Dean Takahashi from the San Jose Mercury News is a journalist who prides himself of getting exclusive news from within the gaming industry. He was the guy who first broke the news that Microsoft were working on the 'Falcon' Xbox 360, the console which featured the first 65-nanometer chip.

Now Takahashi brings news that Microsoft have another revised console up their sleeves, codenamed Jasper.

Takahashi says that the console will launch next August and will incorporate an ATI 65-nanometer graphics chip, in addition to smaller memory chips.Of course, this should mean a cost reduction in the manufacturing process, which in turn will be passed on to the customer, just like it was when the distribution of Falcon began. As Takahashi says 'If you recall, after it (Microsoft) got Falcon out the door, Microsoft cut $50 off the price of the Xbox 360.'

From his blog:
I don’t know why it will take Microsoft essentially three years to cost reduce the size of the graphics chip through a manufacturing shrink. It doesn’t seem like they’re in a hurry to launch a redesigned Xbox 360 graphics chip, considering that Intel introduced its first 65-nm chips a long time ago. ATI uses TSMC to make its chips out of Taiwan, and TSMC hasn’t been the fastest at moving to 65-nm manufacturing. I understand these tasks are difficult and they take a lot of engineering resources. Microsoft has had to divert a lot of engineers to debugging problems with Xbox 360 reliability. Even so, you would think that they would have moved faster, since the move to 65-nm graphics chip will likely be one of the best things they can do to improve the reliability.

Check out Takahashi's findings at his Mercury News blog.