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The Xbox One could very well be more powerful than the Playstation 4 thanks to cloud computing. Official Xbox Magazine is reporting that for every Xbox One sold by Microsoft, there will be the equivalent of three additional console's CPU and storage available to each system by means of a constant internet connection to MS's cloud servers. Of course this means if a game developer wants to take advantage of the Xbox One's powerful cloud servers, a constant internet connection will be required. This would mean that any or even all games made for the system could possibly require a constant internet connection.. But why didn't Microsoft mention this potential during their Xbox One reveal event? This also raises more questions.. Could it be that Sony's Gaikai tech is even more powerful? Will the Xbox One still match up with Playstation 4 if Sony reveals computing potential with their cloud servers? Sony has said that constant online connections are not required, does this mean all game developers are planning on utilizing the PS4's specs only and not the potential cloud specs? Will this mean all future console games will come with a label indicating if a constant cloud connection is required or not? We'll have to wait for E3 to get all the details. In the mean time, check out this video of Crysis 2 being played on a web browser thanks to Sony's Gaikai system: Source: Official Xbox Magazine Click here to view the article

Microsoft will be announcing its new next generation Xbox console during a live press conference on May 21, 10am PDT. You can watch it live on Xbox Live, Xbox.com and Spike TV. Sources: Joystiq | xbox.com Click here to view the article

Based on online document leaks from last June and a Microsoft employee spilling the beans about internet requirements for the new system on Twitter a couple days ago, it seems as though the next Xbox console (Xbox 720?) will require an always online internet connection. This online connection would most likely be needed to initially load games and applications in the console. Even though always online connectivity is very common in a large majority of households, this could anger quite a few gamers. I suppose if my internet provider had an issue and my connection dropped out, I'd have to keep myself entertained by playing games on my PC, phone.. or anything other gaming platforms besides Microsoft's new console. Of course, my internet has only gone out once in the past year, so I doubt I'll have any problems. But we'll have to wait until Microsoft officially unveils the new console to see if this is true. Do you think this always online requirement could potentially hurt the new system? Sources: Polygon and The Verge Click here to view the article

VGLeaks has unveiled the raw system specs of Microsoft's next generation console dubbed Durango. If these specs hold up, the next "Xbox" will have some remarkably impressive processing power at 1.2 teraflops (1.2 trillion floating-point operations per second). To put that in perspective; Xbox 360 is only measured in gigaflops. After the failure of HD DVD in the current generation, it is also a notable point that Blu-ray will be included along with 8GB of RAM, Wi-Fi Direct capability, USB 3.0 and HDMI 1.4a. Unlike the latest report for PS4, there is no news on the controller nor the previously rumored augmented-reality glasses. Here is a full rundown on the specs: CPU: - x64 Architecture - 8 CPU cores running at 1.6 gigahertz (GHz) - each CPU thread has its own 32 KB L1 instruction cache and 32 KB L1 data cache - each module of four CPU cores has a 2 MB L2 cache resulting in a total of 4 MB of L2 cache - each core has one fully independent hardware thread with no shared execution resources - each hardware thread can issue two instructions per clock GPU: - custom D3D11.1 class 800-MHz graphics processor - 12 shader cores providing a total of 768 threads - each thread can perform one scalar multiplication and addition operation (MADD) per clock cycle - at peak performance, the GPU can effectively issue 1.2 trillion floating-point operations per second High-fidelity Natural User Interface (NUI) sensor is always present Storage and Memory: - 8 gigabyte (GB) of RAM DDR3 (68 GB/s) - 32 MB of fast embedded SRAM (ESRAM) (102 GB/s) - from the GPU’s perspective the bandwidths of system memory and ESRAM are parallel providing combined peak bandwidth of 170 GB/sec. - Hard drive is always present - 50 GB 6x Blu-ray Disc drive Networking: - Gigabit Ethernet - Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct Hardware Accelerators: - Move engines - Image, video, and audio codecs - Kinect multichannel echo cancellation (MEC) hardware - Cryptography engines for encryption and decryption, and hashing Check out the full details from CNet and VG Leaks below: CNET: Xbox 720: 8 CPU cores of gaming power? VGLeaks: World Exclusive: Durango unveiled Click here to view the article