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Comment by archgrove | Hacker News Reader

Most annoying to me, is we're 30 minutes into the reveal, and they've still not discussed games. Literally, we've had about 7 seconds of a game playing in the background. As far as I people can tell, this would (so far) seem to be a voice controlled cable box.

Oh, and it looks like a shiny VCR. Bleh.

Edit: Ah, at 31 minutes, we have a games developer. Pity it's EA, but c'est la vie.

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Do you get pissed at iPhone reveals when they don't talk about making phone calls at all? Of course the gaming console can play games and the graphics will be better as well. The selling point is that it's not just another game console. It's a powerful PC in your living room, it'd be a waste if all it was doing was playing games.

I think you missed the point. Its no about whether it can play games or no- its about if there are any innovations in the feature set than before.

If iPhone reveals had innovations in the way we make phone calls- then yes that would be very interesting to watch. In fact when Apple released iOS6, they did talk about this, ie. regarding how you can choose actions when receiving a call.

I think that's the point. They're trying to capture a market far larger than people who care about the next Halo, because those people are going to buy this anyway.

And these are precisely the people who won't be watching the reveal of a new console.

But they're the people who will be reading the vapid-to-us articles written by those who have no understanding of, or context for, gaming and will simply try to encapsulate what they see on that stage.

If Microsoft gave a 'core gamer only' conference as its reveal, the (e.g.) CNN article the next day would read very differently. And the mother with two children and a kinect would decide, in a paragraph or maybe two, that this next one is not really 'for' her.

And that may well be what core gamers want the message to be. But it is desperately not what Microsoft wants the message to be.

True but the press/blogs will summarize this and a ton of people will have heard about it by the end of the day. They really want to be the only box in your living room, not just something you boot up when you want to play Halo, so they're emphasizing things other than the games at this point.

Despite them being live streamed, the announcements aren't for us. They're for the press to write articles that these people will read.

Thanks, I got a lot of value from that middlebrow dismissal.

Just as I got a tonne of information from yours. My point is that this is, primarily a games console. They're up against Sony, who are focusing entirely on games, and Nintendo, who are focusing entirely on games. They've shown, essentially, 3 games, and a giant pile of fluff. I can already watch TV on my TV. I have never desired to go "Quick, watch TV! Damn, back to the game! No, wait, TV! Hold on, TV guide!". That's a gimmick, not a feature worthy of nearly a minute of stage time. It looks, in honesty, like a rushed announcement for something that's years off ready, not launching in 6 months.

My "highbrow" comment then, is that this is a big mistake. They had the advantage of being the last next-gen console reveal - they can answer every point of Sony and Nintendo, plus add their own spin. And they basically gave us less information than was already public in the gaming press, probably pissed off a large proportion of the hardcore gaming public, are unlikely to have attracted the non-gaming groups, and picked a rather daft name. It was an open goal, and this went so far wide, I think they'd have been better not saying anything until they had something to say.

You still think this is still primarily a game console?

Microsoft is putting all its chips down on the battle for your living room, which is a major front. The fight to be the all-in-one device people buy that replaces their cable box, game console, and media server (and the data being positioned as the provider of that device brings with it) is not a small one.

Self-identified "gamers" like yourself, who will probably turn out to be the minority purchasing audience for this generation of consoles-cum-entertainment boxes, already have a venue for game porn - it's called E3 - and Microsoft knows it's coming up in a few weeks.

Does the average consumer really want an expensive, gigantic box with huge blower fans to watch Netflix and Hulu - when an Apple TV, Roku, or any coffee grinder with an HDMI port does the job?

Yes, when they can take the place Apple TV and a Roku and play games on them. Plus, the interface is probably simpler for a lot of people. It is far easier to get to Netflix on the Wii than on the Apple TV, especially for my family members that are using it the first time. I assume this is similar.

The average consumer? Of course. They want as few fiddly bits as possible. They want their stuff to just work.

Then they want an Apple TV or a Roku. My wife's grandma can and does use an Apple TV to watch Netflix. There's no way in hell she could ever navigate the UI disaster that is the XBox 360.

But everyone can speak, right? "Xbox, watch Netflix" --> instantly looking at Netflix. No need for multiple or big universal remotes, no switching inputs, etc.

I love my Roku, and I have no plans to get an Xbox 360 as I'm sure many of the features will require an XBL subscription. But the vision? I'm there with the vision.

So far these "talk to your TV" features haven't worked out, and is it really worth the (guessing) $300 premium over a $99 Apple TV? No doubt if there's a good way to do voice control on a TV, Apple's going to figure it out before Microsoft does.

I agree at the moment. I do have Kinect and had high hopes for the voice commands, but as yet they just take too long to register. However, if it's as good as today's demo implied then we'll be pretty close to, if not at, the level that makes it the simplest (not cheapest) option.

> No doubt if there's a good way to do voice control on a TV, Apple's going to figure it out before Microsoft does.

I don't have the same blind faith. Apple hasn't put themselves far enough in the living room for me to wait for them. Sure, they got Apple TV, but that seems like barely a side project for them. It's not as good as the cheaper and more versatile Roku, and it's not as bold in thinking as the Xbox One (or even the Xbox 360).

I think you have to abandon the premise that the XBox One is primarily a games console. That, and a whole host of other assumptions like watching "TV" on your television; who watches television anymore? Nobody I know even has cable.

As someone who is a dedicated gamer, I think his comment is 100% valid. The last PlayStation I owned was the PS2, after that the Xbox and the Xbox 360 were my primary consoles, mostly because Xbox Live was such a breath of fresh air for multiplayer console gaming.

I'm 99.9% sure I'm buying a PS4 this fall because of the extreme de-emphasis on gaming for the next Xbox, while Sony is making all the right moves in supporting indie games, etc.

I think they're saving most of the game related content for E3, which is soon(ish).

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