My friend wanted me to give him an in depth analysis on the Xbox One so I did and decided to post it here. It's pretty messy though.
"OK so this might be a pretty big message because I’m going to basically give you a list about the Xbox One and all of its features.
The console itself:
- The X1 is a pretty big console, it’s noticeably larger than the original 360 and weighs about the same.
- It has a slot loading Blu-Ray player and can also play DVD’s and audio CD’s.
- The power and eject buttons are touch buttons (but you won’t need to use the power button much…I’ll get to that later).
- It only works with an HDMI cord (which comes with it) so no analog hookups.
- It has a Kinect sensor port (obviously)
- It has 3 USB 3.0 ports
- It has an HDMI in port which means you can plug in anything you want to the X1 to work with it (like cable box, 360, PS3, PS4, another Xbox One). I’ve only hooked up my cable box to it so I don’t know how everything else works with it. The reason for that is so you don’t have to switch inputs on your TV.
- It’s very quiet (you can only hear it when there is nothing else going on) and doesn’t get very hot even after hours of use.
- Despite it being a big brick, you can tell the console has a very high build quality and it looks surprisingly sleek.
- It still has an external power supply, which is about the same size as the 360 slim version.
- It has a 500GB non-removable HDD
Kinect:
- Kinect is very large, bigger than the original Kinect by a decent amount. It’s also surprisingly heavy.
- It has an infrared sensor in it so it can control the TV and whatnot (in settings you can choose if you want it to turn on/off your TV and/or cable box whenever it turns on or shuts down).
- The voice commands are still pretty far from perfect. It’s definitely better than the 360 but still could use some work. And over time as it learns your voice, it gets better. It works about 70% of the time for me now.
- The minimum distance you have to be from the Kinect is 4.8 feet I believe. 6 feet away is the optimal distance though.
- For the limited games that do use Kinect (dance games mostly so far), they are pretty accurate at tracking you and depending on the game you can have up to 6 people (once again, only the dance game supports that many so far) playing at once.
Features:
- There are so many good features that make the Xbox One experience very simplistic and seamless.
- The console defaults to the away power mode which is the power mode where you can say, “Xbox on” and it will turn on in about 5 seconds and when you’re done you can say “Xbox Off” and it will turn off into that mode (you can change that if you want in the settings though and make it turn completely off…but why would you want to?!!)
- Kinect recognizes whoever is in front of the TV and will log them in if they have a Xbox Account (it doesn’t work perfectly right away but after it learns your face it works almost flawlessly).
- The Xbox guide button now simply brings you to the home screen instead of bringing up a secondary small screen (which is better, and you’ll see why later)
- There are about 250 awesome HD gamerpics available on it.
- Instant switching is amazing. AMAZING. I recommend buying the games you plan on keeping for a long time digitally so you can instant switch between stuff. For instance, I can be playing Forza 5 and simply press the home button and launch Hulu Plus and my game will stay paused right where it’s at…and vice versa for other apps like video apps.
- The dashboard is very simplistic and fluid
- When you have two people or more signed in at once, you can say “Xbox, show my stuff” and it will bring you to the dashboard that you customized yourself.
- You can pin apps and games to the dashboard for easy access (that’s what she said)
- There are enough settings on the console so you can make almost any changes you want.
- If you have Cable TV you can plug in your Cable box and say “Xbox, watch TV” and it will bring you to the TV section just like that instantly, on top of that your Xbox Guide shows all your favorite channels, and shows app channels like Hulu and Amazon stuff so you can have most of your entertainment right from that Xbox Guide.
- The start button is your friend (or at least what used to be the start button on the 360). The start button is how you access all the options for everything when you’re on the dashboard.
- You only need one Xbox Live Gold account on the Xbox One and then everyone else who has their account on your box gets access to every Xbox Live Gold feature.
- All your friends and achievements carry over from the 360 to the X1 automatically.
- Games are saved automatically very, very often to both the cloud and the console (unless your offline, then just the console).
- You can tell the Xbox to “record that” and it will save the last 30 seconds of gameplay into a video.
- The longest recorded video length you can have is 5 minutes
- You can do commentaries for your videos and have different film effects.
- With an update soon you’ll be able to plug in any size HDD you want and use it to store your games on it.
- Kinect can tell who has the controller and respond accordingly.
Apps:
- There are already plenty of great apps. It’s got Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Twitch TV, Machinima, YouTube, Vudu, Skydrive, Skype and a whole slew of other apps. Almost everything you would need. There are also rumored to be tons of apps coming in the future…like the amount you would see on a cell phone. For instance, VLC media player is rumored to be coming to the X1.
- There’s a app (it’s actually under games) called Xbox Fitness and it has a bunch of workout videos and you can get points by accurately doing the workouts that you’re supposed to and challenge friends/ see friends scores. It’s a great workout motivator and it’s got free videos for Xbox Gold members until the end of next year.
- Everything is an app now. Friends, messages, etc.
- Achievements now have big pictures (like wallpapers)
- There is a friend feed where you can see what your friends have been doing, what videos they’ve uploaded and all that.
- You can put your favorite friends into a spot called favorites.
- You can have more than 100 friends…not sure on what the cap is but I know it’s more than 1,000.
- You can follow other people if you want instead of friending them, and they can do the same to you (Think Twitter).
- The app called “My games and apps” is how you control all your games and apps including, deleting them, deleting add-on content, pinning to the home screen (dashboard), and a bunch of other things.
- You can snap things (Snap is like the two things on one screen mode on Windows 8) whilst doing anything really. For instance, you’re playing a game, get stuck and want to know how to keep going on. Well you just say “Xbox, snap internet explorer” and it will do that and you can look up how to pass that part of the game just like that. You can also snap a whole bunch of other stuff like friends screen, party chat, and other apps. You can’t have a game be snapped though. If you want to switch between the two screens you just say “Xbox switch”.
- If you want to search for anything you simply say “Xbox, Bing ___”
Controller:
- The controller feels like it’s sculpted to your hands. It’s near perfect.
- It’s slightly lighter than the 360 controller
- It still uses 2 AA batteries but you can also use a mini USB cord to make it into a wired controller if you want.
- D-pad is very improved
- It has an exceptional build quality.
- There is rumble in the triggers now and it makes games more immersive.
- You can only use proprietary mics with the X1.
Smartglass:
- You can use any android phone for smartglass but if you want the full smartglass experience, you’ll need to have a tablet.
- You can control your Xbox One completely via smartglass
- In the future there will be an update that will allow you to play your Xbox One games on your tablet via smartglass.
Glitches that I’ve noticed and things that are kind of lame:
- There is currently a ram glitch which means you have to fully restart the Xbox One every few days (which is done by holding the power button for about 10 seconds). If you don’t, then you can’t play your disc based games. Also note that this glitch is very rare and I was one of the unlucky few who got it (It’s really not a big deal though, just a very slight inconvenience every few days).
- I don’t know if this is every Xbox One but my games and apps that I have pinned sometimes disappear and then reappear randomly. Again, not really a big deal at all.
- You can’t join party chat with Xbox 360 people or listen to their voice messages.
- Supposedly, if you don’t accept a party invite when it pops up on screen it will be gone forever (they are working on getting that fixed though.
- The bumpers on the controller are kind of awkward feeling for me. Probably just takes some getting used to.
And that’s all I can think about. I know there’s a whole bunch of stuff that I probably missed but those are the main things. Oh and games look AMAZING on the Xbox One."
