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Xbox Second Screen Announced
kodiaktau writes "Microsoft has announced a feature called SmartGlass that provides a new set of features when viewing media on mobile or PC devices. Sources say that it will provide context focused advertising/product placement as well as metadata about the media you are currently viewing. Additionally the interface allows you to store viewing data and share between your desktop and mobile devices to continue viewing content between devices. From the article: 'SmartGlass also allows you to view the web on an Xbox 360 using Internet Explorer. The tablet or phone becomes the keyboard and you can easily browse web pages without having a physical keyboard in the living room.'"
No, thanks.
They were late to the "rip off Nintendo" game last gen, so now they are on it before the Wii U is released.
Wow. Steve Ballmer batting 1000 lately.
To be fair, the summary is extremely harsh and implies the feature is primarily for advertising. The article gives an example of displaying a map depicting where all the action is happening during a TV show—a little like how the game Supreme Commander delegates additional resources to dedicated tasks (like a monitor just for a strategic view) rather than simply virtualising them all together as one big viewport.
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How about you work on a next gen console, and stop adding useless crap to your tired console from 2005?
But but but, we can help you find products that you want to spend money on! Don't you want that? Don't you want to spend money? Don't you want to see the new shinies that are coming out on the expensive game system you paid moneys for? Are you some communist that is against buying stuff? And we can build a WEB SERVICE with the RIAA that helps you make sure that you're playing a REAL copy of your favorite movie or album and will make sure you're not some victim using victimizing bittorrent, horrible handbrake and the dangerous PS3MediaServer to enjoy your game system. We just want to give you more purchasing power and help you manage your digital rights. Don't you want power and rights? Huh?
My work here is dung.
Because the 360 (and PS3) are "Good Enough"
Just like DVDs vs BluRay, sure BluRays hold more detail, higher res, etc. but DVD is sufficient for most people. Many are even willing to get lower quality for more convenience, like crappy streams/ 'R5' torrents. I would say the main reason DVD's outsold VHS is the lack of Rewinding.
they want their ideas back.
Finally, Microsoft has listened to it's customers and fanbase! People have been clamouring for years to have context focused advertising/product placement on their Xboxen and now these long years have loyalty have been rewarded. Bravo, Microsoft. Bravo.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
you are doing it wrong. " 360 (and PS3) are "Good Enough""
I stopped playing PS3 after last year's madden, the season progression took 15-35 minutes, the game start takes several minutes... time for new hardware...
"Stop adding value to my current investment and bring out a new platform so I can throw money at you all over again!"
Never thought I'd hear that on slashdot, the place that almost universally derides the upgrade train from LPs to tapes to CDs and then on into the downloadable content realm.
Why not graduate from consoles and move into PC gaming?
If it wasn't for the rumors that next gen consoles are being designed I would have expected the next gen consoles to be stripped down PC's with a content delivery system that works on consoles and PC's.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
The summary doesn't mention it, and I winder ... by phone or tablet, do they mean *any* phone or tablet, or are they going to pull an Apple and lock it to their devices?
to me the non-game stuff was the best part of the show. the latest shoot everyone till they are dead game is getting pretty old.
getting rid of extra crap i have and using the x-box for everything is something i'm looking forward to. few years ago i thought sony was going to do this, but once again sony screwed up
At the keynote they said it will work with Windows 8, Windows Phone, iOS, and Android. Now to what degree of "works" is yet to be specified. I imagine iOS and Android apps might have access to a subset of features, but it's nice to see some attempts at cross platform functionality.
So it's like a Gamecube with the Gameboy attached..... the Gameboy displays extra info about the players or overall maps. Nothing new really.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Upgrading from LP to cassettes to CD don't offer new content..... just the same old stuff that you need to repurchase. But the 5-year-cycle for consoles provides better sound, better graphics, and new games. We want and are willing to pay for improved technology & the new game styles it permits. (Unless you're still sitting there playing your old Atari?)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Because consoles are leading gaming now. There will be those few PC games I care enough about to have the right hardware for, but when a game is available on both platforms, I'll get the console version first.
It's called "XBox 360" because after one look you will turn 360 degrees and walk away. Er...by walking backwards...I guess....
Overhead of the OS. MS tried the "stripped down PC" with the Xbox...it's already been tried. Didn't work.
"I don't want more choice, I just want nicer things!"
-Jennifer Saunders as Edina Monsoon
Microsoft altready tried the "Smash a PC into a console" with the original Xbox, and they lost a lot of money doing it. It is cheaper to design a console that is easy-to-assemble and save some cash, especially if it is designed to allow integration later on (such as the PS2slim with one single CPU instead of several independent chips).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
The problem is that a lot of the stuff mentioned were already possible before this "technology". You can open IMDB on any phone or any tablet already. This sounds a bit more interactive, but why should I be reading about a scene instead of just watching it? There are some potential gaming applications with it, but am I supposed to juggle a controller and a tablet at the same time in order to get a "full" experience? Doesn't sound particularly fun. (Maybe they want me to use Kinect+tablet, but shouting at my TV is definitely not fun.)
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Presumably the same reason Lost had plot-explanation captions in some broadcasts—to facilitate sloppy storytelling and information overload.
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Interesting. If they work only on the XBox 720 and abandon the 360, the typical Slashdot comment will be "OMG THEY WANT TO FORCE YOU TO BUY A NEW CONSOLE THAT YOU DON'T NEED TO GET NEW SOFTWARE FEATURES LIKE A BROWSER".
If you bought a XBox 360, all this is amazing value lasting years (minus RRoD issues which they fixed at their cost) and you can still use all the new features like using your existing iDevice or Android device with the new games.
Why is this a bad thing again, isn't it just more value for your money? They're not even charging the 5, 10 or 20 bucks for the big software upgrades that Apple used to charge for the iPod Touch upgrades.
Why is the summary so lame and talks mostly about ads? I don't even see the "Sources say... ads" line in the article... where did it come from? Now we're going to see that picked up in the comments and without even a proper source.
Again, since when is adding features to something you already bought a bad thing? And no, I am not new here. So I guess it's because we're talking about 'M$' on the Slashdot circle jerk inborn retardation channel. The saner people have left in disgust and the inmates run the asylum, right from the submitters to the commenters to the moderators, perhaps editors too.
Because not everybody is interested in PC gaming?
It's just another machine to buy and keep up to date, and it is probably more effort than most people are willing to invest.
I don't play games often enough to want to do anything other than pop in the disk, play the game a while, and turn off the console.
I'd be willing to bet most people who play on consoles don't want to have a PC gaming rig, or they'd have done so. I for one have no interest in getting into the "which super awesome video card do I need now". A console is more like an appliance, plug it in and go, which is precisely what I want it to be.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
if you believe that and buy into it... you're telling the console makers and console/pc game developers that
you're OK with one-time-use serials to prevent rentals and used game sales..
you're OK with paying a subscription (e.g. xbox live) on top of the top-dollar paid for a game, just to play it.
you're OK with paying for DLC or content packs that really should be part of the game (and in some cases is actually delivered on the game media but cost extra anyway)
you're happy with the high price of games today....
and you don't mind all of these things making their way to PC gaming (because you're used to it all on the consoles)...
in other words, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
I can think of a few examples why I'd want this in addition to simply watching.
My wife and I are working our way through all the Star Trek series right now on Netflix, we're in Voyager now. I can't count the number of times we've said "hey, is that the actor from such and such episode or other sci-fi series?" and pulled up IMDB while letting the show continue to play. Having that info auto-linked would speed up the time it takes to find and get us back into the episode that much faster.
Similarly, in a series like Game of Thrones, imagine if you had the full index from the books at your disposal. You could look up who a forgotten character is to remind you of the plotlines. The intro segment on an episode is usually insufficient if you don't watch them back to back.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Better graphics and new games are something you get in the current cycle, without upgrade consoles. Games from 2012 look a lot better than they did in 2005 on the same hardware.
You're lying. Neither liking consoles nor acknowledging them as the current leading platform type in gaming imply any of those things. You're trying to use emotional blackmail to shame console fans into switching sides, which is stupid for many reasons.
Has nobody noticed that this is, essentially, the same idea as the Wii U from Nintendo?
Why not graduate from consoles and move into PC gaming?
Oh no, I already spent way too many years of my life chasing THAT dragon, thank you very much.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Do you honestly believe that the PC gaming companies aren't doing all of this too?
They don't have one time serial numbers? They don't have additional DLC and add-on costs? They don't have DRM that requires an always-on internet connection? They don't cost a fortune?
I'm pretty sure I've seen people complaining about all of these things in PC gaming.
At least on a console I don't have to worry about what other crap they're doing behind the scenes.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So this time Microsoft is looking to copy the new Nintendo console BEFORE it comes out.
And skydrive-support! Awesome! Windows Phone Sync OMG!
Oh wait wait wait.. oh. jizz BING!!!
I cannot wait for this SmartAss! I want it rite nao!
other platform support will be
1) poorly implemented
2) deliberately gimped
3) late
4) all the above
Better graphics and new games are something you get in the current cycle, without upgrade consoles. Games from 2012 look a lot better than they did in 2005 on the same hardware.
This has pretty much always been the case with most formats- the later games look better as they get to grips with the hardware and standards generally improve. Later Atari 400/800 and Commodore 64 games looked miles better than some of the first releases.
Conversely, while the first tranche of next-generation games may look marginally impressive next to their predecessors, it's often not that big a leap, e.g. I remember when my flatmates bought a PS2 in early 2001 and the games looked slightly improved over what you'd expect from the original PlayStation, but nothing that impressed me that much. (The Grand Prix racing game in particular looked just like a PS1 game with higher resolution). Similarly, the early PS1 game Road Rash looked pretty much like a Mega Drive/Genesis racer, just with a few added polygon buildings and some FMV slapped on.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
So it's coming up on IOS and Windows Phones? I expected Windows Phones but IOS over Android? I just want a native browser on the Xbox so if I want to look something up quick I can. Why won't MS just give us a basic browser to use?
I for one have no interest in getting into the "which super awesome video card do I need now".
To be fair, these days it's more like "which super awesome video game is going to finally require me to upgrade my video card". If you get a decent one (less than 100 dollars) it will last a ridiculously long time playing all the latest games at close to max settings. My theory is that the games are designed in the first place for console hardware which hardly ever gets deprecated, even after a new console version is released.
Umm, those were in *reruns* of shows. They were essentially the same as trivia commentary tracks on some DVDs.
It wasn't like these were in the initial runs of the shows, and necessary to understand the show. They were additional info, for fans. (At least a couple of them succeeded in getting me to watch a rerun, when I otherwise would't've.. But I skipped the ads as always, so it wasn't too successful on the network's part.)
So you're claiming that LPs, *with the pops/clicks and skipping*, sound better than CDs? Especially "to normal ears".
That's ironic, with your username. While I haven't played any of my Atari 2600 games in a long time, I do think some are "still" fun. Heck, I'll probably get a Wii at some point to play the various Mario games (from the Wii download store) I never played, which is the vast majority of them... as well as Wii games. (I wish the current PS3s were backwards compatible to play my PS2 games.. In fact, I'd pay probably as much for an emulator to then play ALL of my existing PS2 games as I would pay for the the PS3 "upgraded " [in some cases downgraded] versions. Unfortunately, I may hold my nose and 're-buy' a couple of the PS3 versions, esp the Sony published ones, since they will end up free after credit card points.)
Regardless, I get the feeling they'd've been useful in the initial broadcasts too sometimes!
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I inferred that you were disparaging them in the original post I responded to. Now it sounds like you thought they were useful.
you're OK with one-time-use serials to prevent rentals and used game sales..
Wrong, that's just as much an issue with PC games.
you're OK with paying a subscription (e.g. xbox live) on top of the top-dollar paid for a game, just to play it.
Wrong, that's only XBox that has subscription fees and wrong again on needing to pay that just to play it.
you're OK with paying for DLC or content packs that really should be part of the game (and in some cases is actually delivered on the game media but cost extra anyway)
Wrong again, this is no different from PC games.
you're happy with the high price of games today....
Wrong again, games on consoles were no more expensive than those on PCs.
and you don't mind all of these things making their way to PC gaming (because you're used to it all on the consoles)...
Nope, they are already in PC gaming because they aren't something that was introduced in console gaming.
Your whole pathetic rant is just a long list of fail, you lose!
Why not graduate from consoles and move into PC gaming?
Because not everyone wants to be on the forums on launch day questioning why their drivers are crashing when they adjust their settings to get a balance between performance and visual quality. Look at the myriad of posts on the forums for AAA titles complaining of crashes with different hardware combinations and hurried releases of drivers to try and fix problems.
I can't wait to get my hands on this! I can't beleive that nobody has solved this problem yet. Hopefully SmartGlass will deliver. i also hope it can talk directly to the XBox through your home router instead of going out to the cloud and back down. We'll see. Oh, and while I'm asking for stuff, let us develop XBox apps using Xaml/C# (or some flavor of Silverlight).
How about you work on a next gen console, and stop adding useless crap to your tired console from 2005?
Yeah stop supporting your products dammit!
I bear no ill tidings toward the subtitles (although like any metadata for a show, they're distracting), I just don't like the show.
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I'll be very disappointed if there's no Wii U tablet support. ;-)
If you're ok as a game developer making 3d realistic graphics on crappy intel gma 915 mobile graphics with 3% of the power of a real GPU with a console, and no dedicated ram.
Seriously Intel killed the gaming market for the pc. I saw a statistic here several years ago that showed 70% of the pcs sold come with these graphics so horrible not even Aero can run properly. The same games all look fluid and awesome on the console and kids laugh at PCs because they are so slow, crappy, and over priced.
Go ahead and try to write a game for only those with cool graphics. Guess what? BestBuy wont carry it because 70% of the users will say it runs like crap and return and then the retailer will refuse to carry your product.
WIth these 2 problems it is easier just to write it for a console. Sadly, the PC is going this route too as Windows 8 approaches as stores, subscriptions, wireless plans, and renting become the new norm.
http://saveie6.com/
Nah, just time for less shitty software. Plenty of good games have load times measured in seconds and not minutes.
MS has missed the boat on just about everything. The bulk of disposable income wants gadgets, not PCs, sure a single PC is OK, but the money is in phones, tablets and consoles, and trying to turn the xbox into something worse through ads will only drive people away.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
You are correct (programmer skills improve over a console's life), but exaggerate a bit. The games you cite as examples were probably developed for the PS1, and then last-minute ported to the PS2. That happened with Final Fantasy 4 which is really an NES game, but was retargeted to Super Nintendo near the end of development. Ditto "Animal Crossing" and "Luigi's Mansion" which were originally N64 games, but released to the Gamecube since the n64 had been discontinued.
Final Fantasy 10 and Gran Turismo 4 were both released during the PS2's first year of life, and since they were targeted from the ground-up as PS2 titles, they were waaaaay beyond anything the PS1 could do. They had double the pixels (480i instead of 240i) and millions more polygons for a smoother look.
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considering i only play a hand full of games, madden being one of them... i wish there was a way to update rosters for madden 2010 instead of a "new" game each year.
You just need a couple of high profile reviews to complain about how bad the load times are, and they'll be forced to do a better job.
PS3 has a 2X BluRay drive, which means 72 Mbps. It also has 512 MB of RAM (if you count both the video and system, 256 MB each). To fill the 100% of the RAM with data loaded from the disc (which will never happen in practice, you need RAM for other things), it would require 57 seconds. Less if you've cached anything to the hard drive.
In reality, you probably only need half that in pure data, and you could have pre-loaded or kept a fair amount from the previously loaded data (your team's players don't really change game to game).
I'd argue more than 30 second load time on the PS3 is just sloppy work. Xbox 360's DVD drive is about twice as fast as PS3's BluRay drive, so generally Xbox 360 load times shouldn't be more than 15 seconds. Xbox 360 also dedicates a chunk of hard drive dedicated to automatic caching (If you want to use the hard drive on the PS3, you typically have to "Install" the game. For some games that is mandatory).
Not to mention Dreamcast and its VMU modules (or whatever they were called). Frankly, it's a shame we've had to wait until now (for TFA and the Wii U) for it to resurface as an idea again.