The latest generations of our consoles are lacking a lot of power, with the Xbox 360 only having 512MB of RAM and the Playstation 3 only having 256MB. It is fair to say a new generation is needed, despite what some developers say will be a “tough transition”, given the immense amount of Xbox 360 and PS3 users.
Codenamed ‘Durango’, Microsoft are working on the next Xbox that should be available between late 2013 and mid-2014, depending on how fast they can ship the console.
Xbox Powerhouse
A new report from Xbox World says the next Xbox, the Xbox 720 as we’ve taken to calling it, will be a powerhouse of a console, beating most-every gaming desktop with incredible specs. These include a quad-core processing unit, and each core will be divided logically into another four cores, giving us a 16 core processing unit.
This will come with 8GB’s of RAM to smooth the whole gaming experience along. All of this will be specially developed by Microsoft to make gaming and entertainment an ease, without lag or poor game quality. We’ve recently see games like Skyrim not come to life as much as we would like on these ancient consoles.
There will likely be a dual core GPU, although reports are out saying that a quad core GPU may be on the Xbox. We are unsure, as most every desktop console only has one GPU and the ones that have dual core are very high tech. To have quad core GPU capabilities, Microsoft would have to enhance and develop the GPU’s to work very well together with the system and with each other.
Xbox Kinect
Kinect seemed to be in beta mode when first released, now both developers and Microsoft are working to enhance the system to work better with gamers. We’ve seen at E3 2012 and Gamescom 2012 how game developers are looking to make their game more Kinect compatible, either with motion or just voice.
“Kinect 2.0 will be able to track up to four players and is much more responsive” according to Xbox World. We have heard rumours that Kinect 2.0 will be inbuilt on the Xbox, with a small motion sensor and voice sensor on the outside of the console.
Other controllers will include the obvious Xbox 360 controller, although Microsoft may look to redesign it for better hand comfort. One of the features gamers really wanted to see back on the next console is the controller, as some don’t like the Kinect feel yet.
Augmented reality is one of those features that seems too futuristic to be coming to consoles next year, but we’ve seen Valve and Sony both show off virtual reality headsets. IGN went to Japan to see one Sony has developed. They said that while the headset was very heavy, it looked incredible and the experience really immersed you in what was real and what wasn’t.
With that in mind, that only the weight and tweaks on the design are needed, we may see Microsoft bring their own to market as an accessory to the console.
When is it coming?
We doubt it will be called Xbox 720, we’ve seen Xbox 8, Xbox Infinity or just possibly ‘Xbox’ as possible contenders. The console should be coming sometime in 2013, although we are unsure yet. It will be manufactured by Foxconn, we suspect, instead of home-made by Microsoft.
This might not be the cheapest console at launch, we suspect people will be forking out $600 – 1000 if specs are to be believed. Microsoft may do it cheaper but they will be cutting profits very thin if that is the case.