stusser
5009
Why? The win8 appstore seems fine to me. Most of the apps are crap, but the store is fine.
LMN8R
5010
The narrow-minded view some people have about that announcement is really confusing.
“Windows 8 doesn’t have apps so why would I care about apps on Xbox One???”
Um…maybe because the simple fact that people can make apps for Xbox One is something really cool? Do you really think they’re going to port over a bunch of existing Win8 apps and call it a day or something?
olaf
5011
I regret my Xbox One purchase. I got it on launch day with 3 games and I have not gotten my money out of. Seeing them throwing in 1-2 games for free now isn’t helping. The launch titles were mediocre at best and there has been nothing since then, including Titanfall, that I want to play on the One. Not to say I would have rather bought a PS4, although I think I would just because its cheaper and kinect is gimmicky shit to me. I should have known better and held on to my money for a year or so until there was an exclusive I had to play, this is what got me to get a 360 in 2007, Mass Effect.
I will not buy anything that requires Games for Windows Live or whatever is its successor to run. That thing has just stopped and most developers aren’t bothered to go back to fix support.
Is there a way to calibrate the Xbox one controller? One of mine seems to be pulling to the left.
Looks like Phil Spencer has some plans regarding all Xbox One apps being locked behind the Gold paywall.
Holt: @XboxP3 now that you’re boss, we can start blaming you for Gold 2 play and apps behind the xbox live gold paywall right? sorry phil
Spencer: @Holtdagawdess Yep, blame away. I’ll get my changes to plans in place soon but in the meantime pile on.
Holt: @XboxP3 @Holtdagawdess I like this response… i hope its not for show… surprise us phil
Spencer: @Th3CoreGamer @Holtdagawdess In today’s world show would last about 10 minutes. Not saying everyone will love everything but we have plans.
Would make sense since virtually every product in the entertainment center besides the Xbox allows you to use Netflix etc without paying the device manufacturer a monthly fee. I don’t expect multiplayer access to move to free however, especially since Sony locked it away as well.
I’ve always held that requiring Gold for streaming video etc is downright insulting. That alone would have been enough to stop me from buying an xbone. It’s not why I didn’t buy one, lack of exclusives I care about did that, but it would have been enough.
I don’t expect them to give up paid multiplayer either, even though it’s 2014 and charging for multiplayer is fucking crazysauce. It’s just too much money to leave on the table.
I like what I’m hearing from Phil. Now why didn’t the old people running this think more progressively? For instance, Xbox360 has lost potential ad revenue and internal marketing pushes because people like myself are letting Gold lapse and are using Roku (or other streaming devices) instead of Xbox 360 for Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon etc. I’d been railing on Microsoft pretty hard about this. And now they’re finally, “maybe” considering changing this AFTER all the competition is around to force their hand. The problem for Microsoft, is for people like myself, once Gold lapses for a device on the end of it’s curve, we will not look at it again until a new console replaces the last one. So Microsoft in their stubbornness is losing out on my (and many others) $6/month, extra ad revenue, and their ability to sell Xbox360 games. Worse for them, the longer someone goes without using Microsoft Gold, the less it becomes totally necessary to stay on that network when the individual is considering a next-gen console to purchase.
I like that Microsoft is on the back foot at the start of this generation. I think it’s given them the kick up the arse they needed. As a member of the INNER CIRCLE (update preview group) I’ve seen that they are definitely listening and responsive to feedback, and they’re making good progress with the XBO OS and dashboard. I just had the One Guide and Set Top Box functionality enabled (in the UK) and it’s very cool to control everything with voice - even the DVR.
Canuck
5018
Some guy called Brad Wardell claims that Xbox One update will double performance:
“Xbox One is the biggest beneficiary; it effectively gives every Xbox One owner a new GPU that is twice as fast as the old one,” he added.
Wow anybody even remotely associated with MS are just absolutely desperate to try and make the people think the Xbox One is actually some supercomputer that’s just hampered by some bad software…geez.
Brad mentions the load on video cards, but currently on most modern Nvidia cards with current drivers the clock speed and fans are already dynamically adjusted based on temp. Is this not the case for the Xbox One?
Guys i have new news from microsoft on directx 12.
Not only will it DOUBLE the performance of the xbox one, it will also cure cancer. That is all.
If Brad’s right that just means the current API and drivers on Xbox One are in an even more horrible state than anyone has been willing to speculate. It’s an indictment of Microsoft’s ongoing failures with the platform more than an endorsement of the future.
Oh shit guise, our next-gen console is using our neglected pc graphics api! New priority!
From Brad’s neowin post:
There is a downside for all this power. DirectX 12 games will be the first games to fully utilize the powerful graphics cards gamers have been buying for the past few years. DirectX 12 won’t require a new video card for GPUs that already support DirectX 11. As a result, that GPU will be getting pushed twice as hard as it previously was which means more heat on cards that might have only barely been cool enough when they were only being commanded by a single CPU core. We expect to see many marginal video cards setup to experience over heating issues as DirectX 12 suddenly pushes these cards beyond what the IHV had anticipated.
I’m feeling pretty good about my ACX Cooler 780 GTX purchase right now. I was worried it might have been overkill.
Why no mention of PS4? That also runs x86 architecture and directx based api’s, no? Should there not be a double performance gain for that platform as well with directx12?
Not that I’m buying that to begin with… Improvement? Sure. I mean, this is coming from Brad, who is also been involved in Mantle, so I don’t doubt him when he says there are significant improvements to be made with better api implementations. But 100% improvement? Surely that’s a stretch. And double the heat output from cards because they’ll be pushed twice as hard? Are all cards only running at 50% utilisation today and their thermal ceiling is already saturated? I don’t buy that at all. It’s not like they engineer and QA these things by playing the latest AAA shooter - they’d throw junk workload at them using low level tools with direct hardware access to ensure pipeline saturation and determine potential thermal ceiling (and hence required reference cooling). A more efficient consumer graphics api is not going to fuck with fundamental engineering outcomes.
I must be missing something…
stusser
5026
My guess is he was misquoted.
@sharaleo: The PS4 does not use directX, no. It has its own low-level API that may or may not have the same issues with CPU utilization faced by directX 11.
So, with the price drop and Titanfall bundle I finally bought an Xbox One on Friday.
Xbox One first impressions:
The system UI is clunky and slow. Clunkier and slower than the 360. wtf.
In a couple of hours of playing my controller disconnected for no reason twice when I was sitting less than 4 feet from the box. This is apparently a common issue with the One and the ‘fix’ for now is to plug the controller in via USB and forget that it is supposed to be wireless. wtf.
Titanfall is fun, but the graphics are only marginally better than what 360 games look like and the screen tearing due to lack of vsync is so bad it is constantly distracting. The graphics on PS4 games I have like Killzone: Shadow Fall and Second Son are, in comparison, jaw-droppingly good. wtf.
If there’s another console generation and all my game-playing friends stupidly decide to get the inferior console due to resistance to change, I’m going to just find new friends instead of giving into the peer pressure.
The Mantle API, and by extension DirectX 12, are both designed to replicate the kind of low level access and low overhead already offered by the PS4’s GNM API. The fact that these were solved problems on console were a large part of the reason DICE was dissatisfied with DX11 and convinced AMD to work with them to create Mantle. That’s not to say PS4 won’t see driver and OS optimizations over time that unlock greater performance potential.
