The last several years of gaming have taught us that there are quite a few ways to make a gaming announcement.

For instance, you can bring out a bunch of awkward presenters who sound like they’ve only seen a video game as a word atop an earnings report, you can hire a bunch of celebrities to shamefully shill your product, you can insert enough cheap jokes and crowd pop attempts to make pro wrestling blush, and of course you can overspend on the presentation to compensate for your drastic under planning on the actual execution.

In unveiling their new console today, Microsoft pulled out all of these, and more. Of course, we should have anticipated this as soon as we heard the name of that console, the Xbox One, which displays as much creativity as any of those mentioned techniques.

Putting aside the fact that Microsoft is comfortable naming their console of the future after a term used when people are specifying the original Xbox in conversation, the actual hour long unveiling that would follow was a jumble of ideas that probably didn’t leave the punch in the gut impression that Microsoft had intended.

Now granted, there were a few moments of inspiration during the presentation, but most of them were centered around the initial demonstration of the Xbox One’s voice operated multimedia capabilities which, even though it was more of an extended demo of the new Kinect, was exactly the kind of thing that you expect  from the next generation of gaming system.

From there though, things moved downhill. While aspects like the console’s bland looks, terrible, terrible name, and dull presentation style are ultimately trivial, what isn’t is the general impression that Microsoft is more interested in creating a multi-media device than they are a gaming system. This is evident in the lack of sufficient game announcements, dearth of in-game footage, choice to treat EA annual games like a big deal, and larger emphasis on getting RGIII and Steven Spielberg to cut promos over providing gamers with details like a price point (on Live and the console) or a solid release date.

If you need any further proof of this dramatic shift in philosophy, look no further than the dodgy and haunting answers to the controversial issues of used game compatibility and always online features, which do nothing to quell the concerns of gamers.

Then again, the point is that the Xbox One doesn’t appear to be a gaming console as we’ve known it. While that could be a good thing in doses, and it’s obviously financially beneficial for Microsoft to focus on a multimedia device, if you’re a real gamer you’re probably still left shivering from that hour long cold shoulder.

Of course, realistically it is still too early to draw long term conclusions on the Xbox One, but the fact remains you only get one first impression, and the Xbox One’s first impression was not that of a confident  gaming system. You could argue that Microsoft is saving all of that “game stuff” for E3, but as mentioned, that is a bloated and archaic institution, whereas this was the moment that Microsoft was supposed to have all to themselves.

It’s quite possible that what we’ve just seen is the inevitable future of the business of video games. If it really is all about figures and market shares though, then Microsoft will do well to take notice of the rise in Sony’s stock shortly following the Xbox One announcement not as an apparition, but as a clear message of the dangers, and benefits, of first impressions and that this is a true make or break system for the Redmond institution that shows they cannot afford to rest on their laurels, and come out with many more major whiffs, as they did today.

Our current console generation is set to be one of the longest in the industry. Sony has often commented that the PS3 is on a 10-year plan, same with the PSP. That puts the former right around its midlife crisis, and like any good mid-lifer, it went and slimmed down, smartened up, and managed to find its way into more homes than any other time in its life (I don’t know that the last one actually works in my metaphor, but hey). Microsoft isn’t ready to send its console over the hill just yet.

Speaking to the Guardian UK at CES this year, Microsoft’s David Hufford said the Xbox 360 hasn’t even made it halfway through its lifecycle. Project Natal and upgrades to the Xbox Live service are planned to prolong the life of the console well into the new decade.

“I think it’s important to say that the Xbox 360 is the console of the long future for us,” Hufford said. “There is no need to launch a new console, because we’re able to give this console new life either with software upgrades or hardware upgrades like Project Natal.”

It’s funny. As much as people gripe that PC gaming is over, consoles are starting to emulate PCs. We’ve just seen consoles succeed in the same way Apple has, by marrying hardware and software control under one roof.