Is the leaked Xbox roadmap genuine?

Microsoft's five-year plan for the evolution of Xbox is hugely ambitious, signalling the company's intent to take over the living room, and the entire household, with a box that does it all. The Xbox 720, as the 2010 document calls it, will play games, apps, and video, not just on the big screen but any screen in the house. It will come with an improved Kinect sensor, and native 3D output; it will support AR glasses by 2014, and cloud streaming of games the following year.

Not only is it ambitious, it's remarkably coherent, reflecting an understanding of where Microsoft needs to go if it is to win the impending battle for the living room, and putting much of its Xbox strategy over the last two years into context. But is the document genuine? We shouldn't read too much into its removal at the request of Covington & Burling LLP, a legal firm which counts Microsoft among its clients; it is just as likely, if not more so, to shut down false speculation which could reflect badly on its client. But there is plenty of detail to suggest that, while outdated, it's the real deal.

Xbox 360 is showing its age

Even when this document was apparently drafted two years ago it was obvious to Microsoft that it would need a new box on shelves in 2013, and so it has proven. Google and Apple are already making moves into the living room, Nintendo's Wii U will be out before the end of the year, and Sony has already spoken of its desire to avoid being the last to market as it was with PS3.

Xbox 360 will be eight years old by the end of 2013, and it's beginning to show it: no 1080p, no support for Blu-ray, native 3D, or hardware-accelerated video decoding. It could never be the all-in-one entertainment hub Microsoft wants it to be because it's too noisy, too power hungry, and isn't always-on - an essential requirement for a media streamer.

Specs

We've no doubt that the suggested Xbox 720 specs have changed in the last two years, but what does jump out from the document is a promised sixfold increase in processing power over its predecessor. This tallies perfectly with an IGN report from January that went on to claim that mass production of the GPU would begin before the end of 2012, with the console on shelves in late 2013. The permanent internet connection may be designed for media, but it could also facilitate the "sort of anti-used game system" referred to in recent reports.

Kinect

By Microsoft's own admission, the second generation of Kinect will only represent an "incremental" improvement over the original: the promised "closer, wider, deeper" play space is a tacit acknowledgement of one of Kinect's principal shortcomings (made even clearer by one slide, which reads: "Don't rearrange your living room, Kinect can see [it] better than ever"). Also promised are improved voice recognition, a better camera, and simultaneous tracking of four players.

This rather flies in the face of a report from last November which claimed that Kinect 2 would be able to lip-read, and detect emotions by tracking facial expressions. That report noted, however, that Kinect is currently held back by its reliance on USB to pass data to the console, a problem that would be eased, if not solved, by Xbox 720's use of USB3 and dedicated hardware processing of Kinect data.

Games and media

Microsoft has been the brunt of much criticism over the last couple of years from gamers seeing the company's increased focus first on Kinect, then on video content, as evidence that it was turning its back on core gamers. At E3 two weeks ago, Phil Harrison insisted Microsoft wasn't marginalising its core audience. "Halo, Gears Of War, Forza, Fable and Dance Central, all returning in a bigger, better way," he told us. "I think gamers are going to be pretty well catered for." The leaked presentation promises "the best core content," singling out Halo, Fable, and Gears Of War - was Harrison not just answering a question, but managing expectations?

Core games are still on the agenda - Microsoft's pitch to developers calls for triple-A experiences that aren't possible on competitor hardware - but they are now just one pillar of the Xbox strategy, which naturally has to change if 720 is to be "the only box you need for premium entertainment". Consider this, from a blog post by Microsoft's IEB CMO Yusuf Mehdi: "Moving forward, Xbox will go beyond the box to reach all new families of devices. Just as Xbox has grown to mean more than games, it also is more than just a console. This year, Xbox becomes the premium entertainment service for Microsoft."

As for media, the content deals Microsoft has struck will surely outlast Xbox 360, and the feeling that Microsoft has spent the past two years laying the foundations for the next decade has only intensified after seeing these supposed next-gen plans.

SmartGlass and Fortaleza

If this document is fake, it's been made in less than a fortnight - Microsoft unveiled SmartGlass, its cross-platform, multi-screen technology, on stage at E3. As our Microsoft E3 conference report made perhaps a little too clear, the company's focus on transmedia - a tablet showing a map with the location of the on-screen Game Of Thrones cast, for example - didn't exactly have thrilling implications for videogames. But combine it with a set-top box that streams games to any screen in the house - and when cloud streaming arrives in 2015, to any screen anywhere - and suddenly it starts to make sense.

The Fortaleza AR glasses, meanwhile, are consistent with patent filings which show Microsoft has been working on similar technology since 2010 - when this document was apparently written. Google, which the document acknowledges as a competitor in the battle for the living room, filed a similar patent last October, which was approved last month.

Metadata

On NeoGaf, where the document was first turned up, users quickly looked beneath its surface in a bid to identify the author, and one image was uploaded from a folder belonging to a Windows user named nkachroo. Could this be the work of Naveen Kachroo, director of Xbox planning and co-author of several Xbox-related patents?

The real deal?

Whether genuine or not, the document is consistent with Microsoft's actions over the past two years; indeed, it casts much of the company's conduct in an entirely more flattering light. With video and music apps, the XTV pay-TV service, Blu-ray support and the 720's ability to stream media to any device in the house, Microsoft would be well positioned to see off the challenge of Apple and Google in the battle for the living room. That sixfold increase in processing power, and an improved Kinect, will mean gamers at both end of the spectrum are, to quote Harrison, well catered for.

There's enough, then, for us to assume this document is genuine - and it's worth considering whether it was leaked on purpose following the poor reception afforded Microsoft's showing at E3. Valve has already shown what a well-timed leak can do to public perception of a company, when the appearance online of the handbook it gives to new staff caused people to stop moaning about Half-Life 3 and start updating their CVs.

It looks a little rough, admittedly, but it's clearly marked as for internal discussion; it's not a final document, but a proposal, but that it is so consistent with the media push, Kinect's "broad gaming" and the announcement of SmartGlass, suggests the proposal was accepted. So, is it real? We don't know. But, frankly, we rather hope that it is.