Slashdot Mirror
Leaked Document Hints At Augmented Reality Glasses For Future Xbox
An anonymous reader writes "A 56-page leaked document details Microsoft's plans to build a Project Glass competitor. Kinect Glasses is marked as a 2014 project designed to connect to a future Xbox 720 console. The document also includes potential pricing for the next Xbox — $299 with a Kinect 2."
Project Glass *IS MICROSOFT'S*. Why would they develop a competitor to their own competitor to the WiiU?
Seems interesting but worth remembering this is on old product roadmap from August 2010 which broadly outlines: 2011 - TV App for Xbox 360 2012 - Pay TV App for Xbox 360 2013 - Xbox 720 & Kinect V2 2014 - Glasses (WiFi / Living Room) 2015 - Glasses (Mobile) Seems like a useful product for gaming input, potentially 3D display in glasses & maybe augmented reality for say PvP in room rather then on-screen. The mobile glasses concept seems a bit ambitious but it was a 5-yr roadmap I'd read this as a head-mounted display, mic & headphones etc .. interesting but not revolutionary ...
And may be completely out of date too ????
But how much will Microcrap charge per month for Xbox live?
they should presented that at e3 instaed of their watch-what's-on-your-cellphone-from-your-tv-in-your-refridgerator crap
As a kid, we already had Augmented Reality in game-play.
We played soldiers, cowboys and Indians and any other game.
OK, instead of a 17 button game console controller, we used a stick and instead of Augmented Reality Glasses we used our imagination, but still.
Now get of my lawn.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
How many months was Xbox Live inactive for? How much personal information did Microsoft make available to malicious parties?
Is Xbox Live mandatory or an optional extra?
Way to miss the point, again, Microsoft.
I can only assume this is another example of bureaucracy and accountants getting in the way of tech.
I know that you had tongue in the cheek as you wrote that post but I believe that both you and other might still think that augmented reality games and imagination are somehow comparable... which they really aren't.
Think of reading a good book. You're enjoying a form of art where one talented individual (or group of such) carefully crafted something. Everyone gets the experience just as intended by the artist, but then each individual's personal views, life experience, etc. is combined with the artwork and everyone gets unique experience. The beauty of any artwork is exactly in the combination of being able to examine something just as it was designed and interpreting that based on your own personality.
Now, consider just coming up with a cool story inside your head. I'm not saying that's worse than reading a book, but it's entirely different thing, because you're no longer experiencing something as it was designed by the artist.
I assume their target audience probably aren't the kind of people who need to wear prescription glasses already.
"Loss leader" sounds a lot like "monopoly abuse" to me.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Being a loss leader doesn't require a monopoly, only lots of money.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Xbox Live is free. Maybe you're thinking of Gold Live - the service which provides extra non-essentials for those who really want it. The live service, match-making, all online gaming, is free.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Ars technica has a good writeup on this: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/leaked-document-points-to-299-xbox-720-for-2013/ Consensus is that its either fake, or marketing powerpointware for ideas, not designs.
pretty certain you can't play online without Gold
If you count "playing games online" as an extra, then sure.
Oh wait, you think you can play online with silver. Nah, you can't. Not that it's something I care for, but you can't.
True enough, I suppose. While the two terms aren't exactly synonymous, they do have similarities. In this case, Microsoft is most assuredly a monopoly. Coming out with a "loss leader" may very well be "monopoly abuse". IMO, there is little if any difference. It's remotely possible that if I liked Microsoft, I might view this similarity in a different light. Since I despise Microsoft, I'll choose the light in which I view the matter, thank you.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
>Kinect Glasses is marked as a 2014 project designed to connect to a future Xbox 720 console.
And not tethered to a smartphone or at least a wifi handheld, so you can go *outside* and actually *use* augmented reality?
Way to kill your innovation in the cradle, Microsoft.
--
BMO
Of the PS3, 360 and Wii, only the Wii was sold at a profit initially, the others were subsidized by the game sales. There's a history of this going back decades at this point. It's only a monopoly abuse when it harms the competition, normally it's just a business strategy and it counts on there being enough quality games that they make up the difference on royalties.
Now, if they're using profits from elsewhere or jacking up the prices when the competition is out of the picture that would be an antitrust violation.
Seems that Microsoft has an incredible sense for useless innovations that will never catch on.
Nobody except a very small group of geeks will ever wear glasses for anything else than sharper vision.
Sales worldwide:
Wii - 96 Million
360 - 67 Million
PS3 - 64 Million
67/227 = 29.5% of the current gen home console market. Not even close to monopoly abuse.
FWIW, Sony also sold their console at a loss for a while in a bid to increase installed base. Are there two console monopolies? Nintendo are the only one of the 3 current console manufacturers that doesn't sell hardware at a loss.
Huh, I didn't know that.
I guess they're kind of in an Apple-type situation: their marketshare isn't fantastic, but they dominate the mindshare in that field. I had always just assumed Xbox was the majority. You know what they say about assuming, though.
xbox live is mandatory if you want to play games online, you know these games that you already paid 60€ to play, psn is mandatory as well if you want to play online, so not much difference except that xbox live isn't free
what will the TV content have? what will it work with?
Just the IPTV that U-Verse and other systems with the same tech use (still needs there main box)
OTA TV?
cable clear qam?
cable card?
cable card + SDV tuner?
cable card + VOD / PPV?
RVU (right only with directv and needs there main box)
Take a DISH or DIRECTV smart card? (under ground route they don't offer cards for 3rd party boxes)
AllVid (still needs a main box and roll out date unknown)
others??
... if it can augment the wife.
I don't like playing online. Fuck online, I want to play split-screen with my friends. A close friend at EA has told me that split-screen is being phased out of new titles because online is more profitable - it helps kill the 2nd hand game market, which is one of EA's strategic goals.
My bad:
http://www.cracked.com/article_16196_the-7-commandments-all-video-games-should-obey.html
Thou shalt let us play your game with real-life friends.
Violators:
Grand Theft Auto IV, MotorStorm, Shadowrun, etc.
Quick, tell us what the following games all have in common. We'll give you a hint, one thing is that they were all among the top 10 most popular games of 2007:
Wii Sports
Wii Play
Guitar Hero III
Super Mario Galaxy
Madden NFL 08
Guitar Hero II
Mario Party 8
But what else? If you answered, "None of them contain male frontal nudity" then, well, you haven't gotten the 122nd star in Mario Galaxy. If you said that these games all have multiplayer that's intended to be played with friends in the same room, you're right.
Likewise, what's at the top of sales in 2008? Smash Bros. Brawl.
The advantage that consoles have over, say, PCs, is that you can play from your comfy sofa. The reason the sofa is considered the pinnacle of furniture technology is because there's room for other people on it.
Yet, here's Grand Theft Auto IV, boasting about its robust multiplayer, and if you think "multiplayer" means inviting the gang over to play, get drunk, laugh and high-five each other until the break of dawn, too bad. You can't do that. Want to play with friends, they must be kept at arm's length, faceless at the other end of a broadband connection. Grand Theft Auto IV multiplayer is a world without hugs.
They'll say that GTA IV's vast open world makes split-screen impossible. OK, what about MotorStorm? It's a goddamned racing game, and they won't let you play a real-life friend on a split screen. A racing game.
Sorry, you know damned well that technical limitations aren't the reason everyone is dropping split screen. Every previous generation had it, in times with much less powerful systems and few widescreen TVs.
You're dropping it because four players on a split screen are playing off one $60 copy of the game. Four players playing online need four copies ($240).
And these are the same people who're baffled about how the Nintendo Wii was able to depants the whole industry with its cheap, underpowered little machine. Hey, maybe it's because they're the one company that still seems to realize humans need interaction with other humans. Real interaction, not trash talking over a headset behind fake names.
By the way, some of you are scratching your heads about having the obviously single-player Mario Galaxy up there on the list. Well, it turns out Nintendo included an option so that at any moment, a friend can pick up the second controller and, with the pointer, help the first player collect items and shoot at enemies. It's a small thing, but it means a guy can get his girlfriend in on the action and cut off her complaints that his gaming is taking away from his time with her.
So when she comes over, do you think he's going to put on his GTA IV headset, or pop in Mario Galaxy? Here's a hint: The second choice gets him closer to touching boob.
it's wearing glasses. Nothin's cooler. Ok, maybe if it's those cool glasses you were while AC/DC music plays, but the trouble with that is the music only plays when you take the glasses off.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Microsoft is not a monopoly and neither is Intel. Both companies enjoy competitors with products at generally lower costs that are perfect substitutes for their products.
A monopoly exists when a customer has NO other reasonable choice or the monopolist is able to completely control their market and their competitors profitability.
I frankly think of Microsoft as a one trick pony whose pony is about to expire, quite the opposite of a monopoly.
Between this and the non-stop stream of "oh yeah, we should do that too" non-creativity, looks like MS should change their motto to the classic Usenet idiocy:
ME TOOOOOOOO!
It gets stupider. A huge percentage of households have no video game consoles at all, or an older console like a playstation 2, an original xbox or some other, and a lot of households have more than one. We have three 360's, a ps3 and two wii's. My sons three best friends have one wii between their three households. Guess whose house they spend all day at...
So calculating a real dominant market share analysis is a tad more complicated than doing some simple division.
Sony already learned a lesson on building a $500+ console...nobody buys it because the wii is 1/4 the price and the xbox without hard drive or kinect isnt much more expensive than that. However, Sony management is filled with idiots who will always make mistakes and repeat errors, and hold the sanctity of their content at a point where regardless of the impact to the customer, they'll always shoot for 100% content protection even if it means making the product unusable by the customer. Ask your friends at Bestbuy or Fry's how much fun they had with customers returning gazoodles of blu-ray players and "defective" disks because they changed codes and implemented new protections and all of the customers who didn't know how to update firmware or who didn't have a network and network attached player were stuck with a non playing movie. I won't even delve into the sony ps3 network fiasco that resulted in my daily netflix box (the ps3) ending up in a closet for 3 months, replaced by a roku player. I'll always remember that fondly, Sony.
I think nintendo got lucky with the Wii. Really, really lucky. I dont think the wii U is going to bring them the same sort of luck. If the ps4 is over $400-450 and doesn't have some absolutely killer feature, it'll sell badly until they drop the price, just like the ps3 did.
In looking at the 720 and its persistent allegations of cranking up the content protection and finding ways to resist used games a la Sony...well...if thats the case then I don't want it at any price. I'm not really willing to pay $50 or even $35 for new release games. I'm into paying $10-15 for a used game. Since the used games need a $5-10 code to play online or use important DLC, they're now worth $5-10 less to me, as are the new games because the publisher already stole part of the resale value right up front.
At some point the industry has to figure out a way to profitably connect game and content publishers to the public without all of the electronic 'protections' that never work anyhow. While not simple, I've looked at all the stuff you can do to hack consoles to play games and watch movies for free. Anyone that wants to can do it. So they're just inflicting a huge hassle on the 98% of people who would never bother, while concurrently screwing up people who cant afford high priced new release games.
Sometimes the only way to win the game is not to play. I think I'll just keep buying old used games for the 360 from the pre DLC era and let these guys faces hit the pavement a few times, see how it goes after that.
Sure it was "leaked" document full of "stuff" for the Xbox.
More likely it was purposely leaked piece of FUD to make their competition (Sony) worry and work on stuff that doesn't matter.
I trust nothing about MS based on MS's history.
Be seeing you...
Now see, I'd pay extra for that feature. No, not the glasses. I often say that some expensive item would only be worth it if I could fark it.
Wow. Tableaux right here on Slashdot. Bravo!
This is the most boring, inane post I've read in quite some time.
I thought it was quite interesting.
the xbox kinect is a piece of shit!
the comercial sells it far above its bar.
the comodedy is less accurate to give user expirnce for gaming, and the device is a microsoft clasic.
not ready to hit the marker
they dont know what to do with it
they dont care about you, you already paid for the hardware, the software is others problem.
till this day, no epic game for kinect, ony garbage.
In this case, Microsoft is most assuredly a monopoly.
No, a monopoly isn't a term with which you label a company, it's related to their position in a particular market. Microsoft has a monopoly position in particular market.
Coming out with a "loss leader" may very well be "monopoly abuse".
Not in a market in which they have no position. Many companies use anti-competitive tactics, for example Microsoft was chastized by the DoJ for their use of private APIs in their software giving them a competitive advantage on their platform, Apple has a similar usage of private APIs for their software on iOS that they prevent developers from using. It's legally valid in Apple's case because they don't have a monopoly, the behavior is the same though.
Since I despise Microsoft, I'll choose the light in which I view the matter, thank you.
As in i'll incorrectly apply the term 'monopoly' in such a way that it enables me to make my point. Terms don't just mean whatever you want them to mean, and in this case 'monopoly' most certainly doesn't mean what you think it means.
You may stick with strict interpretations of law. I'm looking at a larger picture, one which the DOJ should be looking at, instead of narrow and strict interpretations.
Microsoft OS's run on more than 90% of consumer computers. More than 90% of school age children for the past 15 years has been exposed to a Microsoft environment. In fact, most "computer science" classes have nothing to do with "science", instead being nothing more than learning how to navigate a Windows-centric business environment.
The monopoly is far more pervasive than the DOJ has ever stated - and it's not going away in the next year or two. Give it another decade, I think. Everything that Microsoft did in it's first ten years was intentionally designed to give them this monopolistic position today. It's slipping, and eventually, they will lose the position. But, not for years, yet.
Anytime a corporation has billions of dollars with which to leverage itself into a "new market", you are seeing abuse of monopoly. Walmart has done it again, and again, and again. Same thing with Microsoft.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You may stick with strict interpretations of law. I'm looking at a larger picture, one which the DOJ should be looking at, instead of narrow and strict interpretations.
No, it's the basic definition of the word.
Microsoft OS's run on more than 90% of consumer computers. More than 90% of school age children for the past 15 years has been exposed to a Microsoft environment. In fact, most "computer science" classes have nothing to do with "science", instead being nothing more than learning how to navigate a Windows-centric business environment.
So they have a monopoly on desktop/laptop computers, that doesn't give them a monopoly in all other markets they choose to enter, as defined by the term 'monopoly'.
Anytime a corporation has billions of dollars with which to leverage itself into a "new market", you are seeing abuse of monopoly.
Wrong, that's not a monopoly in any way, shape or form, and is clearly not what the word monopoly means.
Let's suppose that I'm a rich kid. My Daddy owns the town. He owns more than half the real estate, he owns 3/4 of the businesses, he owns the bank. And, he happens to have leveraged all that into becoming the mayor. I have everything going for me.
I graduate from high school and/or college, and decide to go into business. One of my classmates wants to compete against me.
How much competition within the community do you really think there is going to be? My Daddy isn't going to do business with someone outside the family. Meaning, I have every business and property that he owns sewed up, my "competitor" can't touch any of that. The only "competition" is going to be for all those other people.
Things will be much much worse for my classmate, if Daddy decides that he wants to invest some money into my own venture. He can pay for advertising that I might not be able to afford. He can pay for the best tools and equipment. He can offer higher wages to anyone thinking of working for my classmate.
But - you wouldn't think of this situation as a "monopoly", would you? What exactly would you call it?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Just because you can afford to do a loss leader product doesn't mean you have a monopoly or are abusing a monopoly position. It isn't illegal to have a competitive advantage, in fact virtually every market in existence you'll find one party has a competitive advantage over others.
Things will be much much worse for my classmate, if Daddy decides that he wants to invest some money into my own venture. He can pay for advertising that I might not be able to afford. He can pay for the best tools and equipment. He can offer higher wages to anyone thinking of working for my classmate.
But - you wouldn't think of this situation as a "monopoly", would you? What exactly would you call it?
No, of course not, because it isn't a monopoly, it's reality. You think you have some entitlement to a completely level playing field? That all your competitors should be forced stoop to your level so they don't have any kind of advantage over you? Do you not understand the very basic concept of a free market economy?
In any case how is your situation in any way analogous to the situation with Microsoft? It's not even relatable. The tablet market is well established and Microsoft isn't a part of it. Apple has all of the advantage with marketshare and cash, no other tablet model even comes close to touching the iPad's dominance in the tablet space and even then it's not a monopoly.
Bah, go back in the house and listen to your Mungo Jerry!
You should keep those sorts of opinions tight these days. I see forcible reeducation in your future. You need to learn to share, smile, do the carbon-free dance, bond with Gaia, and most importantly give 99% of your money to the unworthy.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.