When the Xbox One was announced on May 21, many hardcore fans of the gaming console still had questions that needed answers. Little was discovered about the console after its announcement other than it would not be backwards compatible and will be subject to region locking.
In a Q&A with USA Today, Marc Whitten, chief product officer for Microsoft's interactive entertainment business revealed some new details about the Xbox One. The main thing that he wanted to focus on was the updates that the motion system "Kinect" will bring to the entertainment system.
"Because it is so deeply integrated, we're able to do things like recognize you when you say, 'Xbox On.' So not only does Kinect turn on everything in the living room to get it to the right state, but it gets it to your experience and that's really important," he said.
In addition, Kinect helps eliminate steps to logging in and beginning your Xbox session, either with gaming or streaming video. It is heavily integrated with Skype, allowing users to make personal video calls to one another.
The Kinect has been updated to recognize user's hearbeat.
"It's called blush technology where it can detect the blood flow," Whitten said. "Now imagine being able to do a fitness game or fitness experience and it can track your heart rate and give you great feedback and give you new exercises all without having to wear any fancy gear."
One rumor about the new Xbox was that it would require Internet connectivity to work. Whitten did his best to squash those rumors honestly.
"Xbox One needs to connect to the Internet. There are many of the services that are just powered by the Internet, streaming movies, playing multiplayer, things like that. If we can't get to the Internet, you can play your single-player games assuming they don't take advantage of something on the Internet that it needs. You can watch Blu-ray movies, you can watch TV," he said. "But when you think about the value proposition that we are creating, this is an Internet native device."
