Inside secrets about the Xbox 720   

Peter Moore, the head of Interactive Entertainment division of Microsoft said in one magazine interview that the same production team who built the Xbox 360 is now working on the Xbox 720 which is their next generation gaming console. And they are looking for a CPU that will go with the Xbox 720 sometime in 2011 or 2012.

In June 2008, the President of Entertainment and Devices Division of Microsoft, Robbie Bach was quoted as saying: "We are constantly working on the latest technologies. We have employees working on these technologies. We began designing the next generation Xbox even prior to Xbox 360’s release."

Another reported conjecture came from the Inquirer newspaper in 2008 which stated that Intel was attempting to push its high-performance Larrabee chipset to be the CPU for the Xbox 720. According to the report, Microsoft was offered by Intel some kind of a “sweet deal” to secure the CPU supply contract for the next-gen Xbox. The deal supposedly includes every component from microchips to chassis. If Microsoft decides to award the contract to Intel, the competition will effectively be out of the running.

As most of us know, the Xbox 360’s CPU was supplied by IBM and its GPU was from ATI. If Intel gets the deal with Microsoft, it would surely alter a lot of things. Backward compatibility will definitely be close to zero for instance. However, it is unlikely that the first version of Larrabee will ever take off, but again if Intel gets the deal, Larrabee version two could be a tough contender.

It was further stated by The TeamXbox.com in June 2009 that the next Xbox will not be released until 3D televisions have become more mainstream. Because the next Xbox features a full high definition stereoscopic 3D image processor, comparable to 3D movie houses.

Another insider story reported by Fuzilla.com in 2009 declared that AMD and ATI had gotten the contract to supply the CPU and GPU for the next Xbox console. As we know, AMD and ATI built the Xeon GPU of Xbox 360, and they argued that Microsoft should retain them for compatibility reasons. The report further claimed that the next Xbox will be launched after 2011 due to the present economic situation.

Unofficial specs of the Xbox 720:

• Customized IBM PowerPC CPU with 6 cores each running at about 6.5 GHz
• 4 MB L2 Cache
• Graphics processor is customized by ATI using unified shader design running at 1256 MHz
• Unified memory design, 2560 MB GDDR4 RAM
• Removable 280 GB HDD
• Blu Ray disk drive
• 8 wireless game controllers
• Built-in Ethernet port
• Video cam ready
• Wi-Fi ready
• Support for standard and high definition video output
• Compatible with other digital media such as DVD’s and CD’s
• Full screen, interactive 3D visualizers
• Multi-channel surround sound production with 64-bit audio processing
• Customizable console appearance

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