Xbox 720 document leak reveals $299 console with Kinect 2 for 2013, Kinect Glasses project
While it's clear Microsoft isn't planning to introduce its next-generation Xbox console this year, all signs indicate that a 2013 launch is on the cards. A newly leaked 56-page document sheds …
Context & Ripple Effects
A year ago, WinRumors reported that the next-generation Xbox was expected to be unveiled at E3 2012 — an unveil that never came. This leaked 56-page document supplies the likely explanation: Microsoft's own roadmap targets a 2013 launch, meaning the company was never positioned to show hardware this cycle.
The timing compounds the damage. Microsoft has a confirmed secretive hardware event scheduled for Monday, with insiders predicting a branded tablet to rival Apple's iPad, and the leak lands just days before it — framing everything announced there against a roadmap Microsoft did not choose to publish.
First-order effects
- Microsoft's unannounced pricing and bundling plan — a $299 console shipping with Kinect 2 in 2013 — is now public roughly a year ahead of schedule, stripping the company of control over how its next launch is framed.
- The disclosure of Kinect Glasses as an in-development augmented reality project turns an internal experiment into a public product expectation before Microsoft has acknowledged it exists.
Second-order effects
- NUads, the interactive Xbox Live advertising technology Microsoft announced on June 14, presumes exactly the kind of advanced motion sensing Kinect 2 implies — the leak now ties the company's living-room ad ambitions to an unannounced sensor.
- With the Monday hardware event days away, whatever Microsoft announces will be parsed against the leaked document rather than presented on its own terms, raising the bar for any surprise.
Third-order effects
- If 56-page planning documents keep escaping, console makers face a structural choice between writing thinner internal roadmaps and accepting that launch windows and price points are effectively public long before they choose to announce them.
- Kinect's trajectory from a single 360 peripheral toward a family spanning Kinect 2 and AR glasses suggests Microsoft sees sensors, not boxes, as the connective tissue of its entertainment strategy — though the glasses project remains unconfirmed beyond the leak.
The trend: Internal roadmap leaks are collapsing the secrecy window around console generations, exposing pricing, launch timing, and follow-on hardware years before vendors announce them.