UPDATED 16:51 EDT / MAY 22 2013

Has Xbox One Forgotten Its Roots? Hint: It’s Gaming.

Microsoft finally unveiled the Xbox One, an all powerful all-in-one living room entertainment system that you could talk to to control other gadgets in your home.

Aside from being able to talk to it, Kinect also watches for hand gestures for easy navigation.  It has Skype, and TV guide so you’re constantly connected as well as aware of when your favorite shows will be on.

The Xbox One features 8GB of RAM; USB 3.0; Wi-Fi direct; Blu-ray; native 64-bit architecture, three OS – Xbox OS, the Kernel of Windows, and the glue that ties them together an OS that mixes the other two together.  It also has a new Kinect sensor, mobile devices function seamlessly with Xbox One because of Smartglass, and more Xbox Live and Cloud for everyone to enjoy and use.

Microsoft might have focused so much on the entertainment side that it forgot the Xbox’s roots, which is gaming.  Some gamers have mocked Microsoft’s latest Xbox efforts, calling it a very expensive set-top box, which could threaten sales of the console.  But could Steven Spielberg’s promise to produce an original live-action television series based on the game “Halo” drive sales to the Xbox One?

According to SiliconANGLE Contributing Editor John Casaretto, “it may bring people if there’s enough buzz around, and certainly a name like Steven Spielberg is a big thing.

“That’s not the only experience that they’re bringing.  There’s this NFL thing where you can be watching the game, have your fantasy [team] and have it updated in real time in collaboration with the NFL…that’s also interesting.  [These are] very compelling things that bring people to the console.”

See Casaretto’s entire segment below:

But is Xbox One really that bad?  Is creating a total entertainment box the worst move for Microsoft?

SiliconANGLE Founding Editor Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins is actually baffled with people’s reactions.  During the unveiling, Hopkins stated that the general mood of viewers were positive, but now the blogosphere seems to have taken to bashing Microsoft and the Xbox One, likening it to an old school rivalry.

“[M]ost tech blogs are geographically centered around Silicon Valley and all of Microsoft’s competitors are also in Silicon Valley, and so there’s a rival schools mentality,” he says.  Hopkins added that in the past, he’s heard people say something like “The Xbox is so great that sometimes I forget that it’s a Microsoft product” or “It doesn’t even count as a Microsoft product because everything that Microsoft does sucks.”

He also added that most technical blogs are based on game blogs written by fanboys such as PlayStation bloggers bashing the Xbox, or Xbox bloggers bashing the PlayStation.

For more of Hopkins’ Breaking Analysis, check out the NewsDesk video below:


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