Posted December 31, 1969 by Ron Williamson

Xbox 360 is unleashed to the masses by way of an MTV special. At 9:30 on 5/12/05 on MTV the next generation Xbox console was officially announced; the Xbox 360. With the airing of this program we can finally put our imaginations to rest as most of our suspicions have been realized. The program only lasted for thirty minutes and revealed disappointingly little about the actual system, but we do now know enough to hold us over until E3.

The first piece of information given to us was that the system is, in fact, going to be called the Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 features many additions that will separate it not only from its predecessor but from all of the other systems. Out of the box the Xbox 360 will feature broadband connectivity, the ability to play progressive-scan DVDs, CDs, and even the ability to view photos. The Xbox 360 will always be connected to the internet you will even be able to receive game invitations while you are watching a DVD. While on the subject of the internet the new Xbox will come with Xbox Live silver free of charge. With this you will be able to manage your online Gamer Profile. With this profile you will be able to talk to your online friends at anytime through voice chat, or you can send and receive voice messages, and you can even access the new Xbox Live Marketplace which will allow users to download free games, demos, trailers, levels, weapons, vehicles, skins, and maps that you can save to your detachable Xbox 360 hard drive. But that?s not all, there will also be Xbox Live Gold which allows you such features as video messaging (with the Xbox Live camera peripheral), online tournaments with celebrities, and sponsored tournaments to win prizes. Every Xbox 360 owner new to Xbox Live will receive one free month of the Gold subscription to let them experience everything Xbox Live has to offer. Other system features will allow you to stream music to your Xbox 360 from an MP3 player or photos from a digital camera.

Not a lot of video from the new system was shown on the MTV program but what was shown was quite exciting. We got to see brief shots of games for the Xbox 360 such as Call of Duty 2, Tony Hawk?s American Wasteland, QUAKE 4, Madden NFL 06, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 06, The Darkness, Perfect Dark: Zero, Project Gotham Racing 3, Saint?s Row, Ghost Recon 3. Other titles not shown on MTV, but that have been confirmed are NBA 2K6, Elements of Power, and Gears of War. Since there was not very much footage actually shown we have a lot to look forward to, but Perfect Dark: Zero can give us some indications of what to expect. The character models in the new Perfect Dark title will consist of 5,000 polygons each while the levels will be comprised of anywhere from a whopping 100 to 300 thousand polygons each. The game will feature online multiplayer which is capable of supporting up to 50 players simultaneously.

In order to pull off some of these impressive graphics and expansive game play you need great hardware and the Xbox 360 has exactly that. It comes equipped with three PowerPC-based CPUs that are capable of a teraflop of floating-point calculations. It also has a custom made graphics processor by ATI with 512 MB of Ram. The system will also always output a high definition image for those lucky enough to own a compatible television. It will also always output surround sound. following the success of certain wireless devices such as the Nintendo Wavebird all official Xbox 360 controllers will now be wireless. One nice feature is purely cosmetic but the system will have a removable faceplate. This will solve the problem of buying your system and then wishing you had gotten it in another color.

We finally know something about the new system from Microsoft and it promises to be quite an impressive system. For more details though we are just going to have to wait until next week when E3 will reveal the remaining secrets we are all anxious to find out. If you are intrigued about this or anything else don?t forget to keep check back here for up to date news directly from E3.