Xbox 720 controller remains the same

Sony may have redesigned its flagship controller for the upcoming Playstation 4 (PS4), but it seems as if Microsoft has chosen to leave its Xbox 360 controller mostly untouched.

This news doesn’t exactly come as surprise, especially since earlier reports indicate that Redmond has opted to revamp its Kinect motion platform for the next-gen 720.

Indeed, there will be a significant improvement in resolution from both the color and depth cameras with the introduction of a third sensor – which allows the new Kinect bundled with the 720 to access the infrared spectrum. In turn, this will help the Next bolster its performance in low-light scenarios.

The Kinect interface is also reportedly moving from the USB 2.0 interface to USB 3.0, with end-to-end latency measurements dropping from 90ms down to 60ms.

Meanwhile, the 640×480 RGB camera is supposedly upgraded to 1080p (with a move from 24-bit RGB colour to a more manageable 16-bit YUV set-up), while depth resolution increases from 320×240 to 512×424. This all translates into less calibration for the user, as the system will likely work around furniture.

The physical 720 controller, aside from being a tad smaller, is said to feature the same twin-analogue setup and button layout, including the centrally-positioned Home button, analogue triggers and d-pad.

As previously reported on TG Daily, the Xbox 720 (Next) is reportedly powered by an AMD eight-core x64 1.6GHz CPU, a D3D11.x 800MHz GPU and 8GB of DDR3 RAM.