Next Xbox Could Be Coming in 2013 For $300 With Kinect 2

According to a 56 document supposedly from Microsoft that was posted to Scribd, which has since been taken down by Covington & Burling LLP, Microsoft will be releasing the next Xbox in 2013 with a $299 price point and the next iteration of Kinect.

Called Kinect V2, the new Kinect will have some features that people have been wanting from the current Kinect. For example, you can now play the Kinect while sitting down. It will also be able to track the motions of four people simultaneously instead of the current two. Finally, the new Kinect will be able to adapt itself to your living room. So now you don’t have to rearrange all your furniture to play with the Kinect.

The new Xbox will be getting some upgrades as well, including a Blu-ray optical drive. Instead of running DVDs like the Xbox currently does, it will be using Blu-ray discs. This will offer, according to the document, 4x-6x the power of the current 360. It will apparently also have some kind of “always on” functionality, but no other details were given. Last but certainly not least, the document at no point mentioned any kind of functionality that either blocked or inhibited the use of second-hand titles. So either they’re keeping that feature to reveal at a later date or you can play pre-owned games on the new console.

The document also mentioned Fortaleza, a set of augmented reality glasses that the new Xbox will support. Fortaleza will use Wi-Fi or 4G connections and are planned to launch in 2014.

Finally, the document mentioned that the new system will be offering cloud services. The document made is seem like Microsoft will be offering new software and services through the cloud, which apparently removes the need to ever by a new console again.

Some of the content of the document dates back to the middle of 2010, so whether it’s all true or not no one can say. But if it is all true and the next Xbox is coming next year, Microsoft has high hopes for it. The document had in it predictions that said that over the course of the console’s 10 year lifespan it would sell 100 million units.

Source: GameSpot