According to the latest issue of Xbox World magazine, devkits for Microsoft’s next generation console are already in the wild, and were shipped to developers in March. The first devkits reached a select number of developers after Microsoft’s hush-hush developer’s conference in London on February 28, 2012. The purpose of the conference was to brief European representatives on the new hardware, which is codenamed Durango – the meeting was subsequently confirmed by a senior technical artist at Crytek, who tweeted that he was “enjoying the Durango developers summit in London. So far, great swag and interesting talks.” Further meetings were held for American developers at the Game Developers’ Conference in San Francisco, with Durango devkits shipping “shortly afterwards.”
The publication states that current devkits will not mirror the final hardware in appearance, however, initial specifications are representative of the console set to ship in late 2013. Sources close to Xbox World magazine have revealed that Durango’s devkit features a “monster” 16-core IBM PowerPC CPU, a GPU comparable to AMD’s Radeon HD 7000-series graphics cards, and a Blu-Ray optical drive.
“Even if you had a 16-core processor in your gaming PC there are currently no games built to use it, but games for the next Xbox could put all sixteen cores to work on day one for a level of performance far in excess of current gaming PCs. It’s a ridiculous amount of power for a games machine – too much power, even. But remember, Kinect 2 could chew up four whole cores tracking multiple players right down to their fingertips, so it’ll need a lot of power.”
Discrete sources at GDC also confirmed to the publication that developers expect Sony’s Playstation 4 to be more powerful than the next Xbox, and that various studios are aiming to unveil their next generation software at E3 2012 in June, regardless of whether “Microsoft and Sony are ready or not.”
“Regardless of whether the next Xbox makes it to E3, the arrival of those Durango devkits is the starting gun for the next generation and once again Microsoft have beaten Sony out of the gate by getting hardware into the developers’ hands first. Sony keep denying any possibility of PS4 at E3 2012 too, but if they don’t move fast Microsoft could roll into June’s LA showcase with dozens of next-generation exclusives from third-parties. When Epic shows that first Unreal 4 demo they’ll only have one console platform to talk about – call it Durango, call it 720, call it what you like, but if Microsoft move fast it might be the only game in town.”
