Xbox One Console Discussion

[Daft]

Next Xbox reveal due 21st May, costs $500 or $300 with a subscription, reports suggest

 

Microsoft will reveal its next-generation Xbox at an event on 21st May, multiple reports have suggested.

 

The console will launch in "early November", seasoned Microsoft analyst Paul Thurrot has revealed. These details have been independently backed up by The Verge.

 

Named just "Xbox", Microsoft's machine will be "expensive" and cost around $500 (roughly £326, although likely higher in the UK). A lower price $300 (£195) model will also be available with some form of subscription.

 

 

Veteran Microsoft watcher Paul Thurrot in action.

Regarding the console's rumoured "always-online" component, Thurrot reiterated what we knew already - that previous Microsoft design documents have mentioned the feature.

 

"Looking at some of the stuff I got a long time ago, it actually says 'must be internet-connected to use' in the notes," Thurrot claimed. "And that's all I have, but it does say that."

 

Recently-leaked internal documentation dated to last year referenced the console's "always on, always connected" design.

 

Microsoft was coy in its apology for comments made by senior employee Adam Orth last week that appeared to support an "always on" console. The company's statement was careful to apologise for Orth's poorly chosen words while steering clear of addressing the subject in general.

 

Thurrot's report also mentioned two other unannounced Xbox-branded machines. One, code-named "Yumo", was to be an Xbox device purely for entertainment apps, rather than games. The product has seemingly been canned to avoid confusing consumers.

 

The other machine is a new budget-priced Xbox 360 model, code-named "Stingray". Due for release later this year, the device will cost just $99 (£65). Thurrot suggested this may mean Microsoft's new Xbox would not play Xbox 360 games.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-08-next-xbox-reveal-due-21st-may-costs-USD500-or-USD300-with-a-subscription-reports-suggest

 

It's slightly surreal to see the PS4 doing everything right and the Xbox (if all this is true) do everything wrong.

 

I'm having déjà vu from the PS3 and 360 launch, except everything's backward.

[Charlie]

Here we go:

 

You Can Now Buy An Xbox 360 For $99 (If You Can Find A Microsoft Store)

 

 

 

http://kotaku.com/5908241/you-can-now-buy-an-xbox-360-for-99-if-you-can-find-a-microsoft-store

 

See that's actually quite a good deal. Paying only $40 (£20) extra to be able to spread the cost over monthly payments. Would work very well for younger people or low-incomes to be able to buy the console.

[Captain Falcon]

Hang on, I'm trying to get my head round it all - Are they setting it up as a sort of dedicated cloud-access-service console with everything saved and stored somewhere out in the ether? Is that what this looks like?

 

Whilst streaming is an option for a lot of content, it's still far from appropriate for high definition gaming demanding fast response times - especially so in the US where MS have the biggest market share.

 

Cloud saves will still be an option as they already are, but the gaming side won't be a cloud platform unless such a game required additional processing power that needs to be handled remotely and then both sides will likely be working in unison.

 

As Shorty mentioned, it's probably just for random checks once every so often to see if you're running up to date firmware, DRM checking and probably recording activity use so they can better serve you adverts.

 

Always on would be bad enough for some folks if the checks were made frequent enough but to have all content streamed, games and film, would be such a no-no move that not even Microsoft would attempt right now. Plus, you wouldn't need such an expensive box if it were all handled on the cloud as it has to do sod all work.

 

 

 

Even with Kinect 2.0, $500 sounds awfully steep considering it uses inexpensive RAM, a low power/cost processor (well, probably two of them), and a low end GPU which are all based on off-the-shelf components. Surely the removal of motors inside Kinect 2.0 thanks to the wide angle lens has both reduced complexity and cost to manufacture as well. Even with a sizeable HDD, it sounds like there is a nice profit on the package compared to previous releases.

 

Sony could easily undercut that and not even take much of a hit... unless their Eyetoy really does come bundled in every box but even then, there wouldn't be much in it and you'd be getting a much more powerful device to boot.

[Shorty]

It's slightly surreal to see the PS4 doing everything right and the Xbox (if all this is true) do everything wrong.

 

I'm having déjà vu from the PS3 and 360 launch, except everything's backward.

We'll have to wait and see what this console can do, first. I was initially very impressed by the PS4 reveal, then I sat back and realised that I really don't want much of what they were selling.

 

Even if always-on is a big deal to some, it won't affect my choice personally, and they probably looked at the figures of online gamers on their system and realised that there's a huge chunk of people that this isn't going to bother.

 

If Xbox has a machine as powerful, or nearly as powerful, as the PS4, fast to boot and fast to play, play as you download/install, slight improvement to the controller, big improvement to Kinect, retains its brilliant downloadable game structure, but has no share button... it's now one step ahead of the PS4 for me. (If I buy a Vita, that would probably change significantly).

 

On the other hand if it looks like we'll get Sim City esque game launches with everyone failing to activate their game on launch day, or Kinect barely improves but shitty sports and dance games remain the focus of their launch, if the hardware is not up to scratch or the dash has even more ads and they make looking at your avatar's feet a big deal again....

[Daft]

Why would having an optional feature be a negative?

 

Edit: That's not meant to sound aggressive as it does.

 

What feature would sell you the new Xbox?

Edited April 8, 2013 by Daft

[Shorty]

The share button is negative to me because it's a waste of space and it's taken away the select button. It's putting a feature right in front of me that I'm already sick of looking at on the internet. I'm not saying it's a negative to the system overall, but to me personally.

 

No individual feature would sell me the Xbox really, to be honest I find most things beyond gaming and buying games to be a gimmick these days. I miss consoles that just played games and new consoles were just more powerful. I'd be happy with a more powerful Xbox. Really just a refreshing, gaming-focused attitude to the delivery of the system would sell it to me, unfortunately I'm expecting to see the opposite, more pushing the "family entertainment centre" aspect.

 

But if I had to pick an actual feature... how about a "Games mode", where you toggle off the music apps and the video rentals and shit like that and just see your games. Or two HDMI outs, I mentioned that before, that would absolutely sell the system to me.

[Agent Gibbs]

theres a piece on another games news site that suggests it periodically checks and if connection is severed for more than three minutes it suspends the game and takes you to the network connection troubleshooting section of the consoles OS, its supposedly part of a large leak from reputable sources....

 

the thing with always online and all these other internet based saves/updates and digital distributions, is that modern ISP's have download and upload limits, BT's bog standard package is a limit of 10gb per month, and that is surprisingly easy to go through, it only takes a few demo's downloaded and you've exceeded it, not including normal browsing and the biggest drain streaming of content...BT then charge £5 per extra 5gb iirc, other ISP's restrict speeds

So its all well and good pushing this digital concept of streaming and being online, but the infrastructure just isn't there yet, and until it is i don't think its a good business model.

sure you could argue this will increase demand and get isp's to invest, but thats ludicrous, they were on about fibre optic broadband back when in the Gamecube/ps2/xbox generation and its only just come into effect in the last 18months

 

if microsoft do this, they will fail....and frankly they deserve it

[Shorty]

I get what you're saying about streaming, but that's not really going to change much from how it exists now. Streaming a game will be the same as downloading now, and they're not killing physical media yet. The ping won't put you anywhere near it, every 3 minutes with your console on 24/7 for a month... thats only 430KB of downloaded data and the same again up.

[Dcubed]

Well this is convinient! MS just sent out a press release about their selling off of Mediaroom to focus on Xbox for their IPTV stuff...

 

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2013/04/08/mediaroom-and-our-tv-journey.aspx

 

The following is a post from Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President of Marketing, Strategy and Business for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft.

 

Today, Microsoft and Ericsson announced a definitive agreement for Ericsson to acquire Mediaroom, the number one IPTV platform deployed by TV operators around the world. This acquisition is mutually beneficial and strategically aligned for both parties. Ericsson will continue to invest in the growth and success of Mediaroom to the benefit of customers, employees, and the industry. It allows Microsoft to commit 100 percent of its focus on consumer TV strategy with Xbox.

 

We are proud of the world-class engineering and business achievements within Mediaroom. They have a rich history of driving innovation in IPTV. As early pioneers, they built the infrastructure to stream video on limited bandwidth, and today they enable multiscreen entertainment experiences for pay TV subscribers. Mediaroom has contributed to the evolution of TV and powers 22 million set-top boxes today in 11 million subscriber households.

 

With the sale of Mediaroom, Microsoft is dedicating all TV resources to Xbox in a continued mission to make it the premium entertainment service that delivers all the games and entertainment consumers want – whether on a console, phone, PC or tablet. And with 76 million Xbox 360 consoles around the world with 46 million Xbox LIVE members, it is a mission that gets us out of bed in the morning.

 

It is not a mission that we can achieve alone. We want to partner with the industry to deliver the next wave of innovation in games and consumer entertainment. We will partner with content creators, studios, labels, networks, content aggregators, operators and distributors to make this happen. We believe the future of home entertainment is one where TV becomes more simple, tailored and intelligent. We believe the best is yet to come for this industry.

 

Our vision and energy for the future of entertainment is more focused than ever. Stay tuned.

 

So roughly 60% of 360s are connected online then (probably quite a bit less actually when you account for multiple accounts on the same machine)

 

Cutting off 40-50% of your customer base doesn't seem like the smartest idea... 3G antenna for the always-on security perhaps?

[Daft]

Isn't there a massive assumption within that 60%? Yeah, 60% are connected online, but how many are always online.

 

It's amusing that I'm probably included in that 60% but I got rid of my Xbox years ago.

[Dcubed]

Isn't there a massive assumption within that 60%? Yeah, 60% are connected online, but how many are always online.

 

It's amusing that I'm probably included in that 60% but I got rid of my Xbox years ago.

 

I'm probably a worst case scenario for those numbers. I have 7 accounts on my machine and it's almost never connected online (I'm still rocking a HDMI enabled original model 360 with no WiFi, so it's a PITA to get get it hooked up online).

 

That number is a lot lower than I had expected actually. It's probably because it lacked WiFi up until the Slim model, but when you compare it to the 3DS (which has over 80% of systems hooked up online) it's still pretty surprising!

[Agent Gibbs]

I get what you're saying about streaming, but that's not really going to change much from how it exists now. Streaming a game will be the same as downloading now, and they're not killing physical media yet. The ping won't put you anywhere near it, every 3 minutes with your console on 24/7 for a month... thats only 430KB of downloaded data and the same again up.

 

I know, the ping won't amount to much, but what worries me is forcing of adverts and updates etc through this always online service, not necessarily in regards to data size with those (although i suppose they could have large amounts of updated adverts/image and frequent updates), its more of the actual connection stability and installation side, who knows what issues could crop up due to this extra level of MS oversight? i've had connections go down for hours and days, to think i couldn't play on my console because of this is just madness

 

Generally though streaming/downloads etc still confuse me in their approach, everyone pushes them, yet ISP's penalize for their "over" use, and what constitutes as overuse is entirely relative, one day of psn plus games can destroy a limit and i'd hardly call that overuse

[Shorty]

Tbf all the decent ISPs only penalize in a way which limits your downstream during peak hours, even that shouldn't affect a gameplay scenario. But yeah, hopefully this will force a few more providers to start offering more reasonable packages. My Mum's plusnet is the worst, hit 10GB and automatically be charged £5 for another 5 gig... ridiculous. My cousin went round, watched some Netflix and hit the limit in a couple of days.

[Cube]

What about people living in student accommodation? Consoles generally get blocked from accessing the network.

[Charlie]

What about people living in student accommodation? Consoles generally get blocked from accessing the network.

 

And anyone who doesn't live in a major city has piss poor broadband. Travel 30 minutes outside Glasgow and its like you're back in the dark ages.

[Cube]

I've heard one good theory: Microsoft have released this so everyone is impressed when they announce the console and it turns out not to be true.

[The fish]

I've heard one good theory: Microsoft have released this so everyone is impressed when they announce the console and it turns out not to be true.

 

That did occur to me. I doubt they're that cunning, though. Maybe they're backpedaling as we speak, and will try and claim they were having us on the whole time?

[Rowan]

it's taken away the select button.

 

Maybe I'm wrong but I'm struggling to think of a game that made inventive use of the select button apart from to bring up the map so it's not that big a loss. :hmm:That and a gesture on the touchpad could emulate the select button.

[Cube]

The touchpad is also a giant physical button.

[Ashley]

I've heard one good theory: Microsoft have released this so everyone is impressed when they announce the console and it turns out not to be true.

 

Man I'd love it if gaming companies started releasing foilers.

[Happenstance]

We'll obviously have to wait until they announce everything properly but one theory is that they think whatever services they are planning with this always on feature are going to make them enough that losing all the other people who can't or won't go with the always on feature will be an acceptable loss.

[Cube]

Considering how long Google have been working on them and they're still not sure what the end use is, I highly doubt that Microsoft Glass will have much relevance to the Xbox.

[Dcubed]

Its a much bigger difference performance wise than what you are thinking. I would assume at least a £100-150 difference at launch even with Sony taking more up front losses. 720 should be quite affordable in comparison. Of course MS could get greedy like Nintendo and over price the system because it has something like Waggle or tablets etc.

 

You're forgetting about the Kinect 2 included with each Durango. That's gonna bump up the price significantly...

[Retro_Link]

May not be backwards compatible...

 

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/04/09/bloomberg-next-xbox-to-use-amd-based-cpu

 

Bloomberg Reports Next Xbox to Use AMD-Based Chipset

 

Rumors of the next Xbox's use of an AMD-based chipset have been circulating for months, and now Bloomberg is lending further credence to the claim. According to the news organization's anonymous sources, the system will utilize a chip based on AMD's Jaguar APU architecture. The article also claims that, because of the move away from Power PC technology to an x86 system, current Xbox 360 discs won't work with Microsoft's next console. This puts the possibility of hardware-based backwards compatibility in jeopardy.

 

While the report offers no additional details on the specifics of the hardware, it falls in line with purported specs leaked earlier this year, which claimed the system would utilize a 1.6GHz 8-core AMD CPU. If true, the next Xbox would be comparable to the PlayStation 4, which Sony has confirmed will use an 8-core AMD processor based on the same Jaguar architecture. Whether or not Microsoft's silicon will outpace the PS4 in terms of clocking speed or number of cores, however, remains unknown.

 

The news follows reports earlier today that Microsoft is planning to reveal its next console at an event on May 21st. With just over a month to go, more pre-announcement leaks seem likely. To catch up on all of the latest next-gen Xbox rumors, check out our wiki guide.

[Magnus]

With the extremely spotty backwards-compatibility on the 360, was anyone really expecting their next console to be backwards-compatible?

 

Though I guess it would be useful for when your 360 dies.