Although Microsoft has said the next
Xbox won’t be launching anytime soon, the rumor mill just won’t quit.
Gaming blog VG247 is now reporting that Microsoft is hard at work on
the next Xbox, and when it finally launches late next year, it’ll come with a Blu-ray player. The device will also ship with two AMD GPUs, making it “like two PCs taped together,” the blog’s sources say.
Those reports aren’t necessarily groundbreaking. AMD has hinted from
time to time that it’ll be Microsoft’s partner in the next Xbox. Gaming
blog Kotaku also said earlier this year that its own sources have
confirmed that the next Xbox will launch with Blu-ray and not the DVD drive available in the current Xbox 360.
If the next Xbox does indeed ship with a Blu-ray player, Sony might
have trouble holding back its chuckles. The company currently offers
Blu-ray support in its
PlayStation 3,
due mainly to the fact that it’s one of the founding members of the
Blu-ray Disc Association, and licenses Blu-ray technology to other
companies. That little wrinkle had been widely viewed as the reason
Microsoft hasn’t brought Blu-ray to the Xbox 360; the software giant
ostensibly has no desire to give cash to its chief competitor in the
gaming space.
