Xbox One..

So, what do you all think about the Xbox One, now that it's been revealed?

First up, the look of it. I think it looks OK, but it's nothing special. It looks to me like a mixture between a NES and a VCR player. Very simple design, and they could have done a lot more with it. It's just a bit dull on the eye. The controller isn't much different from the 360 controller, which is good because I love the 360 controller. The D-pad looks much improved as well, which is great for someone like me who loves fighting games.

Spec wise, I'm quite impressed. A custom 8 core AMD CPU, 8GB RAM (only DDR3 compared to PS4's DDR5), 500GB HDD (external storage can be used via USB), Blu-Ray, and USB 3.0. No word yet on the GPU though, other than it being an AMD Radeon. All in all, they're some great specs. If you were to build a PC with those specs, you'd probably be looking at £800+ (That includes a crappy box for a case). The Xbox One will obviously not cost that much, so they're squeezing some great specs into a machine which will probably cost around half the price of a comparative PC.

Now features... No backwards compatability at all isn't good, but it's understandable. The 360 games were optimised for the 360, not the Xbox One. A lot of the popular 360 games will very likely be available on Live anyway, but it is a shame you can't play your old 360 discs in the One. What is even more of a shame is the rumours of fees for playing pre-owned games. I've read that to play a pre-owned game, you have to pay a fee first. It won't be a great deal of money, but it's still not right. Games companies have been doing fine for many years while pre-owned games have been available. Why try phasing them out now? I mean, it's not just pre-owned games that'll be effected by this. You won't be able to lend friends your games, without them having to pay to play them. People won't want to buy used games from charity shops, because they'll have to pay to play them when they get them home. I strongly disagree with this fee, and hope Microsoft change their minds about it before the console is released.

I've seen a lot of bitching and moaning online about all the streaming and video downloading options on the Xbox One. I have no idea why people are complaining about it. It's good to have so many options for watching videos and TV series'. I know most set-top boxes and TV service providers do the same now, but it doesn't hurt that Microsoft are doing it as well. They did it on the 360, so why shouldn't they do it on the One?

I've read something (probably a stupid rumour) about the Xbox One having to be always on so it can do dayly updates and checks. I don't know whether it's true or not, but it's not a big deal to me. I have to leave my Sky box on standby whenever I'm not watching TV, so leaving my One on standby won't hurt. I don't know what these "checks" will involve, but constant updates are fine by me as the thing I really hate is turning my 360 on, then having to wait for it to do an update before I can use it.

I don't really know what else to touch on for now, as I don't know much more about Xbox One. I'd love to read what everyone else thinks of it so far though.

Wheato. Go over to www.xboxoneforums.net. I'm on there as Yelmorb.