Introduction
The new Xbox that emerged at launch was both traditional and under-featured, a disappointment borne of a company reeling from the negative reaction to its original vision and trying to offer something else in a short space of time.
In a now infamous u-turn, Microsoft scrapped plans for the always-online revolution that would have allowed for disc-less play, easy game sharing on other owner’s consoles, mandatory system scans and an end to second-hand purchases as we know them.
A year and two months later, however, the Xbox One has slowly grown into a true contender to the PS4‘s throne.
The Xbox One is not just a games machine, it’s also a clever and powerful media hub designed to sit at the centre of your digital home – or at least it would be, if Australians had access to many of the features that overseas Xbox users are currently enjoying. Microsoft has finally announced that its TV service OneGuide will soon Australia.
Regardless, the last year has seen the situation improve for Australians in many ways, and not just in terms of streaming media content. That’s not to say that the console can rest easy – there’s still a long way to go until we see Xbox One’s full potential.
YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSBlm0pgxno
It’s quite the legacy to live up to. For long stretches of the last console generation, the Xbox was king. While the Wii was everywhere, and millions of gamers and AV enthusiasts eventually picked up a PlayStation 3, for a while there the phrase “let’s play some Xbox” was almost interchangeable with “let’s play some video games.”
It was the console that brought Xbox Live into maturity, setting the standard for the online experience on a gaming console. It taught couch gamers to tolerate the tech support look of a headset in exchange for voice communication, and that you get what you pay for: a year of Xbox Live Gold might have cost as much as a game, but the service was more robust than Sony’s PSN.
The original Xbox One release date was 22 November 2013, launching with the new version of Kinect on board by default. These days of course, Microsoft is offering a Kinect-free option, which has proven popular because of the bundle’s cheaper price and higher performance. The standard Xbox One console can now be purchased for about $499, while the version with Kinect costs about a hundred dollars more.
Make no mistake though, Kinect is baked deep into the Xbox One experience, with voice and gesture controls at the heart of everything should you choose to use them.
So if you’re not going to play a game, you don’t need to use the excellent gamepad to turn the console on or navigate to your entertainment of choice.
