Kotaku reports the next Xbox will ship with a 500GB hard drive, mandatory game installs to the hard drive, always on internet connection and mandatory Kinect 2.0 integration in every Xbox 720. The hard drive is a mechanical one with maximum read speeds of 50 MB/sec.
The retail system specs appear to not have changed from what's been posted here. Notably the shared DDR3 and gimped SATA 2.0 connection for the hard drive remain. I was hoping at least one of those would be upgraded before launch. SATA 3.0 and ability to swap in a 3rd party hard drive would have been welcome since prices of SSDs are surely to drop expontentially over the next 3-4 years which would make a 512GB SSD swap a no brainer for people who want to cut down on their load times.
Here is the diagram outlining the differences between Kinect 1.0 and 2.0.
Supposedly the retail specs of the console. Not seeing any changes from earlier diagrams linked here already.
http://kotaku.com/5982986/we-know-all-about-the-next-xbox-from-someone-who-says-theyve-got-one
The Data Move engines could be used to accelerate certain graphical effects but it remains how useful they will be.
Mandatory Kinect is a double edged sword. On one hand it would allow developers a feature that's universal on all Xbox consoles which would push for this to become more integrated into games. On the other hand, a lot of gamers simply do not want to pay for this feature or use it in games. With Kinect 2.0 more or less confirmed to be included in every next gen Xbox, it would stand to reason why MS didn't have a lot of $ left to spend on a beefier GPU and memory subsystem feeding it, without either taking larger losses on the hardware than MS or having to price the console much higher to compensate.
