The Inquirer is reporting that official, final Xbox 2 development kits are set to ship early next year, upgrading the current PowerMac G5 + Radeon 9800 kits to something using ATI’s R500 graphic chipset. That means two things: the Xbox 2 hardware should use R500-class hardware (duh) and the R500 is pretty close to being locked and loaded, meaning we could reasonable expect a new Radeon video card using the chipset around the same time next year.
On a related note, it looks like Nvidia has confirmed to stockholders that the Playstation 3 will launch in Spring of 2006 for Japan and Winter of 2006 for the west. This isn’t hugely surprising, but it’s the first semi-official nod I’d seen.
Xbox 2 developer’s kit arrives for Mac [TheInquirer]
Playstation 3 to arrive spring 2006 In Japan [TheInquirer]
