Wasn't Halo still under Bungie back then?

Anyway, it would be a better business strategy if they just pricecut and launch Halo 4 on X360 next year. X360 sales would bring in more revenue and profit instead of launching a Nextbox along side a pricecut for the X360 in the same year (We can't assume sales would explode for both). Though Halo 4 coming out on the Nextbox in 2013 is always an open possibility (max out revenue from X360 version in 2012)

343 was made in late 2008, frank o conner said back than that they already started work on the next game. Also ya ive thought of that as a possibility. they could re- release halo 4 on the 720 after sales have dies down on the 360, that way they could get away from the new halo every year thing.

Thats only a problem from the perspective of the consumer. Microsoft, it's not something they would avoid.

this is surprising news, it won't be anew system, but a slim version of the xbox 360 most likely

Agreed.  Though, I think they will announce it earlier than 5 months before launch.  Possibly at E3 '12, with a launch in mid-late 2013.  And a NeXbox launch around the same time as the Halo 4 launch would negatively impact both.  Some who would have purchased Halo 4 will decide to use their money to jump into the next gen and some who would have jumped into next gen will wait because the 360 still has a few good exclusives left.  And like you said, they still have yet to cut the 250GB SKU to $199.

This is prolly not true but what's with people going crazy saying you need more than 2 gigs of ram? You guys should run hardware monitor while playing games on PC more often. With no windows running on the console 2 gigs is plenty for next Gen. If they have Another 1.5 gigs of video ram and 2 gigs of system ram they are set. I dont use up 4 gigs of ram when gaming on 3 screens with windows eating 500 mega of ram on its own...

and 6 core cpu+2GB ram sounds very wired

It may be alright now, and even 1-2 years from now but if you think how far games are being pushed now and then think how far they will be in 5-6 years time after the system would be approaching the usual halfway mark of its generation it will, once again, be a big bottleneck let alone towards the end of the generation. Personally I would like to see an 'ultra-beast' console but realisticly speaking around 4gb of RAM should be their minimum target, not two... most laptops these day have more than 2gb of RAM. Ofcourse this is likely inaccurate so in the end this may well be moot but the point still stands.

First of all, laptops, computers and such are not a good comparison for system ram needed for gaming as operating systems, browser tabs and other thing things take up a good chunk of system ram by themselves before the game even boots up...Below is a screenshot of my system ram usage as I am replying to this. I am not gaming and half of my ram is taken up...

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-OmR9Jz-kc7E/TsH4W6gBvCI/AAAAAAAAAgI/hEeWqXreFI0/s567/system%252520ram.jpg

Secondly, I think people will have to lower their next gen expectations. Microsoft and Sony next gen consoles are not going to pack a dual GTX 580 or 6990 video cards due to cost, power consumption and heat. Best we can hope for is something along the lines of gtx560Ti or 6950 like performance brought down to a 28 nm chip which consumes a maximum of 120W by itself.  So realistically for next gen people need to expect a slight bump in detail along with 1080p gaming at 60 frames per second and true 720p per eye 3D gaming @ 30 fps as a best case scenario. HD TV's that 99% of the people who play consoles opwn do not support higher settings than that so there is no point for them to deliver something better than that.

Lastly, next gen games will eat up video ram more than they eat up system ram. Something like Metro 2033 on 3 monitors maxed out already needs more video ram than system ram. Microsoft will be smart to give their video card as much ram as sytem ram. If people are expecting Avatar like graphics, be prepared for 2GB of video RAM to be used needed at least. System ram however really doesn't need to be much higher than 2 GB if there is dedicated video memory...assuming Xbox 720 doesn't run on windows vista :)

Hmm....bits and pieces coming together. Hearing "loop" in another rumor intrigues me.