The XBOX One

Brakara · 2014-12-09T09:24:48.000Z

The twitch update is already out. Love the follow games feature, since it means I no longer have to search for games with the freakin’ gamepad.

Edit: the whole start screen is a huge improvement for me. It lists channels you follow (with the ones broadcasting at the top), then the games you follow. Basically, unless you want to check out new channels/games, you never need to go into one of the sub-menus.

TimElhajj · 2014-12-09T09:30:24.000Z

Thank you mrbloo and Rock8man! You have saved me from my kid giving me the rolling eyes. :)

Telefrog · 2014-12-09T13:34:41.000Z

I’m pretty excited by this.

Khan Academy is now available on Xbox One.

mouselock · 2014-12-09T15:14:41.000Z

Telefrog:

I’m pretty excited by this.

Khan Academy is now available on Xbox One.

Okay, that’s really cool. Is it an app?

Telefrog · 2014-12-09T15:17:46.000Z

mouselock:

Okay, that’s really cool. Is it an app?

Yes. No official link yet. You have to search for it in the Xbox One.

Rock8man · 2014-12-09T15:41:24.000Z

I downloaded it and watched a couple of videos. Very nice. I’d heard a lot about Khan Academy, and it’s really nice. It’ll be nice to get a refresher on some topics I haven’t reviewed since college, and to find some nice new topics to dwell into as well.

Unfortunately, it’s not a snappable app, which makes me sad.

Telefrog · 2014-12-09T15:55:24.000Z

Khan Academy is amazing. The video are legit. Very easy to follow, nicely done, and the price* is awesome.

*FREE

Alan_Dunkin · 2014-12-09T18:51:20.000Z

That’s pretty cool. Not sure how much use I’ll find it but is definitely worth checking out.

It looks like Youtube and the Media Player now fully supports Snap, including playing videos in the Snap window. Depending on your “main” app, this may cause the snap app to play great, or it can lag quite a bit.

— Alan

Rock8man · 2014-12-09T18:58:03.000Z

Yeah, Hulu Plus runs lag free on games like Destiny, but lags quite a bit while playing Forza 5 and Horizon 2. I suspect the Forza games take more resources.

Armiger · 2014-12-09T19:28:25.000Z

Slainte Mhath:

I know, and I understand. As you say, too many people would abuse the system and purchase 360 copies of games that exist on both systems just to get the digital upgrade token and then resell the 360 disc to offset the cost. I’m just bitter because we have spent close to $200 in recent months on new retail 360 games, including pre-orders, and it kind of feels like a kick in the teeth to be told we’ll need to buy our games all over again if we want to play them on Xbox One. If I had known this we would have bought digital copies of the last 3 or 4 games we purchased. Turns out someone already picked up Destiny for Xbox One for cheap in a recent sale to give to my son as a Christmas gift (they didn’t know he already had it), so that should work out as his character and the digital content he has purchased WILL transfer to the Xbone copy. For the other games, we’ll just stick to the 360 version.

Thanks for the heads up on the HDMI pass through guys. I did not realize there were lag issues. I had read that you could connect the two consoles that way and be logged into your Live account on both, but it’s not worth it if there are latency issues, as we’ll be playing games like CoD:AW most of the time that would suffer from that. The TV we use for gaming has multiple available HDMI inputs, so we’ll just connect one console to each and switch when we need to.

Some publishers did offer a cheap current gen physical to next-gen digital upgrade path last year at system launch with games like COD and BF4. If you had a physical ps3/360 copy you paid $10 for the ps4/xbone digital version. The catch was you had to have the ps3/360 disc in the ps4/xbone drive for the game to start up. Maybe people found a workaround for that so they didn’t do the same promotion this winter. No idea why they didn’t do it again, but they did try your plan out - it was just last year instead of this year.

Malderi · 2014-12-09T20:46:11.000Z

Just picked up an xbone from the Black Friday deals and buying games. I’d like to keep my library all-digital so I never have to futz with discs, but I’m also a cheap bastard and Microsoft doesn’t really like discounts or sales. Should I bite the bullet and get some of last year’s games cheaper on disc? Ryse, for example, is still $50, which seems high…

Brakara · 2014-12-10T01:35:15.000Z

The MSRPs are usually pretty high, yes, but they do have sales. The Black Friday one was pretty good (a game like Ryse was $25), and I’m sure there will be one this Christmas as well. In addition, there’s a weekly Deal with Gold, with discounts on games for people who have Gold subscriptions. Granted, this week it’s pretty weak with only Peggle 2 and PvZ on sale, but now and then more high profile games have some pretty decent price cuts (I got Tomb Raider fairly cheap that way).

Rock8man · 2014-12-10T02:42:45.000Z

Malderi:

Just picked up an xbone from the Black Friday deals and buying games. I’d like to keep my library all-digital so I never have to futz with discs, but I’m also a cheap bastard and Microsoft doesn’t really like discounts or sales. Should I bite the bullet and get some of last year’s games cheaper on disc? Ryse, for example, is still $50, which seems high…

Like Brakara said, they do have sales, and if the Christmas sale is as good as the Thanksgiving one, you should get some opportunities to get some games digitally. In addition, I’d recommend getting EA Access. For $30 a year membership, you’ll be getting access to their “vault” of games, which currently contains Battlefield 4, FIFA 14, Madden 14, Need For Speed Rivals, Peggle 2, and Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare. So you’ll have digital access to all those games right away.

Until yesterday, they had the remastered versions of the two Metro games on sale for around $16.50 each for Gold members. So keep an eye out for sales if you’re a gold member.

Alan_Dunkin · 2014-12-10T09:10:34.000Z

Yeah, Gold is generally where the deals are, though the Black Friday stuff was fairly decent.

— Alan

Telefrog · 2014-12-22T09:43:28.000Z

Xbox Wire – 22 Dec 14

Start the New Year Off with Some Sweet (Free!) Games with Gold - Xbox Wire

You probably know by now that being an Xbox Live Gold member gets you free games every month. You may have seen by now that some really cool stuff has been given away totally free as a result of this program. But January 2015 really, really takes the...

The free Xbox One game for Games With Gold in January is D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die.

The 360 gets MX vs ATV: Alive for the first half of the month and The Witcher 2 for the second half.

Sounds like the 360 gets the better game.

Rock8man · 2014-12-22T09:51:01.000Z

I haven’t logged onto the 360 in a while. I just looked up what I forgot to download so far this month:

The Raven on the 360?
And what’s still available on 360 until the end of the month is the new SSX, which I already own on disc.

Looking forward to getting D4 and Witcher 2 next month. I might finally give up on finishing the first Witcher and just jump in on console.

Jason_McMaster · 2014-12-22T16:22:54.000Z

Telefrog:

http://news.xbox.com/2014/12/games-start-the-new-year-off-with-some-sweet-games-with-gold

The free Xbox One game for Games With Gold in January is D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die.

The 360 gets MX vs ATV: Alive for the first half of the month and The Witcher 2 for the second half.

Sounds like the 360 gets the better game.

I’ve been wanting to try D4. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM SWERY

Kool_Moe_Dee · 2014-12-22T21:51:50.000Z

Telefrog:

http://news.xbox.com/2014/12/games-start-the-new-year-off-with-some-sweet-games-with-gold

The free Xbox One game for Games With Gold in January is D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die.

The 360 gets MX vs ATV: Alive for the first half of the month and The Witcher 2 for the second half.

Sounds like the 360 gets the better game.

I found D4 to be quite enjoyable. I don’t consider that a weak freebie by any means.

Telefrog · 2014-12-25T12:21:32.000Z

And Live is down again. Lizard Squad DDoS attack.

Razgon · 2014-12-25T12:24:28.000Z

If its that difficult to track down someone like that, I really do fear for our infrastructure in case of any kind of war involving Cyberwarfare, if thats the correct term.