Xbox One...Oh My

Hey Guys, so yesterday Microsoft announced the Xbox One and my god I am preordering two, one for me and one for the wife, she will not be left in the dark trust me. I hope everyone took the time to watch the reveal, if you haven’t start here.

There were a lot of assumptions about it being similar to the PlayStation 4, which it is hardware-wise, but this isn’t about the PlayStation 4. From a hardware perspective the Xbox One has 8 GB of RAM (DDR3), an 8 core x86 AMD processor and specialized GPU that is being equated to an AMD Radeon HD 7790 GPU, a Blu-ray player (thank God) and comes packaged with the new Kinect, a 500 GB HDD (standard) Gigabit Ethernet and HDMI in/out. All this hardware allows for a seamless switching between all of the software. The hardware working in concert with said software will create a very centralized (hence One) platform which actually leads us to the real marvel of the Xbox One the software.

The Xbox One Team has really stepped its game up here. For starters there are 3 Operating Systems: The Xbox platform that we know and love, albeit with a graphical upgrade, a Windows Kernel based on Windows 8 for applications and to deal with the multitasking and a middleware which I believe is hypervisor based (see: hypervisor) that makes it all play nice. One of the features that I like is the Live TV, this takes advantage of the HDMI in/out. This will work great for me because I have Direct TV so when football starts….imagine the possibilities. This also piggy backs on another cool feature: Active Fantasy Stat Tracking. The new Xbox One experience will track your fantasy stats (they've only showed NFL and NBA so far) and you will get a small popup notification when your players score points for your league, kind of like the achievements popup on the Xbox 360 just with smaller real estate. The other way you can track fantasy stats is with the new snap-in system. This basically works like picture in picture but is displayed side by side instead of the one screen being superimposed on the other screen. Speaking of the snap-in feature leads to another useful feature that we touched on earlier: Multitasking. They take this to extremes as are as I am concerned, as if Microsoft’s own words, “You can start matchmaking in one game while playing another”. This tech specifically is called Smart Match. Other multitasking that they showed were interesting as well. They show the first Star Trek (2009) and span-in(ed) the trailer for what I believe is Star Trek: Into Darkness and they were both playing. I couldn't tell if they were using split audio, but I would think that probable, specifically when you take into account that During the COD: Ghost expose’ they spoke of multiple video out. I started to give a entire sections to the Kinect but it can be summed up into a few sentences. It’s always on and always listening. It takes human range of motion into deep account, it even notices when you twist your wrist now and it is going to be an integral part of the system. Make your decisions on if that is a good thing as you may.

There were some mention of games but not much. EA is releasing 4 titles within earshot of launch all powered by EA’s new Ignite Engine (*Note: He got the life kicked out of him.Watch the video on IGN that I linked to understand). These titles are mainstays and should be expected on any new system: Madden, FIFA, NBA Live and UFC. Microsoft also spoke of 15 games that are coming from their internal studios with 8 being new franchises, but the show stealer was Call of Duty: Ghost. Everyone was waiting for that announcement. You should have seen me and my wife. This is primarily the reason why I am preordering two.

I refuse to compare the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 right now as these are new systems and we don’t have "complete" details about either systems or all of the launch titles. After E3 that should change but you never know.

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