Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

Leak points to “always on” ’Net connection, one-time installs for next Xbox

Dev kit help file also discusses bundled Kinect that's required to operate.

Newly leaked documentation accompanying the developer's kit for the successor to the Xbox 360, codenamed Durango, is rekindling rumors that the new system will require disc-based games to be installed to a hard drive before being played.

The "Hardware Overview" included in the Xbox Developer Kit help files was obtained and published by VGLeaks, and it matches up closely with rumors leaked last month by SuperDaE, a shadowy source who once tried to sell a Durango development kit on eBay. The document discusses how Durango games will be distributed via Blu-ray disc (an upgrade from the Xbox 360's DVDs) but says those games won't be playable directly from that optical media. Instead "all games will be installed on the hard drive... disc media will be used for distribution, but during gameplay, games will not use content from the optical disc."

This suggests that Microsoft would use some sort of online-activation code or other method to confirm that a single Blu-ray disc is not being installed to multiple systems (and thus place limits on the standard secondhand resale of used game discs). While the help file doesn't address this directly, it does mention that the system will "always maintain a network connection so the console software and games are always current." The document also suggests players will be able to start a game while installation to the hard drive is ongoing, a setup similar to the one announced recently for the PlayStation 4.

This kind of one-install-per-disc limit has been rumored in the past, but this is the most direct acknowledgement of mandatory installs from what is apparently a Microsoft-produced document. The Verge was able to get independent verification that the XDK file was genuine, but it also says that the information is from last year. The file itself warns that "this document is preliminary and subject to change," so there is plenty of time for Microsoft to alter course on this issue, especially after Sony's decision to back off its own used-game-blocking plans.

Elsewhere, the leaked overview discusses a new Kinect sensor that will be bundled with the Durango and which will be "required for the system to operate." The new 3D sensor will support a higher resolution and provide a depth map that is "less noisy" than the original Kinect, according to the document, and allow for a wider field of view that doesn't require a tilt motor in the hardware itself.

Other hardware tidbits discussed in the document include a "familiar x64 architecture and tools," built-in "move engines" that can handle common tasks like compression and decompression, and dedicated audio hardware that produces 7.1 digital sound output.

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