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.
Following on from the release of the PlayStation 4 last Friday, the Xbox One has today finally made its eagerly anticipated launch. But as fans of the Microsoft console flock to collect the next-gen Microsoft machine, reports are emerging of issues related to the device's disc drive.
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?
Here at Redmond Pie HQ, we place a great deal of value on working hard and getting the job done. We would never condone frivolously boycotting your responsibilities and commitments in favor of pursuing some other kind of more interesting leisure activity. However, we do make a few exceptions to that rule, one of which is that it's actually alright if the leisure activity involves spending some extremely important alone time with the Xbox One and Xbox LIVE. We can't get you out of work or family commitments, but thankfully the Xbox Doctor’s Note service has you well and truly covered.
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.
As both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 reach thousands of homes around the globe with time, there are going to be a ton of questions that need some serious answering from the get go from buyers who haven't made their decision which next-gen console to go for. As reviews of the two gaming giants begin to trickle through and people are beginning to see what can be achieved by this new generation of hardware, there's one question that probably isn't on the lips of many gamers, but we're going to answer it for you anyway!
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 be hitting stores late next week, and although we've been dealt a deluge of information from both official and unofficial channels already, new revelations are being made on an almost hourly basis. In the latest, the guys over at NeoGAF have been looking into game install size and discovered that some titles will command up to 43GB of storage space, which is a colossal amount of real estate by anybody's standards.
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.
As we move closer and closer to an official public launch, it's fair to say that the rivalry between Sony and Microsoft is well and truly heating up. Undecided consumers will soon be faced with one of the toughest video gaming decisions that they have had to make in the last few years: should they purchase Sony's PlayStation 4 or Microsoft's Xbox One? As you might expect, both companies are involved in their own final promotional campaigns ahead of the hardware launch with Microsoft France taking a leaf out of the Sony France book by creating the Xbox One Hotel.
