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Microsoft Unveils Xbox One

Today at a press conference leading up to E3, Microsoft unveiled its next-gen games/entertainment console, the Xbox One. Their stated goal for the Xbox One is to have a single device provide "all of your entertainment." One of the big changes is increased support for voice and and gesture input. You can turn the console on by voice, and it will recognize you and automatically login. Swiping to the side with your hand will browse through menu pages, and saying "Watch TV" will bring up the TV app very quickly. The same with music, internet, and movies. The new console also supports multitasking — for example, while watching a movie, you can bring up your web browser in a side panel and surf the web at the same time. There is also a built-in TV listings app that responds to channel names — saying "Watch CBS" will switch to CBS without giving it an actual channel number. By this point, you're probably asking: does it play games? Yes. Hardware specs: 8-core CPU/GPU, 8GB RAM, a Blu-ray drive, a 500GB HDD, USB 3.0, and Wi-fi Direct. (They didn't provide the CPU frequency, instead saying it had 5 billion transistors.) The Kinect sensor got an upgrade: 2Gbps of data capture has finer skeletal visibility, can detect minor orientation changes in hands and fingers, and can even calculate your balance and weight distribution. The new controller looks slightly bigger, and is designed to play well with Kinect. They've also updated Smartglass, the remote control software that runs on mobile devices, but they didn't explain much about it. The new Xbox Live will have 300,000 servers powering it, up from 15,000 this year — though, of course, no details were provided about server specs. The console will have native game capture and editing tools — essentially, a game DVR. Saved games will be stored in the cloud, and they have new matchmaking capabilities that operate in the background. Update: 05/21 17:50 GMT by S : Halo is getting its own live-action TV show, for some reason. They'll be collaborating with Steven Spielberg. Microsoft is also partnering with the NFL for live broadcasts and interactive experiences, such as split-screen Skype chats and fantasy league updates. Xbox One will be out "later this year." No price information. it will not be backward-compatible with Xbox 360 games.

15 of 782 comments (clear)

  1. Xbox One? by Andrio · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Didn't that come out like 12 years ago?

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    1. Re:Xbox One? by dmomo · · Score: 5, Funny

      Brace yourself for the awesome as I go to every gamestop to buy every first generation XBox for $40 a pop. Once the new console is released, I'll sell them on EBay as "XBox 1, slightly used, only $200".

  2. Cable integration? by jandrese · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I really hope this means every XBox will come with a Cablecard slot in the back, just so Microsoft can cause every Cable Company manager's head to explode at the same time when they announce the feature.

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  3. XBMC by elzurawka · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So basically all the features I have been using for the last 3 years on XBMC + Steam, except for Voice and motion input(which i think are silly and I don't want).

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    -EL
  4. one by Ian+0x57 · · Score: 5, Informative

    before everyone jumps in on the "i thought this was version 3 not 1" bandwagon - it means ONE as in ONE tool to do it all. not ONE as in version 1 of the product line....

  5. Microsoft's attempt at a do-everything box by JDG1980 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Looks like the Xbox One is a home-entertainment center for which gaming is mostly an afterthought.

    That's not necessarily a bad thing (hardcore gamers aren't nearly as important of a demographic as they think), but a lack of focus could be a real problem. We already have general-purpose machines that are versatile enough to do what we want them to. Microsoft needs to make the case why this is better than a laptop or a tablet or a smartphone – especially as it is certain to be loaded down with DRM.

  6. Wait, what? by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does "You can turn the console on by voice" mean when "off" this thing is actually running a voice recognition system waiting for you to turn it "on"? Ignoring the "it's constantly listening to what is going on" part: what did they say the "standby" power use was?

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  7. Re:I look forward to hearing about why this will f by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Easy, they will sell it at below cost, like console manufacturers always do at first. Both Sony and Microsoft lost money on every console they ever released until well into their lifecycles.

    That is one reason why Microsoft encrypted the controller protocol on the 360. They claw back money on expensive accessories and didn't want any unlicensed hardware on the market.

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    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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  8. It's freeaking me out by Immerial · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's always going to be on... you can walk into a room and say "Xbox, On." That means it's always going to be watching. It reports back what your watching ("See what your friends are watching."). They've increase the camera resolution enough that they can read your heart rate. Sorry... too freaky for me. It's like a LOTR Palantir... gonna have to cover it with a cloth. Or maybe another metaphor, like an Xbox Hal... me: "Xbox, Switch to Playstation 4" Xbox: "I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that."

  9. Re:I look forward to hearing about why this will f by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Xbox customers are extremely loyal, to the point of sycophancy. Of all the Xbox owners I know, zero of them have just bought one Xbox 360. After they got RROD'd, they ALL went out and bought another at full price. One of my friends is now on his 13th one.

    Plus there are legions of people who buy the special edition Xbox 360's, and just toss their old working one in a closet and forget about it or repurpose it for another room.

  10. Re:I look forward to hearing about why this will f by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Specs like this? You say that like they are good specs. Some cheap-ass 4 core hyperthreaded CPU so they can say it technically has 8, like the PS4, a paltry 8GB of RAM, obsolete Blu-Ray drive and an absolutely tiny 500GB hard drive (why 500GB? why not AT LEAST 1TB?).

    Nah. This thing will come out for $300-$400 and will be drastically underpowered compared to even a moderate range gaming PC, just like the PS4

  11. Re:Installation notes. by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do not install Xbox One in the bedroom and/or avoid having sex in the same room as your Xbox One.

    Which room does your Xbox One have sex in?

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  12. Re:I look forward to hearing about why this will f by TWiTfan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Xbox customers are extremely loyal, to the point of sycophancy.

    Not this one. I've been an Xbox owner since the Xbox 1. But I've grown tired of having to pay $50/year for basic stuff like using the Netflix and Hulu apps. I'm also sick of the ad-heavy new home UI, the shitty new Netflix UI, and the fact that MS has spent years dropping all their best first-party developers.

    I was vastly underwhelmed by today's unveiling (seriously, a Halo TV show, wtf?!?!?). The fact that the didn't even address the "always on" requirement for single-player titles rumors tells me all I need to know. Combine that with a bunch of "cloud" shit, no interesting exclusives, a new cable interface that probably won't even work with my cable system, and hardware that's no better than the PS4--and it all adds up to a great big cup of who-gives-a-fuck.

    This Xbox fanboy is probably going PS4 this time around. At least it will save me $50 a year.

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  13. Just keep telling yourself you understand CPU arch by default+luser · · Score: 5, Informative

    AMD doesn't make Hyperthreaded(tm) CPUs, but they use a very similar technique for duplicating core components. Don't be so dense.

    Bulldozer module is NOTHING like hyperthreading.

    Hyperthreading duplicates/shares key registers, cache entries and TLBs in order to execute instructions from TWO THREADS on the same processor core. The EXECUTE and DECODE are typically much wider to allow two threads to fully-utilize all the execution resources of a single core. Software must be written specifically to take advantage of this feature (separate threads for FPU and ALU ops, and go easy on the thread locking), or you'll see zero, or possibly NEGATIVE improvement. Best-case scaling throughput (Nehalem) is 20-30%.

    Bulldozer modules are two COMPLETELY INDEPENDENTLY OPERATING cores that share decoders and an FPU unit. The decoders are tasked depending on how many cores in the module are loaded, and the FPUs just have a shared reservation station available to both processors (assumes that most loads are integer-heavy). Neither processor can execute instructions from another thread, and the best-case scaling is much higher than Hyperthreading (typically 70-80%).

    Also, Bullozer will be losing one of it's major disadvantages when Steamroller launches: the decoders will be 4-wide for each module, and run independently, which is expected to allow scaling to 90-95% in integer-heavy loads.

      As you can see, there is NOTHING in common between the two designs. The Bulldozer approach reduces the size of the core in favor of putting more cores on a die. The Intel Hyperthreading approach is to make a much wider core, and get more efficient use of those execution units. The only thing they have in common is that they both can theoretically improve multithreaded performance.

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  14. Re: I look forward to hearing about why this will by s.petry · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The courts and politicians were not nearly as corrupt in the 70s as they are today. You can read every case on US-DOJ regarding Microsoft being found guilty of predatory monopolistic practices, and see what their punishments (or lack thereof) were.

    This is in addition to numerous states that have found them guilty of predatory monopolistic practices, and receiving no punishment.

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    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.