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Posted: May 22 2013 10:05 am

So uh... how about that XBox One?

Posted: May 22 2013 10:56 am

It doesn't appear to be targeted at traditional gamers. From all the emphasis on media, "the cloud", and features that would only be usable by the first world, I would be led to think they're going to war with Apple.

[Edit]Microsoft gives the Boot to self-publishing indie developers:

Quote:

Unlike the PS3, Vita, Wii U and, soon, the PS4, indie devs will not be able to self-publish their games on Xbox One, reports Shacknews.

Matt Booty, general manager of Redmond Game Studios and Platforms, told the site that Microsoft will "continue to court developers in the ways that we have." He did add that the company will "explore new business models and new ways of surfacing content," but ultimately concluded that "Microsoft Studios is a publisher that works with a wide range of partners, as do a lot of other people, to bring digital content to the box."

So it looks like I was wrong. Apple would not be where it is today if not for indies lining the App Store with all manner of stuff only found there.

Posted: May 22 2013 01:29 pm

not backwards compatible?
cant carry over XBLA games?
necessary install of games in order to play them?

count me out unless they come out w/some killer app for it.

Posted: May 22 2013 02:05 pm

username wrote:

count me out unless they come out with dozens upon dozens of killer apps for it.

Fixed.

Posted: May 22 2013 02:38 pm

You know, now that I think about it, the whole thing about games being linked to accounts and the fees for game sharing isn't too different from Steam and Origin. The fact that it was possible to share games for free by exchanging discs was one of the few advantages the 360 had over it. By throwing that away, they're limiting their audience, but only time will tell by how much exactly. If nothing else, it will be interesting to watch the distribution of physical discs. If the fee ends up being even slightly lesser than retail price, there may be much fewer discs pressed.

Posted: May 22 2013 04:56 pm

I'm not sure how I feel about some of these things, but I'll wait and see what they have game wise to decide whether it will be good for me or not. Was originally going to get this, but I think I'll weigh out my options better and wait to hear more about the PS4 as well. I'm not going to let what I've heard so far make me decide unquestionably to go with one or the other because the PS4 details aren't even really out yet.
I find the 'comments' section for Xbox One articles on IGN to be pretty entertaining. Doesn't sound like a ton of info has been released about the PS4, but the fan boys from both sides are already arguing like they've played these systems for years and can definitively tell you which one is far and away better than the other.

Posted: May 22 2013 04:57 pm

I am still waiting to see what the 15 exclusives are going to be.

Does anyone know what the deal with arcade games is on the XBO? Do they transfer over from the 360? That would be nice to know, as I probably play more arcade titles than anything else on the 360.

Also, fuck Kinect. I don't want to have to have the thing connected and on all the time. Not unless they start coming out with REAL games for it, and not the shit they have made so far.

Overall I am feeling pretty meh about it, but I usually end up buying every console I can anyways, so I will probably get one of these at some point.

Posted: May 22 2013 05:52 pm

Honestly, I'm feeling more and more secure with just my 3DS. Neither the Wii U nor either of the other two company's console's wow me.

Joined: Aug 04 2009 Posts: 2515

The-Excel wrote:

You know, now that I think about it, the whole thing about games being linked to accounts and the fees for game sharing isn't too different from Steam and Origin. The fact that it was possible to share games for free by exchanging discs was one of the few advantages the 360 had over it. By throwing that away, they're limiting their audience, but only time will tell by how much exactly. If nothing else, it will be interesting to watch the distribution of physical discs. If the fee ends up being even slightly lesser than retail price, there may be much fewer discs pressed.

It's not too different from steam is right but the differences are different enough to be a bad thing.

I mean the Xbox One requires you to be online at least one time a day. Even to play single player games. With Steam you can play all single player games offline once you've set it up to do so.

With Xbox One, if you buy a disc, it isn't attached to an account, it is attached to your actual console system. So unlike steam where I can have my games installed on as many computers as I like but have one account to access them, with Xbox One you have one console which you can play the games on and if it dies, you are fucked.

Of course Microsoft are offering an option to fix this of course. Just pay a fee to get your copy cancelled on your console and moved onto another. Of course I am referring to the new policy on used games with Xbox One. If you buy a used game you have to pay for the game in the store and then pay for it to get attached to your account and erased from the previous owners.

It also must be remembered that Steam is a digital platform. So you are downloading games. With Xbox One, you are buying physical games and then having to authorise online to play them. It's totally pointless and stupid.

With the post of course you should be able to see my views on the Xbox One pretty clearly but of course I am sure some Xbox fan boy will still try to defend Xbox, even though they are literally trying to suck the money out of you every way possible.

Joined: May 22 2008 Location: Goshen, VA Posts: 6544

The differences between this and Steam are:

PC gaming has never/rarely been about bringing your game to a friend's house to play on his PC.

Steam sells most of the games also available on consoles for far cheaper.

Console gamers have always relied on used games/resales/trades/rentals.

And I don't HAVE to use Steam to play games on my PC. I can choose to get them anywhere. You don't have a choice on XBOX One

Joined: Aug 04 2009 Posts: 2515

JoshWoodzy wrote:

The differences between this and Steam are:

PC gaming has never/rarely been about bringing your game to a friend's house to play on his PC.

Well I can't say Xbox really does that anyway.

Gaming now has really became the thing where you sit in your house with your copy of a game playing it and your friend sits in their house playing it and you talk over mics. That is what seems to be a multiplayer experience nowadays.

I mean I get lending games is what you are getting at, but local multiplayer is basically dead. My friend goes on about this all the time. Like all of us here will remember bringing games to their friends house and playing them but nevermind Xbox One, even Xbox 360 and PS3 was pretty devoid of local multiplayer games.

The only company that still encourages local multiplayer is Nintendo. Like recently I went over to a friends and brought over my N64 with F Zero X and Quake 2 and shit and we sat there and had fun. Now you just can't do that. Multiplayer is such an anti-social experience now. If this was nowadays and those games came out for a Sony or Microsoft console it would be as above.

We'd host an online game and sit and play talking over mics. RIP local multiplayer.

Actually it's pretty ironic that Microsoft and Sony are all about "oh you can do this and that, the social experience" when basically all their consoles have killed social interaction with people in terms of multiplayer gaming.

Posted: May 22 2013 08:17 pm

For the sake of brevity and clarity, I've decided to refer to this entertainment center (it's simply not a game system) as the "X1."

Posted: May 22 2013 09:40 pm

@om*d wrote:

Does anyone know what the deal with arcade games is on the XBO? Do they transfer over from the 360? That would be nice to know, as I probably play more arcade titles than anything else on the 360.

Supposedly, no: http://nerdreactor.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-wont-play-360-games-or-transfer-xbla-games/

Zero backwards compatibility.

Joined: Apr 09 2008 Location: Pennsylvania Posts: 3112

Honestly, I picked a good time to get out of consoles. The Xbox One is going to suck hard from the few things I've seen on it, The PS4 doesn't really seem to have anything wonderful going on, and that leaves the market to the Wii U, if anyone gives a damn once the dust clears. Meanwhile, on my PC, I can get a huge range of games, from indie to major release. The indie stuff can be varied (no M$, $ony, or Mintendo approval required) for either free or cheap, and Steam sales can get me brand new major releases for crazy-low money. I think if consoles will ever die, this will be the generation that kills it.

My impression is that the huge market boost to the industry attracted a lot of shitty marketing and non-gamers to the fold. You could say that movies and TV got commercialized as well, but I'm betting there are people in charge of the 3 major consoles' production and marketing who brag to their friends that they haven't played a game since pong. Seeing that there are 3 consoles with no backwards compatability, with the possibility of losing my digital-only copies of games on my PS3/X360, meanwhile telling me "backwards compatibility is backwards" reaks of someone who has never spent a sizable amount of money on games.

Posted: May 22 2013 11:52 pm

Greg the White wrote:

Honestly, I picked a good time to get out of consoles. The Xbox One is going to suck hard from the few things I've seen on it, The PS4 doesn't really seem to have anything wonderful going on, and that leaves the market to the Wii U, if anyone gives a damn once the dust clears. Meanwhile, on my PC, I can get a huge range of games, from indie to major release. The indie stuff can be varied (no M$, $ony, or Mintendo approval required) for either free or cheap, and Steam sales can get me brand new major releases for crazy-low money. I think if consoles will ever die, this will be the generation that kills it.

My impression is that the huge market boost to the industry attracted a lot of shitty marketing and non-gamers to the fold. You could say that movies and TV got commercialized as well, but I'm betting there are people in charge of the 3 major consoles' production and marketing who brag to their friends that they haven't played a game since pong. Seeing that there are 3 consoles with no backwards compatability, with the possibility of losing my digital-only copies of games on my PS3/X360, meanwhile telling me "backwards compatibility is backwards" reaks of someone who has never spent a sizable amount of money on games.

Like I said before, everything seems to be pointing toward Microsoft targeting non-gamers. Kinda like what Nintendo did 7 years ago.

Microsoft must have picked up on the notion that consoles are on the way out and so targeted people who aren't into console gaming. The actual gaming stuff was kept to a minimum in the presentation. The parts of the games shown were the shallowest possible aspects and very little gameplay to speak of. The issue here is that they missed the point to an almost comical degree.

Joined: May 22 2008 Location: Goshen, VA Posts: 6544

Joined: Aug 28 2011 Posts: 537

http://i.minus.com/iBzvb2JSpQNRM.gif

Posted: May 23 2013 03:23 am

Who called it "Xbox One"? I almost thought we were talking about the original.

Posted: May 24 2013 09:54 am

Right now the Xbox One sounds like the greedy publisher's wet dream come true.

Quote:

Retailers will be free to charge whatever they wish for pre-owned Xbox One games, but both Microsoft and publishers will take a percentage cut of every sale.

...

A gamer walks into a retailer and hands over the game they wish to sell. This will only be possible at retailers who have agreed to Microsoft’s T&Cs and more importantly integrated Microsoft’s cloud-based Azure pre-owned system into its own.

The game is then registered as having been traded-in on Microsoft’s system. The consumer who handed it over will subsequently see the game wiped from their account – hence the until now ambiguous claim from Phil Harrison that the Xbox One would have to ‘check in’ to Microsoft’s servers every 24 hours.

The retailer can then sell the pre-owned game at whatever price they like, although as part of the system the publisher of the title in question will automatically receive a percentage cut of the sale. As will Microsoft. The retailer will pocket the rest.

Unconfirmed reports on ConsoleDeals.co.uk suggest that retail’s slice will be as little as ten per cent. That’s a significant cut from what it has become accustomed to from pre-owned sales and more in line with what they would receive from the sale of a new game – hence, the value of the pre-owned market to the retailer is effectively destroyed.

These same unconfirmed reports also suggest that the activation cost for consumers buying or borrowing pre-owned software will be £35.

Many readers are asking whether the £35 will be additional cost on top of the price of buying the game. No, we believe that the £35 figure – which is not our number, incidentally – would cover the entire transaction. If correct this would leave retail with a cut per sale of around £3.50.

There's hope, though:

Quote:

Microsoft: "While there have been many potential scenarios discussed, we have only confirmed that we designed Xbox One to enable our customers to trade in and resell games at retail. Beyond that, we have not confirmed any specific scenarios. Another piece of clarification around playing games at a friend’s house – should you choose to play your game at your friend’s house, there is no fee to play that game while you are signed in to your profile.”

Just like how you had to be signed in to your profile when you played a 360 game on your friend's console. The bottom line is that this is a console for publishers. Maybe for non-gamers too. But certainly not for traditional gamers.

Although I kinda wish a system like that was possible on Steam. Sell back a game license, get a prorated amount of what you paid for it in your Steam Wallet.

Joined: Aug 25 2005 Posts: 287

So, let's see.

1) Daily online "check ins" to make sure you're playing legit games.
2) No BC, including digital Arcade games.
3) Forced installations and inability to share titles in any meaningful capacity.
4) A roster of exclusives that consists almost primarily of Forza, Halo, and Gears of War.
5) Mandatory Kinect utilization.

Microsoft has basically constructed a system that makes me, a life-long and obsessive gamer, *not* want their system. I've owned a shit-ton of hardware, including weirdo systems like the Jaguar and the 3D0, and I don't want to touch XBox One with a forty foot pole.

Let's break it down.

1) I have a stable internet connection, but it does go down sometimes, occasionally for up to to two days. My system would be useless. More pressing, though, is the concern that very few people seem to bring up -- with both Sim City and Diablo III it wasn't the end user's connection that was problematic. It was the server load/issues on the COMPANY's side. Remember three years ago when Live went down on Christmas day and stayed down for most of a week? People were pissed they couldn't play online. Now imagine that service outages mean that they can't use their systems at all.

2) Physical BC, okay, fine. I can deal. But when you build an infrastructure around digital titles and don't do due diligence to make those function *somehow* on new hardware, you have problems. I get that the architecture is different, but it's not like MS didn't have time to plan for this.

3) If installations speed up load times, great. However, there's a 500 GB drive in the system and it's apparently sealed in. Thus, if you want extra storage, expect to pay for a USB drive. And does anyone trust Microsoft to not force some proprietary standard so they can sell you the storage at inflated prices?

4) The PS4 is... meh... so far. Sony seems to be in "please love us again" mode and their focus is apparently on gamers and winning them back after the PS3 debacle. Microsoft is out and out flipping us off. If I had to pick which system's exclusives I cared more about, Uncharted, God of War, Ratchet and Clank, InFamous, and MLB the Show carry more weight than Halo and Forza. I'd miss Gears of War somewhat, but that franchise has run its course.

5) Fuck the Kinect. Seriously. Fuck that shit. It was never, ever used well. I get that this was because it wasn't attached to every system so developers didn't want to risk requiring it. That being said, it needs too much space to function for anyone that doesn't have a large play area. Maybe they're fixing that, but motion control is still fairly limited in its use. And I don't want that thing listening for commands even when the system is shut off.

My take is that Microsoft knows who butters its bread -- the frat boy contingent. They know that Japan doesn't give a fuck about them, China can't buy consoles anyway, and the rest of the world is a drop in the bucket compared to the US. Thus, they're focusing on sports and Call of Duty, hoping to excite their base. They also likely figure that most of those guys are only playing Vs matches of Madden and COD anyway, so if they have no internet it doesn't matter if the system locks them out since they're not playing single player. And, yknow what? That's great. Let's trap all the racist, sexist shitheads on one service so that Playstation network and MiiVerse have real communities that want to game and not artificially inflate their gamerscores by spamming and cheating.

I think this upcoming generation I'm going to go WiiU/3DS (already have both and I'm too much of a Nintendo fanboy to ever not buy their stuff -- besides, when Nintendo is in "go" mode, watch out), PC (my current system build rocks the specs of XBox One/PS4 anyway and has a better selection/more interesting titles) and, *if* Sony doesn't cock shit up at E3, I might consider a PS4. A next-gen Uncharted will likely be amazing. To that end, I've already started thinning out my 360 collection. All I'm using it for now is Mortal Kombat and Injustice. MK is getting a PC version that will support my fight stick (sweet!), and I might just bite the bullet and go WiiU or PS3 for Injustice.

Posted: May 25 2013 08:41 am

One of the few references to games at press conference was the promise of "15 exclusive games".

That's a bold promise, and almost certainly a half-truth. I am fairly certainly that:

1) As many as half of them won't make the launch window.
2) Some of them will be enhanced ports. Madden 25: Super Bonus XBox One Edition would technically be an exclusive.
3) The list will include proprietary IPs like Halo and Gears of War.

Posted: May 25 2013 01:43 pm

Syd Lexia wrote:

One of the few references to games at press conference was the promise of "15 exclusive games".

That's a bold promise, and almost certainly a half-truth. I am fairly certainly that:

1) As many as half of them won't make the launch window.
2) Some of them will be enhanced ports. Madden 25: Super Bonus XBox One Edition would technically be an exclusive.
3) The list will include proprietary IPs like Halo and Gears of War.

They already said 15 exclusives in the first year, not at launch...

Posted: May 25 2013 01:47 pm

Well, that's not impressive. Pretty sure WiiU will have had 15 exclusives within the first year.

Posted: May 25 2013 03:35 pm

Does no one care that it looks like a VCR?

Joined: May 22 2008 Location: Goshen, VA Posts: 6544

No one cares what they look like. PS3 looks like a George Foreman Grill and I still dig it.