During the “What the Tech” podcast, eminent tech blogger Paul Thurrott commented on the rumours surrounding the Xbox 720 or Next Xbox and even offered up a few of his own. On the subject of price, he states that, “Durango is going to be expensive [laughs], you know $500, $300 for the subscription model, that kind of thing, but you know, Blu-ray, blah blah blah, but the thing that interest me, going back and looking at some of the stuff I got a long time ago, it actually says ‘must be internet-connected to use’ in the notes. And that’s all I have, but it does say that.”
So whether you’re very happy about that or not – and as Thurrott states, “for me, Xbox 360 is almost entirely an online experience” – it’s going to happen.
He also spoke about when we’d be seeing the console. “Originally, they were going to announce this thing in April 24, now they’re going to announce it May 21. We know there are events occurring this year where we’re going to learn more about Durango.”
Of course, as far as release dates go, it only seemed to make sense that Microsoft would launch their console close to Sony’s PlayStation 4. Exactly how close would it be?
“Early November, yeah. E3 is going to occur. BUILD is going to occur in San Francisco in June when they’re going to talk about the developer story because it’s a Windows 8 device. It’s going to have the same, or basically the same, developer tools and developer APIs and all that kind of stuff.”
Remember, plans can change on the fly and Thurrott is still pretty much giving his own personal take based on what he knows. Take it with a grain of salt, but as we narrow down to E3, the Next Xbox is slowly but surly beginning to take shape.
