Microsoft today officially announced their next generation console at the #XboxReveal event, the console is named Xbox One and will be releasing at some point this year.
The 60 minute event revealed the look of the console, controller and Kinect attachment and focused on the features of the console rather than games, which they are leaving for E3 in 19 days. Although they did announce that there will be 15 exclusive games for the system within the first year.
A quick rundown of the specs of the system were revealed and they are as follows:
- An 8-core CPU
- 8GB of System Memory
- A Blu-ray drive
- 500GB HDD
- Built-in Wi-Fi
- HDMI In/Out portsW
The new Kinect features a 1080P HD RGB camera, 30 FPS color, and an increased field of view and will be bundled with all new Xbox One devices.
Live TV
The opening focus of the event was using the Kinect and voice control to switch between live TV and your video game seamlessly, whilst the display on stage was probably not live action, if the system does work like that it will be impressive. It appears that the Xbox One is attempting to be your whole entertainment system in one (hence the name), meaning that you will be able to watch cable television through your Xbox and quickly change channels with your voice control or quickly start a game without trying to find your remote control.
During this section the Xbox One integrated Skype feature was shown, during this example a Skype call was answered whilst watching a Star Trek trailer, this implies that picture-in-picture Skype calling will be possible, although who would want to take a call while watching a movie? The interface once again seemed speedy and seamless, with voice control used to make and accept the call.
EA Sports
EA Sports then took presence on the stage and announced that FIFA 14, Madden NFL 25, NBA Live 14 and the next UFC game will be arriving on the Xbox One within the next year. They also announced that the NFL will broadcast live games on the system and will have the ability to compare live stats against you fantasy league.
Halo: The Television Series
Perhaps the most surprising section of the event was with the announcement of a live action Halo television series exclusively on the Xbox One, this was revealed by Steven Spielberg via video where he announced his partnership with Microsoft for this project.
Forza Motorsport 5
Next up was Turn 10 who announced that Forza 5 will be available at launch for the Xbox One, they also provided this trailer of the game which you can see below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy_LDyfCANg
Remedy Announce Quantum Break
A surprise announcement here was the reveal of Quantum Break by Remedy, developers of the fantastic Alan Wake. Check out the trailer below, once again Remedy are excelling at mixing story with gameplay in interesting ways. No other information was supplied except that we would be hearing more about it at E3.
Call of Duty: Ghosts
It was revealed before the event that Ghosts would be shown at the Xbox Reveal so it was no shock when Infinity Ward came out to talk about their next gen Call of Duty game. it was announced that the Xbox One would be getting exclusive timed DLC for the game and that famous writer Steven Gaghan has written the story for the game.
That was pretty much it from the reveal, the focus was very much on the entertainment system and not games(which is what most people wanted) but overall we got to see the box itself, hear the specs and have a quick look at a few of the games, so overall it was a solid showing but a bit disappointing.
The Bad News
After the event the press got to ask questions and some of the answers they got do not seem very promising.
Check out these articles for the full story about each piece of news below.
- “Microsoft Confirms Pre-Owned Fee For Used Games” – CVG
- “Xbox One will not play Xbox 360 games” – Engadget
- “Live TV only for US, TV requires a second box” – VG247
Let me know in the comments what you thought of the reveal, I might expand further on the bad news in separate articles but for now I’m waiting for more things to be confirmed.
For now I’ll leave you with some nice screens of the Xbox One, have fun!
