Brand New Xbox One Details from Xbox’s Major Nelson and Marc Whitten

 

This week, our own Major Nelson sat down for a podcast interview with Marc Whitten, Xbox chief product officer, to talk about Xbox One, including new details about the state of the platform, juicy hardware specs and much more.

According to Marc, this is when Xbox One evolves from specs and theory to reality, and in order to ensure the console is working flawlessly, the team has kicked off the Xbox One internal beta.  Xbox One consoles are currently in the homes of lucky Microsoft employees who are putting it through its paces and working closely with the development team to get everything ready for launch.

In the podcast, Marc also talks about the work the team is doing to maximize the power of Xbox One’s hardware. For example, during Xbox One’s product development, they increased its GPU clock speed from 800 MHZ to 853 MHz. In addition, since E3, a new graphics driver, internally referred to as the “mono driver,” has been installed and is 100% optimized for Xbox One.

  Marc also hints about more exciting Xbox One news that fans can expect at gamescom, and also touches on the rest of this week’s news about Smart Match, Reputation, Enforcement United and Community Level Program.

You can listen to the full podcast on Major Nelson’s blog.

Xbox Wire 

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Microsoft Offers 100 Credit For People Who Trade In PS3 For Xbox One

You can trade in your PS3 for $100 off an Xbox One, or you can just buy a PS4 that is already $100 less expensive (photo: jpghouse)

Want an Xbox One but you’re put off by the $499 sticker price? If you’re willing to part with your PS3 or certain newer models of the Xbox 360, and you live near a Microsoft store, there’s a deal you might be interested in.

Microsoft is currently offering a $100 trade-in credit for customers who bring in their old PS3, Xbox 360 E or Xbox 360 S (the two models still currently in production) to Microsoft stores and buy a new Xbox One.

That brings the Xbox One price down to $399, which matches the cost of Sony’s new PS4 console.

As The Verge points out, a new PS3 still goes for about $200 so trading in an old one for $100 in credit against a new console might be a better deal than you’re likely to get trying to sell the used console.

The Xbox 360 trade-in is trickier, as this offer is only limited to relatively newer models of the console, meaning those of us with 360s older than many elementary school kids are out of luck.

Of course, regardless of which console you trade in, you’re giving up access to all the games you purchased over the years, as the Xbox One is not backwards compatible, nor has Microsoft revealed specifics on a plan that would give Xbox One owners online or cloud-based access to all those games.

So PS3 owners with a decent library of games may just want to hold onto their consoles and spend $399 on a PS4 (when it has more than a handful of titles available to play).

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

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