A dubious at best set of images released at the beginning of the month appear now to actually be of a real Xbox 720 development kit, according to a report.
The images, which we featured here back on the 4th, showed what appeared to be a PC with no sign of any innards or details. However, Digital Foundry has spoken to the guy offering it for sale, and managed to extract a little bit more information that could – potentially – point to what Microsoft are planning for the next Xbox.
The leaker, who goes by the name of DaE, says that current devkits were issued to developers back in February, and feature  an Intel CPU (which is likely to be 8 core) and an NVIDIA graphics card. The kits also include 8GB of RAM, although development (and test) consoles normally carry around twice as much memory as the retail ones, so the 720 itself will probably have 4GB, which is plenty.
The new machine is likely to be 64-bit, but developers have stated in the report that current DirectX 11 engines can be ported to 64-bit easily will run with no problems on Microsoft’s new machine, something that echoes how crucial easy PC porting was in the 360’s early success.
A leaked development suite image, which we first noticed a few weeks back, also indicates that the architecture will be x86. That said, there’s a lot of conjecture around just now, and a lot of assumptions, so carry that pinch of salt with you.
tactical20
gr8 pix m8 lulz ect..
;-)
SavageOranges
Gaming PC power in a small, affordable package?
GhostViper
I never trust blury pictures.
Forrest_01
I don’t either – I think it’s Damon Albarn’s face that does it.
Tanzil
Shakey cam, the new standard in journalism.
Bilbo_bobbins
I can’t see anything, is that a screen or something?
cam the man
They’re not the clearest pics, they could be just about anything.
hazelam
or somebody’s watching the matrix. o_O
MadJunkBoy
i don’t think that the next gen is real unless sony or microsoft comes out openly and says so… otherwise, blurry pics is just blussy pic ATM, nothing more, nothing less…