Xbox One is just a day away from launching into the wild and on its journey into the eight-generation consoles alongside Wii U and the PlayStation 4. With the embargo dates lifted from the console and game reviews, Xbox One has been seeing all kinds of scores being given. Many have complained that Xbox One doesn’t even support Dolby 5.1 through HDMI In and outputs all the sound through stereo. While others have also talked about the storage management on the Xbox One.
When Neowin contacted Microsoft as to why the Xbox One lacks traditional storage viewing or management features, Microsoft replied that it is ‘automatic’.
Xbox One was designed to make storage management automatic. For saved games, settings, and other information that Xbox One customers save to the cloud, space is virtually unlimited. On the internal hard drive in each Xbox One, games and apps can be uninstalled or reinstalled instantly with the click of the Xbox One menu button. Saved games and settings information is retrieved from the cloud for any game as its being reinstalled. By being smart about how storage is managed, Xbox One keeps everyone playing, watching, and sharing their entertainment content rather than worry about limitations. You can also see how much storage any app uses by pressing the menu button on that app.
The hard drive on the Xbox One is neither removable or upgradable. Microsoft did state that the Xbox One will support external hard drive but the feature won’t be available at launch. Albert Penello, Microsoft’s Director of Product Planning, on NeoGAF assured everyone that by being ‘automatic’ in storage management, the Xbox One doesn’t delete anything ‘automatically’. He stated that the save games and the upload clips are automatically synced and backed up on the cloud and there is no need for storage management for them.
That’s not how it works.
We do automatically sync Save Games and Upload clips, so there is no need for storage management on that – it’s all in the cloud.
For full downloads and Aps we do NOT automatically delete anything. You get a prompt when you run out of space, and you can manually uninstall what you want.
Keep in mind, external storage support is coming post-launch. This is a short-term issue we know needs to get better, but just for clarity we don’t auto-delete anything.
said Penello.
Albert Penello also confirmed that Dolby Digital is also coming to the Xbox One post-launch as it is a software scheduling issue but the Xbox One will have it.
Dolby Digital is coming post launch. This was a SW scheduling issue pure and simple, and I know people are disappointed, but we will have it.
Anyone with an HDMI receiver should be fine, as we pass the uncompressed 5.1 and 7.1 through HDMI as well as DTS. Even if you have a Dolby only HDMI receiver (which I’m not sure exists), you will still get 5.1 or 7.1 sound since those receivers should accept uncompressed surround.
For the Dolby only headsets, my understanding is that these will work but you will only get stereo audio since we only pass Stereo and DTS through the optical port. I have not tested this myself, but I’m told it works. Regardless, I understand this is an inconvenience, but again we’re going to have Dolby coming.
This is unrelated to the HDMI-IN “Surround Sound” beta. To clarify, we default HDMI-IN audio to be converted to Stereo. However, we do have a feature you can access in TV settings/Troubleshooting that enables Surround Sound in “beta” form. If you check the box, and you get Surround, you’re golden. We found some inconsistencies in STB’s during testing and decided to disable it by default to insure a good initial setup experience for people.
Xbox One launches on November 22 in 13 key countries identified by Microsoft.
Will you be picking up an Xbox One? Do these limitations affect your decision in any way? Let us know in the comments below.
