If you have plans to sit your Xbox One vertically then Microsoft is here to f*** with your feng shui.
Xbox senior director of product management and planning, (or the XSDPMP), Albert Panello gave the entertainment center altering news with Gamespot.
“We don’t support vertical orientation; do it at your own risk. It wouldn’t be a cooling problem, we just didn’t design the drive for vertical. Because it’s a slot loading drive, we just didn’t design it for both.”
Get ready for this to be an out that Microsoft can use if there are any bad Xbox One’s out there at launch. Considering how smooth (not smooth) the 360 launch went, this is smart business wise.
Microsoft has announced that the [amazon_link id=”B00CMQTVMI” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Xbox One[/amazon_link] will be released on November 22nd, one week after the [amazon_link id=”B00CMQTVQO” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Playstation 4[/amazon_link].
The date is also the eighth anniversary of the release of the Xbox 360.
While it will not be beating Sony to store shelves, a one week gap is nothing to be worried about sales wise. They will be just in time for Black Friday which is the most important thing when planning a holiday release.
It looks like employees of Microsoft are getting an extra special [amazon_link id=”B00CMQTVMI” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Xbox One[/amazon_link] as a thank you from their paycheck overlords. An all white console and controller with a black Kinect, because f*** your OCD, and a list of other goodies sweeten the pot for being a loyal worker.
This has not been confirmed by Microsoft. If anyone working there wants to verify this, feel free…unless it will get you fired in which case, nevermind.
Microsoft has been on a tear lately scaling back the unpopular policies that have hampered the Xbox One since its announcement a few months ago. Now they are scaling something else back and it will not be as popular a decision. The corporation announced that they will only be launching in 13 territories worldwide instead of the originally planned 21.
The countries getting the boot to 2014 are: Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland. To try and make amends for the delay Microsoft will be adding a pack-in game with the system, so I hope all of you like Forza 5 because that will probably be it.
No reason was given for the delay in these countries, but I am going to say it is most likely due to trying to meet pre-order demands in the larger countries. Luckily, America still counts as a larger country even though our growing dependence on borrowed money from China would say otherwise.
[amazon_link id=”B00CMQTVMI” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Xbox One[/amazon_link] releases this fall.
Sony officially unveiled their Playstation 4 console to the world tonight and it certainly has a new…slant on home consoles.
Yeah, I went there.
Not only was the look of the console a bit of a surprise, but so was the announced price: $399. Yep, a full $100 cheaper than the Xbox One. We will have much more thoughts on how Sony mopped the floor with their competition later on.
It looks like console users won’t have to wait very much longer to get their hands on Blizzard’s massive sequel, [amazon_link id=”B00BGA9V2Q” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Diablo 3[/amazon_link]. The hack and slash dungeon crawler that fills our deep, hidden OCD desires to loot everything in site will be making its way onto the PS3 and Xbox 360 on September 3rd.
The control scheme has been completely reworked for consoles and best of all, it will not require an internet connection to play like its PC big brother. You can play online or can have local co-op for some old school adventure. Remember? You used to have friends that would come over to your house and you would play games together? No headsets or racist twelve years old. Good times.
Are you at your limit with 100 friends on Xbox Live? Well Microsoft has heard your frenzied cries of popularity. The Xbox One will now give Live users the ability to have 1000 friends on their account. So for all of you celebrities, internet gurus, journalists and what not that need this many friends today is your day!
I’d like to start by saying that I was not able to watch the presentation “live,” but I was following the event on several gaming sites and social media.
The overall impression I got, and the feeling I arrived at after reading some posts and watching some of the demonstrations, was “Meh. Where are our games? When does it actually come out? Is it E3 yet?”
It is no surprise that the Xbox One will be a media-heavy device, with a large portion of its abilities focused on things other than just playing games. My 360 already spends as much time on Netflix and Hulu as it does facilitating headshots, and Sony’s PS4 reveal set the tone for next-gen integration of web and social media. Considering there is already a Pizza Hut app that lets you order delivery right from your console, things like browsing theater show times and buying tickets are just the next logical step in the process.
There was a lot of talk about games, with numbers being thrown around concerning how many exclusive titles we can expect, how many of those are new IPs, etc. The amazing thing was the sheer lack of footage from those games, or even information about titles; hell guys, I would have taken a teaser logo or two. Halo TV series sounds like a win, but again, that’s only game-related, not an actual game.
All photos courtesy theverge.com
The games that were shown off ranged from: Interesting (Quantum Break); completely expected but pretty (Forza, sports titles); and completely expected, uninteresting, bland and useless (Call of Go Fuck Yourself, Leaning in FPS is Not Something to Be Excited About).
Finally, Microsoft managed to give us absolutely zero info in way of a release date.
So what are my thoughts on this? I would have saved the money and hype for E3, since they’re essentially doing that anyway by holding off on game announcements and a solid release date. I genuinely think the folks in Xbox marketing let the media get to them about how long they were waiting after Sony’s announcement, and the end result was a half-assed presentation that gave me very few reasons to be excited for the Xbox One.
“4/10. Would not waste time on over-hyped presentation again.”
Hey! In case you missed it, Microsoft has a new console, the Xbox One. How about a better look at the console, controller and Kinect? We are a visual society so enjoy!!
Microsoft took the wraps off of their offering with the announcement of the Xbox One. The system, as you can see above, is a sleek, minimalist design with a redesigned controller and Kinect 2.0 coming packed in with the system. No release date or price point was given, but there is plenty of time for that with E3 only a few weeks away.
The system is quite the powerhouse with an 8-core CPU and 8GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive, USB 3.0 using a Blu-Ray drive.
The controller looks slightly larger but looks to have a flatter feel from the side. It has an integrated battery (finally!) and new d-pad which I pray feels better than the 360.
The new Kinect has a 1080p camera and USB 3.0 for a better field of vision and the voice controls are being made more of a focal point in the operation of the system.
The Xbox One can play live TV, games, music and movies all controlled with the voice feature on the new Kinect. During the press conference they demonstrated by saying simple commands like “watch HBO” or “watch CBS”. Not sure how it will work when I say “play College Asian Slumber Party 9”, but we will see.
We will have much more coverage on the Xbox One coming so keep checking back!
