Xbox One Announcement

So the Xbox One has been announced, following the Playstation 4 announcement a couple of months ago. The rumours of “Infinity” have turned out to be false, Microsoft instead opting for the potential confusion of Xbox “One” instead. It’s like their business discussions have failed to raise the obvious concern over their failed push for the Original Xbox to be called as such and now we’re going to see the hilarious result of less pliant-minded individuals become perpetually muddled by the first and most recent renditions, probably culminating in a general concensus that the new Xbox isn’t really new at all and in fact is probably just the Xbox 360, a bit like what happened with Nintendo’s Wii-U.

What we’re looking at here is essentially a Bose styled record player from the 70′s but we’re told it has 8gb of RAM and all sorts of other wonderful numbers. It’s going to play games, watch TV and watch you playing games and watching TV. After having gawped at gamers from all over the world eating crisps and declaring “Xbox on” for the past couple of years, Microsoft have rounded up all of the datas and stasticals and are now able to render fully motional characters in games! Oh wait…

The new movement will make the online experience a lot more smooth, because Microsoft “know that the inches and angles are important”. Eh, what?

After the not-so-revolutionary changes to TV on your console, which appeared to consist of a TV guide and a favourites list, but alarmingly advertised as if nobody who watches television knew what they were watching at any given time and might have trouble knowing what programs they like, we were then treated to a dreadfully dull, and to a non-sporty type, confusing presentation of the Xbox being able to intrude upon a game of Football with your Fantasy Football information. Now that’s some niche marketing.

Forza 5 motorsport is having a drastic gameplay change where you will not be able to see the road in front of you and the camera will be focused on the car the whole time. According to the footage we saw earlier today.

Skip about 10 minutes of EA sports stuff and we get a declaration of exclusive EA content for the Xbox One which met a room of silence and bewilderment.

Quick! Rush out Forza!

Forza 5 had some pretty spiffy footage of a Maclaren P1 roving about, prompting some questions about the lack of gameplay in the footage and not too few reminiscences of Gran Turismo on the PS2′s opening video and its likeness. It’s going to be a launch title, so you’d think they’d have a bit more to show.

Then we get a wonderful demoonstration of Xbox’s answer to David Cage and his recent endeavours with the announcement of Quantum Break, some sort of… game or more “interactive entertainment” which is about some live action girl who can make shit happen when she touches people’s faces, apparently. I’m just saying what I saw here. Trying to keep myself open for the “emotions” and polygons and Microsoft’s “inches and angles”.

Supposedly the earlier TV stuff didn’t work its charm as well as it ought and so Microsoft decide to bombard us with another round of that.

Women. Two of them, it’s almost like they’re there to one-up Sony. Halo TV series is announced and it’s going to have Spielberg’s co-operation, although we weren’t told in what fashion. Bearing in mind his earlier TV works Taken and Band of Brothers, it would be great if Halo was a mix of the two and I really think this could be a fantastic show.

Each Xbox One will ship with a box containing a single strand from the head of Steven Spielberg, because games.

And that was the end of the announcement. It started off rubbish, but things picked up a little towards the end, although it remained pretty conservative to say the least. More news can be expected at E3 but for now we know the Xbox One is coming out later this year and appears to have a lot of games being developed, the most at one time apparently, of which 15 are exclusives and 8 are new IP’s.

I think that with the strong backing of major franchises, the understated announcement and the PC welcome environment the game industry has slowly drifted towards, the new Microsoft console will be the most successful by quite a margin. The biggest IP’s have all been catered for an the new IP’s will make the One a centrepiece of the water cooler, IF it gets the games right, so hopefully we can see some change in the industry and finally get something worth loving games for.

Oh and Call of Duty: Ghosts is coming out with exclusive content.

Xbox One Announcement