upnorthsox
Veteran
You mean than show them a box? Yeah I suppose there is, maybe showing them what's inside the box? Nah, wouldn't be prudent.
Microsoft Xbox Reveal Event - May 21, 2013
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You mean than show them a box? Yeah I suppose there is, maybe showing them what's inside the box? Nah, wouldn't be prudent.
GrimThorne
Newcomer
In the returning IPs you could probably swap out a couple for Killer Instinct (trademark dispute settled) and PGR(trademark renewed). There are other Rare franchises like Viva Pinata and Banjo as well.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
8-10x sounds too optimistic for me. More like 6-8x and with eight years between the units, I personally just can't get too excited about that. Imo if you want 10x you need to look elsewhere...
The devs are going to have to do pretty good work to make launch games look appealing, considering how much time they have had perfecting the old gen machines. E3 should be pretty interesting.
The big question however is will that power difference be noticeable. I am inclined to think not much, especially if MS makes up some ground on efficiency side.
Had it been 36 CU versus 12, then you might have a point. But at 1080P, it seems likely that there won't be much difference. That said, I hope MS updates in 2 years with significantly improved hardware that using the VMs will enable.
Personally, it looks like an XBone for the family room and continue with the PC in the home office as the main gaming device. I think that is sony's biggest problem right now. MS does services better and the PS4 is basically a middling PC for gaming.
Given the disappointments on the XBone HW front and PS4 offering nothing of value for me, my best hope now is the 360 mini is real and networks and acts as an extender with the XBone, which I think has some hope of happen.
I think Microsoft could definitely find some success if they can manage to make Europeans do the same kind of thing with national or maybe even better European soccer (or both) as the Americans do with NFL. There are fantasy soccer leagues here and there, same with F1 as well. Already for European and World Championship football, setting up pools and betting some money on the outcome of all 'last 16' matches is very common in most European countries as far as I know.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how well this would work against similar applications that allow you to do the same using tablets and smartphones, which is the current trend. They're not less useful for this, so Microsoft will really have to get the Xbox versions right in order to allow this to work during the actual broadcast of the matches and somehow match the overlays in a nice, realtime way. Possible, but very hard, I think.
TV in Europe, as has been mentioned here and there, is difficult because there are so many different standards. I have a cable box that this could work with (definitely one of the crappy Cisco ones that technically work well, but have incredibly crappy user interfaces), and because these box-makers are so incredibly bad at making a good UI, they would stand to gain a lot if they cooperated with Microsoft to get this to work properly. But the big trend which has progressed quite far at least in this country (and I think also in the UK) is for TVs to have all this built in, which means you can't put a box inbetween anything. So this would definitely require cable companies to move forward with services that any app in the home network can tap into. This would be a great step forward, but that would also allow any device in the home to make the most out of it, and would make the HDMI in superfluous. Even then though, it could work rather well as an input for a last-gen console. Imagine, having your PS3 plugged into the HDMI in of your Xbox One, and you could game on that while using the Party chat, Skype and other features of the Xbox One in an image overlay. Could be interesting enough.
WinRT was something I claimed would be a no-brainer for Microsoft a long time ago, and it is interesting to see they went with it in a big way. Although we don't know that many specifics, the fact that WinRT appears to be getting nearly 3GB to work with is certainly encouraging.
Of course, the downside is that this memory is not available for games. But Nintendo has shown us (more with the Wii so far than the Wii U, mind) that hardware and power aren't the most important factors - if you get your software and services right, then hardware performance is secondary. Now it's a matter of waiting and seeing how much Microsoft can bring to the table.
The whole Cloud concept as Microsoft presented it is interesting as a concept, but if you look at it from a software designers perspective, I think it's a bit of a nightmare and Microsoft really haven't thought it through enough yet to convince me at this stage, with their 'you'll have 3 virtual Xbox One's available for every real Xbox One'. First of all, it just seems really expensive (as someone who's seen everything from Terminals and VMXs / AS400s to every hybrid form we see today, I still believe more in distributed than in hosting as being the more efficient and flexible solution. Hybrid forms can be interesting, but the virtual machine setup seems more interesting for accessing your 'Xbox One' from other devices, which still has limited use in the context of force feedback controllers and Kinect then not being avialable), and secondly, quite hard to implement robustly on the software end, what with having to be able to still work decently if not available, using it for high latency tasks only, etc. I think if you could pre-calculate global illumination values or something like that using the cloud, that could be interesting just to do that with one big distributed calculation for everyone playing a certain game online (say, giving realistic weather and lighting conditions, maybe historically correct, for that time and location), then having three virtual Xbox One's do that just for one real Xbox One user, so to speak. But we'll see. Considering how long games take to develop though, I doubt we can expect anything useful at all before 3 years have passed?
I think they're support for upscaling, which of course they didn't explicitly discuss, is going to help them some, but the 360 had two strong gaming pillars last gen - good Live features that support online gaming, and good multi-platform gaming support. It's not immediately clear that what has been announced today is really a next-step, other than banking on gamers watching TV linked through their Xbox. It's still possible - there are some kids out there in the target range that have questionable boxes that allow them to watch more than they legally pay for, and they may really enjoy this type of linking up, so it's hard to predict this type of thing, but equally these are often not keen on paying something like a Gold service.
I think all things considered, ironically I am as curious about seeing how well the WinRT part of things will work with Kinect. This could be a weirdly important factor for casual use, getting way more useful apps for games, media streaming and what not than any such device would have gotten before, with one of the best kind of gesture based UIs available.
Whether such a UI would then really compete with actual touch on a tablet though is still a big question, and whether Smart Glass could make up for that is also still an unknown. The latter would need to be able to do what the Wii U tablet does, which it may be able to do (no reason why it can't do what Sony did with Remote Play and the Vita), but we've not seen anything like that yet.
Many questions remain, and now it's a long wait until we get to see more at the E3 conferences.
Even as a die hard GT fan though, a next-gen Forza at or close to launch is enough to make me want one (part of the reason why I've had all versions of Xbox so far).
On the other hand, I'm not sure how well this would work against similar applications that allow you to do the same using tablets and smartphones, which is the current trend. They're not less useful for this, so Microsoft will really have to get the Xbox versions right in order to allow this to work during the actual broadcast of the matches and somehow match the overlays in a nice, realtime way. Possible, but very hard, I think.
TV in Europe, as has been mentioned here and there, is difficult because there are so many different standards. I have a cable box that this could work with (definitely one of the crappy Cisco ones that technically work well, but have incredibly crappy user interfaces), and because these box-makers are so incredibly bad at making a good UI, they would stand to gain a lot if they cooperated with Microsoft to get this to work properly. But the big trend which has progressed quite far at least in this country (and I think also in the UK) is for TVs to have all this built in, which means you can't put a box inbetween anything. So this would definitely require cable companies to move forward with services that any app in the home network can tap into. This would be a great step forward, but that would also allow any device in the home to make the most out of it, and would make the HDMI in superfluous. Even then though, it could work rather well as an input for a last-gen console. Imagine, having your PS3 plugged into the HDMI in of your Xbox One, and you could game on that while using the Party chat, Skype and other features of the Xbox One in an image overlay. Could be interesting enough.
WinRT was something I claimed would be a no-brainer for Microsoft a long time ago, and it is interesting to see they went with it in a big way. Although we don't know that many specifics, the fact that WinRT appears to be getting nearly 3GB to work with is certainly encouraging.
Of course, the downside is that this memory is not available for games. But Nintendo has shown us (more with the Wii so far than the Wii U, mind) that hardware and power aren't the most important factors - if you get your software and services right, then hardware performance is secondary. Now it's a matter of waiting and seeing how much Microsoft can bring to the table.
The whole Cloud concept as Microsoft presented it is interesting as a concept, but if you look at it from a software designers perspective, I think it's a bit of a nightmare and Microsoft really haven't thought it through enough yet to convince me at this stage, with their 'you'll have 3 virtual Xbox One's available for every real Xbox One'. First of all, it just seems really expensive (as someone who's seen everything from Terminals and VMXs / AS400s to every hybrid form we see today, I still believe more in distributed than in hosting as being the more efficient and flexible solution. Hybrid forms can be interesting, but the virtual machine setup seems more interesting for accessing your 'Xbox One' from other devices, which still has limited use in the context of force feedback controllers and Kinect then not being avialable), and secondly, quite hard to implement robustly on the software end, what with having to be able to still work decently if not available, using it for high latency tasks only, etc. I think if you could pre-calculate global illumination values or something like that using the cloud, that could be interesting just to do that with one big distributed calculation for everyone playing a certain game online (say, giving realistic weather and lighting conditions, maybe historically correct, for that time and location), then having three virtual Xbox One's do that just for one real Xbox One user, so to speak. But we'll see. Considering how long games take to develop though, I doubt we can expect anything useful at all before 3 years have passed?
I think they're support for upscaling, which of course they didn't explicitly discuss, is going to help them some, but the 360 had two strong gaming pillars last gen - good Live features that support online gaming, and good multi-platform gaming support. It's not immediately clear that what has been announced today is really a next-step, other than banking on gamers watching TV linked through their Xbox. It's still possible - there are some kids out there in the target range that have questionable boxes that allow them to watch more than they legally pay for, and they may really enjoy this type of linking up, so it's hard to predict this type of thing, but equally these are often not keen on paying something like a Gold service.
I think all things considered, ironically I am as curious about seeing how well the WinRT part of things will work with Kinect. This could be a weirdly important factor for casual use, getting way more useful apps for games, media streaming and what not than any such device would have gotten before, with one of the best kind of gesture based UIs available.
Whether such a UI would then really compete with actual touch on a tablet though is still a big question, and whether Smart Glass could make up for that is also still an unknown. The latter would need to be able to do what the Wii U tablet does, which it may be able to do (no reason why it can't do what Sony did with Remote Play and the Vita), but we've not seen anything like that yet.
Many questions remain, and now it's a long wait until we get to see more at the E3 conferences.
Even as a die hard GT fan though, a next-gen Forza at or close to launch is enough to make me want one (part of the reason why I've had all versions of Xbox so far).
Lets forget about the games for a second, i have a question.
Do we have any new information on what kind of multimedia files will xbox one be capable of playing and in what quality, bitrate etc...
I have popcorn hour and few other media players with external hard drives. Since Microsoft seems to want us all to think that xbox one is truly "all in one" machine then i expect it to outperform popcorn a-400 in image quality, sound and bitrate of movies. I want to get rid of 3 different machines and all those unnecessary cables and have it as they say "all in one".
Do you know/think that xbox one will play dvd/dvd iso, blue ray/blu ray iso, mkv and other containers and most importantly at what quality.
Do you think it will be possible for xbox one to scan your media library and you simply say "xbox play movie"?
I prefer buying my movies and music as blue rays, dvds and cds, and ripping them to digital format to have it organized and easily accessible and dont want to stream inferior picture and sound over internet.
Do we have any new information on what kind of multimedia files will xbox one be capable of playing and in what quality, bitrate etc...
I have popcorn hour and few other media players with external hard drives. Since Microsoft seems to want us all to think that xbox one is truly "all in one" machine then i expect it to outperform popcorn a-400 in image quality, sound and bitrate of movies. I want to get rid of 3 different machines and all those unnecessary cables and have it as they say "all in one".
Do you know/think that xbox one will play dvd/dvd iso, blue ray/blu ray iso, mkv and other containers and most importantly at what quality.
Do you think it will be possible for xbox one to scan your media library and you simply say "xbox play movie"?
I prefer buying my movies and music as blue rays, dvds and cds, and ripping them to digital format to have it organized and easily accessible and dont want to stream inferior picture and sound over internet.
Well, in actual fact, they did do exactly that, in exactly the outlets that care about that type of stuff - hence the Wired articles (and others in the tech/gaming press) showing the internals of the box, the manufacturing, the behind the scenes, etc., etc. They did specific pre-briefings with the tech press to give them something more on the day of the reveal, but still controlled enough not to take away from the message and focus of the reveal.
GrimThorne
Newcomer
Until they announce the REAL final specs at E3!
Does anyone know officially out of those 5 Billion transistors what the GPU budget is for the Xbox One? Or are we continuing to use VGL as the best estimate?
I believe Microsoft mentioned that >50% of the use the 360 was getting was for multi-media. In that scenario it makes sense to spend a little time on the non-gaming aspects of the system.
I wonder if they are going to offer a subscription which gives you unlimited access to the library of games for a set fee per year? They could offer all games which are say older than 6 months for perhaps $25 a month incl Live Gold. I think it would be pretty cool if they did that and it would let them practically give the system away for free.
I wonder if they are going to offer a subscription which gives you unlimited access to the library of games for a set fee per year? They could offer all games which are say older than 6 months for perhaps $25 a month incl Live Gold. I think it would be pretty cool if they did that and it would let them practically give the system away for free.
Actually, I'd prefer 720P with a good quality antialias over 1080P with none. I'm hoping most games don't give up 2x of their 6-8x power improvement just for pushing twice as many pixels, there are so many more interesting things they could do with that power.
RancidLunchmeat
Veteran
I wouldn't worry, I think the whole NFL thing is dumb. It's virtually a non-starter. They didn't say anything about giving you access to watch more games via this arrangement, it's just a stats overlay. Big deal, they demoed "smart tv" earlier showing ESPN doing the same exact thing. They also showed how you split screen to the internet, so if you can do that, you can already get automatically updated stats while you watch the game via that method. Not to mention that despite all Goodell's blustering ($400 million will buy you some bluster), there's no way the NFL wants to actively encourage the living room as a better environment for watching NFL games. It already is the better environment, the NFL knows it, and the NFL has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars to try to upgrade their stadiums to encourage attendance. It doesn't make sense for the NFL to dig themselves an even bigger hole by doing something significant to convince people to stay at home rather than come out to the games.
I also really think that they blew it by how they ordered their press conference, and if they would have done so differently, they wouldn't be getting this (rather absurd) "gamer" backlash. I understand they wanted to finish the press conference with a bang, so they put their big guns all grouped together at the end. (Halo TV, NFL, CoD). But they should have moved that entire section with the stupid CBS lady who couldn't remember her lines up front with the rest of the entertainment portion and put all the games together last.
Of course, they did take painstaking efforts to say repeatedly that E3 is going to focus on the games and the "gamers" don't seem to be able to understand that part, so maybe it wouldn't have mattered.
That's the biggest question to me. How will 3rd parties use it if they're not simply MS exclusives? I mean, how many servers does PSN have? Do they even have the Cloud based expertise to make it cohesive, even if they had the hardware available? I doubt it. The idea they talked about, developers having access to their server network to expand worlds and allow for significantly more players, host persistent worlds, etc; would really be a huge deal.
But I don't see how developers can build that ability into a game for One and not for the PS4. I agree, it seems like it would take a significant amount of work to do that.
Here I disagree. I think multiple applications running in multiple windows at the same, switching back and forth between a game you're playing, a movie you're watching, internet, skype, etc as quick and easy as turning the channel on the TV is a huge next-step. I'm trying to recall if they ever showed more than three windows open running apps at the same time, I think three was the most they demoed. Still, that's a major leap forward from what any console can do today or was ever able to do.
Michellstar
Regular
I do wonder if it´ll be possible to chain your pc to the xbone as well through the hdmi.
And, given that kinect 2.0 is coming to the pc, control both
There's a certain perception, whether valid or not, that MS is forcing you to pay for Kinect and TV features, which you may not be interested in using (or paying for, which would be a kick, to pay to change your TV channels).
The price they're going to charge is going to be determined partly by the cost for Kinect and the non-gaming features. Or they could have delivered more gaming performance for the same price if not for Kinect and the other stuff.
No need to feel betrayed. There's competition, not just from other consoles but other electronic toys.
The price they're going to charge is going to be determined partly by the cost for Kinect and the non-gaming features. Or they could have delivered more gaming performance for the same price if not for Kinect and the other stuff.
No need to feel betrayed. There's competition, not just from other consoles but other electronic toys.
I wanted to post this in the News & Rumours thread but it is still closed.
The reports about the used games market on the XBO are inaccurate and incomplete according to Microsoft.
http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-reports-about-xbox-one-used-games-inaccurate-and-incomplete
The reports about the used games market on the XBO are inaccurate and incomplete according to Microsoft.
http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-reports-about-xbox-one-used-games-inaccurate-and-incomplete
RancidLunchmeat
Veteran
Eh, that doesn't say anything new.
I think it's entirely possible that MS is going to do something to require an activation fee (especially for used on-line games), but if they do, I doubt they are going it alone. Didn't EA just announce they were giving up their program to charge people for used games on-line? It would make sense for EA to that if both MS and Sony had already agreed to handle the situation 'natively' at the console level rather than at the developer level.
I don't think EA would give that up if only MS had agreed to provisions against used games. It is possible that EA will introduce some other sort of scalping for used games.
It doesn't really bother me, I think I've purchased two used games for the 360. It wouldn't matter at launch as all the games are going to be new and there will be a lag before they hit the market (unless they are total failures and then, why buy them?). And by the time I'm going back to play games I haven't played before, they are typically discounted new to almost the same price as used games. But I understand that's not the case with people who buy off of Ebay or use the selling of their games to purchase new ones.
I wouldn't recommend MS to follow EA's policies, especially when they were rated as the worst company in America.
MS said they are listening to the feedback and taking note of the negative uproar to the supposed implementations of the used games market and everything surrounding the always online thing. So let's wait and see what happens at E3.
Besides that, Gamestop closed the week down 19% after Xbox Reveal because of the uncertainty surrounding the second hand market:
http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/24/4363850/gamestop-shares-fall-since-xbox-one-announcement
On a different note, the team working on the new Xbox One console think the new console have the potential to sell gigantic numbers of consoles, during its entire lifetime.
They believe the new console can sell between 400 million and 1 billion of consoles during the next generation, and aim at those numbers.
http://www.vg247.com/2013/05/24/xbo...on-lifetime-sales-100-million-xbox-360-units/
They believe the new console can sell between 400 million and 1 billion of consoles during the next generation, and aim at those numbers.
http://www.vg247.com/2013/05/24/xbo...on-lifetime-sales-100-million-xbox-360-units/
Gradthrawn
Veteran
That's not really what he said. In context, he clearly seems to be discussing the console generation as whole, which would include the PS4 and Wii U:
His expansion comment seems to be built on top of that and still in broad "console generation" terms:
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