Be Excellent To Each Other

I also imagine that the news which has reassured me a bit could still be winding up parents. If I had three kids, aged 10,12 and 14, I could pretty much guarantee that the 14 year old wouldn't want the ten year old coming into play on their Xbox, when in the past they could just give them the disc into their own room.

Also, it seems that by volume of discussion alone, we're still far more interested in slagging off Microsoft than we are Sony or Nintendo.

Also, it seems that by volume of discussion alone, we're still far more interested in Xbox than we are Wii or PlayStation.

Also, it seems that by volume of discussion alone, we're all far more worried about the rumours we've heard surrounding the new Xbox than we are about the PS4 hence more discussion despite a comparable amount of info being released about both consoles at this stage.

Who are we kidding, as crap as it looks, we'll all still buy one...

Who are we kidding, as crap as it looks, we'll all still buy one...

Even though sony screwed up o lot in the early days of the PS3, it eventually went to surpass the X360 in everywhere except the US. The playstation brand is still much stronger than the xbox brand and that's a really big factor.

Unless it's really obvious which one to go for then I reckon I'll wait until they've been out a good few months before bothering with either.

GameStop president Tony Bartel has reassured consumers that next-gen games will be able to be bought and sold on the pre-owned market, and explained why that is important as consoles transition.

"Both Sony and Microsoft have said games can be resold and that's exactly what we anticipated. It's a recognised way to make these games more affordable. All three new platforms understand that," Bartel told Forbes.

I guess quite a few do then, but how many of those have a headset for it? I don't and it's pretty essential for any sort of Bezzie gaming scenario.

It always seemed a strange omission to me to leave those out of the standard PS3 packages.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-05-22-gamestop-president-ps4-and-xbox-one-games-can-be-resold

Harrison suggested there was an announcement to come about this too.

My take is: GameStop and other affiliated retailers will be able to pay MS a fee to unlock pre-owned games they get in. So, effectively, MS get a cut of preowned sales. Or another way to look at it: retail still gets to sell us preowned copies at a £5 discount over new, while we can no longer lend, trade, or give old games away to friends. The worst of all worlds, then. Fuck.

Y'know, this makes perfect sense. Games publishers weren't looking at the vast piles of cash made by the likes of GameStop on preowned sales and thinking, We must stop this evil. They were thinking: We gotta get us some of that. And this is how.
 
So it looks like: pre-owned game is traded into GameStop. GameStop pay a fee to Microsoft (which kicks back to the publisher), Microsoft disable the game registration attached to the old console and open it back up to the next one its played in. Sometime in the next 24 hours, the console belonging to the person who traded it in deactivates the game. Someone new receives the disc, the servers know that this disc has been marked as "preowned and available", and it installs and plays as normal.

Heh -- Xbone won't include a headset in the box.

Heh -- Xbone won't include a headset in the box.

Heh, a bit irrelevant since surely you won't really need one to participate in online chat when the Kinect has a microphone anyway.

Heh, a bit irrelevant since surely you won't really need one to participate in online chat when the Kinect has a microphone anyway.

Xbox One and Used Games

We know there is some confusion around used games on Xbox One and wanted to provide a bit of clarification on exactly what we’ve confirmed today. While there have been many potential scenarios discussed, today we have only confirmed that we designed Xbox One to enable our customers to trade in and resell games at retail.

Beyond that, we have not confirmed any specific scenarios.

Another piece of clarification around playing games at a friend’s house – should you choose to play your game at your friend’s house, there is no fee to play that game while you are signed in to your profile.

only to find that you really couldn't have a proper multiplayer experience at all without going out and buying something else. I think leaving it out probably did them a bit of harm. I don't think that it matters so much here.

Picking up all the other noise in the room , the noise from the TV that its sitting right next to

Yet by the end of the console event, I sat disoriented, feeling like I'd seen one of the Big Three take a hard left into a past decade, a fictional privileged nation where everyone owns a giant television they want to talk to, where they entertain themselves with high-end fictional simulations of football season and futuristic, nebulous wars abroad. Where we supposedly want whole-body play. Where the fantasy is that all our living rooms are big enough for that.

Basic FAQ on Microsofts site that doesnt answer any of the difficult questions but gives you some fluff about other bits

http://news.xbox.com/2013/05/qa

Q: Xbox One is a more powerful product compared to Xbox 360, but does it also use more power?
A: NOBODY FUCKING CARES

CNET: You say you're going to support it [used games] , but is it going to be different from the way you're doing it now?

Henshaw: We haven't shared any of those details yet. The key thing to bear in mind is that in the coming generation, obviously retail sales are going to play a huge part in that ecosystem, and people will continue to buy shiny discs. But increasingly, content sales are going to happen online. That's what Xbox Live and the Arcade investments on 360 have all been learning towards, and Xbox One is really going to take that to the next level. The entire content portfolio will be available as well.

CNET: Speaking of watching movies and TV, Netflix on the Xbox 360 has always required a paid, Xbox Live Gold subscription. No other hardware makers with streaming boxes are doing this. Are there any plans to change that with the Xbox One?

Henshaw: Nothing to announce there yet.

CNET: Kinect now needs to be on all the time. But there are obviously some people who say "I don't want this camera in my living room."

Henshaw: If you want privacy, we'll give you modes that ensure your privacy. And we actually have a little bit about this on the Web already. We will have something similar for the Kinect with Xbox One. The system is designed to have Kinect be an integral part of the experience. It's not the case where you'll be able to remove the camera altogether. But you'll be able to put the system in modes where you can be completely secure about the fact that the camera is off and can't see you.

Think your Skype messages get end-to-end encryption? Think again

With the help of independent privacy and security researcher Ashkan Soltani, Ars used Skype to send four Web links that were created solely for purposes of this article. Two of them were never clicked on, but the other two—one beginning in HTTP link and the other HTTPS—were accessed by a machine at 65.52.100.214, an IP address belonging to Microsoft. For those interested in the technical details, the log line looked like this:

'65.52.100.214 - - [16/May/2013 11:30:10] "HEAD /index.html?test_never_clicked HTTP/1.1" 200 -'

The results—which were similar but not identical to those reported last week by The H Security—prove conclusively that Microsoft not only has ability to peer at the plaintext sent from one Skype user to another, but that the company regularly flexes that monitoring muscle.

My take is: GameStop and other affiliated retailers will be able to pay MS a fee to unlock pre-owned games they get in. So, effectively, MS get a cut of preowned sales. Or another way to look at it: retail still gets to sell us preowned copies at a £5 discount over new, while we can no longer lend, trade, or give old games away to friends. The worst of all worlds, then. Fuck.

You do if it's constantly on.

Heh -- Xbone won't include a headset in the box.

You do if it's constantly on.

Opinion: Only games can save Xbox One

If Xbox One is Microsoft's ultimate vision for commanding the living-room, then it has misunderstood its core, casual and family markets quite spectacularly.

Even if the company was helpful, explicit and honest about its plans for always-online restrictions and pre-owned fees, its new console would still hinge on flawed TV features that no one asked for.

Xbox 360 Kinect owners had some trouble today watching Microsoft's Xbox One reveal due to device's response to "Xbox" commands spoken during the livestream.

Several users took to Twitter to document their problems, which included pausing, opening Xbox Live or quitting the stream entirely.

What annoys me most about Microsoft is its arrogance in thinking they can dictate how the consumers play games instead of accepting it's the other way around. No one asked for this online authentications and blocks on pre-owned games. If the console fails it will be a blessing to the gamers and a warning to other companies.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/408253/blog/opinion-only-games-can-save-xbox-one/

There are people in the comments saying they have already pre-ordered a system.

Fuck me! What sad little fucking fanboys! What kind of dick goes and pre-orders a console this early!

"Oooh, look at me, I'm flush and I've run straight down to Game to pre-order my console while still having a hard-on from watching the presentation."

Fucking simpletons.

What annoys me most about Microsoft is its arrogance in thinking they can dictate how the consumers play games instead of accepting it's the other way around. No one asked for this online authentications and blocks on pre-owned games. If the console fails it will be a blessing to the gamers and a warning to other companies.

I'm not sure we can blame MS for that.

You've heard that Amstrad are now taking pre-orders for the GXone console they're releasing in 2016, right?