Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Xbox One Review: Unifying Your Living Room Experience
By ,
1. Xbox One: The Exterior Design

Eight years have passed since the Xbox 360 debuted and today's Xbox One introduction. That's a massive span between two generations of anything calling itself technology, never mind gaming consoles.

Let's put this into perspective. Call of Duty 2 was a launch title on November 22, 2005. In the time leading up to Call of Duty: Ghosts, there were 10 other additions to the franchise. Think back to the PC you were gaming on when Call of Duty 2 came out. Would it be able to run Call of Duty: Ghosts today? Probably not. Even though the CoD games aren't as taxing as Battlefield, the minimum CPU required for Ghosts is a Core 2 Duo E8200. That didn't even show up until 2008. 

Consequently, this generation's consoles are pretty important to pay attention to; they'll probably be with us for the decade's remainder.

Xbox One Design

Meet the Xbox One. Its exterior design is minimalist, in one sense. But the console is by no means small, either. It's a big, black box that takes us back to the days of the original Xbox. In fact, the Xbox One could very well end up sporting the largest chassis in your home theater cabinet. Here are its specs compared to the device's predecessors:


Width
Depth
Height
Xbox One
13.1"
10.8"
3.1"
Xbox 360
12.15"
10.15"
3.27"
Xbox 360 S
10.6"
10.3"
2.95"
Xbox
12.5"
10.5"
4"


At launch, the Xbox 360 went to a shade of cream, perhaps to define itself as something different. But Microsoft made like AC/DC and was back in black for the Xbox 360 Elite and S. The same glossy, fingerprint-magnet finish graces the Xbox One as well. The Xbox 360 had curved edges, giving it an organic feel that also made it appear slimmer than it really was. The Xbox One, on the other hand, channels Microsoft's original design in some ways, exuding power.

Also like the first generation, the Xbox One cannot stand vertically. Microsoft's Albert Panello, senior director of Xbox product management, said that the Xbox One is meant to be used horizontally due to its slot-loading disc drive. He further expressed that the design decision wasn't related to cooling. Of course, that's a bit confusing, given existing examples of vertically-compatible optical drives, such as the direct competition's.

Microsoft does appear to have put a big emphasis on keeping its Xbox One well-ventilated, though. Given quality issues the company and its customers fought through with the first waves of Xbox 360 consoles, maintaining manageable thermals inside of this design's chassis was clearly a top priority.

Sitting at the top of the Xbox One, beneath the outer grill, is an extra large fan that exhausts air from inside the console. We don't have airflow numbers to share, but it's naturally very quiet.

2. Power, Internal Storage, And Game Installations

Power Brick

The Xbox One's power supply is external, separate from the console. Of course, that adds one more bulky piece of hardware on the floor, which is going to affect some people more than others. In comparison, Sony's smaller PS4 employs an integrated PSU.

It sounds like a one-sided debate, but there are positive and negative reasons you'd want one configuration or the other. Should the power supply go out, replacing Microsoft's unit is going to be much easier than Sony's. Also, getting the PSU's waste heat out of the chassis helps simplify thermals. But then there's the elegance of a built-in power source that doesn't need to be factored into where the console sits or how its wiring is routed. From a user-facing perspective, and when everything is working properly, the integrated PSU is almost always preferable.

Storage

The Xbox One comes with a 500 GB hard drive. Compared to the highest-end Xbox 360's 20 GB drive when that console first shipped, we're looking at a very significant step up in capacity. Of course, that's also commensurate with the storage demands of today's titles, which ship on Blu-ray discs instead of DVDs now. It's not enough to run games from optical media, either. Games have to be installed on faster storage, just like in the world of PCs. Suddenly, the step up from 20 to 500 GB is a simple matter of keeping up with the times. And, again, compared to PCs sporting up to 4 TB on a 3.5" repository, 500 GB isn't a ton of space.

And unlike the Xbox 360 and PS4, there is no replaceable drive option. That might end up being a blessing in disguise though, as anyone who bought a bigger drive for the 360 knows that markup on it was borderline criminal. More likely is that Microsoft will add an external storage upgrade option via USB 3.0. Once that happens, we'll update with storage benchmarks to compare install and load times between the internal and add-on disks. 

Again, the typical enthusiast will probably favor Sony's solution (and as someone who just dropped a new 320 GB disk into a PS3 last weekend, I can attest to the simplicity of it all). Adding storage to the PS4 requires swapping out the internal SATA-based drive. This gives Sony the ammunition to say no to external hard drive support. 

You will find three USB 3.0 ports on the Xbox one though, along with the aforementioned slot-loading Blu-ray disc player.

Boot Times

The Xbox One offers two different "power off" states when not in use. The first is a truly "off" mode. The second is more of a standby mode that opens the door to features such as being able to wake hardware through a voice command, automatic downloading of updates, and last but not least, faster boot time.

We timed several runs of cold starts and arrived at an average of 57 seconds from the press of the power button to a fully usable dashboard. In standby mode, that boot time was a much faster average of 12 seconds.

Clearly, the standby mode keeps the system loaded in memory, while the cold boot requires a full startup sequence. Had the Xbox One use a solid state drive, the difference between the two numbers would be much smaller.

Game Installs

Now that the Xbox One requires every game to be installed locally, rather than run from disc, optical media is nothing more than a bulk data delivery mechanism and DRM check. Unlike the previous generation of consoles gamers don't need to wait for the install process to finish before they jump in, either. This is similar to the way Blizzard approaches World of Warcraft on the PC, though most titles need to be installed completely first.

As we tested pre-release titles, we found that downloaded games and those coming from Blu-ray media were ready to play well before the installation finished. For example, we timed a 34.94 GB install and found that it was available 2:38 after hitting the go-button. It took 34:22 to get everything onto the hard drive. This is actually pretty cool. Although games are much larger now than the generation prior, you're going to be playing much sooner, even if there's some variance from one title to the next depending on how developers optimize. We plan to revisit the topic with benchmark data using retail games in the days to come.

3. The Xbox One CPU: Complements Of AMD's Jaguar µArch

A Familiar CPU Architecture

The Xbox One's CPU component brings Microsoft’s architecture of choice back to x86, just like the first-generation Xbox. This time, the company kicked IBM to the curb and opted not to jump into another Intel/Nvidia love triangle. Instead, it put a ring on AMD's finger, tapping the same source for general-purpose and graphics computing IP. At the same time, Sony was courting AMD's semi-custom division as well. Both competitors ended up sharing a bed, but due to NDAs was never caught laying down.

When AMD acquired ATI back in 2006, the company promised integrated graphics paired with x86 resources. It took a while, but we saw the first deeply collaborative effort in AMD's Brazos platform for very low-power devices. While it proved to offer notable advantages over Intel's slow Atom, even the Zacate-based E-350 wasn't a performance powerhouse. Not long after, we were introduced to the Llano-based design, which existed primarily on the desktop between 65 and 100 W. But it was still a far cry from achieving the numbers we wanted to see in any one discipline.

Although even today's Richland-based APUs don't get us where one capable CPU and even mainstream discrete graphics can go, AMD did gain the experience needed to create a modular architecture with right-sized CPU and GPU resources to build more customized processors. And that's exactly what it did for Microsoft's Xbox One.

At the heart of AMD's Temash and Kabini APUs (covered in AMD's Kabini: Jaguar And GCN Come Together In A 15 W APU) is the energy-efficient Jaguar CPU architecture. It's an enhancement of the previous-gen Bobcat design, which powered the aforementioned E-350 and went up against Intel's Atom.

Jaguar maintains many of Bobcat's features, such as some of its cache structures, the ability to decode two instructions, and a similar branch predictor, but adds a number of enhancements covered in our linked launch coverage and summarized in the slides on this page. There's an extra decode stage in the front-end, though this plays a role in achieving higher operating clock rates as well.

In AMD's APU portfolio, Jaguar has access to a shared cache unit with 2 MB of L2 that's 16-way associative in quad-core configurations. The L2 is broken up into 512 KB banks, but no longer associated with each core, as it was before. Both the Xbox One and Sony's PS4 employ eight Jaguar-based cores. But because Jaguar supports four-core arrays, these next-gen consoles actually implement two modules, doubling total L2 to 4 MB.

Compared to what we're used to seeing in the desktop PC space, Jaguar is comparatively simple. Each core occupies 3.1 square millimeters of die space. Even with eight of these on a die, that's only 24.8 square millimeters. It's this efficient design that makes Jaguar viable in such a parallelized SoC, particularly matched up to a much more complex graphics component. Programmed to properly, Microsoft should be capable of great multi-tasking capabilities as the Xbox One runs social media, Skype, and Kinect-oriented tasks with minimal impact on gaming.

In fact, we recently spent some time on the phone with Johan Andersson of DICE, who mentioned that his team is seeing 85-95% CPU utilization on next-gen consoles by virtue of optimizations for scaling in its Frostbite 3 game engine. It looks like the developer community is really ramping up efforts to more thoroughly program to many cores, which could yield great returns on the PC, too.

Microsoft's first developer kits featured 1.6 GHz x86 cores. For production, frequencies were boosted to 1.75 GHz. Although combining a less potent architecture with fairly conservative clock rates might appear to leave the Xbox One underpowered, there's a lot of emphasis on parallelism. And not only in the CPU structure, but also offloading compute tasks to the graphics engine. This is where AMD's HSA efforts will hopefully bear fruit.

4. The Xbox One GPU: GCN-Based

While Microsoft and Sony both leverage AMD's Graphics Core Next architecture for their next-generation consoles, Microsoft's shader count is matched pretty well to the same Bonaire GPU found on the desktop Radeon HD 7790. Sony, on the other hand, appears to have a derivative of AMD's Pitcairn design found on the Radeon HD 7800s. Much has already been said comparing both devices and their capabilities. However, the fact that developers are running certain games at lower native resolutions on the Xbox One than the PS4 and then upscaling the output makes it pretty clear that Sony's GPU is more powerful.

But gaming consoles do not mirror the PC graphics card market. The fastest console doesn't always win, as Sega can attest to.

There are also some very significant differences between actual desktop GPUs and the hardware inside the Xbox One. For instance, Bonaire has 14 Compute Units. As we know, each CU has four Vector Units, and each VU contains 16 shaders. That adds up to 896 of AMD's Stream processors running at 1 GHz, in the case of Radeon HD 7790. We also know from digging deeper into the PS4 that Sony wanted eight of AMD's asynchronous compute engines in its GPU. AMD's mainstream GPUs have two. Clearly, they call these semi-custom designs for a reason.

The Xbox One's GPU sports 12 CUs, totaling 768 Stream processors, and a clock rate recently revised up to 853 MHz. Microsoft has also stated publicly that some of the GPU's resources will be reserved for the Kinect and operating environment, before we even get to differences in each console's memory bandwidth.

Microsoft equips the Xbox One's SoC with 8 GB of conventional DDR3-2133 memory in a quartet of channels. A 256-bit aggregate interface yields 68.3 GB/s of throughput, which is quite a ways behind the PS4’s 176 GB/s. But Microsoft has a trick up its sleeve. Taking a page from the Xbox 360 playbook, Microsoft embeds 32 MB in four 8 MB slices on 256-bit buses. At minimum, it's rated for 109 GB/s, though Microsoft also specifies a 204 GB/s peak.

Despite its comparatively less powerful GPU, AMD managed to build a very technically impressive SoC for the Xbox One. It measures a substantial 362mm2, which is pretty close to the Tahiti GPU on AMD's Radeon R9 280X measuring 352 mm2...and that's just a graphics processor. Yet, both are designed for next-gen gaming.

5. The Xbox One's Controller: Vastly Improved

The Controller

The Xbox One controller is a natural evolution of the Xbox 360's, which was already one of our very favorite designs. We like it so much that it's our go-to-choice on the PC when gaming with a keyboard and mouse aren't ideal. It feels familiar in-hand, yet pleasantly better in all regards. It's hard to articulate exactly, but this is a more refined design. Unlike the 360's controller, the Xbox One's has no bulging battery pack or exposed screw holes. Both changes improve comfort.

Unfortunately, we won't be able to make an immediate switch to the new controller on our PCs. It interfaces with the Xbox One via Wi-Fi Direct, and while Microsoft confirms that the Xbox One controller will offer PC compatibility, that won't happen until 2014.

Xbox One Controller

In the previous generation, there were separate wired and wireless controller models. This time around, the Xbox One controller switches to full wired mode whenever it's connected to the console through microUSB. In that state, the controller shuts off its radios and transmits all I/O through the cable, reducing latency.

New to this generation is a vastly improved rumble system. The left and right triggers now have vibration motors built into them, which provide independent force feedback. We find great examples of this in shooters, where the triggers vibrate when a gun is shot, or driving games, where the texture of the ground feeds back into your finger.

Beyond the discrete rumble capability, the triggers themselves operate more smoothly. In contrast, the face buttons feel mostly similar, and the analog thumb-sticks have a more grippy texture to the edges. One change that may take some getting used to is the renaming of the "back" and "start" buttons to "view" and "menu". In practice, they'll probably be used for the same in-game functions, so there's just a matter of getting used to the new nomenclature as we move further away from the classic "select" and "start". We're sure that some of the humor isn't lost on Tom's Hardware readers when we point out that, like Windows 8, the Xbox One rids itself of the start button.

Vastly improved from the Xbox 360 days is the Xbox One's directional pad. Microsoft tweaked the d-pad a few times throughout the Xbox 360's life, but all of the iterations pale in comparison to this new one. Where it was once imprecise and mushy, the Xbox One's d-pad responds to even the lightest touches accurately.

While the PS4's DualShock 4 controller carries on with the built-in rechargeable battery first introduced in the DualShock 3, Microsoft sticks with the same power source used for the Xbox 360 controller: two AA batteries. The more customer-friendly approach is debatable. As with the power supply discussion, Microsoft's solution makes replacement easier, while Sony's solution is arguably more elegant. But as someone who has had to order aftermarket Li-ion batteries to resuscitate a DualShock 3 controller, my vote is in favor of Microsoft.

We also can't give an advantage to the DualShock 4 for being rechargeable, as there will once again be a Play & Charge kit that puts rechargeable cells into Microsoft's controller. With that said, we're perfectly happy using a set Sanyo Eneloop AAs.

In fact, for extended gaming sessions, the Xbox One's seemingly old-fashioned power source is an advantage. A drained DualShock 4 controller has to be tethered to the console (or some other power source) to charge back up, while the Xbox One just needs a new set of batteries to carry on.

As we saw from the Xbox 360, Microsoft's new headset attaches to the bottom of the Xbox One controller. The port is not backward-compatible, but Microsoft claims that it offers vastly improve sound quality.

6. A New Kinect Camera: The Xbox One's Other Controller

The Other Controller

The new Kinect camera is a key component that differentiates the Xbox One from Sony's PS4. Where both consoles are at least somewhat comparable in terms of technology and features, Microsoft's insistence that every Xbox One include a Kinect is at least as significant a point as the Wii U's tablet-like controller. Granted, Sony has a new camera for its PS4 as well, but that's an optional accessory that must be purchased separately, meaning developers cannot make the assumption that you have one.

This next-generation Kinect is improved in every way. It now features a 1080p camera, stepping up from the previous model's 640x480 resolution. That alone should make Skype calling a far better experience, even from one big-screen TV to another. The new hardware also employs time-of-flight technology, which measures the time it takes individual photons to rebound off an object or person to create a depth map. The camera now uses a global shutter, rather than a rolling shutter, reducing motion blur to less than 14 ms. Compare that to the original Kinect's 65 ms.

The new Kinect also has a 60%-wider field of view, making it better at sensing multiple players. If you're confined to a smaller space, you'll appreciate that the new camera works at a minimum distance of 4.59 feet. The old Kinect needed at least six feet. You connect the Kinect to Microsoft's console using a nine-foot cable. Ideally, that'll accommodate mode living room setups.

In response to some very valid privacy concerns, Kinect is no longer required for the Xbox One to work. However, not plugging it in naturally pares back the ways you're able to interact with the Xbox.

Assuming you want to use Kinect, certain system functions can be controlled through gestures (navigating from one page to the next, for example, or expanding windows). That's nifty functionality of course, just as it was on Xbox 360, but ultimately not as advanced as anything you saw in Minority Report or Iron Man. We found it faster to use the controller or voice commands.

Controlling the Xbox One with voice is similar today as it was in the previous generation. Phrases like "Xbox, go home" or "Xbox, go to Forza 5" worked well during our review. If you're in standby mode, Kinect also turns on the console when it hears "Xbox, turn on."

Xbox One Kinect IR

Kinect does gather a stunning amount of information about your home environment. Microsoft claims that it processes 2 Gb of data per second, so naturally this sort of technology will be embraced by some and labeled invasive by others. As an example, the new Kinect recognizes faces, and thus automatically log users in. When I power up the Xbox One, it sits on a generic start screen. But when I walk into the camera's view, my profile appears and I'm greeting with "Hi Marcus!".

7. Kinect, Your Privacy, And The Future

Kinect and Privacy

Xbox One Kinect

Not only does Kinect recognize its users, but it can also see in the dark thanks to an active infrared camera. Through a combination of its color and IR sensors, Kinect detects minute changes in flesh tones, which translate to heart rates.

Using advanced software models, the Xbox One understands the orientation of your body, as well as the force exerted on different muscle groups. This feature is heavily utilized by the Xbox Fitness online service, which takes popular fitness videos and makes them interactive. Now that's insanity.

You're no longer giving the console inputs through just its controller. Now the machine is gathering information passively expressed by you. Unsettling? Maybe. But this is the sort of thing from science fiction movies, and it has to start somewhere. What'll guide acceptance of this sort of technology is how corporations manage the data they're seeing. In a time where behavioral patterns are peddled for cash to the highest bidder, and we distrust those monitoring us, success isn't going to be easy.

For its part, Microsoft updated its Xbox privacy statement with new entries for Kinect. It reads:

Kinect creates a virtual gaming environment where your body motions and voice can be used to control gameplay and to navigate through the Service. Kinect uses an infrared sensor, camera, and microphone to make control possible.

The camera can be used to sign you in. To do so, it measures distances between key points on your face to create a numeric value that represents only you. No one could look at the numbers and know they represent you. This authentication information stays on the console and is not shared with anyone.

You control what happens to photographs taken during gameplay and whether voice commands are captured for analysis. You can turn Kinect off at any time.

When Kinect is used with certain games and apps, your skeletal movements can be used to estimate exercise stats. You can decide how your stats are managed and whether they are shared.

Some game titles may take advantage of a new Xbox capability called expressions. This feature allows you to use your defined facial expressions to control or influence a game. This data does not identify you, stays on the console and is destroyed once your session ends.

Microsoft made a difficult, cost-adding choice to include the Kinect with every Xbox One. It's likely the biggest contributor to the $100 premium over Sony's PS4. That was a very risky move considering the price sensitivity of gamers during the holiday season.

But the age-old challenge presented by console peripherals is that, unless a feature is universal, developers won't consider support a priority. The original Kinect didn't fail in this regard, but any developer peddling a game dependent on the camera accessory knew its customer base was markedly smaller. All things considered, though, I believe that Microsoft made the right call. It was the only way to ensure developers considered Kinect for every game they made. Ultimately, the Xbox One has a greater opportunity to move the dial on future-looking interaction with the console compared to Sony's PS4 as a result.

8. Watching TV Through The Xbox One

It's Not Just a Gaming Console

Even though the Xbox brand is completely tied to Microsoft and gaming, we've heard it said that Xbox One is a digital hub. Apart from the chaotic world of smartphones and tablets, no other device tries so hard to be so many things at once.

Microsoft took heavy criticism from the hardcore gaming community when it unveiled Xbox One because a majority of its new features weren't explicitly gaming-related. That's not to say the console's biggest selling point isn't its role as a next-generation gaming platform. But there's so much more to Xbox One than just games. This is where Microsoft's strategy differs from Sony's, since the PS4 is a more purpose-built gaming machine.

At some point, Microsoft took a look at how Xbox 360 owners were using their consoles and determined that gaming was just one puzzle piece. In fact, almost two years ago, Xbox marketing and strategy head Yusuf Mehdi revealed that Xbox 360 owners were spending more than half of their time on Xbox Live watching videos and listening to music. Surely, Netflix and Hulu apps on the console make a huge difference, but those usage stats were what influenced the Xbox One's direction.

The Xbox One will launch with the following apps available:

·         Netflix
·         NFL
·         ESPN
·         Amazon Instant Video
·         Machinima
·         Hulu Plus
·         FOX NOW
·         FXNOW
·         Vudu
·         Crackle
·         Redbox Instant by Verizon
·         TED
·         Xbox Video
·         Xbox Music
·         SkyDrive

Xbox, Watch TV

There's an HDMI input in the back of the Xbox One specifically included to take a signal from a digital cable box. Without switching inputs, you can hit the home screen's TV tile, or say "Xbox, watch TV," and the console switches over to a full-screen feed from the cable box.

You can continue to use that appliance's remote control and reference the channel guide from your cable provider. But for U.S. users, Microsoft also has its own TV guide app called OneGuide that updates once you give it information about your location and cable service.

One neat (but less advertised feature) is the IR blaster built into Kinect that can control your TV set. Programmed with the right remote code, voice commands like "Xbox, volume up" or "Xbox, mute" do what you'd expect them to. With OneGuide properly configured, you can even use commands like "Xbox, watch HBO" and jump straight to that channel.

Even for users who aren't in the U.S., the TV pass-through feature still works. I tested my review unit on Rogers cable. There is no built-in TV guide for the Canadian market (it's supposedly in-progress), but swapping between content sources on the Xbox One was easy.

With the TV feed up and active, the Xbox One continues working in the background. It'll still respond to voice commands, and I found that the best application of this awareness was switching between live TV and a game by simply telling Kinect to make it so.

For the roughly all of us who hate sitting through commercials, simply say "Xbox, go to Dead Rising 3," or "Xbox, go to Netflix," (or any other app name), spend a few minutes there, and then say "Xbox, watch TV," to get back to your program. You don't even need to pause your game before switching back; it will automatically suspend. This also works very well for keeping an eye on sports scores without sitting through the full game. Or, using a feature called Snap, you can both watch/play a game on one side of the screen with the TV feed running in a small window off to the right.

9. More Software: Snap, IE, Bing, And Smartglass

Oh, Snap!

Xbox One Snap

Essentially, Snap is a picture-in-picture mode. It creates a new window that takes up about one-quarter of the screen. In it, you can put a TV feed, video apps like Netflix and Hulu, or Internet Explorer. You can even have a Skype call going without interrupting your gaming or TV session (though the person on the other end might find you annoyingly distracted). Truly, this is where the Xbox One shows off the advantages of converging multiple lifestyle-oriented functions into one device.

Game DVR

Xbox One Upload Studio

The prevalence of social media makes sharing a common feature for this new generation. On Xbox One, the ability to share game clips, which are recorded automatically, is called Game DVR. As you dunk on your friends, throw unbelievable Hail Mary passes, or shoot a hole-in-one, saying "Xbox, record that" brings up the Game DVR with the last 30 seconds of gameplay. You can then edit the video in Upload Studio before sending it off to SkyDrive in a 720p MP4 video format. Get ready for lots of gaming videos on YouTube.

Internet Explorer and Bing

The Xbox One integrates both of these very-Microsoft software brands. They will likely end up being our least-used features, though they're far from useless.

Internet Explorer naturally puts Web browsing on the big screen, which has largely been replaced by a preference for casual browsing on tablets. With Snap, however, this could turn into a perfect way to get a walkthrough or map on-screen for help in a hard-to-beat level.

Bing's search features works through the voice command "Xbox, Bing." Its main purpose isn't navigating the Internet, though. Rather, it searches content available to the Xbox One. Say "Xbox, Bing, show me movies with Zachary Quinto" or "show me movie comedies from the 80s", and you receive hits from Xbox Video and other sources, such as Netflix and Hulu. Bing searches scan through games, TV shows, movies, and music.

Smartglass

The Xbox One Smartglass app promises to act like a second screen. Game developers can take advantage of it to display game info or even have direct input into the game. For example, in Dead Rising 3, Smartglass turns your mobile device into the in-game phone that's used to interact with characters. Or, it can be used to call in an airstrike.

10. Is The Xbox One Convergence Done Right?

Xbox One Feature Demo

It's not uncommon to have a specialized device for everything you want to do with your entertainment system. Microsoft's Xbox One tries to take all of them, crammed into...one...box, and unify the experience. Whoa.

Consequently, this is a difficult piece of technology to review. It does so many things. It's not until you use it, or at least see it in action, that you can decide if the platform is transformative to the way you spent time relaxing on the couch, dancing, singing, or talking to friends overseas. I'm including Microsoft's own video as the best representation of the Xbox's many applications.

In a way, the Xbox One introduces multitasking to your living room. Where before you switched between inputs on the TV to flip between games, live programming, your Blu-ray player, or even an HTPC, this device puts all of that under one input that responds to your voice, your face, and the now-old-fashioned controller.

It's a convergence of living room entertainment with an interface that's much like Microsoft's Windows 8 UI. Unlike the controversial operating system, however, the Xbox's tile-based interface feels as natural on your TV as it does on Windows Phone. There's also Bing and Internet Explorer, which don't play a major role, but do what we expect of them. SkyDrive might enjoy its highest utilization as it becomes the default repository for recorded media on the console. I still don't use SkyDrive on the desktop, nor do I want my personal documents and pictures living in Microsoft's cloud. But for 30 second of game footage at a time? Sure.

Xbox One SkyDrive

Taking all of the above into consideration, it's actually harder to compare the Xbox One to Sony's PlayStation 4 than most gamers would have you believe. Neither console can be distilled down into its shader cores or memory bandwidth. If you're looking for a dedicated gaming machine, the PlayStation does have a big advantage in its specifications and $400 price tag. But the extra $100 for Microsoft's Xbox One buys you more than just the Kinect camera. It also comes with Microsoft's promise to reinvent the way you enjoy content on your TV, and that's a very compelling pitch.