So with the graphics and sound well and truly catered for, system memory was next on the agenda. "We asked developers how much RAM they wanted," said Allard. "Some said a gigabyte or two, others really went for it and reckoned a terrabyte would do just fine. We had to consider the end user and, in particular, how to keep the price competitive, so we opted for 64Mb with a unified memory architecture." Don't worry if you didn't understand that last bit - neither did we.

Allard explained that a typical console's memory is divided into graphics, sound and CPU, so a 32Mb system would maybe comprise 8Mb graphics memory, 4Mb sound and 20Mb CPU. Microsoft's 'unified memory architecture' leaves developers free to assign memory as they see fit, depending on the type of game. For example, a first-person shooter would probably have the majority of memory dedicated to textures, whereas a driving game would need a lot of memory set aside for realistic physics. This flexibility should make for a wide variety of game genres on X-Box, unlike previous consoles that have had to specialise due to architectural constraints. You'd never see GoldenEye or Zelda on PlayStation, in the same way that an N64 version of Gran Turismo could never work.

Some prospective developers were initially baffled by Microsoft's inclusion of an 8Gb hard disk. Allard told us that "some of the big console developers were concerned about a console with persistent memory [a hard disk]. However, a month later, after they had time to think about it, they returned with renewed enthusiasm." An unnamed developer was excited by the possibility of using the hard disk as extra (virtual) memory. Allard went on to give us a far more exciting scenario...