It is no surprise that we’re hearing murmurs from certain gaming magazines today about a console other than Wii U. There is a lot of room in the marketplace and people have their ear to news media regarding new consoles, so it only makes sense that the conversation would be abuzz about next generation consoles.
Note: For those finding it hard to follow along, Wii U is the only next-gen console out there; Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are now considered current- or last-generation.
But the news we’re hearing actually has to do with how soon we could see the next Xbox or PlayStation console from Microsoft and Sony, respectively. There are a veritable ton of rumours floating around at present, so we’ll start with Microsoft and move on to Sony afterward.
The folks in Redmond are said to reveal their new Xbox within the next few months, according to Xbox World, based in the UK. The magazine, which is actually shutting its doors with a final issue for December, claims they’ll be revealing all in their penultimate issue. What can we expect to see from the new console? For starters, a name that ditches numerical nomenclature for simplicity; the next Xbox will in fact be called, Xbox.
In addition to the name, Xbox will feature augmented reality, Kinect 2.0, directional or 3D audio capabilities, and a radical new innovative controller of some sorts. We’re hoping it doesn’t have a screen on it, because that would lower our opinion of Microsoft somewhat, but we’re really interested to see what they do have in store.
We could possibly hear something about the new Xbox as soon as CES in January, but whether we do or not, we expect to know plenty of details at E3 2013 in June.
On the Sony side, the next PlayStation is also said to be dropping its numerical prefix, as the number four means death in many cultures, including Japanese, where Sony was founded and is currently headquartered. The console, which could either be called PlayStation, Orbis, or PlayStation Orbis (or anything else, for that matter), will reportedly be capable of 4K output, though whether developers used this in-game or simply for cutscenes and movies is currently unseen.
There is also said to be a much higher amount of RAM compared to current models, although this seems like an educated guess to us. Of course, it has to be assumed that every console in the next generation will have more memory. Our guess is that both the next-gen PlayStation as well as next-gen Xbox will have at least 8GB of memory, if not more to future proof the console.
This information all comes from PSM3, another magazine, although this one isn’t shuttering its windows anytime soon to our knowledge.
All in all, we have to take everything with a grain of salt. Or a salt mine worth of salt. Every guess at this point is just that: a guess. It is inevitable that some things will come true. If we had to bet, we’d put a million bucks on more memory, a few thousand on the name switches, a few hundred on updated version of Kinect and Move capabilities, and a few pennies on anything else.
Whatever happens, you can bet we’ll be here to discuss it!
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