The XBOX One

So last month the free game on the Japanese Xbox store was Zoo Tycoon, I picked that up thanks to CAG. This month it is something called “Cobalt”. Here is the relevant page at CAG:

Of course, the game he wants to play was Game Shared to him on his console. So that ain’t gonna work.

Thanks, though.

I had heard from people online that they got a special offer from Microsoft on the dashboard to renew their Gold for $40 instead of $60 when it gets close to expiring. For the last few months, I haven’t been able to find anything cheaper than $45, and I’ve been looking for $35, which was really easy to find in the old days. Finally I just couldn’t find anything, I got desperate and looked for a worldwide code, but even that was $42. I got it, it didn’t work, but luckily I got my money back.

And hey, guess what, the Xbox dashboard had an ad for me today saying they had a special deal for me to renew gold. $40. So not bad, considering the alternatives. So I took the offer. 12 more months of Gold.

Looks like there was an OS update made available last night though I guess it’s an early release/beta test kind of thing since I’m not seeing a lot of chatter about it. Didn’t get the chance to dink around with it much but it seems to remove a bunch of “clutter” around the screen, moving tiles off the main screen so that you can move down to view favorites for instance, but not see them until you move down. That probably doesn’t make a lot of sense.

I’m seeing a bunch of articles online about the new interface. I’m just crossing my fingers. I hope it’s a positive change. Overall I was much happier with the Xbox at launch, honestly. Now I can’t snap apps. I can’t navigate Netflix and Hulu through voice commands anymore. With every update, they make the Xbox One interface less unique/futuristic and more like the PS4.

I’m not really the best guy to judge such things really. I think this new version gives more customizable options but I don’t really fiddle much with that, nor do I ever snap things or use voice commands. I know there are tons but f folks at MS and plenty of other places thinking hard about UX but it’s really just a place I go to get me to other stuff I want to do, mainly play games.

Kind of interesting; Batman Arkham Origins was released as back compat today but only the disc version. Is that because a downloadable version was never released?

Spotify is supposed to be available now, but is anyone seeing it on the store? I tried searching for it, but couldn’t find it.

Speaking of Xbox One and Netflix, I have a strange issue that maybe one of you guys could help out with, or at least explain to me.

I have all of my devices…Xbox One, Blu Ray, Satellite Receiver…all plugged into an A/V receiver via HDMI, and then the receiver is plugged into the TV via HDMI. Setup works great for almost everything, except Netflix and Amazon Prime Video from the Xbox One. It should be noted that both Amazon prime and Netflix work just fine from the Blu Ray player.

Issue is this…

When I select either one the first time after starting up the Xbox, the screen flickers and then goes black. If I then change inputs on my A/V receiver from “Game” (the name of the input the Xbox is plugged into) to something else, and then back to “Game”, it almost always flickers again and then I get picture just fine. Sometimes I have to do it a couple of times. After doing this once, for either Netflix or Amazon, as long as I don’t shut the Xbox off, I can exit back to the main dashboard and open both Netflix and Amazon without issue, even if I had completely exited the original app. Once I shut the Xbox off, it all starts over again.

I fully realize that this is almost assuredly an issue with my A/V Receiver, but thought that maybe some of you might have an idea on what was happening

Thanks,

Tony

A lot of whispers and rumors that Modern Warfare 2 is going BackCompat soon. Maybe Thursday or Next Tuesday.

Hold on to your akimbo G18s folks.

There’s a lot of rumors going around and it’s hard to tell if any of them are valid. I saw screenshots last week that a developer had Mark of the Ninja in his play history, what does it mean? Who knows.

Which is not to say that Modern Warfare 2 may not be coming, just that there seems to be very little pattern to what gets released when. Definitely not going by the most requested list on the Xbox site.

Which reminds me - looks like a few Rockstar 360 games are on sale on the marketplace this week. So if you wanted to try out Bully or GTA IV or Red Dead Redemption, this may be your best bet.

Battlefield One is live on EA access.

Or if you are in my situation, yay you can finally play that game you bought and installed and then never saw again because your kids grabbed it.

Yeah I don’t always post the (usually) twice weekly back compat updates but I know Revengeance is one folks have been waiting for. Additionally, a couple of pieces of DLC are available for free on the Xbox website, if you own this or plan to buy, may as well go grab them.

Heads up: Conan Exiles is available for download as a Game Preview now. For me, between Star Trek Online and Marvel Heroes I’m not sure I need another MMO in my life. Maybe if they’d left the dongs in.

Hah. I just got out of bed, and my housemate is using the upstairs shower, so I popped my Xbox on and LO! There was Conan. Downloading now.

A lot of the reviews for Conan Exiles are indicating crashes and significant bugs so keep that in mind.

It is early access, so I’m not surprised. I imagine they’ll get it relatively stable relatively quickly. I’ll probably play it like I do ARK, Subnautica, Astroneer, etc- play a lot for a few weeks, then shelve it when the bugs get to me. Keep an eye on the twitter-like feed for the game, check back in for a patch every month or two.

Oh man that reminds me, I need to get back to Subnautica. Is that worth paying money for these days?

It still has some sort of incredible memory leak that makes it unplayable after a few hours on Xbox. I say this as a person who generally doesn’t care about performance in games. The frames rate will drop to 1 every few seconds, resources will fail to propagate, so you can’t collect/build anything even if you’re a glutton for punishment- literally unplayable.

That said, I actually checked their Xbox Twitter this morning, and the last post was from 38 days ago. It said they had just squashed a major bug that was hindering development, and they’d be ready to start releasing updates again ‘soon’. Nothing since. Their development timeline said they wanted to go to full release sometime in September, IIRC. I’m guessing after the new year is more likely.