Microsoft might have been almost a year late with the Xbox One launch in the Middle East region, but as they say, “better late, than never”. We have had the Xbox 360 “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” special edition at Review Central Labs for years now and we have enjoyed every moment of gaming on it. With the new Xbox One, we are not only amazed by the sheer gaming power, but also the awesome gaming titles that accompany this platform.
While with the Xbox 360, Microsoft went with metal for the housing, with the Xbox One, the company has opted for a plastic housing that is both shiny and matte black. The overall build quality is quite good and the console feels quite sturdy. Inside the packaging, the Xbox One console accompanies a Kinect sensor, a wireless controller, chat headset, and a HDMI cable. The console we received for review came with a 500GB of storage capacity.
The overall design of the Xbox One is quite good, though some old-school Xbox 360 afficianados might have something else to say about the design. Design-wise, Microsoft has included some air vents towards the top and back of the console for proper cooling of the internal components. This has probably been done to avoid the infamous red ring of death, caused by overheating, in the previous iterations of the console.
Like the PS4, the Xbox One has gone digital-only with its audio and video. As mentioned earlier, you’ll only find HDMI and optical audio ports. For network connectivity, Microsoft has added a gigabit Ethernet port. It doesn’t support 802.11ac, but the Xbox One does connect to 5-GHz wireless networks. There are also three USB 3.0 ports — two on the back and one on the side.
In addition, unlike the Xbox 360, the Xbox One has a Blu-ray drive. With the Xbox One, Microsoft has also gone ahead and redesigned the controller. The company has made some improvements to the triggers, which now feature rumble motors. The D-pad meanwhile is now a cross, and the thumbsticks are now smaller and more accurate. The controller overall is quite comfortable to hold and it in fact feels more premium.
The user interface of the Xbox One has also been redesigned. It now looks a bit more like Windows 8, with all the coloured tiles, which are easier to navigate than the multiple cluttered pages that made up the Xbox 360’s dashboard. The Kinect also is now a standard accessory that is included with the Xbox One, as opposed to an optional accessory in the case of the Xbox 360.
While Kinect was mainly used as a camera for gestured, Microsoft now wants you to use it as a microphone, too. The emphasis is now on operating the console with your voice and less about making gestures. for the camera. The latter can be; you can wave to move left or right to browse, but the emphasis is clearly on the voice commands.
In order to use the voice commands for the Xbox One, all you do is utter “Xbox” before anything you say. This trigger allows the allows the console to listen to you. For instance, when you say “Xbox go to settings”, you get into the settings menu and when you say “Xbox go to Internet Explorer”, the console opens up the browser. Whatever your accent, the voice commands on the Xbox One works quite well.
Upon switching on the Xbox One, it takes around 2 minutes for it to boot, at the very first time. Once it booted up, it started downloading an update, which was around 2GB in size. Once the update is installed, Kinect will need to calibrate. You can then recover your Xbox Live profile, which is now as fast and simple as signing into your account’s main email address. You can also create a new user.
With the Xbox One, Microsoft lets you take your Xbox One profile with you. If your friend has an Xbox One, you would only need to walk into that room, have it recognise your face, tell it “Xbox, go home” and then load the last thing you were playing, picking up right where your save from home left off.
In order to test out the Xbox One, we ran a couple of titles on the console. We were quite amazed at the performance and the video and audio quality we were presented with. After having played games on the Xbox 360 for more than 3 years, the gaming experience on the Xbox One was a welcome change. The voice commands are something that you will need to get used to. The overall experience of gaming on the Xbox One is brilliant.
The Xbox One is an awesome console that pairs software and hardware quite brilliantly. With the Xbox One, next-gen gaming is certainly here! The Xbox One wins Review Central’s Editors’ Choice award.
Price: AED 1800 Approx.
