This new video showing off the Xbox One doesn’t focus much on games. Instead, it gives an in-depth look at the user experience, menus, and apps. We think that’s a smart play, because as launch day for both systems approaches now’s the time to show potential buyers how the system would fit into their lives beyond games.
Xbox team members Marc Whitten and Yusef Mehdi take the viewer through the menu and features of the Xbox One. The video alternates between impressive and creepy as they talk about some of the Kinect features. At one point Mehdi explains that the Kinect’s camera is able to follow people around the room because it can see their skeletal structure.
The idea of a video game system checking out your bones is unsettling, so is the unprompted facial recognition seen in the video. After removing a cover from the Kinect the system almost instantly recognizes the two hosts and loads custom home screens for them. Convenient, yes, but again unsettling.
If you’re not worried about the Kinect scanning your bones or recognizing your face, then the rest of the features in the video are actually really impressive. At one point Whitten uses voice commands to rapidly switch between applications with almost no lag, and there’s no load screen when he cycles back to the racing game he’s playing.
From this video and the specs we’ve seen, the Xbox One is an impressive system. We’re just not sure we’re over the new Kinect’s creep factor.
(via The Next Web, image via Microsoft)
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Published: Nov 8, 2013 07:52 am