Following hot on the heels of the whirlwind of rumours claiming that the next gen had been cancelled and Microsoft’s consequent rebuttal the following day, we have a bunch of leaks for the next gen Xbox from Moore’s Law Is Dead.
According to MLID, he has several sources that apparently revealed that Microsoft is discussing a 2027 release window with partners, which if accurate, would be the same launch window for Sony’s Playstation 6 – if the rumours from Kepler L2 are also accurate.
But what I want to focus on here is of course the next gen Xbox, or Xbox Next if you prefer. Specifically, Moore’s Law dove into the AMD Magnus APU that will be at the core of the next gen Xbox.
Below you can find a summary of the hardware specs of the Xbox APU:
144mm² SoC (N3P) + 264mm² GPU (N3C/P) = 408mm²
Final useable core count unknown, but will be Zen 6 with up to 3 Zen 6 cores and 8 Zen 6c cores
NPU with up to 110 TOPS at 6W or 46 TOPS at 1.2W (Two power consumption modes)
68 x RDNA 5 CUs (disabled from up to 70 CU)
Shader Engines Total = 3 x 9 WGP + 1 x 8 WGP with 2 shader arrays per engine
At least 24MB L2 cache for the GPU
192-bit memory bus with up to 48GB of GDDR7
24MB L2 Cache at least
250-350W power consumption
Unfortunately, MLID’s sources were not able to provide the final clock targets for either the CPU or GPU, which is a crucial piece of information for determining the target performance. But if the rest of these specifications hold true, we can expect the Xbox Next to be quite impressive indeed. But while good performance, alongside a strong improvement in visuals alongside things such as ray tracing, are important – what gamers care most about is a strong library of games.
Neither console this generation has been all that impressive games wise, with both offering a limited library of exclusives. But the PS5 has still managed to completely run away with the victory for this gen, because it still offers more exclusives than that of the Xbox Series. The Xbox has been on such shaky footing that the rumours of the cancellation of the next gen actually seemed believable, which is not a good sign for the level of trust people have in Microsoft.
So I think Microsoft is absolutely going to have to win that trust back, and Sony will also have to not get complacent. They’ve had the throne for two generations now, but there is nothing stopping Microsoft from coming back strong to challenge them for it. And I hope they do offer more competition to Sony this time, because a more competitive market is better for us as consumers. Just look at what’s happened to the CPU market ever since AMD came out swinging with Ryzen.
Safe to say I will be watching the next generation of consoles with interest.
