January 26, 2012

Next Gen Xbox rumors

Its no secret the Microsoft has begun its first stages of devel­op­ment for its next install­ment of Xbox gam­ing hard­ware. Lit­tle is known but regard­less rumors seep through the grape vine. The lat­est set of rumors to sur­face regard­ing the next Xbox are that it will intro­duce the next level of Kinect hard­ware and will sup­pos­edly the next Kinect will ship with the next Xbox.

The next gen Kinect is rumored to have an onboard CPU that will increase its motion detec­tion (and hope­fully reduce lag asso­ci­ated with the cur­rent Kinect), a fea­ture that was con­sid­ered for the cur­rent Kinect but never made it to the fin­ished product.

Also the next Xbox is said to uti­lize Blu Ray instead of DVD, a wise choice if Microsoft intends to con­tinue to com­pete. Really though it was only a mat­ter of time before they suc­cumbed to Blu Ray, yes Microsoft spear­headed HD DVD but it lost and its time to move on.

And last but prob­a­bly the most con­tro­ver­sal piece of uncon­firmed news is that the next Xbox is rumored to use a new tech that will actu­ally block users from play­ing used games on the con­sole. Should this rumor come to fruition it will be a bad move by Microsoft. Will it kill the com­pany or even the Xbox? no, but it will undoubt­edly piss off the major­ity of Microsofts user base, espe­cially the bud­get gamers. For brand new games this is less of an issue see­ing as you only save about $5–10, but for older games that can be had for $10–30 this will cre­ate issue. Hope­fully Microsoft doesnt make such a force­full move or they will likely lose some of their rev­enue to those who can get the same used games for Playstation.