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Microsoft's Online Spectator Patent
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.'"
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 ...
The system is not necessarily broken
It is certainly not working as intended. If I bought a stove and when I set it to 350F to bake some cookies, it reduced my cookies to ash and melted the sheet too, I'd call it broken.
As for the rest, the only people benefitting now are the lawyers and the IP infringement insurance salesmen.
Hi! I just wanted to take the time to mention that the Xbox360 uses crappy Macintosh processors (or at least, the kind of processor Macs used to use).
Now Macs run on Intel processors. Which are CRAP compared to AMD processors.
Any by the way... When are console developers going to realize that it's better to have high detail, non anti-aliased textures at a high frame rate then anti-aliased medium textures at a lower frame rate? Or even worse, high detail anti-aliased textures at a TERRIBLE frame rate (King Kong, Xbox360)!
I was very impressed with the Xbox version of King Kong. The graphics were very good. I played the Xbox360 version at a Target and was horrified. The detail wasn't even as good as I had expected and the frame rate was unplayable to me. When King Kong would swing his arm around, the frame rate went to shit. The Xbox version did this too, but it did good for it's specs in all around frame rate for the level of detail it has. There's no excuse for a next gen system failing to provide a sweep of high frame rates for it's launch titles.
Seriously. Why does King Kong run like crap on the Xbox360? WHY?! The detail wasn't even THAT good! It's because of the stupid anti-aliasing. And don't even give me any crap about the detail looking bad because it wasn't an HDTV. You should see the Xbox version of King Kong. And even better, the MK: Shaolin Monks demo of The Suffering 2. That demo... WOW! It has VASTLY higher detail than the gold copy of The Suffering 2 for Xbox. It ran like shit, but the detail was absolutely amazing.
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