3067

Uh, they will not even allow GAMES without a publisher, they certainly will not open it up to general apps. You will see large company shit. A Target store finder app. An AOL app. A yahoo News app. Flickr. Gmail. etc…

At best it will bring the stupid ‘app for everything instead of a website when the website is better almost 100% of the time!’ bullshit from iphones and android phones direct to your living room.

3068

Or not. I agree that Microsoft isn’t going to throw open the doors wide, but I don’t think they will only crack it open slightly to let the normal cast of characters in.

Microsoft’s decision to put the Windows kernel in the Xbox One was a deliberate one. I think their plans are broader than simply - hey, download Facebook.

I think if you have an Xbox One next generation, at this stage, the must have app that everyone who owns an Xbox One will be playing with has yet to even be envisioned, let alone created.

3069

The Xbox One having a “Windows core” is about as practically significant as iOS devices having an “OSX” core, which is to say not at all. It is nice for the developers at Microsoft/Apple, because they benefit from some development synergies and save some money, but it won’t actually mean much for the end-user.

As has already been mentioned, only a very limited subset of WinRT apps will be allowed. Not because of any technical limitations, but because Microsoft is Microsoft. No cross-platform play, no Steam, no indie self-publishing, our way or the fucking highway, bub. They are trying their hardest to fight the consumer to lock normal Windows down as much as they possibly can, you really think they’ll open things up on their console? Ha, ha, ha!

FWIW, I’ve been using Windows 8 for quite a while now on both my desktop and laptop and the number of WinRT apps I run on these systems comes in at a nice round 0.

3070

You seemed convinced but I don’t find your case convincing. I’m sure they will curate what appears on the Xbox One but it seems quite silly to suggest that this is a non-factor. Microsoft didn’t wake up and suddenly realize that they put a Windows kernel in the Xbox One. They put it in by design. It was a conscious decision. It is part of their strategy. And since this was a deliberate decision, I think it’s a stretch to say it’s “not at all” significant.

3071

Does anybody buy an Xbox because they wanna run / manage another windows box in the living room? I sure dont consider that a feature. it is supposed to be a turnkey system.

3072

The idea that Microsoft is going to allow an environment that is “innovative” for apps on the Xbox is really laughable. I would love to be surprised but the fact is in a more open system all the innovative apps would streamline you past the adds. The metro interface doesn’t exist for convience it exists to make adds part of “your” content.

If it was open the most popular app would quickly become a list of friends online, what they are playing with a hot join option, and a list of my installed games.

3073

http://www.examiner.com/article/ps4-and-xbox-one-pre-order-sales-declining
Xbox One and PS4 preorder sales are slowing. According to this article, the Xbox One is currently fifth at Amazon with the PS4 down to 17th. BUT that may be misleading. The PS4 had multiple skus for sale while the Xbox One had one. Does anyone know if NPD will repeat these sales out?

3074

eh. that’s not what we’re talking about. No one is talking about running Office or Microsoft letting Steam run on the Xbox One. Of course, they will curate what appears.

also, the question isnt whether apps have a place on consoles; that has been answered this generation. They do. Witness Netflix’s popularity on the PS3. The question is whether having a PC architecture plus a Windows OS trumps simply a PC architecture.

Time will tell but like the Digital Times article suggests this at least holds the promise of being a significant differentiator.

3075

I can answer that, YES it does, because my PC would suck a little without windows. However, I do not need my console to run ‘windows 8 extra lite’. I do not mind win8 but the ‘new’ metro-apps selection have exactly the type of shit I am describing above - largely useless apps. So a narrowed down version of those, with voice commands? No thank you. I can see a market existing maybe, but it is not me.

3076

It all depends on what the allotment for PS4 launch units was and if that’s still much higher than the Xbox One. Either way, people, get back on board the PS4 hype train I don’t want to be the only guy with the Sony system again.

3077

The Xbox and Xbox 360 both ran a Windows Kernel, too. It’s fairly meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Being “Windows-based” is immaterial to allowing open development for Apps, especially since the Win8 metro app ecosystem is currently such a shitshow. Sony could easily offer the same using an HTML5 stack (like they have for PS3) or something mono-based (like they use for PlayStation Mobile). The only relevant issue is what the ecosystem’s policies actually are. That article just reads like the author got bamboozled in exactly the fashion Microsoft intended.

3078

Both had a kernel but neither were as close to PCs as this generation of consoles is. The Xbox One is x86 based AND will have a windows kernel; so rather than starting from scratch, developers can tweak existing apps. It’s the combination of the two that holds promise.

3079

The new Xbox Live point transer to $$ dollar value is apparently a weaker exchange than the value a month ago. (ie. consumers are getting ripped off again).

Can a Canuck or an American confirm the weaker price exchange?

New Xbox Live update drops points, hikes up prices - report

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/new-xbox-live-update-drops-points-hikes-up-prices-report/0118408

3080

My alternative theory: The Xbone is a Frankenstein’s monster of a game console with multiple OSes stitched together, including a Win8 kernel, because of corporate mandates for unifying the interface across all devices. Not because the design team thought they could deliver extra coolness somehow by jamming in yet another item to take up system resources.

MS is (and always has been) about copying the leaders, acquiring established competitors, and market control, not innovation. People who want to innovate soon find other places to do that. And if they do it right, MS might buy them out with some of that Windows/Office money.

3081

I’m with you until the punch line. Definitely agree that this smells of a corporate mandate. Agree that the company as a whole is pushing to unite their various ecosystems together. Disagree that despite this it won’t result in extra coolness and definitely disagree that J. Allard and even those who followed did not bring innovation to the marketplace.

Xbox - First with an Ethernet connection
Xbox - First with a harddrive as part of the system
Xbox - Not first with a multiplayer service (right? didn’t Sony launch PSN before LIVE?) but dear lord LIVE was so much better than PSN for the longest time
Xbox - Not first with a first person shooter but damn if they didn’t set the bar with Halo in so many ways that are still copied to this day
Xbox - First console that I’m aware of to completely revamp its interface midway through its lifecycle
Xbox - First console to bring Netflix to the console experience
Xbox - First console to have mandatory demos for games (which as a consumer I appreciate; sorry developer friends)
Xbox - First console to use spacebucks for transactions (okay, okay - so not all innovation is good; but the point remains, they innovated)
Xbox - First console to have a dedicated arcade ROM section (yeah, not a winner here either - but again, they innovated)
Xbox - First console to bring live TV as a feature
Xbox - First console to have rumble triggers
Xbox - First console to announce a major DRM initiative and the first to say that was a dumb idea. let’s scrap that

The point is: like you, I think the Xbox One includes a windows kernel because it helps the company as a whole; if you are in the Microsoft ecosystem, they want their services to work across. Apple is doing the same thing.

I think the difference is that:

  1. I’m more hopeful that some coolness will come from the Xbox One having a windows Kernel and an X86 architecture. Consumers will win under that scenario and even without Windows, it will push Sony to offer new features as well. Again, a consumer win.
  2. I would never say Xbox (or Nintendo or Sony for that matter) hasn’t been innovative or good for the gaming industry. It has (and they have).
3082

Instead of doing a point by point teardown of your list, I’ll say a few of those are incorrect (Dreamcast had a broadband adapter – optional, but at the time dial-up was prominent so it made sense to include the 56k modem instead), a few are anti-consumer, a few are fairly obvious inclusion due to tech advancements, and a few are things that I don’t care about personally for a gaming console because they have no effect on the gaming experience. I will give them credit for making demos mandatory, even if it’s only for XBLA titles, but that’s the only innovation I’m willing to give them off that list. They would’ve received points for whatever you would consider 1 vs 100 – live action play at home gameshow? – but they decided it wasn’t good enough for their bottom line and canned it.

3083

Here’s the thing about trying new things - not all of them are going to work nor will they appeal to everyone. My point wasn’t that they have hit a homerun every time. It’s that Microsoft has been innovative in this space.

3084

As LockerK pointed out, Dreamcast had a lot of the connectivity features you attribute to Xbox, and the NES and Genesis before it, although not necessarily in the NA market.

But, I suppose you and I define “innovation” differently. What you call innovation for the original Xbox, I call trying to turn an existing device, the PC, into a console. X86 processor, Nvidia graphics, optical drive, hard drive, USB connections. And it didn’t work. MS lost a shitload of money on it, and discontinued support for it as soon as it possibly could (hey, a previosly un-identified innovation! abandoning device support to force-upgrade your customers) when the 360 was released. Was shoving a DRM-locked mini-PC into the market technically a “new” idea? I suppose, but I would stop short of saying that every untried idea is an innovation. Sometimes it’s just an unexplored bad idea.

Then MS “innovated” by pairing the least reliable console ever released with a 90-day warranty. For MS, quality is job 2.1, etc.

To me, an innovation is different, it’s not just technically new, it’s additive. It’s not just iteration, it’s expansion. Adding analong control to the console controller was an innovation so strong that Sony and Sega were forced to catch up. While I like the Xbox S/360 controller a lot, it’s basically a mash-up of the Dreamcast and Dual Shock. An iteration rather than an innovation.

Not to say that MS was all bad. They were first to the console space with a digital marketplace and they made a lot of good decisions with XBLA in design and in mandating a playable demo for all releases. Then, they made a lot of poor ones such as locking out small developers, slotting releases, and forcing their online customers to buy blocks of points that didn’t match up with the market prices, forcing the customer base to pay now (almost interest-free loans, expcept for the non-refundability) for future services. That too, was a technically new “innovation.” But then, fucking the customer is far from a new idea, just one that MS keeps iterating on. : P

3085

Well then… congratulations to them on finding new ways to screw over the consumer and on non-gaming additions to a gaming platform, I guess?

Edit: I pretty much agree with what Rick said, both positive and negative.

3086

Hardly any developers have WinRT apps to tweak. WinRT has been a disaster because of Microsoft’s refusal to allow it to run on OS versions prior to Windows 8, combined with the fact that they have systematically destroyed the trust of developers in supporting their new GUI APIs after epic mishandling of WinForms, WPF and Silverlight. Microsoft is no longer the Microsoft of Win32’s stability.

As Brad mentioned, Sony could counter very easily by offering an app solution based on WebKit or Blink or even Qt/QML or such, all of which actually have better “app” support than WinRT currently does and certainly much better long term trust. And given recent trends Sony is much more likely to have whatever system they come up with be much more open than what Microsoft delivers.