News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[Kaotik]

Did AMD just "spill the beans" on XB1 having more ACEs than their desktop GPUs?

Mah also confirmed that the two GPU versions are compatible with the requirements of Direct3D 11.2 in the living room next Playstation 4 and Xbox One. Compared with the current series desktop GPUs Radeon HD 7000 and HD 8000 (OEM), console versions would offer much more Asynchronous Compute Engines (ACEs) to perform simultaneous graphics and compute calculations more efficiently.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meld...ndig-zu-Direct3D-11-2-kompatibel-1938071.html

Someone who can speak German could probably give better translation than Google, though

 

[Jwm]

True. FIFA announcement and no support in much of Europe would be something of a slap in the face to those nations, I'm guessing (don't truly know the value of FIFA to the 2nd tier nations, nor the rest). That said, in terms of marketing the box to the most important nations which are those covered, FIFA could be an important 'acquisition'. A friend has signed up to Fantasy Football League for the Premiership - it might be a feature MS could capitalise on.

They can import if they truly wish, many of the core I assume would do so anyway, right?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Or I wonder if it similar enough to a British or Australian accent that the can get away with using one of those?

South African is very different in both accent and dialect.

Xbox One has a lot more memory, so in theory it should allow for more than just regional dialects to be stored and used.

I'm thinking the HDD as standard is the real winner here. Every language pack can be stored on that and loaded as needed, or downloaded off the internet as requested.

Hence, while it sounds like a no brainer to just release in a country where many people have English as a second language, that is problematic as it may not be able to fully recognize their particular dialect/accent.

I agree. It's a shame that MS can't use a cloud-based solution. Make the box available to users as a 'beta' and have them use it and train it, connecting to a server-based compute system to bring it all together until there's a decent enough solution that can be released (I assume this can't be done as MS aren't doing it ).

Then MS could release in Mexico, say, to informed consumers, who use it and work out the issues, doing the leg-work for MS. 10,000+ users could generate a lot more reference material than MS's engineers, I'm sure, and MS could pay them with cheap bonuses on Live! as a reward, as well as those users being lucky early XB1 owners.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They can import if they truly wish, many of the core I assume would do so anyway, right?

They can, but with caveats (buying stuff online won't be straight forward). That's not what MS wants when targeting the mainstream with a key sports franchise.

 

[Cjail]

Schools in England all teach English the same way, yet people sound (radically) different from different parts of the country. The spoken language is learnt by sound from one's peers, and is not naturally learnt independently from that (you can learn accents and pronounciation, but you don't get that from your high-school teachers). Even when the BBC forced 'Queen's English' pronunciation, it had zero effect on regional accents and dialects, and now media has relaxed and is tolerant of regional accents.

MS though has decided to release XBO in the UK but not in Norway when in reality UK is more populated and there are actually more dialects/accents/inflections to worry about.

Honestly wow come that MS is releasing XBO in countries where dialects abound and not in less populated countries where the number of "pronunciation variables", pass me the expression, is inferior?!

I am not convinced at all that voice recognition is the real reason for the delay.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Several reasons IMO. One, English is the main language of the host country and MS already have to deal with a lot of accents. The amount of effort to extend the core English pack that has to accommodate a dozen different variations to yet more flavours of English probably isn't too great. It is probably less than creating a whole new language. In addition to that, the Norway language pack would be shared between the other Scandinavian countries who share the same root, so it effectively comes with a minimum of four dialect variations and not the one you attribute to it. Then there's the issue of the UK being a large gaming market and very strong for MS, and where the gamers could be quite happy to jump platform going by previous console sales distributions (no 'intrinsic' platform loyalty unlike say Sony in Japan and MS in USA). Releasing in the US and Norway but not England would see a lot more lost revenue than US+England and not Norway.

It's a case of picking one's battles. MS have finite resources. Investing them on perfecting English and a few core languages is seen as a priority, and these can be refined for other countries over time. It's a shame that MS aren't suitably prepared up front, and it'll be interesting to learn why that is (how long have they been working on the speech recognition? Did they give themselves enough time and resources, and if not, why not?). Ms have come under criticism for their international support before, so it's a little surprising they aren't on top of this.

 

[eastmen]

MS though has decided to release XBO in the UK but not in Norway when in reality UK is more populated and there are actually more dialects/accents/inflections to worry about.

Honestly wow come that MS is releasing XBO in countries where dialects abound and not in less populated countries where the number of "pronunciation variables", pass me the expression, is inferior?!

I am not convinced at all that voice recognition is the real reason for the delay.

I'd assume the places the xbox 360 and original Kinect were popular they should have been able to collect more feedback and improve Voice on Kinect. I know the Kinect has gotten vastly better from launch day to present day in NA at understanding me.

UK and USA are MS's two big markets. Did the 360 sell well in Norway ? Did Kinect also sell well ?

 

[dobwal]

But MS has decided to release in the UK but not in Norway when in reality UK is more populated and there are actually more dialects/accents/inflections to worry about.

How come that MS is releasing XBO in countries where dialects abound and not in less populated countries where the number of "pronunciation variables", pass me the expression, is inferior?!

I am not convinced at all that voice nonrecognition is the real reason for the delay.

First, Norway has a population 5 million living in 150,000 square miles. The UK has 12 times the population living in 2/3rds the area of Norway. There are 4 major dialects of the norwegian language. Even if you could break the english into 48 distinct dialects, I doubt there would exists as great of variation between each and every english dialect that exists of the norwegian language. I'd bet if you could only accommodate 4 of the most widely used english dialects in the UK, you would cover way more than 5 million people.

The reality is that most countries in the world aren't uniformed across the population when it comes to a standard language. Dialects are more a product of geographical isolation than population size. I doubt you can readily separate the english used in the USA into 250 distinct major dialects.

 

[Cranky]

Yup sure. I guess however they don't take accents into account here in America Not enough accented speakers to merit worrying about.

Actually according to BKillian there are 9, YES 9, US voice sets.

sigh, should have read the thread

 

[JPT]

dobwal, who cares about UK, its Norway that counts

Question that pops into my head, is how "sensitive" is the Kinect (or any voice recognition) system to dialects?

 

[Cyan]

Huge news for us Europeans, if true....

Microsoft are going to reveal a major game which will come bundled for free with every Xbox One console at no additional cost.

Rumours say this special bundle will include a free copy of FIFA 14!

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-08-19-xbox-one-to-launch-with-fifa-14-in-europe-rumour

 

[AzBat]

Size comparisons with 360 Fat & 360 Slim. Little bigger than I expected, but not too bad. Wished they would have left the hard drive on the Fat though.

http://youtu.be/TPIhoe0h2Sw?t=1m30s

Tommy McClain

 

[eastmen]

I don't mind the size. I have the slim and it puts out a lot of friggen heat. I went and bought an add on fan. So i'd take bigger but cooler any day of the week. Of course I don't travel at all with my console (or rarely take it to florida when I drive down)

 

[RudeCurve]

They obviously made it a standard A/V component size then fit everything into it. They weren't trying to make the case as small as possible.

 

[bkilian]

And there are a LOT of supported English Dialects. Just the UK alone is going to have multiples. And it wouldn't surprise me if Australia has multiple dialects. Perhaps S. Africa is small enough that everyone has a single English dialect, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were 2 even for that smallish country. Or I wonder if it similar enough to a British or Australian accent that the can get away with using one of those?

South Africa has a bunch of english dialects and accents. For example, my accent is from a single town. I can normally, with reasonable accuracy, tell where a person grew up, where they went to college, and what their home language is just by their accent. And that's not counting dialects.

Xbox One has a lot more memory, so in theory it should allow for more than just regional dialects to be stored and used. Perhaps enough that Bkilian will no longer have to speak with an American accent in order to use Kinect v.2 on Xbox One.

Well, at a guess, I'm expecting most of the voice features on the One to be cloud based, so memory is not an issue. I get excellent results with MS TellMe, and the Bing search on the 360, without having to use an american accent.

 

[Jwm]

Size is fine, my slim just looks out of place right now. Maybe if my RX was smaller the slim would fit in. Lol

 

[eastmen]

wonder what the sticker is covering

 

[Deleted member 11852]

They obviously made it a standard A/V component size then fit everything into it. They weren't trying to make the case as small as possible.

Out of curiosity, what standard AV equipment size is it supposed to match with? I have a 19" (width) rack and the Xbox One is approx. 13". AV equipment is generally wider with a lower height profile to be more easier stacked.

 

[djskribbles]

A/V equipment varies in size... there is no standard.

 

[RudeCurve]

Hmm...from the pictures it looked like standard A/V component width so I guess in reality it's even smaller than I thought.