Yesterday I was tired and angry at the world. Microsoft just appeared to have made a real mess of the Xbox One reveal. The name, the US-centric presentation, the side-stepping of the online issues, the used games issue. It just felt like a complete disaster. But the more I spoke to folks who weren’t completely invested in the whole video games thing, the more I realised who this conference was targeted at, and how it might be spun as a positive result for Microsoft.
My brother for example simply said, ‘we’ll see the games at E3, right?’ I was like yeah, but still — what about the used games thing! ‘They really haven’t explained properly how it’s going to work, sounds like they haven’t worked it all out yet’ he said in reply. And I was yeah… so?
I realised that I was starting to sound a bit like a spoiled child.
Anyway, my point is — after a little bit of distance and perspective I think I feel a little more positive about the whole situation and I thought it might be worth asking you guys and girls who you feel now?
Comments
125 responses to “Tell Us Dammit: General Thoughts On Xbox One”
I’m not feeling anyone 😉
But seriously, I hate the XBox One.
The only chance Micro$oft have of me buying one is if
1) They allow me to use the console without the Kinect
2) They stop all this cloud shit
3) Allow me to play games offline and
4) Not charge us new price for secondhand games
Until they meet these criteria, the XBox One is dead to me.
It’s clearly marketed at the kind of people who lap up all four thousand Call of Duty titles that come out each year. It sounds pretentious, but I think they’ve realised their demographic isn’t the gaming community, but the “gaming community.”
Now that I think about it, a lot of companies are abandoning us. Maybe we shouldn’t have circlejerked Steam, PC master race and retro consoles so hard.
Or maybe they should just take their heads out of their asses. Bit of column A, bit of column B.
Steam Summer Sale is coming up though. That should drown out our utopianist, elite, pure race sorrows.
I agree. It’s a regulated downloadable authenticated bag of bullshit drip fed to the people who want convenience and versatility in a home entertainment unit. One size fits all. Frankly, I’ll just use the PC I already own.
And there in lies the problem. The people who are/ were coveting the new console are the very people who have helped grow the business over the previous cycles. Am I wrong when I say it’s those people that are wanting the box to play the next gen games? Yes, games. And I don’t wanna share anything with anybody, let alone watch TV on my X-BLOCK so piss of with your feature set which demands additional expense for things I either will not or cannot use… I’m sure for many it will be exactly what they want so whatever floats your boat
If E3 doesn’t prove to me there’s a evidence of a great games machine, I’ll steer clear all together. I don’t give a shit about Kinect. I’m still not gonna rush out for a PS4 either even though I have higher expectations of Sony so far.
I can’t help but feel like MS have been baiting us the whole time just to see how far they can push it with services and kinect focus. Then slowly leak naive denials until they themselves could partially agree on something. Either that or there are significant communication issues between key departments.
But such is the nature of the internets. Oculus Rift.
@Evilmoney! Agreed! My money is going to Sony
And your credit card details are going where?
This whinging is getting old very quick. Can’t we just wait a few weeks, hopefully have some questions answered and let the games do the talking. Bring on the next round of the console war, I’m keen to see both systems exclusives.
Very true. E3 is a couple weeks away. This was the announcement of the hardware and what it can do and in 2 weeks we will see games.
Just remember Sony’s launch. Yay we have games, but no console. Yet I bet at E3 we will finally have it and that’s a much larger gap since their “launch”.
I think this sums up exactly why MSFT is not targeting hardcore gamers with this device; there is NO money on making a console for them. Just look at Sony’s results for PlayStation in 2012. They made about 17M profit from about 700M revenue. MSFT has probably done a bit better because they’ve found other revenue streams from Xbox, like FoxTel subscriptions, Xbox Music, movies and Music purchases, XBLA, etc.
it is not in MSFT’s interest to do any of the above 1 to 5 items listed by evilmonkey (respeccys). If you want that get a PC or an Ouya and pay $10 for your games. If MSFT can produce a viable alternative to the Apple or Google version of the lounge room do-it-all box then that can only be good for consumers.
Personally I think it’ll be pretty cool if I can;
play awesome games – tick
multi-task games and others – tick
Skype the inlaws – tick
play music and movies from my NAS – tick
play content from Quickflix or whoever if I choose to pay for this – tick
play streaming music from xbox music for free – tick
has better Xbox SmartGlass integration – fingers crossed, currently a bit rubbish
morphs into a platform that is transportable to desktops & tablets with cloud-saved games, settings and content – who knows, it might just happen… tell me I’m dreamin!
I don’t buy used games
I don’t care about add-on content
The look of the controller/console looks awesome
I’m certain it’ll play anything and everything amazingly for the next 8+ years
I’m not disappointed at all.
I think peoples expectations are way too high. What do people expect from a console… it plays games and has extra features (I get the non AU stuff but we always get screwed so I’m used to it). There’s obviously extra features they haven’t gotten into yet but as a general “Here’s the new XBOX” reveal, I’m totally satisfied.
Um… yeah. Me too.
I like good games, and it may have some, despite console misgivings. The sheer level of hate directed at this whole issue seems strange to me… PS4 did the exact same thing.
Totally agree, will be interesting to see E3, alot of the games at the PS4 announcement are coming to the Xbox One aswell, new controller looks good, Im interested about this Illumiroom, if I could get Free HD TV in NZ through it I’d be happy. Never buy used games anyway, although I do sell mine. If the PS4 can play 2 games at once, this points to no longer needing discs after the initial install which if there was no fee for others to then use the disc the piracy would be pretty rampant I imagine.
The ps4 actualy gave us something to look foward.
Seeing the console?
Personally I look forward to all the game info for the One that will come out at E3.
How about that inflated price because of all the useless features that we can’t even use here in Australia?
What do people expect from a console? The ability to play games without bullshit getting in the way. With the Xbox One, bullshit gets in the way.
I just want to sit down, play some god damn video games at a decent price with some god damn privacy. I don’t want to be connected to the internet, I don’t like my friends, I don’t want them to know what I’m doing and I sure as hell don’t care about what they’re doing.
Kinect, DRM, and a bunch of services I can’t even use here in Australia, are all the reasons why I’m giving my money to Nintendo and Sony.
If they can win me over with a good Xbox exclusive, I’ll consider it, but the future is not looking great for Xbox. Or maybe it is; it seems they’ve got their Call of Duty, EA Sports and Halo demographic covered. I wish it will crash and burn at the stake though, just so it can be an example of what gaming companies should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever do.
here here, even the current gen consoles are kinda annoying. remember when you stuck the disc in the drive and hit the power button and you were playing the game?
now i gotta start the thing up, log into online servers, download an update, then if theres time play a game. not only that, theres ads in my interface, telling me to buy DLC for a game i just got an hour ago..
Oh I know the current consoles have their fair share of problems, and that’s what makes it worse. We’ve told them is shit isn’t good, yet they’ve based a whole console around the stuff that pisses us off.
I think this is what we get for rejecting Nintendo for so long. Sorry for making you guys change demographic by buying an Xbox and a PS2 instead of a Gamecube, I didn’t know they would take it this far.
Nintendo’s online is worse than anyone’s or did you forget about the 1-3 hour update that came along with the Wii-U launch?
I’ve got a Wii-U and it’s already collecting dust because I finished mario, so as much as I want to love Nintendo I think their arrogance will finally catch upto them soon with their lack of titles/underpowered hardware.
Fenix what I think he means is that despite Nintendo waggling itself to death… Ninty compared to Sony and MS (from the looks of it) – has always been about games, first and foremost.
Sony and MS want their consoles to be media centres and are completely sales driven (understandably). They think this is the way to get their consoles into homes. Unfortunately I don’t think they’re completely wrong with these strategies. This is also why whilst finding the conference a disappointment, I see what they’re doing and the conference will have catered to many many many consumers, just not me – and evidently not the diehard gaming community. They’ll win us all over with decent games I reckon – question will be if all this superflous stuff will get in the way or not.
If GameCube won that gen, maybe Nintendo wouldn’t have resorted to what the Wii became. You’re completely correct that Nintendo’s online gaming is crap – but that’s cause they incorrectly underestimated the value of online gaming. Despite this, from the three – Nintendo’s consoles are the most straight forward gaming machines we have now. It’s a shame it doesn’t have the full library of games to support it.
As things stand – PS4 conference’s focus on games and how they’ve simplified the architecture is more encouraging than what MS has shown. My main concern for the PS4 will be the firmware – unlike MS – Sony aren’t experts in that regard and this may their weakness.
I think we have to realise that games are more complicated than Q-bert these days so updates/DLC/patches are just a nature of the beast. Things like SimCity’s launch or Diablo 3’s launch are atrocious testaments to modern gaming but overall I’m pretty sure most people are fine to deal with being connected.
Pricing, has anything been confirmed? Let’s not forget the 360 was about $700+ 8 years ago… so I’d expect about $700-$900 for the xbox one.
What’s so good about xbox/ps4 exclusives anyway… I just want a machine that can bang out the winners and give me a great overall experience, why does XBOX KILLERS come into play so hard… I just see them as a bonus. They probably sell a boatload of EA sports/Halo games so from a sales point of view it makes sense to rehype those games over smaller things. I’m sure all the new stuff like watchdogs/gta V is guarded by the developers so they can’t really jump the gun on those.
The one point I will massively agree on is Kinect being always on, I’m in no way a conspiracy theorist BUT it does trigger some paranoia in me.
Always listening, Always watching, whilst connected to the Cloud… is of some concern for me as well.
This is Microsoft not Google. If it was you would yawn and up pops an ad for a Vitamin B supplement.
Fair enough, it doesn’t make feel any less uneasy about it though. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, I live in London after all, I’m constantly on camera, just prefer not to be when I’m home.
Should we not have high expectations of the next generation of games machine? Do we not represent a very minuscule side of a much larger yet segmented group of gamers? Should we sit there with our mouths shut and expect that Microsoft can deliver a worthwhile experience when we take into consideration the expense involved over the duration? And especially given the questionable practices already taking place in the industry like pricing and service availability?
Can I get an XBOX One for half the price if I don’t want all the other shit, only the games capability? No. You’re buying a service now as well as a games console. More so then ever before. You better hope it’s actually worth it.
I see where you’re coming from and I’m glad you take positive opinion on the new slab. But you yourself are just another part of a much larger cross section of consumers. With any luck your 8+ year prediction is correct. Not long ago Yves Guillemont made a remark about the current console life cycle being too long. Take what you will from that but it does present a much more concerning reality if we end up paying a premium for a service which is not entirely useable… Only to have to upgrade and refresh every 4 years or so. The modular upgradeable solution is much more appealing to me but that is essentially PC territory and couldn’t really be defined as a console at this point.
For me personally, both consoles have shifted towards the ever connected and feature heavy social integration which has absolutely no appeal to me whatsoever. I’m only worried about the games and the features/ specs related to playing games.
For me at least, it’s a wait and see affair. I do recognise that there has been a lot of publicised misinformation. A lot of back and forth between seemingly legitimate and sometimes questionable sources only compounded by the internet and the already hyper connected world. But that’s the nature of the beast. We all feed of it, regardless of our stance.
Firmly in the wait-and-see camp. Until the product is in the marketplace and getting legitimate reviews, I stay at arms-length.
Unless the product in question is GTA V or Dark Souls 2, I suppose :\
Remember though, San Andreas came out only 5 months on the original Xbox before the 360 was launched.
Not sure what your point is, but mine was that I succumbed to hype on those two games and pre-ordered them 😛
Oh thought you meant you would consider one if those titles were on it..
Ah right. My bad wording. Sorry! 🙂
S’all good.
I don’t like the design. It looks like a serias 3 Tivo. I’m also not liking the whole you need the kinect for it to work. I’m not interested in the kinect and it would be wasted just sitting there collecting dust.
Also a waste of money. I am not paying for shit I’m not going to use, so Microsoft don’t have my cash on this one.
I’m really not very interested in the system, which is a first for me. I’ve always been excited for new consoles, but right now, this is more of an “Oh. Alright…” sort of feeling. I’m interested in the Wii U, and the PS4 has a small few things I’m interested in, software-wise, but for the Xbox… nothing.
I might feel differently when some exclusives are announced, but right now, thanks to it’s lackluster announcement, I see no reason for me to even care.
Some things about it like the controller impress me.
The TV functionality doesn’t interest me one bit.
The always on Kinect creeps me the hell out and I won’t be buying it simply for that. I don’t like a camera being in my house that is required to always be on, always be active. Sorry. I know I can ‘power it down’, but a camera that has to be active so the console can be active is a no go for me.
Yep. Deal breaker for me too. Online tracking is far too intrusive as it is… Why the hell would I give Microsoft a potentially always on view of my house and MY BIO-DATA? Will I have to cover myself in tin-foil to play BF4? XXXBOX fail for me.
I’ve got a son that would be playing it all the time, I don’t want anyone monitoring my son in any way shape or form without my permission (no I dont think MS are pedophiles lol)
That is a bloody good point! My other concern would be hackers
Dont forget this one.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/11/this-kinect-patent-is-terrifying-wants-to-charge-you-for-license-violation/
The other thing I can see is… Darling what do you want to do about dinner? (Suddenly a KFC ad appears on screen.)
You know that’s nowhere near as absurd as it sounds right? Chances are Kinect 2 WILL pick up on key words and adjust advertising on screen to suit just as Facebook actually scans your browsing history and adjusts advertising to suit. Scary shit huh?
All those 12 year old COD players yelling obscenities at the TV will be flooded with BDSM and Milf porn marketing.
I highly doubt it. After MS publishes videos like this
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/16/4336762/leaked-scroogled-ad-google-chrome-parody-video
To go ahead and do the EXACT same would be more of a shot in the foot that everyone is accusing the Xbox One of without the facts. This could be the console that creeps everyone out or it may not be. Next few months will tell.
You could always put on 30kgs, stop grooming yourself and do all your gaming in the nude.
So what you’re saying, is be the average WoW player?
i’m totally impressed by all the features. dont care about used games as i dont buy them, i dont borrow or lend games either so that doesnt effect me.
the internet connection thing doesnt bother me either, I have never had my internet not working for longer than 24 hours at a time over the last 10 years or so i’ve been using it.
I’m not sold. Nothing that was shown made the XBone a must buy for me.
The presentation itself seemed a bit rubbish too.
– Here’s the console you all knew was coming!
– TV! Other media! Not games!
– 30 mins later….
– Here’s a handful of games that you already knew were coming, and with the exception of one (?), are all gonna be multi platform releases anyway.
– DOGGIES!!!!!!
– End.
OK. Props for the puppy MS. Also, XBone. Someone in marketing is kicking themselves for not spotting that / or maybe they just wish they came up with it themselves.
I’m leaning more toward the PS4 right now.
Maybe after a few years & a price drop or two, depending on the exclusives, I might get one…
But it’s not day-one for me.
I’ll wait until E3 to pass final judgment, but so far it’s very unappealing to me.
I honestly don’t feel negative about the XBone at all. I look forward to the new games it’ll bring. I’m not totally sold on the possibility that it will require Kinect, but the online requirement is not really that big a deal and I personally will not be affected by the countermeasures against used games. I believe that they will give Xbox Live and the XBL Marketplace the overhaul they so desperately need.
The only dealbreaker for me will be if the DRM is so restrictive that my wife and I won’t be able to share games and DLC on the console like we currently do on the Xbox 360. I do not believe this will be the case, but some people are speculating that it’s possible, given what has been said so far.
either way, I don’t need it at launch. Both the PS4 and Xbox One will be out by the end of the year (I believe the XBox will come out first), and I don’t plan to buy any new consoles until around March/April. I will have time to decide based on how they perform in that first 3-6 months.
Im not buying at launch, but the Xbox One just cemented the fact I’m choosing Sony over Microsoft again. Xbox One just seems to be aimed at the Bro-mers (i.e. Call of Duty/Battlefield type gamers)
I think that’s their most profitable demographic, unfortunately. I feel like this console is purely designed for them. Or at least of what we’ve seen of it so far.
Makes sense though, they’re the ones who pour the most money into their Xbox’s, while we all sit here jerking over our expensive PC’s and Super Nintendo’s. I guess we’ve brought this on ourselves.
Oh well, time to give Sony a chance. If they fuck us over too, maybe the Wii U might pick up after all. I’m sure as hell excited for a new Super Smash Bros.
I think I’ve finally worked out why the “online once a day” thing bothers me so much.
It creates a “used by” date for the console. Any games for it, too.
One day the servers will shut down and the Xbox won’t be able to be “online” anymore, the daily check in won’t work and it will die.
While this is also true of Steam and iTunes, they operate on a different time scale.
To this day, I can plug in my N64 and play, same with the PS2, and relive the games which withstood the test of time and share that experience with whoever will join me.
OR maybe I’m just turning into a crusty old crank a little ahead of time.
Is it impossible to think that when that day comes when they want to push their new new new console they’ll have a patch to get rid of “online once a day” thing?
I don’t think it’s a legit concern just yet.
I dunno. Giving their customers free reign to use their old hardware for however long they like, instead of it becoming useless and them having to buy the new hardware instead?
Sounds like crazy talk to me.
No way that will happen.
No way that WON’T happen. Think about how much outrage that will cause. It’s essentially stealing all the games that the consumers bought from them.
OH GOD that irony does wonderful things to my piracy boner.
Nope, they won’t care. They will keep the servers running for a couple years into the new console generation first though.
Actually that’s been discussed in the used game debate and developers have said that games are more like a licence not an ownership. So it comes down to how easy it is to revoke a licence which would be a lot easier than stealing it back.
This is one of the many reasons I hope the Xbone crashes and burns.
I pretty much said the exact same thing earlier in the comments of a different article.
This is exactly what’s going to happen. Eventually the servers will be turned off and your console and all your games will be utterly useless. Then Micro$oft will re-sell you all those games again as digital downloads on their next console.
I’m just going to wait and see what both consoles have to offer at E3.
Although judging by what has been shown so far, The PS4 looks more user-friendly and simple to use, while the Xbox One looks a bit cumbersome.
The PS4 focus on games and social sharing seems to be designed with the user in mind, whereas the Xbox One with its TV and (rumoured) anti-used game policy feels like it has been designed with TV Networks and Publishers in mind.
As a non-xbox user I was looking for something to get me excited, to entice me into the secret society… it didn’t happen. I’ll wait to see what happens over the next year before considering a purchase.
Definitely leaning more towards PS4, but ultimately, I think I shall be a PC gamer from here on in. This is kinda the last straw for me.
Right here with you brother.
I did buy a Wii U though; I’m just waiting for it to turn around like the 3DS did. Think about them exclusives; there ain’t no way people aren’t going to buy a Wii U when they realise that it’s the only way they’re going to play a new Super Smash Bro’s game.
same. PC & WiiU gives me the best of both worlds.
I’ve had enough enjoyment from ZombiU, and playing NSMB & nintendoland multiplayer to already justify the WiiU purchase – anything else is a bonus.
Nintendoland is such a good game. At first I thought it was just going to be some Wii Sports equivalent, but then I thought to myself, “if a game like this, using all of the best Nintendo IP’s, came out for the Nintendo 64, it would be up there with Smash and Mario Party.”
I’m kinda sad. I’m going to miss the Halo series. (I actually liked it for the story, if you can believe it.)
I liked the Halo story up til Reach, but Halo 4 kind of killed my interest. It just felt so tremendously unnecessary and the story completely failed to serve as a kick-off point for a new trilogy.
It kind of ended at 3 for me.
But… But… Cortana & Master Chief 4eva!
*blubbers like a child*
Day 659 purchase for me!
My thoughts on what I have seen..
– It looks like a Betamax…
It is also (I believe) wider than my white 2009 model.
+ No disc tray, my current xbox disc tray jams if you close it with no disc in the tray! If it jams (a certain inexplicable occurrence if there’s no disc) you have to take off the face-plate and jimmy the damn thing open, so I’m glad M$ discovered 2006 and put in a disc slot instead (hell even the Dell Hybrid has a disc slot)
+ Doesn’t look as if they’ll be selling gimped SKUs this time around. I remember the original arcade model didn’t even have a HDMI output!
– Will play used games for a fee, it apparently installs games to the HDD, like any PC game these days, if you take loan your disc to your friend (me and My brother swapped a whole lot of games this gen) they can play it too – for a fee, problem is will the fee be $10 (like the whole online pass thing) or will the fee be full price. I tend to think it will be $10 as anything more would obliterate the used game market and would also ensure that Gamestop/EB don’t stock your product. Problem for M$ is a whole lot of people (both media and bloggers) are suggesting a full price unlock and M$ is doing nothing to dispel this.
– Kinect – honestly look at the Kinect you can find in my lounge room…
Now look at what they brought out today…
What the f— is that? It looks bulkier (cuz that’s the natural progression of technology) and they’ve gotten down from two cameras and an infrared sensor down to one camera! Apparently it works better than the current one (don’t get me wrong – the current one is quite impressive and a lot of it’s problems come down to its basic design premise rather than any technical fault, but it still has a number of annoying limitations – the chief one being that the camera’s resolution was limited due to the bandwidth restrictions on the USB ports in the vanilla 360, no such restriction exists in the new one so the higher resolution alone should make it function better.
+ The Controller looks really freaking good:
Proper D-Pad (I wonder if Nintendo collects a fee for that?) new stick, BACK and START are replaced by VIEW and MENU?? AA batteries still but no more compartment jutting out from the back, and there are vibration motors in the triggers.
+ Apparently they will show 15 new exclusives, 8 of them new IPs. One of those was shown today (Quantum Break) though I don’t really know what that is, another will be Crytek’s Kinect beat-em-up Ryse and another still will be Respawn Entertainment’s new shooter (or so the rumour goes) there is also the promise of a new Rare game. (If they announce either a new Killer Instinct or Banjo Kazooie 3 the internet will explode)
– In fact after reading about all that development I was chuffed and then I thought – hang on – where was all that great stuff in the last few years of the 360? You know Forza, Fable, Halo, Gears, rinse, repeat. The only place where they’ve had good exclusives (since 2010 when the last great exclusives Splinter Cell Conviction, Alan Wake and Crackdown 2 came out) was XBLA but they never promote it so who would know.
I feel annoyed that they’ve held back all this great stuff in a where Sony is still releasing a tonne of original stuff for PS3.
Overall they’ve made so many anti-consumer choices with this new hardware I think I’ll pass. Ken Kutaragi would be proud
It’s been confirmed as full price.
Think of the disc as simply a different way of “downloading” the game.
Where has it been confirmed as full price for 2nd hand games? How would that work? Pay $30 at EB and then pay $120 RRP or whatever to reactivate it. That would make used games more expensive. Maybe full price if its not deactivated on the primary account first as that’s the same as 2 people buying discs now as remember once installed you never need the disc again.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/05/you-will-be-able-to-trade-xbox-one-games-online-microsoft-says/
But what if you want to bring a game disc to a friend’s house and play there? You’ll have to pay a fee — and not just some sort of activation fee, but the actual price of that game — in order to use a game’s code on a friend’s account. Think of it like a new game, Harrison says.
“The bits that are on that disc, you can give it to your friend and they can install it on an Xbox One,” he said. “They would then have to purchase the right to play that game through Xbox Live.”
“They would be paying the same price we paid, or less?” we asked.
“Let’s assume it’s a new game, so the answer is yes, it will be the same price,” Harrison said.
It will be interesting to see how it plays out. I can sort of see what he is saying when you take the game to a friends and he plays it and they want the $$$ for that. I personally don’t borrow games but I am a lender to my friends. So under this I wont be much of a Library anymore for them.
But I have read that if you take the game to a friend you can play it as its licenced to your account if you log in on that console. What will be interesting and isn’t stated clearly is if you can then both play on the same console while you are logged in.
We will have to wait and see really. Plus see if public outcry is enough to persuade them to change and MS isn’t above changing. Remember when Office 2013 retail was released and the licence was if your system changed even after a warranty exchange you have to buy a new licence of Office. They then back flipped a little to say ok if your replacing with the exact same hardware you are now entitled to reuse your licence.
You may/may not have read this.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/24/xbox-one-used-game-rumor/
What’s clear is we have no real idea what’s happening and wont until they lay it out.
Cheers mate. I’ll raise your gloom with my doom:
http://www.vg247.com/2013/05/24/xbox-one-pre-owned-game-activation-to-cost-around-35-report/
That converts to a little over $50 US if true.
I think they’ll be furiously backflipping until they have an answer at E3.
God help them if they don’t.
Again more rumours. We are all hoping from one end to the other. E3 can’t come fast enough! That is if MS even details it then.
And yes – it’ll make it more expensive to buy and activate a used game.
Are you surprised that Microsoft would want to usurp GameStop and start pocketing lots of used game cash?
If Kinect is mandatory, so is not allowing it in my home. It’s that simple.
I worry, not so much about a console failing, but by a lot of the decisions taken that shift even more power away from the consumer, and the potential glow-on to other systems.
#XBone!
They shouldn’t NEED to explain it. Used games should work as follows – take your game to EB / JB / whatever, trade it in for credit, buy another game with said credit.
I’m sure they’ve worked out how it’s going to work – this thing is launching in about 6 months – if they haven’t worked out their business model yet then they’re in worse trouble than they know. More likely they know how it will work, what they haven’t worked out is a way to spin it so it will sound like something other than consumers getting bent over and rogered with the jagged end of a broken broomstick for the financial benefit of EA.
So all the profits from reselling a game go to EB / JB / whoever and not the people actually making the game? Sound fair to me (except the part where its bullshit). A better pricing system for new and older games (which if the devs see more money they might be able to do) and perhaps a licence transfer system would be better.
Not keen.
Watching the conference after waking up yesterday was a terrible mistake. It takes me a long time to fully wake up (even with coffee) and… that didn’t help at all. It was just so boring. Heck, I forgot it could play games by the end of it.
Also, that TV stuff Microsoft harped on about during the conference… will that really be U.S. only? Does that mean they wasted everyone who doesn’t live in the US’s time?
Sort of. You did get a sneak peek at the cheerfully overenthusiastic corporate portents of consumer doom that the future holds.
Unable to find the image. But my thoughts on the whole thing could be summed up but a gif of Cooder and Spud laughing at Homer through the mail slot.
You want to talk gifs, son? This is the only gif you need.
EDIT: If you haven’t seen the movie Seven then don’t click this link – massive spoiler.
http://i.minus.com/iBzvb2JSpQNRM.gif
That wins the internet for today!
I haven’t played my 360 for a very long time now, and all my TV and visual entertainment needs are served quite well by my PS3 (or you know, actual Television). Unless there are some absolute must-have exclusive games on the XBox and they reverse a lot of their decisions regarding indie/self-published games, online requirements, used game policies, and global access to functionality then I won’t even be contemplating it. PS4 on the other hand and the seemingly about face of Sony to start focussing on what makes a console a console (That’s the games by the way MS) has made me go from “Eh.” to “Oooohhh”.
Afterthought: Oh and I have a small apartment so mandatory Kinect integration is pointless as I can’t use it.
for me, i was already swayed toward the ps4. mainly because my friends and i all bought ps3s’ and are pretty loyal sony customers. that being said, i do also have a 360.
at this stage, i won’t even entertain the idea of buying an xbone at all.
a microphone that is always listening?
a camera that is always watching?
those 2 right there are absolute deal breakers. then you’ve got the whole “needs to be connected” disaster. ok, so it’s not a problem right now. but what about in 10 years time when the xbone2-u is released and the servers for the xbone are switched off? you can safely bet that the next, next console probably won’t be BC either. then the thousands of dollars you’ve invested into your game collection is completely worthless!
next up is the used game debacle. while it doesn’t affect me greatly, it still is extremely pissy. my current gen collection is around 60 maybe 70 disc based games. out of that, i think 2 possibly 3 were bought used. only reason i bought any used is, because of the price. each were $5 give or take. they were games that i only had a very slight interest in and would have never paid much more for them. my main gripe here is, i can’t borrow or lend out games with this system. that is just bullshit.
now, combine the used game and always online problems, and you really have a system that is useless after it’s cycle is over.
i’ll end my rant on that. i’m not going to start on how it’s only marketed toward americans.
lol combine this with the rumoured porn streaming and you get a machine that could potentially have some dude on the other end watching and hearing you wank.
creeeepy
Eh, I’ll probably still get one. My main question would be if I can use the xbox one controller with a pc by using a recharge cable
Mandatory Kinect is pretty much enough to kill any chance of it getting into my home. I _might_ be willing to “deal with it” on the condition that I never had to put it online and have it send information back to base, but combining the two requirements means that I’ve gone from a guaranteed preorder to someone who’s not just skipping it but who’s telling everyone I speak to about it to skip it as well.
People who aren’t “gamers” are _horrified_ about the privacy implications, particularly when combined with how regularly big companies are giving up user data.
Dislike it. sticking to my pc. Windows 7, definetly not 8. Not happy about Microsoft in general, I reckon they will pull through, but at a cost. Eventually this will all be normal.
I’ve owned both Xboxes, never owned a Playstation. I got Xbox due to the exclusives (at the time) like Ninja Gaiden and KoToR. I continued with 360 as Mass Effect was exclusive. As time has worn on, the exclusives I liked became cross-platform and PS3 has had the Uncharted series and Journey that really interested me. Their online system has caught up to XBL and you don’t have to pay for it (and the PS+ looks good value). I’ve always hated the MS Points system and there’s rarely ever been anything online that I felt I got value for money. Going into the new generation I was definitely on the fence but leaning towards getting a PS4.
After the announcements, I have the following concerns:
*Online every 24 hours
I had to move recently and 3 weeks without internet should not mean 3 weeks without being able to use a console gaming system I paid for. I’ll also point out that this is subject to Xbox servers, they could go down or something else unforeseen. My Xbox 360 has had plenty of issues with connecting to XBL as well, despite my network being perfectly fine. It’s rarely bothered me as I was just using it to play games but if this stops me from playing then I’d be incredibly pissed. I also don’t know what the purpose of it is. Is it DRM? Surely the online activation of games should cover that? Also, I honestly don’t think pirating of console games is that big. I’d love to see stats on 360s that have been chipped.
*Always on Kinect
This is creepy as hell. It’s like a private company walking into your home and installing a surveillance camera in your living room. I would like to think I can cover it or point it at a wall, but I don’t trust MS enough that they aren’t going to try to prevent this somehow, like if the camera can’t pick up real people in front of it the console stops working. I also want to know the real reason why they want to do this.
*Used games/online trading
This is a question mark for me. I don’t understand it at all. They basically said you have to pay the current sale price to play but Gamestop say it won’t affect their used game sales.
The controller looks good though and I’ll still reserve my final judgements till I see what games are coming out. They would have to be pretty damn amazing to convince me to give xbone a shot.
I imagine the call back to the mothership is to verify you’re not running hacked software. And piracy / hacked systems are actually a bigger problem on 360 than you think.
That is clearly a lie, they said the reason they dont release games on the PC is because of piracy.
If piracy on the 360 was a big problem they wouldn’t release any games on that either.
You cant possibly claim that publishers have been lying to us!?
Online every 24 hours is my exact concern as above as someone who’s moved houses twice in 2 years. If you’re ever setting up an internet connection somewhere, you’re actually without internet for a long time. Each time I moved it was over a month.
Also I always bring my PS3 up to my family beach house over summer holidays, a place that has no internet. That would be impossible on XBone.
And finally, they say with all their servers, connecting won’t be an issue. But they fail to understand, they’re also relying on a bunch of third parties to get it right too. ISPs and my home network for one. I can’t count the amount of times my home wireless has just gone shit inexplicably, and not being that tech savvy my only solution is to keep turning the modem/router on and off until it works again. And when this doesn’t work, yes, I’ve been without internet for over 24 hours (without time to fix it during my working day).
Couple of things I’d like to point out when people bring up the online thing.
There is still a fairly large chunk of the market that doesn’t hook up a console to online at all, if they plan to launch for Christmas, honestly hope that portion of the public understand what they are getting into, because Christmas morning could be a horrible experience for many people where nothing can be played because they don’t have the internet. Doesn’t that strike you as odd, that you can’t even play a game or use the ‘primary’ functions of the device until you connect it online first.
Also, everyone initially jumps straight to their own connection and how they are generally ok, whilst it is mentioned above they MS could pull the plug at any time and the XBone and everything associated with it instantly becomes worthless. I know things are meant to last forever, but you can still play an Atari, listen to a record, there will be a time when you can’t play an XBone.
There are some pretty big anti-consumer features with the console and I fear a group like Anon/lulzsec or whatever their name is now could and potentially will attempt to cause an outage like that of Sony/PSN had. Just imagine if that were to happen, every XBone on the planet becomes unusable.
All the Xbones would become limp and useless.
But they do make for a sleek modernised version of a replica BETA-max doorstop.
Why would you pass up the opportunity? 101 uses for an obsolete XBrick by Dr. M.
Definitely not interested in it at this stage, but haven’t got a lot of interest in the PS4 either. Still got a healthy back catalogue of games to wade through on my 360 and if I get through those, then the WiiU should have a nice catalogue of games to play at that point. Might be something I consider in 18-24 months time, but definitely not a day or year 1 purchase for me.
I was initially pretty upset around some of the issues it has, but as the smoke cleared and I thought about it, I realized the model they’re using for the games is essentially exactly the same as buying retail PC games that activate on Steam, and I’m fine with doing that so why does it matter to me? I don’t buy used games or trade my games in, rarely give them away or loan them out (too many experiences with people not giving the games back again!) and so I won’t be affected by that.
Don’t want anything to do with Kinect. I’d hurl that shit out the window if I could. However some of the stuff they were showing with it is kind of cool, eg all the controllers have an IR sensor on them, so when you pass a controller to someone else it knows which one it was, and using facial recognition it knows who that person is, so it can automatically sign on their profile on that controller. That’s cool. MS can fuck right off if they expect me to wave my arms around in their shitty kinect games, but some simple things like that I don’t mind as much.
Nothing they showed at the reveal excited me. I don’t have cable TV and probably never will have cable TV as it’s not worth the money since there’s next to nothing on that I’d watch. Besides, that stuff seems incredibly US-centric. Don’t care about sports, don’t care about Call of Doody and it’s Mocap Dogs. So I’m pretty sure the reveal wasn’t aimed at me, and I’ll wait and see what they show at E3. Still leaning much further toward a PS4 at this point since I generally lean toward Japanese games and the 360 turned into an absolute wasteland for those after a few years in when MS stopped paying for timed exclusives. Will probably get an XBone (stupid, stupid name) eventually, but how ‘eventually’ that is will depend a lot on the exclusives and the price, and whether I need it at all when I have a solid games PC and presumably a PS4.
Steam doesn’t need to phone home every 24 hours. Cache your login credentials and you can play in offline mode indefinitely.
This is true. I’m still not sure why MS would need to call back to base every 24 hours. Haven’t heard any reasonable justification for it yet. Their whole effort around the details of some of these features has been extremely inconsistent and extremely poorly announced I think.
My ability to even play this thing hinges upon the NBN being rolled out…
Nope, don’t like it at all. It’s pretty much completely quashed my interest in this next generation (excluding the Wii U, although I’m barely interested in it).
I think the argument about “why are you so mad for, Steam won’t let you lend games, if anything you should be mad at Steam” is wrong: lending games was once a right, now it’s a privilege. Steam took it away, and so then it became a console advantage. Now the Xboner has taken that away, too! It’s slipperly slope stuff. Just wait in 10 years: “Oh, you don’t want your console to spy on you? But the Xbox One has been doing that for the last decade, you should be used to it by now.”
Never been able to lend PC games in the last 15 years or more anyway, because of the product keys only having a 5 use policy.
After the disasters of Diablo III and Sim City, I am not going to do the same mistake for a console, goodbye xbox. The console will need to call home from time to time, daily, or just once when you install the game – it doesn’t matter, because things are going to break, master servers will be done, for hours, or days, but what will the consumer gain from that? Why should be put up with this crap? We’ve already suffered from that type of crap at the small scale of individual games, it would ridiculously masochistic to ask for the same trouble at the scale of a whole console.
Looking at it from a person who plays games frequently, the kindest (and most logical) thing I can say is to wait for E3. I personally am far from impressed from this initial news. As an Australian, this TV functionality seems almost completely useless. I don’t even watch that much TV anymore. We don’t even have Netflix or Hulu to play with. It’s a whole bunch of features that seem to be targeted towards the Americans. I also make a habit of not supporting things that need an online connection to work, even if it is just a periodic one as has been suggested (though 24 hours seems like shit all). The games they revealed were not appealing to me. The kinect always listening is kinda creepy but that’s what unplugging the console is for. Tedious but manageable. The only thing that I found interesting at all was the controller.
If I were to look at this from the perspective of average joe consumer who plays games as a side, this announcement would be bloody amazing. Yay, new console and they announced sequels to some of the most popular games that average joe consumer buys. Better graphics to boot. This is the difference between a person who knows their games and the average consumer. People who know their games looked at the finer details and noticed things were very wrong. Average joe consumer does not do this and they would be impressed by what they saw. That whole press conference seemed targeted squarely at the average consumer.
Like I said though, make or break is at E3. They’ve suggested that they have 8(?) new IPs on the way which is fatastic news. Hopefully they’ll clear up confusion about the aspects we all hate like needing an online connection (24 hours still seems like a shit all time frame). Maybe they’ll also explain just what the hell kinda features people who aren’t Americans are paying for. Maybe they plan to localise these sort of features for each region.
What I don’t like it most of all? The fact it NEEDS the kinect and it watches you. No thank you. Why do Microsoft think this is a necessity?
Because they seek to control us. If everything the Xbox service delivers from here on in requires this sort of intrusive tech then you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be equally intrusive and arbitrary service registration and authentication demands. Used software is only a very small piece of the pie when all games are subject to the same service based validation.
Very scary stuff. So long as there’s a better option out there (and thankfully there is). With the industry as a whole, the primary shift towards online distribution and social connectivity focused “gaming” demands these kinds of service registrations and connected status almost constantly. It’s a neat loophole in the DLC distribution model they can use to draw the consumer in and lock them to a contract with no repercussions if a server shuts down or a corrupt install or hack limits the necessary connectivity.
It has never been a problem before. If you couldn’t connect you couldn’t update or play online and that’s not including any other redundant services the console may have offered.
The assumption that everyone wants to be ever connected is a misconception born of an hyperactive mobile culture.
I have no doubt the system itself is capable of some really cool stuff, but there’s no question it needs to be met with a fair amount of scrutiny.
At least when hackers find a way to monitor the service we’ll have a whole lotta American XBox One fails compilations. That’s something right?
My impression was that the show and tell from Microsoft was to show the new Xbox and not really worry about many games, Show them off at E3 where the games are the main focus.
I’m annoyed that Sony basically didn’t have a finished PS4 to show off but Microsoft did, that kind of said that the Xbox was a little further along. The idea of the Hyper-V is very interesting to me because you could (later on) have a virtual Xbox 360 on there and play old X360 games.
MS had their reveal 3 months later than Sony, though. If Sony did theirs yesterday they would have had a console to show. In fact, in a way, they DID show it yesterday in that teaser video, just not very clearly. But you’ll certainly see it in a couple of weeks at E3.
I actually see the hyper V as a significant drawback for XBox One from a gaming perspective. It’s running 3 OS’s simultaneously – the XBox OS for games, a cut down version of Win 8 for the apps and TV stuff, and the hypervisor itself. It’s basically running a couple of virtual machines the whole time, and the overhead for that will not be insignificant. I don’t know what the official numbers are since nobody has announced them, but I’ve read stories it’s as high as 3Gb for the OS(es) on the XBO vs 1Gb for the PS4. If true, that effectively means the PS4 will have a memory advantage of 2Gb over the XBox (plus whatever additional advantage GDDR5 confers over GDDR3) when it comes to actual games.
There aren’t any details about the OSes yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if the new xbox has some sort of onboard memory that is only for the OSes leaving the 8 Gb for anything else. (Just a thought with that and more will be known with a tear down).
Was it really actually 3 months ago for PS4 show? if it is then wow, time flies because it honestly feels like 3 weeks or less.
I think it was February 20? 21? Something like that. Near enough 3 months to the day before MS’s reveal.
I guess it’s possible they might have some separate RAM for the OS, but you’d think that would have been included in the total announced. I.e. they would have said 12Gb, for example, even if 3 or 4 of that were reserved for the OS. Like Sony announced 8Gb, without mentioning that 1 (or whatever it is) is reserved for the OS. It’s hard to imagine MS having a numerical advantage over the PS4 like that and not saying anything about it.
I like the controller! Will it work on my PC? 😛
I was reasonably sure before the reveal that I wouldn’t be buying one, and now I’m damn sure.
I rarely play my 360 and it never had any exclusives that interested me (except for Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts strangely enough).
Really I’d like to make do with my PC and WiiU but I know I’ll end up with a PS3 for any games that don’t go to the other two. The only way I’ll end up with a X-Bone is in a few years if I pick up a cheap slimline edition and any exclusives that I missed, but I don’t think that’s likely.
But without all those other thoughts I’m sure it will be a perfectly capable console with some good games, and if the controller is PC-compatible then I will definitely pick up one of those.
If MS already made a Killer instinct game on 360, if gears judgment was dlc and not a disc release, if they got rare to make some decent rare games instead of kinect fat head avatar games. If xbl was made free already.
If some of these things happened, I might be interested… I turned my back on xbox about a year ago, got a ps3, free online, great exclusives, I had trouble with a game I purchased online they sent me an email apologizing and giving me a free game download.
Xbox always leaves me feeling robbed.. so xbox this time around can go f*ck itself, I’ve learned my lesson.
To me it depends how I look at it. Yesterday, I thought it was pretty dull, and a bad announcement of a bad console.
Now I think of it as a home theatre PC with gaming cred and it doesn’t seem that bad a proposition at all. I’ll still buy the PS4 over this, but I won’t rule this out either.
Not sold at all. I really get the feeling Microsoft doesn’t care about anyone outside America. The Live TV is completely useless and stupid because you need to plug a set-top box into the Xbox One and plug the Xbox One into the TV, when you could spare yourself the trouble and just use the damn TV by itself, because nearly every TV already has digital tuners and electronic TV guides these days. You’re just buying a set-top box so you can use some silly overlay shit that lets you yell at your TV (if Kinect actually recognizes Aussie accents out of the box this time) to change the channel and “multitask”.
The “multitasking” aspect of Live TV looks nice, but again, it’s useless. I can already use Skype and Internet Explorer and “snap” windows on my PC. Hell, I can also watch videos on my second monitor (which happens to be my TV) whilst playing GMod or TF2 with some friends and calling with Skype to talk with them.
The whole “you must pay full price to play your game in someone else’s machine” thing is stupid. Microsoft are completely missing the point when they point out that this isn’t the case as long as you’re signed in to your Xbox Live account. What if you want to rent a game from the video store? What if you wanna lend your game to a friend or workmate? What if you wanna sell/trade in your old games? What if you buy a game from EB and want a refund because it was shit? Guess what? You’re fucked.
As for the games, I’ll believe it when I see MS put something out OTHER than Halo, Gears of War, Forza, Cawwadooty Modern Dogfare and Kinect games.
Only upside of this console is MS shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly and damage control on a level only EA and Bioware know.
I’m really not sure why anyone would pay per month NOW with xbox 360s LIVE over PSN.. I don’t get it.. I really don’t.. I’m a PC guy, so really consoles don’t hold much relevance in my life.. But the future of gaming should be open to indie devs as well as the big boys.. And I don’t think MS wants that.. Why would anyone support such a closed and controlling concept that the xbox one presents.. It just makes no sense..
Imagine that a hacker knows you have an Xbox One. He knows that by hacking your console he can spy on you via Kinect since Kinect has to be turned on for the console to work. He waits until you’re fully invested in a movie or game.. he knows this from the heart rate monitoring ability of Kinect.. then as your heart is racing, he plays a piercing shriek effect and pops up gruesome images.. you suffer a heart attack and die.. that would be Murder One.