BLOG -- My Impressions of the Xbox One Reveal (May 21, 2013)

Yes, I know that I am super-late to the party on this, and I know that I am super-late with last week's blog (unfortunately, Time is just not on my side at all these weeks / months).

But I'm still gonna blog about this, darn it! I wanted to blog about this ever since I watched the press conference. It's Friday and I'm home, so nothing is gonna stop me now.

Anywho, a little more than a week ago, Microsoft held a press conference which revealed their new upcoming console: Xbox One.

If you missed the conference, you can still watch it here.

After watching the conference, here are my three words to describe it: "Sports", "Multi-Task", and "No". And here are my reasons for my choice of these words.

"Sports": A lot of their features seem to align well with those into sports, especially watching sports games. Like, as they're watching their sports games, they can check and follow how their players are doing in their Fantasy League, and Xbox One can keep tabs / clips on the chosen players so they can be watched at a later time. I don't think those features apply to or work with anything else.

"Multi-Task": So while you're watching TV, you can also browse the internet. I think you can also talk on Skype as well. You can also switch between watching TV, playing video games, listening to music, or watching a movie at an immediate speed -- like flipping channels.

"No": Just no. I reject this. This gaming console does not align with me.

Now... I can see the benefits behind the Xbox One. It's great as an added TV interface (because being able to watch TV and use the internet at the same time on the same screen just sounds amazing), but... it just seems that the major selling point is the home entertainment and media, NOT the gaming component. To me, gaming is the secondary focus to Xbox One, which I find really disappointing.

I won't go into my other gaming related issues with the Xbox One, like not being able to lend somebody a physical copy of my game for more than a day without that person having to pay full game price on it (seriously, what the heck?!), or how the Kinnect will always have to be connected (my TV already has a sensor bar on it -- the Wii's sensor bar) or how indie game companies can't self publish their games on Xbox One while the Wii U and PS4 allow it. I should also mention that the "Xbox One" is a horrible name for Microsoft to name their 3rd gaming console.

It's just disappointing.

The only thing that gets me excited about the Xbox One is Call of Duty: Ghosts. That game just looks very promising and amazing.

I guess to conclude, I predict that the Xbox One will sell poorly on release day -- at least with the core gamer audience. With those who are more sports-oriented, this will sell like hotcakes. I think that is Xbox One's target audience, anyway. At least, it seems that way.


Thanks for reading my blog! Apologies again on the lateness. If you disagree with anything I've said or if you just want to leave a comment, feel free! My end-of-month blog will be posted later tonight so stay tuned! :)