When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works

Home / News / Specs and release date revealed for PlayStation 4 Orbis and Xbox 720

Specs and release date revealed for PlayStation 4 Orbis and Xbox 720

Sony and Microsoft's next-gen gaming powerhouses should be gracing our gaming dens by Christmas 2013, with souped up internals to boot

Sony’s PlayStation 4 Orbis and Microsoft’s Xbox 720 games consoles are both schedueled to be released in time for Christmas 2013, according to the latest online rumours.

According to VG247, the Xbox 720 (codenamed Durango) has been internally confirmed as having a Christmas 2013 release, and will have two AMD 7000-equivalent GPU’s – likened to “two PCs taped together”.

The Xbox 720 will also reportedly have a Blu-ray drive and a four or six core CPU, with one reserved for the OS and another one reserved for Kinect – which will now be built-in. Whisperings of an ‘always-on’ anti-piracy internet connection being required to play games is worrying, but it’s early days yet.

The Sony Playstation 4 (also known as the PlayStation Orbis) will apparently beat the Xbox 720 to the shelves, according to another VG247 source. Sony is reportedly striving to get a head start on Microsoft with its next-gen console, and developers like Ubisoft are said to be already familiar with the PlayStation 4 Orbis’ hardware.

Specs-wise, the PlayStation 4 Orbis will supposedly be ditching Sony’s custom Cell architecture found in the PlayStation 3, and will instead be also rocking an AMD GPU as well as an AMD CPU to boot, as previously reported.

This change should ensure that developers will have an easier time of creating games for AMD’s more standard architecture – hopefully resulting in a strong PlayStation 4 Orbis launch line-up, as seen with the PlayStation Vita‘s solid launch titles.

Both Sony and Microsoft have stated that there will be no new consoles revealed by them at this year’s E3, but we’re keeping our fingers firmly crossed for at least a hint at what’s to come – so stay tuned for more juicy details as and when we get them.

You may also like

25 best food movies ever

Sculpteo wants to fill your house with customised 3D printed objects

Asus Padfone gets pricing for Taiwan pre-orders

Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home