News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[Rangers]

Just checked the amazon.co.uk "best sellers charts" (as referred to in that article):

As of now, Xbox One sits @5th place in "PC & Video Games" (PS4 is 4th).

In Germany (amazon.de), XBox One is 20th in the "Games" category (PS4 is 4th).

In France (amazon.fr), Xbox One is 167th in the "Jeux Vidéo" category (PS4 is 63th).

So, yeah. Make of that what you want. But "breaking pre-order records" seems to push the truth a little (at least in the EU).

Xbox always loses on Amazon even in the US from what I recall.

So it wont reflect true preorders.

You can be sure the broader retail chains breaking records report is true over the much smaller Amazon. Amazon rankings is fun I do it all the time but it's a small not representative sample, probably even influenced by the anti-Xbox fanboy wave on the internet.

I guess I'm trying to say Xbox is at a natural disadvantage in Amazon charts based on NPD vs Amazon USA rankings. So if it does well there it must be doing incredibly well indeed.

 

[Rangers]

It's not just limited to gaming forums or amazon's own customer forums but mainstream media here. Yet another bad article on spiegel.de (top MSM site in germany) about the latest XBox One developments. It's full of negative readers comments and these are the middle class 25-50 year olds casuals with/without family.



You can't blame what happens on "accidental bad PR" anymore. It's an agenda at work. Either a strategical one or a few personal careers. Neither will mean they'll change their modus operandi until the bitter end.

Most pf their decisions will likely end up being done very similar by Sony, except without the massive backlash, if history is any indication.

I remember when Sony pioneered online passes for 1st party games (which MS never instituted), pretty much nobody complained at all for example.

And right now Sleeping Dogs is $15 on XBL, $49 on PSN, Tomb Raider 29 vs 59, etc. Nobody cares.

 

[Phil]

But he probably cant touch any clock talk at all. Because saying there was no downclock from 800 mhz would in effect confirm 800 mhz, which apparently MS (and Sony, and Nintendo) dont want to reveal any clocks.

That, I think is a very good point. If no clocks have been officially revealed, how can there be any downclocks? Of course, we are assuming downclocks to mean anything under 800Mhz since that is what was in the leak, but without knowing exact targets, downclocks could mean anything. So, this would give any Microsoft exec some breathing space on what to deny and what to confirm.

 

[Rangers]

That, I think is a very good point. If no clocks have been officially revealed, how can there be any downclocks? Of course, we are assuming downclocks to mean anything under 800Mhz since that is what was in the leak, but without knowing exact targets, downclocks could mean anything. So, this would give any Microsoft exec some breathing space on what to deny and what to confirm.

Right, it's also why he cant deny any downclock rumor, no matter how untrue.

 

[Silenti]

MS pulled the old PR stunt of dumping bad news out just before the weekend, traditionally this is done on Friday's, and they have their E3 PC just a couple of days away. They are hoping that no mainstream media pick up on it and that the E3 shows will give people too much other material to go back to "old" news.

I've checked around and it is not making the mainstream sites of ABC, NBC, CNN etc.

 

[Rangers]

MS pulled the old PR stunt of dumping bad news out just before the weekend, traditionally this is done on Friday's, and they have their E3 PC just a couple of days away. They are hoping that no mainstream media pick up on it and that the E3 shows will give people too much other material to go back to "old" news.

I've checked around and it is not making the mainstream sites of ABC, NBC, CNN etc.

It's the same stuff that's been going around for weeks anyway. Just yet another round of manufactured "rage". Seems a bit duller this time than last time we raged over this exact same stuff that we already knew, and the time before that.

 

[expletive]

MS pulled the old PR stunt of dumping bad news out just before the weekend, traditionally this is done on Friday's, and they have their E3 PC just a couple of days away. They are hoping that no mainstream media pick up on it and that the E3 shows will give people too much other material to go back to "old" news.

I've checked around and it is not making the mainstream sites of ABC, NBC, CNN etc.

I think its more a matter of "get the bad news out of the way now" rather than risk it spoiling their core gamer explosion next week.

 

[dumbo11]

Microsoft's mistake was not showing if games to distract people from the ugly side of all this. And I would find it extremely hard to believe if Sony doesn't have a similar system. Keep in mind that they instituted online passes in their first-party games so they are keenly aware of the situation.

They could, but honestly I'm not sure that I can see any reason to do it (the same applies to MS):
- EA, I believe, were quoted as saying that it wasn't necessary (they just turn off the servers! ).
- if activision want such a system, then they can implement it, and consumers can agree/disagree/whatever. (given their previous stances, I assume COD: dog is going to be some pseudo-MMO monthly payment thingy).
- if Sony studios desperately wanted such thing, then Sony would have already built it.
- smaller devs are probably more interested in 'everything else', it's unclear that this system would help them anyway.
- second hand retailers certainly don't want it, which covers most retailers...
- with digital sales continuously increasing, this is a stupid battle to fight.

There 2 potential upsides that I can think of:
- it may be that companies will sell games cheaper if second hand sales are disallowed.
- MS/Sony get a cut from second-hand sales.

The obvious downside is that anyone implementing this is going to be hit by negative publicity (and potentially anti-competition/cartel investigations along with class-action lawsuits).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The funny thing is I distinctly remember the context of those days. It was a bunch of FUD that PS3 was a monster that was going to blow away 360 swirling around the internet, etc etc.

Memory gets hazy over time. I don't recall any pro-PS3 FUD. The PS3's reputation was built around Cell's AWESOM POWRZ, but everything released about Cell was, I vaguely recall, accurate. The main issue was the association with the Cell processor and a teraflop CPU, which was an IBM patent with 32 SPEs clocked at 4 GHz. A Google throws up ine single, uncorroborated reference to a Sony spokesperson claiming 1000x more power than PS1, in 2002. I don't think "we intend to build" years earlier constitutes a claim of a 1TF for the final system. Technically, the idea of the 1TF Cell was accurate, but not feasible or representative of the silicon that ended up in PS3. Sony had not engaged in false numbers for PS3 up until E3. MS fired the opening shot regarding manipulating the facts with their 1 TFlop, which Sony retaliated with a suitably made up 2 TFs, and then we had the worst over FUD campaign with imaginary numbers and pointless, selective stats, for which Major Nelson was a front-man.

Major Nelson stepped up to basically say "hey, our system isn't gonna get steamrolled in power, and it's no slouch itself" when he made that post. It was at a pretty crucial time when it seemed like 360 was much less powerful than PS3.

Right. His job was to fight an information war. In content, he picked a load of selective numbers to fight a PR campaign, irrespective of the meaningfulness of those numbers, and then made outright false claims by association. (x times more powerful than PS3 in such-and-such because this single metric is x times larger than that somewhat different single metric in PS3).

And he was absolutely right, is the irony of being lambasted for it now is missing the forest for the trees. He missed a detail but his main, more important thrust was correct.

Nothing he said was right. The truth was XB360 had an all-round more effective design in terms of what devs could achieve in the real world, which had sod all to do with any of the metrics he bandied about as evidence. The 256 GB/s BW to the ROPs did not make XB360 6x faster than PS3 that only had 40 GB/s. The real argument would have been, "we've got this awesome unified shader architecture and a better balanced GPU and unified RAM and a more more capable, streamlined OS that doesn't guzzle RAM and a CPU that won't cause devs frequent migraines as they try to get Cell to prop up RSX's limitations" or somesuch. But you cannot engage the public with those discussions, so instead bollocksy numbers are used, not with any basis in reality beyond being factual correct numbers, but as a tool to fight for mindshare.

My point here being PR is evil and manipulative and cannot be relied upon. It's about spin. It's about controlling the information and misinformation. Every company engages in it as needed. Last gen was the ugliest I recall and a horrific reminder to why PR should never, ever be turned to as a point of reference for understanding a product, unless you are dressed in your fire-proof suit and ready to dig through it with an open mind and investigate what the heck any of it means, if anything. At best, PR provides pieces of puzzles with no explanation what the final picture is, and those reading the PR have to be willing to try and fit the pieces together as best they can. That the PR info can be factually correct is no indicator that it's any use.

As a source, Major Nelson's blog is a PR mouthpiece, designed to control mindshare. Every comment from there must be scrutinised for spin because as a PR front, that's basically it's job. The same goes for any PR front, like PlayStation Blog, although I cannot think of any as more direct and vocal as Major Nelson. His tweets will squirm and twist around any unwanted information information, so to actually get a direct confirmation/denial, we ahve ot be sure the questions have zero room for ambiguity whereby the executive can later come up with an implausible but possible explanation as to why they answered what they did.

Yes, I don't like PR.

 

[Rangers]

Memory gets hazy over time. I don't recall any pro-PS3 FUD. The PS3's reputation was built around Cell's AWESOM POWRZ, but everything released about Cell was, I vaguely recall, accurate. The main issue was the association with the Cell processor and a teraflop CPU, which was an IBM patent with 32 SPEs clocked at 4 GHz. A Google throws up ine single, uncorroborated reference to a Sony spokesperson claiming 1000x more power than PS1, in 2002. I don't think "we intend to build" years earlier constitutes a claim of a 1TF for the final system. Technically, the idea of the 1TF Cell was accurate, but not feasible or representative of the silicon that ended up in PS3. Sony had not engaged in false numbers for PS3 up until E3. MS fired the opening shot regarding manipulating the facts with their 1 TFlop, which Sony retaliated with a suitably made up 2 TFs, and then we had the worst over FUD campaign with imaginary numbers and pointless, selective stats, for which Major Nelson was a front-man.

Actually I'm speaking of the overall tone that was present in 2005/2006 in my view. So hard facts wont really be dealt with here

There was a time when we didn't know how powerful PS3 was. We had just the barest rumors and innuendo, because it wasn't out yet. There was a lot of fear 360 was going to get blown away, swept under the rug, dreamcasted.

I guess I'm looking big pictuire, Other have brought up "Sony said Ps3 was 2 tf's!" like it was some huge crime, but I dont even remember it being a big deal back then. I had forgotten it.

It may be a specific to pick on that was innaccurate, but I dont recall it being important.

Right. His job was to fight an information war. In content, he picked a load of selective numbers to fight a PR campaign, irrespective of the meaningfulness of those numbers, and then made outright false claims by association. (x times more powerful than PS3 in such-and-such because this single metric is x times larger than that somewhat different single metric in PS3).

As I recall this was right at a crucial time (although I dont remember the exact timing) where us on B3D and elsewhere where kinda, just like I outlined above, waiting for the potential PS3 Hurricane. Nelson came out with that and imo it was born out by 360 being relatively on par with PS3 for the last 8 years.

Shame (and sad commentary on MS priorities) he may not be in a position to do the same with Xbox One this time around.

My point here being PR is evil and manipulative and cannot be relied upon. It's about spin. It's about controlling the information and misinformation. Every company engages in it as needed. Last gen was the ugliest I recall and a horrific reminder to why PR should never, ever be turned to as a point of reference for understanding a product, unless you are dressed in your fire-proof suit and ready to dig through it with an open mind and investigate what the heck any of it means, if anything. At best, PR provides pieces of puzzles with no explanation what the final picture is, and those reading the PR have to be willing to try and fit the pieces together as best they can. That the PR info can be factually correct is no indicator that it's any use.

As a source, Major Nelson's blog is a PR mouthpiece, designed to control mindshare. Every comment from there must be scrutinised for spin because as a PR front, that's basically it's job. The same goes for any PR front, like PlayStation Blog, although I cannot think of any as more direct and vocal as Major Nelson. His tweets will squirm and twist around any unwanted information information, so to actually get a direct confirmation/denial, we ahve ot be sure the questions have zero room for ambiguity whereby the executive can later come up with an implausible but possible explanation as to why they answered what they did.

Yes, I don't like PR.

Major Nelson doesn't seem evil to me, in fact he seems like a nice guy. He mainly tweets about "gonna play XXX game tonight" and benign stuff like that. Or what you would call housekeeping, "here's what's new on XBL this week", "here are the most played charts this week", whatever.

Of course he has constraints, like any employee, we should know that going in. And he also likely doesn't know his tech, but I'll take his tech knowledge over Reggie "check that 1080P box" any day

 

[JB9861]

Just checked the amazon.co.uk "best sellers charts" (as referred to in that article):

As of now, Xbox One sits @5th place in "PC & Video Games" (PS4 is 4th).

In Germany (amazon.de), XBox One is 20th in the "Games" category (PS4 is 4th).

In France (amazon.fr), Xbox One is 167th in the "Jeux Vidéo" category (PS4 is 63th).

So, yeah. Make of that what you want. But "breaking pre-order records" seems to push the truth a little (at least in the EU).

Blockbuster and Amazon don't ship a lot of units. According to Amazon, the a kindle fire is the best electronic of all time yet it ships about the same as a surface rt. So what

 

[function]

So you can't even give games to your friends without explicit publisher permission, and the game can only be given once.

They said it was about piracy. Then they said it was about Gamestop, because billions of their money were being stolen by customers and shops acting like they should be able to buy and sell stuff if they owned it. Now it turns out that the awful fuckers are inserting the publisher into the process of giving a game to a chum. Using technological means to attack conventional ownership, just because they can and because they can get away with it.

I said this kind of anti consumer "rights-theft" was the plan, and like a bearded old piss-stain-trouser man complaining about aliens bumming him with the robot, (almost) no-one listened. Reasonable arguments were drowned out by corporate "HAHAH UR INTERNET ISN'T VACUUM ELECTRIX 20nd CENTURY" cocksuckers.

 

[Inquisitive_Idiot]

It's really a shame that they are pursuing this anti-consumer agenda, but on the other hand it's nice to see such a unanimous response by the gaming community, and hopefully this outrage translates into more people voting with their wallets. I think that's the best way to proceed at this point, because I don't think these policies represent a fair balance between consumer and corporate interests. I also think this struggle shouldn't be limited to Xbox, as I think the same complaints you can make about Microsoft's anti-consumer policies apply to services like Steam. In the end, people are trading their right of ownership for the convenience of instant access and a slight discount, while the service providers attempt to make a distinction between physical and digital.

 

[Cyan]

MSFT has a bad day in the gaming media if I go by Eurogamer and Kotaku, titles like "MSFT kills game ownership and expect us to smile" or "Xbobx One just had a very bad day" backed with a picture of a Xbobe in flames... MSFT is managing to pull a PR disaster, it is out of control...
FUD is spreading, they are not clear and have let people in the dark since the reveal event on pretty critical choices they made, they did nothing before that when negativity was growing, etc.

Imho it is amazing to get it that wrong. At this point whoever that doesn't follow the gaming news that asks a friend about the next Xbox is likely to receive a pretty underwhelming answer about the state of the whole affair. Disastrous PR... They already have an uphill battle to overcome the negativity that build... before launch... No matter the merits of the design, their online policies and how they are legitimate or not at this point in History, or people being... well people over-reacting,etc. The way they managed it has been so far dreadful, to the point that Sony PR are mostly silent and I guess laughing their asses off while eating pop corns...

Things are starting to look grim here in Europe.

Pretty decent, nice people, men and women, (some of whom I admire), who helped to create a thriving, very interesting Xbox community are jumping off the bandwagon in droves if the forums are to be believed.

It's an uphill battle for Microsoft. I myself hate being limited.

Although I am still buying the console, I don't blame people.

 

[Cyan]

I never liked the Moderators over at GAF, they are far too one sided. A few of them should not even be mods and it shows.

I don't see a problem with DRM, it's the future of the entire gaming industry. It's on Steam, it's going to be on anything that is downloadable so that means PSN, Xbox Live Arcade, iTunes, and even on Nintendo's own network with their downloadable games as well as the old Nintendo classics.

Game prices need to go down and this can help that happen.

It doesn't matter if you have a disk or not. There are no rentals or used games for PC games anymore. This isn't the days of MSDOS.

If Sony doesn't do it with the PS4 at launch, they will need to follow eventually. Maybe with their Gaikai service.

People are not being realistic, they can set up Facebook campaigns and get organize and try to pass around the info on Twitter as well, but it's all for nothing.

Developers are losing money and closing and in a business like this that is so different than anything else out there it's really needed.

I have mixed feelings and conflicting voices on this.

Microsoft have been brave in that they are going to protect developers, so they are getting full support from them.

Poor developers might get a lot of money from the second hand market and have a lot more chances of survival this way.

This is the good news, now the bad....

I want the physical stores to survive too.



I hate anything virtual. So I am going to declare war to the digital market.

Sure, I have some digital games -Games on Demand-, and XBLA games, GoG games, etc.

But I don't want games to destroy my sense of ownership anymore. So I am going to have MY game within its case (MY case).

I need those cases. I don't want MY games which I paid with MY money being handled in a virtual world by a big corporation.

So yeah, Game, Gamestop and such have my full support. :smile:

I hope Microsoft had the decency to create some kind of partnership with those retailers and renting services so they can survive and keep their employees.

 

[Mianca]

I hope Microsoft had the decency to create some kind of partnership with those retailers and renting services so they can survive and keep their employees.

It's just the way things evolve, though. Look at what MP3 downloads have done to independent record stores.

It's sad, I concur. But the future is digital distribution - with "hard copies" making up but a fringe of the overall market share.

That's not to say that some people (me included) will keep buying CDs, blurays, and boxed games as long as they can get hold of them

 

[SMOKE]

I have mixed feelings and conflicting voices on this.

Microsoft have been brave in that they are going to protect developers, so they are getting full support from them.

Poor developers might get a lot of money from the second hand market and have a lot more chances of survival this way.

This is the good news, now the bad....

I want the physical stores to survive too.



I hate anything virtual. So I am going to declare war to the digital market.

Sure, I have some digital games -Games on Demand-, and XBLA games, GoG games, etc.

But I don't want games to destroy my sense of ownership anymore. So I am going to have MY game within its case (MY case).

I need those cases. I don't want MY games which I paid with MY money being handled in a virtual world by a big corporation.

So yeah, Game, Gamestop and such have my full support. :smile:

I hope Microsoft had the decency to create some kind of partnership with those retailers and renting services so they can survive and keep their employees.

I agree with this, I would have jack shit to do besides handheld gaming while out shopping with the fam. I like to window shop too especially in game stores to pass the time til wifey figures out what 1 of 3 dresses shes gonna buy after an hour of waiting and crap.

I would of liked it more better for them to introduce this when the world was fully ready for something like this instead of force it upon us given most people and places are unstable still but are still big supporters of their products. But that time will come eventually, I wasnt hoping for it to happen like this.

 

[Cyan]

To be honest, the only two pieces of information I knew related to this was "Always connected", and "Games install from disc". All my posts related to this really were just my opinions and thoughts on how the system could work.

I've just thought of an awesome new web-based business model: Become an "authorized retailer", and then allow users to sell their discs directly to other users. Essentially become the private market. Take a small percentage to facilitate, and take care of the licensing issues for individuals. You could even incorporate the "for fee" developers by disclosing the fee to the selling user, and reduce their payment by that amount.

In hindsight, from what I can recall I can kind of see why you say this. I don't remember you added some extra bells and whistles to those comments (for obvious reasons) although at the same time I learnt a lot from them, from the little I could grasp.

Yet, I hoped that the things I found to be more negative, those potentially regrettable facts that could connect to future events, didn't have branches leading to a present date, but they did. The good and not so good things all became a reality yesterday.

Yet, I hoped these regrettable events connected with a future
I have a feeling that, during the next generation, I am going to feel somewhat *isolated* like in the days I bought my first console, the Xbox, when almost anyone had it -and I didn't buy it a launch-.

This comes from an exemplary customer -I never pirated a console nor the thought crossed my mind, I buy games on a regular basis, etc-.

It's a pity, I have always been a honest, noble, exemplary consumer when it comes to videogames, paying for everything, my honour keeping my morals in check, etc etc and now I am heavily burdened and weighed down due to piracy. Kinda ironic.

As for your business idea, I should have to read the Microsoft's statement again and think carefully about it, sounds like scraping a living by selling and buying, but on second thoughts... basing my theory on your words I think that Game, Gamestop and other small retailers would happily borrow that idea before I do.

 

[function]

Microsoft have been brave in that they are going to protect developers, so they are getting full support from them.

Poor developers might get a lot of money from the second hand market and have a lot more chances of survival this way.

I don't think MS care about game developers, I think they care about publisher relationships. Publisher don't care about developers either. Developers only get the money that the publisher promises to pay them - and often not even that.

 

[XpiderMX]

I hope prices to be lower, I will buying the license, not the game itself.