Xbox One Reveal Is Not Pretty

BANG! What's that? Why, that's the sound of Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot with the reveal of their upcoming console, Xbox One. If you missed the dreadfully boring, embarrassing conference, you can view it here. Don't wan to watch all that? I've embedded a video of the abridged version below.

We have a game console but Microsoft is going on and on about one of man's oldest marvels, TV. TV seems to be the Xbox One's biggest selling point here. What about THE GAMES?! I don't mind secondary features to consoles like DVD playback, net surfing and such, but when I buy a video game system, it is primarily to play video games. The fact that that the Xbox One is more about TV than games, or this is what Microsoft is implying anyway, is an enormous red flag. Anyone that already had little interest in the system is probably less inclined to pick one up after this sub-par unveiling.

Then there's the name. We've had consoles with questionable names in the past but "Xbox One"? When this is the third Xbox? Surely, there had to be a better name the brainstorming crew could have come up with besides Xbox One. Suddenly PlayStation 4 and Wii U sound like names that were strokes of genius. At least they gave some form of significance in moving forward at least in terms of names. Xbox One sounds like two steps backwards.

Psst, Microsoft. You already had an Xbox
one. It looked like this

Perhaps many of us are being too hasty. After all, this was the console reveal and Microsoft could still impress us at E3. Having said that, it was still a very underwhelming reveal with far too much emphasis on TV, social media, TV and more TV. Microsoft did very little to hype the console with this press conference and are the biggest laughing stocks of the industry at the moment. I admit that I have very minimal interest in the Xbox One but I'm willing to give Microsoft another chance. They have E3 to wow me. Less TV talk and more game talk. Even with the Wii U's abysmal sales and light selection of games, it's twice the game machine the Xbox One is.