Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Closes Gap Between Windows 10 and Xbox One With "Crossplay" Plans
An anonymous reader writes In its attempt to make console gaming more accessible, Microsoft has announced that it will be developing universal apps which can run across Xbox One and Windows 10, as well as smartphones and other mobile devices using the upcoming OS. At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco yesterday, Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's video games branch, said that the end-goal was to allow people to play games wherever they are over whichever platform they wish to use. Microsoft also announced that an adapter was currently being developed to hook up wireless Xbox One controllers to PCs. This latest move from the tech giant shows its push to grapple back its position in the mobile computing revolution, as the booming smartphone and tablet market shadows its longstanding desktop and laptop business.
We're running out of gaps.
Why can't they just go full Bluetooth like Wii/PS3/PS4 controllers? It's pretty annoying to have to get a special dongle on a long wire to use an Xbox360 controller on my laptop that already has built-in Bluetooth.
Morphing Software
Ya, MS, you do that. You aim for the "One OS to rule us all" and end up with a crappy OS that works on no platform.
I guess the new management is the same as the old management, just doesn't throw chairs.
Be seeing you...
Combining windows with XBox is the business strategy equivalent of winding christmas tree lights around a turd. Xbox is already in familiar territory financially, as its revenue is routinely used to float Azure, the phone program, and the tablet. Hell, Zune even had a run on the XBox moneytrain until Microsoft finally decided to bury that abortion. If i were a shareholder id be very alarmed at Microsofts decision to hobble an already proven revenue stream with an on-again off-again business machine OS.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I'll be interested to see how this works out for them: Architecturally, MS is reasonably well placed to pull it off(to the degree that it is possible, no common language runtime is going to make a 40GB XBone game run on a low end Lumia phone); they can presumably produce whatever set of software services and shims a PC of sufficient power needs to run an Xbox game, given that this generation's xbox is mostly a PC and MS wrote the software on it; and their CLR is available across x86 and ARM, for programs that don't end up indirectly depending on some native binary.
What is less clear, and will be a matter for both MS and the people they hope will be writing 'universal' software, is how well 'cross platform' is going to work between platforms with different UI characteristics. An xbox and a PC with an xbox controller plugged in? Yeah, sure, no problem(though the compromises made to ensure snappy frame rates on the xbox might not look so hot on the PC, sitting closer to the screen). Meaningful interaction with a smartphone, though, will demand developer commitment on par with that that Nintendo needs to secure when trying to convince people to use the WiiU's weird little quasi-tablet controller thing. Will they bother? Will they half-ass something in order to get MS to pat them on the back and feature their game in some prominent location for a couple of weeks? Will they ignore it?
So they are trying to say we can play the next Halo or Assassins creed game on the xbox, then jump to pc or phone. Realistically that's never going to happen, what will happen is you can take the companion app that alot of games have now, and write that to every platform, so you can run them anywhere. Games that a great on one platform NEVER translate well to a different one, a game that is great on your 5 in phone, will suck ass while playing it on the xbox, and vise versa.
Unless this means I'll be able to play Xbox One games on PC (he did say "whichever platform"), I'm not interested.
finally! ha.
Another horrible idea that nobody wants, just like touchscreens. Do MS employees even use computers in their daily life? There isn't a game on my entire computer that I want to control with a joystick or touchscreen. How am I supposed to play Fallout 3 on a surface?
Of course, sometimes putting something in a gap just creates two new gaps either side, leaving you +1 on gaps.
True, trying to bridge gaps with an island will double the number of gaps, per Zeno's paradox. But once the gaps have been made small enough that the average end user can cross a gap unaided, mission accomplished.
While MS has always had XBox separate from Windows OS - haven't they always had a toolkit/library/framework strategy that promised an almost-write-once game experience across platofrms? And it was weak?
I've heard interviews with developers who used XNA to built mobile games that also run on XBox - with a few, uh, gaps - or caveats.
What is missing is that single game store. A few years ago MS promised this flying game that looked amazing (Simulator replacement?). I signed up for the beta but wasn't accepted - and later received a notice that it was generally available. It was called an XBox game !! So I searched for it and couldn't find it on the Xbox store. After a week of half-assed Google searching I discovered that it was a Windows game (and possibly used the Kinect inputs for those who had the USB version). Talk about confusing. It wasn't available on the XBox.
Personally I'd like to buy a game via my PC or mobile device and have it delivered to my XBox. Kind of like the method for buying music.
A game able to run on a mobile phone will look just GREAT on a PC
Sarcasm detected. But people play GameCube and Wii games on PCs using the Dolphin emulator, which performs upscaling by tricking games into rendering the scene to a larger output surface. Some games benefit from high-definition replacement textures even if they don't add mesh detail. There's also an "HDNes" emulator that plays NES games with high-definition replacements for CHR ROM.
The original Xbox OS was derived from Windows 2000
Contrary to popular belief, Windows XB wasn't a fork of NT 5 any more than CE or NT was a fork of Windows 9x. (Source: Xbox Engineering)
Why don't xboxes allow hooking up USB mice and keyboards, microsoft makes both of these and USB support seems ubiquitous, i would play/buy xbox games (read FPS) if they offered this... i can't use a controller because one of my thumbs doesn't bend at the knuckle so the dual analog controls are painful to use...
As a PC-only gamer, I cannot wait for the influx of console-only FPS players.