As if to underscore some of the points in the recently rumored Xbox 2 specifications, Eurogamer has put up an article showing that the Xbox's lead over Nintendo's GameCube in Europe is still healthy, although both lag far behind top dog Sony and their PlayStation 2.

What is of concern is that when the figures for North America and Japan are taken into account, the Xbox is actually third in worldwide installed base, after Sony and Nintendo. Taking this in the context of the possibility that the next generation Xbox may not have backwards compatibility, and the idea emerges that perhaps Microsoft will dispense with its current installed base and target a different segment of the console market with a radically different machine than the first iteration. It might make sense of the completely different specifications seen-- namely, multiple PowerPC processors, ATI video gear, and no hard drive.

This might economically make sense, but it certainly doesn't seem to reward those early adopters who took a chance on Microsoft's first foray into console gaming, who may now be asked to make that choice again while faced with having to abandon their own game libraries-- including Halo and Halo 2-- in order to keep up with current hardware come 2005.