There are quite a few negative comments, not so much about what Microsoft delivered with the Xbox One this week, as how it delivered it and explained it. Gamers are left unsure of what type of performance it will give them, supporters of the Microsoft vision of Xbox Live and the video store, are wondering if they have to buy this beast just to watch video.
It is fairly clear with a little inspection of the spec that this product is the Xbox 720 as gamers were calling it, the gaming platform, while many believe that there is likely to be another Xbox which offers a fraction of the gaming power, and which is only like a Roku box for accessing Live video content, launched once the bulk of the gamers have gone and bought the ‘right’ Xbox.
We had perhaps thought that the video oriented cheaper device would come first, but now we think hard about that, that would make no sense. There may only BE one device and perhaps the pricing makes this cheap enough for everyone, and perhaps you need this kind of power to drive Kinect 2 and voice recognition ‘ but we don’t think so.
The spec had been predicted as coming with an ARM processor, but instead it came out, more or less, with the same AMD chip as the PlayStation 4. There are some people who think subsequent models might shift to each new generation of X86 power, so Intel next and then a new AMD chip once again. We’re not sure.
Both devices use 4 cpus cores in a unit and operate two units, for a total of 8 processing CPU cores, but we don’t know enough about their coupling to know whether or not they will behave like two coupled chunks of power, or 8 separate chunks. We suspect that the answer is both. We would think that down the road a single one of these chips might turn up in a second Xbox Live device, which plays games, but not the high end photo-realistic games, and mostly shows video.
The AMD Jaguar chip that drives it is an adaptation of its popular Bobcat Core used for gaming except this is cut in 28 nanometer geometry and gives about a 20% power hike.
It is the commitments that make the device what it is ‘ Microsoft has committed to make sure that this thing gets TV, without a set top, in virtually every country it launches it, and that includes cable, satellite or IPTV or digital terrestrial.
The biggest new gimmick is the fact that you can say Xbox On and it turns itself on, and of course when your mother says ‘Do not turn that Xbox on,’ it will also turn itself on.
The gimmick that impressed all the gamers was the next gen Kinect, that allows you to do fairly complex tasks with multiple degrees of freedom just by waving your hands at it. To go through a door in a game, you can unlock it, pull the handle and step in. Kinect 2.0 will also respond to voice commands. Voice commands are being used throughout smart TVs to create the next generation interface, and we’re afraid we think this is a blind alley. We saw gesture control for a TV, and it never took off. We suspect that voice control will go the same way. But it may do wonders for a game, as Kinect has.
We would make this observation ‘ both Microsoft and Sony each won fans with their previous generation of devices, but this was not down to the hardware ‘ they won them on which games could be run, at which time on them, and their exclusive games ‘ so both players have dumped their previous approach of differentiating their top end device and just agreed that they would source in a similar fashion to a similar power. Sony appears to have put a little more GPU processing power into its box, but it’s an arbitrary difference which may have no real effect on performance.
Gamers universally moaned about the games that are ready for the device, and moaned, as they did on prior generation devices, that there was no game play shown at launch, but tidied up video clips of what game play might be like. No-one wants to show their hand too early. Our guess is that this box will be substantially cheaper to build that both the previous generation devices and certainly cheaper than the Cell chip that drove the PS3, which it tuned out was a power extravagance and did not translate into increased sales.
The feature list for the Xbox One was straight forward, you get TV, wherever you are; you can turn it on with a voice command; the device multi-tasks, so you can do two things at once and switch between them. It has built in HD Skype, it shows trends in the gaming as well as the video viewing of your friends.
The fact that Stephen Spielberg will make a TV version of Halo, does nothing really for gamers, but got one of the movie all-time greats into the launch; the interactive NFL American football game is more of a draw. Oh and the device lets you use cloud storage for games and movies in a personalized profile.
The system has put some intelligence into matching your player skills with remote online gamers, at the same level, and the system has a games DVR, so you can store any really good moves in games to show people later, and of course it has SmartGlass.
Microsoft figures it has waited long enough to get over the embarrassment of backing the wrong blue laser DVD variant last time, and has finally put a Blu-ray DVD into its box, same as Sony, and the device has a new controller, which boasts
40 design innovations, updated directional pad, thumb stick and ergonomic fit, and the new vibrating impulse triggers.
Xbox One will launch in markets around the world later this year. No prices, no idea of initial volumes, no idea of video initiatives, and no gaming shown live. You’d almost think that Microsoft hasn’t finished the device yet.