Code-Name Falcon

Falcon is the name for the latest international electronics in the Xbox 360. It will have an IBM microprocessor and an AMD/ATI graphics chip that are manufacturedin a 65-nanometer production process. These are cost reduced chips that do the same thing as their 90-nanometer predecessors, but they're smaller.

With smaller chips, Microsoft gets a bunch of benefits. They won't generate as much heat. So the risks of overheating-one of the main reasons behind Microsoft's billion-dollar write-off repairs and extended warranties-are much lower. The chips may also cost half of what it took them before because they use less material and fewer manufacturing steps to produce.

So what do you guys think? Will this increase the sales of 360's? Will this reduce the risk of overheating?

I think they should have done this from the start, NOW they tell us, it almost makes me mad beings that my 360 is a much older model, I feel kinda ripped off, they launch these slightly defictive models from the beginning, and then turn around and make better ones? what a bunch of crap!! Oh well, I guess its a good thing for all the people who waited.lethal18

Technology always moves on. If MS had waited for the 65nm CPUs to be ready "from the start", the 360 would be released this fall instead of being launchedalmost two wholeyears ago.

MS has acknowledged the problem with 360s overheatingand they have taken these steps to fix it. Now if your 360 dies you will get a better, more reliable 360 with the unprecedented three year warranty that MS voluntarily gave its customers as an act of goodwill. You complain that MS go and "turn around and make better ones" but isn't that better than MS never fixing the problem and continually replacing broken consoles with defective ones that are just as likely to fail? I think it is.

If MS hadn't issued the three year warranty, then early adopters like us would have a right to complain when our 360s failed out of warranty, but MS has covered us. My 360 was built in December 2005 and I have never had a problem with it apart from the occasional freeze up. However, mine is definitely a high-risk 360 and I expect the RRoD to happen soon. When it does, my console either gets upgraded (for free) to stop the problem ever happening again, or I get a brand new 360 with the Falcon chipset and HDMI support (for free). I'm sorry, but after two years of some of the best games I have ever played, I just can't bring myself to complain about that.