Xbox 720 Durango Dev Kit Appears Online for Sale
A nice Xbox 720 leak to get your week off to the right start.
Nintendo has already talked a lot about the Wii U. Conversely, both Microsoft and Sony are keeping pretty quiet about their next generation consoles. As far as Microsoft is concerned, we do have some details, such as the fact that it's codenamed 'Durango,' and that it might ditch the optical drive, but we're holding out for some good old fashioned leaks to help us out with the rest of the juicy details.
This past weekend, our hopes were raised high, as one person on the web claimed to be selling an Xbox 720 Durango devkit. The devkit in question cropped up on a game dev forum (AssemblerGames) with a price tag of $10,000. Eurogamer's Digital Foundry reached out to the source and then followed up with multiple developers working on next-gen projects. According to what Digital Foundry heard back, this really is a Durango devkit we're looking at. Of course, it's worth noting that the Xbox 720 probably won't look anything like this -- this is just the cobbled-together hardware sent out to developers so they can get the ball rolling. Still, it could give us some idea of what to expect, specswise, from the new Xbox.
The person responsible for the leaked images goes by the name of DaE and has since been banned from the AssemblerGames forums after it emerged his sale posting was a prank played on the owner of the boards. However, the fact remains that the image he used for that posting were apparently legitimate, and Digital Foundry says that after speaking to him, that he has had access to the devkit.
So, the pics are legit, but what else do we know? Well, Digital Foundry says DaE believes the devkits (dispatched in February) feature an Intel CPU, an Nvidia graphics card (he didn't specify beyond that), more than 8GB of memory, and that it's 64-bit in nature. DaE says Microsoft is actually aiming for an eight-core CPU, but this information has not been verified.
For more pictures and the full story, hit up Eurogamer's Digital Foundry.
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Jane McEntegart is a writer, editor, and marketing communications professional with 17 years of experience in the technology industry. She has written about a wide range of technology topics, including smartphones, tablets, and game consoles. Her articles have been published in Tom's Guide, Tom's Hardware, MobileSyrup, and Edge Up.
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Awesome! Day 1 purchase here. PC gaming is so stale and boring anymore with no good exclusives. Looking forward to seeing these new consoles, as they should be pretty future proof with the specs they are touting (8GB RAM, 8-core CPU, modern GFX card).Reply
Hopefully they have a new Call of Duty as a launch title for this like they did for the 360. Or maybe Halo? -
KidABear ConSOULGamingllllAwesome! Day 1 purchase here. PC gaming is so stale and boring anymore with no good exclusives. Looking forward to seeing these new consoles, as they should be pretty future proof with the specs they are touting (8GB RAM, 8-core CPU, modern GFX card). Hopefully they have a new Call of Duty as a launch title for this like they did for the 360. Or maybe Halo?Reply
Troll so hard... -
math1337 Intel CPUs back? I hope that means I can be installing windows/linux on it, for a reasonably cheap HTPC.Reply -
KNO3 ReplyAwesome! Day 1 purchase here. PC gaming is so stale and boring anymore with no good exclusives. Looking forward to seeing these new consoles, as they should be pretty future proof with the specs they are touting (8GB RAM, 8-core CPU, modern GFX card).
Hopefully they have a new Call of Duty as a launch title for this like they did for the 360. Or maybe Halo?
You almost had me. But then I knew for sure you were trolling when you said "modern GFX card". -
leongrado I wonder why they're going to have 8 cores. Are they predicting games to use that much more cpu in the future? I have an i5 quad core right now and cpu has never been a bottleneck. What do you guys think. Is this just another reason for them to charge us more for the system or are games really going to require that much more professing power?Reply -
wiinippongamer ConSOULGamingllllAwesome! Day 1 purchase here. PC gaming is so stale and boring anymore with no good exclusives. Looking forward to seeing these new consoles, as they should be pretty future proof with the specs they are touting (8GB RAM, 8-core CPU, modern GFX card). Hopefully they have a new Call of Duty as a launch title for this like they did for the 360. Or maybe Halo?Reply
In 2 years those'll become outdated again.
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gamerk316 leongradoI wonder why they're going to have 8 cores. Are they predicting games to use that much more cpu in the future? I have an i5 quad core right now and cpu has never been a bottleneck. What do you guys think. Is this just another reason for them to charge us more for the system or are games really going to require that much more professing power?Reply
Not really. Games are REALLY hard to make parallel, though when coding in Assembly, its easier to do, so for a console, more cores will probably help more then it would on a PC.
Thats why current consoles can still kinda keep up with midrange PC's: They are coded at a MUCH lower level, so you get better performance out of lower-tier hardware.