​The Xbox One: The Kotaku Review

The Xbox One is a testament to Microsoft's towering ambition. It represents their desire not only to occupy a place in your home entertainment center, but to lumber straight into the center of it. It is a black plastic tank, a hard-edged chunk of corners meant to conquer everything in its path. But for all its imposing physicality, it has a surprising number of weak spots.3P

Microsoft stumbled when announcing the Xbox One, betting that users would be okay with an always-online Xbox that blocked used game sales and required a Kinect motion camera to operate. But the gaming public was livid at the news, and eventually Microsoft relented, removing the console's Internet and Kinect requirements as well as its DRM.P

Even before Microsoft officially revealed it, whispers were circulating that the console was behind schedule, and our sources told us that Microsoft was as many as six months behind in generating content for the Xbox One, then code-named "Durango." As the launch has drawn closer, we continued to hear from sources that the operating system and core software weren't ready, and that the system might be in for a rough launch.PRELATED

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The Xbox One I've been using for the past week and a half is significantly different from the Xbox One Microsoft announced back in May. The relatively short period of time Microsoft has had to make so many changes is evident in the console and its software. Xbox One is clearly coming in hot, and many of its features aren't quite complete.P

How best to evaluate a work in progress? It ain't easy, and this is going to be a long review.P

I've had access to a "Beta" Xbox One for the past one and a half weeks, and Microsoft representatives have repeatedly reminded me that the software I've been using isn't final. The system software has been regularly updated during my time with the machine, and there'll be one more update released in time for Friday, the day the console is released. The games will be updated, too. Everything will work better, they say.456P

In this review, I can only offer my impressions of what I've seen and what I've played. Bear in mind that the Xbox One's software probably will change. Some changes may arrive in time for launch, others in the months afterward. Bugs will be ironed out, new functionality will be added, current problems will be erased. Other, unexpected problems may crop up. In a year, the Xbox One operating system will likely be unrecognizable from the one inside the black box currently sitting under my TV.P

But for now, after nearly two weeks with the console and multiple conversations with Microsoft about what their big black box can and can't do, I have a pretty good sense of the Xbox One that will go on sale this Friday.