Well, it should surprise anyone that a new piece of electronic hardware is suffering some issues at launch. Like some PlayStation 4 consoles, the Xbox One is suffering from a few hardware maladies.
While some PS4s aren’t taking the discs into the console, the some Xbox One Blu-Ray drives are not reading discs while others are actually eating the discs.
Another week, another console launch and another trip aboard the hype train to look at the final of the three next-gen home consoles. This time, it’s Microsoft’s effort at a new console with the Xbox One.
Unlike Sony whose PlayStation 4 is trying to be a thoroughbred gaming machine, the Xbox One is aiming to be an all-in-one box for the living room thanks to TV integration, apps, Smart Glass, Kinect, a Blu-Ray player and the occasional ability to play a game.
We’re officially four weeks from the launch of the next-gen consoles (five weeks if you’re outside North America). While you’re unlikely to get your hands on a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One any time soon if you haven’t already pre-ordered one. Still, that doesn’t mean that the console wars are going to cool down anytime soon.
Today, to mark the final month before the next generation of the home console gets well and truly underway, here’s an infographic comparing the two consoles.
Even though Microsoft wrote down the value of their Surface tablet inventory by $900 million back in July and slashed the retail price of their tablet offerings to try to increase sales, they haven’t given up on their entry into the tablet market. On Monday, Microsoft launched their second salvo in the tablet market by unveiling their new and improved Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 tablets.
An anonymous survey of developers by Edge Magazine shows that the performance difference expected based on their specs turns out to be a reality. Developers told Edge that the PlayStation 4 is up to 50 percent faster than the Xbox One and the recent GPU boost hasn’t done much to fix that.
A couple of weeks after Sony announced the PlayStation 4’s launch date at Gamescom, Microsoft took to YouTube to announce when the Xbox One would be hitting store shelves.
While Sony is having staggered North American and European launches, the Xbox One will be available in all of its worldwide launch countries on the same date. The Xbox One comes out on November 22, 2013.
Microsoft and Nokia have been fairly reliant on each other in the smartphone market for a while now with Microsoft trying to make a dent with their Windows Phone OS and Nokia trying to differentiate itself from the scads of Android running competition. It only made sense that their alliance was made a bit more formal.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it is buying most of Nokia, including the devices and services division of the company and a licensing deal for the company’s patents and mapping service, for just under $7.2 billion.
Europe’s big video game convention kicked off with a bang as Microsoft was the first big player to hold a keynote presentation. With the Xbox One steadily gaining ground in the PR game after doing enough policy 180s that you could call it the Xbox 720, Microsoft still had some things to say to get people hyped about their next-gen console.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Microsoft is playing the PR long game with the Xbox One. After getting everyone mad at them when announcing the Xbox One, they’re going back on the “features” that gamers didn’t like and are turning the tide of the PR war by reverting to the status quo.
In a Q&A session, Microsoft’s Chief Xbox One Platform Architect, Marc Whitten, revealed that the Xbox One would still be able to function whether or not the Kinect was broken or plugged in.
As part of their corporate policies, Microsoft has mandated that they can’t go more than a few weeks without doing something to annoy their current and potential future consumer base.
So August’s early frontrunner for Xbone move of the month is Microsoft confirming that users will only be able to use the Xbox One’s ability to record gameplay if you are an Xbox Live Gold member.
et geekera 