Microsoft Finally Selling Xbox One Without Kinect 227
DroidJason1 writes: "Microsoft has unbundled the Kinect from the Xbox One. The unbundled system's price now matches the PlayStation 4. Microsoft is touting 'your feedback' as the reason for this move. Any Xbox One functionality that relies on voice, video, gestures, etc, will not work without a Kinect, and users will be able to purchase a standalone Kinect later this year."
LOL (Score:5, Funny)
The 180s never cease.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Informative)
With the Xbox One, MS has been backpedaling faster than Lance Armstrong approaching a drug-test checkpoint. Suddenly all those bad ideas that were so "essential" are turning into what they were all along: just fucking bad ideas.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Informative)
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2x AMD "Jaguar" APU quad core module @ 1.75GHz w/Radeon GCN (768 cores)
8GB DDR3 @ 2133MHz (68 GB/s)
32MB eSRAM (109GB/s)
PS4
2x AMD "Jaguar" APU quad core module @ 1.6GHz w/Radeon GCN (1152 cores)
8GB GDDR5 @ 5500MHz (176 GB/s)
ARM secondary CPU for handling background tasks, downloads, video encoding/streaming
265MB secondary DDR3 for background tasks, OS (68 GB/s)
Let it be known that the Xbone's original CPU speed was the same as the PS4, but when they learned of PS4's vastly superior GPU, the
Re:LOL (Score:5, Interesting)
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You could be naïve and think that their original strategy to launch the product as a bundle had deeper rooted issues. Issues that would now have been weeded out. What I mean is that it could have been viewed as a good strategy to have a full package but when the public showed disapproval it was already too late to turn around. Months of code had already been written around the Kinect so to release on time they needed to keep it as is. Only later does the team manage to re-write the critical code and al
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mod parent up for knowing the difference between pedal and peddle. I do believe this is the first time I've seen it spelled correctly on Slashdot; everyone else thinks it's "backpeddling".
It's a comon error; nothing too loose your shit over...
Oh I dunno (Score:4, Informative)
We tried to peddle something, nobody wanted.
We reversed our unpopular stance by back-pedalling, and now we're back peddling.
Just whilst I'm on the topic, I'm most narked (and I accept alone), in actually *liking* the original "always-on-in-the-cloud" original XBone pitch.
The kinect can just wither and die though - voice was great. Camera...oh I'm sure it looked great in the pitch.
Media stuff looked pretty damn good when I was convinced they were going to sell it as a cable/ADSL streaming trojan Tivo+ box. I've now no idea wtf they were thinking.
Sell an XBone+ with 1080 games and you can refurb the millions you've sold as leased cable boxes.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Funny)
It's a comon error; nothing too loose your shit over...
Your right, their's alot of things worse then that.
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Correction / FTFY (Score:5, Funny)
s/Your feedback/A massive lack of sales
Re:Correction / FTFY (Score:5, Informative)
s/Your feedback/A massive lack of sales
In Capitalist USA, where dollars = votes, this is the best form of feedback.
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It totally is a different experiene! It's called Mavericks!
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*experience*
Turning spellcheck back on...
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OS X Mavericks [apple.com].
Re:Correction / FTFY (Score:4, Interesting)
That's just making it more confusing and frustrating for any company who had considered an upgrade to Windows 8, and so they're sitting on their hands waiting for Windows 8.x Super Final We Really Mean It Update.
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Well, technically it's feedback. Not only that, but it's also the only feedback they care about.
This is what happens (Score:2)
Too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Starting from when they said there would be an always-on internet requirement (and then there wasn't), and then the whole "no selling of used games policy" (and then there wasn't), Microsoft has more or less annoyed. confused and alienated their potential user base.
Sure, some people will buy it no matter what.
But, for some of us, give us a gaming platform which doesn't need an internet connection, isn't providing an always on internet connected camera, and doesn't handcuff us to how you think we want to use it.
I don't want a gaming platform for Netflix, Hulu, Bing, Dong, Boing, or anything else. I'd also like to be able to play motion controlled games without an internet connection, because I'm not playing on-line games. Ever.
And, if you can't provide that to me, I don't want your product.
At this point, I see more value in buying a spare XBox 360 than even considering the XBone.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft's big problem with their policies and backpedaling is that people like me simply cannot trust anything they say. Rational buyers aren't now going to run out and buy XBones because there's no guarantee Microsoft won't go back to their original policies once sales improve.
If anything they need to abandon disliked policies and declare publicly with some manner of legal obligation that they will never go back to them. Until then I won't even consider buying an XBone or any subsequent Microsoft console.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Interesting)
For the past two console generations (since the original Xbox came out), I've owned every major console brand, but have generally preferred the Xbox. As such, all my games, except for console exclusives, were for Xbox. I found the original Xbox controllers to be superior to Nintendo's or Sony's consoles, and this trend continued until now. MS's "gamer score" was also rather addictive, and was one of their more brilliant ideas of the last generation of consoles. I've also been maintaining a gold account for many years, since most of my friends are on Live, and let's face it, the service was *vastly* superior to the offerings of any other company - of course, for a paid service, it damn well better be.
I may eventually purchase an Xbone, but it might very well come after a PS4, which surprised me. For every Wii or PS3 game, I probably have seven or eight Xbox/Xbox 360 games. I'm thinking about cancelling my Live account (although I recently signed up for another year, so it will be a while), as I rarely seem to play online with my friends these days, preferring solo play.
How did Microsoft lose me as a customer, at least so far?
1) No backward compatibility. I've got a pretty big Xbox 360 library, with a number of games I haven't started/finished or would like to perhaps play again. Backward compatibility would have virtually assured a purchase of an Xbone device, since I know that eventually there will be games on it that I'd like to play. However, I've got to decide now which console in my entertainment center will be displaced by a new console (I've currently got four - all three last gen plus a PS2), and that's my current limit of the switching box I have installed. Microsoft should have stuck with an x86 architecture for the 360, and we'd be able to play all three versions of Xbox games on the latest console with few issues. People argue that compatibility isn't critical (which is admittedly true), since I obviously already have a 360, but I'm literally at the point where I don't have any more room to plug in another console. So now that's just one more device I need to keep connected indefinitely as long as there exists a possibility of wanting to play a 360 game. There's also another message that no backward compatibility sends: we don't care about your loyalty as a customer.
2) Xbox as an advertising billboard. Microsoft decided to heavily monetize their console's connectivity with ads, even for those of us with Gold Live accounts. Either/or, Microsoft. I don't appreciate you double-dipping like that, and every time I see the massive wall of advertisements on every single page of my Xbox One, I get annoyed when I realized that I'm also paying for that service. At this point, I'm largely paying for Microsoft to simply serve me advertisements on my gaming console. Fuck that. Why should I pay hundreds of dollars for another platform that can assault me with non-stop ads between gaming sessions.
3) Disappointing "next-gen" experience. In general, the next-gen experience hasn't really wowed me. Games can barely even render at a full 1080p, for heaven's sake, which I certainly didn't expect of a "next-gen" console at this point. The hard drives are pathetically small, and the Xbone's, of all the idiotic things, is not user-upgradeable (unlike the PS4). It won't take too many installs or downloads before that's all used up, and then you're playing the shuffling game with your drive space.
4) Consumer-unfriendly arrogance. Phone home once per day or your Xbox bricks? Ok, I actually like the idea of being able to install your games and not having to put the disc in for validation. The only practical way to do this is to have an online check to make sure more than one person isn't using the same disc, but this could have been an optional setting, and the way they decided to ram this down people's throat was ridiculous. There was also the specter of killing the used-game market, and frankly, MS didn't have a lot of trust to spare at
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It's amazing how "Microsoft has more or less annoyed" Microsoft has been lately.
Zune
Vista
Windows Mobile
Windows 8.0
Windows Phone
Surface
XBox One
. . . and yet they still have problems listening to customers. See: Windows 8.1
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You should learn how to read. There was never a "no selling of used games policy" and there was never an "always-on internet requirement". The Xbox One would check in with servers once a day to verify software licenses. If you wanted to sell used games, you'd have to use a mechanism to de-list the game from your Xbox One to make that license available for the person who bought it.
If read past the headlines you'd know this. I can't blame you for being confused, having never read the actual articles.
You might want to actually read it yourself: http://www.cnet.com/news/micro... [cnet.com]
Parse the words all you like, but MSFT actually wanted to inactivate your console if it didn't phone home every 24 hours - despite the craziness of this idea, the practicality of it was insane - if I took it with me to another state and the trip took > 24h then I couldn't play it. If my internet died for 24+h I couldn't play it. Stupid.
Whoever is heading the Xbox division recently (or is pulling their strings on-high) is a c
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps you should learn how to use Google?
Because at various times, Microsoft has announced those were (or would be) requirements.
And I can't blame you for being a tool who hasn't really been following this saga. But, nonetheless, I will.
Because you're clearly ill-informed about all of the things Microsoft has said, and then retracted about this console. And, I can assure you, BOTH of those things had been announced and then changed by them.
Used games (Score:2)
I've never heard Microsoft say that there was a "no selling of used games policy"...ever. What I did hear was they were contemplating not using physical media, which sparked a bunch of people to make wild assumptions. When asked about it, Microsoft responded that you could resell them (based on licensing agreements by 3rd parties), and you would get a code that you could then give to someone else so they could download and activate it. Always seemed reasonable to me, but the wild theories about everythin
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Yep. And with this system you could use your games on any machine you were signed in on. And you'd be able to trade games to your friends so that they could play them when you weren't. But people read the headlines and didn't read the articles and now we have two piles of crap that are warmed over last gen consoles.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Informative)
You should learn how to read. There was never a "no selling of used games policy"
People in glass houses shouldn't call the kettle black. When Microsoft first spelled out how the One would work [ign.com], they made it pretty clear (well, as clear as Microsoft legalese can be) that gamers couldn't sell their games to just anyone. Rather, gamers would only be able to sell their games to participating retailers, and even then, only if the game's publisher had opted-in to allowing resales for copies of that game (and then the publisher could optionally tack a fee onto the transaction too, thus decreasing how much money you get to take home).
Similarly, you couldn't sell it to friends or online folks. The only option would be to give it away to them, and, once again, you could only do so if the publisher had opted-in to allowing game trades between individuals. Oh, and an additional restriction was that each game could only ever be given away one time, and even then, only to people who had been on your friends list for at least 30 days. They also outright prohibited renting of games or loaning of physical copies of games to friends.
Given all of those ridiculous terms and conditions [time.com], I can see how you might have been confused and failed to realize that the One had those policies in place when it was first announced. Even so, since you read the actual articles, I'd have hoped for better.
As for the always-on requirement, sure, you can play the pedant by pointing out it only needed to phone home once a day rather than constantly, but that's pointless, since it does nothing to address why the requirement was such a source of contention. The reason it was annoying was because it immediately eliminated a number of valid and legitimate use cases in which gamers wouldn't have a regular connection to the Internet. In the armed forces? Too bad. Internet down for a few days? Too bad. Just moved? Too bad. Traveling? Too bad. Out at sea? Too bad. Vacationing in your summer cabin? Too bad. Don't want to connect devices that have no practical need to be online? Too bad. Don't think a company has any business tracking what you're doing with offline, disc-based, single-player games? Too bad.
And the OP was being kind, since he skipped over all of the indie developer controversies that were around early on after the One's announcement, such as requiring that they work with a major publisher [eurogamer.net]. I also noticed that you didn't address his issues with the always-on camera and that they've since flip-flopped on that requirement as well.
The fact that Microsoft managed to make Sony look good, despite the fact that Sony was in the doghouse with virtually every gamer after all of the PSN stuff a few years back, just goes to show you how badly they messed up with the One's launch.
Disclaimer: I own all three consoles of the last gen, and none of the current gen consoles.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:4, Insightful)
As for the always-on requirement, sure, you can play the pedant by pointing out it only needed to phone home once a day rather than constantly, but that's pointless, since it does nothing to address why the requirement was such a source of contention. The reason it was annoying was because it immediately eliminated a number of valid and legitimate use cases in which gamers wouldn't have a regular connection to the Internet. In the armed forces? Too bad. Internet down for a few days? Too bad. Just moved? Too bad. Traveling? Too bad. Out at sea? Too bad. Vacationing in your summer cabin? Too bad. Don't want to connect devices that have no practical need to be online? Too bad. Don't think a company has any business tracking what you're doing with offline, disc-based, single-player games? Too bad.
Well said. I think a lot of folks (apparently including MS execs) tend to fall into a bubble of sorts where they assume that since *they* have ubiquitous access to extremely fast, always-on internet, then *everyone* has access to extremely fast, always-on internet. It's certainly true that *most* people do at this point, but the fact that MS execs basically flipped the bird at anyone who didn't certainly [dorkly.com] didn't endear them to potential consumers. One more example: my brother works on a tug in Alaska - they currently have a 360 console in their boat, and the original Xbone plan would have ensured that they couldn't use it.
Interestingly, this seems to be in midst of Microsoft's "arrogant" phase (well, more arrogant than usual) - the same time period in which they also dismissed customer feedback about Windows 8 usability. Having seen MS from the inside several times in the past, Adam Orth's comments don't seem out of line for an exec, except that most MS execs have the brains not to post things like that publicly. From his twitter history, Mr Orth obviously enjoyed trolling the internet, yet somehow seemed surprised when the internet eventually raged back. It seems that MS as a company finally figured out that even *they* can't afford to ignore so much consumer feedback or openly mock their customers, and seem to be taking a slightly more humble approach, at least in public. As bad as they are, could you imagine what MS would be like without competition from Sony? Oh, yeah, I can. Just think of the cable companies.
I'm like you - own all three last gen consoles (and all three before that), and none of the current gen. For the first time, my first console might be a Playstation rather than an Xbox, but it will probably depend on who gets the first must-have game.
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Happy to oblige. :)
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Magic!!
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And how exactly is it supposed to phone home every 24 hours without a connection that's available at least every 24 hours? Dumbass.
Ah but they did tell you how, it was called an XBox360 :)
Gamers no Likey (Score:2)
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Kinnect does show promise with voice activation and skype which is cool. I wanted one for this reason. The xboxONE had a promise of being more than just a gamer system like the Sony is.
That is until I found out I needed a gold account with a monthly payment. No thanks I will just use my pc for this thank you very much.
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You needed a Gold account to do ANYTHING on a Xbox One. That's something else they just backpedaled on too.
Get rid of gold acct for Netflix (Score:2)
I know this is an anti MS tech site but I was favoring an xbox over a PS4.
The reason being is I am not a heavy gamer. I wanted a nice OS platform that was more a media center with a dvr, netflix, skype ready, voice activated system that could play games too but did a little of everything.
Sony fanboys have been saying it is sooo much faster thinking it is 2007 all over again. But in reality the performance differences have been similiar. They are almost the same hardware with the xbox slightly slower but wit
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They did that just recently as well.
Also, developers weren't focusing on Kinect anyway. Kinect sucks for AAA and core games. It doesn't work for the genres that are the most popular on the system (aka: shooters). Most of the time a game was made for Kinect, it was some other type of game, or something like the attempted Fable game that was a total on-rails disaster.
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The reason being is I am not a heavy gamer. I wanted a nice OS platform that was more a media center with a dvr, netflix, skype ready, voice activated system that could play games too but did a little of everything.
this is the exact point why i got a ps4. i already have an apple tv. what i wanted was a game system so I could play games. not be a new destination for all my multimedia needs. sony gets this - ps4 is a great game system but doesn't try to be much more.
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I am going to get an Amazon fire and keep my pc for skype and gaming. Too little too late. Maybe with IWndows 9 the app store might be usefull with cross platform desktop/xbox/mobile apps. But not in its current form.
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The built in gpu is something like 50% faster and the xbox dedicates 3 cores to the O/S, kinnect etc, so it only has 5 available for games, those are rather significant differences.
Have a citation for this?
Why didn't they leave the mic in? (Score:3)
I personally hate using voice command with eletronics because they can't talk back to me but some people like it, couldn't they have left the mic in? How expensive even is the mic?
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People didn't not want Kinect over cost. They didn't want Orwell's nightmare in their living room. Half of Orwell's nightmare is still nightmarish.
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Kinect is a feature of the 180. If you don't want Kinect, then there's no point to buying the new Xbox at this point anyway, because the two most hotly anticipated games are available for the 360. You either stick with your 360 (if you're going to buy an xbone, odds are good you already have a 360) or you buy a PS4 just on the basis that it's more powerful.
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I personally hate using voice command with eletronics because they can't talk back to me but some people like it, couldn't they have left the mic in? How expensive even is the mic?
Because the mic hardware was originally part of Kinnect. MS would have to create and manufacture a dedicated peripheral device with only a mic instead of the cameras + mic, and then include that or sell it separately. And since all current software was assuming that having a Kinnect meant both the mic and cameras were there, that would have meant rewriting many assumptions that the software is probably currently making, so there's even more cost.
In short, it's not at all practical or cost-effective, espec
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I personally hate using voice command with eletronics because they can't talk back to me but some people like it, couldn't they have left the mic in? How expensive even is the mic?
Because the mic hardware was originally part of Kinnect. MS would have to create and manufacture a dedicated peripheral device with only a mic instead of the cameras + mic, and then include that or sell it separately. And since all current software was assuming that having a Kinnect meant both the mic and cameras were there, that would have meant rewriting many assumptions that the software is probably currently making, so there's even more cost.
In short, it's not at all practical or cost-effective, especially not for the likely few people who wanted a mic but NOT a camera. The entire point of this move is to shave off costs for those that want nothing to do with the Kinnect. Given the fact that the Kinnect has already proven to be rather unpopular, this sort of investment would simply be throwing good money after bad. If you want voice control (and I mean that in a generic sense, as you've acknowledged that you personally wouldn't even want that feature), get a Kinnect.
Or, or they could just allow USB mics like the Guitar Hero/Rock Band type of mics.
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Or, or they could just allow USB mics like the Guitar Hero/Rock Band type of mics.
Rock Band isn't even available on the newest consoles, is it? And I'm pretty sure you can't just plug in a generic USB mic or probably even a 360 version of a mic into your Xbox One. Even if USB mics could be hooked up and used, that's still a lot of work for a very minor feature. I have a hard time faulting MS for not supporting what I'd consider to be an edge case at best. The console will work just fine without voice support, after all.
There's plenty else they've botched - this is actually something
Live Gold changes too (Score:2)
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No other devices like Blu-ray players, Roku, AppleTV, etc charges a monthly fee to use apps
No other devise offer actual value beyond access to app contents.
Live Gold subscriptions which is $60/year
Yearly subscriptions go on sale regularly for around $35 on Amazon and other sites. Even with Netflix and Hulu going free, I'm still going to keep mine due to the monthly free games (which you get to keep playing if your subscription expires, unlike with PSN). Just do the math:
Monthly Xbox Gold Cost: $2.92
June Free Game 1: Halo Spartan Assault: $9.99
June Free Game 2: Max - The Curse of Brotherhood: $14.99
June Free Game 3: Dark Souls: $19
Seriously . . . (Score:2)
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Which is worse, Jar Jar blinks or Windows 8?
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How many laws do you have to break to fix it? (Score:2)
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Episodes 2 and 3 gave us Mace Windu.
We also got the death of Mace Windu, so it's kind of a wash, still, purple light saber > "UI formerly known as metro"
Smart move on their part, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's too little, too late. Sony has probably won this generation already. The Xbox One isn't a failure, but it is going to be relegated to second place.
If Microsoft REALLY wanted to sell some systems and possibly win the war, they would do away with "Gold" Live! subscriptions, and make the full online experience free-to-all.
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Is that a bad thing?
The good thing is the Xbone is viable. Because if it was just Sony, things would be even worse than it is. (Think PS3 launch - extra cost, etc. etc. that's something only done by someone cocky enough to "win").
And hey, the Xbox360 won last time, and Microsoft got cocky.
But second is still good, and it means neither can really screw you ov
Re:Smart move on their part, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
And hey, the Xbox360 won last time
The underpowered Wii won last time.
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And hey, the Xbox360 won last time
The underpowered Wii won last time.
In terms of High Definition consoles there were only two last generation consoles, the PS3 and the XBox360, so basically it was a two horse race of which the PS3 is currently winning in world wide sales. The Wii was only Standard Definition which sort of put it in the PS2, XBox and Game Cube camp.
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And hey, the Xbox360 won last time
The underpowered Wii won last time.
I wonder if Nintendo is now paying the price for the Wii with sluggish Wii U sales?
Speaking for myself, I was rather disappointed with the Wii, and ultimately purchased only a handful of titles for it, especially compared to my Xbox 360. You'll notice that even with high console sales numbers, Nintendo couldn't really relate that into significant game sales for anything except their first party titles. Now, with both gamers and publishers burned by Nintendo's last console, is it any wonder that their newe
Re:Both lost (Score:2)
The PC is making a comeback with gaming again.
The consoles become popular as gaming pcs were thousands of dollars in 2000. It was a rich kids thing and 3d graphics started arriving on consoles. The DIYS market is heating up where for about the same price you can build a moderate pc with a moderate gaming card and be stuck with a controller. The PC market is shrinking but enthusiast and gamers are taking a large slice of that recently.
Game makers who abandoned the pc 10 years ago because of the lack of DRM a
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Running a network is expensive and a security/liability nightmare (as Sony found out) I don't have a problem with them charging for a service where identity is important.
The most conservative machine leads. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it goes to show that the market for consoles has become more conservative. When you compare the PS4, XBone and the WII U(yes the Wii U is a part of the market), the PS4 is probably the most simple in its configuration. It doesn't have extraneous gimmicks like a Kinect camera or Wii U tablet that increase the cost of the system. Sure the controller has a LED and a touchpad,but it's not a huge new way of gaming that leads to more casually focused games.With the PS4, you only really get a box and a controller.
The casual market that Microsoft and Nintendo built their machine to appeal to is already satisfied with their phones and tablets for their day to day fix. And for the majority of gamer in the market for a PS4 or XBone, they also have phones and tablets with a great selection of casual games. So when the choice is given between the different consoles, they choose the one with a more enthusiast focus. Their itch for casual games is already sated. And it doesn't hurt that the PS4 GPU is 30-50% more capable and at the same price as an XBone(Kinect-less SKU).
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I'll reconsider buying an XBone... (Score:2)
Why is everyone complaining? (Score:3)
"Always on" issue - gone
Gold Membership to use streaming apps - gone
Bundled Kinect - gone
Almost everything that people have complained about has been removed / improved / fixed. I know there is a long tradition of slamming Microsoft on Slashdot ... almost a sport really, but come on. They are doing exactly what we've been asking them to do and everyone is still bitching about it. I for one commend them for listening to feedback and addressing the issues that we've known were there from the start.
I don't own an XBOX One, I'm a PC gamer, but I have to say I'm impressed to see a company that's willing admit their mistakes...I'm looking at you Nintendo...get your act together.
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I don't own an XBOX One, I'm a PC gamer, but I have to say I'm impressed to see a company that's willing admit their mistakes...I'm looking at you Nintendo...get your act together.
I think many people are not impressed since a little market research would have informed Microsoft that all their initial requirements for the XBone (sorry they asked for this abbreviation) were not going to be appreciated by most of the people who would purchase a console. Having done all these back-flips they should have called their console XBox180 or XBox540 :)
As for Nintendo, Sigh! I totally agree.
We told you so MS. (Score:3)
Its nice that you've listened... its just too bad that you took this long to actually respond.
Not a console gamer so I can't gauge how this effects anything. I'm PC gamer. The consoles of any brand are an irrelevance to me.
But MS's launch of the One has seemed troubled from the beginning. I do wonder why they bother with it. MS could have done much better simply by releasing an actual MS windows PC with a console form factor and a console GUI dropped on top of the windows OS. That would have given the Xbox One cross platform game compatibility, legacy support for lots of things windows is compatible with an the one is not, given additional utility to MS windows systems that would be able to use things initially designed for the Xbox, and generally given the Xbox a big advantage over the Playstation.
But they decided to go with another divergent incompatible OS with no legacy support even for most older xbox games. Its pathetic.
Every console should be backward compatible with consoles of the same brand. At least build a reasonable emulator into each. And its deeply foolish for MS not to leverage their command of the desktop environment to gain an advantage over Sony.
Re:Microsoft misses the point. (Score:5, Informative)
The very same announcement also announced that a Gold membership will no longer be required for streaming services.
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And I bet if people who care about that didn't have a PS4 already, that could actually be beneficial for sales.
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You'll pardon me for not being thrilled that they've finally stopped charging a fee to use services which we already pay for. That they've finally stopped doing something they never should have done is good news, to be sure, but not exactly something to get excited about, given that all of their competitors (e.g. Nintendo, Sony, Apple, Google, Amazon, Roku, etc.) have been doing it the right way from the beginning with their boxes that connect to TVs.
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Oh, I'm not defending it, merely pointing out that the parent's concern has been addressed. I don't have any particular side in this generation's fight, haven't yet found the time to play through more than a couple games from last generation. If I did have a preference it would reluctantly be for the PS4 because they managed to have reasonable policies from day one; reluctant because of all the crap Sony has pulled over the years.
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Fair enough.
And yeah, I don't have a horse in this race yet either, though I have all three from the last generation. Even so, I distinctly remember the sour taste in my mouth when I got my 360 and discovered I'd have to pay them for the privilege of viewing Netflix, and then being thankful that I already had my Wii, PS3, and Apple TV hooked up and ready to go.
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Fair enough.
And yeah, I don't have a horse in this race yet either, though I have all three from the last generation. Even so, I distinctly remember the sour taste in my mouth when I got my 360 and discovered I'd have to pay them for the privilege of viewing Netflix, and then being thankful that I already had my Wii, PS3, and Apple TV hooked up and ready to go.
Well, I have a horse in this race and it's already won, been given the ribbon, watered down, fed some oats, and released into a nice pasture to frolic with the mares. It's called a PC and you don't have to worry about bundling, Kinect, being locked out of DLCs (aka Skyrim), etc.
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PCs are great, I have one too, and I wouldn't dare get rid of it. Even so, as general purpose machines, PCs generally come at a greater expense, need to be replaced/upgraded more regularly, are more fiddly than consoles, and come with other headaches all their own. Again, I wouldn't trade mine in for a console, but I'd prefer a world in which we have both great PCs and great consoles, rather than just one or the other. I've never viewed it as a "for one to win, the other must lose" situation. Rather, consol
Offline multiplayer on PCs (Score:2)
Well, I have a horse in this race and it's already won [...] It's called a PC
On an Internet-connected PC, you have to worry about antivirus and other security issues. Or on an Internet-disconnected PC, you have to worry about reconnecting it to the Internet every few weeks so that Steam can renew its receipts. That and the PC doesn't have quite as many games designed to be played with multiple controllers. Sure, you can use an Xbox 360 Controller and use a TV as a monitor, but publishers aren't necessarily willing to accommodate this setup. On the whole, PC multiplayer games tend to
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On an Internet-connected PC, you have to worry about antivirus and other security issues.
Behind a NAT not really, unless you use a web browser.
Or on an Internet-disconnected PC, you have to worry about reconnecting it to the Internet every few weeks so that Steam can renew its receipts.
a) Steam is not the only store out there.
b) If connecting the PC to the internet now and then was a problem for you, you probably aren't shopping at steam in the first place.
That and the PC doesn't have quite as many games
IE 360; why so long to set up a living room PC? (Score:2)
Behind a NAT not really, unless you use a web browser.
And guess what a lot of games embed for matchmaking. Besides, have people managed to break into the Xbox 360 through its Internet Explorer app?
The reason PC games are historically "single-user per computer" is that few users had them set up to ergonomically accommodate multiple players in front of one screen anyway.
I'm aware that consoles have historically been connected to physically larger monitors. But it's been easy to set up a PC to accommodate multiple players since 2007, when VGA and HDMI inputs became more-or-less standard features on new TVs. Why has it taken so long for PC users and major developers to realize this? Did it just take that long to replace SDTVs in livin
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Well, I have a horse in this race and it's already won [...] It's called a PC
On an Internet-connected PC, you have to worry about antivirus and other security issues. Or on an Internet-disconnected PC, you have to worry about reconnecting it to the Internet every few weeks so that Steam can renew its receipts. That and the PC doesn't have quite as many games designed to be played with multiple controllers. Sure, you can use an Xbox 360 Controller and use a TV as a monitor, but publishers aren't necessarily willing to accommodate this setup. On the whole, PC multiplayer games tend to be designed around the assumption of one player per machine so that the publisher can sell multiple licenses to a single household [cracked.com].
Multiple controllers on the same TV?? Sure, it looks like a lot of fun in the movies but whenever I've sat down with more than one person on a console the lack of screen real estate due to split screen kills it for me. You really need an 80" TV to do it right.
If you were right that the console makers actually cared about local multi-player, wouldn't you think that they would have built-in multiple TV support by now? Instead, the Xbox has multilink, which requires a separate console per player.
I do think
Same-screen is not always split-screen (Score:2)
whenever I've sat down with more than one person on a console the lack of screen real estate due to split screen kills it for me.
True, first-person shooters and racing games need a split screen because their camera angles depend on which way a player character faces. But why would you need to split a screen for something that puts both players' characters in one view? Consider arena combat games like Bomberman or fighting games like Street Fighter or cooperative adventures like Secret of Mana or New Super Mario Bros. Wii or cooperative shoot-em-ups like Contra or Smash TV or Ikaruga. Some other games naturally use a view whose orient
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I have a horse in this race and it's already won, been given the ribbon, watered down, fed some oats, and released into a nice pasture to frolic with the mares. It's called a PC and you don't have to worry about bundling, Kinect, being locked out of DLCs (aka Skyrim), etc.
I think most people who post here have a PC in one form or another.
Personally I have a gaming Laptop on which I have exclusively put Fedora 20 (I always keep it updated) which effectively stops me playing "Games for Windows" since I could not be bothered setting up Wine and have no intention of dual booting because I am not very interested in PC games preferring Console (PS3) games instead.
Are PC games (aka Games for Windows) better than console games? Well that depends on the gamer and what they like.
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For my part, the lack of free online gaming disqualifies any console which doesn't have it. I already went down that road with the Xbox 360, and I won't go down it again.
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The PS4 gives you Netflix without PlayStation points, but you need XBox Live Gold to get get Netflix.
Microsoft announced yesterday that starting in June you will not need Gold to use Netflix and other apps.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/13/5712696/microsoft-dropping-xbox-live-gold-requirement-netflix-rumor
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Well, given their track record of circulating rumors, then making announcements to deny the rumor, then making a contradictory announcement denying the previous announcement denying the rumor, then having more rumors, then having an announcement to confirm the rumor followed by an announcement to deny the previous announcement ... you'll forgive us if we don't actually put any stock in what Microsoft says on the topic anymore.
Microsoft has changed their messaging on this product so many times as to make any
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But the fact you can access internet services such as Netflix without having to pay a monthly fee, to access data you are already paying for.
Funny you should mention this.. that's another thing they just did a reversal on [engadget.com].
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That my friend is why I did not bother to purchase one. MS got greedy here.
Now with the Amazon Fire I see no reason to buy such a device unless I want to game occasionally. I prefer PC anyway and I am rather busy these days
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The Price isn't what is making people choose the PS4 over the XBox. But the fact you can access internet services such as Netflix without having to pay a monthly fee, to access data you are already paying for.
I don't have a PS4 since there aren't any games on it that I am interested in (likewise the XBone), although I will at a later date get one. If the PS4 had backwards compatibility I would have got one on first release since I still have PS3 games I have not finished and the difference in graphical output while noticeable is not significant enough to convince me to purchase a PS4 at the moment.
As for paying for a subscription to Netflix I do have to agree that having to pay a monthly fee (ie Xbox) just to
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Because they got away with it on the 360 and figured that they were so fucking awesome that everyone was going to put up with the same shit this generation too.
Re: (Score:2)
As opposed to the Democrats, which also don't respect our privacy.
You seem to be ill-informed about what's actually going on in the realm of privacy and who the bad guys are. It's not a party issue. The leadership in both parties are pretty suspect, and both parties have people in favor of better privacy.
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Sorry, they're considering that as an option, too.
It's a lot harder though, and it'll probably be like the Xbox360 in terms of compatibility because the architectures are completely different (PowerPC vs. x86, and Apple has shown PowerPC emulation on x86 is slow). Granted, the Xbon
Xbox One and Xbox 1 (Score:2)
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Motion controllers since last gen (Score:2)
Subtle things like a slight lean for your in-game character as you go round a corner in a racing game as you yourself lean into it (we all do it)
Controllers have had accelerometers since the Wii Remote and PlayStation 3 SIXAXIS controller.
Battlefield has an option for head tracking
How does that work? If you physically turn your head, you face away from the monitor. Does the game amplify the rotation angle before passing it to the camera?
Re:Terrible Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
The Kinect has been mandatory for a while now (including all of initial pre-launch development), yet still most of what we see are horrible, gimmicky Kinect games trying to turn an interesting piece of technology into a game controller, and outside of very specialized types of games (dancing games, exercise trainers, rail shooters, etc), it doesn't work half as good as a standard controller. Developers have been trying for years now to overcome the difficulties with lag and imprecision, and even with much improved hardware in its latest iteration, the Xbone still has significant problems in those areas. In the end, controlling your console with your body is still very much a gimmick, and doesn't justify 1/5th the price of the entire console.
I own a Wii, and I became so sick of having to waggle a stick around during gameplay that I stopped buying Wii titles largely out of fear of how much unnecessary motion-control would be shoved into an otherwise excellent title. What's the point of waggling a stick back and forth when pressing a button accomplishes the same task faster, more reliably, and without straining your wrist? Motion control is a cute gimmick that, despite excellent sales of the Wii, ultimately proved to be more of a hindrance to most games than a help, as evidenced by the fact that no current gen consoles rely on motion control as a core component of their controller functionality.
Motion control is now largely considered to be an ancillary function for game controllers, only used sparingly or judiciously as demanded by the gameplay. I think Kinect should fall into this same category - cool tech, but really not appropriate for most titles. If game developers want to add a few extra features here and there to optionally support the Kinect, or build a specialty title around Kinect since lots of people will still have them, nothing is stopping them from doing so.
Cheaper multiplayer (Score:2)
I'm now in the camp that believe consoles are a total rip off - the price of titles is extortionate
If you have four people in one household who want to play a game together, one copy of a $60 console game that supports multiple gamepads is cheaper than four copies of a $30 PC game that doesn't.