New Xbox secrets revealed: Microsoft gets angry
| 27 June 2012
Question: What’s the best way of confirming a rumour? Answer: When there’s a lot of fuss to try and stop it from spreading.
A report detailing a timeline and product plan for the Xbox 720 leaked on to a few big gaming sites over the last few days.
Nothing new there, hoaxes get played all the time. But this time Microsoft has made big attempts to stop the rumour spreading, even threatening legal action against sites that are hosting the document - which makes the information look all the more genuine.
So, what’s all the fuss about? Well, the 56-page report lifts the lid on some very interesting new gadgets and tech developments.
A few of the big reveals include:
A new version of Kinect (called Kinect 2) that comes with four player tracking, much better voice recognition, improved 3D space recognition (how the Kinect maps the room and the player’s distance from the sensor), multiple cameras and a vastly improved HD RGB camera for better player detail.
A new pair of augmented reality 3D goggles code-named ‘Fortaleza’ that will be combined with Kinect for motion gaming. The new tech specs apparently connect to the Xbox via WiFi and will bring 3D to Kinect gaming.
The Xbox 720 is mentioned constantly throughout the report. A release is scheduled for sometime in 2013, priced at $299 (about £200). There’s going to be Blu Ray functionality, 3D capability and then on the tech side, it’s supposed to ‘six times more powerful than the Xbox 360’, boasting 4GB of DDR4 memory. It's also backwards compatible, with three Power PC cores, at 3.2GHz.
All good news! Let’s just hope that an affordable new Xbox is due out next year because if it is really £200 then that will make it even cheaper than a PS Vita handheld!
And if it is a hoax? Perhaps Microsoft should look at the hoaxer’s recommendations as something of a wish list. But a few elements really ring true.
For example, Fortaleza is the state capital of Northern Brazil's Ceara. Project Natal, the code name for Kinect, also took its name from a Northern Brazil capital, as Kinect’s creator, Alex Kipman, comes from the country.
But if it really is fake information, why has Microsoft summoned big legal eagles to swoop down and try to stop the leak?
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