Xbox 720 Reportedly Due For 2013 Holiday Debut
Reveal likely to occur during E3 in June.
The long-awaited successor of Microsoft's Xbox 360 could be preparing itself for a holiday 2013 launch.
According to "people familiar with the company's plans" who spoke with Bloomberg, Microsoft is planning to launch the Xbox 720 in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas next year.
The majority of speculation pertaining to the rumored next-generation console has referred to an E3 2012 reveal during June. Other sources have indicated that Microsoft will announce it at a separate event.
The source of Bloomberg didn't want to reveal their identify due to the fact that the information is purportedly based on a confidential Microsoft road map.
Earlier in the year, an all-but-confirmed leaked 56-page document detailed the Xbox 720 itself. The next-generation console is said to offer features such as a Blu-ray drive and the next version of Kinect, with a retail price apparently being set at $299.
The document leak was then pulled by a law firm who lists Microsoft as one of its clients. The latter then responded to the leak by not denying it, buy instead stressing the firm is "continually thinking about the future of the platform".
A holiday release for the Xbox 720 would make sense if the Xbox 360's commercial success during Black Friday is anything to go by. The platform sold 800,000 units last Friday, while total sales during the week of Black Friday equaled 960,000.

And what would be the price of the games to subsidize the 720's price?
Launch that shit already. Seriously I'm excited, but this console is way overdue.
And what would be the price of the games to subsidize the 720's price?
Launch that shit already. Seriously I'm excited, but this console is way overdue.
There is no way MS could launch Xbox at that low price based on the components it has. And traditionally, console games tend to be more expensive than PC games, despite the fact that a lot more console games are ported to PC than the other way around.
Care to explain why?
Doesn't Microsoft already do that making something like $5 per game sold? I don't see why there would be any change.
And when the developers have to pay a licensing fee of $5 per game, what makes you think they won't try to increase the price to recover the loss?
I say don't try to hard to tie that price tag of $299 for the console to any guess at game prices just yet. By the time the Xbox 720 is in actual production the price of its components will be down some. Not to mention that as it stands the components aren't exactly bank-busting. $299 is about the cost of the PS3 right now, and part of the reason for that is because they've sold that at a loss for most of its lifetime.
Finally, I expect that, given the fact that the PS3 launched at $600 last generation, they probably would use that for some cover to up the price of the console a bit from $300 to avoid having to do the same of the game side. $400 for a console sounds a lot better than $70 or $75 for a game. The fact that the WiiU, and its reputation as being the less "hardcore" of the big 3 consoles, is already priced at about $300, that gives MSFT a little more cover to price the 720 console at a bit higher price than $299.
They did it before anyways, like you said Microsoft will probably omit a lot of features (such as HDD and BC) from the $299 version. Microsoft is more than financially capable of selling each machine at a substantial loss, and it was hinted to be a 6x performance upgrade.
I have tried,Got
The ps2,ps3,xbox and wii. But i cant stop loving my PC.
I actually have been playing games for a long time and remember back in the old days, some SNES games sold as new releases for up to $70, especially the FX chip ones. If games have gone up at all, I'm going to go with the game industry's response. 20 years ago they did not have to deal with piracy being common, emulation, or the enormous price of "blockbuster" AAA titles. A lot of companies are going bankrupt in the industry, like THQ.
With that being said, they cannot charge significantly more than everyone else for their games and expect to get away with it. Competitive pricing. XBox 720 games will be ~$60, because that is the common price for everyone else and has been for a long time.
So why the low price? Have you people been listening at all? Microsoft has already made it clear they are NOT going with power for the 720. It's going to be another Win8 ecosystem device that just so happens to play games. I know they claimed 6x the power or whatever, but guess what? Nintendo said it would blow XBox out of the water too. These companies overexaggerate. Microsoft is not going after the Playstation next generation, it's going after the Wii U. It's going to put out a cheap system that uses tablets using SmartGlass. Who would you rather emulate, the company that made the most last gen, or the company that has one foot in the grave? Putting out a system for $500 would be pointless considering how much you could get out of a PC for that price.
At $300, it would include the "CORE" model. No HD, No Kinetics. Adding those would bring the price up to $500 easy.
We have a PS2 in our home, thinking about getting the PS3... but we are realistically looking at waiting for the $500 PS4 to come out instead... hopefully it will include PS3 compatibility. The PS3 is already down to $240... I wouldn't be surprised if its $180 next Christmas.
So this time around it's going to be about getting the one with the exclusives they like to play. Also, since this is the Xbox, it's going to depend if people are willing to pay a subscription fee to activate the full potential of their console like Netflix, online play, etc... which I in no way plan to do because I already have a strong PC and the other consoles already offer it for free.
For now I'm going to stick to PC and a Wii U. Unless there's something only on Xbox or the new Playstation that is a must play. But if MS does offer expensive cutting edge tech for that $299 price point, then be prepared to be locked into a multi-year online subscription service to subsidize that price.
Would it be sold for a loss? yes. Will they make tons of money? More than likely given Xbox's track record and the fact that the low price will help people who didn't want to spend $500ish on a new console buy it for $300ish instead.
As it was stated before, buying a console for around $500 is pretty much crazy at this point given how cheap PCs are and then add in that MS is also pushing Windows 8 right now and you can see why they dropped it to $300.
realistic, they will mark them down to & 59.99.