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Are you aware that the Xbox One is thought to have grave manufacturing problems and that it will be available in only 21 countries at launch, missing all Asia?

You should have been more clear on the used games bit.

game publishers can enable you to trade in your games at participating retailers

http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/license

Basically, go fuck yourself, the horse you rode in on, your mother, and anyone you feel like, because that will fill the time you aren't playing used games. Most publishers will allow it, but that is a statistic, and the outliers will surely be the biggest targets for piracy.

How it will shake out: if you can pirate the game somehow, you will not be allowed to buy it used. This matches everything we have seen from most software publishers, and the biggest game distributors. Not game studios, because they produce a game. Distributors because they add DRM and whatever else they think might be a bottom-line improvement.

I expect a few lawsuits between game production companies and their distributors. Or if they are smart, contract changes.

• Duck tape over the camera
• Screwdriver in the microphone
• Mod your router to sanitize the data the little bastard is trying to phone home with

If you are enough of a masochist to have bought one in the first place, that is.

To maintain your household under constant marketing surveillance. I'm waiting for Bruce Schneier to weigh in on this one, specifically. He does an excellent examination of the general case in his recent "Surveillance and the Internet of Things"

Microsoft is taking Xbox further down the road of current trends in targeting and profiling "users". The model for most web applications and nearly all mobile apps has been that of of the Trojan Horse. An apparently benign, amusing or useful set of functions is presented the user, often below the cost of producing the technology. It does no good to labour the point with tedious argument: the applications are invasive and - depending on your perspective - abusive of privacy.

XBox One is the adaptation of these trends, delivered into the home as a 7/24 data collection head, with a colour camera and a microphone that can't be turned off.

"German federal commissioner for privacy protection: "Xbox One is a surveillance device"

Civil Liberties Australia says Xbox One 'meets definition of surveillance device'

Privacy breach: Xbox One a 'twisted nightmare'

Engadget linked to a Microsoft FAQ regarding a few key questions. IMO, it is filled with some class act doublespeak. Quite amusing, if not a bit frustrating, to read. http://news.xbox.com/2013/05/qa

Quake more addictive than Pong?

You, my friend, have obviously never played Piniq!

Incorrect, you buy the software. You need a license to distribute copies of software, not to use it.

Wow this is going to be a big wake-up call for you, it is absolutely correct that you have not bought the software, you only have a license to use the software under the license conditions. If you did indeed buy it you would own it and be free to do whatever you want with it, but you aren't because you do not own it.
Here is an example:
Any software or content (e.g., text, images, video, graphics, music, sound, or games) (for purposes of this section, we refer to all of these, as applicable, as "Software") that Microsoft provides as part of the Services is licensed and not sold and is licensed according to the terms of this Agreement unless separate license terms are provided or referenced.
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Legal/livetou

Or this example from the Apple app store standard license agreement:
The Products transacted through the Service are licensed, not sold, to You for use only under the terms of this license, unless a Product is accompanied by a separate license agreement, in which case the terms of that separate license agreement will govern, subject to Your prior acceptance of that separate license agreement.
http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/appstore/dev/stdeula/

Show me software that you bought rather than licensed.

Because they don't support his phone's firmware version, and they don't support upgrading it to a version that is supported.

To advertise Nintendo products? Same as the original?

I dunno, it seems strange not to make any attempt at keeping it going online. I'm assuming it had some readers to keep it going as a pure-print magazine for the past decade, during which it would have made sense to bring it online.

After all, Sony has the PlayStation blog and Microsoft has... uh... whatever this is, I guess. (Does Major Nelson's blog count?)

Nintendo has, well, nothing. Sure, there's nintendo.com, but that compares more to us.playstation.com (playstation.com redirects me to jp.playstation.com for some reason) and xbox.com. They have no real "community" site, which something like Nintendo Power could fill. It seems strange to not even attempt an online version.

To advertise Nintendo products? Same as the original?

I dunno, it seems strange not to make any attempt at keeping it going online. I'm assuming it had some readers to keep it going as a pure-print magazine for the past decade, during which it would have made sense to bring it online.

After all, Sony has the PlayStation blog and Microsoft has... uh... whatever this is, I guess. (Does Major Nelson's blog count?)

Nintendo has, well, nothing. Sure, there's nintendo.com, but that compares more to us.playstation.com (playstation.com redirects me to jp.playstation.com for some reason) and xbox.com. They have no real "community" site, which something like Nintendo Power could fill. It seems strange to not even attempt an online version.

- fire up the Xbox with the Kinect unhooked, and let it run for a bit, keeping an eye on the packets (I don't know much about Xbox networking, but I would guess anything transmitted outside port 80 would be suspect)

XBox Live runs outside port 80, just as PSN. So you're going to always see "suspect" activity when you're logged in. The Kinect has an additional port (1863) used for video chat. It might be used in this too. So I guess traffic on port 1863 when you're not video chatting would be odd.

So then, OP should be able to just plug
port 1863
into the Wireshark filter and start cappin'.

This discussion is making me wish I had an Xbox, so I could try it out myself :(

- fire up the Xbox with the Kinect unhooked, and let it run for a bit, keeping an eye on the packets (I don't know much about Xbox networking, but I would guess anything transmitted outside port 80 would be suspect)

XBox Live runs outside port 80, just as PSN. So you're going to always see "suspect" activity when you're logged in.
The Kinect has an additional port (1863) used for video chat. It might be used in this too. So I guess traffic on port 1863 when you're not video chatting would be odd.

So basically what you've said is none of that stuff exists.

Nooooo... I said the exact opposite. Reading is hard, I know, but you got to stick with it.

Steam sales aren't about the "publisher setting prices", they're about people knowing every day Steam runs a deep discount on a game.

Already happens bro. Xbox and WP7 already have regular sales. With Xbox Live coming to Windows 8, there is no reason to believe the weekly sales won't make the jump over as well. Like I said.

"Up to the developer to implement" means it doesn't exist since there is no common API.

No there are APIs for it. There are APIs for it on Steam too. But it's something the developer has to explicitly code for in both cases. Like I said.

Forums are a requirement -- I always check them (as many people do) before making a purchase. That's a key source of information on support levels, compatibility, and so forth.

Google is your friend.

And, yes, Clancy, everyone for the past twenty years has had ratings; that's not what I said. Steam has integration with MetaCritic, a review aggregator.

Sucks that the built it ratings aren't good enough for you. Guess you will just have to open a tab in the browser you have open right now rather then waiting 5 hours for the Steam client to load.

You, like Microsoft, are missing the point of what makes Steam so usable. It's not just another App store. It has a lot of stuff built specifically for games and a culture that encourages purchasing.

Seems like they got it down just fine and people like you are desperately looking for excuses to complain (and just making shit up when you fail).

Let me put it another way. Valve nailed it in one with Steam. Microsoft gave us Games for Windows Live. Any questions?

Yes. Why are you ignoring Xbox Live? You think Microsoft can't put together an app store? Guess again. They have those Microsoft points cards in every tech store in North America. Now the same (or very similar) APIs will allow developers to write games that will easily port between PC, WP8 and most likely Xbox 720.

There is no question they will succeed. Valve wouldn't be bothering with Linux if they didn't feel their primary revenue is about to disappear.

You might have a lot of steam games and so on bought, but there is nothing to say that you won't make all your future purchases in the new windows 8 store. I assume a lot of people will, since it will come preinstalled and won't require a third party download. From that perspective windows 8 is a disaster; for steam. I can't help but wonder if there will be some future anti-trust case over this.

GFWL is a failure because hardly anyone knows it exists. The client wasn't overly bad, and was more responsive then steam for me.

As a side note, I just tried opening the goofy client thing and it sent me to http://marketplace.xbox.com. So apparently they have given up on it entirely.

I guarantee you violated some kind of TOS doing that, which means they can decide to kick you off their network.

I highly doubt that. Can you show us the part of the TOS which says this? If not, what's your guarantee for?

I looked at the web site, and I thought it _was_ an Apple announcement.

That is the metro aesthetic that Microsoft has been using in many of their web properties since the Zune HD. See: zune, kinect xbox Windows 8 bing microsoft.com

block out the Microsoft logos and it would be hard to tell the difference between that and an Apple page.

It's easy to tell the difference. Apple is still big on fake reflections, shadows, gradients, bevels, faux 3D effects like paper curling, point of view icons, etc. Metro eschews these elements in favor of bold colors, lots of white space, and simple flat iconography.

On every major platform. Those are nothing, except the xbox360, for which there's a release:

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Full-Game-Psychonauts/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8024d4a07d2

There you go, have fun!

You must live under a rock.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/PC

No - see http://support.xbox.com/en-GB/xbox-live/game-saves-in-the-cloud/cloud-save-games

I guess I'm oblivious to what I'm paying for then. I just thought those were perks to the online gaming. Here's the official list

I don't see it mentioned, but do Silver Accounts get the 500mb "cloud backup" too?

Or even Gravitas.

If you have a 360, there's a good chance you already are paying. That was the point I was making. Microsoft is already collecting the subscription fees I was talking about (with my tongue firmly planted in cheek). I question the necessity to double dip by charging developers a fee when they're already charging gamers a fee, both of which are presumably being applied towards handling the same set of expenses, namely data centers and other infrastructure costs.

If that were true then Silver members (non-paying) wouldn't get updates or would have to pay for updates. Just because they charge one party for one thing doesn't mean they shouldn't charge another party for something different.

You shouldn't, but that's missing the entire point of what I was saying (i.e. whoosh).

If you have a 360, there's a good chance you already are paying. That was the point I was making. Microsoft is already collecting the subscription fees I was talking about (with my tongue firmly planted in cheek). I question the necessity to double dip by charging developers a fee when they're already charging gamers a fee, both of which are presumably being applied towards handling the same set of expenses, namely data centers and other infrastructure costs.

Indeed. While they have improved the camera, the IR seem about the same.
http://support.xbox.com/en-GB/kinect/setup-and-playspace/lighting
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2012/01/microsoft-bets-big-on-kinect-for-windows-but-splits-its-community.ars

I once saw a XBL gamertag that was Shatnermouth. Is that you? If so, wanna play some Star Trek Legacy sometime?

Wii Parental Controls

Xbox 360 Parental Controls

PlayStation 3 Parental Controls

I'm not an expert but it could be:
- the logical design of the circuitry is copyrighted?
- an actual dump of a system ROM is used? (I know that was the case for the Intellivision emulator)

Personally, I think they're shooting themselves in the foot. All the folks that have good vibes from the Atari heydays of the 80s are usually the ones using the emulators; they are also the potential customers. A 10-year old kid is not going to stop buying the XBOX360 re-make just because he can play the 8-bit version for free.

There's a decent emulator on the XBOX360; has Arcade, Atari 2600 and Intellivision games on it.

Yes it does

I got your new Jack right here.

They should give away free XBox points. http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/MicrosoftPoints Heck, throw in an XBox too.

no freedom to use your own peripherals or storage devices.

Funny, my iPod (iPod! From the competitor!) works fine.

And I guess thumbdrives aren't storage devices, either

The blog linked in the summary actually points to:

http://majornelson.com/2011/04/14/kinect-support-for-netflix/

As its information source, if you'd like to skip all the blog slashvertisements and go to the source, the actual source info is at:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/Netflix/Home

I believe MIT had released a restaurant type game where yes, you do end up in the credits (you can either be a waiter or a customer). But that's it. I'm not sure what became of it though - I tried it briefly but never could find anyone online.

What's next? They have us play a new Kinect game where we act out the scenes displayed so they can crowd-source their motion capture too? Hint: I only consider working for free if a project is open source -- All others must pay.

Related, Microsoft released YooStar 2 which, well, uses a Kinect to film you doing scenes in movies (the previous version used the Live Vision camera), so...

The site says that a player is logged a cheat for gaining achievements without active gameplay.
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/Cheating

This sort of a log requires accurate time keeping, which the Xbox does not seem real great at.
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/695005

FWIW, I'm sitting next to a windows 7 machine that claims to be illegal, it's full of shit.

Microsoft has a tool that will allow your to transfer your licences from one console to another so that you can still play offline. Try this out.

So, because you're too stupid to navigate their web site, it's now impossible?

Also this:

Cancel your Xbox LIVE Gold Membership

Learn how to cancel your Xbox LIVE Gold Membership.

* To cancel your Xbox LIVE Gold Membership or to turn off auto-renewal, you need to contact Xbox Support.

And if you follow the link on "contact XBox Support," the only way listed is to call.

I'm surprised anybody would bother to start making insults without bothering to simply supply a link. (Then again we are talking XBox Live here. There would be more incentive for normal people to stick around if there were an easy way to segregate all the morons such as yourself into your own little playpen).

Google, dude. It's right there, on the first result.

Nope. I'm not a gamer, and I live on the wrong coast for them to bother showing it to me, according to their map.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/kinect

Sounds interesting if they can turn it into something I might use, and ever bother to do so (mouseless mouse? gesture-based keyboard?).

On-board processor was dropped [citation needed]

Here, here, here, and here.

Depth camera runs at 320x240 so it can't detect fingers? Maybe not, but it's doing infinitely more skeletal recognition than Move is.

Actually, Kinect only allows skeletal recognition for its own Avatars -- that functionality is not available to games developers. Both consoles are doing an equal amount of skeletal recognition in the SDK exposed to developers -- none.

Not ambitious? PS3 or PC could do the same thing trivially with two cameras? OK, then why aren't they?

Because, quite simply, everyone else knows it's not worth it. In fact, Sony was offered the Kinect technology and chose not to use it, specifically because they knew its marketability is limited.

Sony has already tried the no-controller camera-driven games with the EyeToy, which bombed. There have been all kinds of toy programs using webcams, which are all forgotten. Adding a depth camera does not fundamentally change the interaction -- in fact, it barely affects it at all. In userspace, Kinect is EyeToy, is doomed. You cannot play engaging games without a controller.

Overpriced? Perhaps, but I have a hard time believing that Microsoft is pricing it significantly higher than they have to - they want it to be a success and the know it's up against a less expensive competitor.

If they cannot sell two cameras and a toy motor for less than $150 I'll eat my hat. Do you really believe, for instance, that they "can't sell" a 250GB hard drive for less than $129.99 when normal 250GB hard drives can be had for less than $50 (a third of the price, ultimately)?

Basically, it sounds like you don't think they're going far enough, but I think if they went as far as you want them to they would completely price themselves out of the market. At some point you have to compromise ship something practical.

If I put a box of trash up on eBay for only a 10% markup over what it all cost me, how many people do you think will buy it? The market doesn't care what you spent. It cares what the price is and what they get out of it. $150 is going to sail right over everyone's head. You may bookmark this post and refer back to it when the Kinect line is officially discontinued (I will give it say Summer of 2012, after Microsoft loses a lot of money, which is what their games division has been doing all along.)

It was really only a failure in the US console market. VO did better as an arcade game, and remained popular in Japan up until VO: Force and Marz killed any attempts at new games.

Twin Sticks weren't hard to find in Japan--in fact, the surplus of sticks produced for the Saturn only dried up a few years ago, which is why you see a lot of modders using them on the XBLA version of VOOT.

They haven't phased out XBox originals support on XBL, they just stopped porting more games over. These are all still playable:

http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/backwardcompatibilitygameslist.htm

Also, they have XBox originals for sale if you don't own them as downloadable games too.

Sony on the other hand, well, yes, they have in fact slashed backwards compatibility by removing the required hardware from all but the early US release consoles. They also slashed Linux support.

If your concern is slashing features and charging more, then looking to Sony is quite ignorant- they also are pushing pay subscription service too now after all. Nintendo is the only one that hasn't increased prices and slashed features.

But hey, you attacked Microsoft, so enjoy being modded up regardless of being so hypocritical and wrong.

Seems like the Family Pack coming in November is still US$99 for 4 people.

For those of you interested you can lock in your yearly rate at $40 a year (a $10 discount on the current price and $20 on the increased price) by going to this link:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/pricelock/default.htm

Just because consoles cannot use keyboard/mouse does not mean PCs cannot use controllers. So what is the point behind saying that many games are better suited to controllers?

PCs have the added bonus of not becoming obsolete and unsupported. For example I can play video games from the 80s and 90s on my 2010 PC, while you need the original physical hardware to play most console games. That or you need to repurchase them as a licensed emulation.

Nothing can stop the free-loaders, they eventually will get what they want.

Kinectimals

You have to buy from the official store. I know on itunes for iphone apps you have to back it up yourself since they won't let you download it again if you lose it.

That is completely untrue. Your iTunes apps are saved to your account, so if you accidentally or intentionally delete something, you can download it again.

I don't know how Xbox handles that sort of thing.

The exact same way. All purchases are tied to your account. Sure, if the servers go down then you're boned, but then you could have just backed up your data in the first place.

[A]nd they sure as hell won't let you hook up an external drive via usb

You can set up 16 Gb partitions for use with USB media to back up all of your game content and saves, minus disk images of physical disks (downloads work fine) and user data, which cannot be duplicated but can be recovered from their server. Is it DRM? Yeah, and it's restrictive. Is it screwing you six ways from Sunday? Not really. You're losing the sell-back option, but it was only a matter of time before publishers started going after the used game market anyway.

Yes, via USB drive or transfer cable -> http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/transfer/default.htm They probably see the whole USB thumbdrive feature as a good reason to get rid of proprietary memory cards.

This pretty much sums it up:

http://www.xbox.com/en-us/live/projectnatal/

Basically body mapping with face recognition. Quite sweet, but the devil is going to be in the software written for it and unlike the Wii, it isn't part of the 'base' system, so software that is written for Natal will have a smaller user base and will probably cost more.

Hi! You're full of shit, AND lack reading comprehension.

When I said "when Live first launched", meant the original XBox version. On the original XBox, you either subscribed and got all the features, or you didn't, and got none of them. No Silver, no Gold, just subscribers.

As to why I say you're full of shit, it's because Silver accounts STILL don't have access to online multiplayer. Couch multiplayer, yes, ability to buy stuff off of XBLA, yes, online multiplayer, NO. The only exceptions have ever been the occasional free weekend, and FFXI, on account of it requiring a separate subscription fee. There was NO change to this, in 2008 or any other year.

You can find a table with an accurate comparison between Silver and Gold accounts here. If you doubt Wikipedia's accuracy, try Microsoft's list. You'll notice neither list includes online multiplayer on the Silver tier.

The Xbox 360 has supported H.264 for over a year now ...

http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/nxe/gamesandmedia/movies/videofaq/viewvideoplaybackfaq.aspx