Neowin.net

While reading an article over at The Inquirer I followed a link they supplied to an online store where I was amazed to see Intels declaration of war on AMD's CPU line

Example: AMD

ATHLON MP 1.5GHZ DESKTOP PROCESSOR $216.95
ATHLON MP 1.6GHZ DESKTOP PROCESSOR $249.95
ATHLON MP 1.8GHZ DESKTOP PROCESSOR $349.95

Example: Intel

PENTIUM 4 1.7GHZ W/128MB RDRAM 256K $266.95
PENTIUM 4 1.7GHZ W/256MB RDRAM 256K $299.95
PENTIUM 4 PROC 1.8GHZ 256K/400MHZ FSB $294.95
PENTIUM 4 PROC 1.9GHZ 256K/400MHZ FSB $429.95

would you look at that, Intel cheaper than AMD, I thought I'd never live to see the day. It isnt much cheaper, but hey!

News source: NECX Direct.com online store

``We're big supporters of the creative concept on a console and that people can have a broad range of content, but we also believe that parents should have the right tools to be able to keep track of and manage what their kids are playing,'' Bach said.

Xbox developers have been working on the control for months, and it was not adopted because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he said, although he and others in the gaming industry have made slight modifications to their combat-oriented games following the attacks.

Neither of Microsoft's chief competitors, Sony and Nintendo (news - web sites), offer parental controls on their game consoles, although Sony's PlayStation 2 (news - web sites) has a password-controlled parental block on the DVD player add-on.

Microsoft initially is marketing its system at 15- to 25-year-old ``hard-core gamers'' - those who will be wowed by realistic graphics and are old enough to deal with violent content. Bach said some of Xbox's games will be violent enough to warrant a ``mature'' rating.

But P.J. McNealy, an analyst with Gartner G2, said the parental control may help Microsoft compete with Nintendo when it tries to appeal to a younger audience.

``Nintendo has traditional been the family friendly console,'' McNealy said. ``They used to be the safe choice: no matter what kids bought for Nintendo, parents didn't have to worry. And this helps (Microsoft) set up to battle for that space.''

Microsoft may also be trying to reassure parents concerned about Xbox's realistic graphics, McNealy said.

``Given the fact that graphics around these games are getting much more realistic and things like the violence levels could be much more graphically portrayed, it's not a huge surprise that they're doing this,'' he said.