stusser
5949
We’ll see about that. I betcha there will be frequent promotions making the effective price $350 permanently.
I doubt we’ll see two games and a $50 giftcard bundled with a console at $350 until Christmas again, but I’m not expecting the effective price to stay higher than $350 for a couple of months.
stusser
5951
Oh I’m with you there. But the console itself will be around $350.
Boyd Multerer, the engineer that championed the Xbox One OS integration with Windows apps, helped design the 360, and founded the Xbox Live team, has left MS to “pursue new opportunities” outside of the company.
As reported by The Verge, that leaves almost none of the core Xbox team from a year ago.
•Marc Whitten, former Xbox VP, is now the Chief Product Officer at Sonos. Whitten was the biggest champion of the Xbox One as a TV platform; he and I argued about the TV integration many many times.
•Ben Smith, the Xbox TV program manager, is also at Sonos now.
•Multerer, who was in charge of the platform that enabled the Xbox One to both play games and run Windows apps, has now left.
•Kareem Choudhry, who was in charge of Kinect development, is now in director of development for all of Xbox. Kinect is how the Xbox One controls cable boxes over IR, but it’s no longer bundled with the console and few games support it. And Phil Spencer seems pretty happy the Kinect is dead.
stusser
5953
They were a group of blunderers, who made the wrong decision at nearly every turn. Not surprising they moved on.
Seriously, Xbox TV?
Great, now I fear for Sonos.
Razgon
5956
But it could do so much MORE with the magic of the cloud!
Telefrog
5957
I won’t link to it, but Lizard Squad just released their own DDoS tool.
Welcome to LizardStresser, brought to you by Lizard Squad. This booter is famous for taking down some of the world’s largest gaming networks such as XBOX Live, Playstation Network, Jagex, BattleNet, League of Legends and many more! With this stresser, you wield the power to launch some of the World’s largest denial of service attacks.
$5.99 monthly subscription - good for taking down a site for 100 seconds
$129.99 monthly subscription - good for taking down a site for 30,000 seconds, or over 8 hours
There are also “lifetime” options ranging from $29.99 to $500 that offer various levels of DDoS.
Can we format reality and reinstall humanity please?
Well, fear of missing a $50 discount drove me to join the ranks of the Xboned today. Hello! Would you like to play a game? Speaking of which, if you own an Xbox One and haven’t played AC Black Flag but would like to, head to the giveaway thread and kiss up to me.
Not sure why the heck you’d give someone with known access to stolen CC’s (and hence ID) bail, mind you.
New job postings at Microsoft’s Xbox division.
First, a little something with Kinect:
A new team has formed in Microsoft’s Xbox division with a specific purpose: to push the envelope of today’s and tomorrow’s technology as we explore new ideas from the ground floor. It begins with veterans from Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and Kinect. But we’re growing as quickly as our imaginations can be translated into code.
If you want a comfortable, standard-role job at Microsoft with no ambiguity or risk, please don’t apply. But if you’re passionate about the potential for Kinect to continue to revolutionize entertainment and are a seasoned software engineer with the skills to prototype and build the future of premium Kinect-powered experiences, we have a growing team of talented people who want to take entertainment into the future.
The other job is for new avatar stuff:
As we cross the threshold to a unified operating system and product experience across Microsoft, it is time to for Xbox avatars to also advance to the next level. Come with us, as we take Xbox avatars on their biggest adventure yet in new Xbox experiences.
“But if you’re willing to pretend the Kinect ever started any kind of revolution in entertainment…”
The kinect voice control is pretty close to being compelling. I can definitely see where it would be nice in another generation and on a computer OS.
“Computer, reboot then open Steam. Accept all updates, set resolution to 1080P, then launch Skyrim. Pause 30 seconds after launch.” (Run upstairs to nuke dinner. Return to a ready-to-go Skyrim, playthrough #1058.)
I also really appreciate the auto login. As an interface device, the whole gestures thing is crap. As a gameplay interface, I’ll let you know how Fantasia is as soon as my back lets me, but aside from it and maybe Just Dance there is a small amount of gameplay that really benefits. But as a generic, ubiquitous interface device for all sorts of mundane things which might one day accept complicated sequences and macros to achieve the Star Trek type computer interface? Definitely worth iterating upon!
Having a computer that goes into sleep mode 5 minutes after you vacate the chair, powering only the camera for a field of vision scan at low processing power, then wakes the computer and restores your previous working desktop as soon as you sit down would be nice. Particularly coupled with something like the XBox One’s active pause where you can literally come back up and pick up where you left off. (Does the PS4 have this? This is a really fucking hugely great selling point of the XBox One… though it makes always online games suck even more in comparison since they lose connection sync and Destiny, at least, doesn’t pick that up at all gracefully once lost.)
Ugh, Microsoft’s Xbox gamertag moving restrictions is stupid enough to make me leave my One in the box for now. In order to get my 360 gamertag for use with my current Live account that I use for my Windows/Windows Phone devices, I have to get a 360 and a “fresh” unsigned-into MS account and then play pin the gamertag on the idiot, which in this equation is me. Why not let me merge my accounts? So much hassle.
