Xbox 720 Devkits Already in the Hands of Developers, Spec Details

There are a ton of rumors circling around about the next generation of consoles right now, which means, undoubtedly, that official announcements are not far off. One of the latest rumors, which seems to hold some weight due to it being published in the UK publication Xbox World magazine, sheds some light on the technical specs for the Xbox 720, code-named “Durango.” Even more interesting is that developers may already be hard at work on developing software.

According to the publication, the Durango devkit contains a 16-core IBM PowerPC CPU, a Blu-Ray drive, as well as a GPU that is said to be similar to the Radeon HD 7000-series cards. For those of you who understand the technical jargon, you know what this means, and for those who don’t, let’s just say it means a whole lot of power. Reports say that the devkits were shipped to developers in March, which means some developers are already hard at work on creating software that pushes the limits of the hardware. It seems Microsoft is once again ahead of the game, as Sony still has yet to make any official statements about the PS4 (seemingly called Orbis), though don’t count Sony out of the game yet. Though Microsoft is pushing their system as quickly as possible, sources from GDC are apparently saying the Sony’s PS4 will be more powerful than the Xbox 720.

Aside from the technical specs, it seems that the Xbox 720 may also require an always-on internet connection, which could ultimately hurt sales of the system. Couple this with the fact that both Sony and Microsoft are pushing to make their systems unable to play used games, and we might be seeing the number of next-generation gamers thin out.

So, Velocity Gamer readers, what are your thoughts on the next generation of consoles?