It’s Time for Microsoft to Turn the Xbox into a PC
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Coming out with an xbox 1.5 or xbox 10 that obsoletes current gen consoles midway through a generation would be the biggest change ever to the game console business. Probably the worst thing they could do would be to make a new "low-cost" xbox that can't run games that are already out.
I can see Microsoft experimenting with doing small hardware improvements in a mid-cycle revision but I doubt they will make drastic changes.
Imagine if Microsoft had devices at the Amazon Dash, Android TV, and Xbox One tiers that all supported UWP and Cortana. That would be a boon for developers.
Microsoft could also introduce a beefed up Xbox One with more powerful CPU/GPU if it did so without creating a new tier. It could do something along the lines of the High-def packs that we see in PC games where everything functionally remains the same but the newer model receives higher resolution texture, models with more triangles, and can render out in 1080p:60fps or 4k.
With a console, the idea is supposed to be that you put the game in, power it on, and enjoy the game. But these days, consoles aren't quite living up to that either. IMO, the first Xbox and PS2-generation of consoles were the best, since they had online play sometimes (anyone remember playing Halo with that Windows app that tricked it into thinking other users were on your LAN? A neighbor and I had tons of fun with that) and JUST WORKED (except in cases of overheating / PS2 disc read errors).
I'm currently enjoying my WiiU quite a bit, since most of the time when it doesn't need to update, I can just start it and have fun instead of spending 5-60 minutes each session messing with making things work like I need to do with Windows 10.
Snark aside, this is probably one of crappiest articles I've ever read (EDIT:) on Ars Technica (or rather, skimmed; didn't deem it worth reading word-for-word). "Microsoft should make a do-it-all box for $200 that has cutting-edge GPU and CPU, and they should fragment their hardware lineup. Oh, and put a pony in every box." I'm sure this article is being passed around the E&D executive suite as I type.
And I thought substantiated rumors (as in, didn't they put it on the Xbone home screen at some point?) said the "windows 10 experience" was coming to Xbone. Perhaps the internal pilot delayed that.
Anyway, take it FWIW, which ain't much because even when knowledgable folks talk, I don't pay much attention (meaning anything above is wrong in some way) because it's mostly none of my business, and I don't care much.
Nevertheless, this dash actually works so it does have that over the first one.
Ugh. Maybe I should spend less time commenting on HN, and actually paying attention to my "inside sources". Or for that matter, just looking at the dashboard when I boot the machine. I truly didn't notice the update.
Maybe you should bother to read the article before commenting, because it says quite the opposite, and suggested that in fact it's the attempt to make a do-it-all box that leaves the Xbox simultaneously overpriced as a streaming box, and underpowered as a console.
I don't tend to have long to play games, and I don't like having 20 configuration options to adjust hair / light / texture / resolution quality. Mainly because I don't know which of these will (a) have the best effect on performance, and (b) have the least effect on how the game's designers intended it to be experienced.
For all the weaknesses of consoles, I know that (for better or for worse), I'm getting the best tuned experience, as intended by the game's designers, as soon as I switch the game on.
That said I hate the PlayStation remote, it's basically designed for super small hands and I have very large hands, so I'm not switching. I'm also fond of Halo.
Seems like the best thing Microsoft could do would be to deliver a remote gaming experience over the net. That way the console cost can be negligible and not require replacement as frequently. They could charge more for Xbox live because it's actually doing the compute and it'd be available on the go even from cell phones. That'd move lots of young people to the windows phone ecosystem.
Kind of how music moved folks to Apple back in the day.
Unfortunately that won't happen. Microsoft is too focused on corporate clients to move the needle in the consumer market.
Yuppers, you could see this coming late in the 360 product cycle. After booting the Xbone for the first time, it was if it were an official announcement: "Microsoft now looks to advertising and other 'monetization' for profit. You, previously referred to as 'customer', are no longer a factor in such measurements as 'customer satisfaction'. We still measure it, we just don't survey users anymore to get that number".
Other than the obnoxious UI, there's no single thing that makes me hate Xbone; it's death by a thousand cuts. If you asked me, "why won't you be buying the next generation Xbox?", I couldn't give you a single or even a half dozen deal breakers. It's more that every function of the box has one little, inconsequential thing that annoys me. Want to watch TV using the pass-through? You have to login first now, or spend minutes sifting through the menus. The OS now allows buggy games to bring the whole box down (never saw that happen on 360). You have to store games on a hard drive, but you still need the DVD to play it. Etc., etc. Just a thousand little things that should be better, but aren't, and it adds up to me just skipping the whole thing next time and getting a PS or Steambox.
That's that fans wanted and that PS4 also does. There was a huge backslash when MS announced original plans for Steam-like DRM.
The culture of accepting DRM exists because piracy is hard, and piracy is hard because it's illegal and DRM is widespread. To break the vicious cycle more people should stop buying games and other content and start to help each other to pirate instead with a goal to bankrupt content producers to stop them from influencing laws and technology.
Consoles exists because hardware manufacturers can make bigger profits when they also control software distribution with DRM. Don't buy consoles.
So, I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but in order for Microsoft to do that, they would have to agree to completely give up all hope for VR on the system they do that on. Cloud VR is simply out of the question; the minimum latency is still guaranteed motion sickness. I'm not sure they can psych themselves up for that, even if it's probably still a good idea.
(I can't prove this but the sense I'm getting from the reports of people's VR experiences and people's console experiences is that the current-gen consoles should simply give up on doing VR. They don't have the power to do it at graphical quality levels that the current market will consider acceptable for very long. Again, let me emphasize, this is my sense; if you vigorously agree or disagree I'm interested in your thoughts!)
Maybe it'll be more viable in ${year when cable monopolies are defeated across the US}
I've heard rumors of this kind of thing recently so it's not a surprising. The Xbox and PC are slowly becoming one, and I'm guessing most games will run on both next generation. Honestly though, as long as their Halo games stay on point I don't really care how the hardware strategy shakes out.
The wife and I are hopelessly addicted to the Halo series so we tolerate them, but overall it's one of my least enjoyed electronics to use. The interface is slow, it's prone to frequent networking issues which due to it's need for constant contact with Live cripples it regularly, the need for open NAT required me to open ports to one on a static IP and DMZ the other, I can go on and on. There is so much potential in this platform (as seen on the 360, which is fantastic) and it's wasted with pretty good hardware and absolute garbage software.
Whoever was in charge of the original release of the XBox One's OS should be outright fired, what a disaster that was, and frankly the current one is better but far from what I'd call good.
/rant
I'm hopelessly addicted to COD3, and if I had a quid for every time that game has crashed on me I'd have a lot of pound coins. The OS is indeed slow, and the network setup I've had to create for games to work reliably is less than ideal. The OS is clearly trying to do a lot, but does all of it slowly and unreliably.
We had a couple friends over to Legendary crawl the Halo MC Edition campaigns and we had to power cycle the units three separate times over the course of the 3 and 4 campaigns because the damn things just would not see each other. Insanity.
Edit: A LOT of it's issues I think come down to how dependent the One is on Live compared to the 360. Live was a big part of the 360 too but it could function just fine without it, but I remember in Christmas of 2014 I had bought the wife her XBox One which came with AC: Black Flag. That week when lizardsquad or whatever took down XBox Live, I had to PHYSICALLY DISCONNECT the One's cable to allow it to login properly, it just could not handle the idea that it had Internet access but Live was down. That kind of omission from the handling speaks volumes as to what the rest of the code must look like.
Eh? I had (well, it's still in the garage) a launch day box. It did the RROD under the extended warranty period, sent it in and got it refurbished, it ran until the Xbone launched. A one-time problem with a one-time fix that had a quick turnaround. Your mileage obviously varies, as did that of others, but for me over the course of nearly ten years, it was a minor inconvenience.
In comparison to the Xbone, the foibles of which I endure nearly every time I turn it on. I dropped my Xbone in the DMZ and called it good, and that works well. But that does me little good with my friends as we ask, "why can't I join? Why doesn't chat work?" My personal fave is the "it says my NAT is 'strict', but it was 'open' yesterday and I haven't changed anything." That even happened to me once. Now how the network stack thinks that a machine with its own IP address, sitting wide-open exposed to the Internet at large, is behind a NAT befuddles me.
And yeah I too noticed oddness with DMZ. For a long time the only way to have two in the house was to have mine in the port forward (since we used mine as a media center and it needed access to the other bits of the network) and to have the wife's DMZ'd, but neither worked terribly well and we would run the gamut from Strict to Open with zero predictability. UPNP seems to keep them happy though, so whatever works.
I'm sure the Xbox Live infrastructure has changed a lot since I left Xbox in 2010, but based on how things worked back then, seeing this on Xbone I'm at a loss for how the hell this could happen
But these days, pretty much all of the biggest name fighting game franchises outside of Tekken and Virtua Fighter (unless you count Dead or Alive as a substitute) are available as native games on PC via Steam or the Windows App Store (Killer Instinct).
It's way easier and cheaper using Steam to run games on multiple machines, plus I can basically bring games with me on my laptop. I don't think I could ever go back to a console.
Personally, I see his point that the price expectations of game consoles prevent them from effectively running next gen games. However, that's always been the case, with console gaming quality lagging behind PC equivalents. But maybe the advancements with VR and 4K this time around has finally broken the traditional console refresh cycle?
I think "media centers" in the form you speak of are becoming more and more irrelevant with the emergence of smart TVs and those <$75 HDMI sticks that are basically fully functioning computers.
I can already stream video from my phone directly to my TV, which gives me full media center capabilities in a very convenient package. I can't see the average person spending $200 for such a device given the current alternatives.
"Personally, I see his point that the price expectations of game consoles prevent them from effectively running next gen games. However, that's always been the case, with console gaming quality lagging behind PC equivalents. But maybe the advancements with VR and 4K this time around has finally broken the traditional console refresh cycle?"
I agree with your first two statements, but I feel like people are going to really reject a refresh cycle of less than 4 years. So rather than VR influencing the life cycle of consoles, I feel like it will be the other way around (but maybe a little of both). The pressure will get pushed all the way back to the component manufacturers, forcing them to make GPUs capable of VR for a lower cost. People have been spending ~$400 for a new console every 4-8 years for like 30 years now, so there's a lot of momentum behind it.
I personally run an older (6850) crossfire set-up, which AFAIK isn't supported under SteamOS, but once the next gen of GPUs drop I plan on revisiting dual-booting Hackintosh for work / browsing and SteamOS for gaming.