Two big chunks of Xbox gaming gossip hit the net last night in the rambles of a forum monkey.

SCI_Monkey posted a two-part message on the Team Xbox Forums detailing new bits of info about the Xbox 2 and Halo 3 from a friend who works at Bungie and knows about these things.

I m going to break this down into two posts to make it easier to read. I ll start with news of the Xbox 2.

Bungie received a bunch of development kits and Xbox 2 hardware to let them get rolling on their Halo 3 project, according to Mr. Monkey.
The Xbox 2 is currently using Apple G5-styled processors, but Microsoft could dump that for an Intel chipset if they think backwards compatibility is important, Monkey says. Let me just say, this has got to be absolute bullshit. I can t imagine that Msoft wouldn t have decided yet which chipset to use this late in the game. They aren t going to be tinker with their processors months before unveiling the thing.

Monkey goes on to say that the controllers Bungie got for the new Xbox were wicked-cool wireless jobs that used tiny plugs ins featuring glowing Xbox logos.

He says the Xbox 2 prototype is much smaller and sleeker than the original Xbox and that a second version of the console will be released a year after the first. This second version will feature a large(r) hard drive and TV Tuner card so people can use it as a digital recorder. Other PC features might include internet browsing, digital music and movie playback and even a word processing application.

Most of this sounds highly unlikely, though I some of the general ideas here may be true. I m pretty sure that Msoft will release multiple versions of the box and that one will probably include some major non-gaming features.

The top of the post [Team Xbox Forums]

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