Nintendo fired the first shot in the wars of the next generation of consoles last year with little details and, frankly, a lot of confusion. Since this time both Sony and Microsoft have been pretty quiet with regards to what they have up their sleeves for the “Playsation 4” and “Xbox 720”, and probably will continue to be until they are ready to show off their new machines.
However, tech blogs have been buzzing as of late that the next generation of Xbox will be rocking an AMD 7000 series GPU, but IGN has “confirmed with their sources” that the next Xbox’s GPU will actually be the 6000 series.
… our sources have confirmed that mass production of the system’s GPU will indeed begin by the end of 2012 but will not, however, be based on AMD’s 7000 series Southern Islands GPU. Instead, the processor will be derived from the 6000 series, which was introduced last year. More specifically, it will be akin to the Radeon HD 6670, which offers support for DirectX11, multidisplay output, 3D and 1080p HD output. The chip currently has a market price of upwards of $79.99.
In real terms, the Xbox 720’s raw graphics processing power is expected to be six times that of the Xbox 360…
Their sources also noted that the “Xbox 720” will most likely see release around October or November of 2013, dashing the hopes of those who were hoping to see the next generation of consoles by the end of this year.
While I am extremely excited and curious to see what the next generation of consoles bring to the gaming world, I’m okay with waiting almost another two years to see an “Xbox 720” or a “Playstation 4” as developers are still getting a lot of mileage from these current consoles. As an Xbox owner, it’s almost hard to believe that as of November of this year the Xbox 360 will be 7 years old, especially with the quality of games that continue to come out year after year pushing the limits of the hardware more and more.
To my recollection this is the longest gap I’ve experienced between console releases, but I’d much rather Microsoft and Sony wait until the technology has made a big enough leap forward to release a console that is truly the “next generation” as opposed to releasing something that is only a small step forward that would be hard to invest in knowing that a few more years down the line something truly more powerful would be released (Sega 32X anyone?). It seems now is that time, far more powerful technology is available, and it’s sounding like 2013 may be the year our beloved Xbox 360’s and PS3’s see the curtain fall on their time to make way for the next generation.