Microsoft throws Kinect under a bus, slashes Xbox One to $399 On June 9, Microsoft will sell a cut-price Xbox One for $399 – without the Kinect voice and gesture controller. "We've heard from people that they just like to play games with a controller in their hand and what we wanted to do was make sure that for those people there's a version of Xbox that really meets the exact needs that …
I wanted MSFT's failure to be massive, and these changes are probably going to stop the Xbox FAIL boat from leaking. If only Sony hadn't made PS+ mandatory for online gaming, MSFT might've just given up on Gold-for-online-play as well. But at least it does show that mandatory Kinect, mandatory Gold for stuff you're already paying for is a no-no in the gaming market. And of course, the stupid secondhand-banning DRM as well.
I wonder if the Kinect-less XB1 will silently replace all the unsold ones gathering dust in the stores?
Unlikely to change anything. The Xbox One still has a 50% power deficiet over the PS4, and every game to date has ended up vastly inferior on XB1... Nothing will change that for the next 8 years, specs are set in stone, DX12 and driver improvements will maybee claw back 1% at best, and Sony can do the same...
THIS is why the Xbox One is failing so hard. The premium price for a less than premium console just made matters much worse.
You'll never have more than 2 colours on the same character space on a Spectrum, for example.
Well, strictly speaking, some games did have more than two colours on the same character space. It's a minor detail that what they were actually doing was swapping two for other two so fast it looked like three or four to you and me...
EDIT: yeah, okay, sarcasm filter fail. </tired>
Look at the hardware specs, in partular, the GPU and memory. The PS4 has double the GPU pipelines, and the full 8GB of high bandwidth DDR5. The Xbox One skimps in both these areas, and added a last-minute bodge of 32MB of ESRAM, which is clumsy to code for.
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/166649-ps4-is-50-faster-than-xbox-one-report-game-developers
"According to unnamed industry developers speaking to Edge, Sony's PS4 enjoys around a 50 per cent improvement in performance, to memory read speeds and arithmetic and logic unit (ALU) calculations in particular, over the Xbox One. In real-world terms, one developer said that a game running at 30 frames per second on a PS4 in 1,920x1,080 Full HD would have to run at a lower 1,600x900 resolution on the Xbox One and still only achieve around 20 frames per second."
Plenty of other sources too.
It has 50% of the shaders in the GPU which is of otherwise identical architecture and similar clock speed.
The RAM in the Xbox One severely cripples the GPU, also. So 50% is a decent enough estimate.
Obviously the difference in the real world will be smaller as most games will be multi-platform, so look similar from a distance, but that's simply because it's easier to change a few settings for each platform as opposed to create entirely different assets to make the best use of the hardware.
"It has 50% of the shaders in the GPU which is of otherwise identical architecture and similar clock speed."
The Xbox One has a faster clock speed, and actually it has 67% of the shaders of the PS4.
"The RAM in the Xbox One severely cripples the GPU"
The RAM in the Xbox One is lower latency than the PS4 - and is designed for optimal CPU performance - the ESRAM cache making up for the memory speed for graphics.
Seeing as you clearly don't understand the numbers and facts you are reciting (and are obviously not very bright at maths), you might want to read this simple explanation of the benefits:
http://gamingbolt.com/crytek-shares-secrets-of-using-xbox-one-esrams-full-potential-resulted-in-big-bandwidth-saves
>>The Xbox One still has a 50% power deficiet over the PS4, and every game to date has ended up vastly inferior on XB1... Nothing will change that for the next 8 years, specs are set in stone, DX12 and driver improvements will maybee claw back 1% at best, and Sony can do the same...
What utter garbage. Punters don't buy based on CPU MHz and consoles have never been about raw power otherwise everyone would buy PCs instead. The PS2 and XBox were not evenly matched and the PS2 architecture was notoriously difficult to program for well (I worked at a game developer in this era).
That you think better drivers can only claw back 1% performance increase at best, is a good indicator of how much you know about these things - drivers can be totally transformational depending how good the original ones are.
"The Xbox One still has a 50% power deficiet over the PS4"
It's about 40% - on GPU - but the Xbox has a faster CPU - and it's CPU has more advanced hardware offload capabilities. And the 10% of GPU reserved for Kinect is going to be removed by a patch very soon (http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/175463-microsoft-to-boost-xbox-one-gpu-performance-by-making-kinect-optional) . And the forthcoming DirectX 12 is going to shrink that gap still further.
"every game to date has ended up vastly inferior on XB1"
Havning played every game that is available on both - on both - I can confirm that is utter dross. Any difference is simply not visible even very close to a very large (65") screen. Even when you look at static screen shot comparisons, you can barely see the difference. What is of note as gamer is that the Xbox One has the better controller, Xbox Live is still significantly better than PSN and the Xbox One has much better exclusives - for now at least.
And that's without considering several major things the PS4 doesnt yet have that the Xbox One does - 4K output, Kinect 2 and an HDMI input.
Well, no. The biggest problem with the XBox fail boat is XBox Live Gold still not available in many countries i.e. Malaysia. PS+ is available in any country where there is PSN, which in turn is available in most countries that has an internet connection. That, and the XBox One is still not available in many countries as well. So keep your dreams alive, unless M$ rectifies this and takes a page out of Sony's books and remove these regional exclusion hooplas, nothing changed.
"Once Linux can support my Steam games my Win7 install will be zapped and I'll be running my Linux distro full-time."
The only games I've got working on Steam Linux are Half-life2 and Portal2, only Valves own game.
And it was a bloody nightmare. I had lots of files missing I had to probe around the internet and on my original dvds to find. But it was good error messages. Maybe my problem is that I run OpenSuse. Friends with Ubuntu says it works much better.
"And it was a bloody nightmare. I had lots of files missing I had to probe around the internet and on my original dvds to find. But it was good error messages. Maybe my problem is that I run OpenSuse. Friends with Ubuntu says it works much better."
You installed Steam on a distro that is not officially supported. It really shouldn't have been a surprise that you had to do some legwork.
Disagree. I think it's another stupid move. The big advantage of the Kinect is that everyone has one - meaning game developers aren't giving up money by making use of it. Also, it's a key part of the plan to make XBox a popular home media centre. MS backtracking on this is a desperate move to try and boost sales and pacify critics. But it wont work. All it will do is shoot themselves in the foot.
MS keep doing this - come up with something really cool and then blink as soon as a bunch of angry people start forum posting.
"The big advantage of the Kinect is that everyone has one - meaning game developers aren't giving up money by making use of it."
That strategy made sense when the console was first released but since then Microsoft has learned 2 new things:
- Developers don't want to make games for the Kinnect.
- Those who have produced Kinnect games have found the market to be very small.
Even if the Kinnect comes as standard with the Xbox One, it is at this point essentially just a niche/novelty game controller. Hampering sales for their console in an attempt to flog a niche game controller is not good business.
"Developers don't want to make games for the Kinnect."
I think its far to early to believe that. Kinect Sports is out soon for instance, and Dance Central is probably on it's way too.
What Microsoft have done is built up a nice installed base of ~ 5 million Kinects that will encourage developers to build games - even if Kinect is optional for new installs. And that was mostly during a period where Microsoft were ramping up console production to meet demand anyway.
"Developers don't want to make games for the Kinnect."
I think its far to early to believe that. Kinect Sports is out soon for instance, and Dance Central is probably on it's way too.
Kinect Sports should've been out on release day, if the Kinect-as-a-main-feature hype is to be believed. After all, it was there from day one on the Wii, which is what both MS and Sony were copying when they made Kinect and the Move systems.
Dance Central is… probably not going to come. Harmonix hasn't announced much beyond "great plans for Rock Band and Dance Central", if they were serious about bringing Dance Central 4 to the XB180 they would've done so already. I'm so reminded of game franchises that never got sequels even when announced; I'm still waiting for that ObsCure sequel we were promised… noticeable that ObsCure 2 was a PS2 game. I wouldn't be surprised if the "next" Dance Central ends up being vaporware or indefinitely postponed.
But the space required for Kinect to be usable for action games (at least on the V1) precluded it from being used in the XBOXs natural environment - a small room with a usually small display.
Granted the XBone is touted as an entertainment centre - not all installation areas will have the requisite space to play games in.
Very much this. We had an Eye Toy on the PS2, which worked out little more than a brief novelty, as standing up and flailing your arms to play video games is not really very much fun (and it didn't work too well). The Wii controller works (reasonably) well, but experience has shown that sitting down and not having to point the controller at the screen is the preferred mode of play - anything that involves multiple players standing up to play together will inevitable get switched off after a couple of rounds (during which at least one person will have taken an elbow to the face).
I'm sure Kinect is technically very accomplished, but I don't think it's what people want in their living rooms (or bedrooms).
Remember when Microsoft said this would never happen?
http://ca.ign.com/articles/2013/08/22/microsoft-xbox-one-will-never-come-without-kinect
So now we have two consoles at the same price, with the same general capabilities, but one is getting PS Now, wasn't locked down, has better games (though naturally that's subjective), and is more powerful to start with.
Making your product more like the PS4 to stop people buying the PS4 isn't gonna work, just like making your game more like Call of Duty to take down Call of Duty does jack shit.
That roughly translates to "These people will be able to buy new games from XBox Live for the same price as they would from a store!".
Also I'd wager this discount only apply's to B rate games.
Microsoft once again left playing catch up, rather than taking the opportunity to put themselves ahead. I love my XBox, but XBox live could take a lesson from Steam, with mega-offers on games that people actually want. Do this, then people would not begrudge paying the $10 per month, I'd also guarantee they would clock up more sales. There was an article on El Reg a few weeks ago mentioning that a high percentage of steam games are never played, because buyers see a bargain that is too good to turn down.
Yes, but only to the extent that everything you do in Chrome is tracked. Or possibly less.
Assume that they're counting how many enemies are killed - with each kill, a counter is incremented on a server somewhere (or an Azure instance). Nothing there to indicate that this statistic can be linked to the user account of the gamer that made the kill.
Paranoia may be a useful trait in this day and age but given that the XBone doesn't advertise at you beyond the level of the 360 - ie, generic "Promo! Get stuff cheap!" ads that are identical whichever account is logged in - there doesn't seem to be any benefit to MS in cross-referencing this kind of data.
"Yes, but only to the extent that everything you do in Chrome is tracked. Or possibly less."
I don't have Chrome, but why would I install a voice-controlled browser that recorded what I said to my wife about the latest government policy-gone-bad, or discussions around support for UKIP for instance?
Oh, Chrome can't do that? Well the xb180 can (whether it does it to this extent or not is irrelevant). Look up NSA and them capturing pictures from Kinect.
Couple this data-stream with voice and facial recognition plus 'always on' and 'always connected' (which was how it was for xb180 at the start remember) and you have a very effective spy network. If it's there and can be tapped, the NSA *will* tap it - they have some form in this area I believe.
Paranoid? I only wish I were.
"Oh, Chrome can't do that?"
Sure it can. Except that Chrome also has piles of vulnerabilities - both itself and in the Flash libraries that can interface with your camera and microphone. If you use Chrome, the NSA are probably already getting a direct feed on top of the built in Google spyware....
This is what happens when you think you own your customers. M$ decided to dictate what could and could not be done with your purchase. You had to have 24hr internet connection to play off line games. You couldn't lend games or rent them and they had no resale value. You can't change the hard drive. You need to pay to watch youtube, netlix, etc. You had to have the kinnect connected in order for the unit to work. All these rules for an underpowered games console. No wonder nobody with sense bought it. Even though they 180ed most of it, I know that these things will always be in the shadows waiting to be reintroduced. I really hope they learn from this. But being M$ the company that listens to its customers I doubt it.
>>"You had to have 24hr internet connection to play off line games. You couldn't lend games or rent them and they had no resale value"
Many people kept shouting that you needed to have 24hr Internet connection. You didn't and it was explained over and over this wasn't true, but it was like some kind of mass hysteria. You just needed a brief connection once every 24 hours to verify your games. You could do that just by tethering to your mobile phone for a minute in extreme circimstances. I cannot believe that any but a tiny percentage of people would be affected by this. Most people have their console connected all the time and when they do disconnect it, it's to take it to a friends who also has Internet. But suddenly everyone on the Internet was spending weeks at their uncle's cabin in the mountains where you couldn't even get mobile signal. I don't believe it.
In return for that DRM, MS would have been able to shelve the entire concept of plastic discs. And you're wrong about not being able to lend games (or rent them). Because of the DRM, you could have leant games to people on the otherside of the country if you wanted. You could lend the game whilst still playing it yourself under the deal.
Reselling was the best thing of all under the original model. Instead of going via Gamestop, who pay you a pittance for it and sell it for barely less than new, you could have resold via the game's developers. That keeps money in a closed loop between customer and developer and thus makes the entire cycle more profitable meaning either more investment in games or greater ability to compete on price, or more likely both. As opposed to Gamestop which is a giant machine grafted onto the side of the customer-developer symbiosis which just extracts money to pay for useless things like store space, staffing costs, etc. (Useless from the point of view of customers and developers).
That stupid video from Sony saying "This is how you share a game on PS4" with two people standing next to each other, one handing a DVD over? If I were Microsoft I would have responded with a video showing: "This is how you share a game on XB1" and it would be someone sitting at their console, clicking "share to..." on one of their buddies' names and someone on the other side of the USA at home suddenly having the game pop-up. Oh, and the original person carry on playing.
MS were going to turn discs into nothing more than a means of data exchange. It would have been full of advantages. But hate won, logic lost.
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