Adrian
Posting Freak
- Aug 3, 2012
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It's been eight years and nine days since Microsoft showed the world the Xbox 360 on May 12th, 2005. Today, we see what's next. The Xbox One.
We're on-site in at Microsoft's Xbox HQ in Redmond, Washington, to check out the new Xbox.
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.RELATED
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Microsoft's brand new Xbox will be revealed at 1PM EDT/10AM PDT, bringing with it news of games, content, and all things Kinect. We'll be…
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New consoles are exciting in a way that it's hard for other product releases to match, even anticipated ones like an iPhone, because they're so infrequent. This is at least a five-year bet on Microsoft's part about what the future of gaming will look like. We've already seen what
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and
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think. Now it's Microsoft's turn.RELATED
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It's been seven years since the giant, boxy, expensive, hugely-fun and hyped PS3 first arrived. Seven years is a long time. But the next…
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Nintendo isn't afraid of different. It has thrown more crazy stuff at the wall—and gotten more of it to stick—than anyone. The Wii U is…
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Microsoft can only hope it's half as right as it was last time around. The 360 was built to last. That eight-year stretch of dominance makes it the oldest of the current generation of systems, and the last to be cast off in favor of a new system. Over that time the Xbox has picked up new features, like the Kinect motion sensor and ever more media streaming capabilities, but its core has remained the same.
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Today's event is only supposed to run for an hour—far shorter than the almost three hours the Sony crew was on stage for the PS4 event—which means it should have a bunch of information packed into a very short time. We'll have impressions from further sessions.
All-in-One Entertainment
We're underway, and the intro video for the new Xbox has users saying that the new Xbox is going to "recognize my name, my voice, my movies" and know what you like. That's a big cue that this generation is going to focus heavily on entertainment. Don Mattrick, President of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, says that Xbox 360 is leading the industry in entertainment, because gamers are quick to adopt new tech.
The focus for the next gen is going to focus on different types of content, and use new tech, like cloud interfacing and streaming. It's the all-in-one home entertainment system.
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New Controls
The console turns on just from you saying "Xbox on". It will launch into what you were doing last. This passive listening is a huge deal for natural interface. It seems incredibly responsive in the demo, but for now it's unclear if this is an actual demo or if it's being simulated.
It also integrates right into your TV. "Xbox, watch TV" drops you right into a live television feed. The amazing part of this is that you can switch quickly from movies, TV, games, a browser or anything else, just by saying "Xbox, go to", or even just "Go to movies".
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Two at Once
You can also use Windows 8's snap mode (with one app "snapped" to the side of the screen" to run another app on the side of the screen while your movie, or TV or game is playing. This is kind of an amazing addition, not just for browsing movies while watching one, like an onscreen IMDB, which is what the demo is showing, but you can also, say, snap a walkthrough for a game you're playing.
Oh, and Skype! You can use Skype while watching a movie or playing a game, too.
Thoughts on this?
