At 10am Pacific time this morning, Microsoft had the official unveiling of their next generation console, called the Xbox One.  Streamed online, and to Xbox users, this was to be their offensive shot to the bow of Sony, who revealed the PlayStation 4 this past February, and Nintendo, who’s thus far unsuccessful Wii-U hit shelves at the end of 2012.

I watched the live stream and honestly, was incredibly underwhelmed.  Perhaps I’m not the gamer they’re looking for (maybe it was the setting, but the Wired article about the system seemed better than this reveal), but I’m not even sure they know who they’re looking for these days.

The main focus of the first half of the presentation, which ran an hour in length, was about the intense amount of interactivity and connectivity the system had. Essentially, the new Xbox One is much like the Xbox 360 on steroids. You can play games, you can watch Netflix, you can listen to music.  Additionally, the Xbox One can connect to your cable box, allowing you to watch live TV through your game console. And of course, this can all be controlled with voice and gesture controls from the upgraded version of the Kinect - which comes in the box for every system sold.  Heck, you can do these things side by side, with “snap” mode - similar to the snap to corners function found in Windows.

It’s very technically impressive, and I’m sure it takes some very sophisticated hardware to pull it together, but who actually was longing for these features? And why do I feel like they will only work properly if you use Microsoft’s baked-in options for movies and music?  That’s a debate for another day, I suppose.

We then went beneath the hood. Sure, a blu-ray drive is very nice, as is 500GB of storage and 8GB of RAM, but with the games needing to be installed, that storage will be filling up very fast. And who exactly are these specs supposed to excite besides developers? I suppose that’s a problem facing all tech conferences, but it particularly bugged me here. They didn’t seem to know if they wanted to entice the average gamer or the tech head, and seemed to ignore both by trying to match them evenly.

We then moved on to some of the games (after a brief detour into an NFL on Xbox announcement…yay?), and honestly, if you gleamed anything more than “status quo” from the announcements, you’re a better man than I.  New sports titles from EA. A new Forza, which was 100% trailer, 0% gameplay, and a trailer for the new Call of Duty game, Ghosts, which while graphically impressive, didn’t seem to change how the game is and was played in any way shape or form. Even the Activision talking heads seemed to be just finding new ways to say “it’s prettier” this time.

Honestly, the only story that got me excited is that director Steven Spielberg would be producing a television series based on Halo. But even that had it’s foreboding feeling, as it will undoubtedly be exclusive to the Xbox (if not the Xbox one), and their use of the term “premium television program” makes me wonder if there will be a cost in addition to your monthly Xbox Live subscription.

I realize, I sound incredibly cynical here, but I really wanted Microsoft to wow me. After Sony left me bored and Nintendo has left me feeling less than excited about their future, I was Microsoft’s gamer to win over. Instead, I’m left wondering where I’ll play next. I guess I’ll just stick with my Xbox 360 for now, as apparently, the Xbox One will not be backwards compatible anyway.

No release date or price was announced, as Microsoft is now pointing to their E3 press conference on June 11th (one day after Sony’s) to bring on the announcement of new games, and I’d assume concrete release details.

Someone has to take the lead here, and right now, it looks like in the race for the next generation of console gaming, no one is even bothering to run.