As part of the presentation today for #XboxReveal in which Microsoft unveiled the next-generation Xbox One console, Marc Whitten took the stage to talk about what makes the gaming console tick. He started by describing how software, hardware, and sensors all work together to produce the experience described earlier by Don Mattrick and Yusuf Mehdi. Primarily he focused on hypetastic descriptions of the electronics and the operating system software that enables the intelligent TV experience and how Kinect is better than ever.

The System: The Xbox One provides 5 billion transitions, 8 GB of RAM; USB 3.0; Wi-Fi direct; Blu-ray; native 64-bit architecture; and it’s practically silent operation. Whitten speaks to the Xbox One architecture as three-OS in one: Xbox OS, the Kernel of Windows, and the glue that ties them together an OS that mixes the other two together.

In the previous presentation fast-switching between movies, games, and even Internet browsing was displayed using voice-command to the Kinect and this is all being handled by the “glue” portion of the OS that allows lots of multitasking. All the hardware and software together in the console also gives it its generalized purpose across video games, video playing, movie and TV streaming, and the cable connectivity even adds live TV capability to the Xbox itself.

The Kinect: A new Kinect sensor is paired with every Xbox One, completely redesigned to respond uniquely to each person and is able to identify an individual by voice. Over 2GB of data a second to understand the world that it sees, which enables the quick switching and being able to make the person sitting in front of the Xbox the controller.

The Kinect camera runs at 1080p and includes a revolutionary skeletal detection system, including doppler (or guessing at how quick and what direction joints are moving), and the ability to read the heartbeat of the person in front of the camera.

Smartglass: As shown in the previous presentation, smart devices will now be able to behave as if they’re part of the Xbox experience. Tablets, smartphones, and other devices can become part of the Xbox system just by running apps that are aware of the Xbox and connect to it.

By expanding the Xbox application process across different devices the personalization and interoperability is greatly amplified. We’ve seen this attempt with the Wii-U by placing screens that can connect to and use the power of the Wii-U away from the device itself; no doubt Xbox-enabled apps on smartphones and tablets can stream via Wi-Fi from the Xbox videos, connectivity, and probably even video games giving a different and more differentiated experience.

Xbox Live and the cloud

Today, 15,000 servers power the Xbox Live experience; but soon over 300,000 servers will power the computing experience for users.

Content is stored in the cloud–movies, music, games, and saves, available anywhere–and this means that intelligent TV and playing games will be brought to a whole new level. This includes a streaming and capture ability that will enable players to easily store and edit their game plays so that they can share it and brag to their friends.

Game developers can even take advantage of Microsoft’s Xbox cloud to produce bigger and badder matches and “living and persistent worlds.” This means that MMOs developed for the Xbox One and on Xbox Live should be able to take advantage of massive cloud architectures to allow players to play together in living worlds that can change and persist around them. Enabling and opening up a hypersocial experience–which is where massively multiplayer online games rest.

Certainly, this will also mean more matches of Call of Duty and Halo, but it also means a bigger, badder social experience enabled by developers into MMO games for players who want to interact with their friends; join matches, and actually interact across a lot of different platforms at the same time.

This also means that game makers can take advantage of the Microsoft datacenter and cloud architecture to offload what otherwise they would have to host themselves (potentially for a price.) After all, Microsoft does have Azure and their own cloud architecture that they can sell on the cheap to game publishers and developers to entice them to use their systems.

And, when it comes to already extremely popular games such as Halo and Call of Duty this greatly increased cloud architected infrastructure means that players can play games closer to themselves, reducing overall Internet latency (which is a big problem for shooters) and relieve problems inherited by playing against or with players who might be further away or suffering bandwidth issues.

It opens up a whole new domain for more immersive, smarter, and potentially better-edged games in the upcoming market where gamers have already seen great leaps forward in local hardware bringing more brilliant, vivid artwork into their games. It’s about time that immersion take advantage of the Internet and its ability to deliver the enemy into your hands faster than ever before.