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[Leak] Xbox One (720) Pre-launch document leaked | $299 with Kinect V2 and 100M lifetime sales considered; assumed PS4 would be $399
- Thread starter Thick Thighs Save Lives
- Start date
LordCBH
Member
Hey man. Xbox One is the new water cooler.
(God that was such a stupid thing for them to say)
MarkMe2525
Member
This is really cool. Those XB1 and PS4 leaks were fun to follow, 360 and PS3 even more so. I remember the 360 leak showing a tri-core processor running at 3.2 ghz and thinking..."yeah right". It sounded too good to be true, back in 2004.
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John Wick
Member
You have to remember that they sold 80 million+ 360's so obviously were looking to build on that success. You wouldn't put down less or the same lol.
Oh well yeah we had this like like 11 or 12 years agoI didn't know that. I was merely reporting on what was posted in the linked gamingleaksandrumours post, which itself was submitted 2h ago.
EverydayBeast
thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
$299 might have won that generation.
soulbait
Member
There is som truth with Sony and Google TV though. Google TV was added to all of Sony's TVs. Starting in 2015, new Sony TVs had Android TV and then Google TV. So they were on to something there and probably heard deals were being made between Google and Sony. It just didn't happen on PlayStation.
Killjoy-NL
Member
Tbf, at the time, we didn't know XBO would end up selling just 57M.
It was severely underperforming, looking at it now.
Seeing how things are currently going, I wonder what the projections were for Series.
They're struggling to get 30M 3 years into current-gen.
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Guerilla Munch
Member
I remember that launch pretty well. The 360 was a monumental success, Xbox Live was the best place for multiplayer, and their first/second party studios were firing on all cylinders. Literally all that anybody wanted was for them to release a new more powerful system to keep the party going.
Then the announcement came and it was a $500 console with bottlenecked architecture, bundled with an always-on microphone and motion tracking camera, and for some reason it doubled as a cable television receiver and literally everyone was like holy fuck Microsoft what in the actual fuck are you doing lmao
Then the announcement came and it was a $500 console with bottlenecked architecture, bundled with an always-on microphone and motion tracking camera, and for some reason it doubled as a cable television receiver and literally everyone was like holy fuck Microsoft what in the actual fuck are you doing lmao
NinjaBoiX
Member
So they insisted on you having a Kinect and insisted on you being constantly connected to the internet why, exactly?
Of course they wanted to do the Alexa thing before Amazon did, they just forgot that consumers aren’t stupid and don’t like to feel like they’re being hoodwinked.
People buy Alexa products knowing full well that their personal info is up for grabs, it felt more like a sneaky ploy with the Xbox. It felt shady as hell.
Freelance Yakuza
Member
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Guys in reddit link posted a link saying it was 10 years ago. Here it is. Arstechnica article from 2012.
arstechnica.com
Leaked document points to $299 "Xbox 720" for 2013 (updated)
Microsoft takedown request suggests leak could be genuine.
arstechnica.com
Their rationale for Kinect pack in is in the slides above. They saw it as a distinguishing add on that made their product more appealing to the market. You forget that Kinect v1 was incredibly successful in the U.S.
The always online thing was part of their pre-launch DRM, a separate thing entirely.
How you’ve taken these two and patched them into tinfoil hat NSA spying territory is quite remarkable. Claims like these weren’t that uncommon back in 2013, but we’re in 2024 now.
Which would make sense, Netflix was a very popular streaming app on the Xbox 360 and it made sense to incorporate streaming Tv services in the Xbox One's design
The same company that went from Windows 3.1 to 95, then back to 7, only to skip to 10.
NinjaBoiX
Member
Oh come on man, it’s nothing to do with government spying, it’s bespoke advertising information which is worth its weight in gold.
GoldenEye98
posts news as their odd job
Going from $299 to $499 doesn't makes sense to me unless it was different hardware...
Mephisto40
Member
Another master stroke from Phil and the team
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Sushi_Combo
Member
They just keep tripping over themselves. It's not even funny anymore.
ZoukGalaxy
Member
rofif
Can’t Git Gud
it still had no games
Quasicat
Member
I bought an Xbox One as soon as they hit $400 and the Kinect was no longer required. Even at $300, I don’t think I would have bought one with a Kinect, because I do not like having cameras in my living room. Even now, my phone charges in the other room in the evening and the iPad doesn’t get charged until I head to bed. I’m just not into having a camera aimed at me while watching TV.
apple_of_enlightenment
Member
What year is it: it's a leak not a press release
Azelover
Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
It's neurolinguistics. Xbox One sounds like "Xbox won". I know it sounds stupid but it is a real thing..
Iced Arcade
Member
Yeah that's definitely a BS leak.
They were on their arrogant mode then so they thought they could charge whatever.
And absolutely no one would call a console 720 in a generation revolving around 1080p HD hype.
They were on their arrogant mode then so they thought they could charge whatever.
And absolutely no one would call a console 720 in a generation revolving around 1080p HD hype.
Guerilla Munch
Member
Thick Thighs Save Lives
Gold Member
They're still loading for me; can you check again?@TTSL, your images aren’t loading anymore. Would you kindly update the op with mirrors?
Edit: I'll re-upload them on a mirror since there's something fishy with that image host. Edit2: Done.
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yeah bro it's totally tinfoil hat conspiracy nonsense
Good. We all read this a decade ago. What does this have to do with Xbox or Kinect?
The Pleasure
Member
Smells like Softwood
Daneel Elijah
Gold Member
The way it was said is not the best, but for Xbox to sell 100 millions or more consoles would need them to expand in Europe considerably from what they ever did in their history, AND be certain that the PS4 would be shit like the PS3 was at first somehow. And it is pretty accepted that at first the Series S/X was Microsoft wanting frontal competition with the PS5. The strategy was all about not loosing again in price and performance. Do you really believe that they subventionned those consoles so much for a goal of 50 millions consoles this gen? It make sense to me that they wanted more than what we are seeing right now, and the leaks shows that they wanted at some point to have 60 millions consoles sold with a redesign to help them get there. I admit that Covid did not help them.
Why are you talking about COVID, PS5 and Series X in a conversation around 2011 era Xbox forecasts?
The data they had available at that time was the very strong performance of the 360, even hampered somewhat by the RRoD fiasco. Going from 80+ million actuals to 100 million wasn’t exactly a tall order, given the fact that the overall market was projected to expand, and they’d have expected to retain leadership in the UK/US while expanding on their existing positions in the EU.
Nobody at MS or even here at GAF could have had the inkling they’d screw up the final hardware, price and messaging so much that they’d destroy their chances right out of the gates. Hell, Halo was still a major system seller at that time.
Killjoy-NL
Member
This shows how much MS fucked up.
They went:
Xbox - 24M
X360 - 84M
XBO - 57M
To currently Series S/X - <30M and pretty much flatlining after 3 years.
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Little Chicken
Member
This document is was made even before the Wii U was announced, so it was made 3-ish years before the XB1/PS4 even launched.
It's just internal spitballing and every company does it pretty regularly. Still, a nice historical leak and interesting insight at a time when Kinect was still probably flying off shelves.
It's just internal spitballing and every company does it pretty regularly. Still, a nice historical leak and interesting insight at a time when Kinect was still probably flying off shelves.
a multicultural team of v
Member
Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages
Documents show company collaborated closely with NSA and FBI to help agencies intercept data
www.theguardian.com
NSA, GCHQ can listen to Xbox Live chat communications
UPDATE #2: Microsoft has spoken out against the government surveillance of its customers and joined other technology gi…
www.eurogamer.net
Papa_Wisdom
Member
Same, I had an og Xbox and 360 day one and loved them both. Really looked forward to the one reveal. Noped our straight away. Only jumped on board when Skyrim came out with mod support. Even then I went to get a PS4 instead but they didn’t have any so came away with a one (birthday present from my gf at the time, now ex)
Daneel Elijah
Gold Member
Because the person I have quoted was quoting someone else. And that person talked about the Xbox one and the Series S/X sales.
I don't deny that 100 millions was not impossible to think about back then. But it was not obvious and certain. Even the Switch 2 is not certain to do that, and I hope that we can agree that they have way more chances to do it than Xbox ever had. And wanting more is a good thing, it allows for them to be ambitious and for us to have a consoles that can be sold cheaper because of it. I will say again what I said in my post. For that to happen, Sony would need to fail their PS4 somehow. And in 2011 I think that the Wii U was still a danger for them, so the competition was high. After all Microsoft did after the Wii U reveal show that they could link the Xbox One with a tablet if needed. Or something like that at least. Sorry if I appear to be dismissing of the Xbox One sales potential. It was not my intention. I wanted to say that as much as we could believe it then, there has also been points against it, even back then. And yes Halo was big 10 years ago.
MarkMe2525
Member
Phil was with Microsoft Game Studios at this point in time, he was over development studios. You can't retroactively attribute the grand vision of Xbox One to him.
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thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Gold Member
I have a theory about this. Notice that the document was probably put out internally sometime between 2009 and 2010, so this is probably a finalized iteration of what'd of came before a revamp in the form of XBO. They were going to have 360 HW BC and use ARM cores instead of x86 or x86-64, and keep the 360 cores for BC purposes. Also only 4 GB RAM capacity but of DDR4 (the XBO went with older DDR3 that was probably cheaper by a bit, but doubled capacity and probably clocked as fast as they could get it for that spec).
Point blank, I think Microsoft had a SEGA moment, you know the kind. I'm talking GigaDrive > Saturn > Saturn revamp kind. They weren't particularly worried about a somewhat more powerful PS4 back in 2009/2010 because they didn't know yet the comeback Sony'd see on the software front, plus they were riding high off Kinect success and a second burst of life for the 360 because of it. They also assumed the appetite for motion controls would have an appeal for longer than they did. Lastly, as you can see in those documents, a lot of their focus was actually on Apple and Google, less so Sony or Nintendo. I think considering the astroturfing and media influences of MS at this time, we probably have them to think for the "consoles are dying" talk that was circulating around at the time, as it's clear the 720 was not prioritizing traditional gaming and looking to position more against what Apple, Google, Amazon etc. were doing (or might've planned to do), utilizing Kinect motion controls as their secret weapon.
Well we all know how this actually went...
I think, Microsoft underestimated Sony a little too much and figured they'd just barely limp along to the PS4, being too slow to get their 1P and 2P exclusives in order, that PS3 wouldn't have a turnaround. Well, Uncharted 2, Demon's Souls, Uncharted 3, Beyond: Two Souls, TLOU, GT6 etc. happened meanwhile MS more or less stopped focusing on core gaming experiences after Kinect launched, unless it was another Halo or Forza spinoff. Microsoft got complacent with their 1P, and they probably noticed a lot of 360 owners buying PS3s in the last three years of that generation. They probably also started hearing word about PS4's target specs and that combined with Sony's revitalized 1P & strengthened partnerships with various 3P spooked Microsoft to some level. They couldn't "really" put focus on Amazon, Apple, Google etc. if they still had to contend with Sony.
So, they needed to find some areas to give the 720 a boost in performance to make it look more appealing vs. PS4, cut features they felt wouldn't be necessary (if they found out PS4 wouldn't have BC with PS3, that could've influenced MS to drop the PowerPC cores from 720 for 360 HW BC), and try holding onto Kinect v2 as their big value differentiator. That's how 4 GB DDR4 became 8 GB DDR3, that's how ARM & PPC cores and whatever GPU they had in development became an APU with x86-64 cores and GCN. And it's how the 32 MB EDRAM (for 360 BC) became 32 MB ESRAM, among other things. With those changes, they had something that on paper could better compete with the PS4, but still tackle the multimedia ambitions they had with the 720 to deal with Apple & co., and the motion controls to draw the Wii and hopefully mobile audience to the platform. XBO still had its hands in all of these things, but at a cost of ballooning the production budget and pushing the MSRP up by $200.
And then super-unfortunate for MS, the NSA stuff happened AND the Wii U completely bombed a month after release, despite having the Wii brand naming to it and still supporting motion controls. Microsoft probably, internally, now feared that they made a bad bet with Kinect v2 and what they thought would be a value differentiator became an albatross. But they couldn't justify cutting it out of the package because they didn't feel a (now revamped) 720/XBO on its own could justify the likely $399 or even $349 it'd command without the Kinect v2 (and at $349, probably losing a LOT on each unit being sold). They were probably hoping that with the PS4's RAM getting upgraded to 8 GB GDDR5 instead of 4 GB GDDR5, that Sony would've made the price higher than the $399 they expected way back in 2009/2010 or so.
Welp, we know how that also went...
I'll never forget watching E3 2013; still one of the best trade events and shows of all time. The energy was insane. But yeah, that's my theory on what happened to 720 which led to the XBO and saw a $200 increase in the price along the way. Microsoft basically SEGA Saturn'd themselves with a rushed redesign late into development, based on an earlier concept that was too steeped in the past of what they thought (or wanted) the console market to veer towards, versus the reality (at the time) of where it was headed. And like SEGA with the Saturn, misread the key desires and wants of the hardcore and core gaming demographics (3D gaming in the case of Saturn, big blockbuster AAA story-driven and core gaming experiences in the case of XBO).
What I'm absolutely mystified by, is how Microsoft made many of the SAME mistakes again (in hindsight, though in some cases noticeable even at the time) with Xbox Series several years later...again kind of similar with SEGA and the Dreamcast (tho I'd say Dreamcast fixed a lot more of the Saturn's shortfalls, than Xbox Series did Xbox One's).
thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Gold Member
I dunno. There is the possibility they'd of done a lot better to retain Xbox owners during the first couple of years thanks to 360 BC (that having a lot more value than Serie's XBO BC, since the 360 was actually a system with many great games quite a lot still exclusive to it at the time). That could've helped them keep a slight edge over PS4 in US & UK for the first two years and, assuming titles like TitanFall were to come regardless the same way they did for XBO, maybe helped maintain that lead for longer or grow it. However I do think even in those markets, PS4 would've been a lot more competitive than PS3 was to 360.
More interesting IMO is what this 720 would've done to Nintendo. I think had it launched and done well enough, Nintendo's trajectory for the Switch would've been MUCH different. They'd still of found a way to fold the portable and console sides into a single device line, but more of a "correct" version of the Wii U, the way the Wii was a "corrected" version of the Gamecube. You'd of likely had a "Wii Switch" or whatever, with the base console and a tablet controller that could break off the handles for Wiimote-like usability, and the tablet controller able to run and play its own games without need of the base console, but stream with the console as a second screen anyway as an option.
I also think that while a 720 as described here still loses ground to PS4 sometime in late 2015, going into 2016 for sure...the initial success could've maybe helped it carve out a better niche against Sony & Nintendo. Not 100 million good, but something between 75 - 85 million. Unlike with 360 tho (where a decent chunk, let's say about 20%, of total systems were repurchased models due to RROD), these would be more 1:1 with actual customers in the ecosystem number-wise, not bolstered as replacement systems for faulty early models. And this probably could've influenced what the PS5 eventually became. A slightly weaker PS5, no PS4 Pro (shift that R&D over to PS5 outright), and possibly a more aggressive PSVR push to scale it down so that they can have a cheap PSVR Lite default with PS5 (something I hope Sony does for PS6, but it would've been too soon with PS5 IMHO).
Again very interesting things to consider, but just like alternate realities where the Saturn was a commercial success, it'll always have to remain a theory & speculation on our part.
No it's potentially real. The actual specs for the 720 here aren't very impressive whatsoever, even next to the XBO we did get, let alone the PS4, and both XBO and PS4 were considered relatively weak hardware for the time they released. 32 MB EDRAM (not ESRAM), 4 GB DDR4 (probably no clocked particularly high), ARM cores, repurposed PPC cores for BC, unknown GPU but probably not particularly performant (though still maybe within ballpark of what the XBO GPU package provided in raw TF at least)...
...Considering Kinect v2 was in-house tech, and the original Kinect wasn't very expensive to manufacture in its own right, a $299 720 in 2013 seems believable without them losing too much money (or any money, potentially) on the SKU. The redesigns to turn the 720 into the XBO weren't cheap, though, not to mention any R&D that would've involved to ensure functionality stayed consistent to expectations.
I venture to guess that an XBO in 2013 without the Kinect at most could've only been dropped to $349 and would have looked like bad value proposition next to the PS4. And that'd of been with MS losing a decent amount of money per unit sold, at least $60 (assuming similar to with PS4 at launch which broke even with the purchase of a single game).
SkylineRKR
Member
This is very bad and its not like Series is a bad, overpriced or too late released system.
Team Andromeda
Member
You are trolling... bye
MasterCornholio
Member
Seems pretty logical that Microsoft wanted to do better with the Series than the X1. Also seems pretty logical that they didn't want to do worse.
That's why they went with the strategy of a Pro console and then a cheap console at launch. Their goal was to beat the competition on price and power with two systems. Which they have for both depending on your interpretation.
Unfortunately the results put them far behind their competitors so obviously the goal wasn't met with the new strategy.
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Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
This 100 million forecast was stupid if they simply based it on the 80 million Xbox 360 units sold, ignoring all the nuances and context.
- X360 numbers were inflated because of RROD and people buying replacements.
- X360 launched 1 year before PS3.
- Sony messed up the PS3 launch and introduced a more expensive console.
They knew PS4 was not going to be more expensive and that it would instead be cheaper than Xbox One. They also knew that PS4 would launch in the same year. They would also know that Xbox One numbers would not be inflated by an RROD-type situation again.
The 100 million units projects was simply out of touch. And the results proved it.
Puscifer
Member
I have to say COVID was a prime example of how much demand wasn't there for the SX, you could only buy bundles for the PS5 while the SS and SX were in regular rotation as next gen consoles. The fact that Microsoft couldn't even ride a wave like that was pretty pathetic that you couldn't entice buyers with an in-stock, non 800/900 dollar bundle vs an in-stock standalone consoles for over 2 years.