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Microsoft Unveils Xbox One
Today at a press conference leading up to E3, Microsoft unveiled its next-gen games/entertainment console, the Xbox One. Their stated goal for the Xbox One is to have a single device provide "all of your entertainment." One of the big changes is increased support for voice and and gesture input. You can turn the console on by voice, and it will recognize you and automatically login. Swiping to the side with your hand will browse through menu pages, and saying "Watch TV" will bring up the TV app very quickly. The same with music, internet, and movies. The new console also supports multitasking — for example, while watching a movie, you can bring up your web browser in a side panel and surf the web at the same time. There is also a built-in TV listings app that responds to channel names — saying "Watch CBS" will switch to CBS without giving it an actual channel number. By this point, you're probably asking: does it play games? Yes. Hardware specs: 8-core CPU/GPU, 8GB RAM, a Blu-ray drive, a 500GB HDD, USB 3.0, and Wi-fi Direct. (They didn't provide the CPU frequency, instead saying it had 5 billion transistors.) The Kinect sensor got an upgrade: 2Gbps of data capture has finer skeletal visibility, can detect minor orientation changes in hands and fingers, and can even calculate your balance and weight distribution. The new controller looks slightly bigger, and is designed to play well with Kinect. They've also updated Smartglass, the remote control software that runs on mobile devices, but they didn't explain much about it. The new Xbox Live will have 300,000 servers powering it, up from 15,000 this year — though, of course, no details were provided about server specs. The console will have native game capture and editing tools — essentially, a game DVR. Saved games will be stored in the cloud, and they have new matchmaking capabilities that operate in the background. Update: 05/21 17:50 GMT by S : Halo is getting its own live-action TV show, for some reason. They'll be collaborating with Steven Spielberg. Microsoft is also partnering with the NFL for live broadcasts and interactive experiences, such as split-screen Skype chats and fantasy league updates. Xbox One will be out "later this year." No price information. it will not be backward-compatible with Xbox 360 games.
Please Slashdot, do your worst :)
throw new NoSignatureException();
A 1980's stereo receiver and a VHS player from the 1990's.
If I can not smoke in heaven, then I shall not go. -- Mark Twain
It took them 30 minutes, half the duration of the entire presentation, before they started talking about games. It is not looking good as a next-gen "game" system.
What the hell is wrong with their numbering conventions? They went from Xbox 360 to Xbox 1? Are they starting all over again from version 1? Why? Is it because finally they have erased all the sunken costs and the franchise is finally in the black? On the windows they went DOS 3.1 to Win95, Win98, Millenium, Win2K, Vista and then finally discovered their first grade math, Win7,8,9...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Didn't that come out like 12 years ago?
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
And it comes with Windows 8 (crickets...)
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I really hope this means every XBox will come with a Cablecard slot in the back, just so Microsoft can cause every Cable Company manager's head to explode at the same time when they announce the feature.
I read the internet for the articles.
So basically all the features I have been using for the last 3 years on XBMC + Steam, except for Voice and motion input(which i think are silly and I don't want).
-EL
before everyone jumps in on the "i thought this was version 3 not 1" bandwagon - it means ONE as in ONE tool to do it all. not ONE as in version 1 of the product line....
Looks like the Xbox One is a home-entertainment center for which gaming is mostly an afterthought.
That's not necessarily a bad thing (hardcore gamers aren't nearly as important of a demographic as they think), but a lack of focus could be a real problem. We already have general-purpose machines that are versatile enough to do what we want them to. Microsoft needs to make the case why this is better than a laptop or a tablet or a smartphone – especially as it is certain to be loaded down with DRM.
So far I've not seen anything about the always-on requirement for the internet connection.
That feature is make or break for me, because if it *needs* an internet connection to be always enabled, I can tell you now I won't buy this -- they had their chance, and they put ads into both my home screen and my games.
Did anyone who actually watched the event see anything about this? I've checked several articles so far, and none of them have mentioned that part.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I will consider it when I can play netflix on it without any sort of subscription.
Does it have tv tunner? cable card? satellite TV?
Tuner. It's tuner you illiterate tool.
Does "You can turn the console on by voice" mean when "off" this thing is actually running a voice recognition system waiting for you to turn it "on"? Ignoring the "it's constantly listening to what is going on" part: what did they say the "standby" power use was?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
"5 billion transistors", also the number of square feet needed to use kinect?
Sigger than your average
No, why?
Netflix has no advertising. I play it on my PS3 with no subscription to any sony product and there are no ads.
Easy, they will sell it at below cost, like console manufacturers always do at first. Both Sony and Microsoft lost money on every console they ever released until well into their lifecycles.
That is one reason why Microsoft encrypted the controller protocol on the 360. They claw back money on expensive accessories and didn't want any unlicensed hardware on the market.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Not backwards compatible with Xbox 360 games?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
If you have an XBox 360, why go with something 359 releases out of date?
It's always going to be on... you can walk into a room and say "Xbox, On." That means it's always going to be watching. It reports back what your watching ("See what your friends are watching."). They've increase the camera resolution enough that they can read your heart rate. Sorry... too freaky for me. It's like a LOTR Palantir... gonna have to cover it with a cloth. Or maybe another metaphor, like an Xbox Hal... me: "Xbox, Switch to Playstation 4" Xbox: "I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you do that."
Nope, they switched to x86.
Maybe not a problem for the devs.
Big problem for all the customers who are pissed they have to buy a new game CD.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I prefer Japanese. No-one else around me can eavesdrop, it doesn't sound as dorky and it actually works better. In Japanese sounds don't run together nearly as much as in English and so the voice recognition is considerably more reliable. Plus Japanese sat-navs are super-polite.
Having said that Google seem to have got English recognition more or less perfect now, even if you are Scottish.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Always on, always listening.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Just considering that this will be abbreviated XBONE...so errors are XBONERS, and if you get an RROD, wouldn't that make you XBONED?
Xbox customers are extremely loyal, to the point of sycophancy. Of all the Xbox owners I know, zero of them have just bought one Xbox 360. After they got RROD'd, they ALL went out and bought another at full price. One of my friends is now on his 13th one.
Plus there are legions of people who buy the special edition Xbox 360's, and just toss their old working one in a closet and forget about it or repurpose it for another room.
Replying to myself, lame I know...
One other question came to mind after I hit submit. Does the XBOX do all the recognition itself, or is everything you (and every sound in the room) sent to Microsoft for decoding? If so how easy is it for interested parties to access that audio stream?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Specs like this? You say that like they are good specs. Some cheap-ass 4 core hyperthreaded CPU so they can say it technically has 8, like the PS4, a paltry 8GB of RAM, obsolete Blu-Ray drive and an absolutely tiny 500GB hard drive (why 500GB? why not AT LEAST 1TB?).
Nah. This thing will come out for $300-$400 and will be drastically underpowered compared to even a moderate range gaming PC, just like the PS4
You can turn the console on by voice
Do you need to have a really sexy voice?
Does it matter if you're male/female or will it work both ways?
If you fail to turn it on the first time, will you ever be able to turn it on in the future?
I just really need to know these things before I even think about buying one.
Could be compatible with games for the xbox 1... I mean original xbox... Ugh. This is going to be a problem isn't it?
Hm yes that rabid loyalty. They should have said 'fuck this console and every game I spent $60 on' and moved elsewhere and refused to spend that $199 to replace it. that would have showed M$.
Do they have deals with ATT UVerse, Cox/Charter/You Name it Cable channels, Dish/Direct TV Satellite companies to hook into their systems? That would actually be some coup if they were to be able to integrate into all these systems...will it also act as a DVR? I mean, if they want to be a 1 box fits all, that would be one big requirement I'd guess.
Sure it can play games....but how well does it do the other stuff ?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
How about product-induced ADD?
I don't want to have a fucking Skype session while I watch football, I want to watch football when I want to watch football. I don't want to give up valuable real estate to a fucking web browser when I'm watching a movie, I want to concentrate on the movie.
In fact, I would contend that the director did a shitty job of making the movie if you can only half-way pay attention for a few minutes while cocking about on the Internet and not miss something.
I don't want my saved games "in the cloud" where I can't access them if my ISP takes a shit. If you're going to put half a terabyte of disk in the thing, let me save a few 1MB save files on it. In fact, my Xbox360 is one of the few electronic things I can still use if my ISP takes a shit these days. They already tried this with "Games for Windows" a couple years back, and it was terrible. In Fallout 3, you could get into the game, and tell it to load the game before it completed your login to Live, and it would load a game from weeks ago if you were playing the DLC.
I'll let others talk about the rest of it - I don't have any feelings one way or the other about other "features."
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Any news on if it can play Xbox 360 games? The thing is if MS drops 360 Xbox Live support the 360 becomes an expensive boat anchor. Everything on the 360 revolves around Live including your profiles, Important game patches, Video content like renting movies and HBO GO, etc.
I guess I can live without being able to play 360 games on the One but then Microsoft HAS to keep Live going on the 360 for as long as people are willing to pay for Live service. People have a ton of money invested in these systems and If MS says "Sorry buy the new one and all new games" that would be a big Fuck You to all of us. There is definitely something to be said for old cartridge and cdrom based gaming systems that were pre-internet. They all work now and will all work 15 years from now. The 360 probably won't.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
If you have an XBox 360, why go with something 359 releases out of date?
Actually they use 8.491853096 bits to store the version number, so "One" is overflowese for "361".
(3 quatloos for whoever spots the problem with that first.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The article says the SoC is 40-nanometer. Is that a mistake?
As a former Texas Instruments customer, I am deaf to your claims.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I'm firmly in the single-player, offline-only game-play camp
So what you're saying is that you're prefer masturbation, over getting involved with other people
There's the offline single-player camp. There's the online multiplayer camp. Do we already forget the offline multiplayer camp? I thought that was console games' one big advantage over PC games.
Do not install Xbox One in the bedroom and/or avoid having sex in the same room as your Xbox One.
Which room does your Xbox One have sex in?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Could be compatible with games for the xbox 1... I mean original xbox... Ugh. This is going to be a problem isn't it?
Though I doubt it's likely to be a major problem in the long term, I do agree that it's a somewhat strange and confusing name, especially as the "PSOne" was a cost-reduced version of the original PlayStation.
When I scanned the headline, I briefly wondered whether this "XBox One" referred to a cost-reduced version of the existing console rather than the new model (though if I'd thought about it I'd have remembered that the current "XBox" isn't the first generation anyway, and MS aren't remotely likely to release a new version of the original XBox, no matter how cheap).
Anyhow, Nintendo managed- by disregarding the issue and not changing it- to get people to forget how laughable a name "Wii" was, and still is when you think about it. So people will get used to this...
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Once the new console is released, I'll sell them on EBay as "XBox 1, slightly used, only $200".
That won't work. As of this July, eBay requires all listings of used goods to come with a photo of the item taken by the buyer, and this photo must be at least 500 pixels long on the longer side. You won't be able to post a listing without a photo, and stock photos qualify only for brand-new items and for services. Sellers who don't already own a suitable camera can always buy one on eBay.
Tuner. It's tuner you illiterate tool.
No, it's 'tuna'.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I already have a PS3 and if this sort of BS continues I might get a PS4.
For the other stuff I use a HTPC since hulu blocks non PC devices from their free site.
I'm curious how this thing will 'tune' in TV? Do they have deals with ATT UVerse, Cox/Charter/You Name it Cable channels, Dish/Direct TV Satellite companies to hook into their systems?
US cable companies are required to support the CableCard standard, so including that would cover all of them. They might still need to make individual deals with Uverse and the satellite providers, assuming they care about them. (I haven't looked up the stats, but I get the impression that mini-dish satellite TV isn't as popular as it once was. Probably because people have to pay the cable company for Internet access anyway, and figure it's easier to just use them for TV as well.)
IBM got righteously busted for tying in the 70's. I can't think of any reason why Microsoft should escape similar proceedings today.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Don't want an overpriced box that does everything. I want a game console that plays games and doesn't need the internet to "check in" with the home office...
This article confirms that both the CPU and GPU are based on AMD designs. Which means it will be an "8-core" CPU the same way the Bulldozer is 8-core: technically true if you only care about integer instructions, but it's more accurate to say there are four modules than eight cores.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like the Xbox One SoC is basically a customized, jumbo-sized version of AMD's Trinity APU.
Yeah, I agree. Porting the game might not be much of an issue but like you mentioned the consumer will have to re-purchase the game, which will be an issue for most.
The consumers (aka, the mindless bleating masses) may repurchase all of their games, but the customers, the ones who are able to make intelligent decisions instead of just blindly accepting everything their corporate overlords throw at them, would just hang on to their 360 consoles in order to play their 360 games, and only purchase new titles for this new system, if they decide they want it.
Any word yet on if Microsoft is still going ahead with the plan to tie each purchased game to a single console, preventing a used games market from arising? If that happens, then the intelligent customers will avoid this console like the plague, and either go with the competition, or go without (aka, stay with their old systems and the huge library of games out there that can last them several lifetimes)?
This space unintentionally left blank.
The idea that Sony lost money on every console ever made is false. After all, Sony is a hardware company.
The PS3 may have lost money on initial units sold. The PS1 and PS2 did not.
Unless it has a couple of Cablecard slots on back, I don't see how that's going to work either. If it's going to be some kludgey IR blaster setup, then forget it. And my cableco's cable boxes don't have any other interface that I'm aware of.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I just did a google image search for "xbox one". Only 1 (lol) image of the new xbox shows up, all the rest are 1st gen Xbox's.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=xbox+one&btnG=Search&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&client=firefox-a&um=1&hl=en&tbm=isch&tab=wi
I'm in the UK, is this the same case for elsewhere in the world?
Remember kids: What's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
But can it play Crysis?
Yes, rhetorical question, I know.
But taking it seriously... The new Xbox GPU is said to be similar to the Radeon 7790. And according to Anandtech, that card can indeed handle Crysis in full HD at more modest settings at playable frame rates (though not a full 60 fps).
That said... who cares? Crysis is basically a benchmark masquerading as a game. It's amazing how much publicity Crytek got by hiring programmers who don't know how to optimize.
“Snapping in” is the Xbox One’s task-switching mechanism, and it’s made possible by some serious operating system kung fu.
WTF, this thing has a an x86 core and is running a modified version of MS Windows, how much effort did they put into multitasking. If they really did put this much effort into it isn't this a bit of wheel re-invention, or maybe they have a better scheduler than in desktop Windows. If the systems is better than standard Windows why is it not being pushed into there main OS.
I may well get one of these, I always liked my XBOXes (original and 360, never had one break). It really depends on whether the always on internet requirment is actually a requirment. I never connected my xbox to the net, and infreaquantly connected my 360. When I want to play games I like to be able to grab a beer and play by myself (I never really enjoyed online gaming) or even better get some mates round get more beer and play games on a big TV, oh and pizza don't forget pizza.
Although I won't be buying this when its brand new, I let some kinks get ironed out and the price drop a bit.
Most Damage is done by people who are AWAKE
Xbox customers are extremely loyal, to the point of sycophancy.
Not this one. I've been an Xbox owner since the Xbox 1. But I've grown tired of having to pay $50/year for basic stuff like using the Netflix and Hulu apps. I'm also sick of the ad-heavy new home UI, the shitty new Netflix UI, and the fact that MS has spent years dropping all their best first-party developers.
I was vastly underwhelmed by today's unveiling (seriously, a Halo TV show, wtf?!?!?). The fact that the didn't even address the "always on" requirement for single-player titles rumors tells me all I need to know. Combine that with a bunch of "cloud" shit, no interesting exclusives, a new cable interface that probably won't even work with my cable system, and hardware that's no better than the PS4--and it all adds up to a great big cup of who-gives-a-fuck.
This Xbox fanboy is probably going PS4 this time around. At least it will save me $50 a year.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
So you want Adds in the middle of your shows?
He means the Xbox Live Gold subscription, not the Netflix one. Unlike every other device on the market, Xbox requires you to pay them $50/year just to access the Netflix app (on top of what you pay Netflix)
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Bulldozer module is NOTHING like hyperthreading.
Hyperthreading duplicates/shares key registers, cache entries and TLBs in order to execute instructions from TWO THREADS on the same processor core. The EXECUTE and DECODE are typically much wider to allow two threads to fully-utilize all the execution resources of a single core. Software must be written specifically to take advantage of this feature (separate threads for FPU and ALU ops, and go easy on the thread locking), or you'll see zero, or possibly NEGATIVE improvement. Best-case scaling throughput (Nehalem) is 20-30%.
Bulldozer modules are two COMPLETELY INDEPENDENTLY OPERATING cores that share decoders and an FPU unit. The decoders are tasked depending on how many cores in the module are loaded, and the FPUs just have a shared reservation station available to both processors (assumes that most loads are integer-heavy). Neither processor can execute instructions from another thread, and the best-case scaling is much higher than Hyperthreading (typically 70-80%).
Also, Bullozer will be losing one of it's major disadvantages when Steamroller launches: the decoders will be 4-wide for each module, and run independently, which is expected to allow scaling to 90-95% in integer-heavy loads.
As you can see, there is NOTHING in common between the two designs. The Bulldozer approach reduces the size of the core in favor of putting more cores on a die. The Intel Hyperthreading approach is to make a much wider core, and get more efficient use of those execution units. The only thing they have in common is that they both can theoretically improve multithreaded performance.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Also interesting is the fact that the entire world of computing outside of the XBOX 360 was able to adapt to the Pb-free initiative without all the drama and years of failed hardware.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
to ask for a classic-style game console built with modern tech/processing power?
Yes, I'd like to be able to play online with friends. That is the only other thing that I really want out of my console. I don't care if plays music or movies. I don't want it to be the center of my entertainment center. I sure as hell don't want it always on and spying on me.
I just want to play games, and that includes used ones.
At least with the PS4, I won't have to pay $50/year just to watch Netflix. Much as I hate Sony and used to love Xbox, I've had enough of that. None for this coming generation, thanks.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
God you people have no life, who gives a shit if it's Xbox 3.14 or Zero or who-gives-a-crap?
Buy it or don't. Idiots.
Boycotting doesn't work. It feels good from a moral standpoint, that your money isn't going to support DRM shit that makes each player in your household pay additional fees to play the one game disk you bought... However, Boycotts don't work. What if you heard the ending of ME3 sucked, and just didn't buy it? That wouldn't change anything. Bitch about it online enough such that it causes a horrible PR debacle and guess what happens? Shit. Shit actually happens. All you have to do is get enough people bitching about something and something will happen.
What if folks had just unfollowed the MS guy who was saying dumb shit about how "always-on" is great and being a general ass? Nothing. Bitch about it enough, guess what happens? Fucker is GONE. That's right. Bitching made it happen. You're the idiot if you think moaning about shit is pointless.
Yes, according to the live stream on GiantBomb, Microsoft's console will implement a "used fee". When you play a game, you will have to install it completely to the hard drive and it will be locked to that user account. If you want someone else to play it, they will have to pay a fee of an unknown amount.
This now only fucks over the used market, but fucks over people lending games to their friends... worse, even their most loyal customers. If you pre-order games for full price so you can play them on launch day and never sell your games back to the used market and never buy used games, you are still fucked if you, say, have a family of four and not only you, but your kids and wife enjoy playing games. Figure ten bucks per account per game? Now that $65 (with tax) game is suddenly $95 or more. And that's before you've bought the $40 worth of DLC.
I'd like to be optimistic and say this all sounds like an incredible boon for the future of PC gaming, but the vast majority of consumers don't give a fuck, don't know a fuck, and will just let themselves get rolled.
They do say that Win8 Metro apps will be trivially portable. I can't help but wonder if that'll include games. For a lot of indie stuff, this would be quite sufficient.
Think about it, saved games in the cloud is genius. Now when you move, you can plug the console at your new flat and all your saved games will be there!
Xbox One + Xbox One = Xbox Three ?
And do tell, exactly how are you going to play offline when every developer is going to claim that their game has to offload some of its processing to the "cloud" now (you know, the way EA did with SimCity)?
Maybe if you pray hard enough, Jesus will miracle your game to work.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I've been an Xbox owner since the Xbox 1.
[Emphasis mine]
Oh this generation is going to be fun.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Yes new processor is a x86 based AMD. Xbox 360 used a Power based cell processor designed by IBM.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
technically true if you only care about integer instructions
Hmm, what else would you care about when you have a powerful dedicated streaming FP unit in the same address space (i.e., easier data exchange and low data exchange latency)?
Ezekiel 23:20
The courts and politicians were not nearly as corrupt in the 70s as they are today. You can read every case on US-DOJ regarding Microsoft being found guilty of predatory monopolistic practices, and see what their punishments (or lack thereof) were.
This is in addition to numerous states that have found them guilty of predatory monopolistic practices, and receiving no punishment.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
This deserves an upvote.
Consoles are great not because they have good specs (they mostly have shitty ones). They are great because they present developers with a fixed hardware target for a decade or so. Games development on consoles is not too dissimilar from Demo scene, just that all the little tips and tricks get applied to all those games.
Give me a fixed target and I'll optimise the hell out of it. With results.
I play Netflix through my 360 and I wasn't even aware that the Live Gold subscription was required...that's really screwed up when you figure all Microsoft is doing is providing the initial reference URL for the hookup. But you know what? It doesn't matter now because I just got a RROD. Time to can-x the Xbox Live, I guess.
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
Then your friend is either likes throwing away money, knows nothing about warranties, or is doing modding that invalidates his warranty (which could also be to blame for his HW failures).
If memory serves... each 360 comes with a year hardware warranty... and if a unit dies and it's replaced under warranty... the replacement gets a fresh 1 year warranty.
Given the 360 hit the US 7 years, 6 months, 29 days ago... it's hard to believe that each of his 13 units died on day 366 (as there isn't enough time between then and now)... I'm more inclined to believe you are full of crap.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I also bought a second one after the first one RROD'd.
It's not about being "extremely loyal" as you put it, it's about being pragmatic:
- I still want to play games on a console, so I'd have to either fix it or buy a new one
- Fixing the old Xbox would cost about as much as a new one, and the new one is simply better (quieter, extra controller, lower energy, wifi, larger HD, etc)
- I have a game library which I'd like to be able to replay
- I can use my old controller
Honestly I've always preferred the Playstation, but I won the Xbox in a contest a few years ago, and it made no sense to go out and spend extra money on a console which is essentially the same.
For the next generation it'll be a PS for me. Either that or a box running Linux+Steam connected to the TV.
As for your friend breaking 12 Xboxes, that's really too much. I wouldn't lend him anything if I were you.
Not sure what you mean about Blu-ray being obsolete
He believes that everyone has a fast internet connection, I suppose. He's forgotten that even people London (e.g. me) have to suffer on a 4mbps DSL connection due to a mix of non upgraded exchanges and very strict planning rules blocking visible RCU boxes.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
As stated, go read the punishments. In most cases, Microsoft had to provide their proprietary software for X number of years for free. It was not a cash payment, and never changed the economic landscape for competition (which is the whole point of punishing predatory monopolies). In fact, when MS has to provide "free for X years" products, it further entrenches the monopoly.
They paid Novell peanuts for the damage they did to "Office" products, and the same with other competition they removed by predatory practices (there are exceptions in private law suits, but those are not what I mentioned). The exception for payment damages is the EU, but we are not talking about the EU.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.