Xbox One
The Xbox One is an upcoming video game console from Microsoft. Announced May 21, 2013, it is the successor to the Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox family of consoles. The Xbox One will directly compete with Sony's PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's Wii U, as part of the eighth generation of video game consoles.
Similarly to the PlayStation 4, the Xbox One will feature compatibility with the x86-64 instruction set, a Blu-ray Disc drive and 8 GB of unified memory in the form of high performance DDR3. It is scheduled for release by the end of 2013.
Hardware
The Xbox One has an APU with eight x86-64 cores, 8 GB of DDR3 RAM with a memory bandwidth of 68.3 GB/s,a 500 GB non-replaceable hard drive, and a Blu-ray Disc optical drive. Three GB of the RAM will be reserved for apps and OS, leaving 5 GB for games. The graphics processing unit (GPU) is based on an AMD GCN architecture with 12 compute units, which have a total of 768 cores, providing a estimated peak theoretical power of 1.23 TFLOPS.
The Xbox One will support 4K resolution (3840×2160) video output and 7.1 surround sound. Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of marketing and strategy for Microsoft, has stated that there is no hardware restriction that would prevent games from running at 4K resolution. The Xbox One will support HDMI 1.4 for both input and output. The Xbox One does not have a video output for either composite video or component video.
XboxOne PlayStation4
Price TBA TBA
Availability 2013 Holiday 2013
Blu-ray Yes Yes
Hard drive Built-in (500GB) Built-in ("huge")
Motion control New Kinect (included) Move controller
CPU 8-core x86 AMD 8-core x86 AMD
RAM 8GB GDDR3 8GB GDDR5
USB 3.0 Yes Yes
Wireless Yes (802.11n w/Wi-Fi Direct) Yes (802.11n)
Gigabit Ethernet Yes Yes
HDMI Yes (in and out) Yes
Suspend/resume Yes Yes
Background downloading Yes Yes
Features:
Media inter-connectivity
Similarly to Windows 8, the Xbox One will be able to snap applications (such as music, video, Skype, and Internet Explorer) to the side of the screen as a form of multitasking. The Xbox One will also be able to serve as a pass-through for an existing television set-top box over HDMI. This functionality allows users to watch live TV from their existing provider through the console, and access features such as show recommendations, an electronic program guide, and voice commands. The set-top box is controlled by the console through either an IR blaster or HDMI-CEC.
Voice control
The console will feature a similar, albeit richer set of voice control abilities than those found in the first generation Kinect. This will allow users to control Xbox functions via voice command. All voice control will be coordinated through the Kinect, and with this ability Skype will also become a function of the new Xbox.
Controller
The Xbox One controller maintains the overall layout found in the Xbox 360 design. The directional pad has been changed to a four-way design, and the battery compartment is slimmer. Menu and View buttons have replaced the Start and Back buttons. Each trigger will also feature independent rumble motors called "Impulse Triggers", which allows developers to program directional vibration. One trigger can be made to vibrate when firing a gun, or both can work together to create feedback that indicates the direction of an incoming hit. It remains to be seen exactly how developers will use the new feature, however.
Kinect
Main article: Kinect
The Xbox One will ship with an updated version of the Kinect sensor; the new Kinect uses a 1080p wide-angle time-of-flight camera (in comparison to the VGA resolution of the previous version), and processes 2 gigabits of data per second to read its environment. The new Kinect has greater accuracy over its predecessor, can track up to 6 skeletons at once, perform heart rate tracking, and track gestures performed with an Xbox One controller. The Kinect microphone will remain active at all times so it can receive voice commands from the user when needed, even when the console is in sleep mode (so it can be woken back up with a command).
The Xbox One will not function unless the Kinect sensor is plugged in. However, users retain the software capability to turn off all Kinect functions while the sensor remains connected to the console.
A Windows-compatible version of the new Kinect will be released in 2014.
Operating system
The device will run three operating systems: Xbox OS, an OS based on the Windows kernel, and another OS that will allow the other two operating systems to communicate by virtualisation (as a hypervisor). Such integration will include features like snapped Skype calls while in game.
The Windows edition on the Xbox will not be compatible with standard Windows apps, though developers will be able to port them over with little effort.
Xbox Live
The Xbox Live service is scaled up to use 300,000 servers for Xbox One users from 15,000 that handle the Xbox 360 users. Cloud storage will be offered to save music, movies, games and saved content and developers will be able to use Live servers to offer more "living and persistent worlds.The service will still be subscription-based. The friends list will expanded to 1,000 friends.
Digital video recorder
Included in the system is a digital video recorder (DVR) which allows the recording of gameplay. These videos can then be edited with built-in video editing tools and shared with friends through the Xbox Live service. At this point the DVR will not be able to record video from cable, over the air, satellite, etc. Microsoft entertainment boss Yusuf Mehdi said "Microsoft would be reaching out to the TV guys to get additional features, like DVR recording and playback".
