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Next Xbox Hints, 1000 HDTVs
The Grand Ballroom on the third floor of the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco, Calif., was packed with press and game developers anxious to hear Microsoft® Corporate Vice President J Allard’s 2005 Game Developers Conference (GDC) keynote address.
Although at one point Allard said, “I’m not going to tell you about Xenon [an internal code word for the next-generation console]; we’re going to wait until E3,” he did give the crowd some tantalizing peeks at what’s to come.
J Allard gets ready to go on stage.
The HD Era
More and more people are upgrading to high-definition (HD) and surround sound. Once you’ve seen the Super Bowl in 16:9 HD, you can’t go back to plain ol’ standard 4:3. Allard thinks video games should be at the forefront of this HD revolution.
The Remix Generation
These are the people that personalize and customize everything. Self-expression is paramount to them. Think ring tones, tattoos, cell phone faceplates, body piercings, etc. In the HD Era, you have more control over your digital entertainment choices.
XNA Studio
This was announced on Monday. (See the press release.) Allard explained how XNA Studio will provide game developers with a platform and toolset that will free them from many current development frustrations. With XNA, he said, developers’ only limitation will be their imaginations. He told the crowd to look for that beta at next year's GDC.
Next-Generation Xbox®
Allard promised developers that the next console will run a teraflop of processing power. That’s equivalent to a freakin’ buttload, people. Okay, actually it’s a trillion floating point operations per second. That’s about all Allard revealed about the hardware, but he was pretty forthcoming about the software. He even gave us all a preview of the Next-Generation Xbox Guide, which is part of the Xenon user interface. When the first screen came up, everyone in the room sat up a little straighter to see it.
This stuff is gonna rock your world. It's everything you’ve been asking for: to see info about people, to see your rank, to be able to do your own soundtracks in every game, and more. Check out these screenshots. 
The HD Hook-up
When people entered the Ballroom for the Keynote address, they received a badge that said “The HD Era.” The badges came in blue, black, and yellow and were distributed randomly. As a thank you to game developers, Allard gave away 1000 23-inch Samsung HDTVs. Which 1000 of the 3000 attendees scored the superschwag was determined by a Forza Motorsport™race. Oh, I’ll go ahead and spoil the ending: The yellow car edged out the black one by just a hair, and 1000 yellow badge holders won HDTVs. As you can imagine, the room went nuts. 
Yellow rules! A happy winner of an HDTV.
It was a great keynote with cool videos, exciting news, and an HDTV payoff. You can listen to Major Nelson’s audio podcast.
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