News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[joker454]

That's only for devkits loans. Some time next year they will allow using retail console as a debug unit, and then one man Indies will be able to submit their games (They'd still have to be certified, though)

Ah ok gotcha, makes sense. I'll probably have to wait for that.

 

[Scott_Arm]

After some more time with it, they need to tweak the way party invites work. I also don't quit understand how party matchmaking works. The asynchronous part of it is weird. I'd quit playing Battlefield 4 yesterday and I kept getting messages saying Battlefield had found a match for me, asking me to accept or decline. They also need to come up with a better way to manage downloads.

Otherwise, I'm very happy with everything. Voice controls are working remarkably well for me. I calibrated with the volume on my receiver much higher than my normal playing volume. The only oddity I've found in voice control is turning the Xbox on. Voice commands work if you add a pause after Xbox: Xbox (pause) go to Netflix. The exception is turning on the unit. It doesn't work if you add the pause, at least not for me. You have to say, "Xbox on," with the second word following closely to the first. I'd say my success with voice commands is greater than 95%. I don't use gestures at all. There's not much of a reason to. Maybe apps will take better advantage. I haven't spent much time with Netflix yet

The controller is very good. The rumble is pretty neat. I only have Battlefield 4 to play, so I haven't seen too many different things done with it.

 

[Cyan]

Very happy with the console too.

Yesterday I could taste a glimpse of what to expect in the future, and it looks promising.

- I began to playing Crimson Dragon.

- There was an option featuring a beginner's tutorial.

- I selected it and I could see an Internet Explorer icon there.

- I clicked on it and it sent me to IE, which began to load a Youtube video.

- I had Crimson Dragon in the background, began to watch a tutorial on youtube and I could navigate other pages.

- In fact I loaded a sports website and I saw that Gareth Bale scored a goal yesterday, I was as happy as a lark.

Lots of potential there.

 

[Cyan]

Now some of the not so good things.

Powerstar Golf disappointed me -the game itself is not bad though, it's fun- because of its lack of Kinect support.

It can be a fun game at times and I felt that I was playing a Xbox 360 game with enhanced graphics.

Powerstar Golf is a game perfectly suited for Kinect and I wondered what's the point of playing anything like that on the Xbox One anymore.

It's a pity because the game has some neat touches here and there, they could enable voice commands at least -which means switching golf clubs without having to go through a long list of clubs using left and right-.

Not that I am going to stop playing it but I expected some very fun/useful applicability and practicality of the tech.

Even BF4 has voice commands, Forza 5 has head tracking, which can be very useful, and Crimson Dragon is just Incredible.

I tilt my head to the right or left while sitting and the dragon tilts to the right or left. It's so fun and I don't have to use LB or RB. It's very useful to avoid projectiles while you confront baddies with LT and RT at the same time.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

This is the case for any "cloud" game save system I've played with - be it Windows 8 Metro games or SteamCloud. Steam will save to the HD first and then in the background save to the cloud.

Bear in mind that game saves are often not at all trivial and upload speeds are usually lower than down so having it save to the HDD first is much safer and far less aggravating should something occur.

Thanks Dave, but that kind of makes my point for me depending on how we define trivial. If we're talking size and space requirements, that's all the more reason I don't want them being stored on the HDD if they are also going to be stored in the cloud.

I understand what you're saying about upload speeds, etc.. But I guess I'd prefer a system that might save locally, backup remotely and the auto delete the local saves once the remote backups have been completed.

Unless there's a retrieval issue with accessing the saves remotely, in which case they become rather useless to begin with, don't they?

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

I only have Battlefield 4 to play, so I haven't seen too many different things done with it.

Hey Scott, any chance we can get a picture of what it looks like for you to be playing Battlefield 4 and also watching one of the NFL games today?

I was just thinking I really wanted to do some more stuff in GTA V, but I also don't want to miss the games. It'd be really cool if I could watch the NFL on half of my screen and play GTA V on the other half.

Can you do that with the One?

 

[Cyan]

Thanks Dave, but that kind of makes my point for me depending on how we define trivial. If we're talking size and space requirements, that's all the more reason I don't want them being stored on the HDD if they are also going to be stored in the cloud.

I understand what you're saying about upload speeds, etc.. But I guess I'd prefer a system that might save locally, backup remotely and the auto delete the local saves once the remote backups have been completed.

Unless there's a retrieval issue with accessing the saves remotely, in which case they become rather useless to begin with, don't they?

Sounds nice. But the technology isn't there yet. I am reading reports of people saying that they lost their progress in FIFA 14 because of a network issue -the connection dropped, servers were offline and the like-.

Skyrim was the perfect game for that though. My game saves take up to 1GB of space in my Xbox 360's HD, if not more.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Hey Scott, any chance we can get a picture of what it looks like for you to be playing Battlefield 4 and also watching one of the NFL games today?

I was just thinking I really wanted to do some more stuff in GTA V, but I also don't want to miss the games. It'd be really cool if I could watch the NFL on half of my screen and play GTA V on the other half.

Can you do that with the One?

Being in Canada, I'm working today. I haven't looked at the NFL app yet to see what it can do. I had Netflix running snapped once, just to see what it looked like. My tv is a 40". I think a larger tv would be favourable for snapped video.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Oh, I'm also curious to compare the quality of the quick clips that get saved automatically for achievements etc vs intentional uploads from Game Studio. I've seen some pretty nice Game Studio vids, but the automatic clips BF4 is saving are kind of ugly. They're highly compressed and blocky looking. I'll have to try to use the "Save that" command, or whatever it is, to make my own video in Battlefield and then compare.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

Sounds nice. But the technology isn't there yet. I am reading reports of people saying that they lost their progress in FIFA 14 because of a network issue -the connection dropped, servers were offline and the like-.

Skyrim was the perfect game for that though. My game saves take up to 1GB of space in my Xbox 360's HD, if not more.

Ehhh? I'm saying 1) Save games should go to the cloud. If that's a problem because of network issues than 2) Save games locally then save to the cloud when available and delete the local saves.

I don't see how technology can't allow that. A simple check of your local saves VS cloud saves should be easy. I mean, Google Drive does that already.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Ehhh? I'm saying 1) Save games should go to the cloud. If that's a problem because of network issues than 2) Save games locally then save to the cloud when available and delete the local saves.

I don't see how technology can't allow that. A simple check of your local saves VS cloud saves should be easy. I mean, Google Drive does that already.

I'm sure they could do that, but really, it's just a matter of something they probably have no real interest in doing because saves are going to be negligible in terms of local storage space.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

I'm sure they could do that, but really, it's just a matter of something they probably have no real interest in doing because saves are going to be negligible in terms of local storage space.

Really? Because my GTA V saves take up GB of storage?

 

[Cyan]

I am so happy! I moved some things around in my room. The room not only looks better now but I can actually use Kinect for anything I want now -provided there are two players in the room at most.

Kinect Sports Rivals is a possibility now....

I wholeheartedly recommend you to use this Xbox.com guide to set up Kinect -it has been published very recently-. :smile2:

Some interesting stuff there, and I am going to use now that I have to re-calibrate Kinect. It can be also very useful for those having trouble with Kinect.

http://support.xbox.com/en-GB/xbox-one/kinect/angle-adjust-kinect

http://support.xbox.com/en-GB/browse/xbox-one/kinect/Set%20up

 

[blakjedi]

one thing i would say to folks...

Please train your family before putting Xbox one on your main TV. Heres why:

-My remote doesnt REALLY work to raise or lower the volume on the television anymore. I dont know why. I can change the channel and get ti dvr/on-demand but no volume and volume is one of the more difficult things to change using the Kinect. Between the televisions volume and whatever room noise there is... its just easier (and more efficient since the Kinect only lowers or raise increments of 2) with the remote.

-you have to leave the xbox on in order to watch TV. The passthrough is active active so the Xbox has to be on to check on whether there is an active connection at the STB and the TV. If your Xbox isnt on no signal gets from the STB to the TV. Unless everyone is trained to go through the cadence of "xbox on, Xbox Watch TV" They will be very frustrated.

 

[dobwal]

Really? Because my GTA V saves take up GB of storage?

So I'm guessing you are all for the proposition of having to DL a GB worth of data everytime you want to play GTA. If you are talking about numerous saves, you can always manually delete some of your local saves.

While the data may be redundant, their functions are not. Cloud saves are for backups and local saves are there for convenience like not having to wait to for data to DL from the cloud so to get back into the game as quickly as possible.

Its no different than the fact that your digitally purchased games are stored redundantly, locally and in the cloud. Or your games are stored redundantly on your discs as well as your console's HDD.

 

[orangpelupa]

Xbox One hard disk successfully replaced from 500 GB to 1 TB.

Basically, they remade the partition table and format to Xbox One spec. Then copy and paste the original data from xbox one 500 GB HDD to the new 1 TB HDD.

Sorry, i dont know whether i can paste the source address

 

[BRiT]

Some interesting tidbits on the Xbox One HardDrive if the information is to be believed...

• GUID Partition Tables
• 5 Primary NTFS Partitions
  • Temp Content partition sized 41984 MiB
  • User Content partition sized (drive size minus 102400 MiB rounded to nearest GiB)
  • System Support partition sized 40960 MiB
  • System Update partition sized 12288 MiB
  • System Update 2 partition sized 7168 MiB

 

[orangpelupa]

Thanks brit
Durang-o sta din tei..

There also discussion about how the space really is. There's a suspicion that 1 won't be able to use full capacity

 

[tcrews]

Some interesting stuff there, and I am going to use now that I have to re-calibrate Kinect. It can be also very useful for those having trouble with Kinect.

http://support.xbox.com/en-GB/xbox-one/kinect/angle-adjust-kinect

http://support.xbox.com/en-GB/browse/xbox-one/kinect/Set%20up

Thanks for this, I decided to run through the setup again for Kinect using the troubleshooting section as I initially just placed it where the 360's Kinect had been. It was working fine but I wanted to see if it would prefer a different angle. Going through the test and it recognizing my floor, it then wanted me to tilt it as far back as possible. So I expect it to work even better now.

 

[AzBat]

Really nice photos of the special white "I Made This - Launch Team 2013" console, its accessories & Day One games...



http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/xbox-one

Tommy McClain