Are you ready for the Xbox One? On Friday, November 22, it’ll be in stores.
It’s no secret that Nintendo’s Wii U has stumbled out of the gate, and early indications are the Sony’s Playstation 4 launch left a lot to be desired. Microsoft is starting to look a little prescient in waiting to be third in line to relase their next-generation console.
While I own both a PS3 and an Xbox 360, owning two consoles has become way too big of an investment, especially when games are selling for $60 a pop. As for which one to choose, Sony made that pretty easy for me. I definitely wanted my next console to continue to have motion gaming capabilities. While Sony is continuing to sell the Move controllers (which are still the most precise motion controllers to date), over the last few years it’s clear that it’s focusing on the use of its controllers as ancillary to gameplay, versus Microsoft who’s gone the opposite direction by forcing all Xbox One users to also have the Kinect (making its price $100 more than the PS4).
We’ll see how the marketplace responds, but as for me, I pre-ordered my Xbox One at Best Buy and will be picking it up this Friday. Hopefully by the weekend I’ll have an unboxing and initial thoughts posted.
If you haven’t ordered your Xbox One yet, here are some places that you can get it:
It’ll be the same price everywhere ($499), so I wouldn’t bother waiting for any special deals or anything. I personally like going through Best Buy or GameStop so I can receive rewards points. If it’s out of stock, keep checking.
As for fitness gaming, as of launch date there’ll be four motion-control games that make extensive use of the Kinect.
- Fighter Within
– Published by Ubisoft, this is sort of the Xbox One version of Ubisoft’s Xbox 360 title Fighters Uncaged). Back in the day, I was definitely disappointed by Fighters Uncaged, especially when compared to the much more high-fidelity fighting game on the PS3. However, with the Kinect 2.0’s improved motion sensing capability, I have high hopes for this one.
- Zumba Fitness World Party
– I expect this to essentially be a direct port of the Xbox 360 version, but we’ll see if the new version takes advantage of the Xbox One’s better graphics and Kinect 2.0 capabilities.
- Just Dance 2014 – Same comment here. The Xbox 360 version was good, but there was very little difference between it and even the Wii version. Doubt they’ll be doing anything special here, except possibly for fine-tuning the motion control accuracy.
- Kinect Sports Rivals Preseason ( (available online via Xbox Marketplace only) – I’d hoped that Kinect Sports Rivals would be a launch title, but it’s not going to show up until at least next spring. Still, they’ll be releasing “Wake Racing” as a free download, which should give a good taste of Kinect 2.0 and its ability to detect a much finer level of details.
- Xbox Fitness (available online via Xbox Marketplace only) – We’d talked about this one before–it won’t be so much a game as a way to purchase exercise videos and view your vital stats as you exercise.
I’ll be reviewing one more Xbox 360 game (Zumba Fitness World Party, which I expect to come in the next couple of days). After that, we’ll probably start focusing on the Xbox One. It’s been a great run for the 360, let’s hope that the improvements for the Xbox One make it a viable system for fitness and exercise as well.