According to The Taiwan Economic News, the first 65 nm GPUs for Xbox 360 are leaving production lines. Xbox 360’s using the 65 nm technology are expected to ship this August. Also there are rumors that a “mid-cycle refresh of the Xbox 360″ should come in the fall of 2009. The Xbox 540, as it is being called, will use the Valhalla chip. The Vahalla chip is believed to be of a “system-on-a-chip design” allowing the console to fit into a slim case.

The Xbox 360 is scheduled to ship in an “all 65 nm” package (Jasper platform) this August. Consumers won’t notice the refresh, unless Microsoft decides to put a Blu-ray drive into the Xbox 360. We were not able to receive a confirmation either way, and we keep digging to find out if the Asustek subsidiary Pegatron will manufacture regular Xbox 360’s or units with an integrated Blu-ray drive. In any case, Celestica, Pegatron and Wistron will have a busy summer cranking out millions of refreshed Xbox 360 consoles.A more dramatic and perhaps visible change will happen next year: TSMC plans to begin producing the Valhalla chip, which will be the foundation of the mid-cycle refresh of the Xbox 360, thus called ‘Xbox 2.5’ or simply ‘Xbox 540’ (360+180), in fall of 2009. We learned that this new chip is apparently much more than a die-shrink and end up as a system-on-a-chip design. This change is likely to enable to redesign the Xbox 360 casing and go towards a slim-design, much like what Sony did with the Gen1 and Gen2 PS2. We believe that TSMC will use a 45 nm process for this Multi-Chip-Module package (CPU+GPU+eDRAM).

There are also some interesting pieces of information that Microsoft is shopping for a more efficient cooling solution – efficient in more ways than just one: Several people close to the cooling industry told us that Microsoft approached them and asked for better and cheaper cooling than what is used in the Xbox 360 right now. Some may claim that the current Xbox 360 cooler design is already as cheap as it gets, but we have no doubts that Microsoft will find a way to drop the cost once again.

by counterstrikesource

Sales tracking group NPD has announced the results of a new gaming study, showing that 72 percent of the U.S. say they played games, online play still lagging behind offline, and an overwhelming minority owning more than one next-gen system.

NPD says the number of game-players has grown from its last study, up from 64 percent the year prior. More than half of that 72 percent, says NPD play games online, but relative to “total U.S. population,” online gamers have only risen slightly from 40 percent in 2007 to 42 percent.

90 percent of online gamers said the PC was their platform of choice, compared to 19 percent for console and portable systems, and 3 percent for cell phones. Younger players make up a good percentage of online players, with 40 percent of online gamers between 2 and 17, with 18-24 year olds only making up 10 percent.

As for online console players, 50 percent were Xbox 360 gamers, who spent the most time per week playing online compared to PC and PS3 owners. Finally, NPD says only three percent of respondents said they owned two of the three next-gen consoles, and only 2 percent said they owned all three.

Said NPD analyst Anita Frazier, “Despite the buzz in the industry regarding online gaming, it is still relatively small compared to offline gaming. There is still a large, untapped market for gaming in general and online gaming in particular.”

via Brandon Boyer - LINK

The Blu-ray 2.0 spec (or BD-Live) is just days from launch. Sony just announced that the next PlayStation3 firmware updated — v2.20 — will add the new interactive features to your PS3. As such, PS3 owners should expect downloadable video content, ringtones, interactive movie-based games, and the always intriguing “more” when the software is released in “late March.” In other words, in the next 11 days. The update will also allow you to copy photos and music playlists over USB from your PS3 to your PSP. The rest of the new features after the break.

– “Resume play” will enable PS3 system to start playing a Blu-ray disc
and DVD at the point it was stopped, even if the disc had been
removed.(*1)
– “Audio Output Device” will be a new Remote Play setting, enabling PSP
to serve as a remote control for music played through PS3.
– PS3 system’s Internet browser will be enhanced: Video files directly
linked from a Web page will be able to be streamed, and the browser’s
view speed will be improved.
– DivX and WMV format videos that are larger than 2GB will be playable.
– “Mosquito Noise Reduction” will be added as an AV setting in the
control panel of the DVD/BD player for improved movie playback.(*2)

*1 BD-J format disc is not supported.
*2 BD discs recorded with BDMV format are not supported.

 by materials of: http://www.engadget.com/