Powerful and versatile, but will gamers pay more for its extras?
The Xbox One is almost out of the gate. It'll be in the U.S. and
the U.K. November 22. We've got one in our offices, and since the Xbox
Live Servers are just now launching, we're giving it some time in the
real world before making a judgment and rendering our verdict. While we
work through our review process, enjoy our updated hands on assessment.
One
console to rule them all. One console to find all your devices, one
console to control all your services and in the living room bind them.
That's
Microsoft's plan. Gaming, cable television, music and movies all
streaming into one system: the Xbox One. It's ambitious, but the
hardware seems capable.
The real question is this: can the Xbox One overcome the mixed messaging, the now-canned 24-hour online dependence and the other potholes that had it stumbling out of the gate, and allowed Sony to win E3 2013 with some sharp PlayStation 4 counter-programming?
Thanks
to a strong launch lineup and more than a bit of damage control, the
Xbox One is repairing its reputation. Still, does it have a chance at
the ubiquity of the of its predecessor, the Xbox 360? Or will it trip over its own $500/£429.99 price tag?
It's quite the legacy to live up to. For long stretches of the last console generation, the Xbox was king. While the Wii was everywhere, and millions of gamers and AV enthusiasts eventually picked up a PlayStation 3, for a while there the phrase "let's play some Xbox" was almost interchangeable with "let's play some video games."
It
was the console that brought Xbox Live into maturity, setting the
standard for the online experience on a gaming console. It taught couch
gamers to tolerate the tech support look of a headset in exchange for
voice communication, and that you get what you pay for: a year of Xbox
Live Gold might have cost as much as a game, but the service was more
robust than Sony's PSN.
Now at the dawn of a new console
generation, the Xbox One stands before us, a combination game console
and home theater system. Can it truly wrangle all the disparate devices
of the living room, as well as support a robust library of games, or has
Microsoft bitten off more than it can chew? Don't worry, we'll slice
those facts nice and thin for you in our review.
Design
The
first thing you'll notice about the Xbox One is what an absolute beast
it is. It measures 274 x 79 x 333 mm, making it longer and taller than a
PlayStation 4 or an Xbox 360. You don't need a tape measure to figure
that out though, the thing just looks huge.
Its
size and girth harkens back to the original Xbox, an imposing black
plastic beast covered in black plastic ridges. Microsoft seems to be
throwing back to that design, bringing back the all black and the
ridge-covered aesthetic.
When
you first take the Xbox One out of its box, you'll notice an eyesore of
a sticker next to the Blu-Ray drive, asking you to kindly not move the
system while a disc is inside.
A
good warning, as that can damage a spinning disc in any system, but an
ugly sticker - luckily it comes off nice and clean. We also have hard
time imagining that gamers will be moving their hulking Xbox Ones very
often, especially since the system is also not designed to stand on its
side.
It's
massive size and black, rectangular construction evoke a stereo tuner
from the nineties. Its imposing bulk begs to be hidden away, with just
its slot loading disc drive exposed, little white Xbox logo glowing in
lonely TV cabinet darkness.
Flip
the machine around and you'll see a plethora of ports. It has all your
standard nodes: ethernet, HDMI out, power, S/PDIF (commonly used for
optical audio), dual USB 3.0 ports and an IR out. Additionally, there
are two proprietary ports, one for hooking in the Kinect, and an HDMI
in, which is how you feed the Xbox One your cable or satellite signal.
There's also a third USB 3.0 port found on the system's right side.
We've
been told that the HDMI in can be used as a regular old pass through,
allowing you to play your Xbox 360, a VCR (do they make HDMI VCRs?) or
even a PS4 through the Xbox One. That's something we'll be testing in
our full Xbox One review.
Kinect
You can't talk Xbox One
without bringing up the new Kinect. While the system can operate without
being hooked into Microsoft's magic eye, you'd be losing a lot of its
most unique features and showroom wow factor.
The
new Kinect is a whole lot bigger than its predecessor. It's also
designed to sit in front of your TV, rather than perched on top of the
screen like the PlayStation Camera. It's too big and, presumably,
delicate for that.
Just like the system itself, it has a white
light up logo on its right side. Dull red lights intermittently glow
when it's active.
The
underside of the Kinect has rubber feet that provide a firm grip. It's
not going to fall off your entertainment center any time soon. It can
also tilt up and down, with enough range of motion that there shouldn't
be any trouble finding the right angle for your living room.
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