Microsoft Announcement: XBOX One

Gamers have been waiting for the big XBOX reveal that Microsoft had promised for a while. The rumor mill was on fire with names for what the new system could be, like XBOX 720, XBOX Durango or Infinity. When Microsoft announced that they would do a revealing event, speculation as to what could be expected was then tossed around, too.

Things that were expected in the announcement were the console physical reveal, the name, the controller, operating system, games, and the reveal date.

This major event didn't blow anything out of the water in terms of a wealth of information. It lacked a lot of solid details and kept waving the E3 flag.

The sleek reveal of the components seems to come with welcome arms that the product will come with a new yet entirely similar control as well as Kinect being included. The name, XBOX One, is a little counter-intuitive if you think about the timeline of things but it is pretty slick.

It is set to run with an 500GB hard-drive, HDMI, 8 Core CPU, 3.0 USB, an update wireless adapters. XBOX One is designed to change the way you live in your living room. They hope to make "your television screen the most important screen" by not only changing the way you game but the way you watch everything and communicate. With Skype communication capabilities and more options than your cable box, your living room will assimilate.

The one negative that was rumored to come with this evolution of console was an "Always On" requirement. Always On would mean that for even single player games that you just want to enjoy in your downtime after purchase still require you to be online. Diablo III is an example for PC gamers. Regardless of play-mode and unlike its previous game, you must be online to play. This style of connectivity could change gaming habits forever and it was an ill received idea.

XBOX revealed that while its suggests you be online and requires it for Microsoft Live and multi-player modes it will not be going to an always on!

In addition to the hardware, XBOX announced that within the first year of the new release, they plan to release 15 games for the system, 8 of which will be a brand new franchise (i.e. Quantum Break). The staple of Microsoft gaming, Halo is going to be taken to the next step with XBOX One; while no new game was announced, it was revealed that Halo will be featured as a new live action television show from Steven Spielberg and 343. This step was taken after the success that was found with Halo's web series Forward Unto Dawn.

At the close, Acitivision received a nice portion of the event to reveal graphic details for Call of Duty Ghosts, but after the initial 17 minutes of game play have been online for several weeks, this wasn't much on the news front.

The biggest let down of the event was the lack of a release time. Not issuing a solid date is to be expected, but the only thing they left us with was "Later this year". What exactly does that translate into?

For the hopes of the gamers on edge, perhaps they will reveal more details rather than broad ideas when they hit up E3 in June.

What do you think about the XBOX One? Planning on buying it at release?

Allons-y!