Nobody that plays video games can pretend for a second that they weren’t excited about the unveiling of Microsoft’s next generation of consoles. Or at least curious. Ever since Sony’s PlayStation 4 announcement and press conference earlier this year, everyone with an ear to the ground in the gaming world has been waiting with bated breath to see what Microsoft’s next move was going to be. With less than three weeks until E3, Microsoft revealed the Xbox One Tuesday morning at its Xbox campus in Seattle.
The hour-long presentation opened up with a montage of culturally diverse enthusiastic people expressing their desire to be themselves and express themselves (and maybe even “pwn” their friends in some competitive gaming *wink*). In the midst of the slide show of smiling faces was a smattering of developers and executives, as if to say, “Hey guys, we’re all equals in this arena! Everybody’s in this together with Xbox!” The reel had quite a few pauses for emphasis on power words like “YOU,” and “ME,” and “MINE.” But it wrapped up with one word echoing over and over: “ALIVE. ALIVE. ALIVE.”
Maybe most importantly, Microsoft gave the answer to the question that had been buzzing around for months now: What’s this thing going to be called? There had been rumors that it would be called the Xbox NOW! (complete with exclamation mark), Xbox Infinity, or simply Xbox. So, when Microsoft’s President of Interactive Business Don Mattrick talked about the technological leaps and bounds that had been made and the trails that had been blazed over the years since the inception of the Xbox brand, it seemed like one excruciatingly long drumroll building up to the name. And then, we get it. The machine has a name: Xbox One.
Everything in your life before now has been leading up to this moment.
The Xbox 360 had to have a different name than Xbox 2, because Sony was already on the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft didn’t want to sound as if they were one step behind. So, if the company chose the most likely candidate (according to the Twittersphere) of Xbox Infinity, where would it go from there? Consider these factors, and all of the all-in-one talk thrown around, and Xbox One makes sense, if perhaps coming off a wee bit presumptuous (because I just know that at some point, someone is going to refer to this thing as The One.)
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