News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

Yep, Uncharted 3 chops the game up into different languages. I ended up downloading all of them anyway for no apparent reason.

 

Most current-gen games max out the 360 DVD drive space at 6-7GB. PS3 multi-platform games end up being 7-8GB. PS3 exclusive games vary, often upto 40GB (though a lot of that may end up being high quality video).

I think in the last 6 months, PSN really upgraded its servers and now I get great speeds.

 

I just got upgraded from 25 Mbps to 50 Mbps for free. Right now I'm pretty impressed with the speed, but then I'm not waiting for a 25-50 GB title to download.

That isn't even the top tier. The top tier speed is 150 Mbps. Depending on the size of the next-gen games and preloading of digital purchases (or lack of it), it'll be mighty tempting to upgrade to 150Mbps for an extra $35 a month.

Has there been any solid details revealed about preloading of the digital titles, sort of similar to how Steam handles it?

 

Yeah, but both next gen consoles will have solid background downloading tech, and low powered mode downloading states. The only people who are really hurting will be those on dial up still, and those with very low bandwidth caps.

All console manufacturers might want to talk to telecoms to try to work out a deal for a bit more stretch room in bandwidth caps when it comes from their servers.

 

Games really should be stored on CDNs directly connected to ISP backbones for a region to avoid massive amounts of traffic on the public Internet. It's not hard to imagine digital downloads of games eventually going toe to toe Netflix when a 25GB game is the equivalent of 8 hours of Netflix (2.8GB per hour HD, 4.7GB per hour 3D).

 

Well the article is about MS helping Indies. If they don't call them Indies because they buy them, that's not really helping Indies, is it? It's turning Indies into 1st Parties.

 

MS are very good at being oblique about what they actually mean. If the studio is owned by MS it's first party. They just used to be Indies.

It's like MS's Xbone exclusives that are also coming out on the PC. They're not really exclusives, just cut down versions of what the PC will be getting.

 

It's not limited to XB1 exclusives or other XBox exclusives, it's the same for every single console exclusive out there - they only count the other consoles, it can still come to PC and be PS4 exclusive or PS3 exclusive or even Wii U exclusive for that matter.

 

Different markets.

Though most of those games wouldn't even exist on PC if it weren't for console versions funding their development.

 

I am going to stay with Blu-ray discs because my connection is only 6MB and it is kind of slow to download next generation titles, if the size of games is what I expect it to be.

Ubisoft CEO says that the hardware of the Xbox One is exceptional and because of that the price of the console is right.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-06-27-xbox-one-policy-changes-get-thumbs-up-from-Ubisoft

 

Funny, was just reading another post which I suppose could be called a rumor where the poster claims that the truth is staring us in the face!

 

Yes, "rumor" seems to be the generous interpretation of that post. If you want to combine the dreams of X1 packing more raw GPU horsepower than PS4 with that Ubisoft statement, don't, as Ubi's CEO was specifically talking about the inclusion of Kinect as justifying X1's price:

 

After reading that article there is a million question marks in my head, I don't know what to say. It sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory to me. I accepted long time ago that the PS4 is more powerful than the Xbox One. I am also conscious of the fact that the Xbox One probably has some advantages that might translate into some scenarios/games where the console can actually perform better. I'd rather not think too much about it.

On a different note, there is a huge reorganisation in Microsoft which has been planned for a long time. What will happen, I don't know.

http://www.geekwire.com/2013/microsoft-reorg-set-tone-rest-ballmers-te​​nure/

I wouldn't mind if Don Mattrick was promoted to a different position -a CEO of something but nothing to do with the Xbox- and Phil Spencer or similar became Xbox Division's CEO.

After the DRM debacle and the bad marketing practices regarding the console, I think Mattrick is to blame to some extent.

 

anandtech discusses xbox one on their podcast . i really liked the idea of licensing the xbox os like windows which can open up the gaming market more like pc. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7114/the-anandtech-podcast-episode-21

 

Why believe anything some random major-league XB fanboy posts? A little research reveals him posting about gamers being brainwashed by Sony, Sony flooding internet comments threads, XB1 having dual GPUs, etc. His insiders are most likely the voices in his head.

 

Less overall business discussion and more Xbox One rumors please.

 

Heck yes. That was confusing me.

I don't feel like writing today -it is going to be a very busy summer for me- so I will be brief, and summarize, in order to share news.

An specialized retailer suggests that the interest in the brand new next gen consoles is pretty balanced.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/xbox-one-and-ps4-interest-balanced-​suggests-retailer

Steve Ballmer opened the newest Microsoft store and gave a free Xbox One coupon to a fan.

http://www.neowin.net/news/steve-ballmer-opens-newest-microsoft-store-​gives-free-xbox-one-coupon-to-fan

 

Btw Shifty, if silly fantasy stories could enhance my life, I'd believe them. They seem to be a redundancy as of late, for whatever reason.

On a different note, this article says that it's highly unlikely the PS4 and Xbox One are going to sell much better than the WiiU.

http://aussie-gamer.com/article/playstation-4-xbox-one-unlikely-to-sell-better-than-wii-u/

 

"xbox-ones-memory-performance-has-been-hugely-underestimated-claim-developers"

ModEdit: bandwidth discovery is already being discussed in the HW investigation thread.

This one might be fun too:

http://www.oxm.co.uk/57309/xbox-one...h-specs-are-meaningless-games-more-important/

What does "Our guys'll say, we touched every single component in the box and everything there is tweaked for optimum performance." mean?

I wonder if that includes the CPU and GPU. They certainly did with the CPU and GPU in the 360.

 

The first article is like saying -for instance, let's say we are talking about the cloud- "That cloud resembles a ship", and leave it at that. It sounds to me like hearsay more than something actually new.

The second news is a bit more interesting, and he is right that specs aren't as useful as they were in the past. The new silicon is much more efficient and technology evolved so much that more power seems like running a hotter machine than something very useful.

Imo, PS4 and Xbox One specs are fine for 1080p, why should they need anything else than running at those resolutions efficiently?

I agree with you that they made the right choice with the X360. Save the RROD debacle, they created a future proof machine and they needed something like that back then.

The Xbox 360 was a nice heater for my bedroom though, especially in the early years. And I mean it.