The concerning thing should be that they are pushing back their announcement, bringing to question whether it will make it to market before the end of '13

Not really, if you read the comments on the guy that announced it twitter page, he says the reveal will be May 21st and in response to another guy saying he cant see the 720 releasing this year, he responds "It Will"

Seems so close to E3 they may as well just wait for E3. Kinda lame. April would have been perfect.

Agree.

Or just wisely providing themselves the time they need for a better reveal? And there's one key difference in that Microsoft had never themselves confirmed that reveal date, like Sony did officially with their PS Meeting event. That doesn't mean it wasn't true, however, since multiple sources suggested that it was. And, to be honest, I know for a fact it was definitely pushed back, because my friends in game development told me that it was happening late in April. I mean, it was like literally a done deal, definitely revealing late April. So, MS, for whatever reason, pushed it back a month. I'm starting to wonder if we really shouldn't doubt just how willing Microsoft might be to launch early 2014? Well, who gives a damn, I'll just say it anyway, but it has been said to me before by someone very trustworthy (and that works for MS) that they thought Microsoft was more than willing to wait for DDR4.

And nobody that told me it would be late april has thus far told me that it somehow won't still be (nobody has denied it either), but Thurrot is as well informed on Microsoft as anybody, so if he says it, there's a good chance it could be true.April fools! They got us before April even started!

I don't have any links, but given the conversations being had in a few forums, developers at GDC may have let it slip that the Durango kits have HD 7970s in them. I can't confirm any of this so take it with a grain, but the person (Thuway if you've ever heard of him) who broke the news at NeoGaf is a devout Sony loyalist (so no reason to hype Xbox720), and his sources are usually VERY VERY accurate. At first he didn't even want to accept it, but then tried to spin it as negatively as he could, saying that he thinks that Microsoft would downgrade the final hardware. But we all know that typically beta kits are very close to what will be in the final box. This had also been mentioned at B3D a couple of times before now, but the community seemed to wave it off or ignore it altogether. Now that it's coming from other sources, there may be some real truth to it.

Since whatever GPU that ends up in the XB720 is bound to be customized, the 7970 (IF that's what actually in the beta kits) is very likely just a place holder. It's also about as un-console like as any GPU can possibly get, very powerful at 3.8Tflops but with also a 250w TDP and very expensive. However, it's up and coming 8000 series counter parts, the 8850 and 8870 will have higher power efficiency (130/160w) and cost nearly two thirds less than the 7970. But this might still explain the heating issues Microsoft is rumored to be having with it's hardware, and it also would explain why AMD delayed the launch of the 8000 series until later this year. Because that's EXACTLY what happened the year the XB360 launched.

This is all starting to look like a repeat of the last generation. Everyone swore they already knew what was going in the XB360, and then Microsoft released a much more powerfully spec'd console. And look at the developers still waiting for final hardware, Mark Rein (Epic), Patrick Bach (DICE) etc. They are all either waiting or complaining about not having final hardware, some of them say they don't even have beta kits. The SAME THING happened with the XB360, Microsoft was very late sending out the dev kits because they were waiting for tech from AMD.

And NOW we find out that the April reveal (which was never officially announced) is being delayed. Guess what? Microsoft early revealed the XB360 in May of 2005. Cowinky-dink?

I actually have a reasonable theory on just how this is all going to end up, but I still need a few pieces of the puzzle to get it straight. But I'm starting to think the pre-SuperDaE/VGleaks rumors about the next Xbox being like "Two PCs being taped together" may be worth revisiting.

All very interesting, but may 21st so far away :( hope something leaks out before.

Wrong thread. lol

I can't speak to a 7970, but I've heard from development buddies before that they were expecting a GPU in excess of 2 Tflops from Microsoft, and that if it were less than that in real world performance terms, there'd be a lot of pissed off developers having to downgrade games. I'm wondering, though, if maybe Microsoft isn't actually going to give devs a GPU in excess of 2tflops and simply plans on picking an actual GPU flop count lower than that, but that they believe in a console will produce like a 2tflop pc card without the kind of excess API and overhead that is present on Windows computers? Either way it should be interesting to see what they do. And, yea, they seem to be lining up for a May reveal again.

Another possible theory, however, and this one does have merit, is the fact that a Radeon 7970 was the VERY first GCN GPU released, and so perhaps they didn't choose a 7970 because it was somehow reflective of Durango's power, but because it was simply the first GCN card out there that was remotely close to the architecture for Durango's GPU. And, perhaps separately, they maybe required the extra power of a 7970 combined with drivers to somehow emulate final Durango performance. Maybe they disabled some Compute Units or whatever using a driver, don't know. But Durango's GPU is heavily customized, so I suppose it makes sense that you would need to have some sufficient hardware to emulate all the gains that Microsoft thinks those customizations will provide in the end console, but a 7970 sounds like too much. Personally, I'm just fine with the current specifications of Durango. It doesn't have to be more powerful than the PS4 or more competitive spec wise than it already is, in my opinion.

Hmmmm looks like they may have show there kit at GDC in private?

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/398604/xbox-s...

Microsoft apparently had some insanely loud private developer party of some kind at GDC. Possible backroom deals and such, who knows.

The specs have definitely been finalized sometime ago. Devs already know about it but are not allowed to speak. The good thing is the expectation from a gamers perpestive are pretty low so chances of being disappointing is pretty much impossible

lol I think there's going to be some very disappointed people if they're actually expecting Durango to be weak. The current Durango specs revealed in the leaks are quite good and will lead to some amazing looking titles.

Chart from Nvidia. Seems they know the power of the machines.

Hmm, maybe they're going based on the same known specs that everybody has seen, who knows. Either way, the safe assumption though is obviously that the PS4 is more than likely the stronger of the two. Seriously, I can't imagine anyone who gets a Titan not somehow being set for the long haul, and by long haul I'm thinking 8+ years. I'm still amazed by that damn thing. I've literally read the same two reviews on it like over 5 times already. I can't stop reading about it.

nice avatar lol :)

No kidding about not even the most exciting in their pipeline. Volta with stacked DRAM is pretty damn exciting. The bandwidth and performance they should be able to get out of those cards will be crazy. It'll likely lead to situations where single card solutions easily exceed (if not double) the overall memory bandwidth on those monster dual gpus cards. And this is with me not even factoring the obvious move to GDDR6.

And, yea, I noticed the avatar change almost immediately and thought to myself, "Damn, why did they have to make it so easy for him!?" lol.

Read the rumours of the 7970 in the 720 aswell a couple of days ago, not sure tbh. It would certainly put the 720 in the driving seat but it's a good 2 or 3x as powerful as the rumours were suggesting and it changes the equation for the 720 for undercutting sony to being more expensive. It's against every other rumour out there aswell regarding the 720. That being said there was a long forgotten rumour of early dev kits featuring a gpu somewhere in the region of 2.5 TF performance which would lend some credence to newer dev kits having a 7970 with an aim to change to a 2.5-3TF 8000 series part when they are ready.

It's a dangerous game though, the 360 failed on heat dissipation, was rushed out the door and practically the entire first batch was a disaster with faults. I expected MS to have the console nailed down by now to ensure the launch units were absolutely fault free or certainly not prone to the issues that plagued the 360. Thats why I expected the rumours of 1.2TF to be true, they don't want sony to get a head start, they want the console to not suffer a red ring type issue, they want to undercut the ps4 and so had taped out with weaker parts early. Sure they could have reacted to the 8gb of the ps4 or this could always have been the plan but it's dangerous. Waiting on a performance part could delay launch till next year as it all needs tested rigorously.

It would fit nicely though, ps4 off the shelf parts GDDR5 1.8TF gpu, 720 8gb DDR3 with customisations and a 2-3TF gpu, certainly a 2TF gpu would narrow the gap between the two massively rather than the 720 being considerably weaker in every way.
OR the rumours could be true and the 720 is a 1.2TF turd that sits between the wii-u and the ps4.

Well, supposedly around the time alpha kits were sent out, the first GCN GPU available to them to represent Durango GPU architecture was the Radeon 7970. They likely used driver related means to somehow weaken or disable some of the GPU's performance to more closely emulate what they felt would be final performance for Durango. I don't think a 7970, if it ever actually was inside Durango dev kits, would have been in there because it was anywhere truly indicative of the kind of power Durango will end up with, at least certainly not raw power. Maybe they just have a very optimistic view of end performance once all their customizations are in there, I really can't say.

I still think the Durango specs that we know about currently, that includes the 1.2 TFLOP GPU, is a design that people will be surprised by. I don't believe the flop count or GDDR5 tells the full story. The idea that it's considerably weaker in every way is something I don't agree with. I think all it tells us for sure is that the PS4 is obviously packing more raw power, but it doesn't exactly tell us the limits to which Durango developers will be able to utilize the hardware's capabilities to do very impressive things on the machine. So, how much more powerful is it? Powerful enough to make it easily discernible to most gamers that Durango is considerably weaker in real world games? And there are developers that believe the ESRAM on Durango has some serious potential performance benefits if it's low latency.

A very experienced game developer and one of the most knowledgeable people on beyond3d.

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1697305&postcou...http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1696970&postcou...This isn't so much about how Durango's specs compare at a cursory glance to the PS4's, as it is more about just how capable will Durango be, and under what circumstances might it be especially capable due to Microsoft and AMD's design customizations? Microsoft's Xbox engineering division has never been known to release very incapable hardware. And, for the record, from what we know so far, Microsoft has been stressing the low latency of the ESRAM.

Exactly. 720 specs, dev kit and other details about Kinect 2, these rumours are already leaked. Comapnies like EA, Ubisoft have already started making games for next gen including 720 I am sure. They have the tools with them by now. Even if decided to change the gpu now, it is too late now and probably will release next year then.

No chance they change the GPU. Looking at the specs, you really see just how much thought went into the overall design and how carefully it was balanced. I find it incredibly hard to believe anything outside of a clock speed increase on the GPU, and even that may not happen. I think the specs are pretty good as is. Their only goal was to provide developers with enough power to build incredible games. Microsoft is pretty confident they did that. The games will tell us if they're right.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53355...

http://kotaku.com/the-next-xbox-and-its-controller...LOL, either a good way to try and prevent leaks, or we're about to see Microsoft unveil the Xbox Zebra. :P