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".
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