VentureBeat » Durango

GamesBeat’s complete coverage for Microsoft’s Xbox One announcement

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:38:29 +0000

We’re mere hours away from learning the name of the next Xbox console. Microsoft’s set up a big, scary tent and part of the GamesBeat team is outside waiting for access. We’ll be updating this page throughout the day with the latest news out of the event.

Filed under: Games

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What to expect at Microsoft’s next-generation Xbox announcement

Dean Takahashi — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:54:24 +0000

Microsoft is expected to announce its next-generation Xbox, codenamed Durango, starting at 10 a.m. Pacific time Tuesday. The company’s first new home console in eight years will define its presence in video games and entertainment for years to come.

The new Xbox will reveal Microsoft’s bet on the future of entertainment and its strategy for using its strength in games to bring in other types of entertainment into the living room and to new kinds of devices such as its Surface tablets. Microsoft has kept a tight lid on the console, which players have nicknamed the Xbox 720. (We’ll be liveblogging the event here).

Microsoft sold an estimated 77 million Xbox 360 game consoles during the current generation of hardware. Sony sold about the same, while Nintendo has sold 99 million Wiis. But Microsoft has dominated the charts of consoles sold and game sales for the past couple of years, and companies like Electronic Arts are betting heavily that it will be a leader in the next generation alongside Sony’s PlayStation 4.

So far, we know that the successor will have an accelerated processing unit (APU) chip from Advanced Micro Devices. AMD, which also makes the APU for the PS4, is expected to make a semi-custom chip for Microsoft, using eight processing cores, or computing brains, based on Jaguar micro-architecture designs. The chip will combine graphics and processing on the same sliver of silicon, and it represents a shift away from IBM’s three-core Power chips that were used in the previous Xbox 360 game console, which Microsoft launched in 2005.

Microsoft and Sony will likely distinguish itself based on the number of cores they will have in each chip. Sony has eight Jaguar cores in its chip, and it also has a special kind of graphics memory that will speed the transfer of data within the chip. Durango reportedly has an eight-core 64-bit APU running at 1.6GHz, with 8GBs of DDR3 main memory and a large hard disk. Microsoft’s machine is expected to have similar capabilities on the semiconductor level, but its games may not run as fast as Sony’s in part because Microsoft is expected to dedicate some of its performance to running Kinect 2.

Kinect 2 is expected to be a more accurate version of the Kinect motion-sensing system that Microsoft launched in 2010. That system enabled players to magically control their games with gestures, rather than controllers, using body movements. But it wasn’t particularly accurate, and you had to stand in a sweet spot about 10 feet away from the console. With more processing power dedicated to the motion-sensing tasks, Microsoft will be able to make Kinect 2 more accurate and cover a wider area. Kinect 2 is expected to ship as standard on the new box, with better accuracy, improved voice recognition, a better camera, and dedicated hardware processing. If the latter is true, it will make the box more expensive to make. But the tax on processing power may not be as big.

Microsoft is also expected to show a number of exclusive games running on the system. The company will likely have a new version of Halo this year, but it may hold mention of that until E3. Electronic Arts, meanwhile, is expected to show off a game from Respawn Entertainment. That game is being created by a team led by Vince Zampella, one of the founders of the Infinity Ward game studio (owned by Activision) that made first-person military shooter franchise Call of Duty into arguably the biggest franchise in video games. Activision has also signaled that it plans to show more of its Call of Duty: Ghosts game at the Microsoft event.

The questions we want answered

When is the launch date, and what is the price?

Microsoft may hold this back until the Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show press conference on June 10, as it may wait until Sony says something. We don’t know the price. The Xbox 360 console launched at $399 and $299, depending on the amount of hard drive storage. Folks are betting it will debut in November.

Just how good will the graphics be? High-definition graphics running at 1080p resolution are very good today, and it’s not clear how well the human eye will detect much better graphics, especially when the viewer is 10 feet away watching the images on a normal-sized (40-inch) flat-screen TV. Will the next Xbox be good enough to run 4K graphics? That’s twice as much resolution, but it will require a better TV that currently costs a lot of money.

What does the box look like? How big will it be? So far, no reliable images of the machine have leaked, but Xbox evangelist Larry Hryb, also known as Major Nelson, has tweeted that Microsoft will reveal the box tomorrow.

Will it require an always-on (persistent) Internet connection? Rumors persist that Microsoft will require an Internet connection for players to use their system and play games. Microsoft may or may not include this feature, which has prompted a strong negative reaction from consumers.

Will it disable used games? This is another controversial rumor. Electronic Arts said last week that it planned to discontinue its Online Pass program, where it charged $10 for people to activate features in used games (in which the original owner had already redeemed the online code). Rumor is that it did so because Microsoft and Sony will be able to disable used games at the platform level.

Will it have an optical disk drive? Blu-ray has won out over the DVD and HD-DVD formats, but it adds cost to the system. On top of that, digital downloads have become much more popular.

Does it replace your cable set-top box? Microsoft has been steadily improving the nongame entertainment features on Xbox Live, and it is expected to do more of the same with music, movies and other entertainment.

Be sure to follow our liveblog tomorrow at the live Xbox launch at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. Microsoft will also livestream the event on Xbox.com.

Filed under: Business, Games

Microsoft phasing out Points system — Xbox market getting real-currency payments

Jeffrey Grubb — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:20:26 +0000

I don’t have many skills, but I could always convert Microsoft Points into U.S. dollars without thinking. A game costs 800 Microsoft Points? Well, that’s $10 in Earth currency. Unfortunately for me, that skill is heading toward obsolescence.

Microsoft is finally ending its Points payment system for the Xbox Live Marketplace, according to The Verge. The company is replacing it with a real-money currency option. It will sell gift cards with dollar values at retail, but it will also accept direct payments with credit and debit cards through its online store.

This new system will work the same across the Windows Stores, the Windows Phone Store, and the Xbox Live Marketplace. Expect to hear more about around the time of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) trade show in early June.

The new system may launch with the next Xbox, which Microsoft will reveal next week. We’ve reached out to ask if it will also replace Microsoft Points on the current console. We will update with any new information.

Filed under: Games

Activision confirms Call of Duty: Ghosts for next-gen Xbox with new trailer

Jeffrey Grubb — Wed, 01 May 2013 16:58:56 +0000

Call of Duty: Ghosts is real, and it is the next generation of the franchise, according to publisher Activision.

Activision and developer Infinity Ward, the studio responsible for the Modern Warfare games, will fully unveil the game during Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox reveal on May 21 at 10 a.m. Pacific. The publisher also confirmed Ghosts for the PlayStation 4, the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, and the PC. The press release failed to mention a version for Nintendo’s Wii U. We’ve contacted the publisher to determine if it is skipping that struggling system.

For now, Infinity Ward is providing sparse details about its new first-person shooter. The studio confirmed it is leaving behind the world of Modern Warfare. Ghosts takes place in a new universe with new characters.

More important for longtime Call of Duty fans, Infinity Ward is promising a totally new “next-gen engine” to power Ghosts’ visuals. Both Infinity Ward and its sister Call of Duty developer Treyarch have used the same engine (with slight tweaks) since 2007′s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

“Infinity Ward set the gold standard for first-person action for a generation, and they’re going to do it again with Call of Duty: Ghosts,” Activision Publishing chief executive Eric Hirshberg said in a statement. “Infinity Ward is going all-in to create the next generation of Call of Duty worthy of the world’s greatest fans.”

Infinity Ward released a new Call of Duty every other year since 2005. The last three of those titles were all entries in the Modern Warfare subfranchise. Infinity Ward executive producer Mark Rubin said the studio was ready to take a bigger risk.

“Everyone was expecting us to make Modern Warfare 4, which would have been the safe thing to do,” Rubin said in a statement. “But we’re not resting on our laurels. We saw the console transition as the perfect opportunity to start a new chapter for Call of Duty. So we’re building a new subbrand, a new engine, and a lot of new ideas and experiences for our players. We can’t wait to share them with our community.”

Microsoft and Activision have also held a tight-knit relationship over the last few years when it comes to Call of Duty. The Xbox 360 has always received preferential treatment when it comes to the downloadable content. Expansions hit at least a month earlier on Microsoft’s console compared to Sony’s hardware or PC.

That partnership is likely to continue with Ghosts making its big debut at Microsoft’s next Xbox event.

“We are consistently thrilled with the overwhelming response received from critics and consumers alike to the Call of Duty series, which has firmly established its home on the Xbox 360 with the game’s largest and most engaged community,” Microsoft president of interactive entertainment Don Mattrick said. “With Call of Duty: Ghosts, we have no doubt that our longtime partners, Activision and Infinity Ward, will raise the bar higher than ever before for this incredible franchise.”

Activision still hasn’t revealed any gameplay, so expect a storm of details on May 21. GamesBeat will have full coverage of that event, Call of Duty: Ghosts, and any other Xbox-related announcements at that time.

In past years, Activision has always pushed the next Call of Duty hard with a new trailer that runs invariably during the NBA playoffs. That tradition could continue with Ghosts, although the Xbox event may fully replace a big marketing spend of that nature.

Filed under: Games

Next-gen Xbox may turn your room into the game using special projector

Jeffrey Grubb — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:13:14 +0000

At this point, it seems like Sony’s and Microsoft’s next-gen consoles are just more powerful iterations of the current boxes. Sure, the PlayStation 4′s graphical capabilities are impressive, but I was hoping for something a bit more futuristic from it.

Enter Microsoft’s IllumiRoom projector technology.

IllumiRoom is a coffee-table projector that can expand a game’s visuals beyond the borders of a television and to a room’s walls, furniture, and floor. The projector uses the Kinect 3D-camera sensor to understand the layout of the room so that the imagery projects properly. This means IllumiRoom can use the surfaces of your TV stand, for example, as part of the gameplay.

Check out the mind-boggling demonstration, via GamesHQMedia, of the IllumiRoom proof-of-concept from January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

Microsoft released a research paper that explains IllumiRoom in detail. The document stresses that this isn’t a real product and is only a “proof of concept.” It even shows how the IllumiRoom box is just an off-the-shelf projector with a Kinect sensor hooked on its hood.

If the Xbox company can figure out how to productize IllumiRoom, then it could set the next-generation Xbox apart.

The applications are obvious from the video. Extending field of view to help highlight important objects or the direction of enemy fire alone could reduce gameplay confusion in first-person games. Turning the room into a reactive cartoon world is something that could wow casual consumers that are not normally into console gaming. This is something that an iPad can’t do.

Microsoft plans to reveal its next-gen Xbox on May 21. We’ll have more information about the console, and maybe IllumiRoom, at that time.

Filed under: Games

Durango (Xbox 720) rumor roundup: Always-on, Xbox Mini, and more

Jeffrey Grubb — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:05:02 +0000

The $15 billion video game industry is once again up for grabs as the next generation of consoles begin marching out to consumers. Nintendo already launched its Wii U, Sony recently debuted the PlayStation 4, and Microsoft … well, things are quiet at Microsoft.

The multifaceted corporation is probably keeping things hush-hush so it can wow fans with the inevitable reveal of the next Xbox, codenamed Durango. At the same time, the Xbox 360 continues to sell well (302,000 in February), and Microsoft doesn’t want to cannibalize that major source of revenue until it has to.

The company refuses to utter a word on the subject, which only makes every peep from any potential source that much louder.

“We don’t comment on rumors and speculation,” a Microsoft spokesperson told GamesBeat when we asked for comment about its next system.

Microsoft has a lot on the line. Gaming consoles are a massive tech battleground, and the Xbox 360 is currently on the king of that particular hill. The 360 has outsold the PlayStation 3 and Wii every month for the last two years, according to the NPD retail tracking firm.

Despite the silence, rumors about the Durango continue to seep out of the company’s tight grip.

We don’t know anything for sure, but a few things seem certain:

The Durango is likely using a powerful CPU and GPU from Silicon Valley chip-vendor AMD to power its games.
Microsoft will hold an event before or at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo in June to reveal the console.
A new version of Kinect is likely in the works.

Then we have a whole mess of often contradictory rumors that no one can confirm:

Durango requires an online connection for games. (Kotaku)
It can detect and block used games. (Kotaku)
It requires Kinect 2.0, a more-capable version of Microsoft’s original motion-control camera. (Kotaku)
It will work as a TV set-top box to replace your cable box. (The Verge)
Only Kinect’s new voice features require an online connection. (VGLeaks)
Games don’t require an online connection. (VGLeaks)
Durango won’t block used games. (VGLeaks)
Backward compatibility is only possible through the use of an add-on called Xbox Mini. (VGLeaks)
Players have to install every game. That includes disc-based games. (Kotaku)
Durango has a new controller. Xbox 360′s pad won’t work. (Kotaku)
A new Forza racing game and Kinect fantasy game Ryse (from German developer Crytek) will launch with the Durango. (The Verge)

Does it require an Internet connection or not?

The most controversial rumor is that the Durango requires an online connection to start games. That possibility previously swirled around the PlayStation 4. Sony alleviated fan concerns by confirming that the PS4 doesn’t require a connection for games nor will it block used games.

But Microsoft isn’t commenting on this. That means it can’t even come out and clarify exactly what it’s position is on the volatile subject.

“Always-on connectivity required to play console games probably doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Baird analyst Colin Sebastian told GamesBeat. “There is a sizable base of gamers that still don’t have stable broadband access in smaller cities in Europe or rural North America.”

Nearly 30 percent of Xbox 360 owners in the U.S. had never connected their consoles to the Internet in early 2012, according to a study by data firm IDC Research.

“Even if that’s down to 25 percent today, the idea that they would launch a new platform that immediately shut out a quarter of their addressable market seems crazy to me,” IDC researcher Lewis Ward told GamesBeat. “The idea that Microsoft would be able to iron out all the bugs [inherent to always-online] even for those gamers with a sturdy web connection is also quite unlikely.”

So, where are these rumors coming from?

Ward speculates that the dev systems, which seem to be the basis for the original Kotaku rumors, require online as a security measure. Microsoft wants to trace each kit so it knows who is doing what in case things start to leak.

It’s also possible that sources are misinterpreting certain features. For example, a prominent rumor is that Durango will connect with cable boxes to provide a Google TV-style overlay. This functionality is also known as TV-over-IP, or IPTV.

“The Xbox will obviously have to be connected while users are watching IPTV, but that wouldn’t be a requirement when not watching,” Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter told GamesBeat.

But Pachter has a different theory about the source of the always-on rumblings.

“The always-connected requirement has nothing to do with TV and everything to do with games,” he said. “If it’s true, the box would be always-on, so Kinect can respond to voice commands and so games start immediately.”

But Pachter also doubts Microsoft would implement a connection requirement to start local games.

VGLeaks, a website with a decent track record on predicting these things, also pointed to the Kinect as the source of this hearsay.

It’s possible that Kinect 2.0 will work like Apple’s Siri. That voice-command service records a user’s voice, decodes it on a server, and then supplies an answer from said server. Google Now works the same way. Similarly, a next-gen Kinect may require access to a server to reach its potential if the VGLeaks source is accurate.

What the hell is an Xbox Mini?

More whispering out of VGLeaks claims Xbox Mini is an Apple TV-like system based on the Xbox 360 but without a disc drive. It will reportedly retail at $150.

“I don’t think we’re to the point, as an ecosystem, where a discless console experience could be a top seller,” said Ward. “They could do it, and maybe they have some cloud-streaming stuff that would make it compelling as a gaming-second device. If it does all the video stuff and general purpose applications first — I guess that’s conceptually possible.”

The second part of the Xbox Mini rumor, however, doesn’t seem conceptually possible.

VGLeaks’s source claims that the Durango will only have backward compatibility when gamers plug Xbox Mini into the next-gen Xbox. The report specifically cites the HD-DVD add-on for the 360 as an example. That odd device was a small box that plugged into the 360′s USB port to enable the playback of HD-DVDs (a now-defunct competitor to Blu-ray discs).

What’s odd about that suggestion is that the Xbox Mini doesn’t have a disc drive. That means, according to this source, that to play an Xbox 360 game on a Durango, the disc goes into the next-gen Xbox but will only work if the Mini is also plugged in.

“That sounds crazy to me,” said Ward. “So you’re going to buy a $300 to $500 next-gen console and then you’re going to get some little add-on that [enables Xbox 360 games]?”

The rest of the rumors

The specs, the controller, and the launch games are all still up in the air. We know that stuff can change up until launch, let alone before a company first reveals its console.

We’ll keep digging for new details, but with the amount of misinformation clogging up the reporting, it’s likely we won’t have any idea what is 100 percent true until Microsoft finally decides to show off its new console.

That reveal itself is the subject of rumors. Our sources originally predicted Microsoft would hold an event this month. Now, that’s out in favor of something in May.

E3 begins on June 11. If Microsoft hasn’t announced the console before that date, expect them to reveal it at their pre-E3 press conference.

Filed under: Games

Rumor: Microsoft has an Xbox (720) event in the works for April

Jeffrey Grubb — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 21:22:25 +0000

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is approaching fast, but it’s starting to look like Microsoft may introduce the next Xbox home game console up to two months before that gaming trade show.

Rumors reported by several websites claim that Microsoft will hold an Xbox event in April. CVG and The Verge both have sources who claim the company will introduce the new console that month. GamesBeat spoke with a source in the wake of Sony’s PlayStation 4 event that made a similar claim.

Separately, a poster on the popular gaming message board NeoGAF uncovered a URL registration for XboxEvent.com. Eventcore, an event-management firm that has worked with Microsoft previously, filed for that URL as well as XboxE312.com (Xbox E3 2012).

Sony just demonstrated why it is so important to hold a separate event to announce a new console. The PlayStation 4 owned a majority share of the news coverage this week in the gaming media, and it attracted a great deal of attention from mainstream sources as well (including appearing on Jimmy Fallon’s late night talk show). If both companies waited until E3, most of the discussion would focus on which had the better presentation. Microsoft wants to avoid that, so don’t let it surprise you if Microsoft announces the event soon.

And unlike the PS4, expect the next Xbox to actually show up to the event based on this Tweet from Microsoft’s Major Nelson:

Announce a console without actually showing a console? That's one approach—
Larry Hryb (@majornelson) February 21, 2013

Filed under: Games

‘Orbis’ vs. ‘Durango’: The altercation over rumored specifications for the next PlayStation and Xbox

Jeffrey Grubb — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:09:43 +0000

Follow our PlayStation 4 coverage

It’s the laziest kind of dialogue you’ll hear in an indie film. A couple of guys sitting on a couch or at the bar will say something like “Who do you think would win a in fight, Dan Rather or Barbara Walters?” It’s a hypothetical exercise done for fun since we can’t possibly know who would really win — although, clearly Barbara Walters would.

Let’s give it a try ourselves: What would win in a fight? Microsoft’s rumored next-gen system “Durango” or Sony’s PlayStation 3 followup codenamed “Orbis”?

Eventually, we’ll know exactly which system punches harder and moves faster (Sony’s holding a major event on Feb. 20 that may involve the next PlayStation), but for now we’ll have to work from the rumored specs for each new piece of hardware. Most of this information comes from VG Leaks’, which published documentation on the Orbis and Durango in recent weeks.

Let’s get ready to force-feedback!

In this corner: PlayStation Orbis

Sony’s next system is a wrecking machine according to the data we have. It features a powerful graphics processor and the speediest memory on the market.

Here’s what we’ve heard:

Eight-core 1.6 GHz AMD “Jaguar” CPU
18-core GPU based on AMD’s Radeon HD 7000 Series
Capable of 1.843 TeraFLOPS (floating-points operations per second)
Shared 512 KB of read/write L2 cache
4GB of GDDR5 RAM
GDDR5 does 17 GB of data per second
Around 3.5GB of RAM available to game software
50GB Blu-ray disc drive

And in this corner: Microsoft Durango

Microsoft’s latest gaming hardware doesn’t like a bum, either. It has an identical CPU to Orbis and a similar GPU. The graphics processor is a bit short on compute-unit cores, however, and while Durango supposedly has twice the memory of Orbis, it’s of the slower (and cheaper) DDR3 variety.

Here’s the system’s stats as far as we know:

Eight-core 1.6 Ghz AMD “Jaguar” CPU (same as the Orbis)
12-core GPU based on AMD’s Radeon HD 7000 Series
Capable of 1.23 TFLOPS
32MB of fast embedded SRAM
SRAM capable of 102GB of data per second
8GB of DDR3 RAM
DDR3 does 102GB of data per second
6.5GB available for games

So, who wins?

I already told you: Barbara Walters.

It all depends on how you define “winning.” On paper, the Orbis is more powerful. The six extra cores in the GPU and the faster RAM could really boost visuals to a very high level if game developers take full advantage of the system’s capabilities. Most studios, though, don’t usually do that.

Games are still gonna look amazing on Durango, and while it looks like the Orbis can punch harder, Durango could outmaneuver Sony’s hardware in terms of features.

The intangibles

Orbis reportedly has 512MB of RAM reserved for the operating system and extra features. The Durango has 1.5GB of RAM set aside for the same thing.

This is where the two systems, so similar in hardware architecture, will attempt to separate themselves from one another.

What is going on in the Durango that requires an extra gig of RAM at all times. Does a new version of the Kinect require that memory, or is it a whole suite of social and media features?

Meanwhile, 512MB for the OS sounds like Sony might skimp on ever-present software features or maybe it’s using the cloud-streaming functionality of Gaikai to pack a major wallop in a small memory footprint.

We’ll know the answers to some of these questions soon. It’s only a week until that Sony event. GamesBeat will have coverage of that and any other announcement, so stay tuned.

Filed under: Games

Microsoft opens a Los Angeles Xbox entertainment studio for next generation

Dean Takahashi — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 06:49:39 +0000

Microsoft announced today that it is opening a new Xbox entertainment studio outside of Los Angeles to create “interactive content” for its Xbox game platform. While much of the traditional gaming world contracts, the move shows that Microsoft is prepared to invest in a new generation of games and entertainment to keep its Xbox platform strong.

The creation of the studio in Los Angeles also says a lot about the convergence of games and Hollywood as entertainment becomes more interactive in the digital age.

Yusuf Mehdi, the senior vice president of the game division at Microsoft, and Nancy Tellem, the entertainment and digital media president, made the announcement at the All Things D: Dive into Media industry event on Monday evening. They also shared new data on the momentum behind the Xbox 360 game console introduced in 2005. Rumors are rife that Microsoft will launch its code-named Durango console as a replacement.

The new studio headed by Tellem is called the Xbox Entertainment Studios, and it “will create visionary original interactive content.” It will also oversee live events, similar to last night’s live streaming of the Grammy Awards’ red carpet broadcast.

Mehdi said that Microsoft has sold 76 million Xbox 360 consoles around the world to date. It has been the top console in the U.S. for 24 consecutive months, and it has sold more than three times the number of original Xbox consoles. About 24 million Kinect motion sensors have been sold since 2010, and the Xbox Live community has grown to 46 million subscribers, up 15 percent year over year.

In 2012, the number of TV and entertainment offerings on Xbox almost tripled, with 100 voice-controlled Xbox Live apps. It was the biggest year for Xbox games and entertainment usage, with 18 billion hours of entertainment consumed, up 10 percent from a year ago.

The average user spends 87 hours of entertainment a month on Xbox, up 10 percent. Entertainment app usage is up 57 percent over a year ago, and online multiplayer gaming also grew in 2012.

According to third-party data from the Experian Simmons Spring 2012 Media survey, about 38 percent of the Xbox Live audience in the U.S. is female, and 54 percent of the Xbox Live community in the U.S. has at least one or more child in the household. Since July, Microsoft says the Xbox Live community has burned 200 million calories using Xbox and Kinect for workouts and activities such as Kinect Nike+ Fitness, other workout programs, and games.

And Microsoft said family content consumption on Xbox Video has grown 400 percent year over year; The Hunger Games film broke the record for biggest opening day in Xbox history when it launched on Xbox Live.

Filed under: Business, Gadgets, Games, Media

Rumor: Xbox ‘Durango’ specs leaked with built-in Kinect functionality?

Jacob Lopez — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:19:30 +0000

At this point, most of us are willing to put our money on Microsoft and Sony announcing their upcoming consoles at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), an annual game industry trade show held in Los Angeles.

With every potential console announcement comes rumors of hardware specs and features. We can’t confirm whether these are true, but most of what’s leaked or discussed is consistent and falls in line with what a next-generation machine would reasonably be capable of.

Here’s some of what VGLeaks says (from a Joystiq report) says about Microsoft’s next Xbox system, reportedly codenamed “Durango” and dubbed Xbox 720 by gamers and the press:

CPU:

x64 Architecture

8 CPU cores running at 1.6GHz

Each CPU thread has its own 32 KB L1 instruction cache and 32 KB L1 data cache

Each module of four CPU cores has a 2MB L2 cache resulting in a total of 4MB of L2 cache

Each core has one fully independent hardware thread with no shared execution resources

Each hardware thread can issue two instructions per clock

GPU:

Custom D3D11.1 class 800 MHz graphics processor

12 shader cores providing a total of 768 threads

Of course, these are just numbers, and it’s difficult to say just how it will look when it’s rendering a game on a screen. If there’s anything to take out of this, it’s that the next Xbox will be a powerful machine. However, if this is accurate, it may not be as powerful as the PlayStation 4, based on what we heard last week.

They also mention a “High-fidelity Natural User Interface (NUI) sensor” that “is always present.” According to Joystiq’s report, this implies some sort of Kinect-like functionality is built into the console. A hard drive and a Blu-ray disc drive are also in this rumored device.

E3 is still five months away, and a lot can happen in the weeks leading up to the conference.

Filed under: Games

Loose lips sink PlayStations: New specifics about the next Sony console (rumor)

Jeffrey Grubb — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 20:12:10 +0000

Yesterday, we reported on a few rumors about the next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft.

Those rumors suggested that Sony’s Orbis (codename for the next PlayStation) is more powerful than Microsoft’s Durango. Today, a new set of rumors seems to confirm some of those previous leaks and assertions.

Eurogamer posted some data it claims it gathered from trusted sources that have Orbis development kits:

Orbis/PlayStation 4

AMD eight-core 1.6GHz CPU
Radeon HD graphics card (possibly a modified version of the 7970M)
1.84 TFLOPS
“Secret sauce” compute module
CPU component could be 75 to 80 mm²
4GB of GDDR5 ultrafast RAM
512MB RAM reserved for the operating system
100GB Blu-ray disc drive

Interestingly, the AMD CPU combined with a Radeon 7970M produces the 1.84 TFLOPS benchmark — according to Eurogamer — that popped up in a separate rumor about the next PlayStation.

A PC with such specs like that can run Crysis 2 on its Very High settings at 60 frames-per-second. A dedicated console should churn out even more due to its more efficient architecture.

Eurogamer’s sources also claim that Microsoft’s Durango will share the same AMD eight-core CPU as the Orbis, but it will have a much slower memory bank. Microsoft’s next Xbox reportedly has 8GB of DDR3 compared to Orbis’s 4GB of GDDR5. DDR3 is an older and slower standard, especially compared to GDDR5.

In this case, Sony’s ultrafast RAM, despite having less, is likely an advantage — especially if it’s true that Microsoft is reserving 3GB of its memory for the OS and always-running applications.

So games may run better on Orbis, but Microsoft may have more features and functionality.

Of course, this is all speculation. The increase in leaks is a sign an announcement is imminent. A Sony executive claims they may have something to say about a new PlayStation in May.

Filed under: Games

Alleged Xbox 720 dev kit sold for $20K on eBay (UPDATED)

Sebastian Haley — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 22:24:01 +0000

[UPDATE: A Microsoft spokesperson gave GamesBeat the following statement: “Xbox 360 has found new ways to extend the console life cycle by introducing controller-free experiences with Kinect and reinventing the console with a new dashboard and new entertainment content partnerships. We are always thinking about what is next for our platform and how to continue to defy the life cycle convention.”

The item on auction has sold for $20,100.]

Original Story: It’s no secret that Microsoft’s next Xbox console is currently operating under the codename Durango, but if this eBay auction is legit, the specs of the Xbox 720 (Xbox Infinity?) may be revealed well ahead of its probable E3 reveal next year.

EBay user “superdae” (an account with no previous activity) posted the auction with a single image (pictured below), the title “Microsoft Xbox Durango Development Kit,” and the description, “This item comes with powercables and a wired controller.” The auction began 15 minutes to midnight on August 11, and bidding has already surpassed $15,000, with six days still left on the clock.

There is a sizable discussion occurring on NeoGAF about whether the dev kit is real, and users are claiming that the auction owner is DaE, “the guy that leaked the Kinect 2 and dev kit pictures.” While the PC pictured may seem unlikely, early dev kits for new consoles often have much more in common with a desktop than the sleek little boxes that eventually end up in living rooms come Christmas.

The bigger question is even if the dev kit is legit, who’s bidding on it, and what is Microsoft going to do about it? Will it be able to shut the auction down if it’s against Microsoft’s terms of service (which it undoubtedly is)? Will superdae’s PayPal information incriminate him and allow his identity to be revealed? And if a developer did get a hold of the kit, would they even be able to use it? All debugs are linked through Microsoft’s Partner.net system, and the company is undoubtedly monitoring the very short list of people who are supposed to have one of these things.

The more likely scenario is that a media publication is attempting to lift this and be the first to break what’s under the hood of one of gaming’s most anticipated announcements next year. Still, that didn’t work out so well for Gizmodo when it “happened” upon an unreleased iPhone prototype. The whole “We found it in a bar” excuse isn’t going to fly here, either.

GamesBeat has reached out to Microsoft for comment and will relay any response in an update.

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat weekly roundup: MMO troubles, virtual reality, gaming, and slow Vita sales

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 23:11:05 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best games stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Zynga is in hot water after allegations of insider trading, Diablo III players top 10 million, and a Konami employee won an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics.

You’ll also find game reviews for Deadlight and the Dark Knight Rises.

Game news:

The DeanBeat: How fast will the shift to huge growth for mobile games happen?

Papo & Yo and 10 other games that feature graffiti

As Sanctuary beckons, Diablo III players top 10M

Konami employee wins Olympic gold medal in gymnastics

Saban Brands buys Zombie Farm iOS gamemaker The Playforge

New online game from Schell lets fans contribute story lines, artwork, music, and more

Twin Engine Labs launches Pentakill app to not suck at League of Legends

Working on generations of game consoles: a developer’s perspective

Bing Rewards earns you Microsoft Points, but not when you use it on an Xbox 360

Why you’re likely to be playing Grand Theft Auto V by March

For Ernest Cline, author of Ready Player One, success is measured in DeLoreans and geeked-out fans

Spy vs Spy game creator tells the story of a rerelease nearly 30 years in the making

Oculus launches Kickstarter campaign for virtual reality gaming headset

Leaked pictures of the next Xbox’s developmental kit, codenamed Durango

Nintendo’s Japanese servers struggle to keep up with New Super Mario Bros. 2 digital sales

MMO news:

World of Warcraft loses over one million subscribers in second quarter

Tracking Star Wars: The Old Republic’s declining subscribers

How to engage 200M users: The secrets of MMO storytelling success (exclusive)

With subscribers below 1M, Star Wars: The Old Republic will go free-to-play this fall

Dragons, dinosaurs, and Transformers: RuneScape’s CEO on the future of free to play

Lawsuits:

Nintendo wins Wii patent lawsuit

Zynga stuck in real-life BadNewsVille: more lawsuits, COO demoted

First Zynga insider trading lawsuit filed

SeeYouInCourtVille: law firms investigating Zynga for possible insider trading

End of the quarter news:

As blockbusters keep selling, Activision Blizzard beats Wall Street’s expectations

Sony slashes Vita sales forecast after slow Q1 sales

Despite Star Wars slowdown, analysts aren’t in despair over EA’s performance

EA hits on earnings but misses on revenue target for June quarter

EA hires new CFO as it prepares to announce earnings

Previews:

Pokémon Black and White 2 looks to the past for inspiration (preview)

The Nintendo 3DS XL is the bigger, wiser brother of the 3DS (hands-on impressions)

Reviews:

Deadlight sets a poetic survival-horror tone but stumbles with melodramatic writing (review)

The Dark Knight Rises fails to soar above the mediocrity of licensed games (review)

Interviews:

Death Rally paves a developer’s path into brave new world of games (interview)

Gamers at Work reveals the risks and emotional complications in entrepreneurship (interview)

Papaya Mobile’s new ad-exchange program could lure new developers to the platform (interview)

Filed under: Games

The DeanBeat: Don’t ya wish these fantasy game consoles were coming?

Dean Takahashi — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:00:16 +0000

With a month to go before this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo video game trade show (E3), rumors are surfacing about next-generation console announcements. We’re not likely to hear much about what sort of features they’ll have for a while with the exception of Nintendo’s upcoming Wii U, which is launching this fall.

But gamers love to talk about their fantasy consoles. We all have our wish lists. How about a little crowdsourced hardware design? I’m up for it. Here’s what I’m hoping will be in the next-gen systems.

It would be nice to see all of the consoles adopt game streaming from the cloud. If you process and store the game in the cloud as OnLive and Gaikai do, you can stream video of a game to a player, relieving the machine on the receiving end of the need do processing. That means that the console never becomes outdated as you can always just upgrade the hardware in the data center to improve the gamer’s experience at home. Cloud gaming hasn’t taken the world by storm yet, but it seems like an inevitable byproduct of advances of streaming, compression, and better broadband.

One rumor suggested the new consoles won’t have physical media. I won’t miss discs, but it may be a little early to get rid of them entirely. Sure, this thought conflicts with the idea of cloud gaming, so I have mixed feelings about it. But we may not be ready for the next console to be entirely dependent on the cloud. I’d be happy to see Jedi mind tricks with brain wave controls, but I’m not expecting great advances on that front, either.

This is an exercise that anybody can join. Nicole Lazzaro, head of XEO Design, would love to be able to carry her games across all kinds of devices, consoles included. She wants the machine to know her friends and be ready to send demos of games to them. She wants a flexible display that she could roll up in a pen and an easily browsable game catalog.

Todd Hooper of Zipline games wants a console with no discs, 4K 3D graphics, and awesome graphics power. He’s happy to pay $60 for games running on such a console. For him, free-to-play games would simply be a nice option. GamesBeat writer Rob LeFebvre would like to see a great “console convergence,” where each system maker’s games will run on their competitors’ machines. GamesBeat intern Mike Minotti wants to see Mario games running on Xboxes. Those are good wishes, and we never said they had to be realistic.

Mark Deloura, former vice president of technology at THQ, said the biggest question for him is how the consoles remain relevant. He also worries about the physical drive. Will Blu-ray be big enough to store the data from next-gen games? Maybe it is the BDXL specification, which stacks Blu-ray discs on top of each other. The transfer rate from those discs would be 45 megabits per second, so it could take 100 seconds to fill up 4 gigabytes of main memory from a disc. That’s a challenge for the technologists, as it’s no easy thing to change to a new disc format. Deloura would also like to see a more open ecosystem for online titles and stronger support. And the consoles should catch up to social/mobile when it comes to innovative business models.

And here’s some more specific wish lists.

Nintendo. The company has described its Wii U as having high-definition graphics, Wii-like motion sensors, a tablet-like controller with a touchscreen, and near-field communications. I’d like to see Nintendo finally embrace the world of online gaming and digital distribution. How about Steam on a Nintendo console, asks GamesBeat writer Stefanie Fogel. Nintendo has the right idea in embracing tablets as controllers, but it really ought to go all the way and use the iPhone or iPad as the input device.

Everyone is quite worried that the Wii U won’t have much processing power. It will be able to run high-definition content, but it may not be as powerful as the current Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Our preference: faster, faster, faster, of course.

Sony. Sony should return to mass-market pricing. That may mean your PlayStation 4, code-named Orbis, won’t have a chip with 256 cores. But who wants to pay $600 for a next-gen machine for the living room? Sony has said it has no plans to describe its PlayStation 4 at E3. Hooper says that Sony would do better to have a better online strategy that catches up with Microsoft’s. Rolling out updates, for instances, should take far less time than it currently does.

Microsoft. A rumor emerged this week that Microsoft will subsidize its current Xbox 360, offering a $99 price for a console-Kinect bundle if you pay for a two-year subscription at $15 a month. That is marching down the road toward a subscription-based console, like a mobile-phone contract, where the hardware is free and you pay for software or an online subscription. On top of that, free-to-play business models, where users play for free and pay real money for virtual items, have made a big splash on social and mobile platforms, but they could really be disruptive on the consoles.

The next machine is reportedly code-named Durango. It reportedly has 16 processor cores — compared to three in the Xbox 360. It is also rumored to have an Advanced Micro Devices graphics chip that can handle 4K resolution (better than high-definition TV) graphics. Amen to that. Dave Taylor, a veteran programmer, would rather see a Larrabee-like processor with 80 or more cores.

I’d also want Kinect 2 since the original Kinect motion-sensing system isn’t as accurate as I’d like it to be. Of course, it goes without saying that we really want the Star Trek Holodeck, where virtual reality is indistinguishable from the real world. Microsoft has said it has no plans to talk about a new console at E3.

Apple. These guys could easily get into the console business with an Apple-branded television set that runs apps from the App Store. When you can spend 99 cents for decent-quality games on the TV, you may never pay $60 for a console title again. You could use your iPhone or iPad as a controller.

What we don’t want to see

One thing I really don’t want to see in the next-gen consoles is stereoscopic 3D. I think the past few years have shown that it doesn’t add that much to the experience, makes a lot of people dizzy, and still adds cost.

I think that game developers and publisher want to see an end to used game sales, particularly for new games that have just hit the market. GameStop would hate for the next consoles to block used games, though it contends a relatively small portion of used game sales are for the newest games. Gamers, who have viewed used games as a right, would hate it, too. Legal precedent supports them too.

What’s your own wish list? Please vote for your favorites in the poll or add some new desires in the comments.

Filed under: Games, Mobile

Next-gen console rumor roundup: Next Xbox may have 16-core CPU

Dean Takahashi — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 22:27:22 +0000

The next-generation console rumors are heating up, and this week brought a lot of new detailed gossip on that front.

Microsoft’s next-generation machine is rumored to be code-named Durango. That name was partially verified on Feb. 28, when a senior technical artist at Crytek tweeted that he was “enjoying the Durango developers summit in London. So far, great swag and interesting talks.” He then deleted the tweet and his account. In meetings, Microsoft reportedly showed details of the new console hardware.

Now Xbox World magazine is reporting that development kits for the new console were shipped to developers in March. Those kits include an IBM PowerPC central processing unit (CPU) with 16 cores, compared to just three cores on the Xbox 360′s CPU. The graphics chip is equivalent to an Advanced Micro Devices Radeon HD 7000-series graphics card, and the machine has a Blu-ray optical drive. The report mentioned that Kinect 2 (the sequel to Microsoft’s motion-sensing system) will chew up as many as four cores tracking multiple players.

If Microsoft is shipping the dev kits now, then it is likely on schedule for a launch in 2013. The developers need a year or more to make launch titles for the increasingly complex console hardware.

Nintendo got dinged by unnamed developers who said that the Wii U’s performance isn’t as good as either the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3. It’s a little hard to believe that a brand new Nintendo console debuting in the fall of 2012 won’t be faster than the consoles that debuted in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Nintendo will make the leap to high-definition TVs with the graphics on its new machine, and it has never put a priority on processing power in the first place.

“We do not focus on technology specs,” said a spokesperson for Nintendo of America. “We understand that people like to dissect graphics and processing power, but the experience of playing will always be more important than raw numbers.”

Nintendo isn’t confirming that the report is untrue, but it isn’t denying it either. Do such rumors matter? Based on the news, Macquarie Equities Research analyst Ben Schacter downgraded his stock rating on Nintendo.

Sony’s PlayStation 4, code-named Orbis, got outed by Kotaku last week. The Orbis reportedly has an AMD 64-bit CPU and an AMD Southern Islands GPU (graphics processing unit). The GPU will be capable of displaying games at a resolution of 4096 x 2160. And it will play games in stereoscopic 3D at 1080p high-definition resolution. It will not be compatible with PS 3 games and will not play used games.

VG247 said that the next PlayStation will be released prior to the Durango machine from Microsoft.

We’re checking with the companies to see if they want to comment further, but don’t hold your breath.

[Image credits: Sillegamer, Kotaku and Nintendo]

Filed under: Games

VentureBeat » Durango

GamesBeat’s complete coverage for Microsoft’s Xbox One announcement

GamesBeat’s live coverage

The story so far

Xbox One

Tech

Games

Interviews

Previews

Reactions

What to expect at Microsoft’s next-generation Xbox announcement

The questions we want answered

Microsoft phasing out Points system — Xbox market getting real-currency payments

Activision confirms Call of Duty: Ghosts for next-gen Xbox with new trailer

Next-gen Xbox may turn your room into the game using special projector

Durango (Xbox 720) rumor roundup: Always-on, Xbox Mini, and more

Does it require an Internet connection or not?

What the hell is an Xbox Mini?

The rest of the rumors

Rumor: Microsoft has an Xbox (720) event in the works for April

‘Orbis’ vs. ‘Durango’: The altercation over rumored specifications for the next PlayStation and Xbox

In this corner: PlayStation Orbis

And in this corner: Microsoft Durango

So, who wins?

The intangibles

Microsoft opens a Los Angeles Xbox entertainment studio for next generation

Rumor: Xbox ‘Durango’ specs leaked with built-in Kinect functionality?

Loose lips sink PlayStations: New specifics about the next Sony console (rumor)

Alleged Xbox 720 dev kit sold for $20K on eBay (UPDATED)

GamesBeat weekly roundup: MMO troubles, virtual reality, gaming, and slow Vita sales

The DeanBeat: Don’t ya wish these fantasy game consoles were coming?

Next-gen console rumor roundup: Next Xbox may have 16-core CPU