We now have ample proof that Microsoft takes Xbox, and the gaming industry, pretty seriously, but what is perhaps going to convince people that the company really wants to hedge its bets as a platform holder is the revelation that Microsoft is currently working on not one, not two, but four new Xbox consoles.

This news comes from well known Microsoft insider Brad Sams at Thurott. He divides the new Xbox projects under the Scarlett banner, which includes all next generation Xbox projects, and the non Scarlett ones.

Half the consoles are meant to be part of the current Xbox One line: one is named “Maverick”, and is a disc-less, streaming only console. I’m assuming it will be the flagship product for the xCloud initiative, but it is due out before the Scarlett products launch. Even before it launches, however, is a revised Xbox One S—this will be compatible with xCloud, but still include a disc drive, be slimmer, and also cheaper.

As for the Scarlett consoles, there are two: one is “Anaconda”, which we have spoken of recently. Anaconda is meant to be like the Xbox One X, a high end machine meant for gaming enthusiasts. The other is Lockhart, a cheaper, Xbox One S style option meant as the mass market mover. As of right now, both are expected to launch in 2020.

It is important to remember that though the source these rumors come from is known for being accurate, these are still just that—rumors. For now, treat them as such. But if there is even a kernel of truth to them, it sounds like the future of the Xbox platform is going to be very exciting.

Is the current generation of consoles on its way out? You would think that we have a few more years before successors for either the PS4 or Xbox One are introduced, in spite of Nintendo’s successful launch of the Nintendo Switch last year- but rumors regarding the next Xbox and PlayStation have already started to percolate.

Speaking to GamingBolt, Matt Pettit, Producer of Defiance 2050, said that he hopes that the current generation of consoles sticks around for a bit longer before their successors are introduced, in part so that the current machines can be properly leveraged to their fullest potential first.

“My biggest hope for the current generation of consoles is for it to last longer in order to take full advantage of the processing power available, and my expectation from the next generation is to innovate,” he said. “To create a gap between what is currently available with the Xbox One X, technology in the gaming space would have to innovate in order to offer anything that isn’t just a small technical increase. Due to that, I believe the current console generation will last longer than the previous, which is great for development.”

This is something I myself agree with- how would new these consoles are, I want to see a few more years of developers extracting every last bit of their power first before we move on to successors. And given how sophisticated PS4 Pro and Xbox One X are right now anyway… how meaningful can a PS5 or Xbox Two be in terms of improvements anyway?

Stay tuned for our full interview with Matt Pettit in the coming days.

One of the biggest issues that online stores have is discoverability for content- this is an issue that Steam has grappled with for years, and that Nintendo is beginning to face with the eShop, now that there is a mad rush among developers to get their games on the platform. But it’s an issue all around in general- it’s not like PSN or Xbox Live do it much better, either.

Speaking to GamingBolt in an exclusive interview, the development team of Omensight, Spearhead Games, noted that game discoverability is one of the primary things they want improved in the next batch of consoles.

“Better performance is always good because it opens more possibilities for the games we create,” they said. “That being said, as a developer, I would love to see some improvements in the way games are promoted and presented in the stores of theses platforms.  Right now, discoverability or exposure on a platform like PSN is pretty bad.

“Besides that, I wonder if we won’t see a breakthrough in streamed games, or subscription based models, as a mainstream way to consume games on consoles.”

They also said that they feel like the PS5 and next Xbox should be able to accomplish native 4K and 60 frames per second, since they will have the hardware to achieve that, without being too overpriced. “I think we now have the hardware to achieve that at a reasonable cost,” they said.

I can’t argue with them on either count- the current state of online storefronts sorely needs redressal, and I do think that future consoles should be able to hit that level of power without trouble. Omensight is available now on Steam and on PS4.

We have started to hear a lot of rumours about the PS5 recently—but the rumor mill is curiously silent on the next Xbox console. So far, we haven’t heard much on that front—is this because Microsoft is just good at keeping secrets clamped down? Or are they just launching their console after Sony’s? After all, an isolated launch worked wonderfully for Nintendo with the Switch—would it not serve Microsoft to do something similar with their next Xbox, too, especially since going head to head with Sony this generation didn’t exactly work out for them?

Speaking to GamingBolt in an exclusive interview, Wedbush Securites analyst Michael Pachter said that he doesn’t feel so. ”You know, I think Microsoft could try isolated launches, but the Xbox One X pretty much process they’re not going to do that,” he said. “It launched far too recently, so I don’t see a new Xbox launching in 2019, I don’t think so. And the thing is, both companies are pretty much aware of what the other guy is doing, so they’ll know if someone is working on a new console, and it’s coming. I don’t think- the reason the PS3 launched so late was because it was so complex, with the Cell processor, and Sony couldn’t get those fabricated quick enough. That kind of staggered launch won’t happen again. If one picks a date, the other will be there.”

”I think both the next Xbox and PS5 are 2020,” he re-affirmed.

Assuming the next Xbox and PS5 are both 2020, that does put both successor consoles comfortably far away from the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro respectively, so that their owners won’t feel burned by their purchases. The question now is—is a head-to-head launch actually something Microsoft should try, given how the Xbox One and PS4 launching together went for them?

Yesterday, news broke out that a Microsoft visual designer had worked on something called the Xbox NeXt, which was specifically specified in addition to the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One, leading many to believe that it may be referring to the next generation of Xbox consoles. It sounded exciting – new hardware always is – and it led to loads of speculation on just exactly what this Xbox NeXt may be: could it be referring to the rumored Xbox 1.5/Xbox One Elite, the incremental upgrade for the Xbox One that Phil Spencer had discussed a while back? Or could it be referring to an all new console altogether?

According to Microsoft, it is neither of them- Xbox NeXt was just the internal name for the Xbox One when it was being developed, they told IGN.

“Xbox neXt was an old internal team name for a group that worked on releasing Xbox One and is not related to a future console,” a Microsoft spokesperson told IGN. “We have nothing further to share.”

Which makes sense- but then why specify it in addition to Xbox One separately? Or could it simply have been a mistake, one that I am reading too much into?

Nintendo and Sony are due to launch new hardware this year, but Microsoft appear to be largely sitting out on this party. Even though Phil Spencer floated the idea of iterative Xbox hardware in the future, he did speak out against minor upgrades like an ‘Xbox 1.5’ just a little while later.

So what exactly is Microsoft’s plan here? Do they really intend to introduce substantially upgraded Xbox hardware already, just three years into the Xbox One’s life cycle? Would they risk mass consumer alienation by doing something like that?

We don’t know what or when Microsoft plans to do, but what we do know is that more indications of new Xbox hardware are emerging. Just today, ‘Xbox NeXT’ has shown up on the CV of a Microsoft Visual Designer– what could this mean? Is this referring to a mid cycle refresh? The term ‘Xbox NeXT’ or ‘NextBox’ has traditionally been used to refer to a new generation Xbox console- so is it possible that Microsoft has already started work on an Xbox One successor?

icrosoft Interactive Entertainment Business Chief of Staff Aaron Greenberg recently teased next week’s Xbox Reveal event via Major Nelson’s podcast and how Microsoft will show its “vision for the future of games.”

“We’re really going to tell one story across two events. So we’re going to start on the 21st and really that’s about revealing the next Xbox platform, really our vision for the future of games, the future of entertainment. We definitely have a lot of surprises planned.” Greenberg then specifically called out Call of Duty: Ghosts, which will have its next-generation engine demoed during the Microsoft event.

“People are going to get a great inside look at really the making of the new platform and the team that’s brought it to life,” Greenberg added. “I mean, to be honest it’s really about the team, the people here. That’s why we’re inviting people to campus, we’re going to bring them behind the scenes a little bit. We’ve never done this before and so it’s really exciting to be able to do that. But I think it’s a lot of laying the foundation – probably the best way to describe it – and then just a couple of weeks later we go to E3.”

Greenberg confirmed that E3 will be more about the next-gen Xbox games while the Xbox May 21st Reveal Event is more about the console, how it was developed and Call of Duty: Ghosts. “E3 is all about the games. At E3, I mean, if you’re a gamer, it’s going to be tons of exclusives, world premieres and obviously even beyond that we have a lot to share between then and this holiday.”

The next-generation Xbox event will be happening on May 21st at Microsoft’s Redmond campus, which is located in Washington state.

Let us know what you think of this and what are your expectations for the reveal event of the next Xbox in the comments below.

Check back on GamingBolt next week on Tuesday which is when the event will be happening for all the latest news regarding Microsoft’s next-generation console.

Via Major Nelson and NeoGaf.

It’s because continuations are a part of life – no matter where you go, evolution is inevitable. As the infamous saying goes, “The only constant is change”. And so it goes with consoles, as we constantly speculate about the latest follow-ups to the current generation. This current generation includes the Xbox 360 and PS3 – Nintendo has been counted out of the race for being too “casual”, and anyway, the Wii U is considered to be Nintendo’s leap into the next generation.

On January 2nd, Microsoft’s Larry “Major Nelson” Byrd posted on his blog about the upcoming E3 2013. More to the point, he posted a countdown timer preceded by the words “And it’s on”, counting down to the next Electronic Entertainment Expo. No talk of what to expect. No news of incoming revelations. Nothing even remotely stating that this was related to the next Xbox.

Here’s your timer, here’s your loose association to whatever value this could have to the next-generation follow-up and boom. Go to work, fanboys, and sell our upcoming conference for us.

But don’t worry. Sony isn’t very far behind when it comes to “talking about the Playstation business”, which it will indeed be doing on February 20th when its first major Playstation event in years in New York. The last event, held in January 2011, culminated in the reveal of the Playstation Vita’s prototype.

Even further back in 2005, it held another a meeting just a few months after initially revealing the concept of the Playstation 3. It doesn’t take a scientist to conclude that both events preceded the announcement of both devices by a good year to year-and-a-half. So you can bet that Sony will live up to the hype (generated by it’s snazzy video) and indeed show us the future of Playstation in just a few weeks.

Let’s talk about this briefly. While it’s wholly possible that Sony will show us something related to the future of Playstation, it may not necessarily be an announcement of the the PS4. Remember – this is a company that went ahead with announcing prototypes and concepts beforehand, and then going on to enunciate about it’s actual console.

Plus, the timing of the event is quite conspicuous – AMD’s Jaguar APU (more on that below) will be releasing in the first quarter of 2013, the Game Developer’s Conference which features developers talking about game mechanics and design philosophies is little more than a month away from the event, and there are still a number of titles to be released, specifically for the PS3, which from a marketing perspective wouldn’t benefit from a PS4 announcement at this time.

After all, would you go for a Samsung Galaxy S3 later if you knew the Galaxy S4 was going to be announced next week?

But expect a fair share of tech demos, announcements regarding the technology that will be powering Sony’s next generation console, revelations about the upcoming motion control systems (again, more on that below) and much more going into the Playstation event.

And we’d be surprised if there wasn’t something there that involved the Vita as well. As it stands, this is a good way for Sony to get the jump on Microsoft in marketing terms without them actually having to reveal the PS4 before Microsoft shows their hand first.

Now, let’s get back to talking about what the future holds by looking at the original rumours of specs and development kits.

The biggest development in the saga was the leaking of development kits for the next Xbox online by a user named DaE, who then attempted to sell them for $10,000. VGLeaks covered the leaking of the kit and its identity, along with the so-called “anonymous-looking black box”, with the code name “Durango” being seen on the placeholder dashboard.

For the uninitiated, it’s been rumoured for a long time that the code name for the next Xbox was Durango. Two applications can be seen on the dashboard – D3D11Game1 and NuiView. The former of course relates to Direct 3D 11, part of the DirectX 11 API used for the Xbox 360 and every single PC game worth a damn, while the latter is “a simple tool for rendering camera views and data from an attached Kinect peripheral.”

Kinect will be the biggest buzz-word going forward with the next Xbox given the obscene success the motion detecting camera has seen with the Xbox 360. It only makes that Microsoft would add more advanced features, which includes the Kinect Glasses for Augmented Reality as seen from recent patents and the like, and even talks of tablet integration.

Of course, there are plenty of listings from engineers hiring for “the next generation of Natural User Interface (NUI) technologies”, “rapid prototyping” and also that a “successful candidate must be able to come up to speed with new technologies.”

Another engineer speaks about “designing, building and delivering the devices and the innovative solution for Xbox and various future NUI applications” along with a mission “to re-invent entertainment, led from the living room, powered by the cloud, across multiple screens and best experienced on our devices”.

Based on the analysis of next generation Xbox specs, Kinect will also be getting its own dedicated input, bypassing the USB input of the current generation, but still upping the standard to USB 3.0. Echo cancellation also appears to be a feature for the Kinect, though how this will play unknown.

Various developers has also spoken about their involvement in upcoming titles for both the next generation Xbox and Kinect but we’ll get to that in a bit.

It’s been rumoured for a long-time AMD’s upcoming eight-core Jaguar APU will be powering both the next Xbox and PS4. AMD will actually look to ship the Jaguar by the first quarter of 2013, and Rory Read, chief executive officer and president of AMD stated that “We have strong design wins for our embedded and semi-custom APUs. Initials products based on these APUs are expected to launch later this year, driving our embedded semi-custom business to more than 20% of our revenue mix by the fourth quarter”.

A lot can be – and has been – gleaned from that statement. This revenue is expected to be attributed to major announcements regarding the technology’s usage in the next generation of gaming consoles.

Considering that graphics technologies from AMD’s Radeon were used in the recent Nintendo Wii U, and that the combined embedded APUs, CPUs, chipsets and GPUs provided 5% of their total revenue last year, and its plainly obvious that AMD has some kind of hand in next-generation console development.

The Jaguar boasts boosts clocked speed by 10% without any increase in power consumption and also features 15% higher efficiency for the new cores compared to last generation’s tech. The 28 nm semiconductor manufacturing process is a huge leap from it’s predecessor Bobcat, which featured a 40 nm process with memory address space increasing from 36 bits to 40 bits and support for SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AES, PCLMUL, AVX, BMI, F16C, and MOVBE instruction sets.

One of the biggest features is the improved power consumption – the design itself is built to provide added a significant boost in performance without overtly heating up the device.

The Xbox 720’s AMD will apparently be clocked at 1.6 GHz would feature 8 GB of RAM of DDR3 RAM, it will also feature about 32 MB of fast work RAM directly connected to the GPU, referred to as ESRAM, and a 12 core Radeon running at 800 MHz.

The PS4 is expected to go with the same configuration, but will feature a 16 core Radeon clocked at 800 MHz and 4 GB of DDR5 RAM, over the much slower DDR3 RAM. The performance deficit is expected to be about 1.23 teraflops for the next Xbox versus 1.84 teraflops on the PS4.

So how does the PS4 differ from the next Xbox? For starters, the CPU won’t take up much space thanks to the reduced semiconductor manufacturing. But this also leaves room for a more significant graphics component to be implemented on the die, the overall result being improved production costs besides the decrease in power consumption.

The basic process of having the GPU handle essential tasks like physics processing to free up the CPU for more important tasks still remains intact, but the Sony will be going for an embedded GPU over a discrete GPU, codenamed “Liverpool”.

Other factors come into play as always. And we’re not just talking about the mysterious “Data Move Engines” that the next Xbox is supposedly touting.

While the PS4 will reportedly allocate 512 MB of it’s precious DDR5 RAM for it’s operating system, the next Xbox is reported to go even further by allocating two cores for customizable apps running in conjunction with your games and 3 GB of RAM for operating system.

This sounds just about in line with Windows 8, which only requires 2 GB of DDR3 RAM to run smoothly. So in terms of pure gaming power, the PS4 will win out. However, the success of the Nintendo Wii and subsequent success of Kinect shows that power isn’t everything, whether in this console war or the next.

To that end, Sony has filed several patents for its own motion detecting camera – one that will allow for finger tracking and depth sensing, which also extends to audio (Microsoft is also working on the same for the next Kinect as well, apparently). Sony’s patent claims that many of the gestures and orientations will reflect within the game itself.

“For example, the user may be able to shoot by different hand gestures, may be able to reload the gun with different gestures, and the different positions or orientations of the user’s hand may cause different graphical renderings of the user or gun on the display screen when the user is interacting with a particular game program”.

We would hazard a guess that these enhancements would come into play with the Playstation Eye. Then again, where does that leave Move? Another article for another day, perhaps.

Among the other next-generation features we haven’t heard about is 3D. Not that both companies were exactly screaming from the roof-tops regarding the implementation of stereoscopic 3D in gaming (just one – Sony).

But with falling costs and a deeper market penetration – further aided by the introduction of 4K resolution TVs – we probably haven’t seen the last of this technology. Expect at least basic stereoscopic 3D support for some games in the next few years.

As for developers, both Sony and Microsoft have a fair amount of support allocated to their sides. Microsoft has Rare, dedicated to developing Kinect games, and 343 Industries which is reportedly working on the next Halo while Sony has its own internal studios like Naughty Dog (despite being terrified of it) and Quantum Dream working on next generation efforts.

In fact, Quantum Dream inadvertently revealed that their next game – Singularity – would be heading to the PS4 via a website registration made last month.

Other efforts from third party developers are harder to predict, but it would be pertinent to mention a particular tech demo that sparked a lot of discussion over next-gen specs: Agni’s Philosophy, from Square Enix. When they revealed the initial specs for developing it, which included a whopping 32 GB of RAM, it was purported that the next generation of consoles would in fact feature this kind configuration.

If the overall makeup for the systems, aiming for lower power consumption and reduced production costs, didn’t make it clear enough, Agni’s Philosophy was a tech demo designed over a period of one year with Intel Core i7 and GeForce GTX technology powering it.

The PS4 and next Xbox will be looking at more power friendly solutions – think in line with today’s notebooks and ultrabooks that can run the latest games on settings that stop just short of full. Given the improvements being made to the architecture, AMD’s technology seems best suited to that task while offering no increase in power consumption.

Think of it as the debate between pre-rendered graphics and real-time graphics. The former may look prettier but it takes many more months to build than the latter. Plus real-time graphics are what will contribute to the overall gameplay.

Having graphics that render more smoothly on the fly are what the next-generation consoles will focus on – as always – and though we may see a lot games emphasize aesthetics over technology, as we did in the previous generation and the one before that, suffice to say that many developers will be getting their heads together sooner and focusing on the practical side of graphics rather than the most visually pleasing.

As it stands, there is a long, long road ahead for the next generation of consoles. Valve is yet to reveal it’s official Steam Box console but are intensifying efforts in the living room PC market, offering an accessibility to dwarf the efforts of companies like Microsoft and Apple.

The OUYA console, running on Android, is a dark horse. It seems like a dream come true for independent developers and could become a major contender given the ever decreasing number of AAA studios and the success of indie games and smartphone titles like Angry Birds, Temple Run and the like.

There is a big, bright future involved, but you can bet that none a single one of these companies will give up without a fight. And let’s not forget Nintendo – they’re still yet to fully show their hand in regards to the next generation, despite several high profile announcements at the recent Nintendo Direct.

For better or worse, regardless of Sony’s announcements on February 20th, the road to E3 2013 and the next generation of gaming begins now.

Heck, it’s easily one of the major reasons for the current trend of “blockbuster” games. So will the next generation be even more expensive? Not necessarily, according to Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick.

As Zelnick stated in a call with investors, as reported by Videogamer, “We don’t have a ramp-up of operating expenses for next-generation. Do we believe that titles to be a whole lot more expensive to make for next-gen? The answer is we do not. In many instances we believe that it may be somewhat easier to make titles for next-gen depending on how the technology comes together.”

This should make sense in some departments, but as long as the game industry is driven by the desire to produce the best looking visuals, pushing GPU manufacturers to up their game as well, the future will always have a high price tag on it.

Source: GIBiz