Microsoft: Blue-Tinted Xbox 360 for Game Developers

The software giant Microsoft, recently unveiled its new blue-tinted Xbox 360 dev kit at this week's Game Developer Conference - GDC 2009. And this kit will be available to game developers this summer.

The new Xbox has an awesome black-and-blue tint finish and is fitted with some new etchings. It has an one GB of RAM - twice what's standard in the current retail version. For the time being, this is a developer-only kit, but may be Microsoft has plans to release some stylized player models as well.

Developer's kit are created to emphasized function over form - they can often look bland or skeletal. Inside the new Xbox, there’s no word on what size the hard drive will be; developers could easily make use of a larger hard drive, or even a second HDD. Also, the extra memory may not be as generous as it appears, given that “debug” code is significantly larger than finished “release” code. The extra RAM may just be enough to cover the overhead of the development package. Also, some programmers have been itching for a Blu-Ray – an unlikely possibility, given that the technology is proprietary to Sony, Microsoft’s direct competitor in the console market.

Such upgrade will serve well for developers, making it easier for them to tweak their software.