At last night's press gathering at Microsoft's headquarters in Seattle, the company lifted the lid on their next home console, the Xbox One. Set to launch later this year (although specifics about pricing, or a time frame are yet to be announced), the Xbox One is Microsoft's challenger to Nintendo's Wii U, and Sony's Playstation 4 - although it seems to be taking a markedly different strategy to either of its competitors.
The Xbox One family. Looks like they could do with losing a few pounds...
What's in the box
Although it's called the Xbox One, Microsoft spent a long time at the conference talking about how its new console is actually made up of three separate things - a new console, a new controller, and a new Kinect sensor. Coming in the box with every Xbox One, the new Kinect sensor has apparently been upgraded to work with "the whole family", and can now track up to six people at a time, with wide angle lenses reducing the amount of space it takes to work. Especially in the UK, where living rooms are small, the Xbox 360's Kinect often simply isn't practical - so we'll await the newly space-conscious Kinect with bated breath. Especially as it has to be connected in order for the console to work.
During the hour long briefing last night, Microsoft outlined their "vision" for the Xbox One, most of which seems to revolve around TV. Kinect will be required to be plugged in at all times, as Microsoft are once again heavily banking on the power of voice and gesture controls to help navigate the interface. It's still not as simple as just pressing a button, but with Kinect on the Xbox One, you'll be able to switch between programs, navigate the menus, and even turn the console on, as Kinect will be constantly activated, even when the console's switched off, watching and listening for a signal.
Initial rumours had suggested that the console would be heavily positioned to be a "living room" device, and it turns out those rumours were true. Roughly 75% of the conference last night was spent talking about TV rather than games, as Microsoft intend for the Xbox One to bring everything together under one box. Oddly, the console will come with an HDMI input as well as an HDMI output, which lets you plug a set top box into the console, and watch TV through the Xbox One. At the moment, though, it's not entirely clear what advantages that will bring over just watching TV through the set top box itself. While it was shown that you'll be able to run apps alongside TV - the one example shown was having a Skype video chat with someone, while watching the new Star Trek film - details were surprisingly thin on the ground beyond that, especially when you consider that most of the conference was spent talking about TV. Equally confusing is the fact that the TV features won't be available at launch in the UK - so TV obviously won't be part of the major marketing push on these shores.
In terms of the box itself, the Xbox One will come with a 500 GB (proprietary) hard drive, a blu-ray drive, 8 GB of RAM (although 3 GB will apparently be reserved for running the menus, etc), and an eight-core processor. It's substantially more powerful than the Xbox 360, but potentially less powerful than the PS4 - although specs are never as important as the games themselves.
The Games
Forza Motorsport 5 is certainly a looker - although details were light on the ground.
Speaking of which... As has often been said, a console is only as good as its games, which is why it's nice to see Microsoft announcing a strong commitment to their new console, with plans to launch fifteen games themselves over the course of the first year of the console's life - eight of which will be brand new concepts. Sadly, though, despite their announcement, it seems we'll have to wait a little bit longer for details of most of these new games, as Microsoft didn't actually show all that many off last night - and only one of the games wasn't a sequel. From Microsoft, we have Forza Motorsport 5, the latest instalment in their uber realistic racing series, which, along with a graphical overhaul, will seemingly see you racing around cities rather than/as well as its traditional tracks, while brand new game Quantum Break, from developers Remedy, the creators of story-heavy games such as Alan Wake and Max Payne, will tie-in with its own special TV series. From the third parties, EA Sports showed a montage of their games, and announced a partnership with Microsoft, although further details will be "coming soon", while Call of Duty: Ghosts was officially revealed at the end of the event, with a trailer that spent a lot of time talking about how the Xbox One lets them make much more realistic arms than they'd been able to make before. And dogs. Lots of dogs.
The Unknowns
Yet lots of questions remain about the Xbox One, and not just the common ones, like when it'll launch (Christmas this year), and how much it'll cost. In fact, the questions flying around are much more serious. Much was rumoured before the event about Microsoft's stance on pre-owned games. The internet was rife with speculation - partially confirmed by tweets from people inside Xbox - that the console would require an internet connection in order to work. After the recent furore with Sim City and Diablo 3 - two games that required an internet connection, and as such were rendered unplayable for days as fans all rushed to play at the same time - people were understandably worried. As it turns out, the truth isn't quite as bad as many feared, but it's still less than ideal. The Xbox One will require an internet connection to play, but it won't be needed constantly, just once a day. More concerning is the news that games will have to be installed to your hard drive in order to work (not great for those of us with large collections), and will be tied to your account. If you want to lend a game to your friend, you effectively can't, unless you're round their house, logged into their console, sitting with them, while you'll also apparently have to pay a fee in order to access pre-owned games. Although Microsoft have rushed to clarify their system, they seem to have got themselves into quite the spin about what their policy actually is, and have yet to deny that a fee of some sort may be involved. While it's looking like things may not quite be the worse case scenario many had feared, it may well not be all that far off.
Either way, with the world's largest gaming convention, E3 around the corner, Microsoft are set to complete their two part Xbox One reveal soon. In 18 days, we'll see the 15 games Microsoft have in the pipeline for the Xbox One, and hopefully learn the price, and release date. As has always been the case with games consoles, it's the games that'll sell the console, not the media features. We'll be counting down the days to E3.
