On The New Xbox

Before I start I'd just like to point out that yesterday I passed two hundred page views on this blog. Is that good? I think so! Woo! As I said when I started this, the entire purpose of this blog was to be a bit of an outlet for me and as an avenue to practice writing, so anything beyond that would just be a bonus. So I just want to give a super big thanks to anyone who's been reading, I hope you've found at least something to enjoy! Anyway:

WELL I was planning on posting something else today, but then I remembered the new Xbox reveal was today, so I thought I might as well post some thoughts on that. Going in, I wasn't really super excited and didn't really have any expectations. I thought the PS4 reveal was pretty okay, but nothing really made me jump out of my seat, so that's pretty much what I figured would happen again. In the end I guess I was a bit more pleasantly surprised than I thought I would be.

So I'll start with the name: Xbox One. It's okay I guess, nice and simple. Beforehand I was thinking that it would be hilarious if they called it the Xbox Five, just to upstage the PS4. It would make absolutely no sense, but it would have been just like the ultimate middle finger to Sony. I GUESS it's better they took more of a high road, though. So yeah, I'm okay with the name. None of the rumors for the name I've seen nor anything I can think of would be better.

Then they talked about the 'all-in-oneness' of the machine - you can easily and quickly switch between TV, games, movies, and music. One thing that annoyed me a bit here was how they kept talking about 'my experiences' and 'what I love'. You have absolutely no idea what either of those things are, Don Mattrick. BUT in the end the easy swapping thing and multitasking is kind of neat. I don't even watch TV now, but I suppose if I had this new Xbox I might. Probably depends on what kind of subscription service there is, they didn't talk about that at all. However the announcement of the new Halo TV series makes the TV thing a bit more exciting for me, as Forward Unto Dawn was pretty great.

They also talked a lot about sports stuff. So that exists. Moving on.

They showed two additional games to the sports ones, Forza and Quantum Break. Well I guess Forza is kind of a sports game too. The closeups of the car looked pretty nice. Quantum Break is a new IP from Remedy, but they didn't really show enough to get me excited about it. This reveal seemed to purposely not really be about the games, though, which was a bit disappointing. They did announce that there would be fifteen exclusive games in One's first year, and that eight of those would be new IPs. That (and the last part in particular) made me feel a lot better, as it looks like Microsoft is not going to lose their focus on games, as many feared they might with all this 'all-in-one entertainment system' stuff. The games will be shown off at E3 by the sounds of it, so I'm looking forward to that now.

Then there was the Call of Duty stuff, which didn't interest me very much, I've just never gotten into that series. The stuff they talked about how they were able to do more with the graphics and everything like that, if extrapolated to other games, was kind of cool though. And there's the dog! I bet when Peter Molyneux saw that he crapped his pants. The one thing I will say about the new CoD, though, it's name. Ghosts. GhoSTS. Kind of awkward to say, really...I dunno maybe it's just me.

Besides that, they made Kinect better I guess. It ships with every system now though, so that's kind of neither here nor there in my mind. I'll have to see what game developers have been doing with it to determine whether or not I care about it. The new controller looks pretty good though, looks like they made improvements without messing up what works. Thank god for that new D-Pad.

So yeah, as I said, the reveal was better than I expected, though I wasn't expecting much. Looking forward to seeing what games are unveiled at E3. Still to early to call it between One and PS4 for me, or even if I'll get either. Should be an interesting year in games regardless, though.