The Xbox one thread

markg · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 16641

Leaning towards getting a PS4 but still going to wait and see. Microsoft could yet be forced to backpedal and the PS3 is pretty shonky in some respects. Also the ridiculous Sony fanboy in my office and just the general smug spooging everywhere are starting to make me root for the new underdog, even though I probably won't buy one.

TheVision · **Posted:** Thu Jun 13, 2013 8:37

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

Patches take forever on the PS3, yes. It's been confirmed this is mostly fixed on the PS4 via background downloading when it's in standby.

This won't effect games which are new to you though, will it? If you're playing something for the first time that has been out ages then chances are (if it's anything like the PS3) you'll hae to download a sizable patch before you can do anything.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Yes, that's a fair point.

A big part of why the PS3 was so bad at this was unrestricted patch sizes -- there are GT5 patches of about a gig, for example. Whereas on 360, a patch can only be a maximum of 8 meg. I wonder if Sony will introduce a limit to match. Downloading a gig is pretty much always going to take long enough to annoy you, even if you have Grim...Net.

Of course, the flipside is that PS3 patches can do a lot more than fix a few bugs -- GT5, for example, is basically a completely different game today than when it launched. But it's rare to see that sort of transformation; I can't think of any other extreme examples.

Bamba · **Joined:** 25th Jul, 2010 **Posts:** 11128

TheVision wrote:

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

Patches take forever on the PS3, yes. It's been confirmed this is mostly fixed on the PS4 via background downloading when it's in standby.

This won't effect games which are new to you though, will it? If you're playing something for the first time that has been out ages then chances are (if it's anything like the PS3) you'll hae to download a sizable patch before you can do anything.

System updates for the PS3 do take a good bit longer than Xbox dashboard updates but I've never really noticed patches for actual games taking any longer on a particular platform; are the game specific patches really that much worse than with the Xbox?

TheVision · **Posted:** Thu Jun 13, 2013 8:51

Yep. Like the Doc said, Xbox 360 game patches are limited to 8 meg. Its not unusual for a PS3 game patch to come in at a gig.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49244

What about burnout paradise? Or did that count as DLC rather than patches?

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

I think it counted as DLC. Same for the car packs for Forza - you always get one car free to encourage you to download the pack, so that even if your don't buy it you can still see other people using the premium cars online. A neater way to handle that is to patch them into the core game so everyone always has all the cars.

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14419

TheVision wrote:

Yep. Like the Doc said, Xbox 360 game patches are limited to 8 meg. Its not unusual for a PS3 game patch to come in at a gig.

So 1Gb patches are frequent? I don't think so or I've just been insanely lucky with my choice of games. In my experience, updates are getting quicker than, say, a couple of years ago.

Bamba · **Joined:** 25th Jul, 2010 **Posts:** 11128

TheVision wrote:

Yep. Like the Doc said, Xbox 360 game patches are limited to 8 meg. Its not unusual for a PS3 game patch to come in at a gig.

I'd just missed the Doc's post but, as he also points out, these massive 'patches' are not only unusual but, by dint of their very size, are likely to be adding more content (which is surely a good thing?). Whereas the Xbox updates really are patches in strictest sense in that they'll basically be bug fixes so are we not comparing apples with oranges here? If the same patch for a particular game on each platform took massively longer to install on the PS3 vs the Xbox then fair enough but I presume that's not the case?

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Saturnalian wrote:

So 1Gb patches are frequent?

No, they're not often that big. GT5 is an extreme example. I do often have to download a cumulative hundred meg or so, split across multiple patches, on a fresh download from PS+. That's shit on multiple levels.

Bamba wrote:

If the same patch for a particular game on each platform took massively longer to install on the PS3 vs the Xbox then fair enough but I presume that's not the case?

PSN is also plagued by inexplicable slow download speeds. Mine seems to run well below my ADSL speed, for no reason I can fathom; some people report it really crawls along, taking all night to download a few gigs. The early models in particular seem to have Wifi speed issues, although my middle-gen slim PS3 is connected via ethernet cable so that's not the whole of the problem.

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

markg wrote:

Leaning towards getting a PS4 but still going to wait and see. Microsoft could yet be forced to backpedal and the PS3 is pretty shonky in some respects. Also the ridiculous Sony fanboy in my office and just the general smug spooging everywhere are starting to make me root for the new underdog, even though I probably won't buy one.

I love rooting for the underdog. Thats why Nintendo is becoming very dear to me (the WiiU will probably be the next console I purchase).

But if the underdog actively treats me with disdain like Microsoft at the moment? Fuck em.

Satsuma · **Joined:** 20th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14419

I tell you problem I have noticed recently that has come with PS+: it automatically downloads these updates for you when you turn on your PS3, which sounds great in principal but it fails to recognise that I've got rid of some of the games it's downloading updates for!

Grim... · **Posted:** Thu Jun 13, 2013 9:46

Dr Lave wrote:

I love rooting for the underdog. Thats why Nintendo is becoming very dear to me

You seem to be misunderstanding "underdog" - the Wii has sold 100,000,000 units to the 360 and PS3's 77,000,000. Obviously the DS is storming the handheld world, and the WiiU sales have skyrocketed since the XBone reveal, apparently.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Grim... wrote:

and the WiiU sales have skyrocketed since the XBone reveal, apparently.

I wouldn't read too much into that. On that list right now, the 360 is at #1, the Wii is at #11, the PS2 (!) is at #16. The WiiU doesn't appear. The WiiU also doesn't appear in the list of 100 best selling things in the video games category.

Edit -- one of my links is amazon.co.uk, the other .com. Someone can feel free to cross-check both lists in both countries if they're enthusiastic.

zaphod79 · **Joined:** 16th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14518

Just catching up on stuff from yesterday

This is their 21 country launch line up - if your not in one of the countries in green your Xbox one will not work (specific questions from people in other European countries who asked Microsoft about it got the answer that even if they imported one it would not work)

For Asia they have said it will be the end of 2014 (so they need to wait a year) , and they have not said anything about Japan.

So they must be banking on some really high sales in those areas where you can actually get the box ?

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/pre- ... disclaimer

Quote:

Australia
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Canada
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Italy
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Russia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
United States

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10175

or not expecting to be able to deliver many.

Squirt · **Joined:** 31st Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 6614

Ha! Screw you Luxembourg! Sit in your little No XBox Duchy and gaze wistfully over the borders!

chinnyhill10 · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 15695

Would love to know what the EU think about people in Portugal buying one across the border from Spain and then being told their console won't work.

markg · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 16641

With everything else that's going on I can't imagine that they give that much of a shit.

Mr Dave · **Posted:** Thu Jun 13, 2013 12:01

chinnyhill10 wrote:

Would love to know what the EU think about people in Portugal buying one across the border from Spain and then being told their console won't work.

Heh, I noticed that the jogadores would not be able to jogadore anymore. Silly.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

chinnyhill10 wrote:

Would love to know what the EU think about people in Portugal buying one across the border from Spain and then being told their console won't work.

Nothing at all, I imagine. Why would it be any different? No-one is forced to sell stuff equally all over the EU. Spotify only became available in Italy about two years after we could get it in the UK, to name one random example.

RuySan · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 3542

I don't want the Xbone in my country either. Still it's a huge fuck you to all the costumers that supported the x360.

MaliA · **Posted:** Thu Jun 13, 2013 12:57

RuySan wrote:

Still it's a huge fuck you to all the costumers that supported the x360.

Hang on. I have not suported the 360. I bought one as it played the games I wanted to play at a price point I wanted.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Not making it easy to give them money, are they?

Also: a cheevo for pre-ordering the console. Only worth 0 GP though!

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10175

The only more successful policy they could use is to just put a PS4 in the box.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Maybe that is the plan. Which is why the cheevo says 'pre-ordered the most powerful console of all time.'

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10175

Are they going for the full house of consumer protection agencies this time? That HAS to come close enough to being advertising to trigger the ASA. Though I suppose since neither is actually available for purchase yet all they have to do is have it on the shelf at least a minute or two before Sony get there.

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

I've just come up with a conspiracy theory so compelling that I think I might believe it.

Context: we all know Microsoft were the first to join PRISM.

Conspiracy: PRISM, or PRISM 2.0 or whatever, is that NSA are making them put a backdoor in the kinect so they can spy on the populace (if not the US, then the rest of the world). Microsoft, or elements within the gaming department aren't being callous dicks, but are actually trying to sink the console for the sake of human rights. They are falling on their sword.

THEY ARE HEROES!

RuySan · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 3542

MaliA wrote:

RuySan wrote:

Still it's a huge fuck you to all the costumers that supported the x360.

Hang on. I have not suported the 360. I bought one as it played the games I wanted to play at a price point I wanted.

I suppose there are some people, somewhere, maybe within my county, that care a lot about gams series like Halo, Gears of War and Fable and now they can't play them anymore. If it wasn't for the always connected stupidity they could buy the console abroad.

Mr Dave · **Posted:** Thu Jun 13, 2013 13:44

"I travel with an Xbox 360 for road gaming"

Is that, perhaps, because you don't own an Xbone? Muppet.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Amazon "versus" customer poll on Facebook.

Ouch.

Dr Lave · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 5979

17:1. Gulp.

chinnyhill10 · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 15695

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

chinnyhill10 wrote:

Would love to know what the EU think about people in Portugal buying one across the border from Spain and then being told their console won't work.

Nothing at all, I imagine. Why would it be any different? No-one is forced to sell stuff equally all over the EU. Spotify only became available in Italy about two years after we could get it in the UK, to name one random example.

That's a service though. We're talking about an electronic item.

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49244

So? If I buy a toaster from France I can't plug it in in my kitchen. There's absolutely no requirement for a company to sell anything whatsoever in any market they don't want to.

Bobbyaro · **Joined:** 18th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 11898

Fair enough, but the thing I don't get is, why MS are doing this? Why limit the countries it can be played in? There is no business reason, and the DRM they are proposing should remove any "anti-piracy" justification against a specific country. I am going to jump on Lave's conspiracy theory and suggest that MS are being blocked from selling in these countries!

chinnyhill10 · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 15695

Cras wrote:

So? If I buy a toaster from France I can't plug it in in my kitchen. There's absolutely no requirement for a company to sell anything whatsoever in any market they don't want to.

No. But they aren't allowed to restrict you from buying in one country and using it in another which what appears to be happening here.

There was a big thing a few years back that the EU ruled on about warranties being enforceable across borders and that you can buy from wherever you want. You may recall the late 90's fad of buying cars in Europe and importing them to the UK (my Dad did this). The car manufacturers were powerless to stop it happening.

I don't know if it applies in this case but I'm sure the EU would be interested that if you bought an item in one EU country and you deliberately prevented it from working in another.

zaphod79 · **Joined:** 16th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14518

Bobbyaro wrote:

Fair enough, but the thing I don't get is, why MS are doing this? Why limit the countries it can be played in? There is no business reason, and the DRM they are proposing should remove any "anti-piracy" justification against a specific country. I am going to jump on Lave's conspiracy theory and suggest that MS are being blocked from selling in these countries!

The reason for the online check in is piracy / and to handle you installing a disk based game then taking the machine offline to play while selling on the disk (so prove to them every 24 hours that your not a filthy pirate!)

The regional restriction i assume will for 2 things :

1) Servers for 'the cloud' / downloads / streaming , in the presentation they said they had plans to expand their server capacity for Xbox live by a ridiculous factor and thats going to be easier to arrange geographically in some locations vs others

2) To stop them having a situation where everyone worldwide hits the servers at a point on day 1 and brings them all down

(note: this is just speculation this has not been confirmed)

Oh and the toaster thing - why cant I plug it in via an adapter , or is it that only France is allowed toasted bread products ?

zaphod79 · **Joined:** 16th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14518

This is the easiest place to put this since it ties in with the ideas Microsoft seem to be following

http://www.vg247.com/2013/06/13/online- ... president/

Quote:

EA: Online Passes "are dead".

EA labels president Frank Gibeau has said the firm nixing Online Pass had nothing to do with Xbox One’s digital rights management system. Speaking with Joystiq at E3, Gibeau said the Online Pass program has been “deep-sixed” and is “at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.”

“We’re not crafting a strategy to bring [Online Pass] back, you will not input codes to unlock your game, it’s not going to happen,” he said, even referring to the Online Pass program at one point as “flat out dumb.”

“The amount of money that we made, it didn’t replace the amount of frustration we put on our customers and it didn’t offset the reputation damage it caused the company,” he continued. “So we said ‘it’s not worth it,’ and so the idea was, look, ‘don’t do stuff like that anymore.’”

Gibeau said the opportunity to “to wipe the slate clean” came about under current interim CEO Larry Probst.

He went on to use FIFA Ultimate Team as an example of continuing to make money off “legitimate” customers who purchase DLC.

“Look, they own it, they bought the disc and it’s theirs. They have a legitimate right for not doing anything illegal,” he said. “If we want to be progressive about it, we will make online services available to them that if they want to buy they can, but they don’t have to. At least that way we participate in some monetization. The reputational damage [Online Pass] was causing us was in excess of the dollars we were making.

“At the end of the day, we’re not going to replace [Online Pass]. It’s not coming back. It’s dead.”

zaphod79 · **Joined:** 16th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14518

And Miyamoto on being able to own / keep your old games :

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013- ... oy-company

Quote:

Miyamoto: Nintendo's game ownership policy should operate "like a toy company"

While Microsoft's used game policy for Xbox One has revealed the company's desire to transition game ownership to a more licence-based approach, Nintendo's top designer Shigeru Miyamoto has said he believes that gamers should retain access "for a long time" to games they have own.

Miyamoto told Eurogamer that he thought games, like a physical toy, should remain the property of their owner.

"What's really important is viewing Nintendo almost like a toy company where we're making these things for people to play with," he said. "As a consumer you want to be able to keep those things for a long time and have those things from your youth that you can go back to and experience again.

"I really want to retain that product nature of the games that we create so that people can do that and have that experience. To me that's something that's very important about entertainment itself. So from the approach of continuing to create things that are entertaining for people, that's an important direction for me that I want to maintain."

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Cras · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 49244

zaphod79 wrote:

Oh and the toaster thing - why cant I plug it in via an adapter

You can. And equally, your XBone will work perfectly well if you use a VPN service that terminates in a country where the service is available, too.

zaphod79 · **Joined:** 16th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14518

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

I did see a few tweets earlier that when Xbox one games on the showfloor 'crashed' they dumped out to a HP Windows 7 desktop (so even Microsoft dont use Windows 8 for gaming)

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

zaphod79 wrote:

I did see a few tweets earlier that when Xbox one games on the showfloor 'crashed' they dumped out to a HP Windows 7 desktop

Yeah, I don't think that's the big deal it's being painted as. I wouldn't expect finished gaames or finished hardware with six months out, and the game dev process probably started before Windows 8 so wouldn't have been though much QA on Win8 yet.

zaphod79 · **Joined:** 16th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 14518

Doctor Glyndwr wrote:

Yeah, I don't think that's the big deal it's being painted as. I wouldn't expect finished gaames or finished hardware with six months out, and the game dev process probably started before Windows 8 so wouldn't have been though much QA on Win8 yet.

I agree - there was a lot of "OMG its not really running on the Xbox one" but I'm sure all the stuff running at Sony will be on PC dev kits as well (I'm still trying to find the tweet it amused me because it was from Mr Julian 'Jaz' Rignall)

edit

https://twitter.com/JazRignall/status/3 ... 4808185857

I just played an Xbox One game using an Xbox One controller that crashed... to a Windows 7, Hewlet Packard-branded desktop. Magic!
— Jaz Rignall (@JazRignall) June 13, 2013

Quote:

I just played an Xbox One game using an Xbox One controller that crashed... to a Windows 7, Hewlet Packard-branded desktop. Magic!

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10175

Bobbyaro wrote:

Fair enough, but the thing I don't get is, why MS are doing this? Why limit the countries it can be played in? There is no business reason

They can only make so many, so they've looked at which countries are most likely to do good launch day/weekend/week numbers, and shout the loudest about

Quote:

not being able to fucking get one, what the fuck Microsoft, didn't you learn anything last time you dicks?! FML you shits, send me one now.

Not even just manufacture - translators need to translate, QAers need to QA, regional marketing needs training and pamphlets and shit, regulation compliance needs to be sorted. There's a massive cascading pile of tasks that all depend on the likely availability of hardware and vary country by country. Jesus, this time they've not just got text to translate and cultural imagery to consider, they've got to sort the fucking Kinect voice acting and control for day one too!

So it's perfect business reasoning to do that thing I said first off - put the hardware where tradition says you can sell it out while you get on with prep for other regions in the background.

Especially when half of the green countries speak 3 languages, one of the grey ones won't allow them to be sold and another wouldn't buy them if they were giving them away.

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10175

I'm to'ing and fro'ing on the area/language thing.

English in USA, Canada, the UK and Australasia.
French in France and Canada.
Spanish in Spain and Mexico.
Russian in Russia.

Actually yeah, easily two thirds covered by 3 languages, more than three quarters with 4.

Brasil is a huge profit-per-console but low-volume region, with extremely dedicated gamers. It makes sense to give the few who can afford legitimacy rather than having them grey import. They probably won't even bother with a Portuguese translation (if they had, Portugal might get it from day one).

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

BikNorton wrote:

English in USA, Canada, the UK and Australia.

Bwahhahahh. So my wife and I speak the same language? I doubt that.

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10175

Easy to find and replace ou/o and s/z.

Jest aside, it is a relatively low-scale effort compared to most other languages.

Doctor Glyndwr · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 32624

Exactly the same amount of QA work, though. Still need to work through the whole system, checking all that spelling, making sure the extra 'u' in 'colour' doesn't overflow a dialog window's edges, etc etc.

BikNorton · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 10175

True.

Hooray for forward planning though - it was specifically the UK audience I had in mind shouting about being cunted in the fuck. How much of a valid business reason that is, I don't know.

Edit: Oh, and the 'launch day sell-out' too. We love a queue.

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