Speaking amid the familiar setting of the Redmond campus, an at ease Steve Ballmer has - in his usual brash style - been delivering even more hyperbole than usual concerning the 2. Responding to questions from the audience, the CEO first addressed a question about his thoughts on the new system, stating it was 'unbelievable', before qualifying "the graphics, what it can do, the way things look, huge innovation. Rumours are that we'll see that product sometime soon. I couldn't comment, of course, on those rumours. But it's an amazing, amazing innovation."

Next, Ballmer was posed a question on how numero two will fair against the competition; to which his response was less than understated: "I think we're going to blow by with our next box. I absolutely think we're going to kick their backsides, so to speak. I think Xbox 1 has been a fantastic product. We're not market leaders yet. There's Sony, there's us, there's Nintendo. When we get Xbox 2 in the market, there's going to be Xbox and the other guys." A man of self-effacing charm, there...

Finally, and in response to a question asking 'why' the Xbox 2 would topple Sony, Ballmer replied with two fundamentals - the first being that third-parties will be enlisted to provide the best games for the system, the second being that Microsoft will create top games to show off the system: "What is 'Halo 2?' It's the greatest video game ever written. It shows off Xbox 1, and we've got some more games coming that will be the greatest video games ever written, and they'll show off Xbox 2."

So we haven't learnt much new, but Ballmer's confidence is bounteous and I can't help feel that Sony and perhaps even more so must be rather unnerved by the man - and his firm's - tenaciousness. With a release rumoured at the end of 2005, the next-generation console war could well begin sooner rather than later.

By Luke Guttridge