back from a playtest at a M$. It wasn't a playtest, but rather a 2 hour discussion with 20+ people about next gen and specifically nothing about xbox. But the last hour was all straight up next gen xbox stuff. Only half of the group was kept for this.
Controllers:
Saw 6 controller designs that were all variations of the same form factor. The contours on some of them are all slightly changed, but two of them had some button adjustments. Prepare for hyper sensitive buttons aka chicklet buttons, even the d-pad had the chicklet feel. The analog sticks were "active sense" their term not mine. Basically it gives some resistance based on what the action is on screen. Example of this was closing the hatch of a submarine/ship (bf4 probably) and having resistance as you move the analog stick around as it would "lock" you could feel it via the stick and some crazy new vibration. Triggers also have this type of resistance technology. The controller is smaller than the 360 controller but its only smaller cause they've cut the amount of plastic in the controller. It's still the same size when you put it in your hands. Bottom has an area for an additional battery pack from the looks. It has a integrated battery built into the controller. It's lighter than a PS3 controller.
UI:
This shit is bonkers!
Blades are back kinda.... you use lb/rb to go between states.
So the system has several states, each state is like a separate space for what you are going to be doing. So the two I saw were "Entertainment" and "Xbox Zone" you can switch between two at any time and can jump from a game right into Netflix/Hulu and then when you're done watching something you can go right back to your game wherever you were. It also saves the state when you turn off the console. Which allows you to leave a game anytime and jump right back into it. They warned that you will loose your state if the console looses power. So I'm assuming the console never turns off, it only goes into sleep mode.
The UI of the states are different but set up the same, they both have multiple mini video boxes for everything. Think Metro but animated to show what everything does. The both had a "live" area where you could watch TV and online live videos. It looks like it propagates things that the user likes then shows them automatically on the main screen. In the xbox area they show what's installed and what other people are playing and where they are in games. It could potentially spoil games for people cause it streams what people are doing right now. This was all super guided and looked very clean/done. If you go to the guide it show's you what people are doing in that state, you can also invite people to watch a sports game live on tv/stream with friends with a google hangout like area on the bottom so you can watch your friends while you watch the game. It seem's you could do that with streams of people playing games as well.
Other:
Disc games are locked to console and user. Same bluray disc single license disc locking tech that sony uses for crossplay. It can be unlocked if you request it then you can sell it or use it on another console. Great for dev's headaches for gamefly/redbox/gamestop. Discs are still required to be in the system when you start them up. We only saw a demo of this technology and were asked to discuss it. I was pretty negative about it due to the fact I'm a multi console home. They rested my fears by saying they were contemplating having it locked on up to 5 devices at one time. Still didn't like that it's locked to a user though.
There was a lot to take in but I hope that gives you an idea as to what we'll potentially be getting. No Kinect stuff was showed off except for a camera on the top of the tv. And no consoles were shown at all.
