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Xbox One S is the Best Xbox You Might Not Want To Buy (cnet.com)
The Xbox One S, successor to Microsoft's Xbox One gaming console, has begun shipping today. Media outlets, which had received the review unit a week ahead of the launch date, have put out the review. In short, everyone loves the Xbox One S' compact design -- 40% slipper form-factor than the Xbox One -- and the 4K support has been widely praised as well. But perhaps, it's CNET's review that captures the sentiment of most people: "Xbox One S is the best Xbox you might not want to buy." From their review: THE GOOD The Xbox One S is a slick looking game console that's 40 percent smaller than the original and ditches the infamously gigantic power brick. It can display 4K video from streaming services and Ultra HD Blu-rays, and supports HDR contrast on video and games. The updated controller works with other Bluetooth devices, too.
THE BAD 4K, Ultra HD Blu-ray and HDR settings only work with newer TVs, and may require some trial and error. The updated controller feels cheaper than its predecessor. Project Scorpio, the more powerful Xbox One successor, arrives in late 2017.
THE BOTTOM LINE The Xbox One S is the console Microsoft should have delivered three years ago, but there's little reason to upgrade if you already own the original box.It's worth noting that the Xbox One S doesn't support game titles in 4K -- a capability that has been scheduled for the Project Scorpio, another new gaming console from Microsoft. It's set to launch next year.
THE BAD 4K, Ultra HD Blu-ray and HDR settings only work with newer TVs, and may require some trial and error. The updated controller feels cheaper than its predecessor. Project Scorpio, the more powerful Xbox One successor, arrives in late 2017.
THE BOTTOM LINE The Xbox One S is the console Microsoft should have delivered three years ago, but there's little reason to upgrade if you already own the original box.It's worth noting that the Xbox One S doesn't support game titles in 4K -- a capability that has been scheduled for the Project Scorpio, another new gaming console from Microsoft. It's set to launch next year.
What does the "S" stand for in "XBox One S"?
Sucks?
Be seeing you...
"40% slipper form-factor " Whats the other 60%? Crocs? Open toe sandals?
Not necessarily bad for the box, but a reminder that if you don't have a 4K TV the box gives nothing new in that department.
What I find crazy is that you get better resolution watching someone else play a game than playing one yourself.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
it stands for "slipper form factor", apparently.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Seems like you're missing a few elements here. The One S is basically the same as the 360 Slim, it plays the same games in the same way. It's just a small hardware upgrade for a few features. Project Scorpio is gonna be different, same as the PS4 Neo, but both will play the same games and both actually force developers to support both platforms. You cannot release a Scorpio/Neo-only game. Your concerns are born out of ignorance more than anything else.
Oh, and, Scorpio's gonna drop late 2017, 4 years after the One. That's just one year shorter than the N64 generation, but you keep backwards and forward compatibility here. That's not "shortening the console life cycle" any way you cut it, and it's much better than the frustratingly long PS3/360 cycle.
yes, there was. An even playing field. If you and I both had console A, you and I had the exact same experience playing game B. This also leveled the playing field for devs because they knew EXACTLY what hardware components to build for. PCs, even with todays trimmed down hardware options, are a different beast, you simply can't assume anything. That's why I'm old enough to remember having to check if the game supported my chipset, videocard and soundcard, before buying it. The only benefit was the even playing field. A tertiary benefit would be the console life cycle being longer than the pc upgrade cycle, but with asshattery like the neo and scoprio, that no longer applies. And in fact, it also destroys the even playing field aspect as they are saying devs need to support all console versions, but they are vastly different in performance. This is a kick in the nutz to anyone who bought one of these consoles
I'm having problems passing the 4K video through my RF modulator... please help!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
What does S stand for in every other iPhone from the 3GS on?
The "S" stands for "Speed". It was even the first thing they said after announcing the name.
Apple seems to generally try and offer up some sort of an explanation for new letters or modifiers that they attach to their products, such as Steve Jobs explaining back in 1997 that the "i" in the original iMac stood for "Internet", but after awhile, the letters seem to become brands unto themselves. After all, the original iPod had no way to get on the Internet, so what did the "i" stand for there? Or what does the "SE" stand for with the iPhone SE? We assume "Special Edition", but it really could be anything.
As for Microsoft, bear in mind that they are the company that thinks incrementing 8 and 360 will give you 10 and One, respectively. I don't really expect their product names to make a lot of sense.
Its going to scale just like PC does now, where we support dual core laptops and kilowatt gaming rigs. This is nothing new. Further, we arent going to see the vast gulf in abilities like we did between Xbox 360 and Xbox one, especially large geometry capability. The 360 was so hamstrung for memory that games designed for both this gen and last gen really suffered for it. That wont happen anymore, you wont have huge differences in geometry capability, the only thing that will change is resolution and post-processing power. Like i said, its a correction for past mistakes and will be the last big speedbump for consoles for the foreseeable future. From now on its incremental upgrades with full, absolute back-compat.
Good-bye
Wow. Just wow.
In any other industry, if they sold as many units as Microsoft sold Xbones, they're be cheering.
Sony has sold roughly 40M PS4s, and Microsoft, 20M Xbones. 20M units is a "failure".
Sure it may be a failure if we're talking iPhones, or Galaxy S7 phones, but I'm sure Google and LG/Huawei would love to sell 20M Nexus 5X/6P phones.
Hell, by this time in its life, the PS3 was not so successful... and yet no one asked Sony to give it up (three years in, the Xbox360 sold less than 20M units. The PS3 was the worst seller in the early part of its life, rendered a laughingstock).
Yeah, there's a lot of Sony fanboys, but still. (I have both consoles, with both PS+ and Xbox Live Gold service to tie me in.). So far though, I have to say Sony's dropping the ball with the PS+ stuff - the free games seem to be just all indie games now...
And when I'm not spinning a 1080 or two up to play Witcher 3 in 4K, I can tell Blender to use the CUDAs to render a 4K scene for a few hours. Or I can use those CUDAs to do amateur weather modeling... or hobbyist genome mapping. Couple those with a Tesla 1070s and you've got a nice huge data pipe to parallel blast a few billion pixels and ints all over the place....at the same time I heat my house. I can't wait to turn my computer into a fission reactor using SLI!
Is there some hardware constraint that prevents Microsoft from enabling "4k UHD" on the original Xbox One at some framerate supported by its HDMI 1.4 port, or are they just using it as a selling point to try and get people who already own one to buy another one?
As far as I can tell, there's no reason why it would take anything besides a software update to enable 2160p30 on the existing Xbox One.
Then again, what I'd really LOVE to see is support for 720p100, 720p120, 1080p100, 1080p120. The difference between 60fps and 90-100fps is still pretty easy to spot, especially in a side-by-side comparison (above 100fps, you really need to hit 300-600fps for the difference to really stand out and be obvious... and even then, it's something you'd notice mainly with peripheral vision & only in high-contrast with fast motion).
That said, there's another mode nobody talks about that could EASILY be supported by even previous-generation hardware (360 & PS3) -- side-by-side 3D. Basically, some new 3D shutter-glass TVs can take a 1920x1080@60fps frame, split it into two 960x1080 frames, stretch them back to 1920x1080, and display them alternating between left and right at 120fps. Right now, just about the only people who use it are people who rip a Blu-Ray 3D disc, re-encode it as SBS, put the TV into SBS mode, and play it with a generic media player... but there's no reason why it couldn't be used for kick-ass games, too.