Last week we saw a document leak online purporting to detail Microsoft’s roadmap for its future gaming hardware. The Xbox 720 was mentioned, as was Kinect v2.0, with a launch for it all planned in 2013. But could it be real?
Yes, is the definitive answer. We know because Internet investigators working on behalf of Microsoft have been sending takedown notices to all the sites hosting the 56-page document, including Scribd and Dropbox.
Microsoft usually refuses to confirm or deny stories of this nature, but having its legal team send out takedown notices which clearly state the “IEB Roadmap” is copyright of “Microsoft Corporation” does the job just fine.
This doesn’t mean everything that was written in the leaked documents will come to pass, especially as it was written way back in August 2010. However, it means Microsoft has had one eye on the future of the Xbox brand for almost two years, and vastly increases the chances that the new console will be turning up in the next 12 months.
