A patent filed by Microsoft in December 2010 is giving off strong hints that the firm plans on making its next console scalable, in that you’ll be able to upgrade, just like PC, the hardware over time.
The patent is of an application making plain the technical architecture of the next Xbox, including the ability for hardware resources to “scale up or down over time.”
The document was publisher in June 2012 and was discovered by a member of the Beyond3D forum.
“While the patent could be interpreted to mean that different Xbox SKUs could be released with different levels of multimedia capability, the ‘over time’ element in the application could suggest that Microsoft is giving itself the option of opting out from the traditional fixed architecture model,” Eurogamer points out.
This means different models of hardware could be built around the same underlying technology and components but with varying power (think of Apple’s iPad yearly release with meager upgrades).
“What should be stressed is that everything we’ve heard about the current Project Durango points towards a more traditional console design, and that this patent application is over 18 months old. Many of these applications are often lodged simply for legal reasons and never actually turn into final products,” Digital Foundry’s tech journalist, Richard Leadbetter concluded.
consoles are not going upgradeable, it totally defeats the purpose of consoles!
whole point of consoles is their allot cheaper than gaming PCs, their easy to use, and there much easier for developers to get games running on them.
if you have a upgradeable console than it totally destroys all of that!
it would destroy the industry, especially knowing the greediness of the industry lately manufactures would require you to purchase the latest upgrades to play the latest games.
theres already upgradeable consoles out……. there called PCs!
i doubt that patent is talking about upgradeable hardware, its most likely talking about scalable hardware.
have hardware in there that scales up or down considering what your running.
one big waste and problem with todays consoles is you have high end hardware running flat chat running a web browser!
what this is probably talking about is having variable clock speeds and such that way you can activate or deactivate certain hardware as its needed.
especially with all the talk of VR, and kinect 2 being inside the system that will waste allot of the consoles processing power, so maybe this is talking about separate chips as well.
have 2 separate parts of hardware in the system, 1 used for kinect, AR and multimedia functions and the other dedicated for running the games.
i wouldent be surprised if we start seeing that, dual hardware in systems that way your not using a ferrari to win a egg and spoon race!