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What Microsoft Should and Shouldn't Do For the Xbox 720
donniebaseball23 writes "Xbox 360 just came off a record November, with more than 1.7 million units sold in the U.S., but behind closed doors Microsoft is planning its next move for the successor to the popular console. Plenty of Xbox 720 rumors have surfaced in recent months, but veteran games journalist Chris Morris has filtered through them to provide a realistic take on what Microsoft should and shouldn't do with Xbox 360's successor. In particular, he notes that Microsoft should adopt the Blu-ray format from Sony. 'A DVD drive as a medium for storing larger and larger games is outdated – and it steps on the toes of a system that bills itself as the high definition leader,' Morris writes. 'Microsoft resisted the move to Blu-ray this generation without any ill effects. It even survived picking the losing side in the format battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, but it can't rely on the DVD to take it into the next generation.'"
They will use some proprietary disc format for sure.
What's up with that? A reference to the number of times an electron must rotate before it returns to its original state?
I wonder whether the next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft will use discs at all. Perhaps we are not yet at the point where it is practical to download 30GB of game data, but with incremental background downloads it might be feasible in the 720's timeframe.
Ultimately the OnLive model is clearly what we will all be using, but it'll be a while yet before low-latency broadband is ubiquitous.
The big question is will the M$ management be smart enough to milk the 360, or will they kill it off to force everyone onto something new. You would think that people with 360 who subscribe to Xbox Live would be a cash cow, but the M$ management has a long history of screwing its own customers to make them buy something new. I would be surprised if it didn't have Blu-ray support, but I would be more surprised if the system was the least bit open. On the other hand, I don't care. I kept waiting and waiting for 360 or PS3 prices to drop, and I waited so long that I lost interest. Hmmmmm, the yard needs mowing.
Make love, not reality television.
"What's wrong with Blu-ray? Everything except the fidelity of the content."
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
They could use the standard blue ray format but simply use their own encryption on the data it contains. I can't see any good reason for them to spend millions developing a new hardware solution unless they're not confident of their own abilities to encrypt. And even if they did it wouldn't be long before someone plugged the drive into a PC and got it working somehow to be able to get the data off the discs.
AFAIK the Java Requirements is only for Blu-Ray Movies. For Storing Game Data, you dont need Java.
These days people expect their Blu-Ray player to have a network port, and sing and dance and give blowjobs. Well, maybe not the last part. But if you have a blu-ray drive it's retarded not to play movies, and you ought to support all the functionality if your hardware is sufficiently capable. Having a DVD-ROM but not playing DVDs only worked for the Wii because it was so much cheaper than the competition, and because Nintendo customers have been trained to expect a system that only plays games for years.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It will almost certainly have an optical drive. Broadband penetration in the US is craptacular. Unless Sony and Microsoft sign a blood pact to both abandon the optical drive at once, which is not going to happen due to Sony's involvement with Blu-Ray, the manufacturer who fails to include it is going to lose massively. Nintendo could probably go to flash media, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Really need to upgrade my Blu-Ray Player. I have none of those features.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And spells Proprietary in a *very* different/new way too
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
I think that should be a drinking game.
One drink for reading a post from an Apple/Microsoft/Sony fanboy or anti-fanboy
One drink for grammer and speeling natzis
Two drinks for "First" in first post
Three drinks for reading a post responding to an AC.
I don't own a 360 (for a variety of reasons, of which I'm about to explain the key one) but every friend I know who owns one - _EVERY ONE_ - has had at least one fatal hardware failure with their device and several have had multiple fatal hardware failures. Simply put, I'm stunned at the failure rate for the 360 and I'm blown away that people tolerated it as much as they did. I really wish I was exaggerating when I say every friend I know who has one had it fail at least once. Usually it was a disk drive failure (kind of important for a disk-driven device...) but I really don't know of anyone who didn't suffer at least once failure.
I know I amount to anecdotal evidence but when I see that large a collection of device failures (and the friends of whom I speak are spread across multiple countries from coast to coast so it isn't a local phenomenon), I have to think I'm actually not anecdotal evidence - I feel I'm witnessing a significant trend.
The most important thing Microsoft needs to focus on with a new XBox is build quality. Everything else should come a distant second.
What Microsoft Shouldn't Do For the Xbox 720:
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
A pressed optical disc is a matter of a few cents. That's significantly cheaper than the cartridges of yore and flash memory of the same amount. If you are implying user brings their own key to a kiosk, that *could* work, but I think you'd have a low attach rate for stores carrying the kiosks as most of the potential customers would be net connected and with the store being no different than buying it via network, the market is too small.
In terms of going full download over the internet, that really depends. First, you have to ascertain what percentage of the market has the capability to reasonably download the games. I suspect the percentage is relatively high, but I know of a few anecdotes of rural areas with no reasonable high speed internet option. Second, you have to figure of those that can, how many prefer optical media. On tech sites the community gives the feeling of being all in on download-only distribution models, but in the market I know several people who buy movies and games on disc even when they have downloadable options. If that is a large chunk of the market and MS dumps optical media and Sony doesn't, this could be a significant differentiator.
Finally, your options for backwards compatibility are limited. If your older library games just won't physically fit in the system, that's a problem.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Some Xbox 360 games are already shipping on 2, 3 or 4 discs and it doesn't seem to bother people that much.
Mada mada dane.
The WiiU is already confirmed to use a proprietary optical disc (probably based on blu-ray).
Mada mada dane.
Why use Blu-Ray or any disc formats @ all? All it does is limit how many games they can bundle, and increase the risk of mechanical damage to the disks. Instead, since flash memory densities - currently @ par with Blu Ray densities from 25-125 GB will be available - will increase every couple of years, why not make the storage of the X-Box one of those formats - be it SD, CF, xD or something? Just like the Sony PSP used Sony's memory sticks, MS could use SD if they want something standard, or xD if they want something proprietary. That way, they save on the Blu Ray drive costs as well - just have a slot for removable SD cards. Game makers can then choose to make heavy games that need 64GB, or light games that would fit on a CD which they can put into a 1GB SD. This would enable them to have a range of games for a range of prices. It also gets rid of the problem of Blu Ray drive related failures.
Since I don't own games like PlayStation, Wii or X-Box, I have no ideas on what other improvements or pitfalls should be there.
DO: Make a sensible sized hard drive standard for every model. The 360 suffered early cycle because games were tentative about assuming that they could use a hard disk (the "core" model didn't have one). The 4GB drive that ships with the current model is also inadequate. 20GB for the bottom end model should be considered an absolute minimum.
DO: Pack in the RAM. Of all of the factors that are driving developer frustration with the current console generation, RAM seems to be at the top of the pack. It's worse for the PS3 (with its awkward memory-split and larger OS footprint) than for the 360, but still... RAM is pretty cheap and packing plenty of it in will pay dividends in 5 years time.
DO: Continue to develop what you've been doing on voice controls for the console's UI. I have mixed feelings about Kinect, but voice activation is really great - and has an appeal to a wide demographic.
DON'T: Worry too much about making a loss on each unit sold for the first year or two. MS's objectives should be to get a large installed base early on and to make sure that their machine is fairly future-proof. This probably means selling at a loss early on. The real profits from a console come later in the cycle, when component prices have fallen, so you can reduce prices and still sell at a profit, and when you have third party developers giving you free money, by putting out games for your system (and paying you a fee on each copy sold) without you having to invest in development.
DON'T: Allow your dev team to push out firmware updates every 5 minutes. The 360 has had a few too many firmware updates for comfort, but perhaps not to the extent of being a deal-breaker. With the PS3, the sheer frequency of updates (and the length of time they take) is intensely frustrating, when you just want to fire up the console and play a game.
DON'T: Allow region locking. Sony have already ditched this and it did them no harm. MS knows region coding is junk; it doesn't use it for any of its first or second party games. Take the option away from developers; its time for them to grow up. It also reduces the incentive for people to get consoles mod-chipped - which in turn means they may be less likely to look into a bit of piracy. Which brings me onto the final point:
DO: Assume that whatever copy-protection you put into the machine will get broken sooner or later and plan accordingly. Reduce the incentive for people to mod their consoles, rather than going for the punitive route. Don't region lock. Do offer up an "other OS" walled garden. Do make it as easy as possible for indie developers to get their software onto the platform.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k277/mrpane911/360.gif
Just replace one spin with two.
I'll wait for XBox 1.44
There you are, staring at me again.
Why not just have a 1TB HDD? Or a swanky SSD? That's the inevitability anyway. Store games in the cloud a la Steam and download them at your convenience. Don't fear the cloud. These days, such a move isn't bound to exclude many as it would have in the past.
This would be a disaster as the XBox experience would be out of control of Microsoft. Instead they would be at the mercy of ISPs. This cannot be overstated. Regardless of the availability of fast Internet connectivity there is a lot to be said for the immediacy of plugging in the XBox, slapping in a disc, and just playing.
Steam is an interesting experiment, and does work, but if you have issues with access to your account you can easily lose an hour or two sorting it out by which time you've lost your time to play.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
I have three Xbox360s, each for a different room of the house. In addition to game consoles they function as media consumption devices for Netflix and for my mountain of movies on the NAS. However, It is such a pain in the ass to migrate between them (and you must, if you want your gamer profile & saved games to interoperate), that I've actually disconnected TWO of them and replaced them with smaller quieter Linux media centers (screw it, If I can only play games on one, I'll only play games on one).
The DRM they employ is hurting their business. I'm thankful that I can re-download my content on different consoles, or swap my hard-drives around, but the fact is, I can only be signed in to XBL in one room at a time, and my Netfilx bandwidth isn't tied to XBL servers except artificially. When I want to play a game online, no one else can watch the movies or surf the marketplace which I pay to access. Yes, I can use separate accounts, but I shouldn't have to fragment my usage needlessly. Besides, I tried that already, trying to find the right drive or profile to play a specific game or movie is RIDICULOUS.
Also, this "online pass" bullshit that's bundled with games has to stop. I already pay for XBL services, MS provides the matchmaking API, its XBL. Dear Epic, I've bought and played every game you ever made from Zork to Gears, but when your activation code prevented me from playing the game I purchased, because another player had used the online pass first, I decided to boycot you... We have 1 disc. Only one of us can play at a time online anyway. You once did produce truly beloved Epic MegaGames, but this bullshit attempt to rape the used game market has caused me to hate you.
In short: SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! People will spend a lot more if you make it easier us to do so. Get rid of the DRM, or at least make it marginally usable.
Until then, I think I'll start investing in your competitors: The DRM free, truly cross platform, charity supporting, indie games.
From what I understand it's essentially BluRay - 25GB for a single layer disc, but they won't pay the licensing fees so it won't be called BluRay and it won't play BluRay movies. Just like the Wii discs are exactly the size of DVDs, the same capacity as DVDs, but technically they're not DVDs and it doesn't play DVD movies. I think you can be pretty sure both the drives and discs come from the very same factories that produce BluRays...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
... to the point where I can boot XBox 720 discs on my PC, even without booting Windows first.
Anyone remember how some games on the Amiga loaded very fast because they did not boot an OS first?
Why do we need competing platforms from Microsoft? Windows 7, Phone, Xbox?
And, most important:
Remember all those people who claimed to not be able to tell the difference between 480p and 1080p? Well, the difference between 1080p and 4k will be REALLY difficult to spot.
Indeed. I sit 10 feet from a 60" and the benefit from a 4K would be so negligible I wouldn't bother (although my vision is in its middle age decline).
Sony has already started pushing a higher capacity 4K capable blu-ray variant through the standards process though. I believe it is quad layer.
The problem with a 4k screen is not the price, it is the usefullness of it. There are charts out there that show the limits of our vision at different distances. A 4k screen would have to be huge to have a noticable difference in clarity at 3m for most people. I lookup up on Wikipedia the optimal viewing distances are for a 1080p screen, and for a 55" like listed above, the optimal viewing distance for 1080p (limited by human eye resolution) is 2-5m. For a 4k screen, it would have to be closer, and there was also noted in that article a mention that being too close to big screens can cause motion sickness.
I think for most people, a 4k screen is way overkill unless you have a HUGE (I would say 100" or above) screen.
From my old Magnavox to the N64, I barely had to wait at all to go between games or parts of games while booted. Now I can wait up to several minutes for the next part of the game to load (especially when it's caching itself on the hard drive). It screws up the flow.
I can't wait until flash is so cheap they distribute 50 GB games on a card. Then we may finally get close to the no-wait we used to have. 1 GB SD cards already cost pocket change in the bulk amounts game makers would be buying them (sad to think I got a good deal on one for $100 some years back).
Added bonus: downloadable content can reside on the card with the game instead of on the machine's storage.
Added added bonus: Harder for kids to destroy a memory card.
Don't need to load the level or even the games code. Just need to stream the video. The next xbox could follow the Onlive model and be a dumb client.
Awesome. Then, assuming I have 60 ms lag to the server, every action will have effective 120 ms lag as an image is sent (60 ms), I respond (instantly, of course), and my response is then sent back over the wire (another 60 ms).
Count me out. Lag in MP games is bad enough; I'm not going to put up with input lag in single-player games.