Microsoft Xbox news and discussion thread

[Sinclair Gregstrum]

Great knowledge Sir! I'd forgotten all about the Nuon platform and there's a couple on there I've never even heard or - Gamate??

Off to Wikipedia I go!

[Electric Crocosaurus]

I have a short piece up on Gamecentral at the moment about the mainstream's reaction to the XBox One this week. I'd love to know what you guys think (and constructive criticism of my writing is always welcome too!)

http://metro.co.uk/2013/06/15/next-gene ... e-3841933/

[NokkonWud]

An interesting read and something that mirrors my thoughts regarding Xbox One in many ways, which is interesting given its source is something from Microsoft. He's made points I've been making on Twitter since the now infamous XboxReveal even on May 21st.

From a Microsoft Engineer in an interview regarding Xbox One.

The thing is we suck at telling the story. The whole point of the DRM switch from disc based to cloud based is to kill disc swapping, scratched discs, bringing discs to friends house, trade-ins for shit value with nothign going back to developers, and high game costs. If you want games cheaper then 59.99, you have to limit used games somehow. Steam's model requires a limited used game model.

The thing is, the DRM is really really similar to steam... You can login anywhere and play your games, anyone in your house can play with the family xbox. The only diff is steam you have to sign in before playing, and Xbox does it automatically at night for you (once per 24 hours)

It's a long tail strategy, just like steam. Steam had it's growing pains at the beginning with all it's drm shit as well. [...] For digital downloads steam had no real competition at the time, they were competing against boxed sales. At the time people were pretty irate about steam, (on 4chan too...) It was only once they had a digital marketplace with DRM that was locked down to prevent sharing that they could do super discounted shit.

Think about it, on steam you get a game for the true cost of the game, 5$-30$. On a console you have to pay for that PLUS any additional licenses for when you sell / trade / borrow / etc. If the developer / publisher can't get it on additional licenses (like steam), then they charge the first person more. [...] If we say "Hey publishers, you limit game to 39.99, we ensure every license transfer you get 10$, gamestop gets 20$" that is a decent model... Microsoft gets a license fee on first and subsequent game purchases, compared to just first now? That's a revenue increase.

Competition is the best man, it helps drive both to new heights. See technology from the Cold War. If we had no USSR, we'd be way worse off today. TLDR: Bring it on Steam

2/4

Yeah we passed that around the office at Xbox. Most of us were like "Well played Sony, Well played". That being said they are just riding the hype train of ZOMG THEY ARE TRYING TO FUCK US FOR NO REASON. Without actually thinking about how convienent it would be for the majority of the time to not find that disc your brother didn't put back... [...] just simpleminded people not seeing the bigger picture. Some PS4 viral team made them all "U TOOK R DISCS" and they hiveminded.

Everyone and their mother complains about how gamestop fucks them on their trade ins, getting 5$ for their used games. We come in trying to find a way to take money out of gamestop, and put some in developers and get you possibly cheaper games and everyone bitches at MS. Well, if you want the @#$@ing from Gamestop, go play PS4.

The goal is to move to digital downloads, but Gamestop, Walmart, Target, Amazon are KIND OF FUCKING ENTRENCHED in the industry. They have a lot of power, and the shift has to be gradual. Long term goal is steam for consoles. [...] If you always want to stay with what you have, then keep current consoles, or a PS4. We're TRYING to move the industry forwards towards digital distribution... it'sa bumpy road

Publishers have enourmous power. Microsoft is trying to balance between consumer delight, and publisher wishes. If we cave to far in either direction you have a non-starting product. WiiU goes too far to consumer, you have no 3rd party support to shake a stick at. PS4 is status-quo. XB1 is trying to push some things, at the expense of others. We have a vision, we'll see if it works in the coming years

Living room transformation. We want to own the living room. Every living room TV with an XBox on input one. It's the thing that gives the signal to your TV, everything is secondary. The future, where games, TV, internet telephony, all that shit happens magically on some huge ass screen with hand / voice gestures... That's our goal.


3/4

Google TV + PS4 + Minority report level gestures, that combined with a sick second screen experience (which is really hot for TV, I know I know.. tv tv tv tv tv... but it's fucking sick when you have it). Games will be the same, there are more exclusives to MS then PS atm, and Kinect 2 makes Kinect 1 look like a childs toy.

By default it's on, listening for "Xbox On". You can turn it off tho, and turn the console like OFF off. OFF off is required for Germany / other countries that require it (no vampire appliances) [...] It has to be plugged in for the console to post. You can turn off everything it does from the settings. Think of it like airplane mode for the iPhone. You can't just unplug the cellular radio, but you can turn it off.

Instead of 10mins, is 24hrs for your console, and 1 or 2 at a friends house. Really the majority of people have a speck of internet at least once a day. And if you don't. Don't buy an Xbox 1. Just like if you didn't have a broadband connection don't get Live, and if you don't have an HDTV the 360 isn't that great for you either. New tech, new req. This allows us to do cool shit when we can assume things like you have a kinect, you have internet, etc.

Current plan is basically you're fucked after 24 hours. Yeah... I know. Kind of sucks. I believe they will probably revist the time period and / or find a diff way to "call in" to ensure you haven't sold your license to gamestop or something... but there is no plan YET. I'm hoping the change it, but I don't work on that so I don't have much influence there /sigh

If the power goes out you ain't playing shit. I'm assuming you mean the internet goes out but you have power for TV and Xbox. Yes, You're fucked for single player games. Again, that's the PoR (Plan of record), but I expect it to change after the e3 clusterfuck

What fee? There is no fee to play your games at your friends house. Never has, never will. Even x360 digital downloads could do that.


4/4

The cloud capabilities is the shit they like the most. We basically made a huge cloud compute shit and made it free. What people are doing with it is kind of cool. THe original intention was to get all the Multiplayer servers not requiring 3rd party costs (Like EA shutting down game servers to cut costs), as well as taking all the games that servers hosted by the clients (Halo, etc), and have all that compute done in the cloud allowing more CPU cycles for gameplay. That will really expand what developers can do. Anything that doesn't need per frame calculation and can handle 100ms delays can be shifted to the cloud. That's huge.

SmartGlass + IE is going to be pretty freaking sweet. 1 finger cursor, 2 finger direct manip. Basically if you think of a laptop trackpad where your phone/ slate is the trackpad and the monitor is your TV... it's that. The tech is there, just needs to be applied. There is some really cool shit going on with Petra + controllers that pairs people with controllers. So if person with controller two trades controlers with controller 1, their profiles magically switch. It's sick. What does this matter? Now if you lean left/right it knows which person is leaning, even if 4 people are all int he same room. It's awesome.

New service using Azure for cloud compute. Allows developers to not use clients for hosting multiplayer servers, or other tasks that do not require per frame calcuations. It's pretty sweet.

Honestly, if you care about anything other then pure games AT ALL. Xbox 1 > PS4. If all you do is play games, and nothing else, PS4.

This was all from the Microsoft engineer that was on /b/ last night.

It's not worth my time to prove it, or risk my Job. I work in Studio A, 40th ave in Redmond, Wa. The thai place in the studio cafeteria has double punch wednesdays. Go ahead and call them and verify if you want.

[ratsoalbion]

I heard somewhere that this may well be a fake?

[JaySevenZero]

Let's be honest, no amount of anonymously posted articles by supposed MS employees is likely to make much difference to the general climate of indifference towards their new console anytime soon.

I think for most people buying into Xbox One day one could very well prove to be a false economy. For all the mistakes and crap launch that Sony had for the PS3, Microsoft currently look set to beat that debacle hands down. Because of the consumer apathy towards its high price point (still £5 cheaper than the Xbox One!) Sony reduced the price by £125 and bundled it with two games only 3 months after its initial launch in the UK (much to my chagrin at the time) and it wouldn't be so surprising to see a similar response from Microsoft if the current negativity doesn't improve once we get into the new year.

[Sean]

Sounds like a dick thing to say, but, I'll believe articles like that pastebin or Reddit article when someone from Microsoft actually says all that stuff in a public space. Why post it anonymously? If MS actually has good news about the system, why aren't they the ones saying it?

One thing that continues to bug me about the Steam comparison is when people say "well, Steam had it's growing pains when it started." Which is true, sure, but, that was when? 2003? Why, if that's truly the model MS is after, would they just mirror the same trajectory? If people didn't like Steam when it started, why not reflect the *current* Steam market? You can't just promise "prices will eventually get better!" I need to actually see it. And, starting off with $60 games is not very encouraging.

[Indiana747]

Yep, Microsoft have confirmed today that the XBox One game price is the same as it was for 360, which is the standard $60. Kinda blows that guys argument about being able to offer cheaper games because we have DRM out of the water. Fake article or not, price has not changed. Sony will follow suit with this price aswell i suspect, but without all the mumbo jumbo of license transferral when trying to sell the game on, of course. The points he puts forward of trying new things, pushing things forward, are all well and good if there was not a cheaper, less intrusive, less chastising alternative that is the PS4. Plus the fact Sony are a proven hardware manufacturer, they make reliable shit. All my Sony consoles that were purchased near when they were released still work as well now as they did back in the day. Whereas ive had a 360 slim for maybe 18 months now with considerably less playtime on it, yet it is starting to fuck up on me. Theres that and it got hacked.
But the 360 has so many great games that i feel slightly guilty about giving MS a hard time on their next gen policies, there is great history there for many 360 users. But blind faith in your user base can only get you so far. Im sorry but my opinion is that these policies are not about moving forward to aid some technological breakthrough, its more about a multi-million dollor corporation satisfying shareholders in a boardroom with the promise of the dollor bill. So unless this stranglehold is loosened by MS in the months, years to come i will not be purchasing their console.

[Electric Crocosaurus]

It seems like most people here will be going PS4 for their first next gen console. There's no way that Microsoft are going to take that lying down, and they will fight back. Whether that is through a relaxation of the DRM measures or price cuts, it will come eventually.

In other news, I only saw today the comparisons between the size of the XBox One and PS4. While final sizes are yet to be confirmed, as it stands the XBox One looks like a giant next to the slimline PS4. A small point, but the PS4 is at least going to less obtrusive under my tv, even if I don't like the design.

[dezm0nd]

This game isn't enough to fork out for the Xbox One but when I do get one, this is mine!



http://vimeo.com/68029322

[richie_in_japan]

Bit of a unique situation, but living overseas with few console-gaming friends nearby makes used games (nobody wants English-language versions) and lending discs (I'm so lonely) pretty irrelevant to me. However I will be continuing with my trend of owning every PS console. I'm not into racing or big shooty games much, so most of the 360 exclusives like Forza, Halo or GoW didn't appeal to me. Also, PS+ carrying over to PS4 is a huge bonus. For the same annual sub (which I've already bought a couple of years of when sales came around) I will be getting the Instant Game Collection for PS3, Vita and now PS4. It just makes economic sense to me to only buy one console and the one which gives me most gaming hours for the lower price. I have bought so few full-price boxed games since PS+ and still have a backlog. I only just got round to Bioshock 2 last night!

Speaking of games for 60 quid, I wonder if that is the disc-based versions? As Leon pointed out on Twitter recently, Sony put Last of Us on PSN for about 10 quid cheaper than the RRP. Maybe with the new gen we'll finally see some more realistic pricing for downloads if they are trying to force people into a Steam model.

[NokkonWud]

You're in Japan, so you couldn't get Xbox One anyway as you couldn't authenticate games, so by default you're PS4 .

[James]

This game isn't enough to fork out for the Xbox One but when I do get one, this is mine!



http://vimeo.com/68029322

Yeah, that and Crimson Dragon are the two I'll be jumping at if/when I buy an Xbox One. D4 could be another, but we really don't have much to go on for that yet.

[PlexShaw]

Below was easily the most interesting looking game shown at the MS press event. I was disappointed by the total lack of coverage it received.

[Scrustle]

Unbelievable news guys! MS have apparently done a complete 180 on all the terrible problems with the Xbone. No restrictions or online requirements at all anymore! Or well, no online requirement except a single one when you first set up the machine.

http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/micro ... 1100-4673/

I can hardly believe it myself. It sounds way too good to be true. So I'll be keeping an eye on this to see if it turns out things aren't all as they seem. Still, this is really interesting, and a fantastic turn of events if it turns out to be real.

[Electric Crocosaurus]

News just in, Microsoft reverses DRM policy for XBox One...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013- ... day-report

[Electric Crocosaurus]

Unbelievable news guys! MS have apparently done a complete 180 on all the terrible problems with the Xbone. No restrictions or online requirements at all anymore!.

Damn you, beat me to it!

[ratsoalbion]

I think the smarter people around here kinda saw that coming, no?
Sooner than expected, but pretty good news I'd say.

[mikeleddy83]

Yeah, lack of competition is bad. Glad to see they've kicked almost all of the negatives out!

...still mid-late generation purchase but it came so close to not at all.

Edit: As Scrustle says below you can paint me in with the less smart folk, I actually thought they were going to do it.

[StuartPD]

Extremely good news for the consumer

[Scrustle]

To be honest, I really did not see it coming. I can still hardly believe it. I'm half expecting there to be another statement in a day or so explaining that this was all a mistake and nothing has changed.

With the way electronic/digital media is going, it seemed predictable that MS would have abused it in the way that they did, and like I mentioned before, I wouldn't have expected it to significantly negatively affect their profits. They got a load of vitriol from the internet, but companies like MS don't care about what people say about them, they just care if they get their money, no matter how horrible they are to get it.

I feel weird talking in the past tense about this stuff. I still think there might be more to this than meets the eye.

And I think although they said that this decision was made in response to "community" feedback, I somehow think that it actually had more to do with what Sony have said.

Either way, it doesn't matter how this has happened. It's just great that it is. Forza 5, here I come! As long as this is all real that is.