Two new incarnations of the Xbox One console have reportedly been outed by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) filings made by Microsoft, with the non-disclosure agreements attached to these consoles expiring right after E3 2016.
While these filings only specify minor details pertaining to these consoles, they do suggest that Microsoft potentially has a couple of big surprises up its sleeve for the upcoming expo. The filings, uncovered by NeoGAF user ekim, reveals how Microsoft has made two recent filings with separate model numbers – 1682 and 1683. These filings were made as a result of the FCC needing to approve the wireless data transmission technology that can be found in these consoles, with the Xbox One having previously been given the go-ahead under the model number 1525. The giveaway here is that a document contained in the filings for model 1683 is a documented titled “User Manual 1525,” a large indicator that this model will share an unrevised copy of the instruction manual bundled with the Xbox One.
Unfortunately, with the majority of these documents being held under a non-disclosure agreement, it’s impossible to obtain any more information. However, it’s easy to speculate that if model 1683 is to be a new Xbox One console given that it appears to contain the same user manual, then given that model 1682 also contains wireless data transmission technology that needed to be approved by the FCC, it is also a new console. The timing of the expiry of the NDAs, which conclude on June 25th, also suggests that Microsoft is looking to unveil these new consoles at E3 2016.
With a Microsoft employee previously listing the “Xbox neXt” among his projects on LinkedIn, and with there being much speculation in regards to a potential Xbox One 4K, it’s looking more and more likely that we’ll see at least one new version of the console this year.
