Graphics chip underdog ATI Technologies said Thursday it has signed a contract with Microsoft to produce components for future versions of the Xbox game console, beating out market leader Nvidia.

ATI said it entered a technology agreement with Microsoft to develop "custom, leading-edge graphics technologies" for the console.

This deal leaves me with two interrogants: What will happen with ATI's deal with Nintendo, or what will power Nintendo's next generation console. And the second, how backwards compatible will X-Box 2 be? Would sound simple since any chip ATI or NVIDIA develop are PC based however many X-Box games have used NVIDIA-only optimizations... but I guess they still have a lot of time to work on it anyway.

I hope it fails big time. lol. I'm pulling for Nintendo, I've owned every system they've ever made except the gb advance and gb sp. And supposedly their next system is going to be quite a bit different than what we are seeing in today's consoles.

I read something in my May issue (2003) of Game Informer that reads:

"ATI Technologies has struck a deal with Nintendoto produce a graphics chipset for future products. Currently, ATI makes the 'Flipper' chip used ni the GameCube"

So... that either means that this deeal is bunk now or they've got deals with both companies? I highly doubt that...

Thought you might be interested in this.

Looks like bad news, SNGX, according to this article at The Inquirer, Nintendo has suspended production of the Game Cube.

Yeh because they are putting all their effort into their new console, at least I think I read that somewhere.