Is the Xbox One X hiding a built-in microphone? Also, here are the ports

"The rarely seen backside... of Xbox One X"

[UPDATE: LOL no, I forgot they’d have to include a way to manually eject a disc. That’s just the little pinhole to shove a paperclip into.]

I totally missed the “Drag to rotate 360 degrees” part of the Xbox One X site yesterday. I thought they weren’t ready to reveal what was on the backside of the console but here it is, looking very much in line with the Xbox One S and the recently revealed Xbox One X devkit.

The most surprising part is that the HDMI IN port remains so anyone looking to upgrade their current Xbox-as-a-cable-box experience should be good to go. As an upgrade to the current Xbox One experience I suppose it’s not that surprising to see the ports remain the same. With the added promise that all Xbox One accessories and games would be compatible with the One X there’s not a lot of room to change things up on the ports.

Is the Xbox One X hiding a microphone?

Continuing to rotate the console, however, has led to my next tinfoil-hat speculation: is this tiny black hole on the console’s front left side a microphone? Will Cortana “always be listening” and sending privacy advocates into a panic? Privacy aside, the voice commands offered by the Kinect were the only way I could navigate the original Xbox One’s Dashboard. If that tech has hitched a ride as a low power, built-in component of the Xbox One X it may stand as a fitting legacy for the ill-fated motion sensing peripheral.

Like the Xbox One X Avatars, I hope we find out more on this mysteriously little port this week as E3 steamrolls right over my day-job productivity.

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