Today, Microsoft unveiled its brand new video game console dubbed the Xbox One. With a powerful 8-core CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 500 GB hard drive, this new Xbox is a beast. Unlike Sony, Microsoft had no qualms showing off the hardware, so now we know more about the Xbox One than we do the PS4 in some ways. Sadly, there was no mention about used games or always-on demands.
Fundamentally, this is an incredible step-up in performance from the eight-year-old Xbox 360. With HDMI inputs and outputs, a Blu-ray drive, 802.11n with WiFi Direct, and USB 3.0, this is a full realization of what a modern console should be. While we didn't get the same nitty-gritty technical details from Microsoft, we still have a pretty good idea of how the internals stack up to the PS4 and modern PCs. The single 40nm SoC inside it from AMD will house both a CPU and GPU, so that's an incredible step forward from the 360's dual 90nm chips. No, this Xbox One won't stomp a modern $800 gaming PC into the ground, but it still has plenty to offer in terms of user experience.
Microsoft is going big with the next Kinect. It will feature a 1080p RGB camera with a wider field of view for easier operation -- a much welcome feature from current Kinect owners. It will run at 30 frames per second, and Microsoft promises a lag-free experience. Actually, Microsoft is extremely focused on speed this time around, so hopefully laggy menus are a thing of the past. With the new voice experience on the Xbox One, you can instantly switch between games, apps, and even live TV. Just by issuing a short verbal command like "Watch TV" to the Kinect, your Xbox One will take in a live feed from your cable box (over HDMI), and pipe it through without need to change inputs. If it works in reality like it does in the demo, that feature alone might be worth the hardware upgrade.
More importantly, Microsoft is seemingly quite focused on making games. With 15 exclusive internally developed games expected within the first year of the Xbox One, it's clear that the Xbox One is still a gaming console first and foremost. With strategic partnerships with EA and Activision, the Xbox One is staying focused on the core base of online gamers that it has built up over the 360's lifespan. That said, Microsoft is still working on branching out to new non-gaming markets. Halo is an incredibly popular game, but with an original episodic release of a Halo series made by none other than Steven Spielberg, it could find an even bigger audience.
Xbox Live is also getting a big upgrade alongside the Xbox One. By the end of the year, over 300,000 servers around the world will be dedicated to nothing but Xbox Live. With games, saves, music, and movies all moving to the cloud, it's no surprise that Microsoft has needed to expand to such a large scale. Now that this new console will have built-in game capture and upload, they're going to need a lot of storage and bandwidth to keep these user-generated videos online. Many expected a partnership with Twitch for video streaming and hosting, but it seems that Microsoft is going at it alone.The biggest disappointment was the noticeable absence of a few specific details. The Xbox One is launching later this year, but a firm release date is nowhere to be found. No mention of price, so now we wait to see which company with blink first at E3. Worse, there was no reference at all to locking out used games or requiring an internet connection. Has Microsoft learned nothing from the past two months of out of control rumors and the whole Adam Orth ordeal? The lack of confirmation one way or the other is just going to make the internet hand-wring even more intense. Hopefully, the Microsoft press event at E3 will answer all of these burning questions.
We'll have much more on the Xbox One's hardware and software details over the next few hours, so stay tuned.
Now read: Xbox One vs. PS4 vs. PC: How the hardware specs compare
