De geruchten dat Microsoft drie versies van de Xbox 2 gaat maken, lijken steeds sterker te worden. Er was al een tijdje sprake van het feit dat de volgende generatie van de Xbox-console je zou laten kiezen tussen een “gewone” Xbox 2, het exemplaar zonder harde schijf, een Xbox 2 met harde schijf en een versie die meer een combinatie tussen een Xbox 2 en een PC zou worden.
Robbie Bach, chief Consumer Leadership Team van Microsoft, lichtte weer een tipje van de sluier op:
“Well, we haven’t talked about the next version of Xbox. But people know we’re working on it, and people have to assume it’s going to be the world’s best game console. That’s the place where it needs to start. But we do think there are going to be opportunities to enable what we’ve called “integrated innovation” scenarios. You can assume that everything we do, the gaming side and things that integrate with other forms of entertainment, is going to get better and better and better. Certainly, there’s the idea that you’re going to want to share what I’ll call for lack of a better phrase your digital memories, whether that’s digital photos or digital video. You can think about sharing broadcast video. That’s going to be a richer scenario. Music is clearly a scenario that everyone is focused on. Certainly, Apple has done some good work there. But we’re still very early in the curve of what’s possible and what people want. The consumers we talk to in MSN or Xbox or the Windows team say music is a very essential part of what they do whether it’s on an Xbox or a PC or some other device. Communications turns out to be a very important scenario as well, whether that’s chat, messaging, blogging, telephony. All those things are important scenarios, and there will be things that Microsoft will be doing to deliver those. Now in some of those, we may be an infrastructure player, rather than a direct consumer player. There are tons of ways where software can play a role.
All of these scenarios I’ve just talked about require some hardware and some very cool software to enable them.”