Xbox One Catch-all

Blind_Evil wrote:

I'll believe no ads on the dashboard when I see it.

So will I. They make buckets of money selling those ad spaces on the 360. Some of those spots sell for something like $30,000 a day. Maybe they've decided it's not worth it in the grand scheme of things though and if so, that would be great.

MannishBoy wrote:

Major Nelson in weird hat

Question: blah blah blah why can't I put the disc in to continue blah blah blah

Answer: Major Nelson straps on his ice skates and talks about your library.

Funny, but your library won't be available on another Xbone if there is no internet connection.

PRG013 wrote:

Funny, but your library won't be available on another Xbone if there is no internet connection.

I would be seriously concerned about that, if I weren't typing this from a wifi network in a national forest, 100 miles from the nearest city. 2013 is a pretty awesome year to live in.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

I'll believe no ads on the dashboard when I see it.

So will I. They make buckets of money selling those ad spaces on the 360. Some of those spots sell for something like $30,000 a day. Maybe they've decided it's not worth it in the grand scheme of things though and if so, that would be great.

I don't want ads on the dashboard but if ads are have to be somewhere I'd much rather have them there than in games. I can easily ignore them on the dashboard. In a game they would continually distract and annoy me (unless it's ads at a sport event that would be there anyway.)

The one thing they aren't talking about in terms of the cloud is what it means for supplying targeted adds to the user. I suspect that advertising could be the main use of the cloud for a long time.

Higgledy wrote:

The one thing they aren't talking about in terms of the cloud is what it means for supplying targeted adds to the user. I suspect that advertising could be the main use of the cloud for a long time.

I don't know that that really fits what they're talking about, but I've said for a long time I wouldn't mind MS ads if they were actually relevant in a way that Amazon advertises on their site.

MS knows a lot about what I like to do. They know what I play, who I play with, what I like to do when I play (achievements), when I like to play, what I like to watch, etc. If you want to really get me to find that cool new XBLA game that my friends are playing, tell me that because I liked the Pinball Arcade Marvel DLC, maybe I'll like the Star Wars tables my friends are all buying...

It's funny. I don't think of what Amazon does as advertising. Until now I've just considered it to be helpful suggestions but, of course, they are ads if, as you say, particularly useful ads.

I've just watched Major Nelson's Q&A bit. It's incredible but, at the moment, Microsoft's PR efforts always leave me more annoyed about the situation than when they started. I'm sure that can't be their intent.

Higgledy wrote:

It's funny. I don't think of what Amazon does as advertising. Until now I've just considered it to be helpful suggestions but, of course, they are ads if, as you say, particularly useful ads.

I'd say Amazon is a bit different too, because it's a shopping website, you go there to buy stuff, it's it's whole reason to exist. Even steam has separate sections for different areas of it's functionality with little or no 'bleed' between them (although default-on, disable-able pop-ups). The 360 dashboard however does have this bleed. Making the ads relevant would be a bit better, but it's still there.

Higgledy wrote:

I've just watched Major Nelson's Q&A bit. It's incredible but, at the moment, Microsoft's PR efforts always leave me more annoyed about the situation than when they started. I'm sure that can't be their intent.

Wouldn't it be great if MS hadn't cancelled all their Q&A and interviews with journalists? What Major Nelson is doing seems a bit like a last ditch effort, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's a bit unofficial.

Scratched wrote:
Higgledy wrote:

I've just watched Major Nelson's Q&A bit. It's incredible but, at the moment, Microsoft's PR efforts always leave me more annoyed about the situation than when they started. I'm sure that can't be their intent.

Wouldn't it be great if MS hadn't cancelled all their Q&A and interviews with journalists? What Major Nelson is doing seems a bit like a last ditch effort, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's a bit unofficial.

Yes, to be fair, he's probably firefighting as best he can with not much room to manoeuvre.

ruhk wrote:
PRG013 wrote:

Funny, but your library won't be available on another Xbone if there is no internet connection.

I would be seriously concerned about that, if I weren't typing this from a wifi network in a national forest, 100 miles from the nearest city. 2013 is a pretty awesome year to live in. ;)

But the question was, What if the Online connection drops for more than 24 hours. Remember when Sony was hacked? How long was that down for?

Scratched wrote:
Higgledy wrote:

I've just watched Major Nelson's Q&A bit. It's incredible but, at the moment, Microsoft's PR efforts always leave me more annoyed about the situation than when they started. I'm sure that can't be their intent.

Wouldn't it be great if MS hadn't cancelled all their Q&A and interviews with journalists? What Major Nelson is doing seems a bit like a last ditch effort, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's a bit unofficial.

There were a surprising number of interviews for them to have cancelled ALL of their meetings. Ben Kuchera pointed this out on twitter yesterday.

PRG013 wrote:
ruhk wrote:
PRG013 wrote:

Funny, but your library won't be available on another Xbone if there is no internet connection.

I would be seriously concerned about that, if I weren't typing this from a wifi network in a national forest, 100 miles from the nearest city. 2013 is a pretty awesome year to live in. ;)

But the question was, What if the Online connection drops for more than 24 hours. Remember when Sony was hacked? How long was that down for?

It's similar to the "what if steam dies?" scenario. If they're offline for whatever reason (DDOSed, pulled offline to fix a breach, someone drops a server during maintenance...) will they have the opportunity or inclination to send a failsafe signal to enable offline play, even if it's just to extend the limit. Then what about the people who didn't pick up the failsafe signal, then what about the presences of that functionality at all (someone could copy the method to make getting around MS's limits easier.

Scratched wrote:

It's similar to the "what if steam dies?" scenario. If they're offline for whatever reason (DDOSed, pulled offline to fix a breach, someone drops a server during maintenance...) will they have the opportunity or inclination to send a failsafe signal to enable offline play, even if it's just to extend the limit. Then what about the people who didn't pick up the failsafe signal, then what about the presences of that functionality at all (someone could copy the method to make getting around MS's limits easier.

This happened to me a few months ago during one of their maintenance windows. Got home, wanted to drop into TF2 quick to change a loadout or two before making dinner. Steam was currently undergoing a regular maintenance window. Double click TF2. "This title is unavailable at this time". Look at the Steam interface and it was definitely showing "No Connection" at the bottom of the interface, but I could still browse the store and everything. Tried to launch TF2 again, no go.

After feeling some slight panic just gave up on it and started making dinner.

MS has made some statements about how they've broken up a lot of their playing and authentication processes to make complete service unavailability over time unlikely.

Of course, you never know, but again, Sony's situation goes to running services like that not being one of their corporate strengths.

But in the digital era, it's always at least some level of concern.

MannishBoy wrote:

MS has made some statements about how they've broken up a lot of their playing and authentication processes to make complete service unavailability over time unlikely.

Have they addressed how they will handle any eventual "end-of-life" scenario?

ColdForged wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:

MS has made some statements about how they've broken up a lot of their playing and authentication processes to make complete service unavailability over time unlikely.

Have they addressed how they will handle any eventual "end-of-life" scenario?

That Major Nelson vid above kind of side stepped it.

MannishBoy wrote:
ColdForged wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:

MS has made some statements about how they've broken up a lot of their playing and authentication processes to make complete service unavailability over time unlikely.

Have they addressed how they will handle any eventual "end-of-life" scenario?

That Major Nelson vid above kind of side stepped it.

Honestly, that my only real bugbear. Given my use case, I can live with almost everything else they're proposing but I won't to know what will happen when (not if) the Xbox One servers get taken down permanently. I know a lot of people don't care what happens to their games when they've beaten them but I'm not one of those people. Being able to go back to my games well into the future is important to me. If Microsoft would just come out and say "Yes, when the servers go down long into the future, we'll send a token to your Xbox One that says you don't have to authenticate any more.", I'd probably be on board with this system. That's all they have to say. But because Stupid Corporate PR Rules 101 says you don't talk about "end game scenarios" when discussing a new product because of some ridiculous notion that talking about it means you don't intend to support it long-term, they likely won't do that.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:
ColdForged wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:

MS has made some statements about how they've broken up a lot of their playing and authentication processes to make complete service unavailability over time unlikely.

Have they addressed how they will handle any eventual "end-of-life" scenario?

That Major Nelson vid above kind of side stepped it.

Honestly, that my only real bugbear. Given my use case, I can live with almost everything else they're proposing but I won't to know what will happen when (not if) the Xbox One servers get taken down permanently. I know a lot of people don't care what happens to their games when they've beaten them but I'm not one of those people. Being able to go back to my games well into the future is important to me. If Microsoft would just come out and say "Yes, when the servers go down long into the future, we'll send a token to your Xbox One that says you don't have to authenticate any more.", I'd probably be on board with this system. That's all they have to say. But because Stupid Corporate PR Rules 101 says you don't talk about "end game scenarios" when discussing a new product because of some ridiculous notion that talking about it means you don't intend to support it long-term, they likely won't do that.

I think it was either Ars Technica or Ananandtech that proposed that in the future, if MS wanted to, a regular PC could be made to run the Xbox VM environment based on the way they were using hypervisor. It's an interesting thought in this discussion.

Of course, MS isn't going to say it. But you also wonder if future hackers might figure that out as well. Not sure how much horsepower would be required to compensate for the customized silicone, but it definitely should be easier than doing the same for the PowerPC silicone of current gen.

I somewhat doubt that the Xbox One, as a functional piece of equipment, will be taken down due to Microsoft getting rid of all methods of authentication. I doubt it requires much hardware, it'd be a huge PR disaster, and they probably plan to sell games for this device for at least 10, if not up to 15, years.

My greater concern is what happens in terms of cloud connectivity for games. I.e. Forza 5 has Drivatar, and I love what that feature proposes to do, but obviously the servers for it won't be online forever. So does the game then become useless? I suspect yes.

But on the flip side, it's probably worth pointing out that physical media is only slightly more robust. For example, have you ever tried hooking up an NES to a modern television? What about an Atari? Eventually even physical games become so difficult to play that they're essentially worthless to all but a small set of collectors, histories an die-hards. And while I do have an SNES actively hooked up and working, I rarely play games on it; instead I've re-purchased games for the Wii or Wii U's virtual console.

So worrying about games disappearing is a bit pointless, as they will all disappear with time, and there's not much we can do about it. They're simply too fragile. Emulation is the only way to keep old games alive, though even that is imperfect.

Really, in the big scheme of things online gaming hasn't really been around long enough for off-lining of games systems/networks to have a widespread impact. There are examples, yes, (Halo2 comes to mind, and you might include your favourite ex-MMO) but they're isolated, and nothing like say shutting down the 360 version of live, because it's still too new. Live on the original xbox has only recently passed 10 years, which is really nothing in terms of history.

I guess to draw a what-if, what if the SNES (Famicom to Yanks) or PS1 from the 90s had an online system they were 'keyed' against. Looking at it now, you could say you can emulate a SNES/PS1 reasonably (but not perfectly) and dump the game ROMs/discs, so it's under your control. None of that is very likely to happen for the 360/PS3 and likely the xbone/PS4, so fall all those kids on 2030's reddit discovering "a gem in my parent's attic" it's got a good chance it will be just trash, no matter how good the games were in the 2010's.

MannishBoy wrote:

it would be good to not look at the controller for the Playstation with dread when I have a game I want to play.

http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Elite-Wire...

It looks like the Xbox One will not come with a headset and from what I can find on the internet, the headset plug on the controller is proprietary and not compatible with the 360 versions. So, it looks like you'll need to buy their special headset unless you want to use the Kinect for chat. It could be that wireless phone headsets will work, but I can't find anything on that either. Regardless, for $500 bones, I'd have liked one packed in if it's going to be proprietary.

sithcundman wrote:

It looks like the Xbox One will not come with a headset and from what I can find on the internet, the headset plug on the controller is proprietary and not compatible with the 360 versions. So, it looks like you'll need to buy their special headset unless you want to use the Kinect for chat. It could be that wireless phone headsets will work, but I can't find anything on that either. Regardless, for $500 bones, I'd have liked one packed in if it's going to be proprietary.

Yeah, I mentioned that up thread. Seems dumb when that was one of the most important things they did to help MP on the 360. I don't want to hear Jimmy's mom offering to make him a PB&J over his Kinect mic when I'm playing a multiplayer game. Or people's dogs, they're favorite songs they're listening to, etc.

Scratched wrote:

SNES (Famicom to Yanks)

What? It was SNES here in the states.

MannishBoy wrote:
sithcundman wrote:

It looks like the Xbox One will not come with a headset and from what I can find on the internet, the headset plug on the controller is proprietary and not compatible with the 360 versions. So, it looks like you'll need to buy their special headset unless you want to use the Kinect for chat. It could be that wireless phone headsets will work, but I can't find anything on that either. Regardless, for $500 bones, I'd have liked one packed in if it's going to be proprietary.

Yeah, I mentioned that up thread. Seems dumb when that was one of the most important things they did to help MP on the 360. I don't want to hear Jimmy's mom offering to make him a PB&J over his Kinect mic when I'm playing a multiplayer game. Or people's dogs, they're favorite songs they're listening to, etc.

Maybe Kinect is smart enough to filter that stuff out? Seems a bit out there, but if it can tell where the voice is coming from and match that to a face, maybe it could work.

MannishBoy wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

This is now an issue of how unclear Microsoft's message is, nut you are conflating two aspects of how sharing works.

First, you can gift any game to anyone that has been on your friends list for 30 days. This is restrictive, as you could give a disc to anyone, and they could continue to gift it. But now, each game can be gifted just once. And when you gift it, you lose access to it. But note, this has nothing to do with family.

When you buy a Gold account, you get 10 slots for people that can play your games. These are not people with their own Gold accounts. You can't add me.

You can make a,slot available to me, but I would then be playing your games under a different gamertag than my own. That's great for trying games out, but its not really how I plan on playing games.

For a game club to exist, one person would have control over everyone else's account. I'm sure that will work for some, but its still sketchy. All games will be on one guy's Xbox, and he can cancel everyone, and keep all of the games.

So while I may make a slot for my brother, and he cab share games, he will pro ably also have his own account.

The sharing you are talking about can be dome now, just by handing a disc over to another person. There isn't really that much to game. That's why the checks are in place, though.

I'm not sure that's right. They said an unlimited number of accounts can exist and use Gold on the "host" box. So I'm not sure that fits with your 10 per gold. And I assume those accounts that get gold access on that box won't be able to use gold elsewhere on their own (another fresh box with no Gold). But they might be able to ride the Gold account of a friend who's paid for Gold...on that friend's Xbox.

But yeah, if it's like the family plan, there will be a "master" account for however they let you link the Gold accounts.

We'll know soon I suspect, as this is one of the things Major Nelson tweeted he was going to blog about soon.

I think it's safe to say that the only accurate statement we can make about these two features is: "We're not sure."
Seriously, we don't know enough, still. I'd not heard that thing about s different account for the family thing. Doesn't really make sense to me since you have to be able to identify the person before adding them as a family member and if it's a new account how doyou do that?

Someone asked earlier if anyone's getting an XBO... Even if I wanted to I can't because I live in one of the 14 EU countries that are not supported by the XBO and I will probobaly end up moving between countries for work so that means that even if I got an XBO I couldn't take it with me because accounts are locked to the country of your billing address so I wouldn't be able to access my gamertag in another EU country - even though the games are able to work between countries (at least as per current info from MS). Actually, I'm pretty sure this goes against EU free movement rules but hey!

It's as if this console and restrictions were created only with the US in mind. I can imagine that the XBO will be a pretty good console for the USA but for the rest of the world there's really not much going for it...

RolandofGilead wrote:
Scratched wrote:

SNES (Famicom to Yanks)

What? It was SNES here in the states.

Hmmm, I thought it was referred to as Famicom by someone.

Scratched wrote:
RolandofGilead wrote:
Scratched wrote:

SNES (Famicom to Yanks)

What? It was SNES here in the states.

Hmmm, I thought it was referred to as Famicom by someone.

That was the NES.

Duoae wrote:

That was the NES.

Right.

Possibly filed under "Analysts doing their thing", but yow: DFC: "The entire future of the Xbox business is in question"

What draws my eye is this bit "...and that is likely to have a major impact on the game industry." - MS doesn't exist in a vacuum, if they stumble everyone feels the effects in some way. Just as everyone loves to say that the PC alone can't support AAA games and therefore we need consoles, one console platform can't sustain it either, unless you're getting into monopoly discussions which are bad for other reasons too.

Famicom and Super Famicom were the Japanese names. NES and SNES were the names in the US.