NEWS - Tuesday, April 1, 2003
Fact or Ficition? PSXbox?
In a shocking development, news from Sony headquarters in Tokyo late Monday night indicates that Sony and Microsoft have come to an unthinkable agreement: a co-branded console to be jointly produced by both manufacturers, and to be released in just 12 months. The decision comes after a lengthy closed-door discussion at Sony’s lush headquarters in Tokyo. Sony, impressed by Microsoft’s successes in the online realm, invited some of the key players in the Xbox architectural design to speak to heads of Sony, and a panel of engineers working on various Playstation2 hardware projects, including engineers from Toshiba, the company behind the revolutionary "Cell" design said to power the Playstation3, as well as engineers from IBM, who were recently contracted to construct an online infrastructure for Playstation2 online games. Discussion was scheduled to focus only on online strategies and architectures, but talks soon spread to overall console design, marketing tactics, hardware manufacturing, and even advanced game distribution systems. "It was like a giant think-tank," commented Microsoft’s J. Alard. "We’re talking industry figureheads from every sector, and an amazing wealth of knowledge working together on a level not seen since the Manhattan Project." "It was quite a sight to see." continued Sony’s Kaaz Hirai. "All these normally reserved engineers with beaming smiles on their faces; they were completing each others’ sentences and putting together ideas faster than my secretary could take notes!" This concentration of talent resulted in an amazing achievement: a completely new console design in a little over 24 hours. It borrows key ideas from Sony’s design heads, like backwards compatibility and IEEE 1394 connectivity, and merges that with many fundaments of the Microsoft camp, including out-of-the-box broadband connectivity, an integrated hard drive, and a unified memory architecture. Check out the rest here.Source: http://www.xboxaddict.com/
