So 2013 saw the release and battle of next-generation consoles. No matter where you’re from it was pretty big news.
Big enough to even serve as a theme in South Park‘s brilliant season seventeen three-parter that threw the console wars into the mix with Game of Thrones and Black Friday madness. Both the Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One rock some pretty advanced features, but of course both have issues. Let’s dig into what makes the Xbox One great, as well as its flaws.
Xbox One has voice recognition software that controls the console.
This makes it easy for the console’s user to give the Xbox One clear voice commands that it can perform, such as “Xbox on” or “Xbox, TV”. Because of the new built-in Kinect, the Xbox One can also be controlled with gestures, like a simple sweep of the hand, or by grabbing and dragging things.
The new Kinect has a 1080p camera and thus offers a high standard of motion tracking so that it can detect even the smallest wrist movements, which means that the possibilities for gesture control are great, and many when waving individual numbers can mean individual commands.
The new Kinect is also smart enough to recognize different people by identifying their faces. It syncs and stores this information with that person’s Gamertag and Xbox Live account should they log into a friend’s console.
This means that if multiple people are playing on a console that has all the information stored, the camera on the Kinect can identify which player is holding the controller to do things like update the game’s score.
Xbox One also has a better and more improved version of Skype –
although this is not surprising, since both are made by Microsoft. The new version of Skype released for Xbox One has an original HD video conferencing mode, which works through the updated Kinect. You can also skype with your friends while watching TV or playing a game.
While the price of Xbox Live hasn’t changed, there are a lot of new features that this version brings to the table. It now runs 300,000 servers – that’s more than the entire world’s computing power in 1999! All your data – from movies, TV, games, apps, music, and more – will be stored on Microsoft’s servers in something called “The Cloud”.
There are also several new features to Xbox Live that come with the Xbox One.
The well-worn five-star reputation system has been greatly updated, with more consistent filtering of the players with a lower reputation. This means that all the trolls will end up locked in dungeons away from any decent people who are actually trying to play a game.
Finding an internet lobby has also changed. Used to be you just walked into a lobby and waited for players. With the new Party Scout system on Xbox One, you can specify exactly what you’re looking for: people with certain DLC, age, skill, level, language, and more! Thanks to the new integrated entertainment features of the Xbox One, players can now switch to TV or the Internet while the device continues to hunt a lobby.
Xbox One also comes with a new Game DVR feature,
which means you can easily record and share your gameplay. Because of Twitch TV, players will also be able to stream any game live to online viewers, as well as be allowed to view other players’ live streams.
The rewards for completing achievements have also changed, as has the addition of new achievements. They will now give you things like artwork, card unlocks and character and game unlocks. Every app on Xbox One can do this, not just the games, even if only the games earn you Gamerscore. When starting a game, Xbox One now shows the player how close they are to getting certain achievements, as well as how close their friends are to unlocking them as well.
Xbox One also has a new mode which means it automatically downloads and installs system software updates when connected to the internet meaning no more waiting for the updates to download and install when you’ve just been waiting for the console. It also creates a personalized, ad-free home screen for each individual player.
The new Xbox One has removed some of the more frustrating features of previous generation games. One such thing is the non-regionalization of games. This means that any game from any country can be played on any Xbox One, granted the game’s publisher hasn’t restricted it. home EV charger