Microsoft will spend half a million dollars for the extravagant launching of the second generation of Xbox consoles. The host of the show will be Elijah Wood, alias Frodo from Lord Of the Rings.

The investment represents one of the smartest marketing moves made by software giant, considering that MTV has the same target as Xbox and the audience of the four channels amounts to 87 million viewers. Even before the beginning of transmission of the event, the marketing plan is starting to pay off, all the IT media talking about the original partnership chosen by Microsoft.

The war of the two consoles began with the presentation of the second version of Xbox. Although Microsoft has denied the rumors appeared in the last days about the configuration of the console, now, all the information posted by many sources have been confirmed.

In other words, Microsoft will offer a performance monster: three 3.2Ghz IBM PowerPC processors, 500MHz ATI GPU, 48 billion shader operations per second, 20GB detachable hard disk and 3 USB ports. The console will support the following supports: DVD-video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD+R, CD-DA, CD-R, WMA CD, MP3 CD, Jpeg photo CD. One of the biggest surprises for gamers is the possibility to wireless control the console, and for the ones interested in the console’s design, Microsoft will offer the possibility of changing the frontal panels.

For now, it is unknown if the games created for the Xbox will be playable on the 360 model. It seems Microsoft is interested to offer this feature, but it faces technical difficulties.