Amid the sea of Xbox One information that came out earlier this week, one rumor painted Microsoft as being in a very precarious situation. Numerous sources claimed that Microsoft was seeing trouble with the Xbox One hardware, namely in the eSRAM. The rumors suggested that because of “yield problems”, the Xbox One would be underclocked to assure that the new console wouldn’t have heating issues like the original Xbox 360 models.
These rumors made the Xbox One sound like a significantly less powerful system than Sony’s PS4. From the information that we already have, the PS4 should have more raw power out of the gate. These rumors also sparked another branch of the conversation, and that was about third party games, and the possibility that the Xbox One could see inferior ports in the next-generation when compared to Sony’s PS4 because of the hobbled hardware.
While Microsoft let these rumors float for a couple of days, they’ve since debunked the info. Major Nelson, a spokesperson for the Xbox brand relayed the following via Twitter. When asked directly about the eSRAM issue, Major Nelson replied: “Definitely not true, I can’t respond to every unsourced online rumor.. but that is false.”
The rumors stemmed from multiple sources, but as Hyrb says, they were unsourced. Microsoft has yet to officially confirm the system specs for the Xbox One, so this could either be a bit of damage control, or, the company just wanting to clear the air about the power of the new console. Of course, if they wanted to do that, they would just release the official specs for the hardware.
Speaking of damage control, Microsoft has been cleaning up mess after mess following the Xbox One reveal last month. Just recently, the company announced that the Xbox One will effectively change the way that consumers buy and play games with its used game policies, always online features, and kinect privacy concerns laid out clearly ahead of E3.
