Unimpressive Xbox One Reveal

I was extremely disappointed by yesterday's reveal. Here's all the info that has been released since yesterday's Xbox One event:

Ugly, bland, boring design. It's looks huge and like a damn VCR/DVR.

Again, boring and big. REQUIRED to use Xbox One (more on that later). Not compatible with Xbox 360.

This might be the only good hardware to come out of this announcement, if it's compatible with a PC, trigger rumble is implemented well and controls feel tight. I don't like the top section design but I do like the integrated battery compartment. This is not compatible with Xbox 360.

No details on CPU core clock speeds or how processing cores will be divided among services. The HDD is internal to the system and CANNOT be removed. An external HDD will have to be used, via USB 30, for additional storage.

Xbox One will be incompatible with current gaming headsets because of it's proprietary audio ports. You will be able to use the optical port for audio but HAVE to use a proprietary cable for voice communications. This will force 3rd party manufacturers to license the technology from MS and build new devices.

Xbox 360 controllers will not be compatible with Xbox One.

Xbox One is not backwards compatible. Don Mattrick, President of Microsoft's Xbox Division, said, "If you're backwards compatible, you're really backwards." So plan to make room on your shelf for both consoles if you want to play your "old" 360 games. This worries me on Microsoft's opinion on games. They seem to be focused on the $$ generated by shallow, "blockbuster" games that lack depth, soul and replayability. Games aren't supposed to be just short, rapid instances of pleasure. I should be able to play Fallout 3, Skyrim or Bioshock on the latest console and have them look and perform better - you can do this with a PC. I enjoy going back and, sometimes with a little tweaking, play games from over a decade ago. Not to mention run emulators and play old Nintendo games. This is strictly a marketing strategy that caters to MS, not the consumer.

Xbox One has been designed so that it will NOT work without the Kinect attached. The Kinect will always be on, listening and watching, in a low powered state. Obviously, this raises privacy concerns. This is also meant to force developers to figure out some way to integrate it into games. The sensors and software have been greatly improved, but to me this makes it even more of a concern. Also, say you have a dog...and he knocks over the Kinect and breaks it, the system is no longer usable until a Kinect replacement is in-place.


Click here for video demo.

Xbox One doesn't always have to be online but it does require an internet connection. Sound a little contradicting? You can play single-player games offline but the console must contact (ping) the Xbox Live servers (via the Internet) at least once every 24 hours.

Microsoft has reported that they are enabling methods for the consumer to play used games. You can buy used games from retail stores like Gamestop, but it must be tied to your account and that will cost a fee...a fee of the full MSRP of the game. I'm sure you can do the math...

Unlike the PS4, indie developers will not be able to self-publish games on Xbox One and won't be able to set their own price. MS is forcing them to continue to use the painful Xbox Live Indie Games process.

Xbox One will feature Snap Mode. This creates a little snap-in window on the right side of the screen that can be used for Skype or IE while watching TV, movie or playing games. Why the hell would I want to video chat with somebody while I'm watching a movie or playing a game?

Xbox One will feature Intelligent TV. If you have cable, you'll be able to plug your cable box in the console via HDMI and channel surf you voice commands via Kinect. I don't have cable so I could give a shit less about this feature. I would rather use these wasted resources on improving the overall UI performance. And still no word on which cable providers will be compatible.

If you love football, Microsoft signed a 5-year contract with the NFL to be able to watch the games on the Xbox One. MS also announced a live-action Halo TV series that will be produced by Steven Spielberg. They're running this franchise into the ground and Spielberg hasn't produced a single successful TV show yet - except for Falling Skies I guess, it actually got picked up for a third season.

Some good features are that you can save your game at anytime and resume exactly where you left off. And you gamerscore, TV shows and movies will be transferable to the new console, but not games purchased on-demand or Xbox Live Arcade games.

The also showed footage of Call of Duty: Ghosts using new graphical feature and improvements; however, it didn't look much different then the CoDs on current platforms.

MS is relying heavily on "the cloud" (i.e. the Internet) to improve overall system performance by providing future capability to offload computing power, store all user data so they can access their games and save games from any console, and perform system updates without user interaction.

Besides some obvious game announcement - Battlefied 4, Destiny and Assassin's Creed: Black Flag will all be available on the Xbox One - this is pretty much all the news so far. As you can tell, I'm very disappointed by Microsoft's disregard for the core gamer, who allowed them to get here in the first place. Unless they can blow away my fucking mind with their game announcements during E3, I will definitely not be getting an Xbox One. And even then, now that the "next-gen" platforms are using PC architecture, besides a few exclusives, it's guaranteed that all the games will come out on PC at the same time as PS4 and Xbox One.

I don't want to come off as a hater, up until this point I've been very impressed with what Microsoft's Xbox division has been doing and even though I wasn't super excited about the new console reveal I was trying to be optimistic. Sony had to learn a hard lesson about their arrogance with their third console, the PS3, and it looks like MS is going down that same path.