Late this week, sources told Bloomberg that Microsoft would release a new Xbox toward the end of 2013. Microsoft's Xbox 360 debuted in 2005, and the hardware is getting a bit long in the tooth after over 7 years.

"People familiar with the company's plans," told Bloomberg that Microsoft "hasn’t decided whether to unveil the new Xbox at an industry event such as the E3 show in June, or a separate event devoted solely to the machine."

This new information gives an extra measure of credibility to what was merely a rumor last June, when a 56 page document that appeared to come from internal Microsoft slides leaked on to Scribd, revealing a road map for the new Xbox (referred to as the Xbox 720). The described console included “an improved Kinect, a head-mounted 'glasses' display, and a major investment in cloud gaming,” Ars wrote in June. Of course, Bloomberg's recent story only divulged when Microsoft is planning to release the new Xbox, but the sources didn't give any details on what it would be called or what features it would include.

But as Ars noted back in June, that leaked road map showed that Microsoft would be “targeting a 2013 holiday season launch for the system in a $299 bundle with new Kinect hardware...and plans to sell 100 million units during the console's ten-year lifecycle.” The internals of the 720 console were described in different places throughout the document to be 6 to 8 times more powerful than those inside the current one. Still, the document was dated from 2010, meaning it could have simply been a wish list, or many things could have changed (or, of course, the whole leak could have been a fake).

While Ars was never able to totally authenticate the document, it's worth noting that shortly after it appeared on Scribd, a major law firm which represents Microsoft requested that the document be taken down. Bloomberg's sources seem to confirm that at least the release date from the leaked document was correct. But we may have to wait until the middle of next year or later to see how “right” this year's rumors were.