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Uncategorized Thursday, January 26th 2012 at 11:05 am

Report: New Xbox to Get Kinect 2, Will Support Blu-ray but Not Used Games

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It’s about that time in the console generation when rumors start flying around like wild. Many of them make you excited for all the wonderful gaming possibilities the future can hold, others are a little bit more terrifying. Naturally, as “Xbox 720″ enthusiasm keeps snowballing, we’re going to get a bit of both. For instance, the new Xbox is rumored to be at least 6 times more powerful than the 360, support Blu-ray, and bring a new version of Kinect along with it. The catch? It may not support used games.

Just to disclaim before getting in any deeper here, these are all rumors from unverified sources, with a side of rampant speculation.

“Games industry sources” have come to Kotaku to suggest that the new Xbox — hereafter referred to as the 720 for convenience — will be stepping up from the 360, which can only support 9 GB DVD, to Blu-ray support, Blu-rays being able to carry a staggering 25 or 50 GB load. Obviously, this would allow for more assets on less discs. No more 3-disc games like L.A. Noire. This also plays into Microsoft’s very transparent plans to make the Xbox a complete home entertainment suite.

The more troubling disc-based rumor is that the 720 may not support used games. As the kind of person who is expecting a used copy of MechAssault bought for fou dollars on Amazon to show up at the office today, this terrifies me. Of course, given that there’s no confirmation that this is actually the case, there’s no word on how such a thing might be achieved. That aside, it’s easy to speculate. The most likely scenario would be that all games are linked to Xbox Live accounts, rendering discs useless on non-synced accounts. Publishers, who have hated used games for a while now, would probably be all for that. Gamers, not so much.

You might be able to get around something like that by staying offline, but that’s less of a worthwhile approach as time goes on and connectivity gets more important. That being the case, more DRM doesn’t seem like an answer, the better solution — the one people should also be taking to piracy — would be to change the content delivery system. If more games were available digitally, for example, you could offload some of the purchases into pure digital content, leaving less discs out there to be circulating used. Then again, that could require a lot of storage space and a good Internet connection, but Steam does it, so who knows?

The 720 is also rumored to support a new version of Kinect. Not just a cosmetic restructuring, the new Kinect — Kinect 2, perhaps — is rumored to have an onboard processor. This was planned for the original Kinect, but never came to fruition. Its inclusion could drastically improve the Kinect’s body-recognizing fidelity, which is pretty much the only thing the Kinect needs if you’re sold on the concept of it.

Other sources are reporting that the 720 is going to be 6 times more powerful than the 360, but again, there’s little to go on here. The number has to do with the new system’s potential processor, but until people start getting development kits, there’s no telling what the practical power of the 720 is really going to be.

In light of all this “information” swirling around, Microsoft has commented on the rumors, kind of. A statement sent to Kotaku reads:

“As an innovator we’re always thinking about what is next and how we can push the boundaries of technology like we did with Kinect. We believe the key to extending the lifespan of a console is not just about the console hardware, but about the games and entertainment experiences being delivered to consumers. Beyond that we don’t comment on rumors or speculation.”

Or basically, “We like Kinect. That is all.” Hooray.

As the year rolls on, we’re only going to start hearing more and more about the 720, and hopefully some of these rumors will be confirmed and denied. Most of all, I’m looking forward to seeing whether or not it’ll actually be called the 720, especially after at least a half year of it being referred to as such, that is, if Microsoft announces the new console at this year’s E3. For the time being, we’ll all just have to feed on rumors and fantasize about how awesome this next generation is going to be, that and about having enough money to afford it all.

(via Kotaku)

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  • CJ

    Not allowing for resale of used games will only ruin the console. If you can’t. Uh used games only the well know games will be purchased. All of the companies that create great games but are not wildly know will flop. Like for me if they never had a borderlands as a used game I would have never played it and missed out on an amazing game. Xbox doesn’t have cheap games that you can download as is. It cost 30 dollars for the original halo on Xbox marketplace where as you can buy it at GameStop for like 10. If the rumor is true count me out I’m going playstation the second they confirm that

  • Asreal

    Bastards…

    I’d expect this kind of thing from Apple.

  • Rikard

    @Asrael I’d expect this from any major company that is blinded with greed, such as MS or Apple.

    Then again, rumors might exist to give good PR to a company as it probably aren’t true. And exist too increase morality towards a company upon disclosure of the rumor.

    Sorry for my lame English, its late.

  • Drew4824

    How would that work for rented or gamefly games then?

  • Pcfix_3

    I highly doubt it is true, but if it were, they would probably put some code on the disk for the machine to read and go out on the web to verify that it is new or that the gamertag that is playing it is the one that bought it. the rented games (gamefly included) would have a different code on the disk telling the machine that it’s a rented disk.  A system like that could work and still allow for game trading by allowing the users to go into their machine and say that they traded in the disk thus releasing it from their use.  I still don’t see how it would work because people wouldn’t want to buy 3+ copies of the same game just so their kids and other family members could play it and they wouldn’t want to release a game that they are playing just to allow other members of the family to play it either.  They would end up killing small game companies and hurting themselves, but who knows, it is Microsoft after all.

  • tony

    Yes, Apple is evil. (Shaking head)

  • Anonymous

    If they do this I will not buy it, someone better come up with the system that doesn’t do this and they will get my money. Too bad though, looks like the 360 will be my last Microsoft system . 

  • Armedrabbit

    Actually the game devolopers dont make any money from used games sales, so itll help out the smaller devolopers if anything.

  • Drewcifer

    How about instead of putting places like Gamestop out of business, bring them in. Charge Gamestop by issuing re-activation codes. Gamestop makes money and so do developers. We still get a break on a used game. Temporary codes for rental places. There are ways around this to make everyone happy. If they choose to stop it all together it’s just plain GREED.