Don Mattrick took the stage before a cheering and excited audience in an auditorium on Microsoft campus. In order to launch, a commercial was run that spoke to the intentions of Xbox as it moves into the future using the cloud, personalization, and further connectivity of community and social–it’s obvious that Kinect, Xbox Live, and connectivity will lead the day across streaming media.

“Team Xbox is on a new mission: build a new Xbox that will combine a new media experience for a new generation,” he says.

It’s name: the Xbox One.

Behold the Xbox One

The Xbox for the new generation will become the all powerful all-in-one living room entertainment system. Microsoft has been building towards this expectation for a very long time now, by pulling in more and more media-centric elements to the Xbox, adding cable, increasing Internet connectivity, and building out into the cloud. This will complete Microsoft’s march into the living room as a set-top all-in-one entertainment center.

To show off the features and functions of the Xbox One, Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi took the stage.

“What if a single device could provide all your entertainment? And what if that device could talk to everything in your living room?” he says. It could talk to your TV, always be on, and nothing to wait on. Mehdi showed this off by speaking to the Xbox-Kinect and said, “Xbox on,” and the screen immediately lit up with his homescreen.

A new area will appear in the Xbox Live dashboard called “Trending,” which will show off what’s currently trending in the Xbox community and amidst his friends.

As part of his presentation, he shows off how Xbox One connects with live TV. “Xbox, watch TV,” he says and suddenly the TV is showing what’s currently on live television. But at this point, he’s not done, he talks about a function called instant switching and when he says, “Xbox, game,” it goes to a video game, and then he shotguns a series of commands–to which the Xbox responds instantly: “Go to TV. Watch TV. Watch movie.”

Switching between games, TV, movies, dashboard, et al is as easy as just talking out loud to the device. At the same time the Kinect also watches for hand movements that enable easy navigation with gesture and voice at the same time. This sort of activity enables not just being able to quickly change entertainment; it also means that console users can use their Xbox at the same time while doing other entertainment-related activities. Including looking up information or even trailers on Internet Explorer (without ever leaving the movie or TV show.)

He even showed off how he could remote-control the interface via his smartphone.

Skype on Xbox

Not only will Xbox enable people to use Skype to make video calls, but it will also let people take video calls while watching movies–and, according to Mehdi, Skype-with-Xbox-Kinect will enable people to do group video calls in the living room on the TV.

The explanation for Skype was extremely short and without many details, but since this is a big deal for many SiliconANGLE readers we will get articles specific to this out and grab onto details.

Xbox TV Guide

The guide looks a lot like every other guide that comes with a DVR; but add in the Kinect and the voice-activation capability it’s as easy as looking at the guide with “Show the guide,” and then switching between channels with voice activation. Easy as, “Watch Syfy,” “Show me CBS,” easy as speaking out loud the channel name without having to scan through a UI.

In addition to the guide, the Trending section enables yet-again entertainment and what everyone else is watching and what you might want to watch–no more being bored in front of the TV as long as an Xbox One is connected. Just a gesture or a voice-command away is any movie, game, or TV show easily found and easily conjured up like a djinni in a black box.

No news yet on the release date–we’re just left with “later this year.” Further news will come to us at this year’s E3.