Following Bill Gates' X-Box announcement at the Games Developers Conference on Friday, Future Gamer were asked to attend the official press briefing at the exclusive Bath Spa Hotel (Microsoft don't do anything by halves). After a quick coffee and Danish (thanks Bill, where was the caviar?), the attendant journos were ushered into the impressive Avon Suite, replete with crystal chandeliers and deep shag pile carpet. Our eyes, however, were firmly on the shiny chrome 'X' sat between two huge widescreen TVs. Could this be the fabled X-Box?
Andy Ashwin

Enter J Allard, General Manager of the X-Box platform and nine-year Microsoft employee. Allard oversees operating systems and online strategies, assuring us that the best gameplay over the Internet will be incorporated into the console.

"No, this is not how X-Box will look," he laughed. The imposing structure is apparently just a technology demonstration unit, containing essentially the same components as the console, only nowhere near as powerful. Microsoft slapped six of these futuristic units together for the GDC, hoping that the outlandish design would ensure that no-one could possibly take it to be the final model. "How would you fit this into a backpack and take it round to your friend's house?" he joked.

The codename 'X-Box' is a reference to the console's reliance on Microsoft's DirectX API, a set of instructions familiar to PC games developers worldwide. Allard insists that this will make the console easy to develop for. He showed us a demo, running on the shiny 'X' sculpture, of a fountain of sparks featuring stunning physics and lighting. This was "knocked up" by a particularly promising student in three days. Impressive stuff it was too, rendered in real-time, as demonstrated by Allard, who moved the point of view around using a Microsoft game pad. The flow and colour of the sparks was fully user-definable by pressing different buttons on the controller.