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Microsoft Reputation Manager's Guide To Xbox One
symbolset writes "In the wake of a disastrous E3 product reveal Microsoft has purportedly distributed a confidential internal 100-point 'FAQ' for the Xbox One that reads like it's from the Ministry of Truth. It was of course immediately leaked on pastebin. Kotaku has the story and an amusing online poll. In the discussion below make sure to line up the FAQ entries with the AC comments for extra 'Informative' moderation."
This just in: The XBone One has managed to achieve what the Dreamcast couldn't... blowing up prior to launch. The Dreamcast at least fired the engines before exploding in a firey storm of shit. Which, given that their customers seem to be EA games and other publishers, and not, you know, people who are going to buy the console... seems about right.
There are Kickstarter consoles still on the drawing board, I mean, not even prototypes available yet, that have more pre-orders than the XBone. I don't think they could fail harder. Unless (dramatic pause) ... they bring Square Enix to headline this collossal cluster f*ck.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
For some of us, you've already lost the sale. Always on internet is a killer for many of us, since it's mostly taking away our freedom.
Fuck Xbox One.
Netcraft confirms it, the XBone will definitely add 3-4" to your penis after only one use!
3-4"
- 3-4"
Was probably a /. formatting bug. You are forgiven.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Remember the rage around here a few years back when Sony nixed Linux on PS3. Or the whole "rootkit fiasco"? Amazing how quickly past outrage is forgotten.
Wonder if MS decided to "watermark" the list before sending it around. A typo here, maybe swap two points there, each person receives an individualized version and the leak can be tracked back to the source. In which case I feel sorry for the person who gets the axe.
Q: What exclusive first-party games are in development, and when will we see them?
A: None. Despite bending our customers over a barrel and raping them until they bled and screamed for mercy with our new DRM, we don't have a single exclusive to show for it.
Q: How many games do you plan to ship at launch?
A: We got a lot of promises, but the warehouse is presently, uhh, a bit vacant.
Q: What is the new Xbox Live?
A: For game publishers, it's the second coming of Christ, the ressurection, the moment we've been waiting for, beating ourselves off to in private fantasizing over. For game players, it's an unholy cluster fuck that makes Square Enix scorched Earth policy on every franchise you ever loved look positively humane.
Q: What new benefits does Xbox Live offer?
A: The new generation of Xbox Live gets to know you and your preferences, by watching you 24/7 through a webcam that cannot be turned off, and puts you at the center of all your games and entertainment, and then builds a giant 20 foot thick concrete wall between you and all your friends who you can't share any of it with without an extra fee. It will make sure your Xbox is always up to date and ready for you, like meeting every ex you ever had at a party, who then stalk you for the next year, posting comments on your Facebook about what a whore you were, and a cheater -- that gaming is better with smart, quick and intuitive multiplayer, unlike everything else on the market which can accomplish this basic feat without spying on you, whoring away your personal viewing habits, and knowing exactly when you're about to climax on the couch to post that new advertisement for Buxom Babes 7, backed by the new Smart Match system -- which is just like online dating, only creepier. It adds even more personalization to your TV and entertainment, because what's more entertaining and personal than sitting alone, in your basement, your friends unable to join you to play without paying an extra fee? Nothing, that's what! With the evolved Xbox Live, your games and profile are stored in the cloud, so you can access them from any Xbox One console, and we'd appreciate it a lot if you'd forget about what we've done with Sidekick, and every other Cloud platform we've absorbed like some Doctor Who alien, only with less wit and British charm.... this time will be different. We Promise(tm).
Q: I saw reports stating friends will be unlimited and reports saying the cap is 1,000. Which is correct?
A: We're excited to report it's the lower of the two, which shouldn't discourage you in any way... because we've tried very hard to match the same low standards that are already present in the industry with our next generation console!
Q: Do I have to pay to access Xbox Live?
A: No. We'll just be collecting your personal viewing habits and selling them to the lowest bidder.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
101. Since I would have to pay 500$ for it, will I be able to run my own software on the Xbox One?
It is trying to accomplish something here !! Cut it some slack !! It is not like Linux would ever be on even a hundredth the number of devices this game machine will sell !! So eat meat and stick a finger down it L.A.M.O.s because X Box One is gonna be rammed down your throats !!
A: Today Microsoft Studios and the world’s biggest and most renowned publishers, including 343 Industries, Crytek, Turn 10 Studios, Capcom and Insomniac Games, unveiled their blockbuster games lineup for Xbox One, with more exclusive titles than at any time in the history of Xbox. We’re excited to share more about our complete launch portfolio over the coming weeks and months.
No numbers, you think by now they'd have the lineup mostly decided..........
This thing is 100% weasel speak.
The whole setup is creepy. It's like Microsoft wants customers in their stores to see these young, hip, techies-but-not-nerds who happen to work for Microsoft. But then Redmond doesn't trust them (or the field organization) to think or recall training when they're asked questions, so we have this call center-type script that everyone is supposed to master so they're all on the same page.
Why didn't MS just post the contents on their web site?
I'm going to call this a Fake Faq. It doesn't read like a corporate MS document, it reads to me like the best attempt of someone who doesn't write any sort of Corporate PR at all and is about as close to Redmond as (broadly speaking) the width of the Pacific Ocean to try and mimic what they think Corporate American English PR would be written like, and they got it very wrong. Having said that, I'm sure that in the environment that I suspect this fake faq document was produced in, it's likely to be widely accepted as gospel by those who want to believe such things. In the primarily English speaking world, I think anyone with an understanding of grammar and linguistics at the level of an average 13 year old would spot that it's a fake faq straight away.
It will still succeed, because Micro$oft is willing to throw more than a billion dollars of marketing at it to make sure it succeeds.
And there are plenty of assholes who will buy it, if for no other reason than to play Halo and the latest DOA Beach Volleyball game.
I care about the broadband internet requirement since I live where none is available. I know we are a minority, but there are millions of us.
Tens of millions of urbanites are more profitable than millions of ruralites.
How does the achievable graphical complexity of the GPU in the Tegra 3 SOC of this "Ouya" console compare to that of the Latte GPU in Nintendo's Wii U?
My cousin currently owns an Xbox 360 and likes to play Call of Duty series, Battlefield series, and similar first-person shooters. He has rejected the Xbox One and is trying to decide between a PlayStation 4 console and a new gaming PC this December. Which $400 gaming PC that can play games with comparable graphics to forthcoming PS4 games would you recommend?
Q: Do I have to pay to access Xbox Live? A: No. We'll just be collecting your personal viewing habits and selling them to the lowest bidder.
Oh, is this XBOXONE a Google product.
And to think Microsoft has been running an ad campaign about how Google reads your Gmail to provide ads and how Google Play Store provides the name, e-mail address, and postal code of anyone who buys a priced Android application to the app's publisher. What a hippopotamus.
Q: How much cloud space do I get? What is stored in the cloud?
A: Xbox Live offers Xbox One unlimited storage space in the cloud.
Unlimited storage means unlimited cost, for fixed revenue. It looks like the recipe for disaster
well you can run whatever iOS software you want on your ipad, including any you write yourself. so I would say Yes, you can run your own software on the ipad.
Apart from the intentionally hamstrung Codea and Safari JavaScript environments, you can't run software you write yourself on an iPad. Nor can you run it on the combination of an iPad and your existing PC. You can run it on the combination of an iPad, a Mac (and not any other brand of PC), and a developer certificate that self-destructs after 365 days.
on the other hand, you can also run a wide variety of software (games) on XBone, presumably you could write one yourself if you want
Has Microsoft yet announced on what terms the Xbox One devkit is made available to video game developers? I assume it'd require a Windows 8 operating system, but that's not much of an obstacle because Windows 8 is designed to run on just about every x86-64 PC, including a Mac if your company also happens to develop games for iOS or OS X. But historically, console makers haven't been willing to sell a devkit to a video game company for its debut title even if it has shown a feature-complete prototype of this title on PC.
Its funny there was an uproar and hate of Sony when they removed install other OS. I Think they will do a 180 and remove the have to call back once every 24 hours because otherwise they lose all military people...that's a big market share to lose for something as stupid as have to call back. Some people are basing this on what they have read and seen from MS direct others are just on the MS hatewaggon without thinking about the reason for it. Stop and think how often do you have your system unplugged from the internet and play the game for those that do. I understand not all have the ability to do so and yes i agree its a bunch of BS but stop and think about it for a moment. most people play multi-player which requires internet and i know for a fact i never unplug my console after playing so whats the big deal? Sony is leaving the DRM to the publishers. The main difference is MS is making everyone have the same DRM where Sony will leave it to others to do the DRM.... They all want a way to control there games and reduce pirated copies and kill off the used game market.
I'm not a fan of DRM either, but this "story" should have one of those "PAID ADVERTISEMENT" disclaimers.
I don't know what Microsoft calls its counterpart to Nintendo's lot check or Sony's TRC check, but it is dishonorable to announce vaporware that hasn't met whatever Microsoft calls its certification process. Even weasels have to preserve some honor. Once the games go gold, expect Microsoft and the publisher to jointly announce them.
The thing about the Linux thing is that it really only affected nerds, those who used their PS3 for gaming (which is what the majority of people bought a gaming system for) were mostly unaffected, and while undoubtedly there was some outrage at releasing an update simply to remove a feature, it didn't really affect people.
The Xbox One changes games, which affects everyone. Every cartridge and disk based console without exception has allowed you to trade in and borrow games. The only restriction has been that you can't duplicate the games themselves, from the Atari 2600 to the NES to the PlayStation, this has been the only restriction.
There is a reason why people are console gamers and not PC gamers.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?
A. Deregulation of the chicken's side of the road was threatening its dominant market position. The chicken was faced with significant challenges to create and develop the competencies required for the newly competitive market. Andersen Consulting, in a partnering relationship with the client, helped the chicken by rethinking its physical distribution strategy and implementation processes. Using the Poultry Integration Model (PIM), Andersen helped the chicken use its skills, methodologies, knowledge, capital and experiences to align the chicken's people, processes and technology in support of its overall strategy within a Program Management framework. Andersen Consulting convened a diverse cross-spectrum of road analysts and best chickens along with Anderson consultants with deep skills in the transportation industry to engage in a two-day itinerary of meetings in order to leverage their personal knowledge capital, both tacit and explicit, and to enable them to synergize with each other in order to achieve the implicit goals of delivering and unsuccessfully architecting and implementing an enterprise-wide value framework across the continuum of poultry cross-median processes.The meeting was held in a park-like setting, enabling and creating an impactful environment which was strategically based, industry focused, and built upon a consistent, clear, and unified market message and aligned with the chicken's mission, vision, and core values. This was conducive towards the creation of a total business.
Is this today's 5 minutes hate? I'd hate to have missed it if this isn't it.
Since I don't game much any more, mainly because I have nothing to prove to 14-year-olds who would mow me down, the only aspect of Xbone that remotely appealed to me was the promise to revolutionize TV.
Luckily, TV and "sparts" were most of what they talked about! Oh joy. Just the same old TV repackaged. Wow this is totally what everyone wanted. Um.. yeah.
The thing is, I already have several TV gadgets that do most of that, or at least the parts I care about. One is a Roku box. Microsoft should get one. It was $90 at Costco and ranks up there among the best decisions I've ever made in electronics. The thing OWNS my TV on the weekends. Key points: it was under $100 and I already have it. Two of them, actually. Roku in the kitchen over wifi is like wireless cable. Now what am I missing again?
Another gadget is the new Dish Hopper with Sling. The box they tried to ban. Sure, I have to pay every month for it and it only gets "a whole lot of channels" mostly in HD, for not a lot of money. But it does a very good job at it the one thing it does. It also happily feeds ALL of that content to my phone, wherever I might happen to be. Or a PC or tablet or whatever.
Wait, RDB. What about playing pirated video files? What about porn files!? Roku doesn't do that very well! Nope. But the Hopper can play some and I also have an old WDTV Live box which can play nearly anything. It plays some things VLC won't touch. The WD box doesn't do much else but it does do file playback. A perfect companion device. It, too, was cheap.
So I am not feeling the need to drop $500 on another STB. What I have works. Nothing Microsoft demoed or talked about poses any threat at all to these devices. And even if they did, the price tag still kills it.
Sig for hire.
Best bang for your buck currently out there, best performance per watt, and the only AMD chip currently out with OpenGL 4.3 support (The rest are capped at 4.2 or 4.1).
Also they're 140 to 170 depending on if you want 1 gig or 2 gigs of ram, with an 80-90W TDP.
Not quite as fast as an HD7850, esp in memory bandwidth, but at half the wattage...
current 360 owners onto a new One? Aside from sick quality levels on 360, how are they planning on forcing people to upgrade? They just stop making 360s and hope for attrition? Or are they going to torment game developers into dropping 360 development and new games will only be for One.
Anyone know what their master plan is? I am writing this based on an article that says One will not play 360 games.
Nothing about Fallout 4. Not news!~!
Realistically, if you want to play a game with someone who lives out of range of cable and DSL, you're going to have to visit them and bring a controller to play same-screen multiplayer. The latency of satellite or microwave won't cut it.
Is anyone going to buy the Xbox One?
No.
All the rest of the questions and answers seem pretty stupid after that since that sort of undermines them all.
If you like Steam's limits you don't need an Xbox One to get you there. You'll be fine with any old Linux box, a Steambox, or Stean in WINE (I'm not a big fan of wine). Steambox is like XBox One without the monthlies.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Slashdot has become heavier over time, but it probably still works better on dial-up than Xbox One.
Just in-case you really clueless idiots didn't get the memo, multiple leaks have conformed that Microsoft builds NSA exploits into every product it sells, and that most of the software updates that waste multiple millions of man-hours across the globe are needed when the exploits become too widely known, forcing MS to close the old holes and open new ones.
As for the XBone- well here's the thing. EVERY developer of an app or game for this platform is instructed to use Kinect for input. This does not mean Kinect input for a major function, like the control of a character in a FPS (although MS would like evn in that situation for Kinect to be waiting for a gesture or voice command). No, it simply means EVERY app/game must give the user the impression that keeping the Kinect sensor 'calibrated' (ie., spying on the room) is alwyas, and I mean ALWAYS desirable.
If Kinect is disabled at a hardware level, no app/game will rune on the console. If kinect is soft disabled, with tape over the lens, or by pointing it at the wall, the console will immediately begin pestering the user to re-calibrate (ie., allow the Kinect to 'see' the full room). No ordinary user will ever use the Xbox One unless the Kinect camera system has full view of everyone in the room.
The Kinect sensor has its own OS, and its own hardware blocks, including exclusive use of RAM, exclusive use of a dedicated area of the HDD, and exclusive use of some of the CPU cores (of which there are 8 in total). No game- repeat NO GAME- can over-ride this allocation of hardware resources to Kinect. Kinect can function at full blast, processing the multiple sensors, compressing and encrypting video, and streaming this data to a remote server, without ANY performance impact on even the most hard-working AAA game.
Kinect is ALWAYS monitoring who and when people enter and leave the room, and takes a facial photograph of each new person per day. The required once-per-24hr Internet connection always uploads this data.
Beyond this default and unstoppable spying, online XBone consoles announce themselves to NSA servers. Any online console can be remotely instructed to begin immediate streaming of data from the Kinect sensor block. The data rate of the encrypted stream is entirely programmable, to cope with situations where too much upstream data would pose issues.
Beyond this, any XBone can be given a list that can extend to many thousands of 'trigger' conditions. These triggers can use sound, image, infra-red and depth data from Kinect, and may include things like a gunshot, people talking in a given language, a particular person speaking in the room, or people having sex, for instance. When the 'trigger' condition occurs, the XBone can be made to engage in any form of immediate behaviour- streaming to a remote server or the HDD if no internet connection is current. Sending an alert to NSA personnel for further investigation/instruction. Snapshot collection of image and audio data.
The XBone never engages complete sleep mode if it detects people in the room. The Xbone is constantly uploading and downloading encrypted data to 'groom' the user not to worry about XBone internet traffic.
Everything you might imagine, in your worst nightmare, that a rogue administration working with Microsoft would require from a spy box in every citizen's home is exactly how the XBone operates. It sees you in the light and it sees you in the dark. It knows how you move. It knows what you say, and frequently, what you say in adjoining rooms as well thanks to the array of microphones. It can move a high quality stream of your room to any NSA server and you have no way to prevent this.
Let me ask you this. How many politicians and other persons of interest do you think the Xbone will catch having sex with people they should not be having sex with? How useful will this information be to those engaged in ensuring such people give their 'support' to those that demand it? How many 'Mel Gibson' moments will the XBone record? How many Muslims will go to
Before broadband there was a thing known as a modem which hooked up to a telephone line. I realise that you may not have heard of these existing, as they did, in that uninteresting bit of history between the late Cretaceous and yesterday. However posting on Slashdot is entirely possible through such a device. Some are still rumoured to exist out in the wilds, far beyond the sight of the last suburb, where the 3G reception icon on your phone starts to flicker.
An official Microsoft spokesperson specifically stated XBone bans meant the user loses access to their own games. Another spokesperson later claimed the exact opposite. As far as users are concerned, Microsoft has said such bans are possible, and has ensured the user has no way (except the courts in the EU) to prevent this.
Will Microsoft be dumb enough to ban single player games? Yes, in the US, where Obama has stated the EULA is law. No in the EU, where courts have stated the EULA is meaningless. Microsoft is NOT kidding. This time round they are insane, and intend to screw the user in every way possible.
Why would you want to write off 10-20% of your potential market (and piss off 50%) before you even start competing with Sony?
That seems to be Sony's marketing strategy, and it seems to work for them. Frankly, I expect that both of these new consoles will root everything on your home network.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
The PS4 is fully HSA and Huma (go look up the acronyms), using an architecture AMD will not have in their desktop chips until the second half of 2014 at the earliest. Almost no-one here understands the long term significance of the PS4 design. Put simply, the PS4 can do things with memory that no current PC can even dream of. GDDR5 is only a small part of this picture.
Next, the PS4 can handle incredible numbers of GPU threads without the overhead of a Microsoft driver model making such an approach pointless. This means that the GPU is unleashed in ways no PC can match until the next generation of AMD GPU parts (early 2013) at the earliest. You see, to compensate for the disaster of Windows driver model (which is worse than ever in Windows 8), AMD and Nvidia are putting CPU cores on the GPU to handle the thread processing, so thread processing is no longer dependent on Windows. This functionality, as I said, doesn't hit desktop parts until 2013 (and even then needs software support from developers, which will take years).
Every PS4 is the same. Every PC is different. Games for the PS4 can take the hardware for granted. Games for the PC will assume (at least for the next 3 years) that most users have 2012 designs or earlier.
I game exclusively on the PC, and do not own either an Xbox360 or PS3, but unlike the idiots proclaiming the superiority of the PC, have complete awareness of what the incredible architecture of the PS4 means. Sure, if you run a current generation game at an high-resolution on your Nvidia Titan stuffed PC, no PS4 can match that performance, but that matters not. Future games are going to involve features that play to the incredible new strengths of the PS4, and no current PC can match those advantages.
The best PS4 games will have far more things happening at one time than is possible with current PC architecture. No amount of extra RAW power on the GPU side can compensate for this. It is all down to how many heavy different GPU threads you can have per game frame. On the PC, driver and state change issues ensure this number is incredibly low. On the PS4 these overheads are almost entirely missing.
The design of the PC is due to undergo a massive change starting some time next year. Both AMD and Intel will be soldering the CPU and memory to the motherboard to boost performance. Both are going HSA and Huma, but AMD has a massive lead here. AMD fully intends to have PCs that are superior to the system AMD has designed for the PS4, but certainly not this year.
The PS4 is so advanced, if the XBone flops and more game development focuses on the PS4, back-porting to the PC will become much more difficult, and many games companies won't bother. Unlike the PS4, the Xbone One is like a very basic gaming PC, and no game that runs on the Xbone would be difficult to port to the PC.
We should be grateful to the PS4 for finally breaking the cycle of games being the same old engine, just with higher rez textures, higher rez output, and more frame rates. The PS4 will enable open world games that are vastly more realistic and pleasing, and one day not too far away the PC will start to catch up.
I'm not a big console gamer these days and the only reason I do pick up any games is because I can buy them used.
PC gaming will be the end of console gaming and really it should have happened already. It's already cheap to build a system that can run high quality games at far better speeds than PS3/Xbox and the new gen cards are already cheap enough that you could upgrade for the cost of a PS4 or Xbox One.. Console gaming was fine in the 80's and 90's but right now technology is simply progressing far too fast for them to keep up. Console gaming systems are meant to have a very long lifespan of around 10 years.
When the technology was just hitting big in PC gaming it was still fine because it was costly and not as good as the consoles on the market at the time. That is not the case today and if people wanna blow their money on a dying method of gaming I say have fun lol. I mean shit I have a PC hooked to every TV in my home and my main PC is hooked with a wireless connection to every TV. I don't need a console, a dvd player, a cable tv box, or whatever.
Quite aside from the other purchase stoppers, I have a projection system, and the Kinect simply doesn't work in that environment -- I know this -- we tried it. It's blinded by the projector just to start, and when you stand where it can see your outline blocking the projector, you're an annoying shadow on the display anyway. Complete non-starter. We threw our Kinect in a box and never took it out again.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
yeah.. you can run your indie code once you pay the developer fee.. same deal as current. or you can write javascript for the browser.
just buy a pc and you'll be happier.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
People think Microsoft is a software and hardware company. Yes, it does that, but that's not Microsoft's primary purpose. Microsoft is an evil company that merely uses software and hardware to deliver evil.
Someone dumped some stuff in a pastebin, and somehow we all *know* it's an internal Microsoft guide for "Reputation Managers".
Why do we *know* this? (Hear me out - I'm not attempting to deny it. I'm making a larger point.)
Perhaps it's because of Microsoft's reputation.
What is that reputation? Contempt.
Microsoft has contempt for the people who are forced to use its products. This is why people react so strongly to Microsoft's recent innovations: it's not the change, but the contempt, that they are reacting to.
Microsoft wasn't always this way, but the attitude was certainly well entrenched by the time that it introduced its Office certification, the "MOUS".[1] The contempt came through with its introduction of the Office Ribbon, immediately after Microsoft said it'd be "too hard" for users to learn the "very different" user interface of OpenOffice. It came through with the total lack of investment in IE. It came through with the introduction of Vista. It came through with WinCE, and the Kin, and with the trashing of Windows Phone 7 users' investment: can't take your apps to 8, suckers! Most strongly, it has come through in the introduction of Windows 8.
The contempt was multi-leveled with 8. An interface designed for touch...and nearly no computers to use it on, nor any in the offing at the time of launch. That was subtle contempt. But the really big, fat, obvious, in-your-face contempt was in the look and feel of the UI. Big blocks of flat primary colors, vocabulary like "charms", dumping you suddenly back at the start page every time Microsoft thinks you're doing something too complicated: this was a UI for pre-schoolers or early primary-school kids. On tranquilizers.[2]
Why did Microsoft think that 8's UI would be acceptable to adults? Because Microsoft has complete contempt for its users. Microsoft has been dissing its users for a long time now. And with "x-bone phone home", always-on cam, etc., the dissing continues: you're a child. You can't handle privacy: you'll just do naughty things with it.
*This* is why we believe some anonymous pastebin: we know, inside, that Microsoft has contempt for its users. We've got the message.
The XBox One was conceived in a culture of contempt, and soaked in it throughout its gestation. If gamers have any self-respect, it will die still-born.
--tl;dr-stop-here--
1. Rebranded the MOS. Would you rather be a mouse, or moss? Which is more respectful?
2. This is what gets people's backs up about the '8 UI. "Can't handle change" never passed the sniff test: tens of millions could handle running away to iOS, Android, OS X... and some can even work with Chrome, according to Amazon's best-seller lists. I've yet to read their complaints about the inefficiency of those UIs.
People (even slashdotters) aren't good at introspection, though, so the unconscious reaction to Microsoft's contempt as embodied in the 8UI came out as a dislike of the mechanics of the UI, rather than as "Microsoft is insulting me! The bastards!"
The Xbone will do ok in the US. That's its home market, there's always a degree of "patriotic" buying (though not to the same extent as in Japan) and, like them or not, some of the 360's exclusive franchises still have a lot of market power. There are people who will buy an Xbone for Halo. The overlap between those people and "people who read slashdot" is probably quite small.
Will the Xbone do as well in the US as the 360 has (where the sales data shows it's the dominant console)? Probably not, at least on the basis of what we've seen so far. Sony's given the "floating voters" with no strong attachment to either camp a lot of reasons to go in the PS4 direction this time. But the Xbox series has a lot of loyal fans in the US and most of them will still be hanging on.
The danger for MS lies outside of the US. Ok, it's never managed to get the Xbox to succeed in Japan. So it's probably fair that it doesn't put too many resources into trying this time around (you'll never get away from the fact that the demographic profile of gamers looks very, very different in Japan and is much less interested in those games we consider "mainstream" in the West).
But Europe? Europe was in many ways the key swing battleground of the 360/PS3 generation and didn't really commit strongly to either camp. There's no "domestic" console, so no "patriotic buying" effect; in short, there's everything to play for. But MS seem to have decided not to play.
The TV offerings (which won't even be available in many territories to start with) aren't exactly tempting in Europe. I've had to sort out phone/tv/broadband packages in the UK, Belgium and the US in the last couple of years and can hand-on-heart say that you can get a decent TV package much more cheaply and easily in Europe these days. Sky or Virgin Media vs Comcast? It's not even close. MS is facing much tougher competition to take over from the existing TV providers.
The competition in Europe is, therefore, much more likely to be about being the better machine for games. Sony's messaging so far has been "games, games, games". I'm not really sure that Halo has more potency as a brand than Resistance, or that Gears of War is more potent than Killzone in Europe.
Then there are the emerging markets. The parts of the world that don't buy many consoles right now, but which might conceivably start to buy a lot more over the course of the next few years. These are also places where the 24-hour-dial-home restriction is likely to be a serious deterrent.
If MS doesn't do some urgent damage limitation, the Xbone runs a serious risk of ending up as a single-territory console.
I ran this through the Cloud-to-Butt extension for Chrome. This version seems to make more sense.
http://pastebin.com/6YkLnA8z
It's their right to disconnect the servers any time they want. They sell you the product without hiding that fact. If you don't want the product, you don't buy it.
Crying 'consumer rights' for a product that is sold with a publicly known 'always on' feature is like wanting to enforce your own policy on the publisher.
Guess what? it will not happen. Just don't buy those games.
If you don't want the product, you don't buy it.
I'm sure no one figured out that people have the ability to do that. Quite insightful.
Crying 'consumer rights' for a product that is sold with a publicly known 'always on' feature is like wanting to enforce your own policy on the publisher.
Well, there are European countries which protect consumer rights to a greater extent than other countries, but whether they'd do anything about this is another matter. So, complaining 'consumer rights' might not be off-base if people can get someone to take action.
Check UIDs. I'm COLD FJORD(826450). User COID FJORD(2949869) has impersonated me. Don't confuse us if he trolls you.
At least in germany valve would get a beating unless they would add a patch to remove the DRM shortly before shutting down the server. First sale and stuff.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Unless you paid for a tethering plan for your phone, they are all just as subject to your internet going out
I've read other comments implying that for those few Internet outages that aren't also power outages, geeks are more likely to buy one-day prepaid tethering plans to make up for temporary losses of Internet access.
PS4 also requires a paid monthly subscription to play multiplayer games.
I haven't read any news that console makers had planned to charge extra for offline multiplayer. Would a PS4 or Xbox One owner be charged per month just to pair more than one wireless controller to the console? Oh, I get it: the only multiplayer you know is online.
It won't happen in the US. It might happen in the EU. Or, haven't you been paying attention? The EU apparently does not share the USA's belief that corporations are our lords and masters in all things.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't really care about the always connected, my Xbox 360 is always connected anyway. I don't care about the used game policy, I don't trade my games or buy used ones. I don't care about the always on connect, I can cover both the microphone and the camera. My biggest concern is that when Microsoft no longer supports the Xbox One, I can no longer play the games I've purchased for it, digital or disc based. Every console I own can still play every game I've purchased for it even tho they are past their support period.
Well, it used to be that when you bought a console VS gaming PC, you didn't have to worry about some things like compatability issues, drivers, viruses/spyware, etc.
Now we've got console games that essentially need 0-day patches to fix poorly-tested games, need to download software updates for licensing (playing BD discs, etc), need software updates to stay online and play with friends, need an internet connection just to play single player, and come with the spyware BUILT IN.
Congratulations vendors, you've taken away anything that make it worth having a console.
has a nice right to it
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
According to the 2010 census, 17.7% of the population of the U.S. is rural.
I would imagine that video game console makers prefer customers with more discretionary income to buy more disc games and more download games. How much discretionary income do these rural dwellers have compared to urban dwellers?
Most people posting here weren't at E3. I was, and I'm here to tell you that the XBOne is by far the best of the next-gen console as it stands now. The games do look next-gen, are well-thought out, and impressive. PS4 was a snoozer, and Wii-U is DOA. So the system phones home once a day? If you were without internet for 3 minutes your face would explode like the Nazi at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark anyways. Used games are an issue, but that's going to be figured out down the line.
And no, I'm not a fanboy - I own all three current gen platforms. XB blows the others out of the water for now. I've played with it, and it's really sweet. ($499 pricetag is another matter, however).
Q: How will avatars work in Xbox One and will my avatar items carry over?
A: Xbox One leverages your natural identity while continuing to have avatars as an important part of your identity. We’ll share more in the coming months.
You heard it here first: It's now mandatory to have your real name on your XBOX live profile. Now all those 13 year olds can come to your house and actually fuck your mom!
Not a lot of people would go as far as to get a tethering plan for internet outages; they can do other things when the internet is down, like do errands or play games. That's only part of the problem; the other problem is "despite us saying it would never happen, connection to XBone servers isn't working due to a technical error, high volume, or our system thinking you're a pirate with 90% confidence. Since you just turned your Xbone on and haven't played it for 24 hours, have fun not playing! But don't worry, this doesn't happen all that often." Sure, most people can live with it, but why get used to something that there is no need to get used to? I could get used to having to charge my phone every 30 minutes, but I wouldn't buy such a phone.
The big problem problem that new consoles are fighting for is: a reason to exist. Most games demo-ed so far look possible on the current generation of hardware. Crowd sources AI is an interesting twist, but possible on current consoles. Killer Instinct is an odd thing to revive, but it would play just as well on a PS3.
Suddenly Microsoft comes out with a console that:
1. Phones home every day.
2. Bans game lending.
3. Possibly cripples the used game market, or maybe not, nobody is really sure.
4. Requires Kinect to be always on, because that wasn't a disaapointment.
Their sales pitch of "You can play games that are basically last-gen games, but with fewer rights" has had shocking trouble resonating with consumers.
5. Integrates with PRISM natively, giving Big Gov (which is quite corrupt these days) a chance to look right into your living room.
6. ???
7. Profit at the expense of your privacy.
Microsoft was the first big tech company to roll over for the NSA (that there's pretty good knowledge of NSA backdoors into Windows for years just shows their further corrupt nature). They give NSA exploit information prior to patching it.
There is no way I am going to give Microsoft (and the government by proxy) a device that can tell when I entered a room, when I leave, and what I'm holding for f*cks sake. Just for some games?
To those who think that Ouya and XBone/PS4 aren't comparable - I'll tell you something - when several of the options is anathema, the remainder, no matter how poor, are all I'm willing to commit to - that it costs so much less is a bonus. I still haven't figured out the Wii U, and I'm not sure I have time to.
Fun should be simple - I debug/analyze and get systems working at my day job - I don't need to mess with all that @ home.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Pretty much defines how Microsoft is operating these days.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Even the Wii provides a better experience in that regard, both for local multiplayer [...] But in general, why would you want to buy a locked out system
The Wii, the Wii U, and in fact every Nintendo console since the Nintendo Entertainment System has been "a locked out system". The lockout chip, combined with a developer approval policy that has exploited the correlation between experience and quality, has resulted in a measure of quality control on Nintendo's platforms. This quality control is arguably the only way the NES was able to pull the North American video game market out of the shovelware rut it was in from 1983 through 1985. As for why one would buy a console over a living room gaming PC in the first place, that's because major PC game developers have tended to pay little attention to local multiplayer, and major developers of local multiplayer games have tended to pay little attention to the PC platform.
I didn't buy steam, I bought the game. Yet if it is a Steam game, I have to agree to a third party and install something I did not want, do not want and will only manage to refuse to let me play the game, IN ADDITION TO any bullshit problems the game itself has.
And I'm meant to be HAPPY at that????
The original HL still runs under Win98. Steam won't. Which means if you run your HL Steam game, you cannot run it on your old Win box. Why? The game works under it, and the original version of steam did. But now your gaming PC kept back so you can play other retro games will not play it because steam requires you update to the newest version and the newest version will not run on that machine.
And you can't even reinstall it.
Valve can refuse my access to Steam because, for example, I have more than one account with Steam. And without Steam, I cannot run the game. Even though the game doesn't require I do not have multiple accounts *even for that game*.
This is why having to run Steam to play a game is wrong.
Not because it is using up resources (though when it wants an update, it does that IN SPADES, so this IS a problem) but because it can only ever get in the way of what I paid and have a valid right to do.
And it's you who does not know what "offline mode" is.
You have to know you need to go offline.
You have to go back online for some other game, you are now no longer offline. Big whoop. Note you cannot demand a refund if a game you buy doesn't have an offline mode or is heavily nerfed by being run in offline mode.
Steam itself requires an internet connection.
You cannot install a game without going online because essential bits are only transferred and unlocked in online mode.
Steam still requires regular updates to itself and, if it thereby decides that your game in offline mode needs updates, it will REFUSE to allow your game to start in offline mode.
Technically - microwave links have some of the lowest latency available.
A point-to-point microwave link gives the subscriber a low-latency connection to the cell tower at the other end of that link, but the other player is still on the other side of the Internet from the tower. You'd end up just as many hops away from the other player as you'd be with cable or DSL.
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Star Trek Online!
Uh, ok. So it's three words on paper, but it's only one in my head.
Resistance is Futile!
...that was top of the line if you didn't have Internet connection? That's what Microsoft is thinking. Why bother if you don't have good Internet, you can't use it to its full capacity. It doesnt make sense to want one without Internet.