Every gamer loves a good next-gen console rumor, and we here at MTB are no different. Just such a rumor emanated from blogger MS Nerd last week. He claimed to have obtained intel indicating that the next Xbox would run on a version of Windows 9, get unveiled at the next E3, and be smaller, cheaper, and loopier (code-named Loop) than the 360.
Yesterday, however, Tech Journalist Paul Thurrott asserted that the platform will instead be debuted months earlier during the Consumer Electronic Show in January. Additionally, Thurrott has reason to believe that the Loop — or whatever it is ultimately called — will have prominent Windows 8 and Windows Phone integration. What’s more, the platform that we all knew would never actually be called the 720 could be launching alongside the Wii U.
“What I’m hearing is the console is going to come out for holidays next year, meaning that they would almost have to announce this at CES, wouldn’t they?”
Continuing, he claimed that Microsoft is taking some interconnectivity cues from their chums over at Apple. “They want this thing to integrate very tightly with Windows 8 and Windows Phone,” said Thurrott. “Which is a problem with the current Xbox.”
With Microsoft’s next console now 100 percent .001 percent confirmed to be arriving around this time next year, we fully expect to hear yet another rumor to the exact opposite in the coming days/weeks. This sort of thing is hardly uncommon during the latter days of a console cycle, and the speculation could end up running even more rampant in the near future thanks to the extended time that this gen is lasting. Consoles have historically given way to new ones after five or six years, but that hasn’t held true this time around.
With no news spilling directly out of the Microsoft or Sony camps about the next generation, we’re left to play the waiting game.
