First and truly foremost, I am aware that calling it the XBone raises questions as to my objectivity in this preview. Not so! I just like the word “bone”.
Heh heh.
Bone.
Furthermore…
I am not a gamer. A little Fable here, a little Halo there, nothing too serious. If you sat me down in front of your Call of Duty or Bioshocks, I can guarantee I would disappoint faster than a Subway sandwich. To be perfectly frank, my main use for the Xbox 360 is as a media player. With that in mind, I thought I would take a look at the system whose mere announcement has brought back relevance to the Rick Roll.
First Sight
To make certain that I was taking an unbiased look, when writing this preview I tried to forget everything I’ve ever seen on Reddit. (I would recommend this tactic be used for most daily activities, such as breathing, waking up, and interacting with others.) I steered clear of all material which has been written and read by actual people and went instead, directly into the belly of the beast. XBox.com.
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xboxone/meet-xbox-one
My immediate reaction was this: $500? Does it suck me off?
Good question! Let’s find out.
Take a closer look
Cool. Good. This is the part where you tell me why it’s worth parting with $500 for something I already own which works reasonably well.
“Xbox One is a state-of-the-art gaming console, a new generation TV and movie system and a whole lot more. Gone are the days of switching inputs on your TV to play a game or watch a movie.”
Those days were gone in 2001, Microsoft marketing team. Score 1 for “meh”.
“Xbox One gets to know you. It learns what you like and what you don’t.”
I expect this of a man, not of a gaming console.
“You can chat with your friends on Skype while watching football on TV. Or show off your best game highlights instantly with Game DVR.”
Cool features, if I’m being reasonable (which I’m generally not). These are things I will use once for their novelty, and never touch again. 3 years from now, someone will be all like “hey Sami, let’s watch porn and react together over Skype” and I’ll be all like “dude I only tried that once when I first got it, and it took me half an hour to get it to work, and it’s now lost in a giant swamp of menus… I wouldn’t even know where to begin to look for it.”
^This is 100% guaranteed to happen.
“The completely re-engineered Kinect takes full advantage of all that Xbox One can do. It’s more precise. More responsive. More intuitive. Unparalleled voice, vision, and motion technology lets you reach into games and entertainment like never before.”
Good, because I was under the impression that the first one sucked pretty hard… I never even bothered to buy one. Oh, and I have zero interest with interacting with my television without a remote. Unless I’m like, super hung over.
Or super drunk.
Or in the kitchen.
Dammit. Touche, Microsoft.
SPEC-tickles
I couldn’t find any actual specs on the Xbox website. Granted, I didn’t try THAT hard, but I did poke around for a bit, and no joy. At this point, I decided to look into what others are SAYING the specs are, which is dangerous, yet amusing. I trust IGN though, so I decided to take their word for it and not do any further research myself.
(NOTE: I was distracted here by an ad for Plants vs. Zombies. They recently introduced a slot machine version of this game in casinos nationwide. My advice on that is easy: don’t. It is not fun. You will lose all of your monies and be forced to pawn your ovaries for PvZ money. Buy the game on your Apple device. That is fun.)
http://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-one/Xbox_One_Hardware_Specs
OH LOOK, HARDWARE SPECS. The kind of thing you would expect to find provided by the manufacturer who is actually, you know, selling the damn thing.
-Plays Blu Rays (Like)
-Game DVR (possibly useless, but nonetheless Like)
-Components (Like)
(Admittedly, I don’t really know this stuff. The RAM, CPU, and HD all sound reasonable. Not like anything I’d expect to get when buying a new cutting-edge gaming PC, but I suppose I’m asking it to do less than my PC.)
(OH WAIT. I’m not. I’m asking it to do EVERYTHING.)
(There is talk about utilizing Microsoft cloud storage in the future to offset the large amount of storage space which will be required, as files grow larger and more DLC and games are offered. Their imposing optimism, however, seems indicative of an uncertain time frame. My supposition is that we are likely to see models offering an upgraded hard drive as with previous iterations of the Xbox.)
(I got a thesaurus for my birthday 
)
-Smartglass (Like)
-Cloud Storage (After having “the cloud” explained to me by several professionals in the industry, I have concluded that it has something to do with computers. Like.)
-Connection, a highly contested point. According to the Chief Product Officer: “you have to go online to get the software update for day one, then you wouldn’t have to be connected after that.” I see no change. (Default Like.)
-In Capitalist America, TV watches YOU!
In response to overwhelming social outcry about the security concerns raised by what is effectively an always-on home monitoring system, Microsoft has assented to offer a “completely off” option for their Kinect on games where it is not required. This is a good selling point, however, I for one was looking forward to reading about the NSA’s new “Kinect Roulette” program. C’est la vie.
Final Thoughts
I was too lazy figure out how they have integrated TV with the XBone, but as someone with no television provider, I am excited to find out what they have to offer.
I will probably break down and buy this for everyday media use, and just use my XBox 360 for nostalgia gaming, thus becoming the new generation Cat Lady.
So it goes.