Everything You Need To Know About The Xbox One In 300 Words (and some pictures)

The console

It’s huge.

UI looks good, but can be tedious to navigate. Feels more intended for voice navigation than controller. See below.

HDMI in port allows you to run TV, or other consoles, though Xbox One.

Be ready to manage your hard drive, which isn’t intuitive.

Still really need Xbox Live Gold.

Probably don’t want to let it control other devices.

 

Media integration

Runs deep. Really is central to the experience.

Can be cool to switch smoothly from Netflix to games to the web and back again. Easier with voice commands. See below.

 

Kinect 2

Central to the console’s UI and operating system.

Awesome when it works, but inconsistent. You’ll probably still prefer the controller to do things.

Identifies and signs you in automatically. Feels futuristic, but try having two people in the room.

Still not sure it has any value for gaming.

 

The games

Nothing to justify a $500 upgrade.

 

The controller

A series of generally sound improvements to what was already an awesome controller (but we’ve known this since E3 – same talking points from June).

 

Social networking

People can now put you on their Friends List and follow you without your confirming it, like Twitter.

SkyDrive is easy to upload captured videos to, but capturing videos works best with Kinect commands. See above.

Media sharing feels half-baked at the moment. No Twitch streaming. No Facebook integration.

 

Our conclusion

Easier to guess at the value of the system than PS4, because Xbox One builds more smoothly from the Xbox 360 than the PS4 does from PS3, but Xbox One feels like it needed to cook more.

These reviews are still mostly Console Wars ammunition. Wait until Spring 2014 for your Xbox One, when kinks are worked out and what ought to be baseline functionality is patched in.