Madison Avenue loves Kinect and Xbox One. At least, that’s what Microsoft hopes will happen. According to Time, Microsoft’s marketing head Yusef Mehdi, was speaking to a conference of advertising professionals and told them that the new console could be the “holy grail” of how marketers can “understand the consumer in that 360 degrees of their life.” Having already taken fire over Kinect’s privacy issues, Microsoft’s PR machine moved to quell concerns.
“We do not have plans to target ads or content to you based on any data Kinect collects. We have a long-standing commitment to your privacy and will not target ads to you based on any data Kinect collects unless you choose to allow us to do so.”
Choose to allow us? Meaning, yes. Microsoft will use data collected by Kinect to target advertising. Maybe you’ll have to opt in, but I doubt it. I rather think the opt out will be buried in a 5,000 word user agreement. I can’t wait to see the ads I get after sitting on my couch in my bathrobe.
You’re all excited about the power of the cloud, Kinect 2.0, and all the great stuff Microsoft says the Xbox One will deliver, so you snagged a preorder of the Xbox One Day One edition. Won’t your pals be jealous when they see your cool commemorative Day One controller while they’re stuck using the lame plain Xbox One controller? Maybe not. In fact, there may be a good chance they’ll be laughing at you. According to a report from GBM, some retailers are saying that there is no guarantee of getting a pre-ordered Day One edition console on day one. Best Buy and Target told GBM that they’ll do their best, but it’s out of their hands.
“Best Buy and other retailers holding pre-orders on the XBOX ONE: DAY ONE EDITION have no control over the number of units the manufacturer would provide on it’s release date, however, all retailers including Best Buy, are in constant communication with Microsoft so we may be able to comply and meet the demand of all these pre-orders. Should it occur that stocks would run out, the last customer on the waiting list will become the first customer in line for the shipment of the next batch of the XBOX ONE: DAY ONE EDITION.”
Microsoft stands by their November 22nd launch date for the Xbox One and has said that there should be no issues with pre-ordered supply for the Day One or regular console packages.
Microsoft has announced a subscription based fitness application for the Xbox One. The Xbox Fitness service will use online stat-tracking, an extensive library of interactive videos, and the Kinect sensor to run gamers through a gauntlet of torturous exercises. Grand Theft Auto V’s waterboarding scene has nothing on Shaun T or Jillian Michaels screaming in your face to do one more set of leg lifts.
Using precision Kinect technology, Xbox Fitness can read your heart rate without a monitor, see which muscles are most engaged by measuring the power, force and transfer of weight in your body, and track the quality of your performance by measuring your balance, tempo and form.
That’s not creepy at all. Xbox Fitness will be included at no extra charge with an Xbox Live Gold membership subscription until December 2014. Microsoft has not revealed what Xbox Fitness will cost after that date.
Don’t expect a lot of indie games on the Xbox One until 2014. Speaking to GamesIndustry International, Microsoft’s Phil Harrison predicted that indie games wouldn’t be coming to the next-gen console through their newly announced publishing program until next year.
I don’t think we’re going to see things at launch. I don’t think it’s realistic to see a developer get the programme and build a game and get it into the market on November 22. It’s reasonable to expect in early 2014 we’ll start seeing the first games come through.
Phil Harrison reiterated that despite some policy reversals, Microsoft’s vision for the console hasn’t changed.
Microsoft’s Albert Penello admitted that the E3 vision for the Xbox One will not be a reality at launch for many customers. Speaking to IGN during the Tokyo Game Show, Penello said that he understands some of the criticism that gamers have regarding the Xbox One’s TV and media functionality.
“TV, if you want to continue, would be another criticism. We talk a lot about TV and that’s only going to work basically in Japan and the U.S. at launch where you have HDMI-in scenarios, so you’ll say ‘hey, what if I have a terrestrial over the air?’ We won’t have a solution for that right away, but we still sell it as part of the vision. So it’s honest criticism and you’d love to have the new launch be everything that you had before and more, but unfortunately it’s an untenable [proposition].”
Albert Penello explained that realizing the Xbox One’s promise of being an all-inclusive entertainment hub is dependent on a number of factors, including the different global standards for television delivery.
Developers say the PS4 is about 50% more powerful than the Xbox One. EDGE gathered the opinions of a multiple developer sources that said the gap between Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One could be wider than analysts initially thought. The sources told EDGE that the power difference is significant.
One basic example we were given suggested that without optimisation for either console, a platform-agnostic development build can run at around 30FPS in 1920×1080 on PS4, but it’ll run at “20-something” FPS in 1600×900 on Xbox One. “Xbox One is weaker and it’s a pain to use its ESRAM,” concluded one developer.
One source also claimed that cross-platform games could suffer due to political pressure from publishers or hardware manufacturers to keep parity between consoles. Games could be hobbled on the PS4 to not outperform the Xbox One version.
Earlier in the week, Ars Technica analyzed comments from Microsoft’s Albert Penello downplaying the power gap between consoles. Their conclusion was that much of Penello’s statements were meaningless or needed more explanation.
Update: Microsoft’s response follows:
“Ten years ago, you could argue that a console’s power was summed up in terms of a few of its specs, but Xbox One is designed as a powerful machine to deliver the best blockbuster games today and for the next decade.
Xbox One architecture is much more complex than what any single figure can convey. It was designed with balanced performance in mind, and we think the games we continue to show running on near-final hardware demonstrate that performance. In the end, we’ll let the consoles and their games speak for themselves.”
Jason Alexander’s character on Seinfeld learned a lesson about nicknames the hard way. It’s almost impossible to determine your own nickname. Whatever resonates with the crowd is going to be it. You may want to be called “T-Bone” but you could end up as a “Koko.”
Almost immediately after Microsoft revealed the Xbox One, internet wiseguys started calling it the “XBONE.” It stuck because it fulfilled the requirements of a good nickname. It’s short, memorable, and can be said in a derogatory way. Although Microsoft has reversed almost every unpopular facet of the Xbox One, as George Costanza learned, nicknames stick. Microsoft’s Major Nelson even expressed his dislike for the name, but “XBONE” is just too good to stop using.
“I don’t like it…it disrespects the teams that have put in thousands of hours (already) into the development of the product. Sure, it’s cheeky but I don’t care for it myself.”
Fusible reports that Microsoft has purchased the Xbone.com domain, cementing the nickname forever. For now, the site just redirects to a Bing search for “xbone” but it will likely get tied to the official Xbox page eventually. For example, xbox180.com, a snarky reference to the console policy reversals, already sends internet surfers to Xbox.com.
Take heart Microsoft! At least people aren’t calling your console “Koko.”
We finally have an official release date for the Xbox One! Analysts had predicted dates ranging from the beginning of October to the end of November and it looks like the people that bet on the traditionally standard pre-Thanksgiving date are the winners. The Xbox One will be available for purchase in the 13 launch territories on November 22nd. This is the same date used for the Xbox 360 launch in 2005.
Yusef Mehdi, Microsoft’s VP of Marketing, Strategy and Business, and Xbox, announced the release date and relayed some good news regarding the chip speed increase.
Finally, in the spirit of continuing to bring value to and excitement to Xbox, I am also pleased to confirm that the development team has increased the CPU from 1.6GHz to 1.75GHz, roughly a 10 percent increase in GPU performance. This is on top of the 6% increase we previously announced for the GPU. What does this mean to you the gamer? It means that the Xbox One will have that much more power for developers to make their games and entertainment really shine. We’re going to keep bringing more value to the Xbox One as we head towards launch building on some of the advancements we have already shared such as the 40 plus improvements to the Xbox One controller, advancements to help you find the perfect opponent and make the most of our online community, to the power of the cloud.
The PlayStation 4 launches on November 15th in the US, and November 29th in most other markets.
The Xbox One console will be able to support wirelessly connecting up to 8 controllers at once. According to new data added to the Xbox One Wireless Controller page, Microsoft’s next-gen console will support double the number that the Xbox 360 could connect. Your household cephalopod will be so happy!
In related news, Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida has confirmed that the PlayStation 4 will only support four controllers at a time. Did you know that you can connect up to seven controllers to the PS3? It’s true. Very few games use more than four controllers, but you can do it. Perhaps your octopus lost one of its tentacles?
That’s the morning queue to get into Pax Prime 2013. It’s hot and stifling in this room, and about an hour before they let people into the main hall, the crowd reaches Funk-con 4. Besides smell, the other thing the image doesn’t convey is the audio experience of Mountain Dew and Doritos blasting butt-rock while someone screeches about your chance to win an Xbox One.
Yesterday’s tour of Pax Prime 2013 was a down and dirty look at the Great Northwest’s premiere gaming convention. This time, let’s check out some of the gaming goodness!
This tour of Pax Prime 2013 has been brought to you by Mountain Dew and Doritos after the jump!Continue reading →
That’s PAX Prime 2013 summed up with one image. It’s kid-friendly Donkey Kong right next to Bayonetta 2’s bad posture. There’s your thousand words right there. It’s cosplayers rubbing shoulders with salespeople in suits. It’s techno music blaring out of speakers right by the restrooms. It’s 15-foot tall TV screens showing pre-recorded gameplay on a 30-second loop. It’s card floppers and dice chuckers sitting near kids trading virtual pocket monsters. It’s thousands of gamers packed into one convention center jockeying to play what the marketing folks will allow them to see. It’s chaos and it’s awesome.
Microsoft’s Xbox One console will only support full voice commands in five launch countries. A large part of the Xbox One’s value proposition is that you’ll be able to use the new and improved Kinect to tell your console what to do. Don’t fumble with the controller like a caveman! Speak to your console and tell it what to do! “Xbox on!” Unfortunately, according to new information posted on the Get the Facts page for Xbox One, not all gamers can expect to do that at launch.
Xbox voice commands will not be available in all markets on the product release date. Voice commands will be available at launch in US, UK, CA, FR, and DE.
Albert Penello, Microsoft’s Director of Product Planning, tried to clarify the notice with a post on NeoGAF. Apparently, the notice only applies to full voice functionality. Out of the 13 launch territories, some voice commands will work in 10 of them, while only the five listed will be able to use all planned Kinect functionality.
“Turns out the answer to this question is…complicated. It’s been an education for me as I’ve been looking into it.”
“There is no way that I could do justice to it in a post, so the marketing team is working on a chart that gives clarity on what locales, languages, and voice features are available in each country. Trying to write it down would be confusing. Stay tuned for a more detailed explanation.”
The 13 launch territories are Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom, United States and New Zealand.
If you purchase Xbox One exclusive Day One edition games at launch, you’ll get more stuff. Microsoft’s Major Nelson has posted some information regarding the special Day One bonus content offered with Forza 5, Ryse: Son of Rome, and Dead Rising 3.
To commemorate the launch of Xbox One, Day One Editions are special game SKUS that include exclusive content and are available only through retail pre-order while supplies last, or via download on Xbox Live the first two weeks after launch.
Forza 5 Day One will come with three exclusive cars – the 2010 Audi TT RS Coupe, 2013 Ford Focus ST, and the 2011 Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera. (My sources tell me that’s some kind of spaceship.) Ryse: Son of Rome Day One will come with a special map for use with its co-op Gladiator Mode. Players will also get an exclusive Legionnaire’s Trust sword. Finally, Dead Rising 3 Day One will come with outfits from previous Dead Rising games to make your character dress like heroes Chuck Greene or Frank West.
Waiting too long means you’ll have to play the regular versions of these games with less cars, outfits, and swords. You don’t want your buddy to have more stuff than you, right? What if he has more digital bits? Crossing the finish line first won’t be as sweet without Lamborghini model #43 in your garage!
Killer Instinct for the Xbox One isn’t free-to-play despite how the game is being marketed in some segments. Ken Lobb, creative director of Microsoft-published Xbox One games, told Eurogamer that the option to download the next-gen fighting game and play through it as Jago is just “the world’s most generous demo.” Additional characters are $4.99 each, or you can buy the Killer Instinct Combo Breaker pack for $19.99, which comes with all six launch characters and two post-launch DLC fighters. (There’s also a $39.99 version that comes with a load of extras.) Lobb explained that the pricing scheme is meant to encourage the growth of the fighting game community.
“What we’re trying to do is get the most people possible back into fighting games,” Lobb said. “When I worked on KI1, when the Super NES and Mega Drive were at their peak, there were millions more fighting game players. The community is super robust right now, with a lot of fans, but it’s smaller than it used to be.
“I want all the people who will be like, oh yeah, KI, I loved that! But I don’t know if I can learn it again. Play Jago. See if you like it. That’s the idea.”
Microsoft plans to release Killer Instinct in two seasons. Season 1 is the launch version with six characters and two DLC additions. Season 2 is scheduled for 2014 and will include another eight characters. Additionally, like League of Legends, Killer Instinct’s free character will be swapped with another selection after a few months.
Titanfall is one of the big games being shown in conjunction with the Xbox One. Have you seen it? It’s a multiplayer blend of parkour, jetpacks, giant mechs, and adrenaline. The pilots versus mechs combat is something that shouldn’t work as well as it does. Respawn Entertainment is making a splash with their debut game, and they’re doing it with Valve’s Source engine. Wait, Source? This is the same engine used for Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. I’ve played Source games. They look good, but not this good.
Titanfall producer Drew McCoy spoke to Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry to explain how their background on Call of Duty gave them a leg up during the development process. He also gets into some technical reasons for using Source, what advantages Microsoft’s cloud gives them, and why framerate is king.
“The thing about the Source Engine when we got it is that we actually branched from Portal 2. It was DX9, very single-threaded and they used the way that engine worked to its best possible potential for Portal. It can’t render that much on-screen. The main thread just can’t push out enough jobs, so we’ve done a huge amount of work. We didn’t choose this engine because it was going to be 60, we chose this engine knowing that we’d be spending the next two years making it fast.”
Titanfall is aiming for a Spring 2014 launch on PC and Xbox One.
