Xbox 720 design doc leaks?

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Mr Bean
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Xbox 720 design doc leaks?

Post by Mr Bean »

Joystick
Joystick wrote:A lengthy business document purportedly sourced back to Microsoft showed up on Scribd yesterday, containing a flood of potential details about an "Xbox 720." For starters, the 56-page document claims the next-generation Xbox will launch in 2013 for $299, alongside the "Kinect V2." The doc also claims it'll come packed with Blu-ray functionality and be able to play game that are "4x - 6x" better looking than Xbox 360. If only it could promise the game themselves would be 4x - 6x better!

Beyond the stuff you'd expect, the document also claims Microsoft has Augmented Reality glasses in the works named "Fortaleza" (presumably built at Brazil-based Innovation Center Fortaleza) – the document claims we won't see through MS' AR until some time in 2014, post-console launch. Additionally, it claims the "Xbox 720" will have some form of "always on" functionality, as well as the ability to run apps at the same time (read: multitasking).

Now before you go getting all excited, you should probably know that this document surfaced in some form back in early May on Nukezilla. Moreover, even if it's totally legit, the document itself appears to be rather old – dating back to August 2010 at least. That said, some of the info detailed in the document has since been announced by Microsoft (most notably Smart Glass). We've seen some pretty thorough fakes in our time, but this would be the most thorough if it were. Still, take all of this with some massive grains of salt.

We've reached out to Microsoft for comment, but, well, you know.
Page 9 is the most interesting, mostly because if the design doc is to be believed they are low-balling included RAM and also saying this will be a ten year unit. But then if this doc is to believed the 720 will have 11 cores in some odd combination of the 360 and a ton of ARM 2 ghz cores which... makes no sense which leads me to believe that this might be legit because it falls into the "so crazy it just might be true".

So... speculation!

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Re: Xbox 720 design doc leaks?

Post by Darksider »

do we know if there will be backwards compatibility yet?
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Mr Bean
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Re: Xbox 720 design doc leaks?

Post by Mr Bean »

Darksider wrote:do we know if there will be backwards compatibility yet?
Full 360 built into the 720.

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Re: Xbox 720 design doc leaks?

Post by Darksider »

sweet. Nice to know my old library won't become useless.
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Re: Xbox 720 design doc leaks?

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The AAA game market has been in decline for the past 2 years. It would not seem advisable to risk 06 level spending and development on what may be at best zero-growth generation of games.
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Re: Xbox 720 design doc leaks?

Post by Losonti Tokash »

Even if it didn't, it's not like your 360 would spontaneously combust. Well, not more than they usually do.
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Re: Xbox 720 design doc leaks?

Post by General Zod »

I'll be interested when Microsoft officially announce it, if then. Leaks are really a dime a dozen.
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Re: Xbox 720 design doc leaks?

Post by Zaune »

CaptHawkeye wrote:The AAA game market has been in decline for the past 2 years. It would not seem advisable to risk 06 level spending and development on what may be at best zero-growth generation of games.
Microsoft have shown themselves to be fairly receptive to indie developers for the Xbox, maybe they're hoping to build on that market. Though cramming a bunch of ARM cores in on top of some conventional PC-type architecture isn't quite the way I'd choose to go about attracting the smalltime semi-professional crowd...
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Re: Xbox 720 design doc leaks?

Post by Sarevok »

^^

Microsoft is very good at making development tools. So regardless of hardware I am confident it will relatively straightforward to develop for.

As for indies the general industry consensus is that consoles are what you go to when you are already established and successful as a small developer and now seek lots of money. It's not something for a newcomer to learn the trade. Mobiles are best suited for that. I don't think the xbox is or would be targeted at the indie developer as an important producer of content.
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