Not sure if this info is already mentioned somewhere, but saw this on an MSN article:

Xbox Next Details Emerge

Microsoft uses Game Developers Conference to outline its next generation console plans.

Todd Mowatt

Earlier today at the Game Developers Conference being held in San Francisco, Microsoft Corp. announced the very first public details about what gamers and developers can expect from the successor to the Xbox.

Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Chief XNA Architect J Allard outlined the company's next generation vision for the future of entertainment as they see it.

Allard cited the emergence of the High Definition (HD) Era in video games fueled by consumer demand for new gaming experiences and how they are connected and will be highly personalized moving forward.

‘In the HD Era the platform is bigger than the processor,’ Allard said. ‘New technology and emerging consumer forces will come together to enable the rock stars of game development to shake up the old establishment and redefine entertainment as we know it.’

Microsoft hopes to help developers building on 10-years of innovation that they have pioneered with the DirectX API, the Microsoft Windows and Xbox platforms.

Illustrating what that means for gamers, Allard shared the first details about the next-generation Xbox guide. Persistent across all games and media experiences, the guide will be an entertainment gateway that instantly connects players to their games, their friends and their digital media.

Features of the guide include will include: Gamer Cards. Gamer Cards will provide gamers with a quick look at key Xbox Live information. They will let players instantly connect with people who have similar skills, interests and lifestyles.

Microsoft plans on creating an online Marketplace that will be browseable by game, by genre, and in a number of other ways. The Marketplace will provide a one-stop shop for consumers to acquire episodic content, new game levels, maps, weapons, vehicles, skins and new community-created content.

Microsoft is also hoping to be able to break down barriers of small-ticket online commerce, micro-transactions will allow developers and the gaming community to charge as little as they like for content they create and publish on the Marketplace.

Gamers will be able to purchase new content. The possibilities are endless, but think of being able to buy a one-of-a-kind, fully tricked-out racing car to be the envy of your gaming buddies for as little as 99 cents.

The next-generation Xbox platform will allow gamers to build custom play lists. This feature will eliminate the need for developers to support custom music in games. The guide instantly connects players to their music so they can listen to their own tracks while playing all their favorite next-generation Xbox games.

Typifying the HD Era game experience, the guide requires hardware designed with software in mind. System-level features of the guide such as custom play lists, the Xbox Live Friends list and voice chat are enabled at the chip level, liberating developers to focus on creating games, not developing for technical certification requirements (TCRs). To support consumer demands for the HD Era, the next-generation Xbox is designed around key principles that let developers maximize real performance, using concepts they are already familiar with.

The next-generation Xbox hardware design will offer gamers a well-balanced system that will deliver more than a teraflop of targeted computing performance.

The core of the system will feature a multi-core processor architecture co-developed with IBM Corp. that provides developer headroom and flexibility for the HD Era -A custom-designed graphics processor co-developed with ATI Technologies Inc. designed for HD era games and entertainment applications.

Microsoft is hoping to create some momentum with gamers and to deliver unprecedented game play experiences with a new console that will deliver a leap in high-definition graphics, multi-channel, positional audio fidelity so clear and precise that gamers will be able to hear footsteps and ambient noises in front of them as well as behind them as they play their favorite games.

To enhance the services and experiences offered by its Xbox Live service, the next-generation Xbox will build on the online component that Microsoft has created with its games. Gamers will be able to enjoy richer and a more robust online communications system on the new platform.

As always there are a lot of things floating around about the Xbox Next, but we will keep you posted and deliver you the facts on all of the new platforms as information becomes available.