[sc:entertainment-category ]So on May 21st, Microsoft is going to announce the next Xbox…
This, of course, is not surprising after the PS4 announcement earlier in the year, but it is a little later than most had thought.
Sony has not done a very good job at building excitement over the PS4, the initial launch party was highly lacking in detail and sounded much like the PS2 and PS3 announcements. Namely full of high ambitions that will never come to pass. Unlike Sony though (the PS4 will be successful, the only question is how long it will take), Microsoft has a more to lose and gain.
Microsoft is on the cusp of becoming a dominant player in home entertainment, they’ve spent a lot of time and money moving the Xbox 360 away from being just a game console and towards a multimedia console. The new Xbox by all the indicators will go even farther and if they come up with something really good, they could make a big move in this area.
I am still on the fence if I’ll buy a new console this generation. I don’t really play many games any more but if the Xbox or PS4 upped the media ante, it might tempt me in to buying one.
I still don’t like the fact to get most of the apps and games on the Xbox you must have an Xbox live gold membership, it seems like a yearly tax to me. But even that I can handle if the right features are present on the device. What are those features?
- Robust video format support (DivX, Xvid, avi, MKV, etc)
- Streaming standards (DLNA at least and Windows file shares would be nice)
- A good interface for DLNA
- Quiet operation
- IR remote control support
- Blu-Ray
Some nice to have features would be:
- Standard form factor, make it fit in with the rest of my media hardware
- HDMI pass through, with the option to stream the video out via DLNA
We’ll see what happens at the announcement, but I suspect we won’t get all the details right away. Either way, by the end of the year we’ll have two new consoles to choose from.
