You know it's one of those days when you browsing around and you find a tit-bit of information about a forthcoming product, and you think and who made this up. Well I guess form the amount of sites covering this supposed leak of info from Microsoft, this must at least hold some semblance of truth.

When I first read that the X-Box 2, code named X-Box Next is planned to have three 64-bit CPU's (RISC based) I really thought this was one of the fan rumours, but on further digging I have a feeling this cold be a possibility. If this is the truth then the X-Box next, could have a combined CPU speed of 9 Ghz, faster than most home computers for many years to come. Coupled with the next generation graphics card form ATI it could make the battle for the supreme next generation of console interesting.

Sony and the fabled 'cell' CPU, which is still as far as I?' aware only on the drawing board, and no practical examples have seen the light of day. They could be in for a bit of stiff competition, and definitely a price war. As Sony are ploughing billions of Yen in to developing components for the next Play Station. Microsoft are playing the cheap side and going for what they know is in production, works and cost virtually nothing to develop.

However for all those wonderful chips the X-Box Next may suffer one set back, it is possible that Microsoft bundle a hard drive in the new console. They claim it because no software companies are using the hard drive. Could it be the case that people are using the hard drive to story copyrighted material? Who knows, I know for one if the X-Box Next has no hard drive I will miss it, as I like the convenience of not having to mess around with memory cartridges. Even though the X-Box Next can easily emulate the original X-Box, Microsoft may have problems getting the licence to emulate the NVIDIA chip. This sets up a double whammy of downers.

Planned for release towards the end of 2005, the X-Box next still stands a chance of knocking Sony off the top spot.

Who know what the future holds, we can only listen to what is available and come up to our own conclusions.