The Verge recently restoked a rumor started in June. Its claim, five months ago, was that Microsoft was building a 7-inch gaming tablet dubbed “Xbox Surface.” You’ll recall Microsoft unveiled its Surface (not “Xbox”) tablet on June 18, and it finally arrived a few weeks ago on Oct. 26. My colleague Harry McCracken, who reviewed it, called it “impressive” and its interface “inventive,” though noted its chief deficiency, as with nearly all fledgling platforms, was a lack of apps. According to the June Verge story, which included a purportedly leaked “partial” tech-spec sheet, Xbox Surface would be a standalone 7-inch gaming tablet with an ARM-processor, 288 MB of memory and a 1280 x 720 resolution display, all paired with a base station that would stream content wirelessly, invoking comparisons to Nintendo’s forthcoming Wii U. Inside that base station, according to the document: dual PowerPC processors, 5 GB of memory, a 250 GB hard drive, a custom AMD graphics processor, an Ethernet port, HDMI and component video, four USB ports, optical audio and support for up to four wireless game controllers. All that, and you’d be able to output video from the base station at up to 1440p, or 2640 x 1440 pixels — higher than standard 720p or 1080p HDTVs as well as most mid-sized desktop computer monitors topping out at 1920 x 1200. Was this actually the next big gaming idea from Microsoft? Could the so-called Xbox Surface actually be the next Xbox? Assuming the document wasn’t a hoax — and The Verge had no evidence to suggest it was or wasn’t — either a console followup or console tie-in seemed likely. Microsoft’s official consumer tablet is Surface, after all. The device outlined in the document seemed more like a Wii U analogue, though the apparent lack of thumb-sticks or other buttons suggested a shift toward something that looked more like a mainstream tablet. The Verge wondered whether Xbox Surface would be part of Microsoft’s big June surprise. It wasn’t, and with Surface officially the story, the idea of a separate gaming tablet sounded implausible. But![]()
