although i can't believe the numbers i am often excited how consoles go new ways in hardware. i am really looking forward of what ms has built with amd (and hopefully ibm).

More rumors?

Saw these over On NeoGaf

These are some of documents used as evidence in the Microsoft v Motorola case back in November. Too bad they're all sealed:

2138 Durango Program Review Schedule, Risks and Mitigations, May 17, 2011 PRODUCT PLANNING
2353 Game Console Durango Product Specification (Orchard Ex. 6) PRODUCT PLANNING
2385 Durango Marketing Review, April 2012 PRODUCT PLANNING
2688 The Durango Story PRODUCT PLANNING
2689 Durango Product Brief PRODUCT PLANNING
2727 "Owning the Living Room via the Operators & Telco's V1 " by Leo Del Castillo, Joe Seidel and Team. PRODUCT PLANNING
2730 Durango Audience Exploration PRODUCT PLANNING

The guy that did the concept Microsoft redesign thing a while ago is now working for MS for the Xbox.

Big News.

I'm working at Microsoft as of Summer.

Xbox to be specific.

It’s true. I’m going to go work for Microsoft. When my Microsoft rebranding project went viral, I frequently got asked if I was approached by them. "Yes" is the short answer but this relationship has actually been going on for nearly 6 months.

This was a difficult choice to make. I was approached by countless companies with offers, ranging from electronics manufacturers to ad agencies. Some of the companies that approached were the makers of my favorite products ever. I am even a “fanboy” of some of them. But when it came time to make my final decision, I wanted to work at a place I can really get excited about. Working at a company is like getting married, it becomes a fundamental part of your life. I want to work with awesome people on awesome projects that I can get excited about. If you’ve been watching Microsoft over the past year, it’s been exciting, regardless of what your ecosystem preference is.

I can’t talk about the details of how things fell into place but the choice became obvious. I'll be designing for Microsoft as of summer. I promise that I’ll make the my greatest work ever while I'm there.

I want to thank every reader of Minimally Minimal for the support so far. Without you, I would have never been able to get to where I am. You have been the wind beneath my wings, my catalyst, my mentor. I hope you’ve been able to see me grow since 2009, the beginning of this blog, and continue to see my work develop in the future. I still have my final semester of school left, and MM is only 3 years old. Don’t take this as the end of me as a curious designer, it’s only the beginning.

Always looking forward,

Andrew

I want to make it clear that MM has no plans of closing. I’ll continue to share my thoughts with you. The details of what I can/can’t post is still in discussion but this will always be a blog about my honest opinions on subjects I care about.

Also: Remember my secret collaboration project with Microsoft in 2012? Well, the IP is being acquired by Microsoft so it will have to stay confidential. I know that many people were looking forward to seeing it so I’m sorry to say that it’ll have to be tucked away for now.

http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/some-updates

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=46645168&postcount=3604

so this guy designed a few cases for XBoxs. Is that really newsworthy?

MS can sell the Xbox8 with a $150-$250 loss on hardware with no worries. They can make the initial billion dollar loss (let's say 5m sold with a $200 per unit loss) back off of Live subscriptions alone.

When it comes to the power race, Microsoft was always the most dangerous with the cash they have on hand, their complete control over Western 3rd parties, the American public, and most struggling Japanese publishers. Japan is irrelevant in terms of console sales; Wii U won't sell more than 9 million over there lifetime, and PS4 won't even come close. By being the strongest, MS will STILL get the multiplatform games the PS4 has anyways by default.

Sounds to me like the 720 will be more of a true "middle ground" console aimed at the iPhone/iPad crowd as much as the hardcore player.

The leaked specs regarding the GPU aren't that mind blowing ... a 1.2 TFLOP GPU is a solid upgrade on the 360 for sure, but not exactly mind blowing.

It'll be able to run a very eye pleasing game of Halo and do PC ports much better justice, but not exactly the 3 TFLOP monster Epic probably wants.

I think there's going to be a lot of focus on Kinect + XBox TV features, this thing is going to be an entertainment box for the living room, games are just one part of it. The next gen Kinect probably also eats up a lot of the hardware budget and requires more CPU cores/RAM to function.

IMO Microsoft is moving away a little bit from seeing Sony as their main competetior to Apple being the main one they have to worry about with Apple's iTV rumored to be coming this year too. 

That said, the 720 will still have all the core games that core players want, the CoDs, Halos, Gears, Destinys, Watch Dogs, Metal Gear Solids, etc. of the world will be on it, the broader approach that MS is taking may allow it to sell much faster and appeal to more people honestly, so it may not be a bad play.