Welcome to the next generation in gaming.

On televisions across the U.S., people are tuning in to MTV right now to watch the unveiling of the Xbox 360. And they're gonna be impressed.

The next-gen console is a tower of chilled white and chrome accents wrapped around a heart of graphics-pumping, teraflop-churning gaming goodness.

The 360 is a sleek console that lives in high-def sound and video, can extract media from your PC or mobile devices and can change it's look to fit your personality.

The console comes with a wireless controller, a small removable 20 GB hard drive and built-in HD DVD playback. You will also be able to buy a digital camera, a WiFi adapter and up to three more wireless controllers for the console.

Microsoft is still trying to make the console backwards compatible and hasn't yet announced the price or release date, though I expect that it will likely hit shelves by November and analysts are saying $300-$400 per unit.

As we heard at the Game Developers Conference, the biggest thing about the Xbox 360 in Microsoft's eyes is that it will be entirely high-definition.

"High def will be the bar by which all consoles are judged and the Xbox 360 will lead the market into that generation," Jeff Henshaw, executive producer for Xbox Digital Entertainment, told me Monday. "It is always high def, always online, always personalized."

The off-white console (the official color name is Chill) can rest on end or on it's side and is about 20 percent smaller than the original Xbox. It has sucked in sides and an oversized power button surrounded by a ring of glowing green light. The device can host four wireless controllers and has three USB ports and two memory slots. Memory units will start at 64MB.

The Xbox 360 is a quantum leap forward in technology, sporting three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz and a 1 MB L2 cache that can perform 9 billion dot product operations a second.

The 360 will sport a custom 500 MHz ATI graphics processor with 10 MB of embedded DRAM. The processor will be able to produce 500 million triangles a second and have a pixel fill rate of 16 gigasamples a second.

The console will also have 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM operating at 700 MHz. The systems overall floating-point performance will be 1 teraflop.
It's hard to compare the current Xbox to the 360, but Rob Smith, editor-in-chief of Official Xbox Magazine, said they certainly tried. The magazine handed the specs over to Maximum PC editors and had them crunch the numbers.

"The bottom line was, between the GPU format and cores, and 512 memory, the Xbox 360 will be significantly faster than the fastest PC," he said.

Despite the enormous increase in raw power, Microsoft isn't really talking much about the Xbox 360's innards. Instead, they are concentrating on what they think will set their console apart from the PS3 and Revolution.

All 360 games will be high-definition ready, supporting 16:9, 720p and 1080i. Audio will be multichannel surround sound and support 48KHz, 16-bit with over 256 audio channels.

You won't need to have a high-def television to play the games, but you'll probably want one.

"We have built the Xbox 360 to truly showcase high definition systems," Henshaw said. "If you have a high-def TV you will experience gaming in ways you never have before."

"Even if you don't have high-def, the games are still going to look better on an Xbox 360 then any other system because of Xbox 360's raw graphics power, but the pinnacle experiences are going to be on high-def."

Henshaw said he thinks the 360 will likely spur a clamor for high-def TVs.

"Our game developing partners and retail partners are actually looking for this product to be the catalyst to help drive industry wide adoption of high-def."

Smith says that the reaction to Xbox 360's high-def capabilities could have the same draw as the original Xbox's broadband capabilities had. In other words, people may really run out to get a new TV just for this.

"For many people it will be like the first time you switch from watching regular TV to high definition TV," he said. "The sun comes out and the angels start singing."

The console will also be always online and make use of built in Media Center Extender for Windows XP, allowing you to connect to your PC and other multimedia devices.

You can connect the 360 to your home network with a cable, or buy a small WiFi adapter for wireless connectivity.

Henshaw said you can use your own WiFi adapter or buy one that fits smoothly into the 360, without messing with its sleek design.

Once the console is hooked up, the 360 will be able to play music, videos and display pictures from your computer on your television. You will also be able to connect MP3 players and digital cameras directly to the 360 with a USB cord and then stream the music or check out your pictures on your TV.

An upgraded version of Xbox Live, Microsoft's online service, will also let you stream that music or those pictures to friends with the console.

"We think about Xbox 360 as being always connected, not just to your friends online but also your PC," Henshaw said. "This is a living room game center device."

The new version of Xbox Live will be much more robust allowing gamers to video chat with the 360's optional camera, weed out annoying people from online play and feature an online marketplace that will allow you to download new game trailers and demos and purchase new content.

Xbox Live will come in two flavors. All 360's will come with Xbox Live Silver for free, while Xbox Live Gold will require a subscription. (Your current Xbox Live subscription will transfer over seamlessly.)

Silver will let you play games online on weekends, but not during the week and will let you track and chat with friends online. You can also access a marketplace to purchase games and download demos through the Silver edition.

But if you want to play online all of the time and make use of Live's new intelligent matchmaking you will need to subscribe to Gold.
Both versions will also support a more robust set of parental controls that will allow you to manage friends lists, file sharing and marketplace purchases.

The new Live will include fully customizable online identities through your gamer tag.

The online component of the 360 won't be the only thing customizable, gamers will be able to pop off the Xbox 360's face plate and replace it with others more colorful ones. Henshaw expects the new faceplates to include game-themes and plenty of home grown versions.

"There will be different colors, game-themed face plates, a lot of people making their own face plate with fabrics," said Henshaw, who is growing a Chia plant on his 360's faceplate. "What we found is that people tend to like electronics that allows them to be entertained the way they want to be entertained and people love the kind of device that allows them to make it a reflection of their own personality."

One of the big surprises, at least for me, is that you will be able to purchase a digital camera for the Xbox 360. The camera will allow you to do video chat through live, take pictures and interact with some games.

"It will integrate well with the console itself," Henshaw said. "It will have high resolution, high-def capabilities. The game designers are actually coming up with the most exciting ways to use the camera. Ways we never envisioned."

Henshaw also touted the remote control that comes with the 360. The all-white controller includes a Xbox Live guide button which is divided into four quadrants called the Ring of Light. By using the button you can bring up a Live menu no matter what you are doing, be it playing games, listening to music or watching movies.

"The Xbox 360 button has both live and offline functionality," Henshaw said. "You can press that button at any time in any gaming or non-gaming experience, to bring up a very consistent menu."

Henshaw said that Microsoft was researching coming out with a larger removable hard drive for the 360 down the line, but couldn't comment on what size it would be or when it might be available. He did say that the 360 will come with at least the 20GB. The drive is a bit larger than a cell phone and can slip into a pocket, he said, adding that it would probably be a back pocket and stick out a bit.

The 360's wireless controller will initially be powered with triple-A batteries, but Henshaw said that later versions will likely include rechargeable powerpacks.

Microsoft couldn't tell me if headsets will be shipping with the Xbox 360. I would guess they will, but they were able to confirm that they will be wireless.

Ultimately, fantastic specs and cool new features aside, the telling point of the Xbox 360 will be its games.

"What we need is games that will attract that broader audience," Smith said. "Any console is huge for the industry and we are primed and ready to find out what the next set can do."

"It's going to be really interesting to see what the reaction is after the big announcement tonight."

Check out the slew of other postings that just went live. They include:

The official Xbox 360 fact and spec sheets, a cool Xbox-Xbox 360 comparison chart and a Q&A with Live's Larry Hryb (aka Major Nelson).

Hope this all made sense to you and shoot me any questions if you're confused.