Yesterday, Sony previewed their next generation gaming system, the PS4, in New York City, showing off some impressive new graphics and gaming announcements while never actually showing off the PS4 console. Now today rumors are surfacing that Microsoft’s Xbox, planning an event of their own, will hold it as early as this April. A blog post on ComputerAndVideoGames.com (CVG) reports:
A growing number of developers and other industry professionals, some of which are Sony employees, have told CVG that Microsoft will reveal its next generation Xbox for the first time in April.
Others as well, including Paul Thurrott in yesterday’s Windows Weekly, are expecting an Xbox only event well before E3 in June, although CVG does note the possibility that Microsoft might begin to talk about the next generation Xbox as early as March, at the Game Developers Conference. Even if they do, however, signs are pointing to a full on Xbox event. CVG quoted an unnamed Sony official at the PS4 event as saying that Sony “at first caught Microsoft off-guard”, and that “(w)e definitely ruffled some feathers”, but if Microsoft is planning an event pre-E3, which has been widely rumored, they’ve been planning it for many months, and certainly didn’t get the idea for holding an event of their own by watching yesterday’s production.
In fact, judging from the tweeted responses to the event by Xbox’s Major Nelson yesterday, he didn’t seem either too surprised or even very impressed by yesterday’s showing, tweeting:
Announce a console without actually showing a console? That’s one approach
— Larry Hryb (@majornelson) February 21, 2013
One thing’s for sure, watching Sony and Microsoft race to this year’s holiday season is going to be entertaining.
In other upcoming event news, Nokia will be holding their press event at Mobile World Congress next Monday morning at 8:30 am CET (check local time at Timeanddate.com), where we’re expecting to hear news about new Lumia phones and maybe (??) even some news about a Nokia Windows tablet. This will be a big event for Nokia, and we’ll be up watching. You can follow along at home by watching the live webcast of the event, which we’ve linked in our sidebar. Can’t wait!