Block By Block: Xbox One S Minecraft Limited Edition
Drawing massive inspiration from Microsoft’s blocky adventure game, the Xbox One S Minecraft Limited Edition console provides a look plucked straight out of the game’s world. Designed with a pixelated pattern resembling the game’s grass block, you’ll find few consoles as easily identifiable as this. On the rear, a transparent plate reveals a pattern of redstone workings, alongside an accompanying “Creeper” controller and custom sounds for hardware buttons.
Kinect For Xbox One And Decline
The Kinect release for the Xbox 360 was estimated to have sold eight million units in the first sixty days of release, earning the hardware the Guinness World Record for the “Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device”. Over 10 million had been sold by March 2011. While seemingly successful, its launch titles were primarily family-oriented games , which may have drawn new audiences, but did not have the selling power of major franchises like Battlefield and which were primarily designed around the Xbox 360 controller. Only an estimated 20% of the 55 million Xbox 360 owners had purchased the Kinect. The Kinect team recognized some of the downsides with more traditional games and Kinect, and continued ongoing development of the unit to be released as a second-generation unit, such as reducing the latency of motion detection and improving speech recognition. Microsoft provided news of these changes to the third-party developers to help them anticipate how the improvements can be integrated into the games.
Microsoft formally announced it would stop manufacture of the Kinect for Xbox One on October 25, 2017. Microsoft eventually discontinued the adapter in January 2018, stating that they were shifting to manufacture other accessories for the Xbox One and personal computers that were more in demand. This is considered by the media to be the point where Microsoft forgone any further work on the Kinect for the Xbox platform.
Ocean Waves: Xbox One S Deep Blue Special Edition
This variant of the Xbox One S comes in a “Deep Blue” colorway, adopting the revised hardware in a dark aquatic theme. This color was only available on 500GB units in select regions, via bundles with matching controllers and a game. Deep Blue Xbox One S bundles were sold in late 2016, alongside copies of Gears of War 4, Battlefield 1, or FIFA 17.
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The Simpsons Movie Xbox 360
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photo source: WIKISIMPSONS
In July 2007, Microsoft created a special Xbox 360 console themed after The Simpsons. The bright yellow Xbox 360 console was made to celebrate the release of The Simpsons Movie and featured the movies logo as well as the top half of Homer Simpsons head. Microsoft only produced 100 units of The Simpsons Movie Xbox 360 and they were never put up for sale. The consoles were only given away as prizes for special events, contests, and drawings that led up to the premiere of The Simpsons Movie.
Ditch The Gloss: Xbox One
Less than a year after the launch of the Xbox One, Microsoft decided to ditch Kinect, selling the console without the ill-fated motion controller. Shortly after this shift, a decision was made to revise the console’s design, adopting new matte black panels across the device. This eased general wear after its previous glossy panel was prone to collecting scratches.
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Microsoft Xbox One To Be Made And Sold In China
Deal marks first major gaming console to gain government’s approval following 14 year ban.
NEW YORK — Microsoft – Get Microsoft Corporation Report has won a huge battle in the video game console marketing wars, as China Telecom – Get China Telecom Corp. Ltd. Report announced it has completed an exclusive carrier deal to begin selling new Xbox One devices in September.
Microsoft stock was gaining 0.09% to $44.44 in early afternoon trading in New York.
According to China’s Xinhua news the deal involves Microsoft investing $80 million to begin manufacturing the devices in that country China Telecom plans to sell the console in its retail stores starting in the fall. The devices will be manufactured in Shanghai’s free trade zone by Internet TV set-top box maker BesTV. The company’s CEO, Tao Mingcheng said the new Xbox will target family users in the “mid- to high-end market” and will be a “popular, mainstream product.”
Microsoft proudly boasted about the deal with BesTV in April, calling it “monumental” on its Xbox blog.
Lewis Ward, IDC’s Research Director of Gaming says Microsoft now appears to be better positioned to take advantage of this big, new opportunity. Reached by phone, Ward said Microsoft understands the Chinese market because of its a long history – since the 1990’s – of dealing with its popular Windows operating system there. He thinks the Xbox One has the potential of a providing Microsoft with a big “leg-up” on its Japanese competition.
Xbox One Review: Games
Cuphead has technically appeared on Nintendo Switch as well, but we’re still counting it as an Xbox One exclusive.
At launch, Xbox One didn’t have the best selection of games, but in the years that have followed some real crackers – both exclusive and multiplatform – have hit the console, bolstering its ever-expanding library.
Halo 5: Guardians is easily one of the best and a must for new adopters. Integrating one of the best single-player campaigns into the series’ most robust multiplayer offering, Halo 5 is a shooter fan’s dream land. And with no certainty that Halo Infinite will launch on Xbox One in 2020 , Halo 5 remains your one-stop shop for spartan battles on Switch.
Xbox One supports all the usual iterative sports simulators, including FIFA 19, Madden 19, NBA 2K19, NHL 19 and more. For shooter fans outside of Halo, Xbox One has Overwatch, Paladins, Fortnite, PUBG and all the recent Call of Duties and Battlefields. It’s not exactly short on multi-platform games.
Fortnite is free-to-play and is full of fun and enjoyable modes to enjoy alongside the usual battle royale matches.
On the exclusives front, Xbox One doesn’t have quite the firepower of PS4, but it does have plenty of memorable games such as Cuphead, Forza Horizon 4, Gears of War 4 and more. There’s plenty more on the horizon, and you can play most if not all of them with a Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription.
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Play Like A Pro: Xbox One Elite
While the Xbox One Elite console was only a relatively minor evolution of the original design, the bundle delivered some welcome improvements. The undeniable draw of the bundle was its included Xbox One Elite controller, though its 1TB solid-state hybrid drive brought some welcome performance improvements, too. With this setup, Microsoft promised a 20 percent faster boot-up and general speed improvements across the board.
The History Of The Xbox
The original Xbox launched late in 2001, nearly nineteen years ago. A lot has changed with the brand since then, bringing more power, more exclusives, and more value to consumers around the world. Now, the brand is set to reimagine itself yet again when the Xbox Series X releases this holiday season.
But before we move forward, why not take a look back at what brought us here in the first place? Xbox has a storied history what started out as a simple project has evolved into one of the most profitable gaming brands in the entire industry and it might help us figure out what we can expect from the company moving forward.
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Everything New Is Old Again
Given the four years between the release of the first Xbox and the arrival of its successor, its no surprise that after six years rumors began circulating in March 2011 that the 360 was on its way out and Microsoft was already hard at work on its next console. The first set of reports surfaced on LinkedIn, where several designers and developers added vague descriptions of a mysterious new project they were working on with Microsoft. There was no stopping the Internet rumor train once it started chugging along, and before long the new console even had an unofficial code name: Xbox 720.
Even with the next-generation rumors, sales of the 360 continued to assert Microsofts powerful position in the console gaming industry, and by September 2012 the company announced that it had hit the 70-million mark in units sold, and by December that number had jumped to 75 million. Although the sales of the 360 trailed behind Nintendos Wii, which sold close to 100 million, it outsold the Ps3 by around 5 million. This news was followed a month later by the debut of Xbox Music and Xbox Video, Microsofts new media services that not only replaced the existing services on the Xbox but also offered an attractive, Apple-style integration across all devices running Windows software.
Xbox 360 Launch Team Edition
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photo source: Flickr via Porcaro Family
The Xbox 360 came out in November 2005 and like the release of the original Xbox, Microsoft celebrated the consoles launch with a special launch team edition. This time, however, Microsoft actually gifted the Xbox 360 Launch Team Edition console to its team members. For the most part, the console looked like a standard white Xbox 360, but it featured a green hard drive and green base The HDD plate was also engraved with the team members personal gamertag. The Xbox 360 Launch Team Edition console also came with a special matching white and green controller.
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Xbox Elite One Wireless Controller
Microsoft released its Xbox One Elite Wireless Controller on October 27, 2015. The premium peripheral retails for $150 and features interchangeable parts that include dome-style convex sticks and taller concave ones. There is also an option to swap out the D-pad for a satellite-looking solution that was tailor-made for fighting games. In addition, the controller features hair-trigger locks that allow you to minimize the travel distance of the left and right triggers. Underneath the controller, there are four removable paddles that allow you to remap any of the buttons. The black and silver controller is significantly heavier than the stock model, which Microsoft asserts is mostly due to the higher-quality steel components.
Xbox One X: What It Takes To Build A Console
Peanut butter and jelly. Shaq and Kobe. Master Chief and Cortana. If theres anything weve learned during our short time on this planet, its that collaboration is the driving force of creation .
We recently heard from Bryan Sparks, Senior Designer, Microsoft Device Design Team, and Leonardo Del Castillo, GM of Xbox Devices Console Development to learn about their creative collaboration process behind the worlds most powerful gaming console: Xbox One X.
To hear them tell it, the story is a fascinating one. In that, the engineering and design teams executed on the development of Xbox One X with a clear and specific goal from the outset deliver True 4K Gaming in a small form factor design and endeavored to work together to make that dream possible without compromising on their vision. And the end result is tremendous.
Kickstarting the Process
As you might imagine when one sits down to create the worlds most powerful gaming console, the engineering and design teams would face a lot of questions: How do you make the systems work with each other? How can we make it compact? Whats the expression of Xbox One X? How does it tell a story just by the way it looks?
While these were all great questions the team looked to tackle early on, the most critical that they all agreed to land on was that this was going to be True 4K Gaming at its heart, and this is what was going to drive the architecture of the system.
The Design of a System
Fitting into Place
Keeping Cool
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The Next X And The End Of An Era
On May 12, 2005, Microsoft unveiled the Xbox 360, the next generation of its gaming console. With plans to release the 360 in November, the company clearly hoped that an early debut almost a full year before the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii were scheduled to arrive would put the 360 in a good position to dominate the market. It also meant the writing was on the wall for the original Xbox.
Later that year, production of the Xbox officially ceased, with the final tally of sold consoles sitting at around 24 million units. While this was nothing to scoff at, the number fell far short of Microsofts initial prediction of 50 million Xbox consoles in households around the world. It was nowhere near the sales totals of the PS2, which went on to sell over 153 million units, but the Xbox did outsell both Nintendos GameCube , and Segas Dreamcast . The last game produced for the Xbox in North America, Madden 09, was released in August 2008, and support for the system was discontinued in March 2009. The final nail in the consoles coffin was hammered on April 14, 2010, with Xbox Live access eliminated for the original Xbox.
Xbox One Provides Access To Game Pass
These days, Xbox Game Pass is the biggest draw of an Xbox console. If you’re not familiar, Game Pass is a monthly subscription that provides unlimited access to over 100 games.
You can download and play them on your Xbox for as long as you stay subscribed, and it’s full of high-quality games. Plus, all titles published by Xbox Game Studios come to Game Pass on their day of release.
Game Pass is $10/month for console only. There’s also Game Pass Ultimate, which is $15/month and includes access to Game Pass on PC, as well as Xbox Live Gold and other perks. For more info, see our full guide to Xbox Game Pass.
Both the Xbox One line and Xbox Series X/S provide full access to the Game Pass catalog, at least at the time of writing. The Xbox Series S|X will run the games better and faster, however, thanks to those consoles packing SSDs and more powerful internals.
That means if you want to check out lots of the titles on Game Pass, an Xbox One is a decent way to do so. However, many of the same games are on Game Pass for PC, so if you have access to a decent gaming computer, an Xbox One is largely redundant.
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How Much Do Xbox Consoles Cost
Before we discuss specifics, it’s important to consider the price of each Xbox console. While there are other factors that go into deciding if an Xbox One is right for you, the value for money is one of the most practical.
The Xbox One S retails for $300, while the more powerful Xbox One X has a sticker price of $500. There’s also the All-Digital Xbox One S for $250, which lacks a disc drive.
As it turns out, these prices match the new Xbox Series S and Series X exactly. As a result, it doesn’t make much sense to pay for an Xbox One now if you think you might buy an Xbox Series X/S in a year.
If you do get an Xbox One, we’d recommend looking for a second-hand model to avoid paying full price. At the time of writing, it’s difficult to even find an Xbox One in stock.
Is Sony Still Producing The Ps4
Unfortunately, things are different for Sony. It’s still near-impossible to buy a PS5 due to high demand and supply chain issues, and things aren’t easier with scalpers abound.
As such, Sony told Bloomberg it will continue to manufacture the PS4 in 2022. For many, the PS4 remains a viable purchase, especially since plenty of upcoming first-party games will land on both the PS4 and PS5.
These global supply chain issues aren’t going away any time soon, and it’s more than just Sony and Microsoft that are impacted. We can only hope it gets easier for the average person to buy a new console as the year progresses.
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Hello Kitty Crystal Xbox
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photo source: imgur
The so-called Hello Kitty Crystal Xbox is so rare that many people thought it was an April Fools Day joke for many years. However, real pictures of the elusive console eventually turned up and on rare occasions, the Hello Kitty Crystal Xbox console has come up for sale on Ebay. The special Hello Kitty Crystal Xbox console was part of the Hello Kitty Collectors Pack, which was only available from one specific retailer in Singapore. Additionally, the only way to get the Hello Kitty Collectors Pack was to purchase a $5,000 Samsung TV then pony up another S$99 for the pack. Reportedly, only 550 Hello Kitty Collectors Packs were produced.
Microsoft Details How It Made The Xbox One X
How three years of engineering brought the Xbox One X to life.
Compact, powerful, sleek. What we once knew as Project Scorpio is now the Xbox One X, and its launch is quickly approaching. Thanks to Xbox Wire, we now have a closer look at how the forthcoming console came to fruition after three years of engineering.
Microsoft’s E3 2017 briefing gave us out first real look at the power behind the X iteration, and now we’ve got more insight into how Microsoft have packed the power into such a small box. The Xbox One X is smaller than the Xbox One S, and Microsoft claims it’s 40 percent more power than any other console on the market.
It takes a lot to cool down six teraflops of power. In a standard PC tower, that challenge isn’t quite so daunting. But in a 13.5 by 10 inch box, keeping it cool and air flowing is a task all in itself, so the design team turned to high-end PC and graphics card cooling systems. The result was the Xbox One X’s custom vapor chamber and fan system.
What makes this system so unique is that it places the motherboard at the top and the cooling system below. As the system is running, the heat literally sinks into the vapor chamber which fills with water. A vacuum sucks up that hot water and uses it to power the radiator fins, and a centrifugal fan pulls air through the console to keep everything, including the power supply, crisp and cool.
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