Have you guys seen this stuff? Thoughts?

http://www.techspot.com/news/50843-final-issue-of-xbox-world-reveals-details-on-microsofts-xbox-720.html

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/xbox-720-to-be-called-just-xbox-tipped-for-spring-launch-50009783/

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/xbox-world-to-reveal-next-gen-details-in-new-issue-report-6400312

For too lazy to click:

The Xbox 720 might be more simply known as 'Xbox', according to the latest and last-but-one issue of Xbox World magazine. That's right, just like the original Xbox console Microsoft launched back in 2002.
The magazine which announced the rumour will soon go the way of Comet, but it's heading out with a bang by revealing everything it knows about the Xbox 720 in a special eight-page feature. It's important to note that all information it gives is still speculation, being based mostly on rumour reporting, a leaked document and talking to game developers.
One of the surprises it claims Microsoft has in store is a simplified console name. Could that be right? Apple named its latest iPad just 'iPad', so anything could happen. Maybe Apple has started a new trend. It does get a bit tiresome adding an endless succession of numbers after product names, especially when a company only launches a new console every few years.
The magazine's editor-in-chief seemed confident that he had his facts right, even implying a pre-E3 launch, which would see the console unveiled in the spring. "Unless something really dramatic changes, everything we reveal in our penultimate issue will be revealed long before E3 in June," he told CVG.
In terms of specs, Kinect 2.0 is rumoured to come as standard, as will support for Blu-rays, which is something Microsoft ruled out for the 360 following its HD-DVD drive. Inside will be 8GB of RAM and a CPU with "four hardware cores, each divided into four logical cores," according to the magazine.
Back in June, we got our most comprehensive look yet at the next Xbox. A leaked document detailed the plans for Blu-ray, as well as saying it'll have 3D functionality. Kinect 2 was first tipped back then, and was described as being more accurate, with stereo imaging, better voice recognition and dedicated hardware processing.
A set of Google Project Glass-style specs was also revealed, but specifically for gaming. You'll be able to use them with the console, as well as away from it. Which opens up all kinds of possibilities.

"Xbox" would be a dumb ass name in a "this thing already exists" kinda way. (See Need For Speed: Most Wanted) The thing looks terrible too. I call BS on this.

Apparently the consensus on this is Xbox is a pretty acceptable name right now. I agree, it would work, but I still feel a little weird about the Xbox coming out... Twice. Still not sold on some of the rumours of the article though.

I would not mind it simply being named Xbox. I already call my 360 an Xbox anyway.

@believer258: But there already is an Xbox!

Is better than the names I have come up with: NextBox or 8Box (because Windows 8 and all that). Also the specs the on the article seems to indicate the new Xbox is gonna be really expensive, like Ps3 launch expensive, or they are mostly lies to make people excited and buy the last issue of their dying magazine.

I'm kinda used to consoles having dumb names at this point and really don't care what it's called.

Doesn't matter to me if this is legit or not unless somewhere in there is says it's being released tommorow, getting excited or interested in something that I can't get my hands on anytime soon... seems like a waste of time to me.

They should just call it 'The Durango'.

@rebgav said:

@Chavtheworld said:

"Xbox" would be a dumb ass name.

It's also the branding that they've used to replace Zune and GFWL.

I will only accept this name if the console is a massive black brick like the original. If it isn't the size of a suitcase it's not "an Xbox."

Just added an image to the OP.

Fits the description you put, no?

@Chavtheworld said:

Weird. I've got a wine opener set that comes in a box that exact shape.

I think that image looks fake futurey enough to be kind of cool. Then again I really like the look of the top loading PS3. Probably not the real thing but whatevs.

I'd be surprised if that picture was real but I do like the look of that thing.

I'm totally fine with it being named Xbox, if this stuff turns out to be true. However, I hope that image is just some concept art that some random person threw together and not representative of the final design. I don't like that look at all.

@believer258 said:

I would not mind it simply being named Xbox. I already call my 360 an Xbox anyway.

Reboot it and call it The Xbox.

@Chavtheworld said:

@believer258: But there already is an Xbox!

...SO!?

On a more serious note, people with iPhone 5's will probably call it "iPhone 5" for a month or so until everyone goes back to calling it an "iPhone" and won't bring up the fact that it's a 5 unless that fact is relevant to the conversation at hand. I'd imagine that game consoles could easily do the same, but with a longer period before people go back to just saying "the Xbox" instead of "the new Xbox" or "the next-gen Xbox" or "the Xbox 720" or whatever.

The Playstation, on the other hand, is a brand that people are used to shortening so the term "PS4" is probably here to stay.

@Begilerath said:

Is better than the names I have come up with: NextBox or 8Box (because Windows 8 and all that). Also the specs the on the article seems to indicate the new Xbox is gonna be really expensive, like Ps3 launch expensive, or they are mostly lies to make people excited and buy the last issue of their dying magazine.

Could be worse. Could be X8OX.

@Ravenlight: Can we get comparison pics? Could be funny.

@rebgav: Ahaha true that.

@believer258: Xbox has to be in the title, that is obvious, but it's a Need For Speed: Most Wanted / Need For Speed: Most Wanted type issue we're talking about here.

@Mr_Skeleton said:

@believer258 said:

I would not mind it simply being named Xbox. I already call my 360 an Xbox anyway.

Reboot it and call it The Xbox.

Now we're talking.

The New Xbox.

They should pull an Apple and call it "The New Xbox".

the Ybox

Now make the 360 controller like the duke and your set!

Hmmm... this is probably all fake, but I kind of like the idea of just calling it an "Xbox." Given that original Xbox has been off the market for many years, it's not likely to cause much in the way of brand confusion--grandpa couldn't accidentally buy you the wrong console at Walmart if he tried, I suspect.

I'll only get really excited by this idea, however, in 2017 when Microsoft announce that name the fourth iteration of the console is "Xbox 360."

Do these hardware upgrades sound expensive to anyone else? Going from 512MB of RAM to 8GB is a pretty big upgrade. Could these upgrades lead to Microsoft pulling a Sony and charging $600 at launch? This isn't even considering the included Kinect and whatever other techonological fads they'll include (tablet?) as well. This is all just speculation, of course.

@Chavtheworld said:

Inside will be 8GB of RAM

This just screams idiot fanboy to me...

If it's true, it's very impressive, but even combining vram and ram, I could hardly imagine it would be even half of that.

I buy the whole idea of Microsoft releasing their new console as just "Xbox". With Windows and Office, MS is making a push to simplify their branding and integrating everything into a single service. The Kinect being a pack-in seems obvious. Rumors are that the increased sensitivity to body motion can now detect individual finger movemet. Removing that kind of PR bullshit probably means that the new Kinect will work as well as the original Kinect should have. I would be kinda surprised if the system supports Blu-rays. They can't avoid using that tech for their games as they need the extra storage space, but I believe they have to pay an additional licensing fee in order for it to legally have Blu-ray movie playback. And I call BS on the posted mock up picture.

if it looks like that, i don't care how little respect for microsoft i have at this point... i'm buying.

@Lukeweizer said:

Do these hardware upgrades sound expensive to anyone else? Going from 512MB of RAM to 8GB is a pretty big upgrade. Could these upgrades lead to Microsoft pulling a Sony and charging $600 at launch? This isn't even considering the included Kinect and whatever other techonological fads they'll include (tablet?) as well. This is all just speculation, of course.

true but.. it's been 7 years

That looks nice, this reminds me of the PS3 prototypes that turned up in the gaming magazine in 1999, one was gold.

This looks alot bigger than the 360 look at the disc drive in comparison to the rest of the thing, could mean they got some beefy hardware in it, but I suspect any of the dev kits out there look more like a PC right now.

@Mr_Skeleton said:

@believer258 said:

I would not mind it simply being named Xbox. I already call my 360 an Xbox anyway.

Reboot it and call it The Xbox.

Blast! Beat me to it!

"The Xbox" would be the grittier reinvention of what the original Xbox should have been!

If that stuff is true that sounds fairly awesome.

@killacam said:

@Lukeweizer said:

Do these hardware upgrades sound expensive to anyone else? Going from 512MB of RAM to 8GB is a pretty big upgrade. Could these upgrades lead to Microsoft pulling a Sony and charging $600 at launch? This isn't even considering the included Kinect and whatever other techonological fads they'll include (tablet?) as well. This is all just speculation, of course.

true but.. it's been 7 years

Yeah, my friend just pointed out that it could actually be cheaper to put 8GB in the new system than it was to put 512MB in the 360. The times they are a-chaaaangin'.

@Lukeweizer said:

Do these hardware upgrades sound expensive to anyone else? Going from 512MB of RAM to 8GB is a pretty big upgrade. Could these upgrades lead to Microsoft pulling a Sony and charging $600 at launch? This isn't even considering the included Kinect and whatever other techonological fads they'll include (tablet?) as well. This is all just speculation, of course.

Doesn't work out that way for consoles, who ever MS partners with would sell their product at a price way cheaper than you and I would pay because they are pretty much locking them in for 10s of millions of orders same with the GPU and CPU providers.

@Unequivocable said:

@Mr_Skeleton said:

@believer258 said:

I would not mind it simply being named Xbox. I already call my 360 an Xbox anyway.

Reboot it and call it The Xbox.

Blast! Beat me to it!

"The Xbox" would be the grittier reinvention of what the original Xbox should have been!

They were always going to call it Xbox all the voice stuff on Kinect now starts with XBOX!

@Mr_Skeleton said:

@believer258 said:

I would not mind it simply being named Xbox. I already call my 360 an Xbox anyway.

Reboot it and call it The Xbox.

Blast! Beat me to it!

"The Xbox" would be the grittier reinvention of what the original Xbox should have been!

Do these hardware upgrades sound expensive to anyone else? Going from 512MB of RAM to 8GB is a pretty big upgrade. Could these upgrades lead to Microsoft pulling a Sony and charging $600 at launch? This isn't even considering the included Kinect and whatever other techonological fads they'll include (tablet?) as well. This is all just speculation, of course.

@killacam said:

@Lukeweizer said:

Do these hardware upgrades sound expensive to anyone else? Going from 512MB of RAM to 8GB is a pretty big upgrade. Could these upgrades lead to Microsoft pulling a Sony and charging $600 at launch? This isn't even considering the included Kinect and whatever other techonological fads they'll include (tablet?) as well. This is all just speculation, of course.

true but.. it's been 7 years

Gaming PCs were running 2gb RAM at the time the 360 came out and using all of it, now that gaming PCs are running 8gb of ram and most not really using even half of it, you'd expect a current console would be designed around 1-2gb of ram, 8 is completely out to lunch.

Yes to just the Xbox, that would be great.

There is no fucking way it with have 8 gb of ram.

Isn't this the company that named their console "360" just so they wouldn't seem like they were behind Playstation "3"?

Yeah, because making it have no numbers is totally logical, right?

@Kidavenger said:

@killacam said:

@Lukeweizer said:

Do these hardware upgrades sound expensive to anyone else? Going from 512MB of RAM to 8GB is a pretty big upgrade. Could these upgrades lead to Microsoft pulling a Sony and charging $600 at launch? This isn't even considering the included Kinect and whatever other techonological fads they'll include (tablet?) as well. This is all just speculation, of course.

true but.. it's been 7 years

Gaming PCs were running 2gb RAM at the time the 360 came out and using all of it, now that gaming PCs are running 8gb of ram and most not really using even half of it, you'd expect a current console would be designed around 1-2gb of ram, 8 is completely out to lunch.

The original Xbox had 64mb or ram, the 360 had 512, it's a similar jump this time if the rumour is true.

@Kidavenger said:

@Chavtheworld said:

Inside will be 8GB of RAM

This just screams idiot fanboy to me...

If it's true, it's very impressive, but even combining vram and ram, I could hardly imagine it would be even half of that.

RAM is so cheap, though. Especially if it's not that fast. I just bought 8GB DDR3-1333 for 30€ (about $38) and that's faster than what is in the WiiU (2GB of DDR3-800 apparently). Microsoft would probably pay half what I pay.

@Lukeweizer said:

Do these hardware upgrades sound expensive to anyone else? Going from 512MB of RAM to 8GB is a pretty big upgrade. Could these upgrades lead to Microsoft pulling a Sony and charging $600 at launch? This isn't even considering the included Kinect and whatever other techonological fads they'll include (tablet?) as well. This is all just speculation, of course.

RAM is dirt cheap. You can get 8GB for like $30-40. In terms of the consoles performance that really comes down to the GPU which we don't know about yet.

@Kidavenger said:

@killacam said:

@Lukeweizer said:

Do these hardware upgrades sound expensive to anyone else? Going from 512MB of RAM to 8GB is a pretty big upgrade. Could these upgrades lead to Microsoft pulling a Sony and charging $600 at launch? This isn't even considering the included Kinect and whatever other techonological fads they'll include (tablet?) as well. This is all just speculation, of course.

true but.. it's been 7 years

Gaming PCs were running 2gb RAM at the time the 360 came out and using all of it, now that gaming PCs are running 8gb of ram and most not really using even half of it, you'd expect a current console would be designed around 1-2gb of ram, 8 is completely out to lunch.

Noone really makes games for high end PC's, as a very low percentage of gamers actually are able to max out new games. 8GB of ram should be minimun as they will probably only cost them like 10 dollars for it with whoever they contract with.

Have a feeling this will be announced early next year at Microsofts own event with all the games being showed at E3.

@big_jon said:

@Kidavenger said:

@killacam said:

@Lukeweizer said:

Do these hardware upgrades sound expensive to anyone else? Going from 512MB of RAM to 8GB is a pretty big upgrade. Could these upgrades lead to Microsoft pulling a Sony and charging $600 at launch? This isn't even considering the included Kinect and whatever other techonological fads they'll include (tablet?) as well. This is all just speculation, of course.

true but.. it's been 7 years

Gaming PCs were running 2gb RAM at the time the 360 came out and using all of it, now that gaming PCs are running 8gb of ram and most not really using even half of it, you'd expect a current console would be designed around 1-2gb of ram, 8 is completely out to lunch.

The original Xbox had 64mb or ram, the 360 had 512, it's a similar jump this time if the rumour is true.

A similar jump i.e. 8x would put it at 4gb, not 8...

...8GB of RAM and a CPU with "four hardware core"...

I really hope this is an indication that the next generations of consoles are just $400-$500 gaming PCs with Blu-ray, simplified interfaces, and SSDs.

Microsoft, if your paying attention, I've never waited on line for a midnight launch but I will for something like this.

@Kidavenger said:

@big_jon said:

@Kidavenger said:

@killacam said:

@Lukeweizer said:

Do these hardware upgrades sound expensive to anyone else? Going from 512MB of RAM to 8GB is a pretty big upgrade. Could these upgrades lead to Microsoft pulling a Sony and charging $600 at launch? This isn't even considering the included Kinect and whatever other techonological fads they'll include (tablet?) as well. This is all just speculation, of course.

true but.. it's been 7 years

Gaming PCs were running 2gb RAM at the time the 360 came out and using all of it, now that gaming PCs are running 8gb of ram and most not really using even half of it, you'd expect a current console would be designed around 1-2gb of ram, 8 is completely out to lunch.

The original Xbox had 64mb or ram, the 360 had 512, it's a similar jump this time if the rumour is true.

A similar jump i.e. 8x would put it at 4gb, not 8...

They will get this RAM so cheap anyway so why not put in 8gb.

The 360 came 4 years after the Xbox, the next one will be 8 years after the 360 so that does make sense.

@mnzy said:

@Kidavenger said:

@Chavtheworld said:

Inside will be 8GB of RAM

This just screams idiot fanboy to me...

If it's true, it's very impressive, but even combining vram and ram, I could hardly imagine it would be even half of that.

RAM is so cheap, though. Especially if it's not that fast. I just bought 8GB DDR3-1333 for 30€ (about $38) and that's faster than what is in the WiiU (2GB of DDR3-800 apparently). Microsoft would probably pay half what I pay.

Seriously. People need to stop living in the past when it comes to ram. It is dirt cheap now. If the consoles really do want to create a longer life cycle then they shouldn't live in the past either when it comes to ram.

@rebgav said:

@Kidavenger said:

@killacam said:

@Lukeweizer said:

Do these hardware upgrades sound expensive to anyone else? Going from 512MB of RAM to 8GB is a pretty big upgrade. Could these upgrades lead to Microsoft pulling a Sony and charging $600 at launch? This isn't even considering the included Kinect and whatever other techonological fads they'll include (tablet?) as well. This is all just speculation, of course.

true but.. it's been 7 years

Gaming PCs were running 2gb RAM at the time the 360 came out and using all of it, now that gaming PCs are running 8gb of ram and most not really using even half of it, you'd expect a current console would be designed around 1-2gb of ram, 8 is completely out to lunch.

8 seems like overkill for a console, though now you have to consider that the OS may be more robust, they may have hundreds of services running as well as multiple apps even while games are being played. If a system also functions as a cable box/dvr then you could potentially be looking at needing several GBs of RAM just for the system functionality before you consider how much is required for gaming. It might not be unreasonable to consider 4GBs of RAM to be a realistic figure, with maybe 1-1.5 set aside for games with a similar amount of video memory on the GPU. 1GB of RAM and 512MB-1GB of memory for the GPU seems like a massive upgrade compared to current hardware, though I suppose a lot depends on how long they see the next cycle lasting.

It was always going to be a big jump, look at the difference between a Xbox and a Xbox 360, this will be no Gamecube to Wii upgrade.

Doubt it comes with 8 gigs of ram, but I hope that's true.

@NickL said:

@mnzy said:

@Kidavenger said:

@Chavtheworld said:

Inside will be 8GB of RAM

This just screams idiot fanboy to me...

If it's true, it's very impressive, but even combining vram and ram, I could hardly imagine it would be even half of that.

RAM is so cheap, though. Especially if it's not that fast. I just bought 8GB DDR3-1333 for 30€ (about $38) and that's faster than what is in the WiiU (2GB of DDR3-800 apparently). Microsoft would probably pay half what I pay.

Seriously. People need to stop living in the past when it comes to ram. It is dirt cheap now. If the consoles really do want to create a longer life cycle then they shouldn't live in the past either when it comes to ram.

I'm less concerned with how much ram an upcoming console may or may not have than I am at what the implications that will have on PC gaming, PC games already need substantially more ram to run a game properly, does this mean that PCs will need 64gb of ram to run next gen games? That isn't going to be cheap...

I think the controller is pretty much perfect at the moment, all I would add is better tension in the sticks to allow for more precise aiming and I would add 2 more buttones on the controller, put another button next to LB\RB which would be right above the charging cable so you have LB1\LB2 RB1\RB2 and a better D-Pad

Looks like a big Roku.

I dont think just calling it xbox is too far from the truth. I mean kinect asks you to say 'xbox' and not 'xbox 360' so maybe its just for ease of access for people and for stuff like that to make more sense.

@rebgav said:

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

It was always going to be a big jump, look at the difference between a Xbox and a Xbox 360, this will be no Gamecube to Wii upgrade.

The fuck is that even supposed to mean? How is that supposed to relate to the hardware in a device? Look at the launch 360 vs the 360 today; same hardware, massive improvements all round in games, massive increase in functionality. I don't know what you're trying to say.

What he said makes sense. I have no idea how your reply is even slightly relevant to what he just said.

@rebgav said:

@Bourbon_Warrior said:

It was always going to be a big jump, look at the difference between a Xbox and a Xbox 360, this will be no Gamecube to Wii upgrade.

The fuck is that even supposed to mean? How is that supposed to relate to the hardware in a device? Look at the launch 360 vs the 360 today; same hardware, massive improvements all round in games, massive increase in functionality. I don't know what you're trying to say.

You were saying 8gb is overkill, how can you not possibly understand what I was saying? Like seriously...