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Microsoft's Online Spectator Patent

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the watch-and-learn dept.

Next Generation reports on Microsoft's 5000th patent: an online spectator mode for competitive games. From the article: "The system will allow online viewers who are not involved in actual gameplay to view game highlights and instant replays, as well as let them control camera perspectives. A statement from Microsoft also describes 'A portal such as a Web site to access spectator-related services such as schedules and information on multiple games and events as well as the number of spectators and participants in each. The portal allows the spectator to find the most popular games to watch, preview the action, and then connect to the desired game or event.'"

1 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Right motivation, wrong goal... by dougmc · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    I'd rather have them fix 3,000 bugs per year.
    Clever, but they probably fix over 100x that many bugs per year.

    Sure, Microsoft software may have a repuation for being buggy, and it may even be deserved (or it may not -- I'm not getting into that here.) But considering just how many software packages they put out (Microsoft does far more than Windows and Office) even fixing millions of bugs/year wouldn't surprise me. And as for 3,000 bugs, I'm guessing that even one relatively simple Xbox game may have that many bugs created and then fixed in it's development cycle.

    Also keep in mind that most bugs are very minor. This error message has a word mispelled? Bug. The documentation doesn't explain how to do something very well? Bug. For every critical bug that you hear about in the news, there's likely to be hundreds or thousands of minor bugs that are getting fixed that you never hear about, many of which are fixed before the product ever goes to market.

    Now, perhaps you meant `3000 serious bugs', but the serious ones usually are fixed, but perhaps not as quickly as people would prefer ...