by a $500 million marketing budget to be
spent over 18 months and 1,000 Microsoft staff working exclusively
on the console. It will launch in Autumn this year in the US and
Japan and in Spring 2002 in Europe. No pricing information has been
disclosed.
