Ya I just read it and that's not at all how they described it or how MS did it in the past. But what are you saying about the diagram. That they had no others?
Not this detailed no. This wasn't some diagram that a few people made up, this was something that someone at MS who was working on functional hardware leaked. You could tell which spec MS was going with when it was found that IBM had taped out Xenon in Jan of 2004 and the basic specs of Xenos were leaked end of 2003. Point in case, post the detailed specifications for the other design MS was working on for 360. 360's specs leaked in early 2004 and murmurings about what direction they were going in could be traced back to 2003. PS3 rumors and leaked started coming around late 2004 early 2005 at at no point did MS have a kneejerk reaction and switch specs, despite some people thinking they would.
If MS was going to change hardware for 360 they wouldn't wait till 2005 to do so they would have done it early to mid 2004 at the latest. Or a better example, look at Dreamcast even Sega had decided on what hardware they were going to use in July of 2007, DC launched in November of 2008. And hell Sony was openly talking about PS2 by that time.
Waiting until 7 months before your system is expected to launch to decide on which design you're going to go with would be the dumbest idea ever from a financial and developer/development environment stand point. The R&D for these consoles is in the multiple millions, and even for MS that's not something they would eat just to eat. To employ a design team, have that team test various hardware setups/chip architectures, go through multiple fabrications for yield testing, get a developmental environment up and running, seed them to developers that's a huge expense and then add in they're basically doing it twice. One design gets the axe pretty early in the process to cut down on said R&D cost.
Is it possible that the leaks specs aren't what MS is using? Quite easily. Is it possible the leak specs are what MS will be using? Equally quite easily. Whatever direction MS goes in was chosen ages ago and not as a kneejerk reaction because of Sony's February unveiling, that's just stupid people theory propagated by dumb people who want to believe in nonsensical shit. Whatever design MS ends up going with they chose that design early 2012. The only question that remains now at this stage is what design (if there were multiple) did MS chose? Everything else is just static noise and stupid people theory.
My personal thought is the system won't be too far off from the specs we've read thus far. Occam's razor and all that jazz, if there was secondary design that was vastly different it would have leaked in some form at this time because it'd have to pretty far along, which also means companies outside of MS would need to be working on it which means the inevitable leak. Same goes with 360 designs, the simple fact you can't find the secondary design specs online but you can find in abundance the primary design specs leaked as far back as Jan of 2004 shows you in calendar form when MS decided on which specs.
I'd say we should all temper our expectation on some crazy eye exploding hardware and embrace the reality that maybe, just maybe what's been leaked is what we're going to get for the most part. From PS2-Xbox-GC-PS3-Wii-WiiU-360-Vita-DS-PSP-3DS we've seen the specifications leak early time and time again and have yet to see the final hardware be something completely different and foreign.
Personally I know MS/ATI know what they're doing, so while Xbox fans engage in self loathing and hate MS for abandoning them because...well I don't know why. I think MS is going to surprise everyone and show stuff that is new and exciting, and the fans that doubted them are going to look utterly foolish. You'll then see them backpedal saying they believed in MS all along.
Either way, we'll know for sure in less than 5 days.
You people really need to have more faith that MS knows what they're doing and understands hardware better than a bunch of wiki programmers and naysayers on NeoGAF. I don't understand how MS fans are so negative toward MS.
