Software, Gaming and Computing Giant Microsoft announced the Xbox One last week (on the 21st of May 2013). This next generation gaming console will only be available later this year – no exact launch date has been specified by Microsoft.
The Xbox One is being marketed as “the ultimate, all-in-one entertainment system”. According to Microsoft this will be much more than just another Xbox gaming console, but an all-in-one home entertainment solution. Besides playing some games you will be able to control your television, browse the internet and listen to music.
The next generation Xbox will have a 500 Gb hard drive, 8 Gb RAM and 8 core CPU. It was also run with 64 bit system architecture. The console also has Wi-fi Direct, USB 3.0, HDMI in/out ports and a Blu Ray Drive and will operate silently. The Xbox One controller maintains the overall layout of the Xbox 360 design, but the directional pad has been changed to a four-way design.
The Xbox One will have some rad features. The console boasts a new Xbox dashboard (which has a cleaner layout than the Xbox 360 and resembles the Windows 8 Metro User Interface). The log-in feature is voice activated and you also be able to switch to either gaming mode, internet mode, television mode or browsing the internet by using voice commands. The Xbox One will also have a built-in DVR (or digital video recorder). This will allow users to record gameplay. Microsoft are in talks to allow users to record TV via the same system.
The console will also have an improved version of Kinect. The Xbox One will have an 1080p Kinect sensor and will feature voice recognition for individual users. The Kinect camera has also been improved. The new sensor will recognizes more body joints, better identify limb movement and wrist rotation and will also interpret the energy put into a motion. The Xbox One will not function unless the Kinect sensor is plugged in, but users retain the software capability to turn off all Kinect functions while it’s connected to the console.
The Xbox Live service is also being scaled up to use 300,000 servers for Xbox One users (up from the 15,000 that currently handles Xbox 360 users) and cloud storage will be on offer to save music, movies, games and saved content.
It sounds like Microsoft are doing some excellent planning ahead of the launch of the Xbox One. The new features also sound great, but it will be interesting to see how the Xbox One compares to the upcoming Sony Playstation 4 (which specs have not been announced yet).
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