News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[patsu]

Ooer, Terry Myerson. Now I'm doubly glad I left. I'd have problems working for a person who essentially punished an entire group of people because he didn't like the product they were working on, and thought one of them might have been talking to the press.

Which team did he punish if I may ask ?

 

[AzBat]

It almost feels that they are firmly putting the gaming aspect of the xb1 behind them and are putting people in place who have the mind and skill set to market a generic CE device for home entertainment. More tv and media and whole lot less gaming.

That's what I was thinking. Maybe they have reserved themselves to not being the goto game system after most multi-platform titles now look better on the other guy's hardware? Kind of a snowball effect going on & its looking like even the few exclusives(Titanfall, Halo, Gears, Forza, Project Spark, Kinect) won't be enough to get back into gamers' good graces. Lets hope they have an answer to other guy's VR. If they don't then I think they will just turn Xbox One into a Windows Entertainment box instead. Bleh.

Tommy McClain

 

[Rangers]

OXM UK

http://www.totalxbox.com/73607/1080...er-over-time-assures-microsoft-hardware-boss/

1080p on Xbox One will get easier over time, assures Microsoft hardware boss
Expect "fairly large improvements" to graphics as devs master the GPU and ESRAM

Posted on Wednesday 19-Mar-2014 4:04 AM PDT By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, Deputy Editor for OXM

14 Comment

Xbox director of development Boyd Multerer "fully expects" more game developers to achieve native 1080p on Xbox One as time goes by - it's a question of tweaking performance to suit the console's GPU and ESRAM setup in particular.

"I fully expect that to happen," he told us, as part of a gargantuan technical chat you'll read in issue 110 of OXM UK, on sale now. "The [graphics processing units] are really complicated beasts this time around."

Improvements resulting from software optimisation are par for the course with any piece of gaming hardware, naturally. As you may recall from our report on backwards compatibility, the Xbox 360 and Xbox One employ completely different processing architecture, which means that developers must discard or build on their old techniques.

"The hardware is basically baked, and what comes next is people discovering better software techniques to take advantage of it, especially in the ordering of the data so it flows through all the caches correctly, and I think there's a lot of opportunity there," said Multerer. Of the Xbox One's ESRAM - a slab of super-fast RAM that works in tandem with the console's eight GB of DDR3 RAM - he added that "this is where tuning your data set becomes super important."

The creators of the Xbox One launch titles didn't have much opportunity to fine-tune their work with a view to improving visual fidelity, according to Multerer. "Once these engines - the engine developers like Frostbyte and those guys - they really wrap their heads around this particular GPU architecture, then all of the titles coming out of that studio will take advantage of it and get better."

Multerer says we can look forward to "fairly large improvements in GPU output as people really tune these data sets now to get maximum use out of their GPUs". Resolution isn't the be-all and end-all, however. "Part of it is learning how to tune, part of it is I think a very legitimate question of quality of pixels versus number of pixels, and of course both are interesting.

Would like to get my hands on this issue. Doesn't appear available digitally yet though.

 

[NRP]

Heh, I remember bkilian saying how a lot of the "gamers" at MS either left or were forced out in place of MBA bean counters, so I guess this fiasco is the inevitable fallout. Hopefully it teaches MS a lesson.

MBAs absolutely cannot do cool stuff. In every place I've ever worked, MBAs were always the "party poopers".

 

[XpiderMX]

"A lot"? for fiasco you mean no powerful hardware? Then, what Wii U is?

 

[JPT]

Heh, I remember bkilian saying how a lot of the "gamers" at MS either left or were forced out in place of MBA bean counters, so I guess this fiasco is the inevitable fallout. Hopefully it teaches MS a lesson.

MBAs absolutely cannot do cool stuff. In every place I've ever worked, MBAs were always the "party poopers".

You need balance, look at the PS3, did Ken Kutaragi get to much power? Maybe he should have had a bean counter to keep him a bit closer to the ground?

 

[bkilian]

:neutral: What if it was an isolated event? Maybe he had a bad day at the office.

Maybe. Scuttlebutt around our team was that he was gunning for us from the start. He might be an awesome guy, but in all the interactions I had with him, he just come off as smarmy and insincere.

Don't see a problem. As I mentioned above, if he gave the traditional 2-weeks notice he should be fine for getting a recommendation for any other employment. Like Wavey said they also might have expedited his last day to protect them from things that the outgoing employee might attempt to do before he/she leaves.

It depends on where you're going. A friend of mine, who was a principal in XBox, and super useful to have around, gave his two weeks notice and told them he was going to Valve. His office was cleared out that day. I gave my two weeks a little bit after that, and I worked 12 hour days for my last two weeks and was still checking code in on my last day.

Haven't heard much on him, but you're not giving me much faith. Doesn't look like he has any experience in the gaming industry. That can't be good.

He's a phone guy, sorta. He reminded me of a used car salesman, because he was always smiling. I never trust folks who are always smiling

Which team did he punish if I may ask ?

Kin. Which, admittedly, was a doomed team almost from the start, but it didn't help to have the guy in charge of Windows Phone do everything possible to torpedo your product. Then when the Kin team got rolled into Win Phone, he flat out said that he didn't want us and he wasn't going to assign any useful work to the ex-Kin guys because he didn't trust us. I was at that meeting (It was my last meeting in the team, I had already given notice and was moving to XBox) and I couldn't believe some of the things he said and insinuated. He also disparaged our work and implied nothing in the Kin product was even worth rolling into Win Phone (Although I know for a fact that they later took our filesystem improvements, our event consolidation code, and a bunch of our silverlight improvements. As well as tons of our UI).

The guy just rubbed me up the wrong way from the very first interaction I had with him.

 

[NRP]

Well, Windows Phone hasn't exactly set the world on fire, so it doesn't sound like this choad will do anything for the Xbox brand. If it keeps getting bad press, perhaps he'll get canned too?

 

[Rockster]

Sorry B. We got your back here and the smear campaign will begin post haste.

 

[patsu]

Sorry B. We got your back here and the smear campaign will begin post haste.

"So Terry, and you ? What is your contribution to society ?"



Hey Bkilian...

... because he was always smiling. I never trust folks who are always smiling

That's me ! I am always smiling ! 'specially when I'm clueless and don't know what's going on.

Like Dopey.

 

[bkilian]

Sorry B. We got your back here and the smear campaign will begin post haste.

Haha! No, like I said, it's mostly subjective, other than the things he said to the Kin team, which were kinda dickish.

I don't know about you guys, but every so often I meet a person who, from the very first time I see them, I want to punch in the face(*). I generally pride myself on being a reasonable, evidence based person, but I still have these feelings now and then. Myerson was one of those people. Before the Kin debacle, I had no reason to have that impression, but I still did. So I'm not really an unbiased observer.

(*) I have never actually acted on any of these impulses...

 

[Rockster]

Strangely, every time I feel that way about someone, it ends up being the correct evaluation of that person. Just ask my wife. Their true colors always come out eventually. And if the Kin ridiculousness is any indication, you were right on the money too!

Besides, some people always have that look on their face that could use a slight adjustment.

 

[BoardBonobo]

Haha! No, like I said, it's mostly subjective, other than the things he said to the Kin team, which were kinda dickish.

I don't know about you guys, but every so often I meet a person who, from the very first time I see them, I want to punch in the face(*). I generally pride myself on being a reasonable, evidence based person, but I still have these feelings now and then. Myerson was one of those people. Before the Kin debacle, I had no reason to have that impression, but I still did. So I'm not really an unbiased observer.

(*) I have never actually acted on any of these impulses...

I guess he'll be the guy they get to sweet talk the indies into bed with MS then...

 

[AzBat]

It depends on where you're going. A friend of mine, who was a principal in XBox, and super useful to have around, gave his two weeks notice and told them he was going to Valve. His office was cleared out that day. I gave my two weeks a little bit after that, and I worked 12 hour days for my last two weeks and was still checking code in on my last day.

Gotcha. I can see that. With Marc going to Sonos, there probably wasn't any concern to show him the door immediately.

He's a phone guy, sorta. He reminded me of a used car salesman, because he was always smiling. I never trust folks who are always smiling

LOL, guess you wouldn't me much either. Rarely do I get upset or grumpy at work. Pretty happy go lucky guy.

Tommy McClain

 

[Cyan]

Strangely, every time I feel that way about someone, it ends up being the correct evaluation of that person. Just ask my wife. Their true colors always come out eventually. And if the Kin ridiculousness is any indication, you were right on the money too!

Besides, some people always have that look on their face that could use a slight adjustment.

:smile: You made me roar with laughter. A little tip for yah'. If you are going to mess with someone's face just make sure they look fine afterwards. Or better than before at least.

On another note, Xbox users can get rewards by being positive online:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Micr...Rewards-by-Being-Positive-Online-433113.shtml

 

[Rangers]

Not strictly a Xbox rumor but kinda Xbox related given Gears...Epic said they are not working on an Unreal game of any kind.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03...rnament-title?abthid=532ad171ec34b7cd7b00000b

“We’re not [planning on] shipping an Unreal Tournament game," he announced. "We have a lot of nostalgia for the game but we’re actually not developing anything in the Unreal game universe at all at the moment.

“We’ve announced Fortnite… That’s a game we’ll be talking about later. We don’t have anything to show you here at GDC. We’re developing that project and there are several other projects that aren’t announced yet that are being developed with Unreal Engine 4.”

Hoping For Samaritan like everybody else. Seems to be rumors of canceled projects and so forth.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

On another note, Xbox users can get rewards by being positive online:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Micr...Rewards-by-Being-Positive-Online-433113.shtml

A little, important clarification - this is for rewarding good online play/interactions on the XB1 console. It is not, as I first interpreted, rewards for going on forums and comment threeads posting nice things about XBox.

It's a good idea. There needs to be something to clean up online culture. It's general a crap culture with a lot of socially unacceptable behaviours.

 

[GrimThorne]

Gotcha. I can see that. With Marc going to Sonos, there probably wasn't any concern to show him the door immediately.



LOL, guess you wouldn't me much either. Rarely do I get upset or grumpy at work. Pretty happy go lucky guy.

Tommy McClain

lol. That DOES sound like a very tough thing to hold against a person. If you smile too much?

I'm pretty much the same way. Work is often stressful enough as it is, I've often found that it's better to make yourself as approachable as possible.

 

[Cyan]

A little, important clarification - this is for rewarding good online play/interactions on the XB1 console. It is not, as I first interpreted, rewards for going on forums and comment threeads posting nice things about XBox.

It's a good idea. There needs to be something to clean up online culture. It's general a crap culture with a lot of socially unacceptable behaviours.

Shifty, what an unique cast of mind. What on earth made you think that??!! Yes, there's usually nothing to go off of in your mind.

Additionally, Tommy (Azbat), yes, Whitten was one of the most decent guys in the new Xbox team, not discussing that, but it doesn't mean that they could be more imaginative with the hardware side of things, and above all, make people feel excited about the Xbox One, when in fact it was a huge letdown.

They didn't focus on promoting Shape and things like that, but TV stuff. They built a kinda boring hardware, save for the audio and the eSRAM, and DMEs. It shall be a console that can be an untimely backwards compatible device though.

I just hope that now that John Carmack left iD and when he finally builds the Occulus Rift, Microsoft hire him and bring back Allard, Moore and Bach.

That would be one hell of a team working on the next console.

 

[AzBat]

lol. That DOES sound like a very tough thing to hold against a person. If you smile too much?

I'm pretty much the same way. Work is often stressful enough as it is, I've often found that it's better to make yourself as approachable as possible.

LOL, yep. Get more flies with honey...

Additionally, Tommy (Azbat), yes, Whitten was one of the most decent guys in the new Xbox team, not discussing that, but it doesn't mean that they could be more imaginative with the hardware side of things, and above all, make people feel excited about the Xbox One, when in fact it was a huge letdown.

I agree that their position during the 360 generation may have clouded their view of the next generation. I also agree they could have been a little more imaginative. Not a huge letdown, but was disappointed yes. They still haven't completely botched everything though. However, the hemorrhaging of a gaming executives doesn't instill much confidence.

Tommy McClain