Xbox One Tour: Road To Launch Orlando Event

If you’re an Xbox fan that’s been been following Major Nelson’s Blog for a decent amount of time, you might know about the Xbox One: Road to Launch Tour and the five cities that Major Nelson plans to hit on the path to the Xbox One’s launch. Well, last night the tour made it’s way to sunny Orlando, Florida and being a resident I slid on down to the Millenia Mall to partake in the festivities.

Considering the event was due to start at 7:30, I was comfortable with arriving a good hour and a half early, so I slid in line at around 6:06pm. The line continually grew until right before the line started moving, and here’s an example of the line last time I glanced at it:

It’s safe to say there were a large amount of gamers there.

Once the doors opened, I got ushered over to the controller stop that showcased the changes made to the Xbox One controller:

After having held it, I gathered a few details:

The new controller is slightly smaller than the 360 pad.

The thumbsticks now have a ring of texture around the edge, adding in a good amount of grip.

Triggers and bumpers have been redesigned and feel “thicker” under your fingers. The triggers still have a good amount of resistance, but they’re just a bit wider than you’re used to.

Force Feedback in the triggers feels different, but the examples they had playing were fairly fitting. The controller doesn’t have enough feedback to fit perfectly with the videos they showed as examples, but they were pretty cool nonetheless.

With the demo being over, I took a few minutes to get decent shots of the Xbox One, and it’s not as massive as the gaming world has led you to believe thus far…

After getting a couple good shots, I wanted to chat with Major Nelson. Luckily I got the chance to do so fairly quickly, as he was walking toward the front of the store.

Following that, I took the time to record a fellow gamer getting some hands-on time with Forza Motorsport 5.

[jwplayer mediaid=”73425″]

The game is absolutely gorgeous as you can see, so I figured I should get hands on it. I stepped in line an chatted for a bit and checked my clock, the time was a fantastical 7:48 pm (through some time rift, I got all that done within 20 minutes). I figured there would be plenty of time, so the other gamers and I went to talking about the event and we waited to get hands on Forza. A highlight came a bit after waiting when someone brought their original Xbox in for Major Nelson to sign. This happened:

Sadly, the hour and fifteen minutes I waited wasn’t enough time to get my hands on Forza 5. After I got in line, I found out that there were only two Xbox One consoles available for the entire event, which didn’t bode very well for the scads of people waiting outside the store. The other Xbox One was mounted in an arcade cabinet showcasing Killer Instinct, and that line went much faster due to two people playing at once.

Probably should’ve chosen that one.

All in all, it was nice to get my hands on the controller, but it would’ve been a much better event were there more consoles available. It’s fairly surprising that there were only two of the consoles available for an event that’s on Major Nelson’s site, talked about on Twitter and Facebook — especially within a month of the console launch. Also surprising is that the consoles they provided weren’t meant to remain at the store.

You’d think that having them in stores would be extremely vital at this point!

Luckily, Major Nelson made a call to Microsoft HQ and they were allowed to leave the Killer Instinct arcade cabinet at the mall for an additional day so the people that didn’t get to play at the event could play the following day. Sadly for those that made drives up from hours away, a few of whom I had the pleasure of talking shop with in line, that wouldn’t be an easy feat.

Keep an eye out near you for when the Xbox One comes to your local Best Buy and GameStop. I know I will, because I’m dying to race a lap in Forza 5 to make up for my lost chance.