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Xbox One

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  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Also I don't see cloud computing being used for single player modes in any game, there would need to be a mode for cloud computing enabled and disabled.

    And the processing would have as much lag as the player has ping, on top of any computational lag.
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    PolyHertz wrote: »
    This seems like a legal battle waiting to happen:

    fWpJY1n.jpg

    Again, same policy as Steam, Origin and any online store. And it's the same policy if you bought your game online or on a disc. I've seen no legal battle yet.
  • ErichWK
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    ErichWK polycounter lvl 12
    That is not the same policy as steam. If I get banned from playing online Call. Of Duty I won't be banned from playing Bastion. With Xbox One if I find an exploit in Halo and my account gets banned I would lose rights to every game I ever bought. Seems a bit draconian. Take away my online, but my single player games? Which brings up the worst point of Xbone. We arent really owning the games, just buying licenses. Lame sauce.
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    I agree that it is more of a marketing buzzword at the moment than an applicable solution. For the time being we haven't seen it properly applied to a running title.

    I suspect that one of the first games we will see deliver somewhat on the "cloud" promise will be Titanfall. That game is going to be entirely multi-player focused, making it a good test case for applying "cloud" support. (high-speed on-line support would be necessary for it even if no cloud servers were involved)

    It's quite the buzzword, even the games back on the 360 days have something you'd call cloud-support, sort of like the backend that ran for halo3, the cloud just essentially means running something on a server.
    As to what they will actually do with the extra processing power, you're guess is as good as mine. As you pointed out, even with additional calculations possible, you would still have a bottleneck between the client and the server. Even a high-speed internet connection isn't going to provide the same speed you would get from crunching numbers on the client's hardware. (between the system's CPU, GPU, and RAM) I can only imagine that some physics simulations for the environment might benefit from this kind of processing. Aside from that I'm at a loss. There would be no point in rendering backgrounds or such on the cloud, those elements wouldn't add enough to the visuals to make a difference.

    It will always be an issue, which is why cloud-rendering isn't something that can be shuffled into your local rendering pipeline easily, hardware is having a hard time as it is going to and from the graphics-card and is optimally doing things on its own.

    What we see in something like the Division is the very typical cloud-enhanced type of game, which is again essentially just a more solid back-end for doing stuff like multiplayer and persistancy, it's not something new.
    I fear that Microsoft might be chasing after diminishing returns with their emphasis on cloud support. Until we see an example that is meaningful to gameplay and interaction, I won't be convinced.

    You could essentially have a sandbox game where every citizens life in some town is simulated on servers and wouldn't have to be entirely local until you need the information, but as we know with EA and MAXIS it is more expensive than it is worth to actually do what you COULD do with the servers.
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Hehe yeah - especially since the SimCity cloud dependency was a lie that was quickly exposed.
  • vik
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    vik polycounter lvl 13
    ErichWK wrote: »
    That is not the same policy as steam. If I get banned from playing online Call. Of Duty I won't be banned from playing Bastion. With Xbox One if I find an exploit in Halo and my account gets banned I would lose rights to every game I ever bought. Seems a bit draconian. Take away my online, but my single player games? Which brings up the worst point of Xbone. We arent really owning the games, just buying licenses. Lame sauce.

    Just to point this out,in Steam`s case, in-game ban for being naughty(cheating) is not the same as an account ban.
  • Overlord
    PolyHertz wrote: »
    This seems like a legal battle waiting to happen:

    fWpJY1n.jpg

    This just keeps getting better and better.
  • Ark
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    Haha, not even running Windows 8, that's amazing.
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    eld wrote: »
    What we see in something like the Division is the very typical cloud-enhanced type of game, which is again essentially just a more solid back-end for doing stuff like multiplayer and persistancy, it's not something new.

    It's nothing they weren't already doing on the 360, really.
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    ErichWK wrote: »
    That is not the same policy as steam. If I get banned from playing online Call. Of Duty I won't be banned from playing Bastion. With Xbox One if I find an exploit in Halo and my account gets banned I would lose rights to every game I ever bought. Seems a bit draconian. Take away my online, but my single player games? Which brings up the worst point of Xbone. We arent really owning the games, just buying licenses. Lame sauce.

    An account ban probably means you pirated something or tried to hack the system. In both cases you are a moron and should be punished as such. Of course just exploiting a bug should involve a game ban which is different.

    As for the whole "XBox One games were running on Win7 PCs" thing, it's again a lot of exaggeration. Yes, LocoCycle, the terrible looking game from TwistedPixel, from which the port to XOne was anounced 2 weeks ago was running on PCs.
    All the other games were running on devkits.
  • Overlord
    Jerc wrote: »
    An account ban probably means you pirated something or tried to hack the system. In both cases you are a moron and should be punished as such. Of course just exploiting a bug involves a game ban which is different.

    You're speculating vagaries to justify behavior that is clearly disproportionate and assuming that the policy is infallible. Punishment is not proof of wrong doing, even when the punishment is severe. The fact that someone was banned is not definitive proof that they must have done something wrong. It's faulty logic to assume that one is deserving simply because they were punished. It goes along with the misconception that you should allow authorities unlimited power to perform searches because, "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear and only criminals would refuse to be searched."

    No, the policy is abusive and excessive on its face.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Jerc wrote: »
    An account ban probably means you pirated something or tried to hack the system. In both cases you are a moron and should be punished as such.

    Or someone could of just tried upgrading the HDD or replacing a faulty one, or someone trying to mod to get around region locks, or someone tries to get around the 24 hour activation system just so they can play offline.
  • Bibendum
    For whatever it's worth Amazon had (may still have?) the same policy. A couple years ago they closed a large number of accounts on the basis that they returned too many items and anyone who bought digital goods lost them when they lost access to their account. They did so without any warning telling people they were approaching the return limit. Not that "others are doin it too" makes it any better...

    Honestly though I think this is a relatively trivial problem because it can be changed simply by adjusting the policy and if necessary pushing out an xbox live update that allows them to ban people on a per-game basis if it becomes a big enough problem.

    In regards to the Kinect for a while (maybe still?) Kinect bundled 360s were outselling non-Kinect bundles and they've sold 24m kinects to date so they probably see it as a device with broad enough appeal to justify anchoring them together.

    Unfortunately I don't think Kinect will ever be a really useful device for gaming so much as it is a party gimmick and a piece of fitness equipment in much the same way the Wii has become.

    Unless Microsoft can push the price down I think they're going to end up being outperformed by the WiiU.
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    Just a thought. If they are using x86 based systems now. Why could they not include emulation software to allow people to play.. Xbox games?

    The original Xbox was basically a low end PC back in the day.

    That might make a few nostalgic naysayers change their mind. I can understand the inability to work with 360. But again, Xbox games should in theory should work without too much trouble.
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 19
    xbox games on the 360 were emulated - so I guess it's up to the devs if they want to port them over
  • arshlevon
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    arshlevon polycounter lvl 18
    Wow, so even in the US, xbox will only work in 21 states at launch, and no concrete plans to work in other states untill 2015 estimated. What are they thinking?

    http://www.p4rgaming.com/microsoft-confirms-xbox-one-will-only-work-in-21-states-in-the-us-at-launch/

    *edit

    Actually only 20, becase virgina is not one of the states.
  • aajohnny
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    aajohnny polycounter lvl 14
    arshlevon wrote: »
    Wow, so even in the US, xbox will only work in 21 states at launch, and no concrete plans to work in other states untill 2015 estimated. What are they thinking?

    http://www.p4rgaming.com/microsoft-confirms-xbox-one-will-only-work-in-21-states-in-the-us-at-launch/

    *edit

    Actually only 20, becase virgina is not one of the states.

    Wow seriously? wtf are they thinking? Do they want sales?
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    lol haha yeah I wouldn't trust that one too much :D Sounds a lot like some fun trolling and clever satire, showing how arbitrary it is to only launch in select countries. I see this as a way to explain to the privileged audience what it would feel like to be stripped of their chance of getting the system for stupid, BS reasons. And what's funny is that some fanboys will still find ways to justify it, claiming stuff like "if you live in a rural area you shouldnt be able to afford an Xbox anyway". Awesome hehe.

    But now I am actually interested to see if the gaming press is going to pick up that story and run with it without source checking ...
  • arshlevon
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    arshlevon polycounter lvl 18
    Ahh, looks like your right pior, the gaming media did pick up the story, but on google when you click on the links from gamespot there is a 404, page not found error. Based on their current announcements, I would not be suprised, sorry for the misinformation.
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    Not sure if actually satire....
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    I'm aware the map (from http://internetcensus2012.bitbucket.org/images/worldmap_16to9_1600x900.png ) follows population spread. It's only logical to prioritize populated areas.

    The thing is Cliffy B didn't tweet "Europe, get decent broadband in most places" or "get decent broadband where most of the users are". No. He tweeted about everywhere. That includes backwater towns. If you were to look at a similar map from Europe, I expect there to be a similar population-density/internet-availability correlation.

    I couldn't find a similar map with included speed limits and so on. However I could find a generic map (at http://internetcensus2012.bitbucket.org/images.html ) that shows a fuckton of IP addresses/pings, which at least gives some indication of internet distribution:
    worldmap_16to9_1600x900.png

    Even if it's about 'just' 10% of the users, you're still talking about 10 million units that you are guaranteed to miss out on. Well, perhaps only 1 million after this horrendous PR nightmare...
  • DireWolf
    “Some factors Microsoft put into consideration included demand, the amount of complaints received from each state, internet quality, obesity rates, amount of Xbox Live users, quality of life and more. It was well thought out research and we stand by our decision to launch with only 21 states.”
    lol Obesity...
  • McGreed
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    McGreed polycounter lvl 15
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    Snader wrote: »
    I'm aware the map (from http://internetcensus2012.bitbucket.org/images/worldmap_16to9_1600x900.png ) follows population spread. It's only logical to prioritize populated areas.

    The thing is Cliffy B didn't tweet "Europe, get decent broadband in most places" or "get decent broadband where most of the users are". No. He tweeted about everywhere. That includes backwater towns. If you were to look at a similar map from Europe, I expect there to be a similar population-density/internet-availability correlation.

    I couldn't find a similar map with included speed limits and so on. However I could find a generic map (at http://internetcensus2012.bitbucket.org/images.html ) that shows a fuckton of IP addresses/pings, which at least gives some indication of internet distribution:
    worldmap_16to9_1600x900.png

    Even if it's about 'just' 10% of the users, you're still talking about 10 million units that you are guaranteed to miss out on. Well, perhaps only 1 million after this horrendous PR nightmare...

    loving that single ping from the north pole :D
  • Kharn
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    Kharn polycounter lvl 8
    loving that single ping from the north pole :D
    Just to be a massive pendant, its Greenland :p
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    Yup. Odd how they decided to put it in the middle. I'm guessing they didn't know it's geographical position (both of the cities are on the opposite coasts).
  • skankerzero
    McGreed wrote: »
    Sooo, a windows machine was used for showing the games at E3 and not a devkit?

    http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Xbox-One-Games-E3-Were-Running-Windows-7-With-Nvidia-GTX-Cards-56737.html

    seriously?

    This was posted and discussed only one page back.
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    xbox games on the 360 were emulated - so I guess it's up to the devs if they want to port them over

    Im not saying port. I am saying sticking the disk in and playing on the xbox1 as it would have an xbox emulator built in. In theory it shouldnt be too hard? Again x86 to x86.
  • CyberGameArts
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    CyberGameArts polycounter lvl 7
    I don't know if anyone has posted this yet but I found this pretty interesting!

    http://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/1gh0ja/some_perspective_from_a_3d_environment_artist/
  • DireWolf
    I don't know if anyone has posted this yet but I found this pretty interesting!

    http://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/1gh0ja/some_perspective_from_a_3d_environment_artist/
    While it made sense, the guy didn't make a good job convincing readers.
  • ikken
    What Microsoft is doing (limiting used sales, stopping piracy, allowing additional revenue streams) is as big a factor for next gen graphics as the new tech is. if you can't pay artists to fill the gigs of data with art, all that extra ram is just wasted. The industry is having a hard time paying 15 artists to fill up 200mb of data.
    gurl
    So in reality, Microsoft is sort of saving the gaming industry from turning into a bunch of crappy phone games and /r/gaming is getting pissed because in the long run, Microsoft is doing them a favor but they are too narrow minded to realize it?
    gurrrrrrl
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    I don't know if anyone has posted this yet but I found this pretty interesting!

    http://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/1gh0ja/some_perspective_from_a_3d_environment_artist/

    That is silly, artists wont have any issues using more ram, stop down scaling textures, increase view distances, stop limiting the number of unique assets, and reduce despawning.
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    Artists will probably always author their textures at twice the resolution for quality sake. So indeed creating 2k or 4k art will most likely take longer than creating 1k textures.
    Likewise, creating hundreds of props to fill a scene realistically will be much more time consuming than creating the only few props you could afford to display with current gen.
    Look at the videos from Ubisoft's The Division, the amount of variation in props and details is just insane.

    It's not about filling the ram with unoptimized assets, it's about filling this ram with content that is as efficient as what you were doing with current gen, which means A LOT more assets than previously.
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    It's nonsense though. Developers should simply come to terms with the fact that at some point they will not fill out an entire disk or all of the RAM. And they don't HAVE to, either. It all comes down to managing the scope of the project. Not every title can or should be a $60 blockbuster.

    One solution would be to have modular asset creation. It aught to be quite possible for Call of Duty 10 to build a certain crop of assets for a certain type of environment, which then is re-used and expanded in CoD 11.

    Another solution would be to approach it a bit more as a middleware solution. Buying prop packs. This is already used in indie development to keep costs down, or for a dev team (often, a 'rogue' coder making his own game) to get by without any dedicated artists.

    You can't expect customers to simply pay twice as much for their nextgen games. Well, you can, but they won't do so.
  • Muzzoid
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    Muzzoid polycounter lvl 10
    Also you don't have to make a realistic shooter...
  • Lazerus Reborn
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    Lazerus Reborn polycounter lvl 8
    Of course as the tech advances, the production costs will rise.

    However you need to take into account the solid pipelines that are already in place. You would simply need to stop scaling down at certain points and have higher poly caps. (as stated above) So the cost of development should not rise too much.
    /They will rise, as it's new off the press, first of the "newest" generation so there will be mistakes and unforeseen issues with development, again raising production costs.

    Everything will be up in the air for a while till it settles, but i can't see many £80 games being bought when steam offers brand new games for £30. Similar, the console digi market will probably boom if people aren't willing to part for a AAA title, the cheaper indies may be a good choice.

    Shame since i want so many of the E3 games ;(.
  • Calabi
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    Calabi polycounter lvl 12
    So its true used games do hurt the industry?

    Well either way we really are going to find out now. If one console sells more new games(you can compensate for relative numbers of users on each console) then they will know.
  • Ace-Angel
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    Ace-Angel polycounter lvl 12
    I don't know if anyone has posted this yet but I found this pretty interesting!

    http://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/1gh0ja/some_perspective_from_a_3d_environment_artist/
    Can anyone explain the point this guy is trying to get across? I don't see the correlation between what MS is doing vs. hiring and having artists fill out your architecture.

    MS isn't going to magically stop studios from firing more people, or opening up more jobs at places like EA.

    Again, am I being daft and didn't understand the point the guy is making, or is he reaching for strands of hair?
  • Overlord
    Calabi wrote: »
    So its true used games do hurt the industry?

    Well either way we really are going to find out now. If one console sells more new games(you can compensate for relative numbers of users on each console) then they will know.

    No, it's not true. It's no more harmful to the industry than a used car is to the auto industry. It's just that the game industry has gotten itself into this notion that used sales equate to lost sales they are entitled to, which is just silly. Used goods displace sales of new goods in every industry, not just games. The games industry is the only one we hear about that's resisting it. Used games are competition and every business hates that, which they all try to get rid of so they can have a monopoly. If they really want to beat the competition, they should produce games that consumers want to keep. Many console games right now are a disposable affair. If your game has such short term appeal, it's no wonder that the used market is full of them. The industry wants to blame the market, but they should take a look at themselves see the gross inefficiencies in their management. It doesn't help that publishers pressure them to produce the same old cookie cutter blockbusters instead of creating something that isn't so stale.
  • nick2730
    Looks like microsoft was demoing the xbox one using windows 7 and a high end pc with Nvidia GPU, go figure the console uses an AMD card

    http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Xbox-One-Games-E3-Were-Running-Windows-7-With-Nvidia-GTX-Cards-56737.html
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 19
    oXYnary wrote: »
    Im not saying port. I am saying sticking the disk in and playing on the xbox1 as it would have an xbox emulator built in. In theory it shouldnt be too hard? Again x86 to x86.

    Actually it's PowerPC to x86. AFAIK Xbox emulation on the 360 was handled on a game by game basis
  • almighty_gir
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    almighty_gir ngon master
    i wonder how they're getting round the 3gb limitation on 32bit architecture, unless i'm confusing things here... x86 = 32bit right?
  • nick2730
    @ almighty your right the x86 is 32bit restriction for 3gb but thats only for the OS since xp is designed for 32 bit im assuming they designed the console to utilize all the memory maybe sharing some with video card
  • Goeddy
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    Goeddy greentooth
    i wonder how they're getting round the 3gb limitation on 32bit architecture, unless i'm confusing things here... x86 = 32bit right?

    nope its not. x86 is the general processor architecture.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86
    64bit and 32 bit is just the lenght of the memory addresses.
  • nick2730
    windows xp was 32 bit only allows it to address 3.75 gb of memory
  • Calabi
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    Calabi polycounter lvl 12
    They'd be a bit stupid to have 8 gigs of memory and only have a 32 bit OS.
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    Actually it's PowerPC to x86. AFAIK Xbox emulation on the 360 was handled on a game by game basis

    I am speaking about xbox (original) to xbox 1. Which is direct x86 to x86. 360 used the powerpc and thus needed a game by game conversion. Here, if they, (Microsoft), wanted to, it would not be difficult to embed a xbox original virtual OS and use the disk drive to play original xbox games without anything else needed from publishers for conversions and what not. The new system could handle the old xbox specs without barely a yawn.

    This might in that case make it easier to swallow for gamers. Yes, the 360 is fubar for playing on xbox 1, but at least they would have a huge catalog of original xbox games to use. Without the BS of "conversion" from publishers to run on new platforms and be at the mercy what the publisher chooses to convert and as well as possibly just making people rebuy it even though they own the disk. It could be a very smart move on Microsofts part to battle the bad PR.



    I don't know how I am failing to get across what I mean. :(
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 19
    oXYnary wrote: »

    I don't know how I am failing to get across what I mean. :(

    I didn't realize playing original Xbox games on the Xbox One was even a thing people wanted/were getting upset about.
  • PolyHertz
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    PolyHertz polycount lvl 666
    Wouldn't it still be a problem running XBox games on XBoxOne due to the orignal system using an NVidia GPU?
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