Hands-on with the Xbox One: Kinect, interface, and OS impressions
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
That doesn't sound very good. I remember all the complaints from Apple just taking your fingerprint - this is taking your picture, skeletal model of your body, and linking it to a record of everything you watch or play, along with always on camera and audio recording.
I don't think I'd put one of these things in my house even if you paid me. I'll stick to Steam, I guess.
[1] - http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/12/4615586/xbox-one-no-longer...
I have set up Kinect profiles for my family with the Xbox 360, but it is a bit hit and-miss, and signing in and out becomes a hassle. If the recognition works as seamlessly as described in the article it would be a great improvement.
I'd bet they store their version of "meta-data" in the cloud. That way they can target ads to specific users based on attributes derived from people's physical attributes and characteristics. I also expect to see Microsoft (and others) explore the concept of 'pay-per-view' where an increase in viewers for media content results in an increased viewing fee using facial-detection to establish the cost.
Personally, I believe that meta-data collection is an interim-step towards more-aggressive sharing of this information. What does that mean? It means that your FitBit, Withings Scale, Nike Fuel, and Kinect Exercise regimen will one-day be sold to your health-care provider. Initially it'll be opt-in ... consumers can choose to reduce their rates if they share such data with an insurer --- but eventually it'll be mandatory. The XBOX One's early press boasted that the new Kinect sensor is so amazing it can detect your pulse. What would that data be worth to insurers?
Same goes for autos. OnStar opened the door showing that there's value in the data they collect. Progressive has a product called "Snapshot" ( http://www.progressive.com/auto/snapshot/ ) that feeds driving-data to the insurance company in order to inform how they adjust the policy rates they offer to you. Automatic ( http://www.automatic.com/ ) has their dongle that collect similar info. Cars will all be connected one-day, and it won't require extra hardware to collect and transmit this information. All of this data will be sold to insurers. First, it'll be opt-in ... but eventually it'll be required.
Is any of this paranoid? Sure - but the past 6 months of revelations about the level of data-collection taking-place wherever and whenever possible confirms that wherever there is data - it will be collected and sold to anyone that's buying. Just look at the $10 million+ that AT&T makes selling data to the NSA.
So yeah - I am concerned that information is being shared and sold on my behalf for no apparent personal gain.
This whole "THE NSA HAS OUR MEMES!!" is a bit over the top. Being overly paranoid hurts innovation and limits what we can do. Also, if you think Gabe Newell and his people aren't storing all sorts of stuff about you, I think you have an overly rosey view of non-MS companies. Most of us a carry senor-laden devices that make the Kinect look like a potato in our pocket everyday.
Imagine if Tim-Berners Lee was on the receiving end of this in the 90s? "YOU WANT TO STORE COOKIES ON MY COMPUTER? YOU'RE STORING IP ADDRESSES AND USER-AGENTS?!?!?! RUN SCRIPT IN THE BROWSER???"
Yeah, the web wouldn't exist then. We'd have "GNU Privacy Gopher" and no one would use it other than Richard Stallman.
If your government is fascist then fix it. Don't blame the guys trying to make great games.
This statement is ridiculous. The web was not originally designed to be an application platform, it moved that way because business pushed it in that direction. I know the vast majority of sites I visit don't use cookies or javascript for anything important, because I have both of those turned off by default anyway. It seems very obvious that the majority of cookies and javascript these days are being used for tracking purposes, i.e. things that don't benefit the user in any way and should probably be blocked for practical purposes.
>Being overly paranoid hurts innovation and limits what we can do.
This statement is also ridiculous. Being concerned about your own privacy isn't paranoia, it's self-preservation. We have all the reason to expect these companies to think twice before going forward with some innovation that could be potentially harmful, but it appears you want to encourage them not to do that. What you're actually saying is "companies having to worry about ethical issues limits what we can do," which is absolutely true, and this is not a negative thing.
To me the reality of this technology is more Idiocracy than anything. The marketing hype is that it's somehow a futuristic sci-fi fantasy device. It's just another way to sit on the couch watching TV and playing games.
You're aware we're discussing a game system designed for children, right? Its not some critique on society. Its mindless entertainment by design.
>but it appears you want to encourage them not to do that.
No, as I said this is a government regulatory issue. Attack your government for allowing these policies. I find it hugely hypocritical as well. You have a mobile OS duopoly by companies that are both horrible, horrible corporate citizens, yet the Kinect automatic person detector, which is stored locally for a game, is the thing people go apeshit over. This level of emotional reasoning isn't pretty, its counter-productive, and I suspect falls into politically correct and geek friendly MS bashing while Sony, Apple, and Google get largely free passes. I also feel there's this libertarian bent here in which we don't discuss proper regulations as solutions but wring our hands over the status quo of corporations being under-regulated and do this schoolmarm-ish "They shouldnt be doing that!" Guess what, they will because it makes money. This is what low regulation looks like.
I've heard more paranoid theories about Kinect, with zero proof, than real concern over google tracking me and storing my wifi passwords. Or the various hacks and leaks like Adobe and Linode, which affected and arguably victimized me legitimately.
There's this "contrails in the sky" hysteria when it comes to the kinect which is 100% irrational. Let's not contribute to it.
I agree that, as users, complaining publicly to these cathedral-like entities serves little purpose. The responsible thing to do is to be aware of it and to either avoid as much of it as possible, or to be very cautious about what you do around it (and before you go taking that to mean something specific, I mean in a general sense). I would say this matters even more when children become involved, the fact that this is an entertainment device marketed towards them is somewhat of a trojan horse. This is the reality of what you must do to retain privacy. It's perfectly feasible, it just warrants some of your attention.
Imo you americans should fix your government and let companies continue to built great and innovative products.
At the moment, I don't really think anyone is building fake skeletons to hack my Xbox account. It might make for some creepy Minority Report-style advertising if Kinect cameras become ubiquitous and the data is uploaded to the cloud, but I don't think we're anywhere near that yet.
Some videos: 1) Giantbomb impressions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXwud8fSNhs
2) Xbox UI walkthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhe6jV-APwM
pretty sure they wont, but i think that's sort of the point, and it speaks to the fundamental difference in how they see the market evolving vs. sony with their ps4.
i get a sense that microsoft views this as the last 'console' (in the traditional sense) they'll release.. everything from the architecture, to the internals, to even the naming, makes me think that this is meant to be just a 'box' - the one and only box you'll need - which will grow (in features and power), with more-and-more of the resources offloaded to the cloud over time...
i think their original policies around 'always on' speak to that vision, but that's just my guess, and is why i'm more excited about the xbox one long-term.
Me too, but I'd rather have the console generation lifetime be shorted. Why not a new Xbox after 3 years? The 360 was released almost 9 years ago. How is this the norm?
I'd love to see us PC gamers given some level of competition here. I can't tolerate 360 graphics unless they're super cartoony. It just looks like a PC game from 2004 or so.
Incremental updates work for things like phones and tablets. I mean, people line up by the Apple store near me for a couple blocks (downtown Chicago) for a slight bump in hardware specs. Not sure why we can't have a faster update schedule with consoles.
My PC from 2005 would be a joke to game on.
I think a lot of this shows the lack of competition in this area and plain greed. Why redesign when we can milk the current design? Our only real competitor feels the same and those critical of this will just buy PC games. Seems like console gamers are being abused a bit by these policies and the gaming world is always many years behind on consoles.
With PCs, there's the question of how well your computer will play a game. With consoles, this question is instead binary: Either your Xbox 360 will play the game exactly as well as all the others or it will not play the game.
That's not the case, or at least it shouldn't. PC's aren't magic. You can ship a game with low res textures and high. So if you have the Xbox1 2013 you get the low, but if you have the Xbox1 2015 you get the high and maybe a bump in resolution.
This is a solved problem in the PC world. I understand its different than the status quo, but its silly to think it can't be done.
I suspect the console makers are simply scared to make the early adopters have a worse experience than the kid with the new box and it serves them to make the generation last as long as possible from an economic pov.
Regardless, I hope someone disrupts this duopoly. I had higher hopes for android gaming devices, but who knows, its still early in the game. I could see a deviation on the steambox really shake things up.
I also imagine the economics get better as time goes on and you don't make a profit until sale # x million. Considering how much cheaper hardware is nowadays, I wonder if this formula still applies. You can make a gaming box that beats these next gen consoles for not that much.
Microsoft and Sony typically lose money per console for a good portion of the sales cycle. So either cost has to be driven down dramatically, or you have to expect people to pay significantly more per console and then expect them to update more frequently.
I think in the future we'll see it where you'll be able to upgrade a console, like a gen .5 where you just connect a pack into an expansion bay and it boosts CPU/RAM/GPU to allow the game to run with better graphics
Graphics improved over the life of the last console generation until they plateaued. To do that many game developers and game engines have to get down and write code at the hardware level to optimize as much as they can. Add on the 1-5 year development time frame of many games and you're in a scenario where updating hardware regularly actually becomes a big middle finger to many of your game developers.
Things that could change this: - Newer Super Powerful hardware allows consoles can stay in the sub $500 price range and is strong enough to allow hardware level optimization to be done away with so that a 3-5 year game can work on multiple console versions (past or future). - Revolutionary game development software that some how magically lets super AAA titles be made in months instead of years while also drastically dropping the price of a new release from $60 into the phone "app" range. - Instead of hardware becoming substantially more powerful it becomes substantially cheaper and smaller. If you could buy next gen consoles for under $200 it would be a hassle, but possible to own multiple generations so that you can play your 3 year old games as well as your new ones.
TLDR: Hardware is not the reason for long console release cycles, the games are.
I've always wondered: how prevalent is this kind of hyper-social gamer? I've played my fair share of games, but I've never been flooded with requests of all sorts, and switching inputs to quickly do something else never caused me to cry out in anguish.
Over time I started joining parties with his friends, and adding them to my friends list, and chatting with them independently. For all of them, the normal routine is to hop on the xbox and join whatever friends you have online doing what they're doing. From the people I've talked to online, the number one factor about whether they will use ps4 vs xbox one has to do with which one their friends are going to be using.
So I'd say that the hyper social gamer is a very common creature indeed. You just need one good game and one good friend, and before you know it you're making memories together online and having a great time.
I realize my own experience can't invalidate the entire idea of needing consoles to be so 'community' centric. I'm just wondering if it's true that a significant amount of gamers (or even an insignificant amount) are getting so many messages and invitations over Xbox Live or PSN that switching inputs for a second completely destroys their experience.
There's something about those German developers, because my usual greeting to a tabbed out game is "noooo!" I remember leaving X3 running for a weekend and when I got home my wife had tabbed out. It was the first time tabbing out and thinking I'd have lost like 60 hours of auto trading, but no it tabbed right back and didn't even skip a beat to reload graphics.
For me, the simple ability to tab out of a game will gurantee me as a player. Total War games seem semi-stable usually just a long reload time every time you do it.
Also, I hope that they didn't hinder usual controller-based commands because I usually have issues with speech recognition. In English, my French accent gets in the way. And in French, the recognition is less accurate. So I end up not using it at all.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/8/5075216/xbox-one-tv-micros...