{"id":19609,"date":"2013-05-28T11:12:23","date_gmt":"2013-05-28T16:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/?p=19609"},"modified":"2013-05-28T11:11:21","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T16:11:21","slug":"high-five-bro-the-xbox-one-is-a-michael-bay-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/gaming\/xbox\/high-five-bro-the-xbox-one-is-a-michael-bay-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"High Five, Bro! The Xbox One Is A Michael Bay Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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?\u00a0There 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.<\/p>\n

\"Everything<\/a>

Everything in your life before now has been leading up to this moment.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\u00a0bit presumptuous (because I just know that at some point, someone is going to\u00a0refer to this thing\u00a0as The One.)
\n
\nNext came\u00a0Yusuf Mehdi, the smiley\u00a0Senior Vice President of the Online Audience Business Group, who\u00a0spent his time on stage going over Xbox’s Snap Mode, which appears to be a jumped-up version of some of the features that the Kinect offers for navigating the dashboard.\u00a0Although the transitions between movies, music, gaming, and live TV look seamless, none of that stuff speaks to me as a gamer as a particularly strong selling point for my next video game console. (Also, I know the announcement was held at 10 o’clock in the morning and the selection isn’t the greatest, but is The Price is Right <\/em>— tired-looking Drew Carrey and all — really the image of cutting edge modernity you want etched into our brains as we walk away from this?)<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>

This just SCREAMS next-gen.<\/p><\/div>\n

Mehdi also\u00a0touched on the integration of Skype as a sidebar that can pop up and let you have a chat while you continue whatever other task you were involved in. He illustrated this by having a Skype chat during the presentation with his pal D.J. where they ribbed each other about their fantasy football teams in what had to be one of\u00a0the stiffest, most unnatural scripted conversations I’ve ever seen. (Oh, you guys are just a couple of cut-up executives, messin’ around, giving each other grief!)<\/p>\n

The next guy to come out was Marc Whitten, Corporate Vice President of Xbox Live, who talked about the “magic and science” of the Xbox One, giving us a little bit of info about what’s under the hood of this bad boy. Whitten listed 8 gigs of RAM, a 500 gig hard drive, and 5 billion transistors. Then, the VP went on to show the new Kinect camera, which looks a lot more sturdy and capable than its predecessor and boasts face recognition. The new controller was displayed for about 10 whole seconds, and danged if it doesn’t look a whole lot like the old controller (which, to be fair, people have very little issues with.) Because the Kinect is boxed in with the Xbox One, we can expect to see quite a bit of Kinect integration into controller-oriented games, like it or not.<\/p>\n

The next person to come out was EA’s Andrew Wilson to announce a “very special relationship between Electronic Arts and Microsoft,” with logos for the FIFA, NBA Live, Madden, and UFC franchises displayed behind him.\u00a0Another reel played where professional athletes from all of the previously mentioned sports talked about how much of a head game all of their respective sports were. We all know that if there’s one group of people who know video games, it’s pro athletes. All of the sports footage looked to be in-game, powered by what is apparently a new engine called Ignite.
\n
\nPhil Spencer from Microsoft Studios then took the stage to show some footage from Forza 5<\/em>, out later this year, that consisted primarily of cut scenes and camera angles sexily running along the contours of a car. Spencer also showed\u00a0glimpses of a new game from Max Payne<\/em> creator Remedy games, called Quantum Break<\/em>, which consisted of real footage of a mother and daughter juxtaposed against grandiose imagery of ships smashing into bridges and the like. Let me be clear: THIS IS THE FIRST TIME DURING THE PRESS CONFERENCE WHERE I SAW A VIDEO GAME THAT I MIGHT WANT TO PLAY.<\/p>\n

\""Mommy,<\/a>

“Mommy, will the new Xbox play video games?”
“I don’t know, honey. I… I just don’t know.”<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Spencer proceeded to reveal some more good news: There will be 15 first-party exclusives from Microsoft within the first 12 months after launch, eight of which will be new intellectual properties. This is encouraging, considering the almost nonexistent trickle of first-party releases for the 360 over the past few years.<\/p>\n

Spencer departed the stage allowing for Nancy Tellem, the Entertainment and Digital Media President of Microsoft, to make her appearance and welcome the first actual game developer of the press conference onto the stage, Bonnie Ross of 343 Studios (Halo 4<\/em>). Ross expressed her excitement to work with Microsoft and *drumroll* Steven Spielberg to create a brand new live-action Halo<\/em> series for television.\u00a0The audience was then greeted by Spielberg himself on the big screen, expressing his excitement as well, and reminding everyone watching that he has been a gamer for decades.\u00a0 Yes, Steven, we all remember Boom Blox<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A real game-changer, that one.<\/p><\/div>\n

Just when it looked like things were shifting into\u00a0a realm that\u00a0hardcore gamers might actually care about, another exciting new partnership was announced with the NFL. Cue a bunch of live-action footage of football games where the aforementioned fantasy football feature came into play. Apparently, you can now have all of your fantasy league’s players and stats updating in real time alongside whatever game you are watching, which, in all honesty, is pretty cool if you’re into football. But if you thought that the banter between Yusuf Mehdi and D.J. was awkward, here’s Don Mattrick and NFL commissioner Roger Goodall hanging out in chairs, walking around on a football field, and being weird, mismatched buddies in general.<\/p>\n

At this point, there isn’t much time left in Microsoft’s allotted hour of broadcast, so it seems like they’re going to try to fit in one more big announcement. Enter Activision’s\u00a0CEO to unveil the next Call of Duty<\/em> game, alleging that, “We didn’t want to do the safe thing; we wanted to do the right thing.” The “right thing” is apparently Call of Duty: Ghosts<\/em> (correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t that been up on my 360’s dashboard for awhile now?) The game boasts enhanced graphics, storytelling from Traffic<\/em> screenwriter Stephen Gaghan, and PUPPIES!!! That’s right, Call of Duty: Ghosts<\/em> will let players partner up with a canine squad member. The montage reel even had a German Shepherd wearing a motion capture suit.<\/p>\n

\"tankdog\"<\/a>

A hero was born that day<\/p><\/div>\n


\nAnd that was it. Xbox One will come out some time before the end of the year, like everyone already knew.Now, don’t get me wrong, because it sure does sound like I’m bashing Microsoft, but I’m not. I’m sure that the Xbox One is going to be an excellent piece of hardware, and many of the features that the company chose to focus on during the press conference are undeniably groundbreaking and innovative. Also, most of the big\u00a0games coming out over the next decade will be available on the Xbox One. And they’ll probably be awesome. In fact, as someone who owns both Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles, I opt for the Xbox version of games more often than not.<\/p>\n

What I am\u00a0taking issue\u00a0with here is the presentation. The entire press conference felt very artificially engineered. All of the booming applause that we heard were supposedly originating from the back of the room, presumably from planted Microsoft employees. I know it sounds redundant to continue to harp on comparisons to Sony, but the fact of the matter is, that company is the other major player in this market, putting out a similar product in the same time window as Microsoft and it chose to take a radically different approach with the presentation of the PlayStation 4. Sony directly said, “Hey, we’re about making video games. Here are\u00a0a bunch of those.”<\/p>\n

I feel like Microsoft, as opposed to targeting the demographic that made Xbox a brand in the first place, is approaching the consumer with vast, broad strokes that appeal to everybody on some level.\u00a0Rather than unveiling a score of new innovations and ideas, we witnessed a presentation largely focused on social media, multitasking, and sports games with a new coat of varnish on them.\u00a0The company is appealing to the lowest common denominator, which is\u00a0the same\u00a0thing Nintendo did when it started a casual gaming approach that the Wii espoused, which arguably led to that company’s decline. Xbox One’s presentation felt like the popcorn movie of the summer, with a lot of flashy explosions and\u00a0smoke and mirrors, but nothing that will ultimately ingratiate hardcore audiences.<\/p>\n

Gamers are the people who will buy next-gen consoles before anybody else. The big names that got thrown around during Microsoft’s press conference — Halo<\/em>, Call of Duty<\/em>, Madden<\/em> — are franchises that have a vast following of consumers who spend a whole lot of time playing those games exclusively. Those franchises are also going to see new games being made for current-gen consoles for years to come. Frankly, I don’t see my neighbor, who only plays Call of Duty<\/em>, buying a new $500 game console so that he can multitask in a more streamlined way while he plays, especially when he can get the new game on the 360 or pause the game to look at his smartphone when he wants to check out Facebook.<\/p>\n

Microsoft came out on top this past generation, but only because it had a head start on competitors. With Sony releasing a comparable console at the same time, only time will tell who had their priorities straight.\u00a0 The first shots have been fired, and the battle will resume in less than three weeks at E3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":19756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[905,45,907,3062,1920,46,47,26],"tags":[740,4819,3,3102,4817,4795,3250,4000,58,4818,2746,2046,29,5226,1102,4794],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19609"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19609"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19744,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19609\/revisions\/19744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}