A lower priced model is said to exist around $300, along with a subscription of some kind. Thurrot points to signs of ‘always-on’ demands being present. New budget Xbox 360 due in 2013.
This $99 Xbox 360 is codenamed ‘Stringray’ with the analyst suggesting this could mean the new Xbox won’t be supporting older games with backward compatibility.
”Looking at some of the stuff I got a long time ago, it actually says ‘must be internet-connected to use’ in the notes,” Thurrot said. ”And that’s all I have, but it does say that.” Recent document leaks exposed plans by Microsoft to utilise always-on requirements with the corporate giant not directly addressing the concerns raised.
”So the new Xbox that comes out this year will just be the Xbox,” he said. ”Durango is going to be expensive, you know $500, $300 for the subscription model, that kind of thing.”
”We have talked for a while about this notion that there might be another version of the Xbox that was just aimed at entertainment - a non-gaming device. That device was code-named ‘Yumo’ and they’re not making it,” he claimed. ”They may make one in the future, but it’s not happening this year.”
Microsoft is proceeding with ‘Stringray’ however.
”Originally, they were going to announce this thing in April 24, now they’re going to announce it May 21,” he said. ”We know there are events occurring this year where we’re going to learn more about Durango.”
Thurrot believes November is the prime moment to launch the next Xbox console.
”Early November, yeah,” Thurrott continued. ”E3 is going to occur. BUILD is going to occur in San Francisco in June when they’re going to talk about the developer story because it’s a Windows 8 device. It’s going to have the same, or basically the same, developer tools and developer APIs and all that kind of stuff.”
”I think there’s a lot information to come, but I look at all this stuff that I’ve seen about Durango and I think, ‘it’s all positive.’ I don’t really see any bad news here at all. Like to me, everything I’ve seen about this is really positive. It’s amazing to me that, based on like no information at all, everyone is like freaking out about everything.”
You can check out Paul Thurrott’s analysis via podcast episode 159 of What The Tech.
