Microsoft to launch Xbox 360 in Japan, Europe in '05

Microsoft today announced it would launch its new Xbox 360 game console in Japan and Europe in time for the year-end holiday shopping season.

Xbox 360 news from Japanese Xbox Summit

Microsoft Japan hosted this morning (5.30 am in the UK, 1.30 pm in Japan) in Tokyo the eagerly awaited Xbox Summit 2005. The event was used to announce a number of new Xbox 360 titles, most of which are in development by Japanese development studios:

- The big news is the announcement of Ridge Racer 6 for the Xbox 360. Namco also announced Love Football, due in time for next years football world cup, and showed a new trailer for the previously announced Frame City Killer

- Team Ninja announced that they have five games in development: Dead or Alive 4, Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball 2, Code Cronus, Project Progressive, and a secret game.

- The other big news that will please European gamers is the announcement that Winning Eleven (Pro Evolution Soccer) will appear on the Xbox 360 in autumn 2006.

Xbox 360: Enter The Beta Kits

The chaps over at IGN has posted an extensive article detailing the Xbox 360's Beta Development Kit. With the exception of the audio chips (this chipset isn't complete), the Beta Kits contain about 90% of the console's chip set. They comprise the specialized three-CPU core processors and the graphics GPU.
We asked the teams how much more powerful the Beta Kits are then the P5s they're been working on, and what the significance of that additional power is. We learned that they're still exploring the Beta Kits' power and limitations, and that while there is nearly twice as much graphic power, the way in which coding passes from the triple core processors through the systems, it's got to be cleaner than on single processing machines. One North American developer had this outlook. "On our side, we've been working very hard to tap into the full power of the Betas. On a technical side, while the GPU is nearly twice as powerful as the Alpha kits, the CPU architecture requires very clean logic coding in order to take advantage of its full potential." (We'll get to the clean logic bit later on in the story.)
Another developer explained the differences this way:
"The major difference is in the video chipset, which is pretty different from anything you can find on the PC (or alpha hardware). It does some slick bits of load balancing between pixel performance and vertex performance, which helps us make sure that we're maxing out the video hardware no matter what we're doing. HDTV looks spectacular on this thing.
Microsoft still losing money on Xbox

DESPITE posting a 22% increase in revenue for its Home & Entertainment division Microsoft continues to make an operating loss on the arm amounting to $179 million, bringing the yearly loss to $391 million. This is down from a loss of $1.2 billion last year, so not too bad, but the Xbox remains a big money loser for Microsoft.

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Xbox 360 Hard Drive Content Revealed

Microsoft has submitted the media content of the Xbox 360 hard drive to the British Board of Film Classification for the organization to classify the age-rating.