XBOX One

The Xbox One is an upcoming video game console from Microsoft. Announced on May 21, 2013, it is the successor to the Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox family of consoles.The Xbox One is scheduled for release in November 2013 and will directly compete with Sony's PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's Wii U as part of the eighth generation of video game consoles.Microsoft and various publications have classified the device as an "all-in-one entertainment system,"making it a competitor to other home media devices such as the Apple TV and the Google TV platform.

Moving away from the PowerPC based architecture used in the Xbox 360, the console features an AMD processor built around the x86-64 instruction set. The console places an increasing emphasis on entertainment and integration with the Kinect peripheral, offering the ability to use an existing set-top box to watch live television programming (augmented by an enhanced program guide with support for voice commands), a built-in Skype client, and improved second screen support. The console also provides new functionality for use in games, such as an expanded Xbox Live service, improved Kinect functionality, cloud computing, the ability to automatically record and share video highlights from gameplay, and integrated support for live streaming gameplay online.

The Xbox One is an upcoming video game console from Microsoft. Announced on May 21, 2013, it is the successor to the Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox family of consoles.The Xbox One is scheduled for release in November 2013 and will directly compete with Sony's PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's Wii U as part of the eighth generation of video game consoles.Microsoft and various publications have classified the device as an "all-in-one entertainment system,"making it a competitor to other home media devices such as the Apple TV and the Google TV platform.

Moving away from the PowerPC based architecture used in the Xbox 360, the console features an AMD processor built around the x86-64 instruction set. The console places an increasing emphasis on entertainment and integration with the Kinect peripheral, offering the ability to use an existing set-top box to watch live television programming (augmented by an enhanced program guide with support for voice commands), a built-in Skype client, and improved second screen support. The console also provides new functionality for use in games, such as an expanded Xbox Live service, improved Kinect functionality, cloud computing, the ability to automatically record and share video highlights from gameplay, and integrated support for live streaming gameplay online.

Initial reaction to the Xbox One has been mixed. Early reviews praised the console's new features, while others had criticized its lack of backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games, online connectivity requirements, mandatory integration with Kinect, and ambiguous restrictions on the resale and sharing of used games. In response to these criticisms, Microsoft announced they would be dropping most of the originally planned digital rights management and internet connection requirements.

Hardware

The Xbox One's exterior casing consists of a two-tone "liquid black" finish; with half finished in a matte grey, and the other in a glossier black. The design of the Xbox One's components were designed to evoke a more entertainment-oriented and simplified design than previous iterations of the console; among other changes, the LED rings used by the Xbox 360 are replaced by a glowing white Xbox logo used to communicate the system's status to the user.

The Xbox One has an APU with eight x86-64 cores and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM with a memory bandwidth of 68.3 GB/s.The memory subsystem also features an additional 32 MB of "embedded static" RAM, or ESRAM, with a memory bandwidth of 102 GB/s.Eurogamer has been told that for simultaneous read and write operations the ESRAM is capable of a theoretical memory bandwidth of 192 GB/s and that a memory bandwidth of 133 GB/s has been achieved with operations that involved alpha transparency blending.The system includes a 500 GB non-replaceable hard drive,and a Blu-ray Disc optical drive.Kotaku, Game Informer, and Gizmodo state that 3 GB of RAM will be reserved for the operating system and apps, leaving 5 GB for games.The graphics processing unit (GPU) is based on an AMD GCN architecture with 12 compute units, which have a total of 768 cores, providing an estimated peak theoretical power of 1.23 TFLOPS.For networking, the Xbox One supports Gigabit Ethernet. 802.11n wireless, and Wi-Fi Direct.

The Xbox One will support 4K resolution (3840×2160) (2160p) video output and 7.1 surround sound.Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of marketing and strategy for Microsoft, has stated that there is no hardware restriction that would prevent games from running at 4K resolution.The Xbox One will support HDMI 1.4 for both input and output.The Xbox One does not have a video output for either composite or component video.