Xbox One unveiled

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The new machine sees Microsoft add a Blu-ray drive and Skype functionality to its console, built in feedback into its gamepad triggers, and upgrades its Kinect camera sensor to 1080p high definition resolution.

Xbox is the one Microsoft product I really like.



18 thoughts on “Xbox One unveiled”

  3. Apple is already in the TV business. They sold 2M Apple TV’s over the holidays. The question is are they going to get into the console gaming market or focus on content deals? I suspect the later is their goal.

  5. Nice, but according to the story the switch from PowerPC to x86 will mean that games for the current XBox won’t work. Apple was able to make the same switch years ago while letting customers use old software, why can’t Microsoft? I can’t see re-buying all the games I already have.

  7. One of the huge takeaways last generation was the fact that people never really used the backwards compatibility. You should, instead, be whining about the fact that game are installed and tied to your live ID. Goodbye used game market.

  8. When buying your new Xbox they don’t come and steal your old one, keep it and play your old games till your fingers fall off. No need to re-buy anything, and highly doubtful that you will even be able to.

    The reason for the ‘smooth’ switch from PPC to x86 was because developers updated their PPC app to x86, temporarily making a universal binary which had the code for PPC and x86 in it, later dumping PPC altogether.

    Developers will most likely put their time, money and energy into making new games instead of recoding their old ones. There’s little incentive for both Microsoft or developers to pour energy into developing, updating a cross platform support system. Especially considering that most games fall into oblivion a month after they’re released or when another games comes around. The market for old games besides arcade games is pretty small.

  9. I think its probably quite a bit more difficult to do acceptably fast and reliable emulation for games than other software.

    Also, I think backwards compatibility in consoles is overrated. If you’ve got a big library of XBox 360 games that you actually still play, you’ve probably already got an XBox 360. It will still work fine after you get your XBox One.

  11. I have a hard time seeing how a TV would work for Apple. I think their strategy should be AirPlay – all the smarts in high-margin, frequently-upgraded iOS devices, with the TV as a dumb output device. The $99 AppleTV is a good first step, but it would be even better if they started licensing AirPlay/AppleTV to TV manufacturers.

    That said, I’d be interested in an 802.11ac-capable Time Capsule/AppleTV/iCloud cache set top box.

  12. I do not believe Apple will do something “bigger”, hardware-wise, than the Apple TV/Roku. It is the content deals. Having said that, I look forward to the Xbox One for gaming but will keep on increasing my collection of Apple TV’s for music and video playback.

  14. XBox is the one MS product that they’ve gotten almost entirely right from the very beginning – biggest error being the 360’s Red Ring of Death design flaw, from which they were able to recover (I actually own one with this flaw, but it hasn’t blown up yet, imagine that).

    This is why I was so shocked to hear that nobody from the XBox team was involved in the Surface project.

  18. No, but it at least follows a naming pattern, albeit not a very well-established one: iPhone, 3G, 3GS, 4 (which was the 4th generation, at least), 4S, 5. The next will be the 5S, and the one after that will be the 6 (it can be reasonably assumed)

    Compare to the Xbox’s naming convention of Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

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