Regarding the orientation, if I remember right, the PS3 and xbox360 were also shown vertically in the marketing, no? Also, from I remember of the Wii, it also sat vertically.
Xbox Series X: Gee thanks, Microsoft! Just what we wanted for Xmas 2020 – a Gateway tower PC
It's always interesting to see where industrial designers source their inspiration. Tesla, in creating the futuristic CyberTruck, looked to the dystopian world of Blade Runner. Iconic '80s movie Back To The Future directly inspired Nike’s self-lacing MAG kicks. And in creating the upcoming Xbox Series X console, Microsoft's muse …
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Monday 16th December 2019 20:00 GMT Blackjack
Re: The Wii came with a stand for it to go vertical
You like Double Dash? I guess you never played Mario Kart DS then?
I still use my Wii sometimes.
Guess what? Gamecube Sonic Heroes might be repetitive but it is definitely better than a lot of later Sonic Games.
And of course there is Brain Academy even if it's a murder on the controller batteries.
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Friday 13th December 2019 15:13 GMT Paul Shirley
I ran a pair of Xbox Ones vertically on my desk, stuck between the monitors and wall, for 4 years. Picked up plenty of dust but never complained about overheating. Rarely used the Bluray drives but they're slot loading and worked perfectly.
The One X sat horizontal, buried under a pile of crap simply because I ran out of safe places to sit it vertically!
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Sunday 15th December 2019 13:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Everything will be downloaded from the network.
Cool. Just did that.
You might expect that you buy an Xbox with bundled games and you can just turn the thing on and play...
No chance.
First, download 3.8G of system update at ~ 4Mbs. Care to calculate how long that takes?
Then configure a load of pointless profile crap, enter the download code and.... yay! Download 70+Gb at ... at ... wait for it ... and you will ... hang on... hmmm... well, let's see, ... about 4Mbs.
Not even anything to play, however pointless, until this is all done. No demo game. No pre-loaded free trial of something vaguely entertaining that showcases the hardware. Just a 36+ hour wait with nothing but a veeeeeeeeery slow progress bar. And *now* imagine that you are about 12, and it's your birthday.
Where's the initial hit of excitement as you plug the thing in and get wowed by the graphics & sound?
A complete and inexcusably piss-poor unboxing experience. You should be hooked straight off and have a good chance of ending up with a lifelong (even if possibly not entirely justified) bias towards Xbox as a gaming platform.
Product design? Total f**king incompetence, IMO.
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Monday 16th December 2019 09:56 GMT Kane
Re: Everything will be downloaded from the network.
"And *now* imagine that you are about 12, and it's your birthday."
In fairness, a good parent would set up the console beforehand and do all that crap themselves, so that when little Johnny opens the box and his eyes light up, it's ready to go.
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Monday 16th December 2019 11:23 GMT Phil S
Re: Everything will be downloaded from the network.
did that last year with an Xbox I got in the cyber Monday sales - glad I did as I had to hide the thing in loft room (kids are nosy) to install the updates over weak-ass wifi (Victorian walls/ceilings) and it took 4 days!
Then I put the games in and had to do the same to install them.
Took about a week in all, but was worth it so they could play the thing!
My Amiga 500 was much easier...
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Monday 16th December 2019 11:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: a good parent
A "good" parent might not know anything about xboxes, and assume they arrive sensibly configured. You know, like a laptop, or a tv box, or some other computer-like device.
And just because a parent might happen know they have to compensate for Microsoft's incompetence, doesn't mean they should have to; and Microsoft should know better - do they want the initial experience to be a positive one, or a tedious, long-winded, and frustrating one?
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Thursday 19th December 2019 05:40 GMT Diamandi Lucas
Re: Everything will be downloaded from the network.
This is one thing that annoys me about how the Xbox One handles game updates. Other consoles allow you to defer updating and will let you play the single player campaign.
If you want to defer the update on the Xbox One you have to go into the network settings of the console and take it offline.
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Monday 16th December 2019 01:50 GMT the hatter
Re: Ah yes but
Already an option, I noted as a non-Xbox-er who was looking at some detail the other day "Xbox One S All-Digital Edition" billed at $50 (and I assume £50) less than the normal One S, for those with poor budgeting skills. Might even make sense for MS to do an All Digital edition of the new one at launch, give a short-sighted cheapskate option for those who can't quite justify the price tag of the full-fat version at launch.
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Monday 16th December 2019 13:17 GMT Ugotta B. Kiddingme
Re: No more discs?
MS tried that with the early designs for XBox One. They also tried "always on" both for box and internet connectivity as the only option. They backed off both ideas after much outcry from the user community. You CAN run discless and/or "always on" if desired, but you don't HAVE to.
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Friday 13th December 2019 14:18 GMT Pascal Monett
So, it's a PC, right ?
It's a tower, and if you open it up I'd wager you'll find a microATX motherboard, a regular AMD video card and the usual components connected to said motherboard.
The one thing that may change is the way the OS is configured, locking you down to the Microsoft Store and only giving you the gaming options.
I wonder if you could install Linux on it. I also wonder why you would want to.
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Friday 13th December 2019 14:45 GMT chuBb.
Re: So, it's a PC, right ?
Doubtful they learnt the lesson well with the original Xbox, used to run xbox linux on one of mine (had 3, one for gaming/going to block buster and hiring 5 games for a £5 for the weekend and ripping to the upgraded HDD, one as a media center xbmp => xbmc aka kodi these days, and one as a simple web and mail server).
Instead i predict inside you will find a single big PCBpossibly a wifi daughter board as its cheaper to just plonk a standard laptop wifi board in, a bunch of heatpipes and hopefully and inch or 2 void at the bottom for a dust catcher and means to not choke the thing if put vertically on carpet, as the fan would be sucking bottom to top. And yet another huge PSU brick as that makes manufacture easier, you only have to design the psu for each major markets power network/standards
Will be interesting if MS also do a PS5 and have an SSD cartridge, as i reckon that digital only will be a non starter for anyone on a sub 30Mb connection 80+GB downloads for games and 40GB day one patches, would not be at all surprised to find self serve vending machines in super markets and games shops to copy to the SSD
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Friday 13th December 2019 15:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: So, it's a PC, right ?
You'll actually just find the GPU mounted on the custom mboard or integrated on the CPU die depending on whether they can cool an integrated version. Never bothered cracking the case of any of mine. While it's barely different from a PC, the underlying hardware graphics access is very different, but hidden by DirectX.
Probably just a matter of time till MS release Win10 for it, they added keyboard support last year and it can run UWP apps. But locked down as possible, of course it will be.
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Friday 13th December 2019 17:20 GMT nevarre
Re: So, it's a PC, right ?
Xbox OS is essentially a VM that runs on top of Windows Core as the host OS. Look up Xbox One on Wikipedia, or search the web for Xbox One architecture. It's more likely that they will release a software only version of Xbox OS to run on Windows, but it's more likely that more games will drift towards versions that function on both Windows and Xbox and dump their save files out in Azure somewhere.
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Friday 13th December 2019 19:13 GMT Sandtitz
Re: Noise
"So, how much noise from the cooling system, when it's under full load? Any numbers anywhere?"
Did you read the article?
The device is in development phase and ready for the markets in Christmas 2020. They may still change the externals or some of the innards, including cooling.
From the article: "Spencer says is no louder than the Xbox One X."
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Friday 13th December 2019 18:41 GMT Dr. Vagmeister
RE: ......suggesting Microsoft had learned from its mistakes with the Xbox One.
Maybe they have introduced some new ones.
I have a hifi rack, and a wide TV stand where every piece of equipment is wide and not tall. Where on earth is this new tower design going to sit ?
Maybe the unit can lie on its side, but the article seems to indicate it cannot for ventilation purposes.
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Saturday 14th December 2019 20:38 GMT Dwarf
Re: RE: ......suggesting Microsoft had learned from its mistakes with the Xbox One.
I still wouldn't want a brick that sort of shape under my TV, long flat boxes are well established for fitting into TV stands, big cubes less so.
Flat screen TV's only a couple of mm deep nailed to the wall is a good thing too, so other things fit flatly and nicely out of view.
Nowhere in anyone' s designs does a large brick feature into the view of "that will integrate nicely"
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Saturday 14th December 2019 14:51 GMT TheSkunkyMonk
2 consoles and 5 drives in a year or two with the 360, Ill never waste money on a xbox again. Only reason I bothered with the 360 anyway was for Forza and they went and trashed that game as well. Laughed so hard when they added a minute cooldown to start races, what idiot though that was a good idea? Then all the DLC, nope just nope, if Im paying top dolar for a game I expect to get the entire game.