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SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA--Microsoft Chair Bill Gates took a few shots at Sony and wowed the crowd of game developers and enthusiasts here Friday, as he unveiled Microsoft's X-Box game console, which won't ship for more than a year.

Microsoft tried to make Sony's PlayStation 2 seem like old news even before its fall U.S. debut. The rival system shipped in Japan this week.

Microsoft's device won't be ready until fall 2001, but the first public display of the silver, X-shaped prototype showed impressive power at rendering video playback. Microsoft gave no game-playing demonstration. However, from butterflies in a beautiful Japanese garden to a buxom Lara Croft-esque warrior and her trained battle droid doing martial-arts moves, each animated scene highlighted the X-Box's capability to render shadows and realistic movement. The demo drew "wows" from the game-savvy crowd.

After one demonstration, Gates remarked, "Not bad for a calculator." It was an obvious dig at Nobuyuki Idei, Sony president and chief executive officer, who implied that PCs are "dinosaurs" during the prerelease hype for the PlayStation.

Neither would Gates reveal the X-Box's price tag, saying only it would be priced "like a gaming console." The Sega Dreamcast made its U.S. debut at $199, and the Sony PlayStation, $299. The PlayStation 2 is shipping in Japan at $370.

Microsoft's final demo displayed a popular boxing character as he appears in a current game, and how he'll appear in an X-Box version. The demonstration showed the machine's graphics power, and highlighted one of the important alliances Microsoft has already formed in the gaming world.

Serious Hardware

In addition to Microsoft's impressive list of game developer allies, Gate revealed some details about the box's notable hardware set. They include some firsts for any game console.

Its processor will be Intel Pentium III technology and will run at 600MHz. The graphics processor will be co-designed by graphics card vendor NVidia and runs at 300MHz. The X-Box will have 64MB of high-speed DDR memory. It will have a 4X DVD player that can play back DVD movies, four game controller ports, USB ports, and an Ethernet port (for broadband support); a modem will be optional. Most notable: X-Box will include a built-in 8GB hard drive.

No other game console offers a hard drive, and it will enable fast access to large amounts of data, Gates says. It will also let you download trial versions of games from the Internet, a function available only to PC gamers now.