Microsoft reveals the Xbox One!

Come and get #xboned

Posted by Josh Folland on May 28, 2013 in Blog | Comments Off on Microsoft reveals the Xbox One!

Last week, Microsoft finally unveiled its official entry into the 2013 console war: The Xbox One in an hour-long presentation streamed online. Being a hardcore gamer at heart, even though most of my PC (GOGO PC MASTER RACE) I still have a nerdy obligation to see what the next generation of consoles is going to bring.

Xbox has been my primary gaming console for over a decade now. As much as I love PC gaming, there are some console-exclusive titles and even some games that just flat-out run better on a console. Part of me had high hopes for the Xbox One, even if only from the standpoint of “Yay, all of the PC ports will be slightly better now!” I feel like this video sums up the reveal quite nicely:

TV, TV, TV, Calladuty, Calladuty, Calladuty, Sports, Sport Sports. The Xbox One is covering me in mainstream. Being a PC gamer who really only ever got into IT because of my interest in the “bleeding edge” of technology, this reveal really didn’t speak to me – which from a raw, pragmatic standpoint makes sense: I am not the mainstream. I am by most definitions of the word a video game “hipster.”

…But so are many of the folks in online communities that are going to be taking a very hard look at their new product. Gamers want to play games on their gaming console, not watch TV while holding onto a controller. They want to see new and exciting IPs, impressive leaps in technology and graphics, innovative gameplay and all the other exciting buzzwords that you see floating around when someone is truly blown away. In my experience, this has not been the case with the Xbox One.

Instead, it’s received a lot of bad press so far. For starters, Sony has much more impressive specs packed into the PS4, with 8GB GDDR5 as opposed to 8GB DDR3 in the Xbox One just as one example. In my personal circles and social networks, I haven’t encountered anyone who’s excited for the Xbox One. Instead, most seem turned off by some of the features they’ve packed in. Plenty of gamers are not pleased about the concept of their controllers not being forward-compatible as well, despite the current generation of consoles as well as the future generation all running on USB 2.0/3.0.

With all that said, this is really the bulk of the information Microsoft has given us regarding the Xbox One. Now, I’m willing to keep an open mind (E3 isn’t far away, and it’s reasonable to assume that both Sony and Microsoft are holding back some of the big guns until then) but so far, this is how I’m feeling about the console wars:

 

PS: Xbox One? Really? Way to confuse the mothers of over-entitled children everywhere this Christmas! “Oh look Billy, I got you the first Xbox!” “NO MOM I WANTED THE XBOX ONE THIS IS THE WORST CHRISTMAS EVER” Also, #xbone is too easy to abuse.