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Microsoft officially announces the Xbox One

by on21 May 2013

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The first "all-in-one" box


As announced earlier, Microsoft has now finally unveiled its next-generation console, the Xbox One. Although it did not shed much light regarding the actual architecture, Microsoft did show a lot of features, UI and bunch of upcoming games.

While there have be a lot of rumors regarding the actual name of Microsoft's next-generation Xbox console, including Xbox 720, Xbox Infinity and Xbox Next, it appears that Microsoft managed to surprise everyone with the Xbox One name. Although not as original as we expected, the name does not come as surprise since Microsoft's Don Mattrick describe it as an "all-in-one" box. Of course, the new Xbox One also got the new controller and the new Kinect.

As you can see from the pictures below, the console itself has an interesting design with a sleek all-black look. The left front side is dominated by a slot-in BluRay drive while the right front side features a logo and what appears to be a touch sensitive surface but that is still not clear as Kinect and its new gestures and voice control was used for everything during the presentation, including the "Xbox ON" powering up command.

The new UI design of the Xbox 360 Dashboard now looks a lot like Windows 8 with its tile-design and it honestly doesn't come as a surprise since Microsoft will try to merge as much Windows-related things with the upcoming Xbox One, at least if the x86 AMD-inside rumors are confirmed.

Specification wise, the new Xbox One features, what Microsoft calls, the new Xbox architecture. Although it did not reveal any specifics, Microsoft did note that it will feature an 8-core CPU, 8GB of system memory, 500GB HDD, Blu-ray drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi Direct, HDMI in/out and USB 3.0 support. In general, this sounds a lot like what we seen at Sony's presentation and we would not be surprised if these two end up to be quite similar. The Xbox One architecture is the key here as, according to the presentation, will make developers' lives very easy. It includes Xbox layer, Windows Kernel and a third layer that connects these two for multi-tasking and app switching fun.

We were quite surprised when Microsoft decided to talk about the release date but it was only ready to say that it will be ready later this year. In any case, Microsoft promised more info during E3 show that kicks off on June 11th and it will be a quite an interesting battle between the new Playstation and Xbox.

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Last modified on 21 May 2013
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