Microsoft is taking its own sweet time in choosing a partner, and doing so at an early date would only hurt its chances at producing a competitive product. This also keeps AMD and Intel in the running as a future partner, as both have very promising future products to base the CPU off of. The big question for Microsoft is exactly how much CPU power the X-Box 2 will need? The current X-Box has a 700 MHz Pentium !!! derivative, and that is not exactly a vector processing powerhouse. The PS-3 is all about vector processing, but seemingly not so much about graphics, so this could be an area where Microsoft may have an edge. We will not hear anything from Microsoft this year, and of course announcing anything in 2005 would be too late. From this we can infer that Microsoft will probably make an X-Box 2 announcement in early 2004. Another reason for Microsoft not wanting to announce X-Box 2 early is that it wants to keep excitement about the current X-Box at a fever pitch, and not dilute it by announcing specs on future products.
