xbox oneWith our smartphones and tablets getting smaller and thinner with each passing generation, you would think that consoles would eventually get small and compact as well, right? However if anything they seem to have grown compared to back in the day, or at the very least are roughly around the same size, so what gives?

Well if you’re wondering why your Xbox One isn’t some sleek and sexy machine that you can slide in between your books on your bookshelf, Microsoft’s industrial designer Carl Ledbetter has an explanation for that. Speaking to the folks at MCV, Ledbetter revealed that cooling was the primary reason as to why the Xbox One is sized the way it is.

According to Ledbetter, “Everybody gets frustrated, because what we want is for everything to be wafer thin, not get hot and just be a snap to put together. But the reality is that there are very real issues around cooling when you’re pushing some number of watts in the processor, therefore the thing has to have some size to it.”

This isn’t a particularly new concept as gamers who build their own PC gaming rigs and are concerned about cooling tend to go for the bigger and more airy chassis, although these days there seems to be a surge in popularity in designing gaming rigs based on mini ATX/mini-ITX motherboards. That being said is size a concern for you when choosing your console? Or does it not matter?

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