Hey lets quickly jump to conclusions and be a bunch of assholes cause that is a great plan. Microsoft is so evil. Ooooh down with Microsoft. They don't care about me as a gamer... Oh burn em! Close em down. Lay em all off.
Seriously, E3 is less than 3 weeks away. Games will be showed then. Stop your whining. Funny that you guys bitch about all the bastard kids on xbox live screaming and yet here you are acting not much different.
If gamers are too dumb that they can't tell the difference between Xbox: One and the original Xbox then well perhaps playing more video games isn't really in their best interests to start with.
I highlighted what parts of your rant I thought may have been pretty offensive. Seeing as how those aren't directed at anyone in particular, apart from using the word "gamers" I would say polycount has a pretty big gaming community.
Your blind faith and need to protect anything and everything that has the COD named attached to it, because you work there is astounding jesse. You put down anyone who has any opinion different than yours, which of course that COD's shit doesn't stink.
As common sense would lend us to believe, having a camera that is always on and connected to the internet is not a good idea as autocon said. Noone has hacked it yet because it hasnt been as easy as it's about to become for starters. But that isnt even my biggest concern.
Wouldnt you agree that preemptively addressing this issue before someone is recorded banging/changing in their living room is a good idea?
But anyone with a kinect now already has this. No one is hacking kinects and streaming your living rooms video feed. What else is there to be concerned about.
My Xbox is in my bedroom, not my living room. When I was a kid, it was in my bedroom too because my parents didn't want to hear it and they wanted to watch tv. Even if people aren't hacking the cams now, give them time. I don't like the idea of having an always on cam in my bedroom. I also doubt parents would like the idea of it in their kids' rooms. If it wasn't a required feature, it might not be an issue, but it is now.
Also, large portions of the country still don't have reliable or accessible high-speed internet. So what about those people. My hometown only recently got "high-speed" which is barely a step about dial up. Living in a city, it may not be an problem, but that's a big middle finger to a lot of potential customers.
But anyone with a kinect now already has this. No one is hacking kinects and streaming your living rooms video feed. What else is there to be concerned about.
Your right, because no one has done it yet, it means that its never going to happen and no one should be worried about it.
Right now it would be a shot in the dark to find someone with an Xbox Kinect and is hooked up to the internet out of the millions of Xboxs out there. With the Xbox One you KNOW they have to be connected to the internet and have to have a Kinect (which you can never turn off)
Its important to bring up these concerns now so that they can be addressed now instead of down the line when the product has shipped and the chance to fix them might have passed. Waiting for something bad to happen to fix a problem is foolish.
There is no reason that the Kinect NEEDS to be connected to the console to work. Microsoft is just programming it that way but there is no need for that to be the case.
but we already know they can make an amazing gaming console I guess is my point.
thats not true with most products. design teams change. product focus changes. management changes. peoples expectations also change. all these things have an effect on the product and can radically change something people like into something they do not. microsoft has a horrible track record in this respect, vista, win8 etc.
xbone is not a necessity its a luxury item. nor is it cheap to most people. the higher the price people pay much more attention to the details and weigh the benefits, cost, competition etc. its also not 2005. people have a much larger range of devices that are competing for there money.
the majority of criticism i have read relates to the changes in the business model and the device restrictions that potential customers see as a negative. once you factor in all the negatives like not being able to lend out games, a required internet connection etc. plus all the cost for the device, games, subscriptions etc your talking about a major purchase for most people that they consider very carefully. if the product does not meet there desires at the price they want then they will simply chooses other similar products (playstation), or different devices (tablets). assuming that you 'own' the market and can rely on loyal customers is the fatal flaw large companies make after they are successful. they take there eye off the ball and fall out of touch with the market.
if your selling a high priced luxury item you can not expect loyal dependable customers the way you can if your selling a cheap necessity like toothpaste. you have to show your core audience that what you offer is what they want and better then the competition. microsoft has failed to do that for many gamers. i think quite rightly people are skeptical of the moves microsoft is making. clearly microsoft does not see the gamer as the core audience. imo that a rather large oversight if 100% of your current customers are gamers.
Microsoft came out and said in their conference that E3 would be where they showed the games. They even said 14 exclusives and 8 new franchises. That should get some excited.
Honestly, I wouldn't put the xbox and ps4 into luxury items for the people that are on this board. We are not living in mud huts or caves. We all obviously have access to tech and have other gaming systems. It isn't a Mercedes. It's a gaming console and I can almost guarantee many of you have spent more on a cell phone or other devices. Perhaps that is a gross miscalculation or the wrong way to put it. Ehhh...
I plan on getting both the Xbox:One and Ps4. Just like I did with the 360/PS3. I am sure I am not the only one on this board that will take the same approach.
About the kinect and possibly PS4 Eye required to be plugged in, if Microsoft or Sony wants devs to take advantage it, it has to be something everyone has plugged in and connected. Otherwise Kinect features in games are pointless to include, because not everyone would be using it, the are forcing devs to try to innovate by making it a new standard for consoles. Which is kind of a good thing, they want consoles to be different than PC games.
Not every can use it - Kinect is very situational. That's the main reason why developers are reluctant to look at it. There are several million of them out there already ( a hardware attach rate of around 1-3, which is pretty remarkeable), so it's not like there aren't people to sell them to.
it is a fact that law enforcement requests and is granted access to any and ALL information you pass over microsofts xbox live network including video.
i will never have a hi fidelity microphone and camera in my home that is accessible to anyone let alone the pigs. i'm far more worried by them then the hackers.
edit:
luxury items are items you do not 'need' apposed to necessities like food clothing etc. the implications are just as much psychological as they are monetary. when you do not 'need' an item you think about it very differently then thing you do.
it is a fact that law enforcement requests and is granted access to any and ALL information you pass over microsofts xbox live network including video.
I understand though. I am much more concerned with the govt then hackers like you guys said, but jesus can you really go through life being that afraid and paranoid?
I understand though. I am much more concerned with the govt then hackers like you guys said, but jesus can you really go through life being that afraid and paranoid?
i am not affraid. i'm smart.
smart enough to never have to be afraid because i will never have an xbone.
it is a fact that law enforcement requests and is granted access to any and ALL information you pass over microsofts xbox live network including video.
i will never have a hi fidelity microphone and camera in my home that is accessible to anyone let alone the pigs. i'm far more worried by them then the hackers.
edit:
luxury items are items you do not 'need' apposed to necessities like food clothing etc. the implications are just as much psychological as they are monetary. when you do not 'need' an item you think about it very differently then thing you do.
I highly doubt the FBI is interested in my 3-79 Halo 4 kill to death ratio. I really don't think I'm going to do a 3-5 stint in Chino or Gitmo because I accidentally team killed someone.
Unless you are doing illegal dealings on xbox live, you don't have jack shit to worry about. If you are that stupid to do so, you deserve to get caught. You'd better get off the interweb as them po-po pigs have access to all of your postings.
The One will break sales records, it's too big to fail. The PS4 will break sales records as well. It just depends on which one comes last and that will be the one to break the previous record.
Yes. You have any idea what information can be pulled off a confiscated smart phone?
Police don't need a warrant to track your location via phones, and they don't need one for emails or texts that are older than 180 days, and they don't need one for files on cloud storage.
Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft - they all tend to acquiesce to police requests.
You're in trouble if you're worried about "the pigs" getting your stuff.
@sactaurs
you're in trouble if you think that having a live video camera and microphone in your living room that microsoft has constant access to is not a problem.
@Jesse Moody
it may look a bit like a bad PSA but its true.
The One will break sales records, it's too big to fail. The PS4 will break sales records as well. It just depends on which one comes last and that will be the one to break the previous record.
Neither the 360 or the Ps3 (or the Wii, for that matter) broke sales records this generation. I wouldn't be so confident of it happening in the next.
Not every can use it - Kinect is very situational. That's the main reason why developers are reluctant to look at it. There are several million of them out there already ( a hardware attach rate of around 1-3, which is pretty remarkeable), so it's not like there aren't people to sell them to.
It never makes sense to limit your market, there's a lot of cool uses for the kinect that would be optional and not take anything away from the game.
Here's a few features I could see added to normal games, taking advantage of the kinect.
- Have the option to use the Kentic for games that have character creation. Do a full body scan and a up close face scan and the edit automatically does all the adjustments to make you match your character, and then you can tweak the sliders and options a bit more if you feel the need to.
- Leaning around walls in FPS. It's never felt right to me have buttons on the controller for this option. I'd feel more natural and make the game a bit more immersive.
- Gernade throwing, I've never liked games where you have to hold the gernade button longer to throw it furter, it'd give more options if you just want to drop a gernade, or throw it sideways or around a corner. Also it'd give you better control so you can arch the throw higher or lower to avoid stuff in the way, something you cannot really do in games now.
- Voice commands, Mainly for small squad games like Mass Effect, I disliked having to pause to give orders, even if there was only a few commands.
- For racing games use rotating your head to the right/left to look out those windows.
- Better quick time events than hit this random button, things that would actually make sense in the context of an event. Like instead of taping B to grab someone that is falling, just reach out a hand instead, or leaning out of the way of something coming at you, or putting up an arm to block. I wouldn't like to see these over used, but could be better than hit whatever button
- Features like Metro Last Light's wipe your dirty gas mask clean button.
- In horror games where you can only use a gun or flash light, but not at the same time, have the player point the flashlight with their hand.
Some of these ideas might not work at all in a game, but some of them are worth a try.
What excites me is the prospect of a wider install base, specifically my parents generation if the price is reasonable. I'd have no problem recommending they get one, if only to use for skype calls and netflix, as they have a hell of a time with a controller, but they can talk to it and use gestures easily enough. Many gamers scoff at the "casuals", but the "casuals" = money right now, and at the end of the day it's a business. They'd be INSANE not to try and increase their install base. This press conference, despite what you may have wanted it to be, was exactly what the business types wanted to see.
COD, EA, Sports games, those are safe bets, the investors want safe bets, and for those types, the press conference had all the information THEY wanted. Doesn't matter what the gamer wants, at least right now, they'll save the for E3 I'm sure. So prematurely condemning it is silly, I'm just excited for new games/experiences, if the XBO ends up falling flat, I won't get one, simple as that, I don't get why people seem to be so upset by something nobody is forcing them to buy.
"What would George Orwell say if he knew that people are even going to pay for this willingly?"
--(sorry, I´m not replying to you specifically, its just this quote that hit me)
He would, as most semi intelligent people that aren´t dying of big-brother-is-watching-me-wank syndrome laugh and realize that no one cares what you do. No one wants to watch you in your living room wasting time on a game or movie so unless you give them a prime reason to.
No one is going to give one single dinky-poodoo about your always on camera that is not accessable from the internet since you are half smart and have a firewall on your router and ... a honking big xbox in the way that MS would be in a shitstorm of trouble in all EU countries if they allowed it to be accessable from the outside in anyway, shape or form.
And if someone is still dying from the paranoia bug, get a tin can, put some soundproofing in it and throw the damn kinect in there and close the lid when you are not actively using it.. Problem (well not really since its in the persons head) solved!
I fully agree with Jesse Moody here..
Holy hopping flaming gay hippos how idiotic most of the comments here are about this.
One might think this forum is filled with young gaming fanboys that dont have the first clue of how business or hardware works given most of these comments.
We see the hardware specs of the XO console, we can see its power potential and they said within the first few minutes of the presentation that E3 would be the gaming focused reveal.
How people miss this and rant about MS´s lack of dev support or lack of focus on games and other random crap is just facepalm worthy on an epic scale.
Are you people suffering from cutton-brain?
The specs are about the same as the PS4´s. Slightly less ram speed and roughly 33% fewer GPU computation cores.
To counter this, MS put in more on-dye cache´s to help shuffle smaller data packages faster around in the system.
They also said that the console can grow over time due to cloud computing on their massively expanding server structure.
Now if you actually open your eyes and stop rage-rolling on the floor like little spoiled children, you would realize that if they in the future manage to offload functions over to their cloud servers that can tolerate higher-latency, the computational power of the Xbox One grows exponentially.
And if you even think this isn´t possible, then how on gods green earth do you fathom they can stream entire games over to you while you install on the PS4 over a service run by *my mouth is to big for my own good* Dave Perry.
I´m just.. bleh.. I think most of the commenters in this thread need to have an attitude adjustment and think things through to the end.
Most of this thread reads like a bad gaming forum kiddy rant rather than a discussion between industry pros and people that actually think they have a blind shot in hell to last anywhere in the industry with their kind of thinking.
i can not imagine someone would post something so uninformed and childish in a serious attempt to make a point. Jesse, nor anyone else in the whole thread has resorted to that sort of rubbish. i think you have to do a bit more work then name calling if you want to convince anyone you have something relevant to say.
Can we stop the arguing and just talk about the Console... Everybody has their own personal preference and choice to like or dislike, buy or not buy something... if you like it then its awesome to you and maybe it's not to somebody else, if you hate it, it sucks to you but maybe it's not somebody else. If you enjoy it that's all that matters. There really is no right or wrong in this case in terms of it "sucking" or being "Amazing".
"What would George Orwell say if he knew that people are even going to pay for this willingly?"
--(sorry, I´m not replying to you specifically, its just this quote that hit me)
He would, as most semi intelligent people that aren´t dying of big-brother-is-watching-me-wank syndrome laugh and realize that no one cares what you do. No one wants to watch you in your living room wasting time on a game or movie so unless you give them a prime reason to.
No one is going to give one single dinky-poodoo about your always on camera that is not accessable from the internet since you are half smart and have a firewall on your router and ... a honking big xbox in the way that MS would be in a shitstorm of trouble in all EU countries if they allowed it to be accessable from the outside in anyway, shape or form.
And if someone is still dying from the paranoia bug, get a tin can, put some soundproofing in it and throw the damn kinect in there and close the lid when you are not actively using it.. Problem (well not really since its in the persons head) solved!
I fully agree with Jesse Moody here..
Holy hopping flaming gay hippos how idiotic most of the comments here are about this.
One might think this forum is filled with young gaming fanboys that dont have the first clue of how business or hardware works given most of these comments.
We see the hardware specs of the XO console, we can see its power potential and they said within the first few minutes of the presentation that E3 would be the gaming focused reveal.
How people miss this and rant about MS´s lack of dev support or lack of focus on games and other random crap is just facepalm worthy on an epic scale.
Are you people suffering from cutton-brain?
The specs are about the same as the PS4´s. Slightly less ram speed and roughly 33% fewer GPU computation cores.
To counter this, MS put in more on-dye cache´s to help shuffle smaller data packages faster around in the system.
They also said that the console can grow over time due to cloud computing on their massively expanding server structure.
Now if you actually open your eyes and stop rage-rolling on the floor like little spoiled children, you would realize that if they in the future manage to offload functions over to their cloud servers that can tolerate higher-latency, the computational power of the Xbox One grows exponentially.
And if you even think this isn´t possible, then how on gods green earth do you fathom they can stream entire games over to you while you install on the PS4 over a service run by *my mouth is to big for my own good* Dave Perry.
I´m just.. bleh.. I think most of the commenters in this thread need to have an attitude adjustment and think things through to the end.
Most of this thread reads like a bad gaming forum kiddy rant rather than a discussion between industry pros and people that actually think they have a blind shot in hell to last anywhere in the industry with their kind of thinking.
/old, irritated man rant off!
Just gonna argue for argueings sake because in general I agree with Jesse. I just found it funny that this system is, apart from its intended use, the thing Orwell described.
Now the thing is, there's a lot of people who're not "half smart" - if people were smart we could just do away with all laws and hope things work out all by itself, although I think we'd rather end up in a mad max world (even though some people here might find this cool ). For example there's still a good amount of people who fall for the Nigeria spam or people who click "yes" on every toolbar installation and then wonder why weird shit happend on their PC. It's also been proved that many consumer firewalls are rather crap. The strongest argument really is that nobody cares what you do in your own 4 walls, even if you leave the digital doors wide open. Chance is they rather go for your credit card number than a pic of you sitting on the couch. Although with all the trolls in the internet I wouldn't be so sure.
What could be fun though is when some marketing researchers find a way to make use of that camera. How many people in the household? what age? gender? what's their viewing habits, and so on. Could probably hide this in some EULA which you click away in a hurry just so you can get your game fix.
I think (hope?) this will not happen, but then again I wouldn't be surprised if such a thing happens in the next 10 - 20 years. The amount of personal info, rights you give people in an EULA, has increased dramatically since when I bought my first computer game in the 80's. (did games even have EULAs back then?)
while it's interesting to see people's emotional reaction to the XBox One launch, it does seem a bit extreme. For example, at least it doesn't look like a grill or have the problem of people mistaking it as an add-on to an existing system. The name is not so bad, and the box looks like something that could blend in with my livingroom.
As far as content, there is a huge market for TV, movies, sports and games in established genres -- like Call of Duty.
Remember the E3 presser where MS had Cirque Du Soleil? The one that left gamers confused and angry? Well it didn't hurt the Xbox's bottom line.
By taking over/killing the used market, MS has a lot of revenue to gain.
This is business as usual for MS, and an evolution of their ongoing strategy. I can see why a lot of people are upset about that, but it's not exactly a surprise, and it's hard to call that strategy a failure.
Personally I don't know of any XBox exclusive content in the works that I would want to buy. I have a hard time even imagining an XBox exclusive game I would want to play at this point. I don't know anyone who wants to work with MS, even if that were an option for indies.
Can we stop the arguing and just talk about the Console... Everybody has their own personal preference and choice to like or dislike, buy or not buy something... if you like it then its awesome to you and maybe it's not to somebody else, if you hate it, it sucks to you but maybe it's not somebody else. If you enjoy it that's all that matters. There really is no right or wrong in this case in terms of it "sucking" or being "Amazing".
quite right,
if someone wants to throw out another point then by all means do so. but if someone is on about some other point that you think is bullshit then don't pay any attention. or at the least make an attempt to argue your point with some intelligence. calling people names like a 6 year old is the stupidest thing you can do.
on a positive note:
one thing i am curious about is the specs of the graphics cards being used. i only know its an amd at this point. if there is some info floating around pleases enlighten us.
I am not super tech savvy. But what's the difference between 8 gigs of DDR3 and 8 gigs of DDR5. I keep hearing different things.
The memory bandwidth is the big difference, which means you can swap out more space more quickly. I think the PS4 has almost 3x the bandwidth, even including the Xbone's 32mb of very fast ESRAM.
That was not a joke post per say, and the wording in it was aimed at the audience it got.
Seemed fitting for people thinking that tech like the kinect would be used to spy on them in their living rooms.
The chances of that happening are so astronomically small, that you are more likely to be filmed by a random person using their cellphone while they fog up your living room window with heavy breathing.
This sort of thing would ruin MS if it was possible in almost any country other than the USA. The legal ramifications would be immense, and not worth it for MS to risk.
If "the man" wants to find out your habbits, there are far easier, quicker and cheaper ways to do so through your bank, credit card, online history and your place of work.
How ever, the hardware is pretty solid given that devs have direct access to it unlike what they do on the PC platform.
So you get alot more from it than you otherwise would.
For comparisons sake, we are talking about an 8 core 1.6ghz cpu and a gpu that rougly is on par with something like AMD´s 7780 in raw computational power.
Remember though that the xbox360 is about on par with the age old Nvidia 7800 card in raw specs but has since its release been milked far far beyond what would be possible on a 7800 on a windows PC.
When the xbox360 launched, this was the *cutting edge graphics* we were introduced to.
Kameo rendered in a sub-720p-scaled up res with no AA and struggled to stay at 30 fps, even dropping to the low 10´s occationally.
Now a few years later, and on the same hardware we get things like this.
So what you see with these Xbox One release titles is just the first step in learning to harness the hardware.
The whole cloud computing thing has been played to bits over the last few years, but more often than not its been played wrong.
Branding internet-storage space as the amazing cloud that things magically happen in, and for this reason alot of people have a bad taste in their mouth and simply ignore the possibilities of this when done right.
Microsoft is in a prime position to utilize this power for their console, both in apps and in games.
By taking over/killing the used market, MS has a lot of revenue to gain.
We'll see...
I think this might be a massive win for games priced $20 or less. If gamers have a limited budget and can't buy a $60 game and they can't buy it used, they might buy a cheaper indie game on another platform instead.
on the kinetic point i don't see any augment other then "they would not do that there good guys".
i already posted a link to microsofts site which admits they have given various agencies over 70,000 taps on peoples connections to there servers in 2012 alone. thats only the stuff they can divulge to the public. obviously they have the capacity to store and retrieve anyone's data if there is a request for it. the idea that this highly sensitive data including video and audio will not be used and abused is a fairy tale. after the numerous scandals involving data breaches by hackers (which pretty much did wreck sony). the insatiable apatite for governments surveillance of its citizens under the rhetoric of anti-terrorism. and the huge profits to be made in data mining and sale of peoples habits. its obvious that this is fundamentally for the benefit or microsoft to make more profits. and potentially catastrophically bad for private citizens.
we obvious disagree. i respect your opinion and your right not to care. but please do the same for people who feel the opposite. there is far more logical evidence to suggest malevolent intentions or unintended data breaches then there is for the opposite case.
How ever, the hardware is pretty solid given that devs have direct access to it unlike what they do on the PC platform.
im not sure what you mean by this. you have full access to the assembly code instruction of just about every computer chip on the market. some even lower to the microcode. the same is true for gpu compute and in amd and Intel's case full access to there driver source code. in the case of windows/osx/linux you have full access to the system apis. and for linux and osx full access to the kernel and library source code.
edit:
i also don't get the bit about the gpu. explain how one would 'milk' more out of the xbox gpu then any other gpu?
So you get alot more from it than you otherwise would.
For comparisons sake, we are talking about an 8 core 1.6ghz cpu and a gpu that rougly is on par with something like AMD´s 7780 in raw computational power.
can you provide a link to this? where are the specifications that show this graphics card is 'like' the 7780?
How ever, the hardware is pretty solid given that devs have direct access to it unlike what they do on the PC platform.
It's just one platform for developers to make a game for, this is where the magic is at.
The Xb-one will use a selected amount of the systems resources for its own uses like the dashboard and other running applications, developers can never bypass this.
The PC is and should always be fully open, where the developers have as much direct access as the user allows, down to the point of completely deciding what operation system to run on it.
The move to x86-64 only solidifies the fact that developers wants and needs more easy to use systems to develop for, and when looking at arcane machineries such as the PS2 and PS3, it has been quite a mess.
Also, cloud computing has been a buzzword all the way in their reveal, it won't make the xb-one perform any better.
Microsoft has designed a console for game publishers.
Every hardware and software decision Sony has made has been focused on providing game developers more options and abilities. Every decision Microsoft has made has been focused on providing game publishers with more options and abilities.
So much confusion, rumors, presumption. I want to point out all the twisted facts that are getting thrown every which way. just get your facts straight or I can't take anything you say seriously. I don't work on console games, I own both systems and I'm in the middle of the fence here, but a lot of these comments DO feel like a youtube-level of thought was put into them. THINK. DO SOME RESEARCH. PLEASE.
"KINECT is always on oh my god *tinfoil hat*"
Wrong, it's listening but not watching. It's not always seeing what you are doing. It's waiting to hear a keyword. Everyone is making such huge presumptions here - but it was stated there are integrated modes for power. It could very well be that when it's in sleep mode there is no net connection available because they turn off the power to networking...at the chip level. We don't know. What we do know is that it's a sensitive issue. Microsoft is not going to take that lightly, they're going to take it very seriously.
To play Devil's advocate: How many people have webcams built into their computer monitors, and with an OS by Microsoft or Apple? Or a smart TV from samsung with a camera in it? Your phone likely has a high resolution camera and great audio as well as always-on internet. Is it honestly that much of a different risk? Any one of these could be tampered/hacked/seized. If this is your worry, your worry is much larger than xbox one, is it not?
"I don't want to pay for Kinect"
More presumption. Microsoft was infamous for eating huge amounts of costs for the xboxes. They want to smash Sony into the ground. They will eat more production costs, happily. It's a long-term investment, and it worked for them before. In addition, Sony has some slightly better hardware. How does that affect their production costs? We don't know. We don't know exactly how different the prices will be. Don't presume xbox one will be more than playstation 4 and use it as an arguing point, because you are guessing.
"Always Online sucks"
There is absolutely zero proof that MS will require you to have the internet at all times to play your games, or even some of the time. The best we have is that they are building a platform where developers will get to choose if they want to check for your internet connection, and some games might require it. Stop jumping to ridiculous conclusions based on conjecture.
Presuming that microsoft is going to give a big middle finger to half their customers is somewhat silly. It's an obviously bad business decision, and that's why there's no way in hell they are going to do it. Honestly I'll be very surprised if Sony does not do something very very similar, that's the big rumor seeing as EA has shut down their online-pass-DRM systems recently. Overall though, a fuzzy point that people are twisting around facts about and using as an argument. Don't use fuzzy logic to argue your point. Do your research. Prove me wrong with links and facts, *please*.
"Used Game Fees/No Lending"
It's kind of amazing the double-standard being ignored here. No one complains about games being tied to your account on a PC. I have bought games multiple times for different PCs in my home, so I can play them with my family. I can't resell my Steam games and I doubt I ever will be able to, but MS is publicly saying they are trying to figure this out and enable it (which everyone ignores).
Why is it that this ok on the PC but not the console? Is it just the years of being used to having it, and now they are taking it away? Clearly this is for a good business reason - Steam is the ultimate painless-DRM - they want xbox to be the same. Less used-game sales is good for your industry, even if it's worse for you as a consumer. It's painful to think about ripping off this band-aid, but if your xbox was just like steam as far as purchasing/owning games - would that be so bad, from a consumer or developer perspective?
Don't get me wrong, I borrow/lend games all the time. Beat a game, donate it to a friend or family member or whatever. That's awesome...I'm going to miss it. I'm playing Devil's advocate here though. If PS4 lets you trade games, maybe it gives them an advantage. Or maybe EA and Ubisoft start putting crazy codes on every ps4 game they make and force you to buy codes from them to enable it when you buy a used game. Who knows? Not us.
An interesting topic I haven't seen anyone discussing (and I warn you now - this is all just conjecture and rumors as I haven't seen any facts myself)
We know that XB1 and PS4 have 8GB of ram
We know that PS4's ram is faster
My big worry after yesterday was "HOLY SHIT - the XB1 is running a windows kernel?! How much memory will that take? How much CPU power?" I discussed with my friends the real fear of having the OS for XB1 be way more power hungry than it used to be. It does some impressive stuff, fast switching and docking and all this stuff, and it looks SNAPPY. The usefulness of these features is obviously TBD - but if their mere existence means we get less resources for games, I am worried.
Today a developer friend told me my concerns were true. It's an unnamed source, so I have no cold hard facts here - but I am told:
XB1 - 3.0GB for the OS - guess is 4GB free for Devs (breathing room)
PS4 - 1.0GB for the OS - guess is 6GB free for Devs (breathing room)
And that's just ram - I was also worried that xbox would have one or more cores reserved for the OS only to support this stuff. I suppose that is a worry on PS4 as well with recording/streaming/etc. I dunno much about this to be honest, but it could be that the stats on the box are just one factor of the actual performance.
On paper they are pretty close - but if it ends being true that Xbox has a fancy OS at the cost of dev power, and sony is the opposite - it will be very interesting to see how that plays out.
"Used Game Fees/No Lending"
It's kind of amazing the double-standard being ignored here. No one complains about games being tied to your account on a PC. I have bought games multiple times for different PCs in my home, so I can play them with my family. I can't resell my Steam games and I doubt I ever will be able to, but MS is publicly saying they are trying to figure this out and enable it (which everyone ignores).
Why is it that this ok on the PC but not the console? Is it just the years of being used to having it, and now they are taking it away? Clearly this is for a good business reason - Steam is the ultimate painless-DRM - they want xbox to be the same. Less used-game sales is good for your industry, even if it's worse for you as a consumer. It's painful to think about ripping off this band-aid, but if your xbox was just like steam as far as purchasing/owning games - would that be so bad, from a consumer or developer perspective?
Don't get me wrong, I borrow/lend games all the time. Beat a game, donate it to a friend or family member or whatever. That's awesome...I'm going to miss it. I'm playing Devil's advocate here though. If PS4 lets you trade games, maybe it gives them an advantage. Or maybe EA and Ubisoft start putting crazy codes on every ps4 game they make and force you to buy codes from them to enable it when you buy a used game. Who knows? Not us.
Good point, even though the comparison isn't quite fair. You don't have to buy PC games via Steam. Not every PC game is bound to an account. There is choice. If you really want to avoid Steam then you can in many cases - although it'll be less convenient.
Apart from marketing, money and DRM. Systems like the xb1 make me sad because there will be so many awesome games which will not last for future generations once the content owners turn off the switch. I can still fire up my 25 year old 8 bit machines and enjoy the games. 25 years from now, will we be able to still enjoy xb1 games, or will it all be lost?
And that's just ram - I was also worried that xbox would have one or more cores reserved for the OS only to support this stuff. I suppose that is a worry on PS4 as well with recording/streaming/etc. I dunno much about this to be honest, but it could be that the stats on the box are just one factor of the actual performance.
On paper they are pretty close - but if it ends being true that Xbox has a fancy OS at the cost of dev power, and sony is the opposite - it will be very interesting to see how that plays out.
I think that Sony said that there is extra processing hardware to support the background stuff, independent of the CPU and GPU.
That might just be for background downloads and video streaming/saving/screenshots though.
"Always Online sucks"
There is absolutely zero proof that MS will require you to have the internet at all times to play your games, or even some of the time. The best we have is that they are building a platform where developers will get to choose if they want to check for your internet connection, and some games might require it. Stop jumping to ridiculous conclusions based on conjecture.
All games are tied to your Live account to work, though. They also said that the system must connect to the internet at least once every 24 hours.
Wrong, it's listening but not watching. It's not always seeing what you are doing. It's waiting to hear a keyword. Everyone is making such huge presumptions here - but it was stated there are integrated modes for power. It could very well be that when it's in sleep mode there is no net connection available because they turn off the power to networking...at the chip level. We don't know. What we do know is that it's a sensitive issue. Microsoft is not going to take that lightly, they're going to take it very seriously.
You're right that it is overblown, but as you say above "We don't know" The major point of contention here is that Kinect is required. Those with a tin-foil hat could just not have one or unplug it while they played games that didn't need it: people who are paranoid get some choice in the matter, rather than needing to equate a perceived loss of their privacy with the desire for entertainment.
To play Devil's advocate: How many people have webcams built into their computer monitors, and with an OS by Microsoft or Apple? Or a smart TV from samsung with a camera in it? Your phone likely has a high resolution camera and great audio as well as always-on internet. Is it honestly that much of a different risk? Any one of these could be tampered/hacked/seized. If this is your worry, your worry is much larger than xbox one, is it not?
A lot of webcams have hard-wired LEDs or other signalling systems that switch on when the camera sensor receives power. Do we know this is the case with Kinect? That if we care if it is watching, we will know if it is? I don't know I don't have one, but I is good info have about newer versions. Also even OS made by Microsoft and Apple have levels of customisation of device management well beyond what a console offers (though still not as good as open-source applications) Those who care about webcam privacy can delve deep enough to secure it.
There is absolutely zero proof that MS will require you to have the internet at all times to play your games, or even some of the time. The best we have is that they are building a platform where developers will get to choose if they want to check for your internet connection, and some games might require it. Stop jumping to ridiculous conclusions based on conjecture.
I have bought games multiple times for different PCs in my home, so I can play them with my family
Nice anecdotal evidence. I've got a feeling that there are many people who would consider this stupid and unacceptable. It has been common for a lot of products out there to be easily shared about ones own household.
Why is it that this ok on the PC but not the console?
It's not and it never has been. PC gamers used to be able to resell games, but stuff like CD keys in that system made it practically an honor system. Over time that was not resolved and the only way to play PC was to accept this. Of course it has rarely been an forefront issue because piracy made it really (and unfairly) easy for anyone who wanted spread games further than an initial purchase.
More to the point - PC players did not have the habit of visiting a friend and playing their shared games, LAN parties existed but then you had your own PC anyway. Consoles have always enjoyed that activity and yes people are noticing the loss.
Thanks to Steam sales, a lot of games cost about as much as a hamburger, so people put up with the loss. Regardless why do we want consoles to be more like PC anyway?
Less used-game sales is good for your industry, even if it's worse for you as a consumer.
Well since I'm not in the industry my bias will show strongly. Sorry.
Then I read your last paragraph and realised you covered your whole butt. Now I feel silly.
Replies
I highlighted what parts of your rant I thought may have been pretty offensive. Seeing as how those aren't directed at anyone in particular, apart from using the word "gamers" I would say polycount has a pretty big gaming community.
Your blind faith and need to protect anything and everything that has the COD named attached to it, because you work there is astounding jesse. You put down anyone who has any opinion different than yours, which of course that COD's shit doesn't stink.
As common sense would lend us to believe, having a camera that is always on and connected to the internet is not a good idea as autocon said. Noone has hacked it yet because it hasnt been as easy as it's about to become for starters. But that isnt even my biggest concern.
Wouldnt you agree that preemptively addressing this issue before someone is recorded banging/changing in their living room is a good idea?
My Xbox is in my bedroom, not my living room. When I was a kid, it was in my bedroom too because my parents didn't want to hear it and they wanted to watch tv. Even if people aren't hacking the cams now, give them time. I don't like the idea of having an always on cam in my bedroom. I also doubt parents would like the idea of it in their kids' rooms. If it wasn't a required feature, it might not be an issue, but it is now.
Also, large portions of the country still don't have reliable or accessible high-speed internet. So what about those people. My hometown only recently got "high-speed" which is barely a step about dial up. Living in a city, it may not be an problem, but that's a big middle finger to a lot of potential customers.
Your right, because no one has done it yet, it means that its never going to happen and no one should be worried about it.
Right now it would be a shot in the dark to find someone with an Xbox Kinect and is hooked up to the internet out of the millions of Xboxs out there. With the Xbox One you KNOW they have to be connected to the internet and have to have a Kinect (which you can never turn off)
Its important to bring up these concerns now so that they can be addressed now instead of down the line when the product has shipped and the chance to fix them might have passed. Waiting for something bad to happen to fix a problem is foolish.
There is no reason that the Kinect NEEDS to be connected to the console to work. Microsoft is just programming it that way but there is no need for that to be the case.
thats not true with most products. design teams change. product focus changes. management changes. peoples expectations also change. all these things have an effect on the product and can radically change something people like into something they do not. microsoft has a horrible track record in this respect, vista, win8 etc.
xbone is not a necessity its a luxury item. nor is it cheap to most people. the higher the price people pay much more attention to the details and weigh the benefits, cost, competition etc. its also not 2005. people have a much larger range of devices that are competing for there money.
the majority of criticism i have read relates to the changes in the business model and the device restrictions that potential customers see as a negative. once you factor in all the negatives like not being able to lend out games, a required internet connection etc. plus all the cost for the device, games, subscriptions etc your talking about a major purchase for most people that they consider very carefully. if the product does not meet there desires at the price they want then they will simply chooses other similar products (playstation), or different devices (tablets). assuming that you 'own' the market and can rely on loyal customers is the fatal flaw large companies make after they are successful. they take there eye off the ball and fall out of touch with the market.
if your selling a high priced luxury item you can not expect loyal dependable customers the way you can if your selling a cheap necessity like toothpaste. you have to show your core audience that what you offer is what they want and better then the competition. microsoft has failed to do that for many gamers. i think quite rightly people are skeptical of the moves microsoft is making. clearly microsoft does not see the gamer as the core audience. imo that a rather large oversight if 100% of your current customers are gamers.
Honestly, I wouldn't put the xbox and ps4 into luxury items for the people that are on this board. We are not living in mud huts or caves. We all obviously have access to tech and have other gaming systems. It isn't a Mercedes. It's a gaming console and I can almost guarantee many of you have spent more on a cell phone or other devices. Perhaps that is a gross miscalculation or the wrong way to put it. Ehhh...
I plan on getting both the Xbox:One and Ps4. Just like I did with the 360/PS3. I am sure I am not the only one on this board that will take the same approach.
i will never have a hi fidelity microphone and camera in my home that is accessible to anyone let alone the pigs. i'm far more worried by them then the hackers.
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/77602.html
microsofts law enforcement request report.
http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/reporting/transparency/
edit:
luxury items are items you do not 'need' apposed to necessities like food clothing etc. the implications are just as much psychological as they are monetary. when you do not 'need' an item you think about it very differently then thing you do.
Isn't that true for most US companies though?
most companies do not have a hi fidelity live video camera with audio in your house that constantly connects to there servers...
i am not affraid. i'm smart.
smart enough to never have to be afraid because i will never have an xbone.
I highly doubt the FBI is interested in my 3-79 Halo 4 kill to death ratio. I really don't think I'm going to do a 3-5 stint in Chino or Gitmo because I accidentally team killed someone.
Unless you are doing illegal dealings on xbox live, you don't have jack shit to worry about. If you are that stupid to do so, you deserve to get caught. You'd better get off the interweb as them po-po pigs have access to all of your postings.
The One will break sales records, it's too big to fail. The PS4 will break sales records as well. It just depends on which one comes last and that will be the one to break the previous record.
That just sounded dumb... lol
Police don't need a warrant to track your location via phones, and they don't need one for emails or texts that are older than 180 days, and they don't need one for files on cloud storage.
Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft - they all tend to acquiesce to police requests.
You're in trouble if you're worried about "the pigs" getting your stuff.
you're in trouble if you think that having a live video camera and microphone in your living room that microsoft has constant access to is not a problem.
@Jesse Moody
it may look a bit like a bad PSA but its true.
Neither the 360 or the Ps3 (or the Wii, for that matter) broke sales records this generation. I wouldn't be so confident of it happening in the next.
It never makes sense to limit your market, there's a lot of cool uses for the kinect that would be optional and not take anything away from the game.
Here's a few features I could see added to normal games, taking advantage of the kinect.
- Have the option to use the Kentic for games that have character creation. Do a full body scan and a up close face scan and the edit automatically does all the adjustments to make you match your character, and then you can tweak the sliders and options a bit more if you feel the need to.
- Leaning around walls in FPS. It's never felt right to me have buttons on the controller for this option. I'd feel more natural and make the game a bit more immersive.
- Gernade throwing, I've never liked games where you have to hold the gernade button longer to throw it furter, it'd give more options if you just want to drop a gernade, or throw it sideways or around a corner. Also it'd give you better control so you can arch the throw higher or lower to avoid stuff in the way, something you cannot really do in games now.
- Voice commands, Mainly for small squad games like Mass Effect, I disliked having to pause to give orders, even if there was only a few commands.
- For racing games use rotating your head to the right/left to look out those windows.
- Better quick time events than hit this random button, things that would actually make sense in the context of an event. Like instead of taping B to grab someone that is falling, just reach out a hand instead, or leaning out of the way of something coming at you, or putting up an arm to block. I wouldn't like to see these over used, but could be better than hit whatever button
- Features like Metro Last Light's wipe your dirty gas mask clean button.
- In horror games where you can only use a gun or flash light, but not at the same time, have the player point the flashlight with their hand.
Some of these ideas might not work at all in a game, but some of them are worth a try.
COD, EA, Sports games, those are safe bets, the investors want safe bets, and for those types, the press conference had all the information THEY wanted. Doesn't matter what the gamer wants, at least right now, they'll save the for E3 I'm sure. So prematurely condemning it is silly, I'm just excited for new games/experiences, if the XBO ends up falling flat, I won't get one, simple as that, I don't get why people seem to be so upset by something nobody is forcing them to buy.
What would George Orwell say if he knew that people are even going to pay for this willingly?
More Huxley than Orwell
http://9gag.com/gag/5196073
way, way to much information
@RyanB
the unfortunate thing is they were both right...
--(sorry, I´m not replying to you specifically, its just this quote that hit me)
He would, as most semi intelligent people that aren´t dying of big-brother-is-watching-me-wank syndrome laugh and realize that no one cares what you do. No one wants to watch you in your living room wasting time on a game or movie so unless you give them a prime reason to.
No one is going to give one single dinky-poodoo about your always on camera that is not accessable from the internet since you are half smart and have a firewall on your router and ... a honking big xbox in the way that MS would be in a shitstorm of trouble in all EU countries if they allowed it to be accessable from the outside in anyway, shape or form.
And if someone is still dying from the paranoia bug, get a tin can, put some soundproofing in it and throw the damn kinect in there and close the lid when you are not actively using it.. Problem (well not really since its in the persons head) solved!
I fully agree with Jesse Moody here..
Holy hopping flaming gay hippos how idiotic most of the comments here are about this.
One might think this forum is filled with young gaming fanboys that dont have the first clue of how business or hardware works given most of these comments.
We see the hardware specs of the XO console, we can see its power potential and they said within the first few minutes of the presentation that E3 would be the gaming focused reveal.
How people miss this and rant about MS´s lack of dev support or lack of focus on games and other random crap is just facepalm worthy on an epic scale.
Are you people suffering from cutton-brain?
The specs are about the same as the PS4´s. Slightly less ram speed and roughly 33% fewer GPU computation cores.
To counter this, MS put in more on-dye cache´s to help shuffle smaller data packages faster around in the system.
They also said that the console can grow over time due to cloud computing on their massively expanding server structure.
Now if you actually open your eyes and stop rage-rolling on the floor like little spoiled children, you would realize that if they in the future manage to offload functions over to their cloud servers that can tolerate higher-latency, the computational power of the Xbox One grows exponentially.
And if you even think this isn´t possible, then how on gods green earth do you fathom they can stream entire games over to you while you install on the PS4 over a service run by *my mouth is to big for my own good* Dave Perry.
I´m just.. bleh.. I think most of the commenters in this thread need to have an attitude adjustment and think things through to the end.
Most of this thread reads like a bad gaming forum kiddy rant rather than a discussion between industry pros and people that actually think they have a blind shot in hell to last anywhere in the industry with their kind of thinking.
/old, irritated man rant off!
joke post?
i can not imagine someone would post something so uninformed and childish in a serious attempt to make a point. Jesse, nor anyone else in the whole thread has resorted to that sort of rubbish. i think you have to do a bit more work then name calling if you want to convince anyone you have something relevant to say.
Just gonna argue for argueings sake because in general I agree with Jesse. I just found it funny that this system is, apart from its intended use, the thing Orwell described.
Now the thing is, there's a lot of people who're not "half smart" - if people were smart we could just do away with all laws and hope things work out all by itself, although I think we'd rather end up in a mad max world (even though some people here might find this cool
What could be fun though is when some marketing researchers find a way to make use of that camera. How many people in the household? what age? gender? what's their viewing habits, and so on. Could probably hide this in some EULA which you click away in a hurry just so you can get your game fix.
I think (hope?) this will not happen, but then again I wouldn't be surprised if such a thing happens in the next 10 - 20 years. The amount of personal info, rights you give people in an EULA, has increased dramatically since when I bought my first computer game in the 80's. (did games even have EULAs back then?)
As far as content, there is a huge market for TV, movies, sports and games in established genres -- like Call of Duty.
Remember the E3 presser where MS had Cirque Du Soleil? The one that left gamers confused and angry? Well it didn't hurt the Xbox's bottom line.
By taking over/killing the used market, MS has a lot of revenue to gain.
This is business as usual for MS, and an evolution of their ongoing strategy. I can see why a lot of people are upset about that, but it's not exactly a surprise, and it's hard to call that strategy a failure.
Personally I don't know of any XBox exclusive content in the works that I would want to buy. I have a hard time even imagining an XBox exclusive game I would want to play at this point. I don't know anyone who wants to work with MS, even if that were an option for indies.
quite right,
if someone wants to throw out another point then by all means do so. but if someone is on about some other point that you think is bullshit then don't pay any attention. or at the least make an attempt to argue your point with some intelligence. calling people names like a 6 year old is the stupidest thing you can do.
on a positive note:
one thing i am curious about is the specs of the graphics cards being used. i only know its an amd at this point. if there is some info floating around pleases enlighten us.
The memory bandwidth is the big difference, which means you can swap out more space more quickly. I think the PS4 has almost 3x the bandwidth, even including the Xbone's 32mb of very fast ESRAM.
Xbone's 68 GB/s DDR3 vs to PS4's 175 GB/s GDDR5
Seemed fitting for people thinking that tech like the kinect would be used to spy on them in their living rooms.
The chances of that happening are so astronomically small, that you are more likely to be filmed by a random person using their cellphone while they fog up your living room window with heavy breathing.
This sort of thing would ruin MS if it was possible in almost any country other than the USA. The legal ramifications would be immense, and not worth it for MS to risk.
If "the man" wants to find out your habbits, there are far easier, quicker and cheaper ways to do so through your bank, credit card, online history and your place of work.
How ever, the hardware is pretty solid given that devs have direct access to it unlike what they do on the PC platform.
So you get alot more from it than you otherwise would.
For comparisons sake, we are talking about an 8 core 1.6ghz cpu and a gpu that rougly is on par with something like AMD´s 7780 in raw computational power.
Remember though that the xbox360 is about on par with the age old Nvidia 7800 card in raw specs but has since its release been milked far far beyond what would be possible on a 7800 on a windows PC.
When the xbox360 launched, this was the *cutting edge graphics* we were introduced to.
Kameo rendered in a sub-720p-scaled up res with no AA and struggled to stay at 30 fps, even dropping to the low 10´s occationally.
Now a few years later, and on the same hardware we get things like this.
So what you see with these Xbox One release titles is just the first step in learning to harness the hardware.
The whole cloud computing thing has been played to bits over the last few years, but more often than not its been played wrong.
Branding internet-storage space as the amazing cloud that things magically happen in, and for this reason alot of people have a bad taste in their mouth and simply ignore the possibilities of this when done right.
Microsoft is in a prime position to utilize this power for their console, both in apps and in games.
We'll see...
I think this might be a massive win for games priced $20 or less. If gamers have a limited budget and can't buy a $60 game and they can't buy it used, they might buy a cheaper indie game on another platform instead.
i already posted a link to microsofts site which admits they have given various agencies over 70,000 taps on peoples connections to there servers in 2012 alone. thats only the stuff they can divulge to the public. obviously they have the capacity to store and retrieve anyone's data if there is a request for it. the idea that this highly sensitive data including video and audio will not be used and abused is a fairy tale. after the numerous scandals involving data breaches by hackers (which pretty much did wreck sony). the insatiable apatite for governments surveillance of its citizens under the rhetoric of anti-terrorism. and the huge profits to be made in data mining and sale of peoples habits. its obvious that this is fundamentally for the benefit or microsoft to make more profits. and potentially catastrophically bad for private citizens.
we obvious disagree. i respect your opinion and your right not to care. but please do the same for people who feel the opposite. there is far more logical evidence to suggest malevolent intentions or unintended data breaches then there is for the opposite case.
im not sure what you mean by this. you have full access to the assembly code instruction of just about every computer chip on the market. some even lower to the microcode. the same is true for gpu compute and in amd and Intel's case full access to there driver source code. in the case of windows/osx/linux you have full access to the system apis. and for linux and osx full access to the kernel and library source code.
edit:
i also don't get the bit about the gpu. explain how one would 'milk' more out of the xbox gpu then any other gpu?
can you provide a link to this? where are the specifications that show this graphics card is 'like' the 7780?
It's just one platform for developers to make a game for, this is where the magic is at.
The Xb-one will use a selected amount of the systems resources for its own uses like the dashboard and other running applications, developers can never bypass this.
The PC is and should always be fully open, where the developers have as much direct access as the user allows, down to the point of completely deciding what operation system to run on it.
The move to x86-64 only solidifies the fact that developers wants and needs more easy to use systems to develop for, and when looking at arcane machineries such as the PS2 and PS3, it has been quite a mess.
Also, cloud computing has been a buzzword all the way in their reveal, it won't make the xb-one perform any better.
http://kotaku.com/when-xbox-jokes-accidentally-become-xbox-marketing-509427497
Sony has designed a console for game developers.
Microsoft has designed a console for game publishers.
Every hardware and software decision Sony has made has been focused on providing game developers more options and abilities. Every decision Microsoft has made has been focused on providing game publishers with more options and abilities.
"KINECT is always on oh my god *tinfoil hat*"
Wrong, it's listening but not watching. It's not always seeing what you are doing. It's waiting to hear a keyword. Everyone is making such huge presumptions here - but it was stated there are integrated modes for power. It could very well be that when it's in sleep mode there is no net connection available because they turn off the power to networking...at the chip level. We don't know. What we do know is that it's a sensitive issue. Microsoft is not going to take that lightly, they're going to take it very seriously.
To play Devil's advocate: How many people have webcams built into their computer monitors, and with an OS by Microsoft or Apple? Or a smart TV from samsung with a camera in it? Your phone likely has a high resolution camera and great audio as well as always-on internet. Is it honestly that much of a different risk? Any one of these could be tampered/hacked/seized. If this is your worry, your worry is much larger than xbox one, is it not?
"I don't want to pay for Kinect"
More presumption. Microsoft was infamous for eating huge amounts of costs for the xboxes. They want to smash Sony into the ground. They will eat more production costs, happily. It's a long-term investment, and it worked for them before. In addition, Sony has some slightly better hardware. How does that affect their production costs? We don't know. We don't know exactly how different the prices will be. Don't presume xbox one will be more than playstation 4 and use it as an arguing point, because you are guessing.
"Always Online sucks"
There is absolutely zero proof that MS will require you to have the internet at all times to play your games, or even some of the time. The best we have is that they are building a platform where developers will get to choose if they want to check for your internet connection, and some games might require it. Stop jumping to ridiculous conclusions based on conjecture.
Presuming that microsoft is going to give a big middle finger to half their customers is somewhat silly. It's an obviously bad business decision, and that's why there's no way in hell they are going to do it. Honestly I'll be very surprised if Sony does not do something very very similar, that's the big rumor seeing as EA has shut down their online-pass-DRM systems recently. Overall though, a fuzzy point that people are twisting around facts about and using as an argument. Don't use fuzzy logic to argue your point. Do your research. Prove me wrong with links and facts, *please*.
"Used Game Fees/No Lending"
It's kind of amazing the double-standard being ignored here. No one complains about games being tied to your account on a PC. I have bought games multiple times for different PCs in my home, so I can play them with my family. I can't resell my Steam games and I doubt I ever will be able to, but MS is publicly saying they are trying to figure this out and enable it (which everyone ignores).
Why is it that this ok on the PC but not the console? Is it just the years of being used to having it, and now they are taking it away? Clearly this is for a good business reason - Steam is the ultimate painless-DRM - they want xbox to be the same. Less used-game sales is good for your industry, even if it's worse for you as a consumer. It's painful to think about ripping off this band-aid, but if your xbox was just like steam as far as purchasing/owning games - would that be so bad, from a consumer or developer perspective?
Don't get me wrong, I borrow/lend games all the time. Beat a game, donate it to a friend or family member or whatever. That's awesome...I'm going to miss it. I'm playing Devil's advocate here though. If PS4 lets you trade games, maybe it gives them an advantage. Or maybe EA and Ubisoft start putting crazy codes on every ps4 game they make and force you to buy codes from them to enable it when you buy a used game. Who knows? Not us.
We know that XB1 and PS4 have 8GB of ram
We know that PS4's ram is faster
My big worry after yesterday was "HOLY SHIT - the XB1 is running a windows kernel?! How much memory will that take? How much CPU power?" I discussed with my friends the real fear of having the OS for XB1 be way more power hungry than it used to be. It does some impressive stuff, fast switching and docking and all this stuff, and it looks SNAPPY. The usefulness of these features is obviously TBD - but if their mere existence means we get less resources for games, I am worried.
Today a developer friend told me my concerns were true. It's an unnamed source, so I have no cold hard facts here - but I am told:
XB1 - 3.0GB for the OS - guess is 4GB free for Devs (breathing room)
PS4 - 1.0GB for the OS - guess is 6GB free for Devs (breathing room)
And that's just ram - I was also worried that xbox would have one or more cores reserved for the OS only to support this stuff. I suppose that is a worry on PS4 as well with recording/streaming/etc. I dunno much about this to be honest, but it could be that the stats on the box are just one factor of the actual performance.
On paper they are pretty close - but if it ends being true that Xbox has a fancy OS at the cost of dev power, and sony is the opposite - it will be very interesting to see how that plays out.
Good point, even though the comparison isn't quite fair. You don't have to buy PC games via Steam. Not every PC game is bound to an account. There is choice. If you really want to avoid Steam then you can in many cases - although it'll be less convenient.
Apart from marketing, money and DRM. Systems like the xb1 make me sad because there will be so many awesome games which will not last for future generations once the content owners turn off the switch. I can still fire up my 25 year old 8 bit machines and enjoy the games. 25 years from now, will we be able to still enjoy xb1 games, or will it all be lost?
I think that Sony said that there is extra processing hardware to support the background stuff, independent of the CPU and GPU.
That might just be for background downloads and video streaming/saving/screenshots though.
All games are tied to your Live account to work, though. They also said that the system must connect to the internet at least once every 24 hours.
I believe Sony has basically confirmed the 1 gig OS. Here's a interview with a Microsoft rep kind of suggesting the 5 gigs of ram for games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M7oHSoL9sU&feature=player_detailpage#t=586s
You're right that it is overblown, but as you say above "We don't know" The major point of contention here is that Kinect is required. Those with a tin-foil hat could just not have one or unplug it while they played games that didn't need it: people who are paranoid get some choice in the matter, rather than needing to equate a perceived loss of their privacy with the desire for entertainment.
A lot of webcams have hard-wired LEDs or other signalling systems that switch on when the camera sensor receives power. Do we know this is the case with Kinect? That if we care if it is watching, we will know if it is? I don't know I don't have one, but I is good info have about newer versions. Also even OS made by Microsoft and Apple have levels of customisation of device management well beyond what a console offers (though still not as good as open-source applications) Those who care about webcam privacy can delve deep enough to secure it.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/05/xbox-one-does-require-internet-connection-cant-play-offline-forever/
So far that's the current proof.
Nice anecdotal evidence. I've got a feeling that there are many people who would consider this stupid and unacceptable. It has been common for a lot of products out there to be easily shared about ones own household.
It's not and it never has been. PC gamers used to be able to resell games, but stuff like CD keys in that system made it practically an honor system. Over time that was not resolved and the only way to play PC was to accept this. Of course it has rarely been an forefront issue because piracy made it really (and unfairly) easy for anyone who wanted spread games further than an initial purchase.
More to the point - PC players did not have the habit of visiting a friend and playing their shared games, LAN parties existed but then you had your own PC anyway. Consoles have always enjoyed that activity and yes people are noticing the loss.
Thanks to Steam sales, a lot of games cost about as much as a hamburger, so people put up with the loss. Regardless why do we want consoles to be more like PC anyway?
Well since I'm not in the industry my bias will show strongly. Sorry.
Then I read your last paragraph and realised you covered your whole butt. Now I feel silly.