Microsoft likely to showcase Xbox 720 in April reveal

Now you will see gamesmanship!

Completely expected, Sony have forced their hand somewhat.

Interested to see which direction they’ve gone with the new Xbox.

Earlier story – When asked about console release cycles, Hirai indicated Sony is waiting for Microsoft to strike first. Speaking to The Times, he said, “why go first when your competitors can look at your specifications and come up with something better?”

Todays story – an unnamed Sony official has claimed the company’s PS4 reveal “at first caught Microsoft off-guard.”

Conclusion? Sony is shitting in their mouth.

This is going to get bloody this time around.

Console wars. Oh.My.God. *facepalm.jpg*

It’s going to be interestng though.

I would say it definitely caught them off guard but only because of Sony’s corporate bluff.
But it wouldn’t drive them to pull the trigger earlier. I would say if MS were aiming for a winter release anyway, April for a reveal with details, followed by E3 for a proper fandangly bit of showmanship would fit with their modus operandi.

There’s always going to be fanboy/console wars lol Im a Sony fanboy but I really hope Microsoft steps it up with the exclusives that so far was my only thing against the 360 I want sick games not to jump around on the Kinect

As a matter of fact, Microsoft has known Sony was due for a February reveal since November.

Not really caught off guard at all.

My gut feeling is that these two consoles will be brilliant but one could stagnate due to price. Anything over $400 in this climate is a no go

@4 I think we might see the least bloody console generation in quite a while. They’re both using similar hardware this time, both are going online and both have a move-controller built in.

There’s space for two console makers in this space, which is what we have (wii being a novelty extra kinda console) and it’ll be so much easier to cross-develop due to the hardware similarities. Both should be able to turn a profit, neither are likely to suffer any sort of knockout blow.

Your preference might just come down to design, usability and online features in the end.

E3 organisers aren’t going to be happy about all this…

@10 Well said

@8

They did?

In any case MS needs to come with an impressive showing, plain and simple. I don’t want to see Usher or Harrison Ford on stage or hear how much money you made on the 360…….

I want to see what your system can do and what is it bringing to the table. One way MS can wow the crowd is showing Battlefield 4 running on their system.

I bet you MS pays EA to show off that game on their hardware. I’m pretty sure COD is going to be there too.

But the only thing that’s going to really hurt MS is the release date. Sony is releasing this year, MS should release 4 to 6 months after that. They literally can’t afford another red ring incident.

Move over cult of Kaz. It’s time for Palmer GIFs!

You guys are funny, Sony and Microsoft have so many of the same third party partner that there’s nothing about Sony and Microsoft next console that the Sony and Microsoft doesn’t know about, down to probable release dates.

I am sure Microsoft is not surprised at all by the PS4 announcement and knew about it before all of us. They even knew Sony was not gonna show the actual console, I remember the article about a Microsoft Exec saying most people outside of gaming wont know much about what Sony reveals on the 20th. Which kinda turn out to be true, since no console was actually shown, dampening this announcement a bit.

Consoles suck.

Not as much as your PC!

@11
MS Announced pre-E3 last time. It was on MTV.

Lol, good stuff, lets get all the cards on the table.

@PC_PlayBoy Pc’s suc….wait I love pc’s and consoles…you suck!!

@18:

Yeah, but it was only about 3 weeks before E3, and seen as a “pre-E3″ event.

This would be a possible 2 months, by which time, E3 could be left with nothing but a few game announcements.

Let’s be honest, Nintendo is probably not going to have anything ‘interesting’ except a few tired looking exclusives to show off.

We already know so much about the PS3, and more info is coming out all the time, so all we can realistically expect is to see the console, and controller in action.

If I was running E3, I’d be working hard to stop MS announcing anything before the show.

Why are people still calling it 720? It doesn’t make any sense Next xbox is going to get a name like xbox 3 or just xbox. Any thoughts?

@22 According to my very lazy maths, it could be called the Xbox2664 based solely on the fact that if the hardware is the same as the PS4 and it achieves 1.85 teraflops, and the Xbox360 produced 0.25 teraflops thats a 740% increase

Anyway, Xbox 3 would seem logical, but maybe something like Nextbox.

Apparently they’re just going to call it “Xbox”.

@22 They should just be honest and call it the Halo-Netflix Box.

But seriously, i’m guessing they’ll show Halo 5, announce it as a launch title, Forza, i guess… Not too sure what else though, MS’ problem will always be its massive lack of first party studios. They may pull out the stops and crank everything up to 11 for the first year, but just like with this gen, whilst the studios are between games, it’ll be the long third party, multiplat filled desert again.
People bought into CoD on 360 because CoD2 came out for it first, 360 had a years install base in advance and the online features were better suited to it, but can anyone really imagine what the 360 would be if the PS3 was considered the “home of CoD”? Looking at what the PS4′s offering in terms of network, the next Xbox probably wont even have the online edge Live did this gen.

I just dont see what MS can offer with a new console, they dont have the exclusives, they probably wont have a better network, going off rumours they wont have the “power” and they wont have more time on the market. Considering the fact that globally the PS3 has pretty much always been selling better than the 360 at a much higher price (one people considered to be ‘too high’) it seems they dont really even have the loyal install base.

^ Wow! Are you Michael Pachter?

Meh… wish it could have been March already… oh well.

@25 They already do have the better network on account of buying a company that operated a large worldwide network many years ago. You can’t take that away from them. If the next xbox has a better leg up in Japan, Sony wont have quite the same home advantage this time around (8-9 million PS3s sold there vs 1 million 360′s accounts for the reason for why they are now neck and neck on sales). We all need to wait for facts from MS before writing anyone off from this race.

^ Exactly. A balanced person wouldn’t look at the situation any other way.

We don’t know anything about the 720, it’s games or it’s functionality. Trying to justify writing it off at this stage is desperate folly.

“corporate bluff”

I dont know why exactly, but this… term made me laugh

@25
I reckon a proper Forza of some sort is likely, but Halo 5? Not yet. Updated version of Halo 4 – very possibly. Too early for 5 though.

Lack of first party studios wasn’t an issue last time as they cherry picked the best third party stuff. Similar this time perhaps? I think they will likely have some sort of deal with Activision and CoD or maybe EA and Battlefield. Not full exclusivity but DLC first something like that. EA were a little conspicuous by their absence at the PS4 showing. They will develop for it no doubt (they were on the list) but some sort of deal with MS perhaps.

@28 Microsoft are never going to do well in Japan because their console boxes look like they were designed by a 4 yr old with a crayon.

@31 I agree – MS are just going to throw money at exclusives rather than memory. I fully expect some COD and GTAV exclusivity.

@32 And the ps3 was the pinnacle of style and class? Give me a break. I enjoy my PS3 but it was like a 3 legged/1 eyed dog. You love it, but its not pretty. No, MS only started to take Japan seriously late in the game. And like the xbox in the western world, you make a name, then the next iteration builds on what came before. The playstation brand is already established there so not quite the same leap can be made by Sony.

Lucid Games (not far from where I used to live) are making Project Gotham Racing, Black Tusk are making a Defiance type (MMO sort of 3 rd person shooter out in April) game and two downloadable titles and Remedy are making an exclusive game too.

After seeing what Sony will be offering Microsoft will have to have better/same hardware and all the functions the PS4 has.

And have a bunch of developers and exclusive games that looks good as on the PS4.

If not, this will be the first time I am skipping Xbox.

I love my Xbox 360 and while i have all the consoles, except for the Wii U, it remains my console of choice this gen. I apreciate the things like party chat, Xbox live, the many awesome arcade games, the control is near perfect IMO. So basically i’d really want to buy the new Xbox at first, cause i can only afford one console this year.

It’s really going to depend on several factors. Will the console come with a great launchgame? I have no idea which ones, cause i’m certainly not expecting a Halo 5 already. It’s gonna depend on that. Let’s be honest, MS hasn’t really been interesting for gamers looking for a new IP on their console. They focused way too much on Kinect and that’s something i hope they won’t do during this event. Sure they will show the new Kinect and it’s features but don’t ignore real games MS, please. And of course specs, rumours have been saying the PS4 is significantly more powerful. Time will tell.

I dont know drdamn I feel they need more exclusives having let so many go.

Microsoft will launch along with the PS4, propably even for 50$ less.
spec wise they will be about the same anyway, so nobody cares.

will get them both, so i dont really care

at least they will show the console itself
not promises like sony showed

Don’t worry about MS, reask, they’re working very hard on being number one. Stuff like this:

http://www.t3.com/news/xbox-720-3d-environment-tech-leaked

http://www.vg247.com/2013/01/09/microsofts-illumiroom-projects-images-with-kinect-for-an-immersive-game-experience/

…and Kinect glasses (and whatever else people can come up with) look like they have the potential to make all the wow moments and megatons that Sony was missing.

I hope so Giga as it would be a shame if they let it slip like Sony did early on with the PS3.
Interesting times ahead if some of them links bear fruition.

@42 But Sony let it slip and sold shedloads. ‘Let it slip’ is a subjective comment. Sales would show that a LOT of people loved what Sony did. Enough to pay a touch over the odds for the product. Its about business again. I can’t see MS abandoning any of their target audiences. No matter what your opinion of them is (good or bad), they’re a good/sensible (mostly) business and provided no one from the windows management team is involved could actually do some really clever things as Giga says.

Let’s be honest here. I expected at least a interesting and promising new IP from Sony during the event, i guess they’ll keep that for E3, but still..they played it quite safe with Killzone Shadow Fall and inFamous and the rest being multiplatform titles. So i don’t think anyone should complain if MS shows either a glimpse of Halo 5 with impressive graphics or something else. However, anything Sony did during that event, it was mostly about the console and gaming itself. Very little about entertainment services and motion stuff. Only a small bit of MM’s new Move game.

But even with all the casual shit they are no doubt going to show, there of course will be real games as well, real games to showcase the true power of the system, to make fans of the 360 look forward to buying this system. Also i expect MS will show the console, unlike Sony. They’ve always done that in the past, but then again…so did Sony until this week. However…Major Nelson more or less dissing Sony because of no console showing and actual complaint about games, should hopefully mean MS will indeed show the console and actually have loads of games?

Let’s also not forget the E3 Natal / Molyneux presentation, where the grade of interactivity never happened. But I bet Microsoft has some great looking Alan Wake in pocket. And exclusive CoD DLC of course.

@45

I hope so man. Alan Wake 2 on next-gen tech sounds fucking awesome. Especially after what Remedy said about the new face-tech they were using for their new project and bodly saying that LA Noire’s face-tech was nothing in comparison, something along those lines. On top of that Sam Lake teased Alan Wake stuff last year before E3 but nothing happened then. And in January of this year they teased it again, something Alan Wake was gonna be announced this year.

I was talking about this with someone recently and he said…the problem with Alan Wake 2 and MS is, is that AW ‘only’ sold 2 million copies, with PC combined it’s more than 2 million though. But apparently that’s not enough for MS to publish a second one he said. I hope that’s BS, cause fuck you MS if thats true. You should embrace this title.

@42

I’m confused, what did Sony show that so fantastic that Microsoft needs to top it?

Better hardware is a given, I’m sure whatever the difference in the processing power of both console would not be noticeable in a game, just like 360 vs PS3.

Streaming games? Please, form my OnLive experience no thank you.

What else is so groundbreaking with PS4? Nothing as of yet, just copying tech pioneered by other companies.

At the end of the day, especially if both consoles launch in the same window, most people who got only PS3 will go get a PS4, most people who go only an Xbox will get the next Xbox.

People like me who got both an Xbox and PS3, will go get the console they enjoyed the most first. In my case I spent 90% of this gen on my Xbox and will get that first and a PS4 later.

For me it’s only going to depend on the launch games and price too. Even though people around me are expecting Microsoft’s console to be a lot less powerful than the PS4, i am not expecting that at all. So if the specs are similar, i should be good with the new Xbox when it comes to multiplatform titles like Watch_Dogs and Destiny, which the latter releases in 2014 anyway. Of course an awesome exclusive launch game is also a plus and i am very curious what MS will have to offer. PS4 offers Killzone, which is quite awesome. Thing is…i wonder if us Europeans will even see the PS4 this year.

At the talking about why the Xbox is the home of cod it’s because the Xbox controller is perfectly designed for Fps. Research has been done that show the cascaded analog sticks are more natural in the hands making them more comfortable and giving better control.

Yeah i agree, the controller is perfect for shooters. It really is near perfect IMO anyway, and i hope so much MS won’t change too much with the new one.

Anyway…exactly HOW caught off guard was MS?

http://www.whosay.com/larry/photos/294247