Xbox 720: Blu-ray inside, always-on netcon required

Yes because mandatory online connections have worked so well for Ubisoft.

Built in Kinect, oh dear.

Always on, so all those who still have yet to get the internet or don’t have a reliable connection will miss out. What if you got young kids, they have zero reason to ever go online.

April 1st was yesterday, wasn’t it?
In that case, I’m curious how much almost as or more expensive than the PS3 at launch this thing will be.

All this is straight up. Rumour until announced, obviously, but this is what pubs and devs have been told.

Things are starting to get quite interesting.

Next year’s going to be insane.

Please, post photos so that I may lick my screen. As I so often do with VG247 articles, of course. Thanks =-)

I heard rumors that the price point will be relatively low, can you confirm that at this time?

I love this point just before a new generation. No-one knows what the hell is going on, but it’s EXCITING!

Not buying the always on internet piracy measure.

That would be commercial suicide, and every half decent business knows it. Microsoft are not that stupid.

@absolutezero: Ubisoft’s “always on DRM” worked… Diablo III “always on DRM” will be working. All MMO’s needs internet connection and all MMO’s working. VG247 needs internet connection and VG247 also working.

“…slotted in for a Christmas 2013 released”

Bonus Monday morning ‘d’ in there. !:)

Big ass story!

I have a hard time believing that any system would require an always netcon. Just doesn’t searve any purpose that I can think of nor does it encompany the whole market. Plus some folks have isp caps, how much of that cap would something like that eat up?

God, I love this two year period of rumours and leaks before home console launches.

Not buying the ‘always on internet’ thing at all. Half the US still has very expensive/very rubbish broadband availability. Piss on their best market? I very much doubt it.

If one core’s for Kinect and another’s for the OS then we’d better hope it’s six cores and not four, incidentally.

There was something in the air that night, the stars were bright, Durango

@#10 Ubisoft’s “always on DRM” worked

All of the Ubi games that contained the mandatory online DRM have been hacked to work offline. Thats not working. Thats giving the pirates a better experience than those that choose to purchase.

Massively Multiplayer Online games require an internet connection? News to me! D:

Constant DRM and built in kinect?

Well that’s Xbox out of the window… Sony, your move.

I was told the always-on thing was “like Steam”. So maybe there’ll be an offline mode, or something. I was told it was a requirement, though.

This is one rumour i hope is true but im worried about the controller, as it is surely going to be a stupid ass controller.

Any word on the amount of RAM, Pat?

Steam’s offline mode barely works even now though! ;_;

What Blerk said! If they have two cores reserved for the OS and Kinect you’d really want the chip to be an 8/12 core chip. In saying that they could be pushing a more GPGPU type setup with the CPU doing minimal work.

The main difference between this and Steam would be that Steam don’t make you buy discs as well.

Unless they’re planning on selling everything digitally too, and the ‘like Steam’ thing only applies to digital sales rather than disc-based sales. Which would make much more sense.

Holy cow this is big news, this ain’t even a rumour anymore then? What i find so surprising is how this kind of news can leak, but we didn’t know anything about 360 before its release.

April 1st was yesterday, i had expected an article like this, but it’s april 2nd now, so i guess we can believe this

Wow, the always on thing could single handedly ruing console gaming for me. Seriously, I’ve always hated the PC games that do that and now it’s coming to consoles…
The sad part is that pirates are gonna break whatever anti-piracy measure they have and soon, people that pirate X720 games can enjoy them free of always online restriction and other similar crap.

I wonder how much American internet will improve over the next 20 months?

I’m pumped up now, it seems like the new console rumour floodgates are open and flowing.

Can someone who knows shit about PC GPUs tell us about the ones mentioned above? It doesn’t need to be true, hyperbole and rampant speculation welcome!

The always on internet thing would probably be a pain, but I’m always on anyway, so it’s no skin off my nose…

“The sad part is that pirates are gonna break whatever anti-piracy measure they have”

Doubtful. They’ll likely just use a further refined version of the PS3 system which has held up remarkably well, even after it was (arguably) blown wide open resulting in its keys being exposed. The consoles next gen will be ridiculously difficult to hack.

The GPUs rumoured to be in both the next Playstation and in this are nothing really to shout about. They’ll do the job good enough at 1080p, which is what Im guessing both companies are aiming for.

Its just funny that the industry keeps on keeping on with the punishing consumers instead of trying to make the consoles more attractive to pirates.

@28
The reason PS3 did better after refined measures were put in place is because most big hackers didn’t bother to crack it. As long as there is one hacked / piratable system on the market, they’ll rest.

That’s always how they work. Also, maybe the legit game recognition system will be upgraded but the always online system have ALWAYS been broken by hackers within days of their release. Even if hackers break that part, the pirate gamers will get the better experience with one less restriction. That has ALWAYS been the case.

Right now people are playing pirated Xbox LIVE games on their systems. There are pirate WOW servers. Do you really think this time hackers are gonna lose?

This is the first technical specification estimate/report/leak that sounds realistic to me. Up until now, they’ve all been far too meagre. Two 7000 series working independantly (which PC architecture cannot do, I’m told), sounds about right. It would make the console 10-20 times more powerful than Xbox 360.

PC gamers will say ‘two 7000′s isn’t that powerful – blah, blah’ but in a closed console environment, in real applications, in games made specifically for the hardware, that’s significantly more graphical fidelity than current high-end PCs are capable of producing.

That’s going to be one impressive machine.

“Do you really think this time hackers are gonna lose?”

Yup. There’s a huge difference between hacking software on a PC and doing it on a console. There may be people playing pirated games on XBL but there are a grand total of none of them doing it with a system running another other than the latest dashboard (Since 2.0.8495.0). Same goes for when the PS3 was hacked and then updated.

Don’t mistake the DVD drive flashing workaround (which was idiocy on Microsoft’s part) with a fully rooted (JTAG) system having access to LIVE (or PSN for that matter).

One said: “It’s like two PCs taped together.”

.. Can we add this to the “imbecilic comment of the year” nominations?

Because yes.. a GPU.. is a PC.

“that’s significantly more graphical fidelity than current high-end PCs are capable of producing.”

No its not. Lets not get bogged down in willy waving.

@34

Yes, it is. Or perhaps you could name for me all those games that take full advantage of your average enthusiasts quad-crossfire setup? It takes them two years just to bring the drivers up to speed and years after that for any software to appear that takes anywhere near full advantage. In real terms, in a closed system, this will produce far better-looking games than anything being made for PC – for a time.

It’s not that it’s more powerful, it’s that the hardware will be fully used. On PC it just never is. Benchmarking huge numbers is all those high-end systems are good for.

@35 Don’t forget how vague “7000 series” is. A 7750 is not much better than the existing Xbox 360 GPU, if at all. Two 7970s, however, is an altogether different kettle of fish.

What’s more exciting in a geeky kind of way, is that the GPUs will work independently of one another. That’s how PCs should be architected.

I don’t believe you, Pat.

Your sources are dodgy.

I believe this, is the most reasonable news about the upcoming next gen xbox console, they are in line with an affordable console, price wise but with a good graphics punch, i like it, and also believe the blue ray and iam glad with this desicion instead of the without optical drive rumor, therefore i like this news overall.

I can picture Pat sitting on this all day yesterday thinking FUCK APRIL FOOLS DAY.

Which is a sentiment I can wholeheartedly support. April Fools day should be ‘international everyone get the cock off the Internet and do something useful day.’

In other news, me=pumped.

@33 I imagine it was just a play on the Wii being “two GameCubes stuck together with duct-tape” rather than a serious assessment of the machine’s make up.

Presumably the dual GPUs would be to approximate a final chip which isn’t ready yet. I’m pretty sure both 360 and PS3 dev kits had similar intermediary hardware, whereas actually shipping a unit with two GPUs seems like a rather odd decision on the face of it.

failed name for failed console
100% RROD
720 will have graphics similar to 360
PS4 graphics will beat PC in every aspect

Hope this is true. A new console might finally force Activision to update the CoD engine…. Maybe -_-

If it really does have always on the I have to believe MS will just have handed a huge chunk of the market outside US to their competitors.

Or maybe it’s just the time of year for such rumours.

#42 if the PS3 and 360 didnt force them, why makes you think the new gen will do it? 8D

@36 Are you forgetting that the 360 has the equivalent of the ATi Radeon X1800 series? A 7750 completely destroys it.

“Xbox 720 will require an always-on internet connection as an anti-piracy measure”

If this is true then I’m out. There are alot of people out there just like me who wouldn’t buy an always-on. It isn’t practical and doesn’t work, and that is a game not a full-on system.

If we compare the problems that one game suffers and multiply this by the number of game you buy over the lifetime of a system then we have a problem with servers, applications, how new games are integrated within the older systems and service/downtime.

Didn’t buy AC, not buying diablo3 and adding the xbox if the rumors are true, but I guess we’ll wait and see how things go.

@45

Exactly. X1800 ran 273 GFLOPS, 7750 (if it is going to be 7750) runs 900 GFLOPS in its basic form (expect an improved version if this is the chip MS goes with); X2=1800 GFLOPS (since they’re working independently). That is a very conservative estimate.

And GFLOPS do not tell the whole story; there are significant architectural improvements between such disparate generations. 1×7750 is eight times the power in real terms than X1800 (in original Xbox 360). Times two, that’s 16 times the power.

That’s significant. That’s HUGE.

#36 has no idea what he’s talking about.

273 graphics flops for 360 what a loser 360 console is hahahaha

@48

Be-be boo, boo, boo. Goo goo booooo. Wibba wabba googoo boo-boo.

@49
ba ba ba ba ba ba banana
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10 10 10 10 10 10 100%