Littlebigman pointed out GameSpot's latest Rumor Control column, that sports purported images of the Xbox 360's controllers that seem consistent with the partials seen at ourcolony.net. (Mini-editorial: For all the ribbing Microsoft took for the original "Duke" Xbox controllers, I grew to like them, not for their bulk, but for their button layout.

SPOnG has a story speculating that the on-again, off-again adventure game Kameo will be released finally on the Xbox 2 rather than the Xbox. More surprisingly, it claims that it was ported to the new console by Rare only six weeks after they received their first Xenon development kits, and that they could have done it even faster.

(Could this give credence to rumors of Halo 2.5 for Xbox 2 as a launch title? Only the Shadow knows --Ed.)

Eurogamer has a story quoting Shane Kim at Microsoft Game Studios that the Xbox's most popular franchises, including Halo, Fable amd Project Gotham Racing, will be making their way onto the next console:

"Without giving away all the surprises we have in store, gamers that love franchises like Halo, Fable, and Project Gotham Racing can safely assume we will continue to invest in them as we move into the next generation."

Spong, featuring a new Googlified logo, put up a story late last night (so it's not an April Fool's joke, at least not a fair one) that says the Xbox 2 will have downloadable demo content right at launch.

In other news:

SPOnG has a story that claims retail channels are being told that current Xbox hardware is being phased out; Major Nelson denies this in his blog, saying that shortages of Xbox hardware in the retail channel are due to the popularity of the console.

Eurogamer has a story that indicates it may be possible to "customize" your Xbox 2-- or at least for Microsoft to custom-tailor the console different geographical regions:

"We have ways, we have ideas. Look at cell phones," Microsoft VP J Allard told trade publication MCV. "You can have snap-on faceplates, you can change the skin and the batteries, and you can change the ringtones. I think we need to have a global foundation, and then personalise within region."

Voodoo Extreme wonders whether Xbox demand is really as high as Microsoft says, or whether supply is being restrained in anticipation of the sequel's release. Only the Shadow knows.

SPOnG is reporting that they're now convinced that the name of Microsoft's second-iteration gaming console will be Xbox 360, having apparently gotten the information from a mole in a focus group that met yesterday in London. The group wasn't there to choose the name itself, but to choose among these possible slogans:

IGN has an article up entitled Everything You Wanted to Know About the Xbox 2, with nary a mention of Bungie or the Halo series. They believe that MS plans to have as many as 40 titles out within 2-3 months of the new console's launch. (However, there's little doubt that without Bungie's Halo, the original console would not even have fared as well as it did. What is Bungie cooking up for the new box, and when could it possibly be ready? --Ed.)

[image:9123 align=left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Joystiq points to a page at Engadget showing an image that purports to be a leaked picture of Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 2, codenamed "Xenon" but that its sources say is actually a decoy.

The Game Developers Conference has kicked off with J. Allard's keynote address, and the web is atwitter with news about Microsoft's next console, despite the machine itself not yet making an appearance. Here are a few links to items floating through the ethernet at the moment:

More Xbox 2 specs, this time from GDC through GameSpy via Voodoo Extreme. The upshot? A triple-cored PPC, 256Mb of total memory, optional hard drive, 720p standard output and a new 500Mhz GPU. Yowza. Apparently part 2 of this series is due tomorrow.

In other news:

Just as other sites (DailyGame, TeamXbox, SPOnG) are picking up the same rumor promulgated by a quote of Microsoft's J.

Microsoft's J. Allard commented rather off-handedly, in an article about the size of Microsoft Game Studios, that Bungie will double in size (currently 65 people) in order to work on the "next installment" of Halo. Thanks Louis Wu at HBO. (Remember, though, Allard isn't technically Bungie, even if Bungie is technically Microsoft --Ed.)