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Xbox One: Built for the future

So if I want to watch a Batman movie it's just as fast to load up netflix and type "batman" in the search engine with a controller than simply telling kinect to search for Batman movies?

Same applies to a game in a large library that I havent played in a while.

I will also be able to walk into my game room and tell kinect to turn my xbox on and start my game while I'm getting my controller or going to the fridge to get something to drink.

How is this not faster?

This may not be important to you but to say it WON'T be faster with kinect is an untrue statement for many (not all) functions.

The very first thing you do with your console (turning it on) is faster with Kinect.

The second thing you do with your console (signing in) is faster with Kinect, since it auto recognises voice/face/body/whatever.

And yes, as you say there are many times where voice commands are much faster than using buttons.

If I'm playing Battlefield 4 and want to ask a certain friend to join me on a server, saying:

Xbox: Invite Special C
is quicker than having to go to the guide, find the friend and select the correct button to send the invite.

It also means I didn't actually interrupt my current gaming session.


Similarly, if I want to chat to one of my friends while gaming/browsing/whatever, I can just say:

Xbox: Call Special C

And its done. Without having to navigate any menus or interrupt my current gaming session/movie/whatever.
 

Tunesmith

formerly "chigiri"
Will Kinect be connected to the cloud services and recognize you on other people's Xboxes without you doing anything beforehand/the first time? That'd be both freaky and cool at the same time.

Say you walk into a buddy's living room and the Xbox notices it's you and asks you if you want to sign in your profile.

Thinking of it, that'll be a 2015 feature for sure once the 2014 backlog is out of the way.
 

weeeeezy

Banned
Will Kinect be connected to the cloud services and recognize you on other people's Xboxes without you doing anything beforehand/the first time? That'd be both freaky and cool at the same time.

Say you walk into a buddy's living room and the Xbox notices it's you and asks you if you want to sign in your profile.

Thinking of it, that'll be a 2015 feature for sure once the 2014 backlog is out of the way.

This would be an awesome feature but MS has confirmed facial recognition does not leave the console. I think that recent OXM article states this.


edit: Sorry for the double post
 

Bsigg12

Member
Phil Spencer just posted a link to a story that states that everything dealing with Xbox Live Compute and the cloud servers will be offered to developers for free.

That's clearly an advantage if true.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-10-15-the-difference-engine

I just read this. That's news if I've ever seen any.

What that means is not just convenience or multi-device access to content, but a significant extension of the power and scope which the Xbox One can offer developers and players. It means persistent worlds, improved AI, better rendering and dedicated servers for every multiplayer game on the platform. And it's all being offered to developers for free.
 

KrAzEd

Banned
So if I want to watch a Batman movie it's just as fast to load up netflix and type "batman" in the search engine with a controller than simply telling kinect to search for Batman movies?

Same applies to a game in a large library that I havent played in a while.

I will also be able to walk into my game room and tell kinect to turn my xbox on and start my game while I'm getting my controller or going to the fridge to get something to drink.

How is this not faster?

This may not be important to you but to say it WON'T be faster with kinect is an untrue statement for many (not all) functions.

Hey! Using your brain is not allowed in Xbox One threads! lol but I couldn't agree more...switching to live tv with voice commands is so much better then finding my tv remote to switch inputs. There are tons of ways the kinect can make life easier, as long as its responsive.
 
UI animations look nice. Cool to finally see them in motion.

(Also lol at PlayStation fanboys starting to downvote click the YT video the screens/gifs are coming from.)
 
Credit to XboxUncut on Reddit.

ibgfs3CkGUPTHP.gif


ibqitOx1T2Uvdu.gif


ibaafNSH2i961d.gif

Damn, that looks slick as hell. Really impressive stuff.
 
Still waiting for that magical sentence, Microsoft.

"All games on Xbox One will have dedicated servers."

Yep without those words it holds little meaning to me

I don't care if you make servers cheaper, Devs don't want to pay for additional cost unless they need to

I severely doubt we'll see many cases of dedis on XB1 without the same on PS4

AI stuff is fine I guess but nothing another platform can't do as well
 
This would be an awesome feature but MS has confirmed facial recognition does not leave the console. I think that recent OXM article states this.


edit: Sorry for the double post

Yeah you have to sign into your buddies Xbox at least once for it to recognize your face with your profile.
 
I just read this. That's news if I've ever seen any.

I enjoyed this part as well and I think that this is where MS has been focused coming into this gen.

"That was one of the big intents, to take this barrier to entry of server development away and let these developers really explore what they could do with the cloud without having to worry about allocating financial resources or server developers to the problem.
 
Having a weaker GPU and slower memory is not building for the future. We'll see if cloud actually produces anything tangible, but they didn't say much in this video.
 

Phil4000

Member
Microsoft's tendency to glorify features using sensationalist terminology is getting really tiresme.

My first thought as well. They have to get us excited about these new consoles somehow, because right now Iam not really feeling the excitement to be honest...
 
Yeah you have to sign into your buddies Xbox at least once for it to recognize your face with your profile.

I think it would be good if you could make so that you can only sign-in to your xbl profile via password or facial recognition on other peoples XB1s (I,e, require your password or your face to log into somebody elses home console).

Or better yet, they should make it so that you can designate certain friends "home consoles" to be sent your log in info so all it will ever take to sign you in when you visit is just to sit in front of the console.
 

Phil4000

Member
Microsoft's tendency to glorify features using sensationalist terminology is getting really tiresme.

This is nothing new though, just look back at the Kinect announcement the prior E3 before it launched the following year. The final product was underwhelming, and its integration in most games was completely unnecessary...
 

netBuff

Member
No one can deny Sony makes amazing hardware, but they can take a page from Microsoft on software development.

MS has been horrible at user interface design for a long time now, let's not glorify the company.

Will Kinect be connected to the cloud services and recognize you on other people's Xboxes without you doing anything beforehand/the first time? That'd be both freaky and cool at the same time.

Say you walk into a buddy's living room and the Xbox notices it's you and asks you if you want to sign in your profile.

Thinking of it, that'll be a 2015 feature for sure once the 2014 backlog is out of the way.

This would be an awesome feature but MS has confirmed facial recognition does not leave the console. I think that recent OXM article states this.


edit: Sorry for the double post

This is literally impossible, it's not a question of whether MS wants to or not. The failure rate with biometric recognition is much too high for such a feature to work in any way.
 

netBuff

Member
Phil Spencer just posted a link to a story that states that everything dealing with Xbox Live Compute and the cloud servers will be offered to developers for free.

That's clearly an advantage if true.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-10-15-the-difference-engine

The article isn't clear on whether the resources required by games are going to be free, or just the tools required to build integration - according to the TitanFall developers, they aren't getting processing power for free.

And it's irrelevant to us customers anyways, as multiplatform games aren't going to utilize cloud computing on one platform but not on the other. Cloud hosting is extremely cheap these days.
 
Hey! Using your brain is not allowed in Xbox One threads! lol but I couldn't agree more...switching to live tv with voice commands is so much better then finding my tv remote to switch inputs. There are tons of ways the kinect can make life easier, as long as its responsive.

Repeating a million others - why is a Kinect unit required for voice commands? Oh, that's right - because Microsoft knows it's the only real useful part of Kinect. Another way of removing a feature in order to sell it back to you.
 

ShapeGSX

Member
Repeating a million others - why is a Kinect unit required for voice commands? Oh, that's right - because Microsoft knows it's the only real useful part of Kinect. Another way of removing a feature in order to sell it back to you.

I guess you could strip the camera off of Kinect and just have the microphone in the room.

But if you are implying a headset would work just as well, nobody is going to stop what they are doing to find their headset, plug it in, and say a command that is built into the OS for convenience. Headsets aren't convenient. The Kinect microphone array is.
 

KrAzEd

Banned
Repeating a million others - why is a Kinect unit required for voice commands? Oh, that's right - because Microsoft knows it's the only real useful part of Kinect. Another way of removing a feature in order to sell it back to you.

Either way people complain...if Microsoft uses kinect to make games, or for more practical reasons. I for one am a gamer who doesn't feel like jumping up and down in my room, I would much rather have a device that enhances my experience rather then trying to be the experience. I think Microsoft is doing a good job of not shoving kinect gaming down everyones throat like they had been a couple of years ago. As time goes on I am sure we will see innovative features in core games that utilize the kinect. I recently read an article where a developer was talking about making a horror game that would use the kinect to read your heart rate, and scare you according to your nervousness. Pretty neat stuff if you ask me...Console launches are usually barren and useless, just look at the 360's launch and especially the PS3's (LAIR). We won't see the full potential of kinect for some time, but I am glad developers will actually take risks with it because they know the entire install base has one. Sony only removed their camera to undercut Microsoft, and it will pay off for them in terms of sales, but its nice to see Microsoft stick to their guns on one aspect of the ONE.
 
The article isn't clear on whether the resources required by games are going to be free, or just the tools required to build integration - according to the TitanFall developers, they aren't getting processing power for free.

And it's irrelevant to us customers anyways, as multiplatform games aren't going to utilize cloud computing on one platform but not on the other. Cloud hosting is extremely cheap these days.

I think this is a good point. Developer utilization of this stuff will come down to cost. Cloud computing solutions such as AWS are getting cheaper but I wonder what kind of cloud power it takes to do anything interesting on the gaming side of things.

For reference here's a break down of amazon's cloud computing offerings:
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

Having said that, microsoft attempting to offer a game development tailored cloud computing platform is pretty no-brainer. Bet they are beating a lot of other companies to the punch.
 
Man, the Metro interface is butt ugly.
At least it makes sense on a console, more or less.

They need to get rid of that shade of puke green though.
 

PG2G

Member
Its just a simple routine that calculates chances and probabilities and mimics a "behavior" out of this. Dont make more out of it as it is. Nothing that would kill the performance of the game if it was processed in box. If the cloud could really handle some performance heavy duties it would be a complete different thing. Its nice though, but far away from what Microsoft promises.

Doesn't that depend entirely on how "simple" the calculations are? If the servers are storing the data for every race a player has ever done and interpreting it to create complex decision trees then that definitely isn't simple.

Not to mention, doing it server side instead of client side allows them easily tweak and improve algorithms.
 

Ovek

7Member7
Why does the welcome screen on the Xbone and Metro reveal look infinitely better than the janky nasty mess this is Windows 8?
 
Can you elaborate on "core aspects of the game"?

Forza does more than just cloud storage.
http://www.polygon.com/2013/6/11/4420778/forza-motorsport-5-preview-e3-2013-drivatar-cloud

"When you put the controller down, then your Drivatar begins its day," said Giese. Your friends and other online players won't run into you online, but they'll face your Drivatar, and Giese said the idea is that people who know how you race will feel like they're playing with you even when they're racing against your Drivatar. (Forza 5 will always notify players whether they're racing with a live player or that person's Drivatar.) And the more you play, the more your Drivatar will be able to learn about the way you race.


Some of the advantages of Titanfall using the cloud.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/25/titanfall-dev-explains-xbox-ones-azure-cloud-benefits
You can get even more CPU on your dedicated servers to do new things like dozens of AI and giant autopilot titans!
Suddenly you have no more host advantage!
Bandwidth for the servers is guaranteed from the hosting provider!
You can use all of the available CPU and memory on the player machines for awesome visuals and audio!
Hacked-host cheating isn’t an issue!
Matchmaking can be lightning fast since it’s guaranteed that everyone can connect to your servers.
And since the servers aren’t going to go disconnect to watch Netflix, you don’t need to migrate hosts anymore!
You'll have to ask the person who you replied to, as they used the word, not me. For my opinion of the word core, though - what is being done doesn't meet it.

On Forza and Drivatar - you play the game, your style is determined and all of your driving attributes are packaged up as your Drivatar and then uploaded 'to the cloud'. One of your friends then goes on his console and loads up Forza 5 and he downloads your Drivatar profile and drives around facing an opponent that matches your traits. That is just cloud storage, nothing more nothing less.

All of the AI decisions are still being done by the console - hence you can use them offline - the only difference is the decisions are based on a real-life profile, not pre-determined routines.

Now is that an improvement over what we have at the moment, and is it neat that you can do it - perhaps - but let's not overstate what it is.

On your Titanfall bullets - a lot of those have nothing to do with cloud. The only ones that do are the AI ones and have they even shown what they're doing, because all I've seen is them say that they can do it not that they have done it. Dedicated servers exists today and do not require the cloud.

See - this is the issue for me. Microsoft are claiming the cloud is enabling these things but they're doable without the cloud. We have dedicated servers today, so I just don't get how they can sit there and say the main benefit of the cloud that it enables them to do dedicated servers.
 

Alx

Member
Why does the welcome screen on the Xbone and Metro reveal look infinitely better than the janky nasty mess this is Windows 8?
They don't seem that different to me : huge personalized sliding picture, transitioning to an array of animated tiles... The implementation is slightly different, but the rules are similar.
 
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