According to industry sources, plans to produce CPUs for the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console on 65nm at Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing will be pushed back until the middle of 2007. In April 2006, Chartered announced that it had signed an agreement with Microsoft to manufacture CPUs for the Xbox 360 console on 65nm Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology starting in the first quarter of 2007. Chartered is already a major foundry partner for producing Microsoft's Xbox 360 CPUs on 90nm technology. Both companies declined to comment on the news.

In order to equal its rivals, Microsoft has decided to extend the warranty on the Xbox 360 from a mere 90 days to a more satisfactory one year, the general standard for most electrical appliances nowadays. The company has also decided to refund the cost of any repairs done in the last twelve months, which should be done automatically over the next ten weeks.

Back in August, we reported that Microsoft would let amateur game programmers have a go at making games for the Xbox360. Based on Visual C# 2005 Express Edition and Microsoft .NET framework, XNA Game Studio Express allows anyone running a computer with Windows XP to make Xbox360 games. Of course, for the games to actually run, the author has to be a member of the XNA Creators Club, which costs $99 a year through Xbox Live. Members of the XNA Creators Club get the ability to publish games on Xbox Live, forum support, and various assets. You can download Game Studio Express and the framework required from MSDN.

Microsoft has had a goal since the beginning of 2006 to sell 10 million consoles. A spokesperson for Microsoft said in a press release "This holiday, we expect to have sold in excess of 10 million units worldwide." By "sold", Microsoft refers to the amount of Xbox360s that it has shipped to retailers and OEMs. It should not be very difficult for Microsoft to achieve it's goal. They are already reporting that sales for Xbox360 are way higher then the Xbox's sales, and can sell about one million consoles a month.