Key Highlights:
- Microsoft’s E3 2013 countdown has fuelled speculation about the company’s next Xbox console.
- The unannounced Xbox 360 successor is widely being referred to as the “Xbox 720”, although Microsoft has not confirmed its final name.
- Reports point towards a late 2013 launch, with November emerging as a possible release window.
Microsoft has started a countdown to E3 2013, fuelling speculation that the company could reveal its next Xbox console at the Los Angeles event in June.
Xbox spokesman Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb posted the countdown on 2 January with the message “And it’s on”, but provided no details about what Microsoft plans to announce. The timing has inevitably increased speculation surrounding the successor to the Xbox 360.
The unannounced console is widely being called the Xbox 720, although Microsoft has not confirmed that name. Durango has also emerged as the reported internal codename, while Xbox 8 and Xbox Loop are among several possible retail names circulating online.
A release date has not been announced either. Current speculation points towards the new Xbox arriving in late 2013, with November considered a possible launch window in the US.
That prediction ultimately proved remarkably close, although Microsoft’s plans unfolded differently from the rumours circulating in January.
Microsoft officially unveiled the console as Xbox One on 21 May 2013, several weeks before E3. The company subsequently launched Xbox One in the UK, US and several other markets on 22 November 2013.
The “Xbox 720” name therefore never became official, but the expected 2013 launch did. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 successor arrived almost eight years after the Xbox 360 first launched in November 2005.
