Xbox One and Windows (8) integration

[Coreldan]

We've heard very little to nothing about this topic yet, but the hopes that it has some strong and cool integration is pretty much what makes me root for the X1 over the PS4. The 360 currently has some mild integration so that you can just "Play to" for example videos from your PC to a 360. At the very least this is needed, but I was hoping for a tad more. So what could it be?

Well, how about "Xbox, PC" would either extend the TV screen as a secondary monitor to your PC or just remote control the PC? Naturally all kinds of contents should be able to be sent easily from one device to another as well.

But yeah, I love the Windows 8-family (includes Surface RT and WP8) for how nicely they all work together with skydrive etc and THIS is most likely the feature that will sell the X1 for me if they get it right.

EDIT: I believe Smartglass (or some kind of phone integration anyways) was already confirmed in the original press conference and that one looks nice indeed. Was quite awkward to have to type your password at a friends place with the virtual keyboard

 

[martinmc78]

Im hoping they announce something at E3 or on the run up to launch - Im currently toying with doing a custom build touchscreen windows 8 PC in a coffee table and dismantling and putting my xbox 360 in there as well linked to the monitor to play on my old games. Hopefully with the wifi direct functions the Xbox One will be able to pick up both the PC and the old 360.

 

[Robert Carpenter]

With Wifi-Direct integration, a whole new world of possibilities is open.

The biggest challenge that comes with wireless streaming has always been bandwidth and latency. Not everyone has a completely stable gigabit LAN network to rely on for device-to-device streaming. Wifi-Direct tackles this problem from all angles. We can now stream both output AND input using Wifi-Direct to achieve a nearly identical experience to native use.

Now, take a second to look into what has been seen coming in Windows 8.1. Pre-beta Windows 8.1 WinRT Developer APIs

That link shows a new API for metro apps so that they can display completely different things on different screens. Netflix is a great app to demonstrate these capabilities. Pair your tablet with a second display, whether it's wireless or wired. On your tablet, Netflix would constantly show you it's Library/Database so you can search other shows/movies and the usual other stuff, while the second screen would be used mainly for displaying the current streaming show or movie.

Very excited to see the possibilities that arise in the future. I have faith that Microsoft will eventually take advantage of WinRT to innovate and utilize these new technological advances.

 

[Andygoes]

I'm hoping to hear something about PC/X1 cross platform game compatibility. We're getting so close - the X1 is built on X86 and has W8 running on it (the core, anyway). How awesome would it be if the games were essentially the Metro style UI games, except AAA titles? This might be the beginning of how MS wants to get game developers to transition away from the desktop to the metro environment on PC. The way they are talking about it, it seems as though the interface is basically W8 minus the desktop (with ability to snap), so why not? (oh, right, money)

 

[Coreldan]

But what does Wifi direct require hardware wise? My PC doesn't even have a WLAN capable card atm, just the usual ethernet-cable ****, so I suppose without some kind of extra hardware I can't use that one. I suppose the Surface RT might be hardware capable for that as it is already.

 

[MacDaMachine]

Remote play to any Windows 8 device, then they announce a 7-8 inch surface tablet for $200.

BEAST

Wishful thinking eh?

 

[iBandar]

^ Not really, that's Microsoft's plan since the beginning. Why do you think they are pushing smartglass so much?

 

[martinmc78]

^ Not really, that's Microsoft's plan since the beginning. Why do you think they are pushing smartglass so much?

Its no good pushing smartglass without sorting out the functionality first. The demos looked great at last years event when they first showed it off - all the extra content that would be available when watching films and playing games - all you get to use it for at the moment is a remote and a keyboard. Its only been in the last two months that they have started pushing films through xbox movies with added features but you have to pay 1500 MS points for the privilege. 343 had the right idea for smartglass with atlus for halo reach via waypoint. Would be good if they shipped Halo 5 with an updated version that made proper use of smartglass as there isn't any point for doing it for halo 4 now.

 

[iBandar]

Its no good pushing smartglass without sorting out the functionality first. The demos looked great at last years event when they first showed it off - all the extra content that would be available when watching films and playing games - all you get to use it for at the moment is a remote and a keyboard. Its only been in the last two months that they have started pushing films through xbox movies with added features but you have to pay 1500 MS points for the privilege. 343 had the right idea for smartglass with atlus for halo reach via waypoint. Would be good if they shipped Halo 5 with an updated version that made proper use of smartglass as there isn't any point for doing it for halo 4 now.

That was just the beginning. Xbox One has a deep smartglass integration, wait to be blown away

 

[martinmc78]

That was just the beginning. Xbox One has a deep smartglass integration, wait to be blown away

Ive heard that line before. It wasn't a very good beginning for what was originally shown. Its the same with virtually everything MS has ever come up with. They show people what it can do but want other people to do the work. Smartglass, Kinect for PC and illumiroom are prime examples.

Im not knocking MS here by the way, the stuff that comes out of Microsoft Research is ground breaking and truly astounding. Its just everyone else seems to be too lazy to put in the effort to make it work. Films are a prime example if you buy a blu ray the additional content that you get is astounding but its only available on your tv through your player interrupting your film as you access it. So whats the problem in transferring it to smartglass to make it work as MS intended?

 

[iBandar]

Ive heard that line before. It wasn't a very good beginning for what was originally shown. Its the same with virtually everything MS has ever come up with. They show people what it can do but want other people to do the work. Smartglass, Kinect for PC and illumiroom are prime examples.

Im not knocking MS here by the way, the stuff that comes out of Microsoft Research is ground breaking and truly astounding. Its just everyone else seems to be too lazy to put in the effort to make it work. Films are a prime example if you buy a blu ray the additional content that you get is astounding but its only available on your tv through your player interrupting your film as you access it. So whats the problem in transferring it to smartglass to make it work as MS intended?

Have you seen Kinect 2.0? Or read views from people who have used it? Its generation ahead from the orignal Kinect.
It detects your heartbeat, blood pressure, facial expressions, muscle pressure, joint moment and so on. Look at leap from Xbox to Xbox 360. They always get the product right on second time.

I already said, smartglass was just an application before, which was added to Xbox 360. Wasn’t working natively, and had many limitations. Now its part of Xbox One from ground up, and will do TONS more then just using it as a secondary controller.

 

[martinmc78]

Have you seen Kinect 2.0? Or read views from people who have used it? Its generation ahead from the orignal Kinect.
It detects your heartbeat, blood pressure, facial expressions, muscle pressure, joint moment and so on. Look at leap from Xbox to Xbox 360. They always get the product right on second time.

I already said, smartglass was just an application before, which was added to Xbox 360. Wasn’t working natively, and had many limitations. Now its part of Xbox One from ground up, and will do TONS more then just using it as a secondary controller.

You've completely missed my point - what MS shows in the demos works great, looks amazing and has awesome potential. But its not down to MS to realise the potential of the Kinect 2 or smartglass

What good is being able to see your facial expressions, heart beat and blood pressure if the games and apps that follow from launch don't take advantage of it? Smartglass may be built into the xbox one but will still be an application on phones and tablets but what good is it if the game designers and movie/tv providers don't give access to the additional content.

And I don't get your point about MS getting it right second time there was nothing wrong with the original Xbox. The leap between that and the 360 was mainly hardware and software driven as is the jump from the 360 to One. Its not about getting things right next time.

The original potential of the Kinect and smartglass on the 360 was met by only a handful of games and movies. Im just hoping that more companies get on board this time around.

 

[DaveGx]

Ive heard that line before. It wasn't a very good beginning for what was originally shown. Its the same with virtually everything MS has ever come up with. They show people what it can do but want other people to do the work. Smartglass, Kinect for PC and illumiroom are prime examples.

Im not knocking MS here by the way, the stuff that comes out of Microsoft Research is ground breaking and truly astounding. Its just everyone else seems to be too lazy to put in the effort to make it work. Films are a prime example if you buy a blu ray the additional content that you get is astounding but its only available on your tv through your player interrupting your film as you access it. So whats the problem in transferring it to smartglass to make it work as MS intended?

I agree. To me, MS has a history of showing some awesome "research" and demos that never live up to it or never are released. I like MS products but I'm always skeptical when they show a demo or research or their vision. Even the quickness and smoothness of the XboxOne OS functionality I'm skeptical of until i see it in my living room.
Its easy to think back of many things they've shown in the past that you never seen again or weren't even close to meeting expectations when whatever it was, was released

 

[Robert Carpenter]

You've completely missed my point - what MS shows in the demos works great, looks amazing and has awesome potential. But its not down to MS to realise the potential of the Kinect 2 or smartglass

What good is being able to see your facial expressions, heart beat and blood pressure if the games and apps that follow from launch don't take advantage of it? Smartglass may be built into the xbox one but will still be an application on phones and tablets but what good is it if the game designers and movie/tv providers don't give access to the additional content.

And I don't get your point about MS getting it right second time there was nothing wrong with the original Xbox. The leap between that and the 360 was mainly hardware and software driven as is the jump from the 360 to One. Its not about getting things right next time.

The original potential of the Kinect and smartglass on the 360 was met by only a handful of games and movies. Im just hoping that more companies get on board this time around.

The situation is very different now so things will be improved.

Kinect was not standard, so the cost of incorporating Kinect features into games that were not focused primarily on Kinect was not justified. You can eliminate any multiplatform games from being capable of taking advantage of Kinect or Smartglass because these games are usually developed once and then the same source code is compiled to run on all platforms.

Smartglass is about 6 months old. You have to remember that after SmartGlass launched it was only available for Windows 8, it took a lot of time before it was available on iOS, then more time before it was available on Android, and more time before it was available on Windows Phone. Smartglass has been available on all major platforms for less than 6 months. Also add the fact that most game development is a long process. A lot of games still being released are games that entered development long before SmartGlass was even announced.

We also have no idea what things were like from a Developer API point of view. A game might have had very limited Kinect capabilities if the game was not developed for Kinect being the primary source of input. A lot of games run on popular engines like Unreal Engine 3. The engine is what handles the compatibility and availability for each platform.

-Example: As a developer, you develop a game with Unreal Engine 3 and use every tool they give you. They give you EVERYTHING you possibly need. And as long as you use what they give you, your game is guaranteed to work on all platforms. If a game is developed for multiple platforms, the game developers rarely touch anything that is specific to each platforms.


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Unfortunately, not much will change will multiplatform games. However, platform exclusives have much more incentive to develop these features because they are now completely deployed to each user and available to almost every customer.

 

[martinmc78]

The situation is very different now so things will be improved.

Kinect was not standard, so the cost of incorporating Kinect features into games that were not focused primarily on Kinect was not justified. You can eliminate any multiplatform games from being capable of taking advantage of Kinect or Smartglass because these games are usually developed once and then the same source code is compiled to run on all platforms.

Smartglass is about 6 months old. You have to remember that after SmartGlass launched it was only available for Windows 8, it took a lot of time before it was available on iOS, then more time before it was available on Android, and more time before it was available on Windows Phone. Smartglass has been available on all major platforms for less than 6 months. Also add the fact that most game development is a long process. A lot of games still being released are games that entered development long before SmartGlass was even announced.

We also have no idea what things were like from a Developer API point of view. A game might have had very limited Kinect capabilities if the game was not developed for Kinect being the primary source of input. A lot of games run on popular engines like Unreal Engine 3. The engine is what handles the compatibility and availability for each platform.

-Example: As a developer, you develop a game with Unreal Engine 3 and use every tool they give you. They give you EVERYTHING you possibly need. And as long as you use what they give you, your game is guaranteed to work on all platforms. If a game is developed for multiple platforms, the game developers rarely touch anything that is specific to each platforms.


​

Unfortunately, not much will change will multiplatform games. However, platform exclusives have much more incentive to develop these features because they are now completely deployed to each user and available to almost every customer.

I do hope your right. Now these options are available with every Xbox One shipped it will give devs a lot more potential and I do agree with you on the points you've made.

There is still a big IF floating over all of this though. There is no doubt good things can be done with what MS has provided. 343's Atlus for halo reach, voice commands in Skyrim added post launch as free DLC. (Im not going to say smartglass extras in movies is a current bonus as I don't think paying ?15 for a film is worth the cost no matter how much extra is on it.) But its still down to devs and publishers with budgets and deadlines to see IF they can make use of the extra functions and still keep to budget and deadline.