The industry has long suspected that Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox 720 (Next) would not be offering backwards compatibility with older 360 game titles.
And why would it? Indeed, unlike its predecessor, the upcoming 720 is powered by an AMD x86 board, rather than a 3.2 GHz PowerPC Tri-Core Xenon.
Sony’s Playstation 4 (PS4) faces similar limitations in terms of playing PS3 games, as the Japanese-based corporation happily ditches its 3.2 GHz Cell Broadband Engine for a slick new AMD APU.
Of course, most core console gamers have long accepted the almost de-facto lack of backwards compatibility, yet remain concerned about their ability to play used games on the 720, while uneasily eyeing the rumored “always-on” Internet requirement.
Although Redmond has yet to officially confirm console specs, the Xbox 720 is widely expected to be powered by an AMD 8-core x64 1.6GHz CPU, a D3D11.x 800MHz graphics platform and 8GB of DDR3 RAM.
In other Xbox 720 news, Microsoft rep Yusuf Mehdi recently noted that Redmond will be placing even more emphasis on the Xbox as a versatile entertainment hub for the masses.
“We want to partner with the industry to deliver the next wave of innovation in games and consumer entertainment. We will partner with content creators, studios, labels, networks, content aggregators, operators and distributors to make this happen,” Mehdi wrote in a recent blog post.
“We believe the future of home entertainment is one where TV becomes more simple, tailored and intelligent. We believe the best is yet to come for this industry. Our vision and energy for the future of entertainment is more focused than ever. Stay tuned.”
