Elysium Magazine was keen to more information about the beat that is set to revolutionise the gaming industry – the Xbox 720. Microsoft has announced that the next Xbox console will be revealed to the world at an event at its Washington headquarters on May 21st. It’s also announced that further details will be announced at E3 alongside a full list of launch titles for the new console.
Lets look at some of the new features doing the rounds on the rumour mill.
720: Hardware
In January of this year, VGLeaks, published what it claims were technical specifications of the next-gen Xbox console. According to the information published on the site the 720 will be powered by an 8-core CPU running at 1.6GHz, alongside 8GB of DDR RAM. The machine also boasts a custom 800-MHz graphics processor, which “can effectively issue 1.2 trillion floating-point operations per second”. The console also contains 8GB of RAM and a Blu-ray disc drive, which can read 50GB discs, 32 MB of fast embedded SRAM, as far as its connectivity goes, it has Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct networking. A serious piece of gaming kit, we are sure you will agree!
720: Cloud Entertainment
Microsoft announced it had sold off its IPTV platform to Ericsson as part of a plan to focus its efforts on a new entertainment system for the 720. The move continued Microsoft’s ongoing app-based strategy for the Xbox dashboard over the last 18 months, according to the Verge, with the publisher looking to develop a cloud-based entertainment platform for its console. The possibilities that come with this are exciting, rumours of a continuously streaming TV interface seems exciting.
Xbox 720 Price
If the PS4 comes to market in the UK this year, Microsoft are likely to make every effort to get their next-gen console onto retailers’ shelves at around the same time.
With the Xbox 360, Microsoft released several variants with differing storage options, which in turn, dictated the retail price point.
At the cheapest end, the entry price in the UK was £209.99. Taking this as a ballpark figure makes sense in light of a 2010-dated document that surface last year, stating the planned RRP of the new Xbox console would be around £200.
If that ends up being the case, this would make the Xbox 720 the cheapest next-gen console on the market.
720: Kinect
Reports that have been released so far indicate that Microsoft intends to be as bullish about its Kinect interface on the 720 as it was on the 360. The new version of Kinect looks set to come bundled with Microsoft’s next-gen console and will be able to track up to six players at the same time!
The leaked spec also indicate that Kinect’s latency will improve by about a third and it will boast improved skeletal recognition and be capable of tracking smaller movements and appendages – such as fingers and toes. Once again, this can have a huge impact on how developers approach gaming structures and the potential to enhance gaming is exciting and almost a reality.
720: IlumiRoom
First shown off at CES 2013, the IllumiRoom shows how the new Xbox can make the area around the user’s TV set part of the in-game experience, adding effects such as falling snow and screen projections on surrounding walls. According to Microsoft the IllumRoom tech can “change the appearance of the room, induce apparent motion, extend the field of view, and enable entirely new game experiences”. Anyone else thinking Star Trek Holi-Deck?
720: Release Date
The PS4 has a scheduled release date of December 2013 in the UK– the pressure is on Microsoft to step up. However, the only information that’s emerged so far comes in the form a countdown clock that was posted on the blog of the director of programming for Xbox Live, Larry Hryb AKA Major Nelson.
The clock is counting down to E3 2013, where, if past history is anything to go by, Microsoft will likely unveil its next-gen machine.
So what do you think? Will the Xbox 720 be worth a switch to the next generation of gaming or will you will saving for the PS4? Let us know on Twitter.
