Microsoft’s senior director of product management and planning Albert Penello recently stated to Gamespot that the Xbox One won’t be supporting vertical orientation. In other words, standing the console up rather than having it lay flat? It’s not recommended.
“We don’t support vertical orientation; do it at your own risk. It wouldn’t be a cooling problem, we just didn’t design the drive for vertical. Because it’s a slot loading drive, we just didn’t design it for both. We found, interestingly enough, that 80 percent of people, believe it or not, have their Xbox [360] horizontally”.
Considering that the vertical orientation trend was started by Sony with the PlayStation 2 and that – surprise – even most PlayStation users over the years have been asked to keep their consoles laying flat, does it seem all that surprising? Perhaps Microsoft is just trying to warn the other 20 percent to not do this with the Xbox One at all costs when the console launches on November 22nd worldwide.