In a somewhat roundabout manner, tech site SemiAccurate has pointed to the silicon for Microsoft’s next console being finalised.
Although nobody really knows what the chips are that’ll be used in the 720, final designs for them have apparently been sent to manufacturer. If yields are good, the innards for the machine will be ready in a matter of months.
“While we have not definitively heard about a go/no go wafer in decision,” says the site, “if Microsoft is going to launch their next generation console this year, they almost assuredly made the December 31 date. Any delay of more than a few weeks will mean no new console in 2013, there just won’t be enough time to make them.”
Testing after that, of course, but it’s possible developers will get their hands on final hardware by Summer at the latest, which is encouraging.
This all suggests a 2013 release for the next Xbox.
Nickboss1
I’m worried about what games we’ll see on these new machine. I not sure I’d buy a new console on launch day with just a hand full of games. What games do we know are gonna be out for these machine apart from starwars 1313, watchdogs, darksouls 2 ( but that only 25% complete). it’s not looking good for next gen consoles. I might have to buy a steam box instead.
feel free to add any games i’ve missed.
uncharted86
The consoles have not even been announced yet, so why should there be any games announced for them? ;)
That would only take away momentum from all the current gen spring releases.
orimisac
Don’t know… but after chip design is OKeyed & sent to foundry to be mass produced, there is a real lot of work around getting the best board design (and Microsoft must be really aware of that after having a 50% death rate at the first generation X360 consoles). Something that takes several months. Then testing to avoid production problems, minimizing components, etc.
My best guess would be 2013 holidays or second quarter of 2014.
xdarkmagician
If the chips are ready then we should start to see some specs pretty soon. The only thing about next gen I care about is the cpu/gpu specs and the RAM, as I’m pretty sure thats going to be the only thing next gen is going to change. And the only reason I care about that is I want to see more massive online games like battlefield that performs the same as their current PC parts. If they keep the same 24/32 player lobbies I’m likely to stop console gaming and return to the PC.
orimisac
There are other important things to look for. 1st: CPU/GPU power consumption and heat dissipation. As consoles are marketed as “household appliances” that means that they have constraints in some specs like maximum noise. One of the problems with early XBox360 was that in order to comply with noise standards, Microsoft used the minimum possible fan. That was the cause of overheating and accounted for vast majority of “red circles of death”. In countries like Brazil (where these consoles were smuggled because they lacked proper government license to be legally sold (ANATEL for instance)), merchants changed the whole heat dissipation system in order to extend life of consoles sold out of legal Microsoft warranty.
Foxhound_Solid
Regardless …ill be getting ps4 whether it releases first or second. Xbox doesn’t interest me. I do hope aSony blast off first ^_^ not that it matters. Just means I get my PS4 early doors!