EARLY shipments of the new Xbox 360 are likely to sell exclusively to hardcore games players, but Microsoft’s ambitions stretch far beyond this lucrative niche market.

Just as Sony’s PlayStation 2 console helped to popularise the DVD format by being able to play games and films, the Xbox 360 is designed as a "digital hub". It not only plays audio CDs and DVDs (and games) but also accesses music or video content from a computer or camera (or even an Apple iPod) for playback on a television screen or home hi-fi.

Perhaps its most impressive feature is price. Two versions will be sold in Britain. For £209.99, buyers get a console and wired game controller. Most people, however, will go for the package at £279.99 that also has a removeable hard disk. At about twice the price of PlayStation 2, the Xbox 360 arrives barely two months after Sony’s PlayStation Portable, this Christmas’s other "must-have" gadget.

Xbox 360 is really a powerful mini-computer designed to handle graphics with a smoothness until now found only on PCs costing about £2,000. It derives its processing power from IBM PowerPC chips — similar to those, ironically, that power the computers of Microsoft’s great rival, Apple.

In introducing the Xbox 360 now, Microsoft has stolen a march on Sony, whose PlayStation 3 is unlikely to arrive in Britain before the summer. If the early Xbox 360 games live up to the technical promise of the console, pressure will be on Sony to produce something demonstrably superior. Let battle commence.

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