Microsoft, working with its CPU manufacturing partner, Chartered Semiconductor, looks to move the Xbox 360 CPU die-size to a 65nm process. The current Xbox 360 CPU is manufactured on a 90nm die, and through this reduction, Microsoft hopes to reduce heat expenditure, power utilization, and manufacturing cost. These kinds of moves will be important in the future to keep the costs of producing the Xbox 360 competitive, and is the kind of hardware change that never happened on the original Xbox. Microsoft needs to have better ownership of the hardware platform for the Xbox 360 so that they can continue to produce newer iterations of the hardware, similar to the way Sony has approached the PS2, and Nintendo has continued to tweak and update the Gameboy Advance.

Read More | Gamesindustry.biz