Basically, yeah. I said it when they did the one-eighty on the DRM policy: They played their hand, and the consumers bit them. The only reason they one-eightied was because of the pre-order numbers between PS4 and the 720. It had to have been bad enough for them to know they couldn't go down that road. And as it is, because they played their hand, why would anyone willingly buy the system since you know MS is going to attempt to slowly put those DRM policies in place over the next five-eight years on the system.
Reddit AMA with Xbox One dev
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Basically, yeah. I said it when they did the one-eighty on the DRM policy: They played their hand, and the consumers bit them. The only reason they one-eightied was because of the pre-order numbers between PS4 and the 720. It had to have been bad enough for them to know they couldn't go down that road. And as it is, because they played their hand, why would anyone willingly buy the system since you know MS is going to attempt to slowly put those DRM policies in place over the next five-eight years on the system.
I wouldn't care if they re-introduced these policies for the downloaded versions. In fact, I think that would a good thing. Just keep treating disc-based media like disc-based media. I don't see any way, at this point, to alter that. They cannot post-purchase force the end user to be online to play a game with a disc in the tray.
Fair point. However, the comparison of iPad and XB1 differs from the comparison of iPad and iPhone in that iPad and XB1 occupy the same space in your live: both are tailored to be used while you sit on the couch. Both are designed to enjoy interactive content and media. Smartphones, on the other hand, are designed for mobile use.
Miles Quaritch
Member
I doubt we'll ever see it and maybe it won't work, but what if they find a way to use it alongside their 3D touch-screen, haptic feedback tech?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23132678
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5oDvHahiYuI
Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
Consumer investment too, you are paying what, 200$ for kinect?
I'm telling you, the Kinect 2 is going to be a huge flop.
Why?
Developers have 3 options:
- Develop a Kinect required game. Your audience is limited exclusively to XB1 owners.
- Develop a "better with Kinect" game. Your audience expands to include PS4 owners and you'll probably be able to port "better with kinect" features to the pseye.
- Develop a regular game, ignoring the cameras. Everyone gets the full experience. Probably the max audience exposure.
You are rarely going to see developers spending the time and money to develop games in category 1 that would be "system movers." Risk/reward not there. The only games in category one will be paid exclusives.
Most games, including the AAA titles, will be in categories 2 and 3. Snap the ball using the camera mic...give orders to your teammates...etc. All things that are also replicated on the normal controller, or otherwise mere convenience rather than essential.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multim...inect_2_Capabilities_on_Xbox_One_EA_DICE.html
The more triple AAA the game, the less essential the camera features will be. K2 will be relegated to dance games and workout games and the occasional Gunstringer.
It is going to be a case of developing to the least common denominator on the camera front. By not including the pseye, and having the pseye much weaker than K2, I really think Sony neutered the K2.
Just ask yourself: how many mind-blowing Kinect 2 games has Microsoft shown so far? For a device with so much tech and for a device that apparently costs more than the system itself and coming off the severe lack of games on the K1, they had to have known they needed to come out swinging on the K2 front early and often. Have they done so?
Why?
Developers have 3 options:
- Develop a Kinect required game. Your audience is limited exclusively to XB1 owners.
- Develop a "better with Kinect" game. Your audience expands to include PS4 owners and you'll probably be able to port "better with kinect" features to the pseye.
- Develop a regular game, ignoring the cameras. Everyone gets the full experience. Probably the max audience exposure.
You are rarely going to see developers spending the time and money to develop games in category 1 that would be "system movers." Risk/reward not there. The only games in category one will be paid exclusives.
Most games, including the AAA titles, will be in categories 2 and 3. Snap the ball using the camera mic...give orders to your teammates...etc. All things that are also replicated on the normal controller, or otherwise mere convenience rather than essential.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multim...inect_2_Capabilities_on_Xbox_One_EA_DICE.html
The more triple AAA the game, the less essential the camera features will be. K2 will be relegated to dance games and workout games and the occasional Gunstringer.
It is going to be a case of developing to the least common denominator on the camera front. By not including the pseye, and having the pseye much weaker than K2, I really think Sony neutered the K2.
Just ask yourself: how many mind-blowing Kinect 2 games has Microsoft shown so far? For a device with so much tech and for a device that apparently costs more than the system itself and coming off the severe lack of games on the K1, they had to have known they needed to come out swinging on the K2 front early and often. Have they done so?
Monocle
Member
There are some very cool possibilities. I'm hesitant to get carried away with what could be, though, based on how developers underutilized this generation's new gimmickry. The Wiimote, Move, and Kinect didn't exactly spark a revolution in innovative gameplay. There was a lot of potential, but nobody managed to escape the gravity of convention and create a killer app that really took advantage of motion control.
Yeah. If it's true that the XB1 would have cost well under $399 without Kinect 2, I can't help but think MS made a truly staggering error.
Delusibeta
Banned
Miles Quaritch
Member
Absolutely agree.
The Wiimote especially felt like a completely wasted opportunity outside of a few games, such a shame to see it thrown by the wayside because developers couldn't or weren't willing to take risks.
I'd hope Kinect 2.0 is used to its fullest potential, but the worry of course if that developers will aim for the bottom of the barrel and only implement the barest of features that see its potential wasted just as the Wiimote ultimately was...
CassiusLonginus
Banned
This only holds water if the vast majority of game discs get passed around to A LOT more than 10 hands on average in a very short amount of time, which is highly unlikely. In my opinion, this supposed family plan still doesn't fly because of the following:
- With discs, only ONE person can play at a time. In practice this means that one person keeps the disc until they beat/get tired of the game and then they pass it to 1 person if at all.
With Family plan they said the original purchaser and one other person could play simultaneously. That is the fastest potential lost sale ever. A great Sp game comes out and you and your best friend could immediately both play it with only one purchase.
Not only that, but your friends and family don't have to wait until you are done the game to also play it themselves, you schedule yourself, and every one could play the game at regular intervals even in the same day. You could do this with a disk, but it would have to be with ten local people passing the disk around... not really happening,
- People are LAZY. A disc can sit on a gamer's shelf for years after they are done with it before they decide to trade/sell/give it away. Some people even like to keep every single game they own; they never get rid of them.
But with the family plan, you don't have to lift a finger for someone else to play your game. And for the people who like to keep their games, they can share without losing their game. So whatever amount of people that never contributed to the used game market, would now be sharing games, losing even more sales.
- The family share plan allowed you to change the members of your 'family'. That would mean that I could share my library instantly to many more than 10 people.
At least if a disk really gets to 10 or more people, there is a lot of downtime in between. Not so with family share.
-----------------------------------------
The way you explain the Family Share plan is exactly how everyone wanted it to work, but the problem was not that MS couldn't 'explain it right', it's that they couldn't explain it at all. One thing is to badly explain something, and another is to avoid giving a concrete answer.
It is very apparent to me that MS had this concept of something they called 'Family Sharing Plan' but it wasn't anything stellar so it was just a footnote at their XB1 presentations.
When they saw that during the DRM backlash the few of hopefuls were hanging on to this vague concept of the plan that could make the DRM tolerable, MS then started trying to make it happen the way people hoped it would. In the meantime all they could say to questions about it was "it's awesome", "it's really cool", "read the faq online".
When people were getting impatient, Major Nelson blogs that details for the plan are incoming. Couple of days later, after realizing they can't pull it off and the pre-orders are in the toilet, they do the 180.
AdventureRacing
Member
If that kinect price is real than holy fuck what a wasted opportunity. An sku without kinect could be SO much cheaper and would move a lot more units. If they were able to undercut the PS4 and have chosen not too they're crazy imo. Kinda shows much much faith they have in kinect, which is strange considering how little of it they have shown.
PairOfFilthySocks
Member
Curious to know where you are pulling all these supposed facts from, considering how Microsoft were vague as almighty fuck when it came to their family sharing plan and all signs point to it being nothing more than a fancy, more restrictive demo downloader.
WoW I didn't know Sony invented the webcam.
robertsan21
Member
DRM benefits hahaha
man I hope MS xboned sell like crap, them trying to tell us what we want in a console and forcing shit on us. they deserve it
man I hope MS xboned sell like crap, them trying to tell us what we want in a console and forcing shit on us. they deserve it
Foxy Fox 39
Banned
eh, nothing he said regarding the fsp is wrong...
Manmademan
Member
It isn't. Keep in mind that the PS4 and XboxOne have almost identical architecture and capability, and Sony isn't known for building huge margins into their console hardware (as nintendo is).
There is NO WAY for Microsoft to sell at a price less than the PS4 without kinect, without taking massive losses per unit.
As it pertains to games, you're right. However, the reason the Kinect 2 is in every box is mainly because of the TV functionality. The Snap function, Skype, etc is part of every XB1 experience. You couldn't leave out the Kinect 2 unless you got rid of that functionality, which is a large part of MS's Strategy going forward.
As far as the PS4 neutering the Kinect 2, I disagree. AAA games instituted Kinect functionality within the 360 games. Look at Skyrim and Mass Effect 3. There will still be people buying the Eye for PS4 and games will have much of the same added functionality for those investing in it. As for games built entirely around the Kinect 2, most likely they will be relegated to first or second party games.
But I want to emphasize Kinect 2 is there for more than just games and we should not lose site of that, even though what most of us here care about is just that.
PairOfFilthySocks
Member
You really think Microsoft would've let two people play a game simultaneously for an infinite amount of time with a single purchase? And then let 10 other people have infinite access to that game when the owner wasn't playing? A hearty lol is my only response to that. MS ain't gotta prove shit now that they've put the kabosh on the whole thing so naturally they will come out with all sorts of bollocks to attempt to rally this pro-DRM bullshit.
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
CassiusLonginus
Banned
The one thing that MS was always ambiguous about was whether this sharing meant that 10 people could play the same game (even though not at the same time) through completion with no restrictions at all or not.
The other stuff - the fact that only one person other than the original purchaser could play a shared game at a time, or that you could change your 10 'family' members - were mentioned in the myriad of interviews that tried to make sense of the family plan, like that infamous Angry Joe interview with Major Nelson.
But yeah, in the end though, they never could answer with a plain YES or NO to the question: Can those in my 'family' play my games from beginning to end without restriction (other than the one-person-at-a-time thing obviously)?
And that is what always spoke volumes to me.
I would bet the farm that this was done with the full cooperation of the MS PR department. They're on a mission now to start talking to the hardcore gamers that they've been losing the loyalty of. Notice how we (IGN) got that Marc Whitten interview the other day? They came to us with that, not the other way around.
The next few months should be very interesting.
The next few months should be very interesting.
Can Crusher
Banned
Believing that MS would allow 9 people who didn't buy a game to play it for free.... I can't even understand how naive you would've have to be to buy into that.
That would mean more than ever that for each copy sold, 9 other people wouldn't need to buy it. Most people won't share a game with nine other people, and the odds one game will be sold on average 9 times over are slim.
The proposition that MS was worried about second hand/sharing market due to game installs and therefore always online is ludicrous because you could implement a cd key system with 1 time activation. But they would rather redefine the sharing and second market rules to their own image.
Following the logic, it's easy to believe that digital sharing would be nothing more than the sharing of trial versions. This whole "their messaging was wrong" is just some of you buying into their bullshit, since their lack of transparency says otherwise.
It's easy now, when they are not going to do it, to say that they were going to do A instead of B. Fact is, they are doing neither now and that tells you all you need to know.
If Sony included the eye in every console, there would be no reason for Devs to not add in "better with camera features" to every game. You'd also have more Devs adding more significant camera features to every game because everyone would have access. Without the included eye, however, there is no reason or incentive to focus on any camera features.
Well thank God for that.
Darklor01
Might need to stop sniffing glue
Wasn't there a mention in some other thread hinting that some processing is being handled within Kinect 2?
I'm a big Xbox gamer and will definitely be getting the One but it just blows my mind how much Microsoft has bungled the entire unveiling of this device. It makes me think the last few years they have just taken the hardcore gamer for granted and just expected that whatever and whenever they came out with the next Xbox we would just snatch it up and not think twice. I honestly think they thought they were going to get a much better response to the Xbox One then they got and now with the hype going to the PS4 and the better price they seem to finally be hungry enough to actually care again.
The beginning of the downfall of the Xbox brand can be traced back to the NXE update leading up to the release of Kinect. 2006 - 2008 they went out of their way to accommodate gamers but as soon as they got a taste of the Wii's success they threw gamers right under the bus.
Khalifa Jayy
Banned
You need to understand that MS could not give two shits about the success of the Xbox One console. They are using it as a Trojan Horse for Kinect and nothing more.
Miles Quaritch
Member
Hah, that's pretty pathetic, but not unexpected.
Also says a lot about the general feeling about the One that outlets seemingly aren't actively seeking interviews and such with people working on the One...
shinobi602
Member
I've been a big Xbox fan since the first one and I was planning on skipping the Xbox One due to their used disc policy, period.
Now that that's gone, I have no reason to skip it. Honestly I really really doubt they'll bring back the used disc bullshit, which was the only legitimate reason for me not buying one.
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
A switch is a switch =p
Manmademan
Member
nothing significant, no.
within the box is the same 8 core CPU/GPU SOC from AMD for both the PS4 and the 360. the PS4 version has some additional modifications and compute units included.
the PS4 has 8 gigs of GDDR5, the Xbone is using 8 gigs of DDR3, plus that 32 megs of ESRAM incorporated in to help with bandwith issues. as far as cost goes, its a wash.
the kinect isn't processing anything that's not specific to kinect. Removing it won't have an effect on how games perform. Microsoft has said that they intended to offload some processing "to the cloud" to improve performance, but that has nothing to do with kinect either.
Dr. Kitty Muffins
Member
All that is left for Sony to do is create system selling titles that appeal beyond the playstation fan base. They haven't really shown anything of that caliber yet and Microsoft can still get by so long as that never happens.
Manmademan
Member
But this doesn't really make any sense. How are the snap feature related to the Kinect camera?
I want to love Kinect 2, I think the tech inside even the original was amazing, but for most 360 owners the original was nothing more than an amazing promise left unfulfilled. Now it's back, it's mandatory and it's making the console a lot more expensive, but it's still just a promise. It even seems that they still can't figure out how to use it properly: For TV all we see is voice commands, and for games, they keep moving big games from Kinect (like Ryse) still!
Just show us WHY we should pay the money, makes us excited.
The Wiimote really did have its killer app though, with Wii Sports. Kinect or Move never did.
Manmademan
Member
I was under the impression that the snap feature was intended to be gesture or voice activated by kinect, and not something tied to the controller, since devs will be mapping game functions to buttons independently on a per game basis.
Kinect Adventures sold something like 24 million copies.
Black Mantis
Member
I agree with him, Sony haven't shown a single title that makes me want a PS4 yet. They'll come eventually, but until then, I can wait and keep my money.
Instead gamers have opened the doors for digital only AAA titles, that is what will start to happen.
First it will be multiplayer only games, then it will be games with both, then it will be campaign.
There will be no infrastructure in place to allow gifting/lending/sharing and ultimately we will be even worse off than we would have been prior the 180
shinobi602
Member
Manmademan
Member
we're not talking about you specifically. I don't know you, don't know your tastes. but what exactly is the "playstation audience??"
Microsoft and Sony's userbases overlap to a GREAT degree, and if there's one platform that could catch heat for being limited in who it caters to with first party titles, it isn't Sony.
Microsoft has made Gears, Halo, Fable, and Forza, catering mostly to their core. At the child friendly end we have Kameo, Kinect Adventures, and Viva Pinata.
do you really want to compare that to Sony's first and second party output?
eddfromtheriver
Banned
You make a valid, interesting point... however i do believe MS will release an Xbox One w/o kinect... if not at launch then maybe by next thanksgiving...
Manmademan
Member
not happening. The Reddit AMA covered a big reason why. Microsoft has made guarantees to third party devs that every Xbox one will come with kinect, to spur development of kinect specific features and titles.
If they drop that requirement and the install base of kinect drops, Microsoft will at the very least piss off developers, and at worst end up in court due to potential lost sales.
If a kinectless Xbox happens, it won't be anytime soon.
Speedy Blue Dude
Banned
What signs? An anonymous pastbin, and then CBOAT, who was wrong with MOST of his E3 predictions, confirming it to be the case? For all you know, CBOAT could be wrong with this as well.
Facts, and true signs are Major Nelson, Arron Greenburg, this anonymous dev, and Microsoft themselves confirming that Family Sharing WASN'T demos or trials.
CBOAT was wrong?
Please make the list of his leaks and the outcome to back that shit up.
Miles Quaritch
Member
I think he's talking about DRM through the backdoor by having digital only releases for titles. Essentially Steam without any of the benefits is my guess.
However, as many have pointed out when it's been brought up in the past, the infrastructure for such a move isn't in place in a lot of countries, but as 4G/LTE becomes more commonplace, it could see a lot more people jumping online without the need for the standard infrastructure, but only if it's affordable and that's still a long way off...
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