Xbox 720 will be officially unveiled on May 21 and will retail in November, according to veteran tech blogger Paul Thurrott. Word has it the device will simply be called ‘Xbox’ and was originally intended to launch as two separate versions until one was scrapped.
Speaking on the latest What the Tech podcast, Thurrott laid down some rather bold claims about Microsoft’s new rig, and it’s not clear where exactly this information is coming from, so please do remain suspicious, take a pinch of salt and treat this as rumour only for now.
NeoGAF has a full transcript of the chat, but I’ve hand-picked the juicy bits below.
On the cancelled Xbox 720 model:
“The next Xbox is code-named Durango. And we have talked for a while about this notion that there might be another version of the Xbox that was just aimed at entertainment—a non-gaming device. That device was code-named ‘Yumo’ and they’re not making it. They may make one in the future, but it’s not happening this year.”
On the Xbox 720 price:
“Durango is going to be expensive [laughs], you know $500, $300 for the subscription model, that kind of thing, but you know, Blu-ray, blah blah blah, but the thing that interest me, going back and looking at some of the stuff I got a long time ago, it actually says ‘must be internet-connected to use’ in the notes. And that’s all I have, but it does say that.”
On the Xbox 720 announcement:
“Originally, they were going to announce this thing in April 24, now they’re going to announce it May 21. We know there are events occuring this year where we’re going to learn more about Durango.”
On the release date, pre-E3 showings:
“Early November, yeah. E3 is going to occur. BUILD is going to occur in San Francisco in June when they’re going to talk about the developer story because it’s a Windows 8 device. It’s going to have the same, or basically the same, developer tools and developer APIs and all that kind of stuff.
“So I think there’s a lot information to come, but I look at all this stuff that I’ve seen about Durango and I think, ‘it’s all positive.’ I don’t really see any bad news here at all. Like to me, everything I’ve seen about this is really positive.
“It’s amazing to me that, based on like no information at all, everyone is like freaking out about everything. Aside from this online thing, by the way, the number one question I’ve gotten from people is, ‘What does it look like?’ Who gives a shit what it looks like?
“I’ve actually heard from, by the way not one or two people, several people who’ve said, ‘based on what I’ve seen, Sony is going to blow them away.’ Based on what you’ve seen? You’ve seen nothing. What are you talking about? No, but you’ve seen literally nothing from Microsoft.”
On Microsoft’s new approach to the industry:
“The problem Microsoft has has nothing to do with Sony or Nintendo anymore, it’s Roku and AppleTV. The market for hardcore video games, the market of people will always buy the next Gears of War game, the next Halo game, the next Call of Duty game, it’s fairly finite. It’s a decent market, yada yada yada, it’s not the market for tablets, it’s not the market for smartphones.”
