Xbox One

The new Xbox has been announced: the Xbox One. So what do you guys think? It's times like these that I find MSXL to be the best place for some good discussion on current events in the gaming industry. Let's do what we do best? [b]update:[/b] holy cow, the new [url=http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xboxone/how-it-games]"Smart Match"[/url] system sounds great! seems like there are still some surprises that weren't mentioned in the main keynote. [b]update 2[/b] HOLY BALLS! Check out [url=http://gizmodo.com/kinect-2-full-video-walkthrough-the-xbox-sees-you-like-509155673]this demo[/url] of the Kinect 2! My thoughts on the hardware: + Great design. The people that are complaining that it looks too "boxy" or too much like a VCR/DVR don't understand the entire purpose of set-top entertainment boxes: to blend in. The original white Xbox was a giant, curvy white and glowing green eyesore in the middle of my entertainment center. This new Xbox won't have that problem. + The controller looks great. They didn't change too much, but thank god the D-pad looks like a real D-pad finally. The idea of force feedback on the triggers also sounds like a cool idea. No stupid screens or any other frills, just what looks like a damn solid controller. Awesome. + New Kinect looks beefier and seems more accurate. More voice commands is a good thing, as is more intuitive speech pattern recognition (not having to always say "Xbox" before saying everything). Also, being to finally turn on the Xbox with my voice sounds great! + Blu-ray! Finally! My thoughts on OS: - Cable-based entertainment is slowly dying as people turn to online content/streaming. I can't help but feel that basing your new features on the idea that everyone has Cable kind of alienates a growing base of users that don't have cable. I've never had cable, and I have a growing number of friends that are dropping their pricey subscription fees for more convenient means of entertainment. + Multitasking and "snapping" content looks cool. - The dashboard still looks overly busy and confusing. ? Really hoping the in-game dashboard doesn't suck terribly anymore. It's currently laggy as hell and overly complicated. I hope the new overlay is fast and intuitive. + More than 99 friends (10x more)? FINALLY. My thoughts on the games: - What games? - Great. Call of Duty. Whoop-dee-fukin-doo. - Great, a nice looking car game that looks like all the other nice looking car games for the last two generations. + You can play games while they're installing? Nice. + Updates install automatically in the background? Nice. ? Games are linked to your account and don't require a disc? Running a game without needing the disc is great. I don't mind them being linked to the account I guess? ? You have to pay a fee if you share the game with a friend and they want to play it on their account. I understand why this is being done, but the question is: how much is this fee? + DOGS!!! Other thoughts: ? Yay for a Halo show that's probably executively produced by Spielberg which means he actually has almost nothing to do with it! All around it was a boring event, but mainly because MS seems to be saving the "good stuff" (aka, GAMES) for their big E3 event coming up in 19 days. So I will probably end up being more excited after that event... as long as there's not a ton of Kinect garbage.