The cycle of current-gen hardware is coming to an end, which inevitably means the cycle of rumors about the specs of the next generation must begin. Right on cue, an unnamed “insider” has released a hefty amount of detail regarding the specs of the PS4 and Xbox 720. Be warned, these are only rumors, but they do give us some interesting scenarios to ponder.

Spec rumors of prominent pieces of tech must be taken with a grain of salt, but they almost always pose some interesting questions. Toward the latter years of the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation, games have ended up relatively on par, from both graphical and technical standpoint. This was largely because the machines are similar in power, and because many popular franchises are multiplatform — Call of Duty, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, etc. — and if you’re a developer, there’s really no need to make one version of a product technically superior compared to the others.

PlayStation 4

The insider noted the name of the console will be the “Omni,” and Sony chose that name to show the unit can do everything. It’ll be interesting to know if it’ll simply be called Omni, or something like “PlayStation Omni”. If Sony does drop the PlayStation brand from the name, it would be a first for the company’s gaming systems and a huge marketing move.

More notable than the naming is the rumor that the Omni won’t be capable of displaying in a native 4K resolution, which is most likely going to be the next significant upgrade from HDTV (though ExtremeTech’s Joel Hruska suggests OLED TVs are going to be the next big thing). Instead, the Omni will upscale to 4K, and — as most of us know — a large enough upscale can significantly reduce image quality.

The insider also says that he has heard from other testers that the Omni dev kits are experiencing heating problems. This is said to be a result of Sony not having enough money to devote to research and development, like they did with the PS3’s Cell processor. He also claimed that Omni dev kits have quietly been available since December of 2012, as Sony is attempting to launch the Omni before Microsoft’s NextBox. Furthermore, the Omni’s chipset, dubbed Starsha, is supposedly going into production on January 23 of this year.

Of course, previous rumors stated that the PS4 would launch in September of 2013, so if the chipset is going into production just a few days from now, the units could easily be ready by then.

The supposed tech specs of the Omni:

CPU is an x86 system with a 256-bit bus

An APU with a fast GPU

4GB of DDR3 RAM

4GB of GDDR3 RAM

Capable of 3.2TFLOPS of data

An “off-the-shelf” design, more reminiscent of a PC than a next-gen gaming console

Next up: The guts of the Xbox 720…