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Valhalla, Festivus, MS L33T, Chinese New Year and Xbox 360
I just want to point out that the Valhalla Xbox 360 is probably a year or so after the Jasper Xbox 360. After Jasper is out the door Valhalla is the next big thing for the Xbox 360 hardware team. If Jasper is going to be out in time for the holiday shopping season in October/November 2008 then Valhalla might be under the Festivus pole in 2009 at the earliest.
I could see waiting to get a Jasper Xbox 360 in fall of 2008 but waiting until Valhalla is just plain nuts, I mean the good games are out there now. The unified CPU/GPU super chips are currently only in the early stages of the design process. Currently Valhalla only exists on the "white boards" so to speak. They probably are using Microsoft Surface or Tablet PCs for their "white boards". They should invite me over to Redmond and take a tour of their new offices and I'll let you know what they have on the walls of their meeting rooms.
For the record I don't think that the development of Jasper, Opus and Vahlalla had any impact on their supply problems keeping Falcon based Xbox 360s in store shelves. My theory is the supply shortage of Xbox 360s might be from the Chinese New Year vacations and all the Chinese assembly plant workers had the week off to play Halo and eat moon cakes. I am dead serious check the calendar dates and compare to the shortages. Chinese New Year is as big a really deal in Asia could affect production at the factories. It could just be as simple as the holiday break slowed production and the demand for Xboxes surpassed the supply. Happy Year of the Rat!
Joystiq sez..
"With the list of Xenon, Zephyr, Falcon, Jasper, Opus and Valhalla motherboards we only have one question for Microsoft. Who the hell names these systems and how much do they get paid? While it might be easier just to number the various generations of hardware, we figure Microsoft has a strange love for naming things so they all sound like maps in Halo 3. Note: While Jake doesn't actually count the Opus when listing the generations, we have, for the sake of argument."
Opus is a major side project and is technically not really a "next" generation Xbox 360 since it does not have a new CPU or GPU. But it's way better than a RRODed and then supposedly fixed reanimated Xenon motherboard.
The names are usually from the project managers in the Xbox teams, I guess Robbie Bach has the final say but these names are never meant for public consumption. These are names to be thrown around in internal meetings and such. You will probably never ever hear the words Opus and Valhalla from official Microsoft PR sources. Also sometimes they shorten them to Xe, Ze, Fn, and then probably Js, Op and Ve but that's internal meeting stuff. So if you want to be very Ms L33t use the two letter abbreviations. Hardware nerds love to abreviate things and talk in codes.
By the way I have found no evidence of there ever being a Xbox 360 with a integrated HD-DVD drive. Microsoft is quite happy to sell you an external HD-DVD drive for as long as the HD-DVD format lasts (here is another hint. It’s not that long). There might have been plans for an Xbox 360 with an internal HD-DVD drive as some point but the plans are quite dead. Besides Microsoft makes a lot of money selling external accessories and it makes sense financially for them to keep it external. Basically if it was going to happen I would have uncovered it when I found out about Opus and Vahlalla.
I do know some secret project codenames for some gaming accessories that they are working on. Expect to hear about some new Xbox 360 accessories by E3 Expo and PAX. The Xbox 360 accessory market has been very good to them so you can expect more stuff to plug into your Xbox (or wirelessly connect to).
Now Microsoft is working on their IPTV system for Xbox 360 and it's going to bedone in software or a breakout external box that plugs into the 360 via the USB ports in some markets like with British Telecom. It will let the 360 be used as a digital TV tuner if your local tv provider supports it and is broadcasting IPTV. So if they ever do an "Xbox Ultimate" it will be a hardware bundle and not new motherboard design.
Microsoft is going to keep the Xbox 360 platform around until long after the third generation "Xbox 720" comes out. There is almost no possibility of Microsoft management canning the Xbox project since they moved the Xbox/Zune/Devices team into a big new office and have been hiring people like mad. For Microsoft platforms like Zune and Xbox allows them to be major players in the media entertainment markets of the 21st century and more importantly for them it allows there to be significant Microsoft based competition to the likes of Sony, Nintendo and Apple. The money they spend on Xbox and Zune prevents there being complete non-Microsoft dominance in the world of digital entertainment.
They are in way too deep for them to realistically end the Xbox and Microsoft is dead serious about opening up other markets besides PCs and that means hardware platforms like Surface, Sync, Zune and Xbox.
Update : The new Microsoft campus that will house the Xbox Team will not be open until early 2009 and it will have a pub/bar. I read that last bit on Todd Bishop's Microsoft blog.
Jake at February 15, 2008 
Games
