Rumors have been circulating about a small-form factor Xbox One since the original console launched a couple of years back. The current Xbox One features a custom 8-core AMD APU, cooled by a relatively large heatsink / fan combo, an optical drive, and an internal hard drive. All of that stuff takes up a lot of space inside the system, and eliminating or optimizing those components would make it relatively easy for Microsoft to shrink down the Xbox One considerably. Factor in some PCB optimizations and chip-level consolidation, and bringing a future Xbox One “Slim” down to a size down more in-line with an Intel NUC or similar small-form-factor device is entirely possible.
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