MS E3 2012 conference

[RudeCurve]

Ultimately the SmartGlass client is just similar to a virtual desktop app for XBox with some extra local frills. Apple would have a hard time arguing why it shouldn't approve it for their app-store (as in anti-competitive legislation hard). We already have iOS apps that remote desktop to Windows.

If anything it removes an incentive to buy a Windows 8 tablet if you can stick with your iPad.

Cheers

Good point...I've got a bunch of Apps on my iPhone that controls my PC. There's Mobile Mouse, Touchpad, Splashtop, LogMeIn, Off, Air Video, Remote, PowerDVD Remote...etc.

I've been waiting for an iOS App that allows me to control my Xbox360 using my iPhone. I think the one feature that Apple may not allow MS access to is mirroring from the portable to the TV?

 

[kagemaru]

The conference was ok, Halo 4 was the obvious highlight. I did have an issue with how every major game seemed heavily scripted, but I'm hoping this was done just to insure maximum wow factor for the conference.

One thing's for sure, every one of these games are obviously improved graphically from their predecessors and it's nice to see how they are still pushing more out of a 7 year old box.

I'm glad they are improving the searching in the XNE, but seriously, that thing needs a major overhaul. Like the Giant Bomb guys have said, allow for a bit of profiling to you can give preference to certain types of content, like ... well ... games. They don't just need to post Apps, they need to App Store it up with all manner of recommendations, rankings, sorting options, top lists and so forth. That will help all genres, but certainly also smaller games.

Well you and GB should be happy. The dashboard update later this year looks to add a favorites panel right below where you launch the game. Plus the Games tab is moved over two slots to be right after social.:smile:

 

[mrcorbo]

I think my main issue with MS's conference was that so much of what was presented was lacking in details and specifics. Too many trailers, too few demonstrations of both games and media functions. Why should I be interested in Xbox Music as opposed to one of the other music services out there? I have no idea. What is Forza Horizon? Only a vague idea. What are the improvements in Dance Central 3? I don't care. But if I did, I still wouldn't know. What are the restrictions/limitations of Internet Explorer on Xbox? Even the Nike+ fitness product presentation, as long as it was, was all style and little substance.

 

[joker454]

I think my main issue with MS's conference was that so much of what was presented was lacking in details and specifics. Too many trailers, too few demonstrations of both games and media functions. Why should I be interested in Xbox Music as opposed to one of the other music services out there? I have no idea. What is Forza Horizon? Only a vague idea. What are the improvements in Dance Central 3? I don't care. But if I did, I still wouldn't know. What are the restrictions/limitations of Internet Explorer on Xbox? Even the Nike+ fitness product presentation, as long as it was, was all style and little substance.

Xbox Music's draw is the 30 million songs, that's far more than the other main competitors, they mentioned that on the press release. Basically if you've ever not found a song you wanted on Spotify, etc then you'll be interested in trying Xbox Music. Forza Horizon looks to be more Need For Speed style from what I saw on their info. I didn't look at Dance Central 3. They were vague on the browser though, has anyone show the kinect enhanced browser in action? Maybe it's still too early and was only shown behind closed doors.

MS is either completely checked out on this gen, or completely checked out on core gaming itself.

It's not so much checked out, as they aren't needed anymore. The core are more than satisfied by the myriad of 3rd party games available as sales demonstrate, no need for Microsoft to tie up their own resources in that.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Xbox Music's draw is the 30 million songs, that's far more than the other main competitors, they mentioned that on the press release. Basically if you've ever not found a song you wanted on Spotify, etc then you'll be interested in trying Xbox Music.

Are there any details on where that catalogue is coming from, and how come they've got so many songs? One problem with the numbers game is not having to justify the numbers, but 30 million tracks could be 28 million indie tracks from unknown artists, sort of thing. Like Android's 300,000 apps or whatever claims, when most of them are crap and not worth bothering with. My immediate PR skepticism has me thinking there won't be an extensive back-catalogue where can find every song you've ever wanted, but instead they'll incorporate content from sites like (Googling now...) GrooveShark and CDBaby. Which even then wouldn't come close to 30 million tracks.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Their primary focus this year also seemed to be to stay within an hour (they've had a lot of complaints). That involves choices. Because if you make a list of Vita announcements of the last few weeks, that's a big list. I agree that you'd have expected to see more, but it is also easy to 'lose' against Microsoft for an audience that isn't interested in portables. They made a similar choice to Nintendo in that regard, but Nintendo was wise enough to stress they'd have a separate session on 3DS games. They did a good job there in marketing their own marketing . Will be interesting to see what Vita will actually have on the show floor, because the list of things I've seen compiled on Neogaf is a pretty decent list. It was a shame they couldn't at least show something like CoD on Vita, that would have made a difference to the overall impression.

Yeah. Supposedly there are like 25 playable Vita games on the floor. I am frustrated that they haven't shown any Call of Duty gameplay yet. Thought that was a sure bet for Sony's press conference. I'm curious to know who's actually making it, too. All we know for sure is it's not Treyarch.

But your point is well made. Sony's event was shorter than Microsoft's. They have been listening a lot to past criticisms. They've done 2 hour presentation for the previous 2 years, started late, talked about business matters too much, had too many montages, focused on 3D, etc. They corrected all that this year.

The only real improvement Microsoft made was to not use child actors this year in Kinect demos.

 

[Prophecy2k]

I was dissappointed in all the platform holders presentations this year (thank God for the 3rd party publishers).

However, I was particularly disappointed in MS' conference. Aside from H4 looking superb, another gears didn't interest me, and the rest of the stuff they showed was uninteresting and services most of which are irrelevant to people outside the US.

MS no longer instills me with any hope that they'll be able carry their next-gen console with first party developed and first party published content for core gamers. Their focus has been purely on entertainment and casual stuff like Kinect for the last few years with xbox360. Regardless of how good games like Halo, Gears and Forza might be, a first party cannot just keep recycling those franchises ad nauseum, and barely make any attempts at investing in future franchises.

Next-gen will be even worse than this gen for securing 3rd party exclusive content. So if Xbx720 launches with nothing but the same Halo/Gears/Forza, and then all the same 3rd party stuff but with some extra timed exclusive DLC, then it would not be anywhere near enough to persuade core gamers at launch, especially up against Sony's next console, regardless of any performance difference.

I know that they've formed up quite a stable of new first party dev teams more recently. But imho they should be getting those teams working on current-gen stuff to release at least a year before the 720 hits the market. You can't start investing in your first party dev stable so late in the gen, without any of them aside from 343 actually shipping a game, before giving them next-gen boxes to work on and expecting blockbuster AAA products worthy of 90+ critical ratings. If their new studios first games next-gen tank, then they'll literally have nothing in the way of providing exclusive developement support for their next console.

Worst of all, if Sony's next console is able to support all the social gaming features of current XBL (absolutely will happen), without charging any extra for them (possible although Sony would probably tie them into PS Plus), then without meaningful and proven exclusive franchises/in-house-developers, nor their on-line platform advantage they had this gen, they would really struggle to provide gamers with any reason to opt for Xbox720 over Sony's new box, even if their console is slightly more performant.

They've given themselves far too much to prove for next-gen now. You can't sell an expensive games console as a all-round multimedia box to core gamers without core gaming franchises to justify choosing your console over your competitors. This conference, together with the general direction they've been headed for the past 2 years, makes me think MS' won't be able to repeat the easy win they achieved ove Sony this gen. I just don't think they're properly prepared for next-gen at all development-wise. And that's the area where i think it will really really matter

 

[joker454]

I just don't think they're properly prepared for next-gen at all development-wise. And that's the area where i think it will really really matter

The best way to prepare for next gen (as learned this gen) is to prepare your 3rd party developers with an easy to dev for machine with mature tools and hands on support. Microsoft has proved time and again that they are far ahead of others in that regard. Don't worry about the 720 not having core games, Microsoft knows how to take care of it's developers to let them do what they do best, build the top selling games for console.

Are there any details on where that catalogue is coming from, and how come they've got so many songs? One problem with the numbers game is not having to justify the numbers, but 30 million tracks could be 28 million indie tracks from unknown artists, sort of thing. Like Android's 300,000 apps or whatever claims, when most of them are crap and not worth bothering with. My immediate PR skepticism has me thinking there won't be an extensive back-catalogue where can find every song you've ever wanted, but instead they'll incorporate content from sites like (Googling now...) GrooveShark and CDBaby. Which even then wouldn't come close to 30 million tracks.

No clue, it is weird that they would have more songs than Sony given that Sony owns a music label. I agree on the numbers game but I assume all the current providers are already playing the numbers game really. Need to wait for more details on this for now, it's possible Microsoft is just throwing more money around to get more content, after all they aren't saddled with having to fund all sorts of 1st party studios.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

No clue, it is weird that they would have more songs than Sony given that Sony owns a music label.

Trying to think of reasons why MS would get more content than proven platforms like iTunes or Spotify, and I'm drawing a blank. I also don't believe there are 30 million professional tracks out there to make up a library. Wiki suggests iTunes has 28 million songs, but also 28 million songs, movies and apps combined, so I'm not sure they have that many songs. There's a reference to 'more than 20 million songs' in the wiki article proper. iTunes has a lot of indie stuff I believe. So all-in-all, 30 million tracks to me means a lot of unnecessary, unwanted filler. Spotify has 15 million tracks, but lacks the Beatles library because that's exclusive to iTunes (so sayeth Wiki). I don't see how MS could secure a larger professional library than the established players who have a proven market.

 

[Scott_Arm]

The indie tracks is where you find all of the good music.

 

[Scott_Arm]

...
They've given themselves far too much to prove for next-gen now. You can't sell an expensive games console as a all-round multimedia box to core gamers without core gaming franchises to justify choosing your console over your competitors. This conference, together with the general direction they've been headed for the past 2 years, makes me think MS' won't be able to repeat the easy win they achieved ove Sony this gen. I just don't think they're properly prepared for next-gen at all development-wise. And that's the area where i think it will really really matter

Considering we don't know anything about next-gen, like who's working on it, or in what capacity, or for how long, I think your entire post is basically baseless prediction.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The indie tracks is where you find all of the good music.

Open indie tracks with everyone and their dog uploading music makes 30 million tracks of which 0.001% you'd actually care for. So the 30 million number (or any other) doesn't mean much to me. How many tracks are there that I'd care for? That'd be answered by describing what catalogues are included. Everything ever published on this label or that? Everything published by every label in the past 20 years and nothing earlier? Are their movie soundtracks or not? It's the details that really matter; not the total number of songs.

(Have you ever bought a clip-art collection, in the old days before the internet, of 100,000 images and fonts, only to find absolutely nothing of any relevance or interest or use? I have. )

 

[Laa-Yosh]

E3's significant importance is the behind the scenes stuff. Lots of business partners concentrated in one place, easy to arrange a LOT of meetings during the week.

 

[joker454]

Open indie tracks with everyone and their dog uploading music makes 30 million tracks of which 0.001% you'd actually care for.

Well, "care for" is all relative I like Spotify and it's what I use now, but they are missing many songs including mainstream stuff. I like 80s tunes and last I checked some songs by Gowan, Eight Seconds, etc were no where to be found. I don't even think Metallica or Pink Floyd are on Spotify, so it's not just indie stuff they are missing. I'm hoping Xbox Music fills in the holes, if it does then I'll switch to it.

 

[Ryan Smith]

SmartGlass is essentially an updated version of the Xbox Companion app which already exists on the iTunes and Google Play stores, however the game integration is currently only available as part of the Waypoint app ("Atlus" which is integrated with Read) and is on Windows Phone only. SmartGlass requires a dashboard update to be released this fall and opens up the api's to 3rd party developers.

API being the key word here. There's no evidence they're doing WiiU style streaming, which means everything is being drawn by the client. The implication being that developers need to develop for an entirely different system to make use of any of this functionality. Given the wide range of device capabilities (particularly on the low-end with WinRT), from a development standpoint this could get ugly fast.

 

[egoless]

Delete

 

[RobertR1]

I'm quite happy to see MS keep on pushing for the all in one entertainment box. It's something I predicted in the "predict next gen" thread quite a while back.

Looking at my usage and my free time, I'm more often than not using apps and non gaming services on the 360.

Going into next gen, if I can use the Xbox 3 as my media play (BR/DVD mainly), one stop streaming device, gaming and whatever else they come up, I won't even look at another console or device. These days I barely have enough time to play games that are exclusive to one platform, nevermind worrying about what consoles are offering.

Keep going in the direction you're going MS. It's a good one. Just don't forget the key driver. It's all about the user experience.

 

[RobertR1]

Watched the Conf on Live. Man, I really want to punch Usher in the face.

Smart glass, done right could be real good. I'd very much like to control the Xbox OS via touch and voice vs a controller. I have my iPad and iPhone somewhere close to me most of the time anyway so it'd be nice to use those vs a controller.

I couldn't figure it out but I assume you can use the smart glass app to simulate a keyboard into the IE app? If the only input for iE is voice commands, then it a useless app.

I hope the Nike game is actually good. I really want a killer workout game that can push you to your limits. Something that can go from mild to P90x type workouts depending on how well you do on the fitness tests.

As much as I love Fable, I can't get excited about Journey. Interaction is what gives the Fable games their charm and that seems to be completely missing.

Halo 4 is easily at the top of my must play list after this. 343 might be exactly what the franchises needed.

 

[Billy Idol]

I hoped to see a sign of the Xbox exclusive from Crytek (can't remember the name)...is there any news released or media available at E3?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I hoped to see a sign of the Xbox exclusive from Crytek (can't remember the name)...is there any news released or media available at E3?

Nothing shown. It's made Eurogamer's 'vapourware' list.