Reuters says the rumor is from ATI, and is spreading from there, although microsoft has not said anything about it.
nVidia got a huge boost to their stock prices a few weeks ago, when microsoft announced their intentions to use the nv35 in the new xbox. Their stock shot up 29% in one day, and it continued to make headway for the last 3 weeks. Today it is down 7% trading at about 25 dollars per share. ATI is at about 7 dollars a share, and up about 7%. The Reuters article directly referenced the xbox2, and said the rumor also stated that microsoft dumped nVidia.
Im not gonna get too excited and sell all my nVidia stock based on a rumor. If it is true, then I would think it would be interesting having 2 gaming consoles using the same hardware.
On the other hand, keep in mind that ATI does not currently have a complete platform like nVidia. nVidia doesnt just build a graphics chip for the xbox, they build the WHOLE platform. Xbox just provides a bios, a hard drive, and a case. Well, they manufacture it somewhere too, but last I checked, ATI didnt have a motherboard chipset with high end sound and controllers built in. If microsoft is turning to them, then either ATI is going to break into the mobo market like nVidia did during production of the xbox, or MS will be using multiple sources and piecing the system together, which will definately up costs. So the rumor sounds unreasonable, but then again, MS was selling xbox's for a year at a loss of 80 dollar per unit, just to get into the market. Who knows where they will take it from here.
Perp