Microsoft has announced that the launch of its new gaming console has marked the biggest launch in Xbox history. The Xbox One went on sale in multiple worldwide markets at midnight last night with the Redmond based company confirming that more than one million consoles were sold within the first 24-hours of sale.
The Xbox One has finally arrived today, one week later than its closest rival in the PlayStation 4, and save one or two seemingly isolated incidents pertaining dodgy disc drives, the launch seems to have been relatively smooth and dare we say incident free. One of the main attractions of the new console, besides the fact that it is considerably more powerful and plays a much better game than the Xbox 360, is the second-gen Kinect sensor, which has improved in many ways since the original launched back in 2010. Many of you who've gone to pick up the Xbox One will be getting to grips with some of its new and exciting features, but what won't be shipping is the handy cheat sheet posted online, detailing many voice commands and gestures that Microsoft has neglected to include with the in-the-box literature.
If you're lucky enough to be able to pick up both a PlayStation 4 and an Xbox One this holiday season then there's one party trick that is sure to have your friends green with envy, and if we're honest you can probably put us in that bracket too.
We've already seen Sony ride the peaks of the next-generation console wave with their PlayStation 4 launch six days ago and now it's the turn of Microsoft. With over one million PlayStation 4 consoles sold on the first day of sale in the North American region, Sony will undoubtedly be classing the first few days of availability as clear success for their product. With the Xbox One launching in multiple territory at the stroke of midnight last night the emphasis is well and truly on Microsoft to capitalize on a captive market, but what are your opinions on the Xbox One, and more importantly, will you be showing your appreciation for the hardware with your hard-earned money?
The guys over at iFixit are at it again. After the detailed PlayStation 4 teardown, the team has now turned its attention towards Microsoft's Xbox One. After delighting gamers for a total of eight years, the fabulous Xbox 360 workhorse has now been retired to be replaced with the Xbox One, but what will the iFixit teardown specialists think of the Redmond company's latest hardware release? Although the clinical teardown operation is still a work in progress, the team has already found some great news for end-users that should make prolong the lifespan of the console, and an interesting fact on how the new console will avoid the red ring of death issue, which plagued the original 360 console.
Microsoft’s Xbox One console is just a few days away from public availability, and the company is bound to make it a success by any means necessary. As if all the promotions and advertisements weren’t enough, now the Redmond company has made a new announcement of free access to select few Xbox One titles on a monthly basis for the subscribers of Xbox LIVE Gold.
With the PlayStation 4 set to be released within the next 24 hours and the Xbox One hitting the retail market next Friday, the console fanboys are out in full force, offering lopsided, oft baseless reasons why one is better than the other. Never one to hold back when it comes to making a joke of things, the creators of South Park have put together a scene in this week's episode dedicated to the next-gen battle, with heavy reference to the Black Friday sales beginning next week. As can be seen online in YouTube comments, on forums and other such mediums, an innocent debate quickly descends into a fanboy flame war, before ending on a typically offensive note. Check it out after the break!
The Xbox One may be hitting the scene later, cost more, and be technically inferior in terms of raw gaming power than the PlayStation 4, but it's certainly not all doom and gloom. After all, Microsoft's forthcoming games machine succeeds the Xbox 360, a console that toppled the PlayStation 3 in this current generation, and allied to the second-gen Kinect peripheral - derivative of the immensely popular original Kinect - the interactivity both in motion sensing and voice recognition will be vastly superior to anything the PS4 will have to offer. With this in mind, Larry Hryb - better known as Xbox LIVE's Major Nelson - has demonstrated just how quickly one can boot up the Xbox One using the simple "Xbox On" voice command.
The Xbox One will hit shelves next week, and Microsoft is diligently planning in advance to ensure all of the associated services have been primed and are ready for the big release. SkyDrive, the Redmond outfit's fledgling cloud service, is one such entity, and today, Microsoft has delivered a fairly detailed blog post regarding the video and photo streaming element of the stock dedicated SkyDrive app for Xbox One will play out.
I don't think it's too much of a statement to make that when the Xbox One finally arrives later on this months, relationships are going to be affected. As avid gamers go out and possibly queue for hours to pick up a console that has been several years in the waiting, some other halves will be feeling as though they've been replaced by a plastic box that, to them, just plays games and streams movies as the last console did. But while the general demographic of the console gamer tends to be young males, the latest Xbox One ad flips things a little, with the female taking the traditional position of the guy. It's mildly humorous, and we've embedded the 30-second clip below for your viewing pleasure.
