With every initial reveal for “the next big thing,” in this case Microsoft’s first new console in eight years, we’re always going to be left out of some key details. Price, release date, the specifics. Microsoft threw a lot a us from Redmond this morning:
-A New 8-Core CPU with 8GB of RAM, 500GB HDD Storage, and a Blu-Ray drive, and USB 3.0.
-A new Kinect that ships with EVERY box.
-A new Halo TV show produced by Steven Spielberg.
-EA Sports…stuff. (Yay for new engines!)
-Something about cloud storage and computing?
-Oh yeah, and next year’s Call of Duty.
So where does that leave the gamer? Multiple presenters during the conference reminded us of Microsoft’s core goal: to make the Xbox One the center of the living room. This is also Nintendo’s Wii U goal, and Sony’s ideal PS4 goal. With that, Xbox One is clearly in the lead with immersing television, Skype, Bing, online streaming…
…oh yeah. AND gaming.
We here at Dual Pixels were a bit let down. With PS4’s reveal in February, Sony spent a good 2+ hours convincing it’s audience that they plan to take gaming seriously by blending the power of social media WITH gaming. Not only that, but we saw a variety of demos for many different games and tech demos from multiple developers looking to push the envelope of technology further than the eye can see. They radically redesigned the controller and added touch-capability along with a button just for sharing your experiences directly from the console to the internet. They also teased the capability of being able to remotely control a friend’s controller inside and outside of a game.
Didn’t they also have a few minutes of next-gen character model admiration?
(Top, Xbox. Bottom, PS4)
Well of course they did. It’s new technology! But Sony shows much more promise in delivering content to GAMERS by E3. Microsoft spent an hour telling us how it plans to take over the living room next year, which means getting non-gamers interested too.
And as I’m writing this, Sony’s stock as gone up by 8.5 percent (and counting). Microsoft’s has gone down by half of a percent. The “always on” controversy hasn’t been addressed yet, but it seems Microsoft has confirmed a way to get around used games. We haven’t even SEEN the Playstation 4 yet, but it seems this will be the biggest console war yet.
