4209

Huh, haven’t run into a PA system since high school years ago, wonder why they have one (apparently for trolling).

4210

Might have come free with the phone system. We never use it officially, but the support staff in my office accidentally opens the PA channel on the phone network at least once a week.

4211

Getting the University system hijacked by a phreak is a “use” as well. That was…a mess.

4212

Supposedly Bestbuy is opening up slots for a limited number of new pre-orders for Day One editions for anybody interested.

4213

So totally uninterested in both new consoles. I need to see what kind of Kinect next-gen action there is on XBone, I might be interested in that, if there was any info at all.

4214

Microsoft is starting to show the interface of the system here is the friends app

a here is a more general talk about the system but you can see how the system log on looks

I think it looks nice, but I think although the Metro UI still has room for lot’s of improvements it’s foundation for the most part looks good, people that hate Metro probably won’t like it but if you only hate Metro on your desktop maybe you don’t think is that bad on a TV.

4215

I’m not digging the loading screens in the friends app. In this day and age something as simple as that should be popping up instantly.

4216

Enjoy the new Achievement notification.

4217

So this is interesting.

It’s not quite what I predicted a year ago, where MS would make xbone games cross-platform, and not nearly as effective. But if this is true, it means you will be able to run stuff like Plex on xbone.

4218

“All your favorite Windows 8 apps?”

4219

Yup. There are plenty of existing apps I would want to use on the big screen from the comfort of my couch (and I hope using voice controls) - podcasts, digg and Win8 news app being chief among them.

4220

Oh, sure. It’s infinitely easier to get an app listed on the windows store than to pass console certification! Of course you won’t have the same low-level hardware access, but if true, this is a real open app store on a console, and that is a huuuuge deal!

Easily enough to push xbone ahead of PS4, for me at least, now that you can unplug the kinect.

4221

Wow, This sounds like it might be a nightmare for developers to get cross-platform certification. I’d heard MS was horribly strict with Xbox live. So why would adding 3 more things on top of that… I mean, if it was ne’r iompssible before with just xbox live - now?

But, that will be pretty nice to have them all cross-platformy. On the other hand, I see massive restrictions in making one platform accelerate as every time they put one step ahead in one system, they’ll be dragged down by the need to make every other platform catch up. I"m guessing the pace of innovation between all these systems will slow to a crawl since they will need to be available across all of them.

4222

Hardware Fragmentation is a thing all ecosystems are going to deal with from now on. Even on the least fragmented of them, iOS, you have a subset of apps that are universal across phone and ipad, apps that don’t work on older os versions, apps that don’t work on older hardware etc…

From what I understand the xbone apps os is sandboxed from the games os which should allow them to be less restrictive with the app certification.

4223

Steam App for Windows 8 Store on XBOX One - streaming games from your PC? :)

4224

Right, the apps OS is completely sandboxed, and will not have direct hardware access. You won’t get the same gaming performance, but the much easier certification could make up for that on non graphically intensive games like minecraft, puzzle games, adventure games, etc. And of course the same title can run on windows8 PCs and tablets.

I don’t see why streaming from PC wouldn’t be possible. You can do it in a metro app, it should be doable.

4225

Yeah, The biggest questions are really:

  1. How much windows functionality is really available on xbox? Which Api’s are they going to lock down?
  2. Is this all going to require gold?
4226

Is it too late to call this the Super Xbox?

4227

The more I think about this the more concerned I am as a PC gamer. Strikes me that developers will go all in on a game-pad only interface design which was already bad enough…

4228

That was quick! ;-)

(Explanation - every time a new generation of consoles releases, PC gaming is proclaimed dead)