Today Microsoft released a new video demo that shows highlights of the Xbox One, which launches in the U.S. on Nov. 22 — from navigating a personalized home screen to immediately picking up where you stopped in a game.
Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s chief marketing and strategy officer, and Marc Whitten, the corporate vice president of Xbox, demonstrated the next-generation console’s many features, dropping the word “magic” several times. They walked through how gamers can customize their home screens with social information and pins (favorite content that they’ve chosen to save) as well as how they can switch profiles by giving the Kinect the voice command “Xbox, show my stuff.”
By ordering the console to open a game such as the Xbox One exclusive racer Forza Motorsport 5, players can resume their progress from the exact moment they left off — without waiting for the game to load or having to access their save file.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhe6jV-APwM&w=560&h=315]
Whitten went from Forza to Internet Explorer to live television viewing and back again all in a few seconds. He could swap between applications such as Hulu and Netflix even before they had finished loading. Gamers can also press the “One” button on the controller to return home anytime.
Mehdi also demoed entertainment features such as Skype, which pops up with unobtrusive notifications of incoming calls. The Kinect follows the person around the room by using software, not physical movement of the camera, and by “reading the skeletal frame.”
The Xbox One can also record video and enable players to edit those clips from the Upload Studio. The rendering and uploading was one of the longest tasks that Whitten and Mehdi undertook although they could exit out without interrupting the process and continue using the console.
Today through Nov. 22, customers can swing by more than 75 Microsoft retail stores across the country to check out live gameplay on the Xbox One, including action from the upcoming launch title Forza Motorsport 5.