Xbox 720 Hardware in Development at IBM, Console Arrives in 2013

Another new report about the next Xbox console has appeared on the web, this time with rumors concerning IBM and Global Foundries, the two companies that are supposedly working on the hardware of the upcoming console, the oft-rumored Xbox 720.

The current Xbox 360 will still be around for quite some time, according to Microsoft, but this doesn’t stop plenty of rumors to appear about its successor. We’ve already heard about its various announcement and release dates, with many claiming that the company will present the next Xbox at E3 2012 in summer and release it sometime towards the end of the year.

Now, Fudzilla has published a fresh report, this time citing sources from inside IBM, as the manufacturer is supposedly working alongside Global Foundries on the hardware of the next Xbox console.

According to the website, the Xbox 720 is powered by a system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture with 32nm technology and incorporates a PowerPC CPU as well as a GPU made by AMD that’s basically a modified version of its current 7000 series graphics cards.

IBM and Global Foundries have started working on the hardware in December last year, so a release date at the end of 2012 isn’t really possible. As such, the website claims that Microsoft will opt to deploy the new Xbox console sometime in 2013.

Until then, the report also claims that the company could begin shipping early versions of the Xbox 720 to third party developers this spring, so that they have enough time to experiment on the device and get games ready for its actual launch.

Bear in mind that this is just a rumor, as of yet, so who knows what’s inside the next Xbox or if it’s actually coming in 2013. Still, sooner or later, Microsoft is going to have to start working on the successor of the Xbox 360, which was also designed by IBM, so it’s possible that the company has once contacted the large hardware manufacturer.

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