Specs sound great. I hope they go with 8GB ram as stated. It seems to be quite high on the wishlist of developers. 8800 series and 8 cores would make it pack some serious horsepower.

If true, I hope it won't be really expensive. It seems like a really big leap in raw power

"My source. Who has been right for announcements and timing and leaks more than anything else. Stated that we WOULD for sure see something prior E3. Including the leaks begining pre-during-post CES.By now, when it comes to those kinds of things, I pretty much believe him. MS doesn't want to share any space on a system release"

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=46199500&postcount=737

MS is getting discounts left and right and they will surely sell it at a loss at launch. Probably even a hefty one.

http://www.techpowerup.com/img/12-09-17/78a.jpg
~200$ MSRP for the 8850 which seems to be on the same or maybe even slightly higher level as the 7870

Not that expensive GPU (will be a custom one anyway which is likely to use less power etc.). 8GB RAM costs next to nothing. 640GB HDD ~$50 at retail. Add a case a mainboard, other electronic pieces,Blu-Ray drive and manufacturing costs and the only other expensive piece would be the CPU.

Plus unknown production costs of Kinect 2.0 (the first Kinect only costs about...$50 or so to produce)

They could probably sell it at ~$500 without or only tiny losses. $450 could be the retail price. (maybe even less depending on their strategy)

Obviously they could also make a second SKU with a 1TB or 1.5TB HDD and bundle a cheap game with it (or XBL subscription) and sell it for $500 which could dampen the losses.

Talking about pricing strategy, I've also read that they want to sell the console at a much lower price but with a 2 year mandatory XBL subscription.

If true, the WiiU is going to be pidgeonholed to Dreamcast-like status this gen.

Otherwise, this is fantastic news. I think that Microsoft would be very smart to offer the console on a steep discount if users sign up for Live or whatever their Live-like service is in the coming generation.

Not really. We're 7 years removed from the X360 launch. Only compared to the WiiU does it look impressive. Back in 2005, the X360's specs were unreal for a console, and right up there with mid or high end PCs.

8 TB? That's a lot of memory for a home console. I would say 1 TB would be the highest they start off with then gradually upping it to 1.5 TB and 2 TB.

For "8 cores" read 4 cores, since an 8-core AMD BD/PD CPU is actually slower than a 4-core Intel SB/IB CPUin gaming.

But this is an IBM processor, according to original source(chinese):

ibm 的cpu   amd  的  GPU

I predict full compatibility with 360 games.

A very powerful console indeed. How much a console with these specs could cost ?