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A very boring looking desktop PC was offered for sale through a developer forum, one that had apparently been configured to work as a development station for Microsoft’s next home console, which is currently known under the code name Durango.
The explanation offered for the sale of the Durango devkit is that it was a “prank” performed by a forum member who did indeed have access to Microsoft’s development hardware. The chap, who calls himself DaE, told Digital Foundry that the hardware arrived with developers in February, contains an Intel CPU alongside an NVIDIA graphics chipset, and currently contains more than 8GB of memory in this early preview format.
Even if the sale was a joke, the hardware itself appears to be real. Console makers routinely cobble together boxes that roughly appropriate the power offered by their consoles long before the final hardware is ready, giving developers a chance to get their war and car based products ready for launch.
Although the claimed inclusion of NVIDIA graphics, a 64-bit core and a supposed eight-core CPU makes the specific power claims of the seller appear a little fantastic, several developers have confirmed, or at least not denied, that this is indeed the next Xbox development kit. [Digital Foundry via MCV]
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Apparently the graphics card of this device is equivalent in power to a graphics card that can be purchased for £77. If true that is extremely disapointing.
Gotta keep that profit margin in tact!
Saves me upgrading my GPU for another 10 years… I guess.
This happens with every console generation. they always cobble together stuff that is a year or two old to keeps costs down, but as every box is the same developers can optimise the games a lot more to access all the power available instead of compromising like they do on the PC to facilitate the fragmentation.
I’m actually amazed the rest of the specs are so high, 8Gb ram is double what I expected.
Reading the digital foundry article I might not be far off the mark:
“dev hardware typically features double the RAM of retail kit in order to accommodate debugging tools and other systems.”