If I were Microsoft...

[Bigus Dickus]

... and looking for that breakout app(s) that could extend the XB1 appeal well beyond the core gamer, and start living up to the "one box to control them all..." PR...

I'd be working on greatly expanding the voice recognition abilities, perhaps in conjunction with Dragon/Nuance, to implement a complete and user modifiable library, custom macros, etc... The XB1 is a pretty competent general purpose computer and gpgpu could possibly accelerate this even more. Combined with the Kinect and the SHAPE processing capabilities, it might well be the first $500 box that could function as a comoetent full fledged voice recognition device not requiring a microphone in a home environment.

I'd be working on USB or even better wifi connected RF transmitters and more complete IR capabilities (more extensive discrete codes, learning functions) to make the XB1 a powerful full featured remote.

I'd be working with zwave, lutron, etc to develop USB or wifi connected peripherals which would bridge between the XB1 and home automation systems.

I'd be working to develop a sort of Kinect voice extender, remotely located to the XB1 (other rooms) and with similar mic/IR (and ideally RF) capabilities to Kinect but without the cameras.

People using natural voice to control a variety of stuff in their home has long been a sort of holy grail for movies, fantasies, and real home automation. MS has a reasonably priced box that could position itself as the common hub and voice recognition brain for a variety of systems.

 

[DrJay24]

That is a lot of stuff 99% of people and 99.9% of gamers don't want.

 

[liolio]

Well I think that Microsoft is to improve on its offer, to which extend that unclear, but they are more likely to do so than not.

If I were Microsoft, I would prepare for a "proper" core system and try to leverage salvage parts.

Something like 6 cores and 10 CUs with a boost in clock speed.
I would cut the memory bus to 192 bits and stick to 6GB of RAM (5-1GB split for the RAM).

I would remove anything that is not critical to a "core", barebone, experience:
remove the HDMI in, kinect connectors, 1 USB port, the ethernet port, etc.
So big effort to simplify the design, I would also try to get rid of those 8GB or flash.

I wold ship without an optical drive (back to their original plan) and an empty HDD slot.

I would go for a simpler/noiser cooling system.
For the box by self, some cheaper less sturdy.

The OS would be tweaked down, significantly: less multi tasking, etc. so while running games the OS requires less than full cores for it-self.

As for the game they would be slightly tweaked for the lesser bandwidth to the main ram and the overall slightly different characteristics.

I would try to launch may/june 2014, before too much games are released (which may be tweaked to support the new SKU) and trying to have support for a major I{P (could be titan fall), I would aim for a retail price of 299$, 199$ with a 2 years gold subscription.

 

[blakjedi]

i wouldnt do any of what liolio says and do everything Bigus Dickus is proposing. I actually think home automation etc is exactly where they are going too... Cortana and all that.

 

[dobwal]

That is a lot of stuff 99% of people and 99.9% of gamers don't want.

LOL.

I think the best ecosystem provides 99% of what an individual user doesn't need. And thrives off the fact that the needs of the overall userbase is so diverse it doesn't matter. No different from the iOS and Google app store, PC market and console game libraries.

It shouldn't be MS or Sony job to provide apps but the third party developers. All the platform provider has to do is provide a marketplace and decent developer tools.

Personally I like the ideal of Kinect (cameras and all) situated through out my house and able to control lighting, music and TV settings through my home.

When I drive my wife's car I don't have to fiddle with radio or the driver seat and window mirror positions. They are all programmed into my key fob for her car. So when I get in it sets the car to my liking automatically. A home version of that type of convenience I imagine would be attractive to alot of people.

 

[liolio]

i wouldnt do any of of liolio says and do everything Bigus Dickus is proposing. I actually think home automation etc is exactly where they are going too... Cortana and all that.

Well I think that the existence of a significantly different, core, sku is not holding the main sku to from evolving.
I would not eol the main sku either or even question its relevance, neither I'm opposed to the evolution of the services it is built upon.

 

[dobwal]

Well I think that the existance of a significantly different, core, sku is not holding the main sku to evolve.
I would not eol the main sku either or even question its relevance, neither I'm opposed to the evolution of the services it is built upon.

MS highest selling sku wasn't the stripped down one last gen, so what makes you think that strategy will find success this time.

And how do you salvage the apu if you are going to use a 192 bit interface?

 

[blakjedi]

Well I think that the existence of a significantly different, core, sku is not holding the main sku to from evolving.
I would not eol the main sku either or even question its relevance, neither I'm opposed to the evolution of the services it is built upon.

The current Durango *is* the core system.

if you strip it of anything it isnt an xbox one...

Its entirely another product.

 

[liolio]

MS highest selling sku wasn't the stripped down one last gen, so what makes you think that strategy will find success this time.

And how do you salvage the apu if you are going to use a 192 bit interface?

Well they still sold a lot of core/arcade SKU.

For the RAM / lesser bandwidth, trade off and tweaks. Games like BF4, Cod, etc, ship on some many platform already the difference between those 2 sku sharing the tools, mostly the same perfs, the same arch, having the same amount of memory available for the game, etc. may not turn into a significant hurdle (/investment in human time).

EDIT: about how, I would think that AMD can disable a 64bit controller out of 4 even though they usually don't do that on the GPU lines unlike Nvidia. May be they can't.

 

[liolio]

The current Durango *is* the core system.

if you strip it of anything it isnt an xbox one...

Its entirely another product.

Looking at how the some of those "core" functionality map to markets outside of US, you might be right. /sarcasm.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If I were Microsoft, I would prepare for a "proper" core system and try to leverage salvage parts.

Something like 6 cores and 10 CUs with a boost in clock speed.
I would cut the memory bus to 192 bits and stick to 6GB of RAM (5-1GB split for the RAM).

XB1 is hardly a powerhouse, and you want to go reducing performance?? How's that going to sell to the core, when the PS4 is going to more powerful at the same sort of price? Or is it just about providing a Halo-box to entrenched XB fans turned off XB1 by the price and inclusion of Kinect? If the latter, I don't believe those fans are numerous enough to bother with.

 

[liolio]

XB1 is hardly a powerhouse, and you want to go reducing performance?? How's that going to sell to the core, when the PS4 is going to more powerful at the same sort of price? Or is it just about providing a Halo-box to entrenched XB fans turned off XB1 by the price and inclusion of Kinect? If the latter, I don't believe those fans are numerous enough to bother with.

Well if I'm allow to state it, I think that as far as perfs goes the battle is already over.
for now system reserved 10% of the GPU time, right?
If you significantly lower that by removing kinect and lowering the overall OS overhead, as well a slightly bumping the clock speed, I would think it could be fine (power would go up obviously).
Same with cpu side, slight speed bump and massive reduction in OS overhead (while in game at least).
Should be pretty much a wash. And as you say the ps4 is ahead anyway they could fight it on both end: extra functionality (where it is relevant, be it because of native language or how fragmented the tv market is) and cheap/simpler salvaged system elsewhere.


For the public, well I would thin the people that can't pay 500$ and which might still find in a couple of year 400$ expansive. If MSFT can sell the xb1 400 Sony might be able to sale the ps4 300, more or less.

I would not make assumption on future xbox one sales, though fans or not truth is that xbox functionality are US oriented, be it tv, voice recognition, etc. in quite a few european it is a bit moot. It will prove quite tough to improve on that.

So it is not about fans, it is perfectly fine if MSFT can adapt the xbox one to a couples of big markets (read countries), else where a system which is cheap and allows them to sell games could prove helpful against the competition.

What bothers me is the investment to support the development of a slightly different version of game than the idea that msft could have 2 different sku.
Xbone and Barebone sounds like a good combo to me

Edit as well as doability down to silicon.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

That is a lot of stuff 99% of people and 99.9% of gamers don't want.

I'm sure at some point in the past someone said a PC is something 99% of people didn't want.

IMO, this is something I figure a huge number of people want, just figure it isn't something they can afford, is too complex, and/or simply not available. I think MS has a pretty good platform to take a shot at bending that curve.

I'm not saying MS should have made all that included in the core system. Even a single Kinect has received plenty of criticism, and while I think MS made the right choice by forcing the install base, only time will tell. But everything I described above can be made available as accessories, even the software. My swag is that for around a grand, a moderate sized house could be outfitted with XB1 and the requisite assortment of extenders and bridges to function as a complete automation hub. I defy you to find anything remotely close in price and potential. Outfitting a home with the end automation devices (lights, thermostat, whatever) would of course cost additional, as it already does, but keep in mind what I describe could enable a housewide voice controlled remote of existing IR and RF devices, something difficult to do currently even without voice control and even for pricier solutions.

 

[NRP]

I am blown away by how well Kinect works. MS is on to something here. Hopefully, they will capitalize on it.

 

[zed]

I'd be working on greatly expanding the voice recognition abilities,

Well its been shown its not better than google voice/siri which both are nowhere near infallible. In fact everyone Ive spoken to (i.e. not faceless ppl on the internet) think theyre cool for the first hour and then ignore it completely cause its faster typing something out that correcting every second word.
Until they solve this problem then its not going to take off, sorry.

If I was MS, (since they still have not shown a single must have app for kinect) I'ld release a kinectless version of the xbone for US$350. Im pretty sure sony wont cut the price of the ps4 to match

 

[joker454]

Well its been shown its not better than google voice/siri which both are nowhere near infallible. In fact everyone Ive spoken to (i.e. not faceless ppl on the internet) think theyre cool for the first hour and then ignore it completely cause its faster typing something out that correcting every second word.
Until they solve this problem then its not going to take off, sorry.

Most existing voice recognition works from a mic right next to the users mouth like with Dragon, google voice, siri, etc. Is there anything out there available to the general public comparable to what kinect does, which is perform voice recognition from 10 feet away in noisy environments?

If I was MS, (since they still have not shown a single must have app for kinect) I'ld release a kinectless version of the xbone for US$350. Im pretty sure sony wont cut the price of the ps4 to match

Curious why you think they should do that when they are able to sell everything they make at $500.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Most existing voice recognition works from a mic right next to the users mouth like with Dragon, google voice, siri, etc. Is there anything out there available to the general public comparable to what kinect does, which is perform voice recognition from 10 feet away in noisy environments?

Additionally at least Google Voice and Siri draw from a near constant internet connection to leverage a larger pool of data for voice recognition. That is only available on Kinect when using Bing search while connected to the internet, at which point accuracy improves dramatically.

Regards,
SB

 

[Rangers]

XB1 is hardly a powerhouse, and you want to go reducing performance?? How's that going to sell to the core, when the PS4 is going to more powerful at the same sort of price? Or is it just about providing a Halo-box to entrenched XB fans turned off XB1 by the price and inclusion of Kinect? If the latter, I don't believe those fans are numerous enough to bother with.

Exactly. Besides that, it goes against what consoles are (same as the iterative hardware thing thrown around by some)

XB1 is what it is and it has to stay that. If you want to do a "core" console, strip out Kinect, reengineer it make the casing smaller and consolidate the motherboard etc (So called slim revision), and I even think a no-disc drive (optional of course) SKU would be a good idea.

But you cant change the core hardware, especially with X1 already taking lumps as "too weak".

Sans Kinect, I think the whole point of X1 is to be cheap anyway, that's why you've got a DDR3/ESRAM SOC combo (Microsoft just obscured the cheapness with included Kinect and a profitable hardware price point, but it's there). Dropping 2 CU's and 2 GB RAM wouldn't even be a drop in the cost bucket anyway! What a awful idea lol.

 

[zed]

Most existing voice recognition works from a mic right next to the users mouth like with Dragon, google voice, siri, etc. Is there anything out there available to the general public comparable to what kinect does, which is perform voice recognition from 10 feet away in noisy environments?

So youre implying kinect does worse than the above due to it being handicapped, OK thats well and good but the above are crap
So its voice recognition is worse than crap .. um OK ditto silent buddah. Anyways the average user dont give a monkeys about how amazing the tech hurdles are they just want something that works

Curious why you think they should do that when they are able to sell everything they make at $500.

yes the first 2-3 million till christmas (though they are available in shops its not like the wii (sans nz) or ps4 ) but I think like the wii U (and not the wii) we will soon bes seeing them aplenty on shops shelves, dropping the price under the main competition will maintain momentum. Im Sure Sony will not be able to follow the pricecut. PRICE ADVANTAGE = xbox

edit - just done a quick availablity check, so sold out for the xbone is not correct, Im still picking it to sell more in NPD dec due to having less places to sell to

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Most existing voice recognition works from a mic right next to the users mouth like with Dragon, google voice, siri, etc. Is there anything out there available to the general public comparable to what kinect does, which is perform voice recognition from 10 feet away

I use Dragon on the Mac and don't use a mic, it's using the basic mics built into the iMac and MacBook. I can pace around the room and dictate and it's incredibly accurate; distance seems to have very little impact on its accuracy in my many years of experience.