The May 21st announcement ( #XboxReveal ) concerned the new generation of Microsoft gaming/entertainment console: the Xbox One (for all in one).

Xbox One (clic to search on Amazon.com)

More than a console, Microsoft seems to want to make a central element of the entertainment in the lounge of the Xbox One, to the point leaving less room for game in their presentation… Can be a “disease” of this console generation or a change of approach, more turned to “the ecosystem” and the services.

But what’s in the beast?

• CPU 8 cœurs;
• 8 Go of RAM (DDR3);
• Disque Dur de 500 Go;
• Lecteur Blu-Ray / DVD;- WiFi (802.11N) / WiFi-Direct;
• USB 3.0;
• HDMI 1.4;

No more characteristics… Maybe be more in E3, with a more susceptible public target in this kind of thing. What is safe, it’s that there is no backward compatibility with Xbox 360 games. I find that it’s a pity (and I am not the only one).

Add it a game pad which changes little, Kinect 2.0 native for a stronger integration of the movement and the voice. The whole under “Windows 8 like” with a “modern ui” interface (logical homogenization of the Windows 8 PC / TABLETS and Windows Phone experience). We find consumer services (video and music = entertainment), access to on-line TV, the audio / video communication, etc.

But let us be clearly, to manage to be a good multimedia center, it should not have the defect of the Xbox 360: the noise of functioning!

For the ” line up ” of release, it was completed by big brands… On that side it is supplied enough 😉

Thus, for the independent or amateur programmers, we are a little left unsatisfied. We suspect that Marketplace will be, but no more information on Xbox Live, the successes, the scores, the method of payment. Even there it will be necessary to wait… E3, BUILD, or later?

Next to it, it leaves some uncertainties as the connection perms (or not, or not really), the second-hand games, the look, the microphone “in sleep mode” of Kinect or the aspect “independent developer friendly”… Of a certain side, nothing is engraved in the marble on that side, it is of the software, that updates in case of big general outcry.

In the end, this big revelation leaves many things in suspends… The next months are going to be interesting 🙂