What is with the rumor mill on the XBox 720?
 

Seriously, I keep hearing that the damn thing is trying to go all digital as well as eliminate backwards compatibility with the 360. While you eliminate regionalization and a few other issues, it's akin to getting a PC and just deciding which games you get.

So what gives? Anyone hear the same rumors or is it just pretty bad/good for the industry?

i would say "Rumors Gonna Rumor". A Fully Digital platform COULD happen if Microsoft wants to gap in their PC Players with their XBOX Players AND try, to somehow... for some reason... go head on against Steam.

But they already saw that it didn't work out very well with Sony, twice... you could argue that Sony was focused on the PSP for that, but in the end it's al consoles... So, a fully digital platform is quite unlikely.

And as far as i'm aware, Microsoft is not in the "edge" of cloud computing or storage, so we're talking hard-downloads and data here. Which means, you would either need a big HD for all your stuff or re-download your content every so often. One would hack up prices (unless microsoft lets you use any HDD...), the other is simply a product killer.

My guess is that microsoft would/will try to make the next Xbox into the "Cheapest Pc-Gaming on the market"

The rumors are all so off the wall and inconsistent that I wouldn't bother having an opinion about them until the damn thing is announced and we actually know some facts. Speculation is a waste of time at the moment.

Are they actually going to call it the 720, or is that just working name/rumor?

That's just the name the news sites are using out of convenience. It hasn't been announced yet, so it doesn't have a name.

Not really sure why people are using that as the name.

Yeah, yeah, 720 is 2x360, but the original Xbox wasn't Xbox 180, so it isn't even a patterned naming convention.

Fairly baseless, I would say. Are they working on a new XBOX? Probably, but I wouldn't expect any real rumors for a couple of years.

After some deep research, and seeing the trend in Microsoft's product naming, they'll call the new Xbox the Xbox Live!....wait, that name's already used...

I'll keep calling it the Bingbox unless someone has a better name.

Y-Cube 24/7/365.

The Microsoft Tesseract Hypercube.

I know the point on Xbox360 is that it like, is all around you or some shit, but Xbox720 just sounds like it's spinning in place.

But hey, nothing beats Nintendo's naming system.