Unless you’re living under a rock, you know all about the reveal of the Xbox One, Microsoft’s successor to the Xbox 360. In the one-hour event at Microsoft’s Xbox Campus, the Xbox One was unveiled, showing the actual console (including a new Kinect and controller), multimedia features, Skype integration, sports, the internal workings of the device, and I think there were a couple games in there somewhere.
The Xbox One conference started off showing the console’s compatibility with your existing TV services as Yusuf Mehdi switched between live TV, the 2009 Star Trek movie and even opened a Skype call while he was doing this. The gestures and voice commands actually looked pretty slick, and I could see this being a huge reason to buy the Xbox One for some people.
Microsoft’s Marc Whitten then detailed the inner workings of the Xbox One including the three operating systems powering it and went over the new Xbox SmartGlass features that will come when the new console launches. The Xbox One will have a new Kinect and controller, as mentioned above, and I have to say the controller looks pretty neat. The console will feature an 8-core CPU, 8GB of RAM and 500GBs of memory, and, interestingly, will have a Blu-Ray player.
In a disappointingly small segment, some games were shown off, including EA Sport’s new lineup running on the Ignite engine, Forza 5 and Remedy’s Quantum Break, one of the “eight new IPs” launching in year one for the XBox One.
That’s about it for the exciting news except for the announcement of a Halo live-action series helmed by Steven Spielberg and a Call of Duty: Ghosts trailer.
More is expected to come at E3, but what do you guys think about the reveal? What do you think about the features of the Xbox One? Were you expecting more games? Anything that sold the console for you? Anything you’re still waiting to hear?
I think it did everything well. People are going to constantly bitch about the lack of games, but I think they’re right in saving those for the huge game conference that’s three weeks away. Today was a day to announce the system and show the general public all it can do, and they came out with some pretty exciting stuff. I personally am very happy that they are going in a direction where they plan to take cable DVR boxes out of my life, and just letting one (see what I did there?) box handle everything.
I like the new controller – not much change because it was already great, just like the PS4 controller. They really are just evolving on the things that made the 360 good. New TV and game multitasking, kinect and voice/gesture control, apps…
I think we need to know more about this RAM thing and what GPU it’s running before we can effectively gague it against Sony’s new console. 8GB plus 1GB video RAM or 8GB total? Against Sony’s 16GB shared RAM (is this confirmed or just a rumour?) it seems paltry, and might actually limit the scope of games on the PS4 due to the otherwise similar hardware.
Graphicswise, predictably, nobody has reported being blown away. Still, any progress is good and in a couple of years the big developers will know the console inside out, bringing it hopefully beyond parity with current gen PC hardware.
The One thing they failed to do was choose a decent name.
Still a bit curious how the registration/installation/used game fee details will shake out…but for the moment, I just can’t get past the name. The reveal of One as this gen’s Xbox identifier/number left me dumbfounded. There’s nothing new to be added to what has been said by virtually everyone covering the event, but I’ll be hard pressed to refer to it as anything other than the Xbone for some time to come.
I feel they gave a very surface level look, there’s a lot they showed that I’d love to jump on and say “that’s crap” or “that’s great” but they simply didn’t explain enough. Maybe the Sony reveal spoiled us but there were no in depth tech specs, no real game lineup and at least the first twenty minutes were kinect focused so I had a feeling of dread from the outset
The TV center focus had me the most worried, it seems to be a very key feature for them based on how much time they spent pushing it but that is a very American focused thing and while I’m not against that I would have liked to have been shown something for the Europeans and other territories too. But once again, not enough information.
Roll on E3 I guess. 1-0 Sony in my books, lets see if Microsoft can level the score.
@Drell I think complaining about the lack of video games at the reveal of what is ostensibly a video game console is valid, but I suppose Microsoft has left that behind to focus on giving you a platform to both provide a lot of services in one place and sell you stuff.
In an alternate universe, people are bemoaning the lack of TV integration shown during the unveiling Microsoft’s new “games only” home console.
I am not excited and I am not disappointed. It was about what I expected. E3 will show us more games, so until then, it’s an incomplete from me.
Extremely disappointing. They showed the console which is nice, but then smashed in too much TV integration. I went to bed (4am in Aus) and woke up hoping to be more optimistic, only to hear that kinect must be connected at all times, an internet connection (whilst not always-on) is required roughly every 24 hours and when setting up the console, and that games will be linked to one account, destroying used games and borrowing games from friends. I can’t see the X1 being popular anywhere overseas due to shaky internet.
I think console reveals used to be exciting because we had a lot less access to technology. Computers were for our parents to do work on, no one had cell phones or anything. 8 bit going to 16 bit? HOLY MOLY. Now, we are spoiled, and what we see is 5 year old PC hardware in a shiny box. That’s why I think they have to lean on the TV integration and social features of the thing. The stuff that PC’s don’t do intuitively right out of the box. We know what games are going to look like, the tech isn’t really that important.