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Xbox One Specs

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Microsoft did a great job revealing to us the new Xbox One, here are some of the specs that will be in this system coming later this year:

This “all in one” system will work seamlessly together for games, entertainment and television.

Microsoft promises that you’re “going to have a relationship with your TV.”

Voice commands can be used to go from TV to game to internet without any lag, as was demonstrated. You will be able to use universal gestures such as swipe, and grab and pan. Skype will also be a part of Xbox One.

With the new Kinect, you won’t need to log in manually, it will recognize you and log you in. Microsoft says that it will be able to read your heartbeat and has a better understanding of rotational movement.

TV on Xbox sounds like its going to be pretty cool. Not only can you use it to watch regular channels it seems as though they are creating a channel of their own, as Steven Spielberg announced  a new Halo TV series. The NFL has also joined Xbox and showed us some interaction with fantasy stats and using Skype with NFL broadcasts.

There will be 15 new games within the first year, eight of which will be brand new franchises. Forza 5 was shown, and a new game called Quantum Break.

For XboxLive they promise 300,000 servers for Xbox One

This is all just some of the info we got, more coming at E3 June 11-13.

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The Next Generation Xbox, We Have Questions

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(Image Credit: International Business Times)

We are now only one day away from Microsoft’s May 21st event that will begin at 10 AM PDT on Xbox Live, Xbox.com and Spike TV.  This event is where the next generation Xbox is to be unveiled and of course we are all just filled with anticipation and feeling anxious as we await any new details about the PS4’s competition. If you haven’t already you can check out Major Nelson’s latest podcast which will fill you in a bit on how things are going come together in the next few weeks for Xbox.

Here’s few questions to get us thinking about the next-gen Xbox:

Many Xbox fans are hoping that the new Xbox isn’t “Online Only” and there are a few rumors that say it won’t be and hopefully that’s the case. I think a console that locks you into online only mode at this point in time is self destructive, I don’t think that the gaming community is ready for that yet.

Will Microsoft include a Blu-Ray player in the Xbox (infinity, 720)? There’s no way to know unless they tell us but I’m rooting for “yes”, because it makes sense and it would be nice to have the extra benefits of being able to play Blu-Ray movies on your console along with having the extra capacity for gaming media.

Will there be Skype integration? This would be a great social feature to add into the mix and I hope it makes it’s way in. Besides, Skype and Microsoft are now one in the same.

Will there be Solid State Drives? I haven’t heard any rumors on this but it would be really nice to have an SSD onboard especially with an increased focus on downloadable content. Faster load times and just overall better performance, let’s keep our fingers crossed.

What about a new version of Kinect, what will it look like and how will it be integrated? Some rumors say it will be built into the console itself. If you missed our earlier post you can check out Illumiroom, which is an augmented reality device that projects images around your television and it works with Kinect technology. This could very well be an accessory for the new Xbox.

Finally, what will it look like and what will be under the hood? Will Microsoft show off the goods? How much muscle with the new console have and will it best the PS4?  Maybe we will see a console this time, Sony has yet to show us the PS4’s hardware, which is kind of a let down, even though it probably shouldn’t matter but heck, we want to see it!

Be sure to check back with us as we will be rolling out a rundown of the next-gen Xbox in the days to come.

 

Playstation 4 Will Stick To Blu-Ray

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As the popularity of digital downloads has increased over the years many of us were wondering if the next-gen consoles will focus less on actual discs. We keep seeing more and more content available for download and some games aren’t even shipping manuals anymore, instead they are available in a digital format.

However, the Playstation 4 will still rely on Blu-Ray as it primary game delivery medium. In a recent interview with IGN, Sony’s Jim Ryan mentions this about the format.

Clearly, and this applies not just to games but to pretty much every form of entertainment, there is a trend to increased digital consumption, and that is happening now on PS3 and will continue and will probably accelerate on PS4, but the primary delivery mechanism for the big games on the PS4 platform will continue to be Blu-Ray discs, for the foreseeable future.

I’m not surprised by this at all and actually I’m quite thrilled to hear that they are sticking with Blu-Ray. First of all, our broadband still lacks the bandwidth that’s necessary to make digital downloads attractive. With some games possibly being as large as 40 gigabytes and up, something Jim Ryan says he’s encouraging developers to do, there’s no way you can download that in a reasonable amount of time. The Blu-Ray disc is still reaching it’s peak potential and has plenty of years ahead of it.

I’m still quite fond of having the case and actual game disc. I never feel like I should have to pay full price for a digital download, it feels like I’m not getting the whole game. It’s a strange thought to imagine that one day we may not be using discs at all. Let’s not forget to mention that if we go all digital that will also be the death of the used game business.

At least for now we will be living in a hybrid world of both digital and physical content for not just our games, but movies and music as well. One thing I am wondering about now is whether or not Microsoft will be using Blu-Ray or some other type of proprietary media.