Xbox 720 AKA Durango to have 16-core CPU?

Everyday seems to bring a new rumour about Microsoft’s follow up to the Xbox 360, and with the Redmond-based company stating categorically that no new hardware will be revealed at this summer’s E3 gaming conference, rumours are all we have to go on.

This latest one is a bit juicier than those gone by however; the Xbox 720 may house a monster 16-core CPU.

According to Xbox World, developers were sent out a prototype development kit after the secret “Durango” developers meetings Microsoft are said to have held in London earlier this year.

Xbox World’s sources claim that the devkit packs in a state of the art 16-core IBM Power PC CPU with a graphics processor similar to the AMD Radeon HD 7000-series graphics cards.

A 16-core CPU is a ridiculously powerful proposition; only last November did AMD launch the world’s first 16-core processor, and even then it was aimed at the business market. So what would the Xbox 720 do with so much processing grunt. The answer, believe Xbox World, lives with Kinect, and its potential sequel too:

“It’s a ridiculous amount of power for a games machine – too much power, even. But remember, Kinect 2 could chew up four whole cores tracking multiple players right down to their fingertips, so it’ll need a lot of power.”

As ever, we’ll keep you posted with any updates on the hardware that come our way. There’s every possibility that developers will jump ahead of Microsoft and show off their next gen hardware at E3 come June, so keep your eyes peeled for news on that.