Alleged Xbox 720 Dev Kit Sold on eBay
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One of the Durango development kits has been sold by the elusive DaE.
One of the alleged Xbox 720 development kits (codenamed Durango) has been sold on eBay for £12,833 (or $20,100).
The machine was sold by a man going under the alias of DaE, who appears to be the same individual that leaked the first images of the dev kit as well as last week's reported pictures of Kinect 2.0.
He announced on Twitter that, "I sold one of two I own. I still have the one that featured in news, the other one wasn't really necessary to keep as a leg rest."
The online auction attracted 43 bids from 18 bidders. The winner, ****x, didn't bid until quite late in proceedings but jumped the price from $16,000 to $20,000 in a single bid.
While DaE's recent tweets suggest that he doesn't foresee any problems with the sale, it'll be interesting to see if Microsoft remains silent or gets involved. Traditionally, dev kits and the like remain property of the console manufacturer but are technically "loaned out" to developers to use under strict guidelines. The legal implications of selling one for profit are presumably pretty hefty.
We first heard about the Durango development kit back in February thanks to a tweet from Crytek, though Microsoft is yet to confirm the existence of the device or its codename.
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Despite plenty of leaks, Microsoft has yet to officially confirm that it's working on the next Xbox. But the first one may already have been sold.
An eBay auction over the weekend found a buyer for a purported Xbox 'Durango' Development Kit — a system game developers use to create games for the upcoming console. The buyer, who remained anonymous, shelled out $20,100 for the kit, which apparently looks like a black computer tower.
The sale comes with a load of questions, the foremost being: Is this thing real?
There's no way to know for sure. But the seller, who goes by the name SuperDaE, does have a track history of leaking information about the next Xbox, including the first images of Kinect 2.
SuperDaE boasted about the sale on his Twitter account, saying "I sold one of two I own. I still have the one that featured in news, the other one wasn't really necessary to keep as a leg rest." He also says his lawyers told him to "Go for it!"
Assuming that's true, he might want to reconsider his legal counsel. Development kits are never given or sold to game developers. They're leased -- and remain the property of the console manufacturer. They're also in extremely short supply. And while there have been plenty of leaks, the NDA Microsoft has put into place surrounding Durango (the codename for the next system) has been called 'draconian' by people familiar with it.
If this sale goes through, eBay will have contact information for both the buyer and seller and could turn that over to Microsoft if requested to do so. It's likely, in fact, given Microsoft could make a case that the auction was for the sale of stolen property.
So why would anyone want a development kit? After all, there are no games on the market for the next Xbox, obviously.
Given the price tag of the sale, the buyer is almost certainly not just a curiosity seeker. Corporate espionage is a very real thing, so it's plausible a competing company would want to get its hands on the system to learn more about what it will be facing, though doing so this way would be incredibly risky. Hackers could also be interested, as it would give them a head start at cracking the new system, which would be a true nightmare for Microsoft.
SuperDaE is brushing off the legal ramifications, though. He says he plans to use the $20K to help buy a new car and says he has already spoken with eBay to verify his account.
On the other hand, it could be nothing more than an elaborate prank meant to capture more media attention (in which case, mission accomplished). That's not necessarily bad news for the buyer, though, as eBay does have a system in place protecting buyers from false auctions.
More than anything, the presence of a functional development kit lends even more weight to rumors that Microsoft will be releasing a new system in 2013.
