Be Excellent To Each Other

It's £400, it's not like they pre-ordered a new £200,000 Ferrari that just got announced like people do without getting called fucking simpletons and fanboys etc.

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

They are dribbling imbeciles if they want to part with £400 for something there is hardly any concrete info on. Not even any independent reviews. In days of yore, the mags would have their hands on the hardware before it launched and could at least give you an idea of what to expect. All we saw the other day was a load of controlled PR bullshit which the fanboys lapped up.

Why not?

They are dribbling imbeciles if they want to part with £400 for something there is hardly any concrete info on. Not even any independent reviews. In days of yore, the mags would have their hands on the hardware before it launched and could at least give you an idea of what to expect. All we saw the other day was a load of controlled PR bullshit which the fanboys lapped up.

On the 'pre order' stuff the evening of the reveal I had emails from Game

I don't have a problem with people preordering this early.

I don't have a problem with people preordering this early. If they find out more between now and release that makes them decide they don't want it, they can cancel the preorder. If they decide they really do want it, it's already preordered and they're guaranteed to get it at launch

I remember ordering Amiga games from Special Reserve using order slips from Amiga Power, mailing from Denmark, filled in with my Visa card number and my signature. Those were the days.

On the 'pre order without knowing anything about it' side of things in Tesco this morning they have a massive stand at the door for the Playstation 4 (obviously with just game images since they dont know what the hardware is like) with little DVD boxes on it for you to pre-order it now for £20

So at this stage you have no idea what the hardware looks like , you have no idea what it will cost , and you have no idea when its coming out (Microsoft said worldwide this year Sony have not yet committed to that) but you can still give your money to Tesco for them to do whatever they want with it (I do admit the chances of them going bust between now and this time next year when we'll probably get our hands on the PS4 are slim but the whole practice just seems odd to me)

The Xbox One, with all its creepy Kinect-spying, TV interaction weirdness for the seventeen people who still ever watch TV as it’s broadcast, and dog-based shooters serves a useful purpose. It takes the industry’s fervent ambition to prevent the natural, beautiful human desire to share to a clearer, more immediately offensive place. It highlights the freedom we’ve already given up. And perhaps it will shake us enough to start resisting at last.

Xbox One: A flawed plan, well executed

It’s like Microsoft is fighting to be the person who controls the fixed line phone in an age of mobile telephony.

Publishers to receive cut of Xbox One pre-owned sales at retail

Retailers will be free to charge whatever they wish for pre-owned Xbox One games, but both Microsoft and publishers will take a percentage cut of every sale.

Retail sources have told MCV that Microsoft has this week briefed key retail partners on how it intends to take ownership of the pre-owned market.

This is how we’ve been told it will all work:

A gamer walks into a retailer and hands over the game they wish to sell. This will only be possible at retailers who have agreed to Microsoft’s T&Cs and more importantly integrated Microsoft’s cloud-based Azure pre-owned system into its own.

The game is then registered as having been traded-in on Microsoft’s system. The consumer who handed it over will subsequently see the game wiped from their account – hence the until now ambiguous claim from Phil Harrison that the Xbox One would have to ‘check in’ to Microsoft’s servers every 24 hours.

The retailer can then sell the pre-owned game at whatever price they like, although as part of the system the publisher of the title in question will automatically receive a percentage cut of the sale. As will Microsoft. The retailer will pocket the rest.

Unconfirmed reports on ConsoleDeals.co.uk suggest that retail’s slice will be as little as ten per cent. That’s a significant cut from what it has become accustomed to from pre-owned sales and more in line with what they would receive from the sale of a new game – hence, the value of the pre-owned market to the retailer is effectively destroyed.

These same unconfirmed reports also suggest that the activation cost for consumers buying or borrowing pre-owned software will be £35.

When contacted by MCV Microsoft responded with the following statement: “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.

"While there have been many potential scenarios discussed, 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.”

UPDATE: Many readers are asking whether the £35 will be additional cost on top of the price of buying the game. No, we believe that the £35 figure – which is not our number, incidentally – would cover the entire transaction. If correct this would leave retail with a cut per sale of around £3.50.

Some interesting chat here about MS' plans for cloud-computing bits of your game on the fly. The gist of it is that your local console would offload the calculations for some game aspects to MS' servers meaning that being online would see some thing actually looking better/running faster. I'm sceptical how useful it would be and how well it could actually work given real world latency et al, but it's an interesting idea and the only thing we've heard so far that might actually leverage the 'often online' requirements of the thing for the consumer's benefit rather than just in service of DRM. Also, as a developer, managing the combinations of local/cloud stuff while being able to instantly fall back if the cloud stuff wasn't coming back quickly enough is the kind of headache people are surely just going to avoid completely? Especially because any work done in that area won't be at all useful in the ports of a game done for the PS3 and PC which makes is difficult to justify from a cost, time and complexity point of view I'd imagine.

Microsoft said worldwide this year Sony have not yet committed to that

Advert in today's Metro saying it's out this year, apparently.

Some interesting chat here about MS' plans for cloud-computing bits of your game on the fly. The gist of it is that your local console would offload the calculations for some game aspects to MS' servers meaning that being online would see some thing actually looking better/running faster. I'm sceptical how useful it would be and how well it could actually work given real world latency et al, but it's an interesting idea and the only thing we've heard so far that might actually leverage the 'often online' requirements of the thing for the consumer's benefit rather than just in service of DRM. Also, as a developer, managing the combinations of local/cloud stuff while being able to instantly fall back if the cloud stuff wasn't coming back quickly enough is the kind of headache people are surely just going to avoid completely? Especially because any work done in that area won't be at all useful in the ports of a game done for the PS3 and PC which makes is difficult to justify from a cost, time and complexity point of view I'd imagine.

Patents aren't products, but still, ick: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2 ... hievements

Patents aren't products, but still, ick: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2 ... hievements

Behind Winston's back the voice from the XboxOne was still babbling away about subscribing to Live TV and the exclusive DLC for Call of Duty 27. The XboxOne received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, even his heartbeat, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, Microsoft plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate, with the always on requirement they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

Quite apart from the xbox applications, the new Kinect is an extraordinary piece of technology.

This Illumiroom stuff looks utterly brilliant, if entirely impractical.

I saw that on the news the other day and you're right, it does look extraordinary but I did wonder what practical applications it could have.

Quite apart from the xbox applications, the new Kinect is an extraordinary piece of technology.

This Illumiroom stuff looks utterly brilliant, if entirely impractical.

I can't help thinking that 3D headset devices will finally have their day pretty soon.

I vividly remember the day I got to try one of those Virtuality machines. I'm pretty sure the experience broke something in my soul.

Illumiroom is just tech demo vapourware. Don't confuse it for a shipping product.

I can't help thinking that 3D headset devices will finally have their day pretty soon.

I vividly remember the day I got to try one of those Virtuality machines. I'm pretty sure the experience broke something in my soul.

Xbox One will be region locked, says Microsoft

The Xbox One will be region locked, Microsoft has confirmed with Digital Trends. The console will not be able to play games produced for regions other than the one it was produced in.

“Similar to the movie and music industry, games must meet country-specific regulatory guidelines before they are cleared for sale,” said the Microsoft representative. “We will continue to work with our partners to follow these guidelines with Xbox One.”