News & Rumors: Xbox One (codename Durango)

[Cyan]

Not to harp on SimCity, but I really don't think that should be looked at as an exemplar of why cloud offload is a good idea.
SimCity's server-side simulation is composed predominantly of simple numeric message passing and mailboxes, with player-generated updates coming at a frequency of 3-20 minutes, with global visibility taking tens of minutes to hours to days, if ever. This does assume that there isn't a hiccup in the data used when it gets to the client or how it is evaluated by the validation server, whereupon it may just roll back hours of your progress or permanently glitch the city.
The vast majority of the regional simulation as the player sees it is actually an array of nearest-neighbor data that the client requests and proceeds to run its own simulation on, not the cloud.
There are just way too many clients relative to the number of servers to think that having them do any simulation work is a net win.

The complexity and latency of this method is the modern-day play by e-mail, except this ISP is allowed to drop and delay emails and decide on its own if your client has played the game the wrong way.


I haven't followed PA, but my impression was that this was a client-server game with a predominantly multiplayer focus. The server wasn't indicated as being in the cloud, but a specific dedicated machine that could also be the same machine as a player client.

I can see how you can put online to good use when not playing your typical multiplayer game after reading bkillian and Silent Buddha's post. I also agree with RancidLunchmeat that online doesn't necessitate multiplayer at all, given how many players don't play other than your popular online game.

My point when I say I can't understand why a console forces you to play online, is that it goes against the typical philosophy in the design of a console.

Consoles are historically meant to be plug & play machines, insert your game and play. Having to set up a connection in order to play certainly doesn't apply here.

 

[dobwal]

As long as the online portion is used to supplement the core experience and that core experience can be had offline, then always on/always connected won't hamper anything.

Outside of my consoles where I fear that being left on will shorten their lifetime, I don't readily turn off any of my tech devices. My laptop, tabs and smartphone are never powered down for the explicit purpose of just turning them off and as long as they are "on" they are connected.

For most users of smartphones and tabs the wifi toggle and power off feature are simply a battery saving feature. A lot of products might not be readily described or advertised as "always on/always connect" but in practice thats how they are commonly used.

Not playing my consoles for extended periods of time happens regularly to me. That on and off again type of play pattern creates one of the poorest and frustrating experiences that literally only consoles offer.

Turn on the console and walk away while it boots up only to be met with a system download prompt. Walks away, comes back and presses start to boot up game only to be met with a "game requires a download" prompt. Find something else to do for a few minutes.

I will gladly accept "always on/always connected" to get rid of that crap.

 

[AzBat]

That April Xbox announce? Pushed back a month

https://twitter.com/thurrott/status/317348357150482432

Oh boy. Not a good sign.

Tommy McClain

 

[AlphaWolf]

https://twitter.com/thurrott/status/317348357150482432

Oh boy. Not a good sign.

Tommy McClain

There's a whole bunch of ways to take that (such as the original rumor was just wrong), but I'm unsure how any of them point to doom.

 

[Cyan]

There's a whole bunch of ways to take that (such as the original rumor was just wrong), but I'm unsure how any of them point to doom.

Well, the Xbox 720 might be doomed because time flies like an arrow and perhaps they aren't ready to launch it this year, so they will have to wait until next year.

Not that I mind much, because I have plenty of games to complete yet. But it's pretty discouraging for those who are impatient.

This news appears when precisely today the Xbox 360 marks a milestone and surpasses the NES as the most long-lived (non handheld) console ever, as its life span is getting closer to 8 years, until their successor was launched.

 

[AlphaWolf]

If the perceived movement of a launch announcement which will still precede launch by 6 months is causing you concern you must have panic attacks when watching the news.

 

[Cyan]

If the perceived movement of a launch announcement which will still precede launch by 6 months is causing you concern you must have panic attacks when watching the news.

I'd say you seem to be a more sensitive guy than me, excuse me if I am wrong. HAHAH

On a different note, this leaked screenshot from a Durango's development kit confirms that the possible name of the console might be Xbox Infinity or Xbox 8 -with the 8 lying on its side-.

You can see the infinity symbol at the upper left corner of the window.

 

[dobwal]

Maybe MS is pushing back to maximize the number of pubs slated to show off their next gen wares on Durango.

No point of publically presenting Durango in May if its not going to be ready this year. Might as well hold off until E3 if thats going to happen.

 

[xexuxjy]

Errr, thats just the normal visual studio icon....

 

[Kaotik]

Nah, that logo was used in VS2010 and 2012 beta & rc at least

 

[Gerry]

On a different note, this leaked screenshot from a Durango's development kit confirms that the possible name of the console might be Xbox Infinity or Xbox 8 -with the 8 lying on its side-.

That did make me laugh. Thank you.

 

[Arksine]

https://twitter.com/thurrott/status/317348357150482432

Oh boy. Not a good sign.

Tommy McClain

One month? Eh, either has to do with software or box design IMO. Given some of their PR guys' response to the PS4 announcement it seems like they are determined to show the box at the unvieling.

They might also see the current state of software running on beta hardware and feel like it needs some extra tweaking to be presentable. I don't think this is something that would push them out of a 2013 release though.

 

[astrograd]

Milo's AI tech was running on a limited cloud based database search/query tech iirc. I'd love to see that kind of tech/interaction put into play for npc dialogue scenes in games. Not for motion input in a traditional sense, but using Kinect to track facial expressions and the voice inputs for the rest. We've heard rumors about Siri-like Kinect integration for the dashboard, so why not for npc's in games if Kinect and an internet connection are required anyhow?

Note that some insiders have said MS's internal docs for devs directly referenced Lionhead's MegaMesh graphics tech in relation to their Durango graphics rendering architecture. Let's not forget that such tech was part of the Milo project as well. So if they are going for vitualized textures AND geometry as per Lionhead's tech (same as Carmack has been working on past couple yrs btw), that makes me wonder about Milo being a generalized tech demo/prototype/experiment for Durango functionality.

 

[AzBat]

The reason for my response was that it was confirmed to be announced on April 26 by a lot of folks. Paul Thurrott confirms that it was a real date when he says it's been pushed back. He could of worded it different had the leak been wrong in the first place, but he didn't. So again, one month after the date leak & one month before it's launch & MS are reshuffling? This reveal is a big deal. It's for a billion dollar business & you're still not sure when you want to announce it one month out from the original announcement? Cries sloppy to me at the least. Personally I think they're reacting a lot to the public response of the PS4 reveal. I don't think they're changing the product to make it better compete against the PS4. It's too late for that. Whatever the product they had in the pipeline prior to the PS4 announcement will get released unchanged me thinks. I think they're just changing the marketing of the product & how they are going to reveal it. I sure hope Dean Takahashi is planning on another book about the launch. It will be interesting to read all the behind the scenes stuff leading up to launch.

Tommy McClain

 

[Rangers]

Yes I'm very unhappy about the delay. Mostly just for selfish reasons though. I just wanted to hear about Durango sooner, I have no idea if it's a good move tactically.

Oh well, it's 21 days before E3. So, it's something sooner, I guess, even if not much. Seems too close to e3, though.

 

[dagamer]

Yes I'm very unhappy about the delay. Mostly just for selfish reasons though. I just wanted to hear about Durango sooner, I have no idea if it's a good move tactically.

Oh well, it's 21 days before E3. So, it's something sooner, I guess, even if not much. Seems too close to e3, though.

360 was formally announced only 2 weeks before E3. At this point, I just want it over with. Perhaps Microsoft wants to woo more indie developers? That's the only thing that really changed this week, the Vita might get off life support that way and Sony is really pushing for string support in that crowd.

 

[astrograd]

Don't really see the point in bothering to reach out to indy devs tbh. They are making games to release on a variety of platforms at this point, which means Windows. If their game can run on Windows, it will run fine on Durango. It's not like these indy devs are going to really be pushing the hardware in unique ways most likely, so as long as MS has ways for them to make money those studios will show up regardless. MS would be better served (imho) to just focus on making sure these devs have ways to sefl-publish for free, can do free patches/content updates, and have strong marketing coverage on the new dashboard.

 

[ERP]

Don't really see the point in bothering to reach out to indy devs tbh. They are making games to release on a variety of platforms at this point, which means Windows. If their game can run on Windows, it will run fine on Durango. It's not like these indy devs are going to really be pushing the hardware in unique ways most likely, so as long as MS has ways for them to make money those studios will show up regardless. MS would be better served (imho) to just focus on making sure these devs have ways to sefl-publish for free, can do free patches/content updates, and have strong marketing coverage on the new dashboard.

I sympathize with indy's to a point, free trivial publishing with free patches wouldn't make things better for them. All it would do is reduce live to the level of the App Store where it's virtually impossible to get any visibility for a product without a significant advertising spend (yes there are exceptions).

Initially on live there was no requirement for a developer to have a publisher, the reason MS transitioned to requiring a publisher is that they were flooded with low quality submissions and had no easy way to filter them, the publishers at least act as a tier one filter.
The charging for patches means that MS can at least do some trivial QA on a submission and it disuades the publish now fix later mentality.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

There's a massive problem with publishers as the entry level filter though, and that's that they filter according to their standards. Indies need some more public filter, such as Greenlight, where it's not just some suits idea of financial viability that decides who doesn't and doesn't get published, nor previous experience.

Since the death of XNA, MS haven't announced what they're doing regards 'homebrew' AFAIK, although I think it's a case of running Windows 8 apps on Durango from what Joker was saying IIRC. So perhaps Durango can be ignored and the focus shift to the Windows software portal? That's not an option Sony has. heck, Sony are pretty clueless, not providing PSMobile for their home consoles and fracturing development platform (I guess PhyrEngine is straddling their PS hardware). At least MS can offer a single software portal that runs on all their devices, PC, Durango and Tablet, and eventual XBoy or whatever.

 

[ERP]

There's a massive problem with publishers as the entry level filter though, and that's that they filter according to their standards. Indies need some more public filter, such as Greenlight, where it's not just some suits idea of financial viability that decides who doesn't and doesn't get published, nor previous experience.

While that's true of the bigger publishers, it's actually not that expensive or difficult to become a "publisher".

A friend of mine ran a company that bought up almost complete titles dropped by other publishers, paid a flat fee, and split royalties above a threshold. Pretty much they were a 3 man shop so it's not a huge investment. They are out of business now, it was getting hard to find titles, but indies could certainly band together and create a similar entity.