Microsoft Announces Xbox 360 Manufacturing Partners

Xbox 360 creator Microsoft has announced that electronic manufacturing service firms Celestica, Flextronics and Wistron will handle the manufacturing side of the Xbox 360 next-generation platform, which, according to the company, remains on track for a global launch this Christmas in North America, Europe and Japan. "It's an honour to have the expertise and support of three of the world's best-in-class manufacturing companies as we move into the next-generation with Xbox 360," said Corporate Vice President of Xbox Product Group, Todd Holmdahl. "With three contract manufacturers on board, we're poised to have the flexibility and efficiencies we need to keep up with the consumer demand for the world's most powerful next-generation platform." Flextronics and Wistron are existing partners from the first iteration of Xbox, while the relationship between Celestica and Microsoft is newly formed. All three plants are located in the Pearl River Delta region in Southern China. Rival firm Sony has not yet formally announced any manufacturing partners for the PlayStation 3, although it has announced that it is putting significant investment into factories to mass produce its next-generation Cell chip, a small but vital part of the PS3 setup, which needs specialized new facilities to fabricate the CPU's 65-nanometer processing technology on 300-millimeter silicon wafers. Additional information from the official Microsoft news release specifically calls out the territories that will receive an Xbox 360 launch in 2006, with those countries being Australia, Colombia, Hong Kong, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan.