This week Microsoft unveiled its newest gaming console, The Xbox One, due to go on sale later this year. It comes 8 long years after the release of the Xbox 360, in which technological revolutions like smartphones, cloud computing and online video delivery services have changed the face of computing and entertainment alike. In fact to call the Xbox One a console at all is to do it a great disservice, the latest incarnation of Microsoft’s winning gaming platform is more like a complete home entertainment system, set to become the centrepiece of millions of living rooms across the globe.
“We have an ambitious vision to become the all-in-one system for every living room,” Microsoft’s Don Mattrick said at the unveiling. The new Xbox is a leap forward in technology, utilising 5 billion transistors, to the Xbox 360’s 500 million. It will feature an 8 core processor, 8GB of memory and a 500GB hard disk. The new system will be able to integrate your existing television subscription package into its menus, make Skype calls, browse the internet and can be controlled by voice command and physical gesture owing to an updated version of Microsoft’s Kinect system which will ship with every Xbox One.
The Kinect’s high definition, wide angle camera captures video at 30 frames per second, perfect for two way chats on your T.V, and its infrared sensors are so powerful that they can read your pulse by monitoring pigmentation changes in your face. Call out “Xbox watch Bloomberg” and it will instantly take you there, or “watch Boiler Room”, and it will automatically scan every channel listing for it, if not there it will survey online streaming services for your favourite film and deliver it to you within seconds.
Microsoft’s Surface tablets have failed to gain the traction the company hoped, and its Window’s phone has only managed to garner 3.2 percent of the smartphone market. Xbox, however, has always been a winner for Microsoft, its previous version selling 77 million units worldwide and accounting for almost half of the gaming console market. This new release looks set to further build on this success.
Despite under performing on the Nasdaq for several years, Microsoft stocks have been trending upwards of late. They have risen from 26.42869 to 35.27349, out-performing the technology index with gains of 30% in this year alone. At the moment the company’s stock is trading just short of its pre-2008 highs. And if the hype surrounding the Xbox One translates to sales it is likely that Microsoft stocks could touch $40 this year.
Watch the Full Unveiling Here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bFVptu6QbY
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