Dean Takahashi has written an article up at the Mercury News right now that purports to be "quietly circulated" specifications for the next version of Microsoft's gaming console, the Xbox. They can be boiled down to several points:

• Three PowerPC processors
• ATI graphics processor
• No hard drive
• DVD or Blu-Ray drive
• 256 Mb of RAM
• Possibly no backwards compatibility

I was considering a wry comment or two in this space about those specifications, but the commentary sooned drowned out the... information, if it can be called that, so I'll be posting that separately in Narc's Retorts.UPDATE: The Junkyard has pointed out a tidbit I didn't know about this article, namely that the writer, Dean Takahashi, is also the author of Opening the Xbox. While the subtitle of this volume, Inside Microsoft's Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution seems to indicate more than a small amount of partiality to the console, one would still think that Takahashi would be "in the know" about possible future Xbox specs, lending a bit more credibility to the story than it might otherwise have. Unfortunately, I still think that's bad news for the Xbox and its fans. Jake 'Evergreen98' Billo at The Junkyard also doesn't seem to think these are good ideas.