The Complete Xbox

Microsoft has entered the arena with its newest monster, the Xbox One.

Today was written to be a day of epic proportions. Anybody who’s involved in gaming, either playing or developing, was ready for the next Xbox to be revealed.

Don Mattrick, the President of the Interactive Entertainment Business for at Microsoft, started the presentation describing the new system as being an “all in one” experience that will be “Simple, Instant, and Complete.” With this, he finally let us in as to what the next Xbox will be named: The Xbox One

After Mr. Mattrick set the tone, Yusef Mehdi, the head of the entertainment side of things at Microsoft, took the stage to demonstrate some of the new features of the Kinect 2.0. Instant recognition will be implemented with the new system. It will not only automatically log into your account and such, but it will also remember exactly what you were last doing before the last system shutdown. A new section to the dashboard was also put on display, Trending. This section highlights the most popular videos, games, and movies among not only the world, but your friends, updating at every moment. Mr. Mehdi also showed us the Instant Switching function. With this new function you can switch to different things on your Xbox, and to different inputs on your television making remote controllers a thing of the past. Speaking of TV, the Xbox One will also feature the Xbox Guide. The name should be familiar to 360 users, but it will have a different purpose. The guide will work as an on-board TV Guide so you can see exactly what’s on live TV. Combine this with the Instant Switching mechanic, surfing for your favorite shows will be at its easiest.

The floor was then given to Marc Whitten, the GM of Xbox Live, to let us into the guts of the Xbox One:

• 8 GB of RAM and 5 Million Independent Transistors
• Silent Operation so Halo games won’t be interrupted by the hoarse cries of the system, since, like me, you probably left it on for too long.
• 3 Operating Systems (Xbox OS, Windows, and an OS designed to enable multiple programs to run at once)
• Kinect 2.0 shipping with EVERY Xbox One console. The sensor itself is capable of capturing a wide, 1080p view, new skeletal readouts and joint movement detection.
• New Controller with impact triggers (finger vibration, anyone?) and a new, and more precise directional pad.
• Smartglass will act as the Xbox One’s best friend with lag-free connectivity between devices.

Xbox Live is also getting a boost in servers to 300,000 independent servers, enabling cloud gaming, built-in game capture and playback, better matchmaking options, bigger matches, and persistent worlds.

After the meat and potato section, Andrew Wilson from EA, sporting his amazing chin, graced the stage with an new engine for EA’s lineup of sports games. He calls the new engine EA Sports IGNITE. Player intelligence, player motion, and living worlds were the focal point of the engine’s trailer. Not to mention, that kick to the face was awesomeness!

Phil Spencer, the GM of Microsoft Studios, came out to talk exclusives. He guaranteed that 15 exclusives will hit the Xbox One within the first quarter of its life span, which was a perfect segway into the first exclusive, Forza 5. Long story short, it looks astonishing! Then we were all treated to a teaser of a new game from Remedy called Quantum Break. There is not too much on this game yet, but believe that there will be much more info about it at E3.

By the way, Steven Spielburg is making a live action Halo television series. Just a heads up.

So the price is yet to be determined, but we can all be confident that the price for all models will be revealed at E3 in a few weeks. Also, to ease any stress that gamers have about online connectivity, the Xbox One will not have to be connected to the internet all of the time. The only requirement is the Kinect 2.0.

For more on the Xbox One, and all of your next-gen info, keep it locked here at Brutal Gamer!