Xbox 720 document leak - $299 console with Kinect 2 for 2013

[Clydefrosch]

i dont believe it.
the price alone makes it unreasonable.

everything else does sound interesting, but somehow not like the microsoft i know

 

[Pleng]

$299 price point could be reached with subsadizing. Maybe $299 if you sign up to xyz broadband unlimited for 18 months. It would make sense if they really are going for the home entertainment system setup.

 

[Midna]

It's over. Xbox is finished.

 

[FireGrey]

Hmm, I don't really like kinect plus I'm more interested in the PS exclusives.
Plus Free online with the option to get a subscription to free games is better than a payed online service which is slightly better (Though i don't know which is going to be better so i'm just going with PS on this one).
So right now XBOX720 is out of the option for me, it looks like it's just a contest between PS4 and Wii U.
If the PS4 is significantly more powerful with a lot more to offer then I shall go with that.

 

[Taleweaver]

Some details may have changed since this is a doc from 2010 but it should be mostly relevant.

Even if this is true (which I doubt), then at least the price is pretty irrelevant. The second financial crisis surely must've caused SOME price differentiations (I can understand how they want to sell it under the manufacturing cost* but they're not going to bankrupt themselves over it).



*in the countries where this is legal, obvious

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Issue with a Kinect being part of the console means, odds are, you're gonna be stuck with plenty of games with necessary Kinect functionality. I'm hoping it's mostly optional for your stick-and-buttons games like Mass Effect 3 and Skyrim were on the Xbox 360 but that seems doubtful.

Really I'd just bite on a $300 Xbox 720 with a $400 Kinect 2 bundle that's optional.

 

[retKHAAAN]

Issue with a Kinect being part of the console means, odds are, you're gonna be stuck with plenty of games with necessary Kinect functionality. I'm hoping it's mostly optional for your stick-and-buttons games like Mass Effect 3 and Skyrim were on the Xbox 360 but that seems doubtful.

Really I'd just bite on a $300 Xbox 720 with a $400 Kinect 2 bundle that's optional.

Curious as to why that would be "doubtful"
Sure, there will be (and are) games that require Kinect... But it's kind of silly to assume that your "stick-and-buttons" games will require use of Kinect at any point, ever. I'm sure MS is aware of the fact that most, if not all, "stick-and-buttons" gamers would fail to appreciate being forced to yell at their televisions or air-judo-chop every Phantom and Raider they come across.

I'd have no problem with a bundled Kinect 2, even thinking about picking up a Kinect 1. Then again, I have a 13 month old and would rather have him karate-chopping fruit than watch another episode of Yo-Gabba-Gabba...

 

[Hells Malice]

Issue with a Kinect being part of the console means, odds are, you're gonna be stuck with plenty of games with necessary Kinect functionality. I'm hoping it's mostly optional for your stick-and-buttons games like Mass Effect 3 and Skyrim were on the Xbox 360 but that seems doubtful.

Really I'd just bite on a $300 Xbox 720 with a $400 Kinect 2 bundle that's optional.

Curious as to why that would be "doubtful"
Sure, there will be (and are) games that require Kinect... But it's kind of silly to assume that your "stick-and-buttons" games will require use of Kinect at any point, ever. I'm sure MS is aware of the fact that most, if not all, "stick-and-buttons" gamers would fail to appreciate being forced to yell at their televisions or air-judo-chop every Phantom and Raider they come across.

I'd have no problem with a bundled Kinect 2, even thinking about picking up a Kinect 1. Then again, I have a 13 month old and would rather have him karate-chopping fruit than watch another episode of Yo-Gabba-Gabba...

I guess you've never used a wii before.
Damn did that thing love forcing motion controls into everything.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I guess you've never used a wii before.
Damn did that thing love forcing motion controls into everything.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

With the current Kinect, motion controlled games are basically "segregated". If you want to play them, you can, but it doesn't interfere with your stick-and-buttons games. You have a few crossovers like Mass Effect 3 and Skyrim but neither of them are forced or even that necessary. I've played both games without them. But the peripheral is now part of the controller, developers will just be throwing crap there. One would hope it's for basic things like voice command and navigating menus, but it never is that basic.

 

[Veho]

But the peripheral is now part of the controller, developers will just be throwing crap there.

But they'll settle down after a while. The PS3 controller has a motion sensor, but not all games use it or force motion controls.

 

[retKHAAAN]

Issue with a Kinect being part of the console means, odds are, you're gonna be stuck with plenty of games with necessary Kinect functionality. I'm hoping it's mostly optional for your stick-and-buttons games like Mass Effect 3 and Skyrim were on the Xbox 360 but that seems doubtful.

Really I'd just bite on a $300 Xbox 720 with a $400 Kinect 2 bundle that's optional.

Curious as to why that would be "doubtful"
Sure, there will be (and are) games that require Kinect... But it's kind of silly to assume that your "stick-and-buttons" games will require use of Kinect at any point, ever. I'm sure MS is aware of the fact that most, if not all, "stick-and-buttons" gamers would fail to appreciate being forced to yell at their televisions or air-judo-chop every Phantom and Raider they come across.

I'd have no problem with a bundled Kinect 2, even thinking about picking up a Kinect 1. Then again, I have a 13 month old and would rather have him karate-chopping fruit than watch another episode of Yo-Gabba-Gabba...

I guess you've never used a wii before.
Damn did that thing love forcing motion controls into everything.

Kinect =/= Wiimote & Nunchuk

One of Nintendo's mistakes that really hurt the longevity (and appeal to so-called "hardcore gamers") of the Wii was bundling the Wiimote&Nunchuk rather than an actual controller with dual analogs. That forced devs to incorporate cheesy motion controls to account for the lack of functional controller design. There are only so many different ways you can wave/shake a remote. Sure, they released the "classic controller" but that meant players would have to go out and buy and "special" controller to utilize a more traditional control scheme and no dev could expect every gamer to do that. Regardless, the wiimote and nunchuk were innovative. But they should have been sold alongside the system rather than been the sole focus of it.

Kinect is hands-free. Unless every "stick-and-buttons" game moves to rails, I doubt you have much to worry about. There'd be no way to traverse a world unless they have you walking in place. There'd be no way to fire a gun unless they have you point at the screen and say "BOOM" when you want to fire. The only use for Kinect in games like ME3 or Skyrim would be what they already have it doing.

 

[Deleted_171835]

How about an inaccurate representation of future plans that may prove detrimental to future sales? How about they don't want people thinking that it's real when it isn't, and simply asking a site to take it down yourself wouldn't work? I doubt Microsoft even gave the law firm much of a reason. Just "we don't want this online, make them take it down." You act like the law firm would need the documents to be real to justify their removal. The document might be real, and sure, that's one potential reason. It isn't the only reason, though. You've simply convinced yourself that it is. Of course, you could just be spouting the opinion of the last couple of pages of the Neogaf thread.

Like you said, it's stuff that we know, and how would we know they were internal company references, if they were, you know, internal company references? That's either more assumptions, or those references aren't as private as you may be trying to get across.

That would be easy to fake. Them knowing a name means nothing. I know lots of names. They could have heard it any place at any time. All because you might not be able to easily dredge up the name with six seconds of Googling doesn't mean that it isn't out there to be found.

By the way, welcome to justice in these fine United States.

If that was the case, Microsoft could have simply issued a statement stating that the document is fake. Having a law firm hired by them to remove it will just arouse more suspicion considering this has already spread across numerous sites.

And here's what leads me to believe the document,

Hey guys.

Tom Warren here (Senior Editor at The Verge). I posted this story at The Verge yesterday. I just wanted to clear up a few things and address some points I've seen posted elsewhere etc. The Xbox 720 leak was covered by The Verge at The Verge, not Polygon at The Verge. I know the temporary home can be confusing at times, but thought it was important to point that out.

As for how we check these types of stories. I have been reporting on Microsoft for around 12 years now. That's not to say I know everything about Microsoft and its processes, but I have a fairly good idea of what is and isn't an internal doc usually after the first few pages. This document in question is from August 2010, prior to iOS 4.2 (mentioned in the PPT notes) and when certain team members (mentioned in doc notes) were still at the company in engineering roles. The document references several employees by name and uses one of Microsoft's internal "CSG_Pres" PowerPoint templates (an early example of their Metro style PowerPoint templates that are used regularly internally now).

Couple this with the fact it aligns with other information I've seen about Nextbox over the past year, it aligned perfectly. The document also references Microsoft's SmartGlass technology (announced at E3). I went through a number of other ways to verify the information was as accurate as other stories we would report on - I'm not going to outline the exact processes because I like to keep those secret

We make every attempt to ensure this type of data is accurate. I ran a number of stories ahead of this year's E3, and they were all accurate:

Microsoft to bring full Internet Explorer browsing to Xbox 360 with Kinect controls
Exclusive: Kinect Play Fit to offer universal exercise tracking with 'Joule' heart rate monitor
Exclusive: $99 Xbox 360 + Kinect bundle launching next week with two-year subscription
Exclusive: Microsoft to preview 'Woodstock' Xbox music service at E3

Hopefully this clears up any questions over how we vet this type of information. I don't typically report on Xbox or gaming news (its not my core knowledge) but I do enjoy reading Neogaf threads from time to time. You guys have an amazing community here so keep it up

Thanks,
Tom

This is a post by the resident Microsoft expert over at The Verge in which he said that he did verify whether the information is accurate. I don't know about you but I'm inclined to believe him.

The name just adds to the proof that the document is from Microsoft. Sure that could be easy to fake but given what I posted above, the details that match up in the document, the name just further proves that the document is real.

 

[supermario5029]

Would anyone stop? The console isn't even announced and there isn't a real picture of the real thing! The PS4 too!

 

[Deleted_171835]

Would anyone stop? The console isn't even announced and there isn't a real picture of the real thing! The PS4 too!

What?


This is a leaked document...

 

[Rydian]

This is a leaked document of their plans. These are guidelines mainly involving concept art.

This is nice info and it's interesting to see their goals and how they intend to go about using them, but this is not information about the next xbox itself, just some of the plans that have come up.

 

[Deleted_171835]

This is a leaked document of their plans. These are guidelines mainly involving concept art.

This is nice info and it's interesting to see their goals and how they intend to go about using them, but this is not information about the next xbox itself, just some of the plans that have come up.

There is information regarding the Next Xbox itself.

Xbox 720

• Support for Blu-ray
• Native 3D output and glasses
• Concurrent apps, and additional sensor and peripheral support.
• 6x performance increase,
• True 1080p output with full 3D support and an "always on" state for the console.

A slide on core hardware indicates that the next Xbox will be designed to be scalable in the number of CPU cores and their frequencies. Microsoft appears to have been debating whether to use six or eight ARM or x86 cores clocked at 2GHz each with 4GB of DDR4 memory alongside three PPC cores clocked at 3.2GHz each for backwards compatibility with existing Xbox 360 titles.

On a side note, that 4GB of RAM has now apparently been upgraded to 8GB. Yes, you read that right!

Microsoft positions its Xbox 720 as the only box needed for living room entertainment in the document, providing background recording functionality for TV content and a unified Windows 8 foundation to make it easier for application developers to build apps that target Xbox, PC, and Windows Phone. Microsoft rounds off the document with a promised price point of $299 with its Kinect 2 hardware and a prediction of a 10 year lifecycle with more than 100 million units sold.

Obviously, some of that could have changed but it's still interesting info.

http://filetrip.net/...-10-f29428.html

 

[Rydian]

Again, that's plans, not information on a concrete device. Check the wording, it's future tense.