Microsoft's next-generation Xbox game console may have a built-in mechanism that won't let it play used video games, according to gaming blog Kotaku. A "reliable industry source" told Kotaku that the software giant intends to "incorporate some sort of anti-used game system" in the unnamed console but it wasn't clear how the company planned to do it.
The successor to the Xbox 360, referred to variously in media reports as the Xbox 720, Xbox Next, or Xbox Loop, will also switch media formats from DVD to Blu-Ray, the blog reported Wednesday.
Oh, and one more thing—Kotaku reports that "Microsoft plans to ship their new Xbox with a new version of its red-hot Kinect hands-free sensor system."
A tipster also tells PCMag.com that Microsoft is developing the new Kinect system in-house instead of relying on PrimeSense, the Israeli company that supplied the 3D sensing technology for the current version of Kinect.
Kotaku's report added to a new swirl of rumors about the next Xbox that has sprung up in the past week. In recent days, several tech and entertainment sites have reported that the Xbox 720/Next/Loop is being readied for a late 2013 release and that it's packing a new chip called Oban that combines an IBM-designed Power PC CPU with the latest Radeon HD graphics from Advanced Micro Devices (or perhaps last year's Radeon GPU, depending on which site is telling the story).
As for why Microsoft would try to squeeze out used games, a long-standing linchpin of the console gaming economy, from its future console, Wired's Chris Kohler figures the gaming industry as a whole is inevitably headed in that direction.
"[T]he death of used games is inevitable," he writes, positing that the cheap digital downloads available for Sony's PlayStation Vita point to "the road to the no-games future."
"[A]s soon as Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo et al. think they can get away with it, the disc or cartridge will simply disappear, replaced entirely by digital game sales," Kohler notes. That'd be a two-fer for the video game industry, he adds, because there would be "no cost to produce the goods, no possibility of used sales."