"Next Gen" Blizzcon panel not about 360

World of Warcraft on the Xbox 360... It's the rumor that will not die. The popularity of Blizzard Entertainment's PC massively multiplayer role-playing game and anticipation of Microsoft's next-generation console have combined to create a perfect speculative storm that has raged for weeks.

The WOW 360 scuttlebutt monster has been fed with tidbits, such as job listings on the Blizzard Web site for various next-gen console programmer positions. It gained further sustenance this week when several people noticed that a panel titled "Microsoft Next Gen Platform" will be held at the Blizzcon expo. The event was scheduled for noon the first day of the event, which kicks off this coming Friday at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California.

Since the "Microsoft Next Gen Platform" panel was slated to be held on the event's main stage right before the new World of Warcraft expansion is demoed--and hopefully named--for the first time, many presumed it would be high profile enough to be a WOW 360 announcement. However, others pointed out that it was also being held on the same stage as Blizzard's long-delayed StarCraft: Ghost, which many peg as a more likely candidate for Blizzard's first next-gen console game.

As it turns out, neither camp was right. When contacted by GameSpot, Blizzard reps said the panel was, in fact, Microsoft's upcoming Vista operating system for PCs, which it called "The Next Generation of Windows." Not long after, the official Blizzcon schedule of events was changed to reflect the panel's true subject, and reps confirmed there will be no WOW 360 announcement of any kind at the three-day event.