The next Xbox will ship to retailers in late October or early November of next year with six times the processing power of the Xbox 360, sources close to the project have told IGN. Following initial reports from tech blogs Fudzilla and SemiAccurate, our sources have confirmed that mass production of the system's GPU will indeed begin by the end of 2012 but will not, however, be based on AMD's 7000 series Southern Islands GPU. Instead, the processor will be derived from the 6000 series, which was introduced last year. More specifically, it will be akin to the Radeon HD 6670, which offers support for DirectX11, multidisplay output, 3D and 1080p HD output. The chip currently has a market price of upwards of $79.99.
In real terms, the Xbox 720's raw graphics processing power is expected to be six times that of the Xbox 360 and will yield 20-percent greater performance than Nintendo's forthcoming console, the Wii U.
Developers are likely to receive development kits based on the system's final configuration in August. Projected pricing for the console was not provided.
Thanks to IGN for the quick write up!
Rumor: Next Xbox contains Blu-ray, anti-used system
An industry source has told Kotaku that Microsoft’s next Xbox will contain Blu-ray as its disc technology, and that it’ll introduce Kinect 2; and that it’s to contain some kind of anti-used game technology. Such support would be a substantial data storage upgrade over 360′s current DVD model, which can only support up to 9Gb max. Blu-ray, on the other hand, can support up to 25Gb on a single-layer disc, and up to 50Gb on dual-layer. Previous rumors peg the system to also ship with DVR functionality. The source from the Kotaku report implied that Microsoft plans to incorporate an anti-used game application into the next Xbox. However, information on how such a scheme would be administered is unknown at this time. Another chatterer has told Kotaku the next-generation of Kinect sensors will ship with the console, and that motion sensor will contain its own on-board processor – tech which was originally planned for the first iteration of Kinect. The firm is also supposedly making the controller smaller than the one used with Xbox 360. Add all of these rumors to yesterday’s, which stated the next Xbox would contain six times the processing power of 360, and you have a broader picture of what “Xbox 720″ is rumored to include under the hood. Maybe.
Source: http://www.vg247.com/2012/01/25/rumor-next-xbox-to-contain-blu-ray-anti-used-game-system/
