New Microsoft patent describes an upgradable console

According to a recent patent filing, Microsoft's next console may be able to be scaled up - or down - over time, much like PC gamers do with desktops, removing and adding components. All this is leading to speculation that the current notion of a console lifecycle could be replaced with rolling hardware upgrades.

Application 20120159090 was submitted in December 2010 at the US Patents and Trademark Office and was published last month.  It describes Microsoft's attempts to patent "versions of a multimedia computer system architecture... which satisfy quality of service (QoS) guarantees for multimedia applications such as game applications while allowing platform resources, hardware resources in particular, to scale up or down over time".

What makes this one interesting is that the system being described, sounds much like the "Yukon" system described in the now infamous Xbox 720 leak that first emerged at the beginning of May. Sources confirmed those documents as genuine, dating them back to August 2010, just months before this patent was submitted to the U.S. Patents and Trademark Office.

But unlike the leaked documents, this patent goes deeper into the design, detailing a base architecture consisting of core components. It also describes a multi-CPU, multi-GPU system in which one combo is reserved for the Xbox platform (dashboard, video encoding/decoding) and one is reserved for applications (gaming). Such Examples that were mentioned in the leak included running a TV stream while gaming, and opening a strategy guide while the game is still running.

While the patent could be interpreted to mean that different Xbox SKUs could be released with different levels of multimedia capability, the "over time" element in the application could suggest that Microsoft may be opting out from the traditional fixed architecture model. Consider the iPad - advanced 3D games run over several generations' worth of hardware, but typically the newer hardware revision you have, the better the experience you get. It helps to drive new hardware sales and helps ensure that Apple stays ahead of its competitors in terms of specs and the overall experience. Combine this model with Microsoft dipping into "buy now, pay monthly" subscription territory and there's the possibility that the next Xbox could be a new type of hardware platform - one that evolves over time, subsidised via monthly payments as part of an Xbox Live subscription. Processing power on consoles and desktops isn't evolving as fast as mobile parts, so yearly updates seem unlikely, and on the plus side, the backwards compatibility issue would be resolved once and for all. Suddenly, the mooted Xbox Infinity codename doesn't sound quite so bizarre.