Just recently, Microsoft had a meeting with the investors about the next-gen Xbox 720 console, which led to leakage of few details. Despite tight security around the project, a handful of technical details came out. Apparently, there is no confirmation on an announcement date; E3 will be “Party Central” in the Xbox booth.

Here are some of the details that spilled out:

• The new ’720′ will have 3x the processing speed of the current 360, which doesn’t sound impressive at all;
• Holiday 2013 might be the possible release time;
• There will be 2 launch versions – 320 GB Arcade / 500 GB Pro–but exact pricing is unknown;
• 1 TB HDD will be available as a separate purchase;
• Xbox 720 will not include Blu-Ray;
• No picture was available as prototype consoles are packaged in a 360 slim case to “avoid complications” about the design until announcement;
• Tech Specs include AMD eight-core x64 1.6GHz CPU, Direct3d 11.x 800MHz GPU, and 8GB of DDR3 RAM;
• Xbox Smartglass is still a feature in use;
• No word on Kinect 2.0;
• There is no word on “Immersive” technology being implemented.

“The holiday 2013 release date sounds about right,” say SiliconANGLE assistant editor Kyt Dotson, “that’s when we expect the PS4 to make its debut. Processing power being only three times faster than the previous Xbox doesn’t say much to us because it’s been almost a decade since the last one and we’d hope for something much more powerful; however, 8 cores in x64 does sound very nice for a gaming machine. Looking at the unknowns surrounding Kinect 2.0 and the ‘illumiroom’ I think that’s where we can expect some interesting news as the release date closes in.”

Reportedly, Microsoft’s Xbox 720 will be a hot topic of discussion at GDC 2013. It will be actually an act of unveiling teaser info and details for the Xbox 720 at GDC, with the full load of details coming at E3 2013.