Microsoft believes gaming consoles should become multi-functional.

In November last year, two game consoles of the new generation Xbox One and Playstation 4 appeared, which marked the beginning of a new era in the world of video games. Sony engineers have created their prefix based on the fact that it should, above all, meet the needs of gamers. Microsoft management believes that such a policy is fundamentally wrong.

Once, consoles could only run games from cartridges, but years went by, and game consoles learned to play movies, play music, and even go online. In fact, the new Microsoft console, in addition to its obvious gaming features, should be an intermediary between the digital / satellite receiver and your TV. At least, that was exactly what the marketing department of the Redmond corporation was counting on when it pawned all these television functions on the Xbox One. The prefix can display the TV program, create lists of "favorite channels", supports voice search for the desired channel or TV show.

“A console that can only run games is already a past,” said Albert Penello, one of the leaders of the Xbox division, “The future is about multi-functional devices that have a much wider range of capabilities.”

Amazingly, when Sony announced back in 2006 that the Playstation 3 would become not just a gaming console, but a real multimedia center for watching movies in HD format and much more, Microsoft just laughed at the competition. As a result, due to the presence of the Blu-Ray drive in the Playstation 3, this format won a landslide victory in the battle of the carriers of the new generation. But the external HD-DVD drive, which Microsoft was selling for its Xbox 360 console for $ 199, turned out to be unnecessary, and those who managed to buy it were left without films and support from major film studios. Playstation 3, among other things, was able to go online, play multimedia content from flash drives and external HDDs, connect to a personal computer of a user through a media server, and much more.

Playstation 4 initially did not even support video and music playback from external drives, fully concentrating on gaming features. But thanks to the fact that the fans staged a real boycott of the Japanese company on Twitter, Sony management has already promised to return multimedia functionality in future firmware.

As for Microsoft, then, of course, many Americans will like the TV functions, because, above all, the calculation was made on them. Voice control of TV viewing is, on the one hand, a curious experiment, but on the other hand, in the light of news about the NSA and total surveillance, will users want to keep the Kinect sensor on, which will constantly see and hear what is happening in the apartment?

Judging by the statements of Microsoft, which were made in March 2012, American users of their Xbox 360 gaming console spend much more time on applications and various Xbox Live services than on games. Americans look at digital TV consoles, listen to music, read the Internet, and even order pizza from their consoles. The desire of Microsoft to turn its gaming system into a second Windows 8 PC on board in the light of all these statistics becomes quite understandable.

What do you think: what is the main thing in gaming consoles? What additional functionality would you like to see in them? And who, in your opinion, is right in the approach to the creation of consoles of the new generation - Microsoft with their desire to combine all the entertainment functions in one device or Sony, which this time focused solely on the games and needs of hardcore gamers?

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/consoles/microsoft-schitaet-chto-igrovye-konsoli-dolzhny-stat-multifunkcionalnymi.html.