He's been emailing us regularly, reminding us to plug, so first of all, if you didn't know, Dean Takahashi's new book The XBox 360 Uncloaked goes on sale today. Secondly, Next Generation has posted a comprehensive review of the book up on their site.

Actually, as no real criticisms or analysis is leveled at Takahashi's book, it's less a review than a primer. Still, it's a fascinating read, separating the most interesting tid-bits from Dean's work into a bullet list of gossip and blunders.

These include the revelations that Ed Fries had to threaten to quit to prevent Halo 2 from being rushed out the door (the review claims this ploy was successful, but the ending of Halo 2 would beg to differ), that Bill Gates pushed for a 4+Ghz Intel Tejas chip for the 360 and that the backwards compatibility of the 360 was an 11th hour afterthought.

Most interesting, though, is the revelation that half of the 360 team has been split off to design a portable system to compete with the PSP and DS. The plan is to release it during the 360's half-life, "so that the business has a hedge against the crushing generational transition costs."

We'd be surprised if news on Microsoft's portable hit this E3, though. The 360's half-life is 2007 or 2008, at least. Still, if they did announce it over the next week, that would be a hell of a way to compete with any announcements about the Wii or the PS3, don't you think?

Book Review: Xbox 360 Uncloaked [Next Generation]

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