Microsoft Xbox Reveal Event - May 21, 2013

Doesn't Microsoft have servers all over the developed world?

I still don't understand why tv doesn't work in Europe. Are there not tv boxes with HDMI out from cable, satellite or IPTV? Is everyone on OTA?

 

Nice fairy tale of the golden age. Here the situation looks like as if we'll degrade from DSL Flat to Volume. The Telekom wants to abolish Net Neutrality so they can force companies to pay them to transport their data, squeeze more money from their DSL customers for volume or/and force their customers to use their own multimedia services instead of other company services because they aren't artificially bandwidth limited.
If they actively push for the end of Net Neutrality you can bet your local big telecoms have wet dreams about the same shit.

 

A good portion of the load process could be streamlined by the system. All the discovery and system initialization has already been done, and that data can be sent from the system OS if the game OS is virtualization-aware.
For some of the the low-level system information, it's probably virtualized device IDs that can be made up on the spot by the system.
I'm unclear on there being a need for the game OS to be fully decked out as a multi-tasking OS, since there are other VMs for that purpose.

The game OS load could be hidden in a splash screen, if the system VM can't cheat and quietly start loading certain system elements ahead of time.

 

Well how much time does it take to change the game disc?

I am also guessing, with the HDMI in, the console is intended to be always on with a low power sleep mode, so you essentially have an instant on experience 99% of the time.

 

I feel like you don't understand how this works, or massively overestimate how much time it will take to load a probably 25-50 MB OS that the game runs in.

You could play a game and the System OS could update and reboot and your game would not be affected. That in itself is pretty nice. Also, they can make big changes to the Game OS without having to worry about breaking compatibility with old games. I imagine each game will include the proper OS version it needs to run, so each game on your system can have a different version of the Game OS. That VM runs independently of the System OS, so it never has to be updated for a game once it ships.

The horror!

 

No, I think they have some mechanism where you can play the game while it's being installed to the HDD or while its been partially downloaded.

Don't know all the details though

 

AI in strategy games is where something like this would really shine. No more 2 minute waits for turn to end and better opponents..

 

Did they say anything about the type of ram or flops ?

 

No.

 

A more fitting name would've been Xbox Azure. Lots of smart moves in here in relation to the VMs and cloud integration that will pay off big time in the years ahead.

Any word on if it'll run standard Windows 8 Apps?

Not sure if I'll get one at launch, would rather see how the TV integration pans out in non US markets first.

 

I have tivo. It wont work because ms has said it wont we do not know what the reasons are yet. Sky do satellite TV virginmedia do cable but its not all that popular and you can get 70 odd channels with just an antenna if you have a newish tv.

 

Yeah if they don't have games that use this at launch or the first year, it's never going to happen in any substantive way.

Remember there was talk about uploading your DVD and then Cells in the cloud would upscale them and return you a better movie?

Or MS talked about spectator modes in XBL games, so that championship games would have audiences and so on.

All that fanciful stuff never materialized. Once they get your money, what incentive do they have to improve the product for you? Offer some UI updates once in awhile, that cost them nothing.

But build out their infrastructure to improve the product you already bought? Why wouldn't they want you to buy the next iteration a few years later, promising x times more power and features than this product?

Now, maybe the engineering types talking about this are idealists who really believe these kinds of things will materialize. But the bean counters will beat reality into them. Or they will themselves get bored and move onto other projects or other companies.

 

That would depend on the limiting factor for the end of turn calculations in a game.

Can the cloud run ahead with processig in anticipation of the human player's ending their turn?
Can the client AI do the same?
Otherwise, the wait is still going to be there in some fashion.

The other question is how much demand it places on the cloud server. There are more consoles than there are cloud servers, so unbounded consumption is unlikely to end well.

 

Ah , i see . Maybe they forgot ..

 

It would be far easier to spin off AI threads to idle cores while you're planning your move but many strategy games don't even do that.

 

This is probably the best use case for cloud processing at the moment. Some strategy games try to do simultaneous turns to get around this end of turn wait, essentially processing while you're playing but I'm thinking more of processing on a grander scale within the gameplay, to give AI better overarching strategy and play like other humans would.

So in this scenario it's not completely necessary to be quick in processing... it just has to crunch enough numbers and calculate all the moves, pathfinding, and combinations of where to attack, defend, who to make peace & go to war with, etc. in both the long and short term strategy. Basically everything a turn based strat game does today but much more granular and continually in the background. Any game trying to do that today on a single PC would just chug non-stop while you played.

 

Great job by Carl Ledbetter and his industrial design team. Wonderful old school design language...much more mature and refined than previous generations...makes the 360S look like a toy. This thing is all business! The asymmetrical half/half design is pretty wicked.

Looks like the design is stackable but only if you put the console at the top of your A/V rack.

I like the new controller too....looks more modern. Launch day purchase for me.

As for the reveal, I like the fact MS talked about their vision for next gen as well as provide evidence of what they've done so far. They've announced a bunch of exclusives and new IPs...just have to wait for E3 so no worries.

 

I think it's a really nice looking design too. I would have preferred something of Xbox Slim dimensions. I'd be curious to see how big it is relative to the original 360. My one gripe is the size of the Kinect unit. That thing looks pretty big and blocky.

 

At least it's stackable. The current Kinect has a motor which would actually take up far more space (nothing on top).

 

The console is stackable? I guess if whatever you're putting on top has reasonably tall feet, to give room between for airflow. Maybe the Kinect unit is shorter. Could be. It looks like a brick, but the overall dimenions including the base could be smaller than the original.