Nextbox rumors..

MannishBoy wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

Amazon's model is such that the user pays nothing for using whispernet other than the price of the book, which I assume subsidizes the cost.

Difference is that kindle books are lucky to hit 1MB. Games are much bigger.

And bandwidth is much more limited on mobile than I think you're believing, especially if you started pushing 30+GB games down. Most people's mobile accounts are limited to 5GB total in the US.

Exactly. If you had to pay for all that mobile bandwidth at the rates Verizon and AT&T are charging, a $60 game would cost you an extra $100 or so in bandwidth overcharging.

AnimeJ wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

Amazon's model is such that the user pays nothing for using whispernet other than the price of the book, which I assume subsidizes the cost.

Difference is that kindle books are lucky to hit 1MB. Games are much bigger.

And bandwidth is much more limited on mobile than I think you're believing, especially if you started pushing 30+GB games down. Most people's mobile accounts are limited to 5GB total in the US.

Exactly. If you had to pay for all that mobile bandwidth at the rates Verizon and AT&T are charging, a $60 game would cost you an extra $100 or so in bandwidth overcharging.

I'm only saying this could be done if they have an arrangement like Amazon's. Downloading books over whispernet doesn't count toward anyone's bandwidth limit. But yeah 4G bandwidth isn't as much as I thought, so that would probably only work with smaller games

Well, 4G has ample bandwidth; the issue is that wireless providers are greedy bastards.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

I'm only saying this could be done if they have an arrangement like Amazon's. Downloading books over whispernet doesn't count toward anyone's bandwidth limit. But yeah 4G bandwidth isn't as much as I thought, so that would probably only work with smaller games

And I'm saying nobody would give them anywhere close to the arrangement Amazon has. It's a function of scale. I'm not sure that most areas even have the kind of backhaul network to handle that, not to mention the bandwidth over the air. Remember these 4G towers cover pretty broad areas.

Assuming a book is 1MB (most are smaller) and a next gen game fills a Blu-ray at 50GB, that's 50 thousand times the data for one transaction.

MannishBoy wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

I'm only saying this could be done if they have an arrangement like Amazon's. Downloading books over whispernet doesn't count toward anyone's bandwidth limit. But yeah 4G bandwidth isn't as much as I thought, so that would probably only work with smaller games

And I'm saying nobody would give them anywhere close to the arrangement Amazon has. It's a function of scale. I'm not sure that most areas even have the kind of backhaul network to handle that, not to mention the bandwidth over the air. Remember these 4G towers cover pretty broad areas.

Assuming a book is 1MB (most are smaller) and a next gen game fills a Blu-ray at 50GB, that's 50 thousand times the data for one transaction.

People wouldn't suddenly jump at the opportunity and clog the airwaves. Despite the possible size of individual games (rarely ever 50GB, even the PC version of BF3 was only 10-11gigs), downloading them makes up very little of overall bandwidth consumption. The goal is just to be able to give people in broadband-poor areas better access to games sold online, and a lot of those games would be smaller-sized Xbox Live Arcade or PSN type games. Offer a 4G model for $30-$50 more, and target marketing at those areas that lack good access to broadband.

Still, I admit it's not likely to happen, at least not in the US.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

I'm only saying this could be done if they have an arrangement like Amazon's. Downloading books over whispernet doesn't count toward anyone's bandwidth limit. But yeah 4G bandwidth isn't as much as I thought, so that would probably only work with smaller games

And I'm saying nobody would give them anywhere close to the arrangement Amazon has. It's a function of scale. I'm not sure that most areas even have the kind of backhaul network to handle that, not to mention the bandwidth over the air. Remember these 4G towers cover pretty broad areas.

Assuming a book is 1MB (most are smaller) and a next gen game fills a Blu-ray at 50GB, that's 50 thousand times the data for one transaction.

People wouldn't suddenly jump at the opportunity and clog the airwaves. Despite the possible size of individual games (rarely ever 50GB, even the PC version of BF3 was only 10-11gigs), downloading them makes up very little of overall bandwidth consumption. The goal is just to be able to give people in broadband-poor areas better access to games sold online, and a lot of those games would be smaller-sized Xbox Live Arcade or PSN type games. Offer a 4G model for $30-$50 more, and target marketing at those areas that lack good access to broadband.

Still, I admit it's not likely to happen, at least not in the US.

First, we're talking next gen games, which will have different needs than things designed for current gen. And that includes some PC games now that are shared across platforms. Since you have to think over a 5-10 year life of a console, you have to assume things will scale up (see the move from CD based games to DVD based games, which moved from 650MB to 7GB in size available).

And second, even a single 10-20GB game exceeds paid contract data plan limits by 2x-4x. And those cost $50 a month. No way MS or especially Sony would pay anywhere near that amount to the carriers even if the bandwidth existed.

There's a lot of spectrum out there, but the vast majority of it isn't deployed (some seems to be held by large scale speculators like cable MSOs), and build out will take years even once it's decided that it will be deployed.

The key is really all the unused spectrum. AT&T and Verizon's recent 10q claim they have more than enough spectrum to account for current usage increase trends for the next decade.

AnimeJ wrote:

The key is really all the unused spectrum. AT&T and Verizon's recent 10q claim they have more than enough spectrum to account for current usage increase trends for the next decade.

That's interesting to me. I recently watched an Extra Credits video (and those guys aren't known for poor research) that said that a major spectrum crunch is already looming and in the next couple of years, they'll pretty much be out of it (at least in the US) unless they can get a bunch of people sitting on unused spectrum to give it up and even then, that'll only buy a few more years.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
AnimeJ wrote:

The key is really all the unused spectrum. AT&T and Verizon's recent 10q claim they have more than enough spectrum to account for current usage increase trends for the next decade.

That's interesting to me. I recently watched an Extra Credits video (and those guys aren't known for poor research) that said that a major spectrum crunch is already looming and in the next couple of years, they'll pretty much be out of it (at least in the US) unless they can get a bunch of people sitting on unused spectrum to give it up and even then, that'll only buy a few more years.

Stop The Cap has had a few articles recently doing a rundown of cellular 10qs. It might be different in Canada though, as Phil doesn't have the focus on things up there that he does in the states. For examples though, there's stuff about how wireless providers want to hook folks on apps that burn more data. As to my previous quote, here's the article I was referencing there. And for transparency, I did accidentally include AT&T in that; it's just Verizon, but if I were a gambling man, I'd say that AT&T isn't in a radically different boat.

Looks like an alpha system got into the wild. Digital Foundry has some of the details although it's probably a good idea to have a salt shaker handy while reading the article (even though it sounds like they did due diligence as best they could).

One thing I'll say about that it although it's probably not representative of final hardware (it's not releasing soon, plus lots of memory for debug), one thing about it is that it's not exotic hardware. Hopefully developers won't have to contort themselves to get the most out of it, and it'll make high quality ports easier.

Scratched wrote:

One thing I'll say about that it although it's probably not representative of final hardware (it's not releasing soon, plus lots of memory for debug), one thing about it is that it's not exotic hardware. Hopefully developers won't have to contort themselves to get the most out of it, and it'll make high quality ports easier.

To be fair, the 360 wasn't running anything terribly exotic either. It just had a ton of CPU and GPU horsepower, significantly more than you'd find in a PC at the time, and packaged for much less than you'd pay at retail to build an equivalent system. If they're targeting an 8-core system that's definitely more cores than the average gamer is using (8-core Sandy Bridge is only at the server level), but something that will probably be arriving in the mainstream channels in a few years. It's good to see they're at planning at least 4 GB of RAM for the system as that's been an oft-repeated request from devs.

Switching back to Nvidia is the real eyebrow raiser.. since by all accounts it has appeared that AMD would be the GPU in the nextbox.

Microsoft Says When They Said ‘New Xbox,’ They Didn’t Really Mean New Xbox article at Kotaku.

Last week on a podcast, Microsoft's Brian Hall mentioned "the new Xbox" while discussing products that his company will be releasing in the near future. But Microsoft now says he wasn't actually talking about the new Xbox.
...
But speaking to The Verge, a Microsoft representative said Hall was actually referring to an Xbox update.

Clearly they meant the XBox update last year that added Metro Windows 8 UI to the dashboard.

Although, I'd love to see the sheer amount of chaos that would ensue from a sneak XBox launch in the Fall.

shoptroll wrote:

Although, I'd love to see the sheer amount of chaos that would ensue from a sneak XBox launch in the Fall.

That would be a Megaton of biblical proportions.

Aaron D. wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

Although, I'd love to see the sheer amount of chaos that would ensue from a sneak XBox launch in the Fall.

That would be a Megaton of biblical proportions.

Assuming retail is actually in on it, unlike the Saturn debacle.

MS has had some totally surprise announcements lately. Outlook.com and Surface were completely below the radar.

But you can't launch a game console without software, so unless they've got a lot of internal work going on nobody knows about and Halo 4 is an next gen title, there's no way.

I was just about to say that Halo 4 would be the launch title must-have!

Ground-breaking Xbox 720 tech could turn rooms into 3D environments

Microsoft's R&D division is working on a landmark display technology that will project a full 3D game environment across the walls of player's bedrooms and living areas, a new patent filing shows.

Seems like triple-head gone larger scale. That's going to be just lovely for anyone in the same room as you while playing the latest murder simulator, or crawling around in the guts of some monster.

So something like a CAVE but for consumers? Makes sense with the goal of Kinect (or at least Double Fine's Happy Action Theater). But I doubt it's happening this generation.

Scratched wrote:

That's going to be just lovely for anyone in the same room as you while playing the latest murder simulator, or crawling around in the guts of some monster.

I've always wanted to run through the magical world of Final Fantasy except there's somehow a bookcase and a coffee table in the middle of the world-ending villain's lair.

How would this be possible to play without tripping over your own furniture? Or are they once again assuming everyone has giant white rooms with tons of floorspace like in the commercials?

Demyx wrote:

How would this be possible to play without tripping over your own furniture? Or are they once again assuming everyone has giant white rooms with tons of floorspace like in the commercials?

I've long ago started thinking that everyone on the US West coast just assumes a really high adoption rate for all tech as soon as it's released, or lives in a house just like they do. Heck, if they want to send everyone in my family this year's tablet and/or smartphone and move me into a house with a dedicated gaming room that would be nice, but I'm going to assume that won't be happening.

Ignore this double post, it is bad.

Scratched wrote:
Demyx wrote:

How would this be possible to play without tripping over your own furniture? Or are they once again assuming everyone has giant white rooms with tons of floorspace like in the commercials?

I've long ago started thinking that everyone on the US West coast just assumes a really high adoption rate for all tech as soon as it's released, or lives in a house just like they do. Heck, if they want to send everyone in my family this year's tablet and/or smartphone and move me into a house with a dedicated gaming room that would be nice, but I'm going to assume that won't be happening.

But, but everyone lives in a 36 foot x 25 foot bedroom or a 100ft by 30ft living room!

Demyx wrote:

How would this be possible to play without tripping over your own furniture? Or are they once again assuming everyone has giant white rooms with tons of floorspace like in the commercials?

My take on it is that the patent doesn't have a home application in mind, for precisely that reason.

Duoae wrote:
Scratched wrote:
Demyx wrote:

How would this be possible to play without tripping over your own furniture? Or are they once again assuming everyone has giant white rooms with tons of floorspace like in the commercials?

I've long ago started thinking that everyone on the US West coast just assumes a really high adoption rate for all tech as soon as it's released, or lives in a house just like they do. Heck, if they want to send everyone in my family this year's tablet and/or smartphone and move me into a house with a dedicated gaming room that would be nice, but I'm going to assume that won't be happening.

But, but everyone lives in a 36 foot x 25 foot bedroom or a 100ft by 30ft living room!

Well, I could probably afford to move around my giant spelunking simulator in the far corner of my living space, however I would still need room to accommodate for my Bentley (I prefer not to subject it to the confinement of a garage, or the harshness of elements). Curse you Microsoft! Why do you not consider the middle lower class American income!

Not that I expect much to come out of it anytime soon, but playing something like this in a darkened room, sitting on your couch with controller in hand, could be pretty immersive regardless (mostly) of how cluttered the room is.

Could be a nice "bonus mode" for after the kids/wife goes to sleep gameplay sessions.

I'll be interested to know how they plan to do whole room or even large field of view projection in a compact, reasonably cheap, mass produce-able, easy to use, unit that can reasonably be used in most peoples' rooms and give a good effect. I'm imagining something standing in the centre of a room with no obstacles around it. I'm sure the MS test lab is just fine, but again, most peoples' rooms...

I'm also having visions of projecting something nasty onto the curtains, but that's probably less of an issue nowadays where 'everyone' has a big screen TV that passers-by can look at what you're viewing on the street outside.

Weird thing is I find a good handheld or tablet game can be mentally immersive. I guess I don't get the desire for head-tracking, VR glasses and the like. Once the controller melts into my hands and I'm locked in I tend to get pretty immersed if the game is good.