Microsoft announced it's Xbox One game console/TV enterainment unit this week and some featured specs may be deal breakers for some gamers. Although the Xbox one is a gaming console, Microsoft als aims to bring TV entertainment into living rooms. Gamers may be disappointed with some of the features of the Xbox One since there are a some restrictions that the previous gaming console, the Xbox 360 did not have. Here are three reasons that may cause the Xbox One to fail:
No Backwards Compatibility:
Xbox 360 users who have built a massive video collection will have to trade them in or sell them off since the games won't be supported by the Xbox One. This may be a deal breaker for some. Microsoft could have least kept backwards compatibility for users to transition into a smooth game console upgrade.
"The system is based on a different core architecture, so back-compat doesn't really work from that perspective," Microsoft Xbox Live vice president Marc Whitten said.
Old controllers from previous Xbox consoles won't work with the new Xbox One either. The Xbox 360 on the other hand featured backwards capability, letting users play over 400 original Xbox games.
Sony is also facing a problem with backwards compatibility for the upcoming PlayStation 4 (PS4) console, but they are looking into possible game emulation for older games, which could somewhat buffer the issue. There are people out there who still play games from the PS2. The Wall Street Journal reported that Sony plans to allow existing PS3 games to be streamed on the PS4.
Mandatory Game Install/Usage Fees:
As Wired reported, optical games for the Xbox One will come in the form of a Blu-ray game disc. Users will then use the disc to install the game into the hard drive of the console and the disc no longer has to be used.
"On the new Xbox, all game discs are installed to the HDD to play," Microsoft said in a statement.
If the game disc was used on another Xbox Live account, a fee will be charged.
The mandatory installation suggests that Microsoft could be attempting to combat game piracy by attaching the game to Xbox Live user accounts. It also encourages users to download games directly into their console instead of buying optical games. The mandatory downloads also illuminate the problem with users sharing games with friends within their social circle.
Storage:
Microsoft announced that the Xbox One comes with 500GB of storage space. Hopefully, there will be another one with at least 1TB in it's specs, as 500GB may not be enough storage space for game content, especially for hardcore gamers. Some Xbox 360 games were large, for example, Max Payne 3 for Xbox 360 required at least 15 GB of free space on the console's DVD to install. The newer games for the Xbox One, will be even larger than that and, for serious gamers, storage space may be an issue. Sure it's possible to store games and movies on cloud storage, but users may not be able to access it if internet service is down.
