Technology giant Microsoft might be releasing its next-generation gaming console in time for 2013 holiday season, Bloomberg reported.
The report said that this was claimed by "people familiar with the company's plans." It also added that Microsoft has not yet decided if it will unveil its new gaming console at E3 2013 in June or at an event that will be dedicated totally for the console.
Sony is also developing its next-generation console dubbed PlayStation 4 or Orbis. Nintendo released its new Wii U Nov. 18.
Microsoft sold 750,000 units of Xbox 360 around the Black Friday week. The sales were twice the number of shipments reported for Nintendo's Wii U console.
The next Xbox might include 750,000 Kinect 2.0, Blu-ray discs, they might also feature directional audio, a TV output AND input, an 'innovative controller' and - at a later stage of the console's life - AR glasses. The Xbox 720 has been codenamed as Durango and its CPU is claimed to have "four hardware cores, each divided into four logical cores" and with 8GB of RAM.
The gaming scene has changed with the introduction of tablets and smartphones with casual gamers switching to these gadgets as they gain in popularity. Of the 70 million Xbox 360 users, more than 40 million are Xbox Live online subscribers.
Xbox 360 was unveiled at the 2005 MTV awards and released later. Though for the past 22 months, Microsoft has led the console sales, its monthly sales are on the decline since October said NPD.
Microsoft has also said that it will be upgrading its Windows operating system every year rather than the earlier practise of updating it every two or three years.
