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Reflexx

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http://pastebin.com/uCmdh9jB


>The thing is we suck at telling the story. The whole point of the DRM switch from disc based to cloud based is to kill disc swapping, scratched discs, bringing discs to friends house, trade-ins for **** value with nothign going back to developers, and high game costs. If you want games cheaper then 59.99, you have to limit used games somehow. Steam's model requires a limited used game model.

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>The thing is, the DRM is really really similar to steam... You can login anywhere and play your games, anyone in your house can play with the family xbox. The only diff is steam you have to sign in before playing, and Xbox does it automatically at night for you (once per 24 hours)

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>It's a long tail strategy, just like steam. Steam had it's growing pains at the beginning with all it's drm **** as well. [...] For digital downloads steam had no real competition at the time, they were competing against boxed sales. At the time people were pretty irate about steam, (on 4chan too...) It was only once they had a digital marketplace with DRM that was locked down to prevent sharing that they could do super discounted ****.

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>Think about it, on steam you get a game for the true cost of the game, 5$-30$. On a console you have to pay for that PLUS any additional licenses for when you sell / trade / borrow / etc. If the developer / publisher can't get it on additional licenses (like steam), then they charge the first person more. [...] If we say "Hey publishers, you limit game to 39.99, we ensure every license transfer you get 10$, gamestop gets 20$" that is a decent model... Microsoft gets a license fee on first and subsequent game purchases, compared to just first now? That's a revenue increase.

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>Competition is the best man, it helps drive both to new heights. See technology from the Cold War. If we had no USSR, we'd be way worse off today. TLDR: Bring it on Steam :)

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2/4

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>Yeah we passed that around the office at Xbox. Most of us were like "Well played Sony, Well played". That being said they are just riding the hype train of ZOMG THEY ARE TRYING TO **** US FOR NO REASON. Without actually thinking about how convienent it would be for the majority of the time to not find that disc your brother didn't put back... [...] just simpleminded people not seeing the bigger picture. Some PS4 viral team made them all "U TOOK R DISCS" and they hiveminded.

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>Everyone and their mother complains about how gamestop ****s them on their trade ins, getting 5$ for their used games. We come in trying to find a way to take money out of gamestop, and put some in developers and get you possibly cheaper games and everyone bitches at MS. Well, if you want the @#$@ing from Gamestop, go play PS4.

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>The goal is to move to digital downloads, but Gamestop, Walmart, Target, Amazon are KIND OF ******* ENTRENCHED in the industry. They have a lot of power, and the shift has to be gradual. Long term goal is steam for consoles. [...] If you always want to stay with what you have, then keep current consoles, or a PS4. We're TRYING to move the industry forwards towards digital distribution... it'sa bumpy road

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>Publishers have enourmous power. Microsoft is trying to balance between consumer delight, and publisher wishes. If we cave to far in either direction you have a non-starting product. WiiU goes too far to consumer, you have no 3rd party support to shake a stick at. PS4 is status-quo. XB1 is trying to push some things, at the expense of others. We have a vision, we'll see if it works in the coming years

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>Living room transformation. We want to own the living room. Every living room TV with an XBox on input one. It's the thing that gives the signal to your TV, everything is secondary. The future, where games, TV, internet telephony, all that **** happens magically on some huge *** screen with hand / voice gestures... That's our goal.

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3/4

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>Google TV + PS4 + Minority report level gestures, that combined with a sick second screen experience (which is really hot for TV, I know I know.. tv tv tv tv tv... but it's ******* sick when you have it). Games will be the same, there are more exclusives to MS then PS atm, and Kinect 2 makes Kinect 1 look like a childs toy.

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>By default it's on, listening for "Xbox On". You can turn it off tho, and turn the console like OFF off. OFF off is required for Germany / other countries that require it (no vampire appliances) [...] It has to be plugged in for the console to post. You can turn off everything it does from the settings. Think of it like airplane mode for the iPhone. You can't just unplug the cellular radio, but you can turn it off.

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>Instead of 10mins, is 24hrs for your console, and 1 or 2 at a friends house. Really the majority of people have a speck of internet at least once a day. And if you don't. Don't buy an Xbox 1. Just like if you didn't have a broadband connection don't get Live, and if you don't have an HDTV the 360 isn't that great for you either. New tech, new req. This allows us to do cool **** when we can assume things like you have a kinect, you have internet, etc.

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>Current plan is basically you're ****ed after 24 hours. Yeah... I know. Kind of sucks. I believe they will probably revist the time period and / or find a diff way to "call in" to ensure you haven't sold your license to gamestop or something... but there is no plan YET. I'm hoping the change it, but I don't work on that so I don't have much influence there /sigh

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>If the power goes out you ain't playing ****. I'm assuming you mean the internet goes out but you have power for TV and Xbox. Yes, You're ****ed for single player games. Again, that's the PoR (Plan of record), but I expect it to change after the e3 cluster****

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>What fee? There is no fee to play your games at your friends house. Never has, never will. Even x360 digital downloads could do that.

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4/4

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>The cloud capabilities is the **** they like the most. We basically made a huge cloud compute **** and made it free. What people are doing with it is kind of cool. THe original intention was to get all the Multiplayer servers not requiring 3rd party costs (Like EA shutting down game servers to cut costs), as well as taking all the games that servers hosted by the clients (Halo, etc), and have all that compute done in the cloud allowing more CPU cycles for gameplay. That will really expand what developers can do. Anything that doesn't need per frame calculation and can handle 100ms delays can be shifted to the cloud. That's huge.

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>SmartGlass + IE is going to be pretty freaking sweet. 1 finger cursor, 2 finger direct manip. Basically if you think of a laptop trackpad where your phone/ slate is the trackpad and the monitor is your TV... it's that. The tech is there, just needs to be applied. There is some really cool **** going on with Petra + controllers that pairs people with controllers. So if person with controller two trades controlers with controller 1, their profiles magically switch. It's sick. What does this matter? Now if you lean left/right it knows which person is leaning, even if 4 people are all int he same room. It's awesome.

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>New service using Azure for cloud compute. Allows developers to not use clients for hosting multiplayer servers, or other tasks that do not require per frame calcuations. It's pretty sweet.

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>Honestly, if you care about anything other then pure games AT ALL. Xbox 1 > PS4. If all you do is play games, and nothing else, PS4.

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This was all from the Microsoft engineer that was on /b/ last night.

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>It's not worth my time to prove it, or risk my Job. I work in Studio A, 40th ave in Redmond, Wa. The thai place in the studio cafeteria has double punch wednesdays. Go ahead and call them and verify if you want.
 

HeyCori

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Thanks for this. Very informative. The engineer could definitely have more... tact... but he's a engineer and not a spokesperson.
 

Keith Wallace

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I really don't get the point of this. I don't think that his comments helped the situation whatsoever, nor can I say with certainty that he is who he claims he is. All he said is that emulating Steam is their intention, but I've not seen anything to show that it will occur. He verified the Kinect things that are my biggest problem with the console. He didn't even defend the whole "console won't post without the Kinect" decision.

So while there was some barely-informative stuff here, I don't see how his posting made Microsoft's actions look any better.
 

Keith Wallace

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Also, line 30 was just moronic. With the original Xbox, LIVE was just an added software service, and the original Halo carried the console to major sales before it even existed, proving that online play wasn't a major point of contention at the time. The console worked without it. With the 360, the console got a visual boost through an HDTV, but the console was still enjoyable with a standard-definition TV. With this third console, not having the allegedly-similar situation fulfilled (never having a long Internet outage), the console becomes unusable. The comparison would be that without LIVE, the Xbox wouldn't function, or without an HDTV, the 360 wouldn't function. That's wasn't the case in the past.
 

Reflexx

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The point is that it is what it is. There's a reason and purpose behind it.

You dont have to like it. You dont have to understand. You dont have to agree.

You can get something else.

I, for one, look forward to seeing their vision implemented. And I hope that they don't bow down to pressure from people that want to gimp that.
 

sciencefair

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This reads more like something an xbox one enthusiast would write rather than an actual engineer working on the console...especially considering this was sourced from 4chan.
 

Mystictrust

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This is easier to read, even over the pastebin link that OP provided, on Neowin: Anonymous Xbox engineer explains DRM and Microsoft's Xbox One intentions - Neowin

I don't think this needs to read as if it's from an "engineer" at Microsoft. That may be his position/job title, but (assuming he works at Microsoft) he could just as easily have been dumping all of his collected thoughts out from discussions with lots of people about this over however long Xbox One has been in development (years). While I certainly would have been much more tactful, particularly if I am stating that I work for Microsoft... meaning that I KNOW I am representing them in some capacity... this reads like something that *I* would write at this moment. And I consider myself a software engineer in training (*ahem* full-time student, about to graduate with bachelor's degree in August, looking for work). Either way, my point is, this guy obviously doesn't care how he comes across but wanted to dump out his opinions stemming from his knowledge on the inside.

He's very blunt, but I do like what he is saying. Truly Microsoft or not, it makes sense to me, pulling a Steam-like gaming business model. For the console world, it's kind of pushing everyone kicking and screaming into the next generation, driving innovation, etc. We have no idea if prices will drop like crazy, or if Microsoft can (or will) offer crazy Steam-like price sales, but it certainly CAN be a possibility that prices in the mainstream console gaming industry could DROP as a result of this - at least for titles on the Xbox. Maybe physical discs, maybe digital-only versions, maybe only for the non-powerhouse publishers (*ahem* no way would it ever be Electronic Art$)... it could happen
 
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Keith Wallace

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The point is that it is what it is. There's a reason and purpose behind it.

You dont have to like it. You dont have to understand. You dont have to agree.

You can get something else.

I, for one, look forward to seeing their vision implemented. And I hope that they don't bow down to pressure from people that want to gimp that.

There is literally no logical reason to require a Kinect to be plugged in, beyond the ability to watch users. My unplugging my Kinect does not take money out of anyone's pocket, nor does it hamper the experience of others. Therefore, the only interpretation for "their vision" that fits that action is that their vision is to be able to spy on users. I don't want to see that implemented.
 

sciencefair

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This is easier to read, even over the pastebin link that OP provided, on Neowin: Anonymous Xbox engineer explains DRM and Microsoft's Xbox One intentions - Neowin

I don't think this needs to read as if it's from an "engineer" at Microsoft. That may be his position/job title, but (assuming he works at Microsoft) he could just as easily have been dumping all of his collected thoughts out from discussions with lots of people about this over however long Xbox One has been in development (years). While I certainly would have been much more tactful, particularly if I am stating that I work for Microsoft... meaning that I KNOW I am representing them in some capacity... this reads like something that *I* would write at this moment. And I consider myself a software engineer in training (*ahem* full-time student, about to graduate in August, looking for work). Either way, my point is, this guy obviously doesn't care how he comes across but wanted to dump out his opinions stemming from his knowledge on the inside.

He's very blunt, but I do like what he is saying. Truly Microsoft or not, it makes sense to me, pulling a Steam-like gaming business model. For the console world, it's kind of pushing everyone kicking and screaming into the next generation, driving innovation, etc. We have no idea if prices will drop like crazy, or if Microsoft can (or will) offer crazy Steam-like price sales, but it certainly CAN be a possibility that prices in the mainstream console gaming industry could DROP as a result of this - at least for titles on the Xbox. Maybe physical discs, maybe digital-only versions, maybe only for the non-powerhouse publishers (*ahem* no way would it ever be Electronic Art$)... it could happen
The $60 price point is unfeasible, as is AAA game development as it currently stands-Resident Evil 6 should not have to sell 6 million copies to break even. I want to see game prices come down to $30 to $40 and game budgets to not balloon to crazy levels.

That being said, everything in this pastebin is conjecture, and I'm not sure if Microsoft is a company I can trust to bring prices down until they provide clear evidence that this is a route they plan to pursue with their system. I don't think we will realistically see game prices go below $60 at retail until several high-profile AAA titles fail, and it's possible that the One's DRM system isn't a necessity for the lower price to be feasible for developers and publishers.
 

Mystictrust

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There is literally no logical reason to require a Kinect to be plugged in, beyond the ability to watch users. My unplugging my Kinect does not take money out of anyone's pocket, nor does it hamper the experience of others. Therefore, the only interpretation for "their vision" that fits that action is that their vision is to be able to spy on users. I don't want to see that implemented.
I have no idea if this was their actually intention, but I have always been thinking of it like this: Microsoft is giving every developer 100% assurance that not only does every Xbox One ship with a Kinect, but every single Xbox One gamer will HAVE a working Kinect with their system that can be turned on. It won't be on the shelf collecting dust. It won't be sitting in a box waiting for someone to buy it on eBay. It will be right next to the Xbox. A developer could integrate Kinect in a way that interests a user enough to turn the Kinect features on to check it out. Maybe the most hardcore Kinect hater could hear about a feature, or hear their friends talking about it, and become interested enough to use it, or even start to look out for games with excellent Kinect augmentation. It could happen.

My take is that it simply allows developers to KNOW with 100% certainty that it is completely available, and to not hold back on making a Kinect feature an important part of the game. You never once have to shout "ARROWS" in Ryse to have the archers shoot off their arrows around you, but it's an awesome touch. The developers of Ryse knew that developing a feature like that wouldn't be for naught, because they will never see a disconnected Kinect for Xbox One on eBay
 

Keith Wallace

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I have no idea if this was their actually intention, but I have always been thinking of it like this: Microsoft is giving every developer 100% assurance that not only does every Xbox One ship with a Kinect, but every single Xbox One gamer will HAVE a working Kinect with their system that can be turned on. It won't be on the shelf collecting dust. It won't be sitting in a box waiting for someone to buy it on eBay. It will be right next to the Xbox. A developer could integrate Kinect in a way that interests a user enough to turn the Kinect features on to check it out. Maybe the most hardcore Kinect hater could hear about a feature, or hear their friends talking about it, and become interested enough to use it, or even start to look out for games with excellent Kinect augmentation. It could happen.

That's really not a reasonable conclusion, though. My likelihood of using a Kinect goes DOWN with this idea. I'd be willing to buy the Kinect, though I won't use it much, but telling me I HAVE to plug it in shuts me down to using it completely. If all it needs is to be plugged in (and it doesn't need to see the user for the console to function), I will literally wrap the thing in foil and never use it because I think that the concept is THAT dumb. Making someone buy the thing is one matter--they can use console sales as a point in-favor of developing for the Kinect. However, telling developers that the Kinect is plugged in doesn't really hold any MORE weight that "the Kinect has been purchased."

Just as not having the requirement can mean a Kinect on a shelf, having the requirement can mean having a bunch of Kinects wasting space an electricity without ever being used.
 

Mystictrust

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Just as not having the requirement can mean a Kinect on a shelf, having the requirement can mean having a bunch of Kinects wasting space an electricity without ever being used.
Heh, I think we will have to "agree to disagree" here. A plugged in Kinect being unused and wasting electricity (although, I don't think it has an external power source, and instead draws off the console similar to the way USB can charge a phone off a computer) still has more potential to be turned on and used than a Kinect sitting on a shelf, or on eBay, or in a recycle or trash bin. I mean, if you're literally going to wrap the thing in foil, you wouldn't have it sitting on a shelf. You would be throwing it away and getting it as far away from you as possible. And not you personally, I mean the collective you... plenty of people out there will be covering up their Kinect in one form or another (The NSA thing didn't help any). I suppose you could argue "They wouldn't ever use it anyway" but you know... that is still more potential than if you got rid of the thing. I'm not going to go searching for a replacement if a Kinect game caught my eye, I'll just skip the game. But if it's available, and someone decides to turn on and uncover their Kinect for just one game, then it's a success. The developer has integrated it in such a unique/interesting way to that person, that they actually were compelled enough to look for that feature and use it, or even buy the game because of it.
 

Reflexx

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There is literally no logical reason to require a Kinect to be plugged in, beyond the ability to watch users. My unplugging my Kinect does not take money out of anyone's pocket, nor does it hamper the experience of others. Therefore, the only interpretation for "their vision" that fits that action is that their vision is to be able to spy on users. I don't want to see that implemented.

Except that the console is built to be almost like a personal assistant for media. It needs to hear your commands. For the non-gaming side, the voice and gesture controls are actually MORE important than the physical game controller.

If you're just going to make a ridiculous assumption that the only reason it could be there is to spy on you, then that's on you. You obviously have things you need to work out that I can't help you with.
 

_Emi_

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There is literally no logical reason to require a Kinect to be plugged in, beyond the ability to watch users. My unplugging my Kinect does not take money out of anyone's pocket, nor does it hamper the experience of others. Therefore, the only interpretation for "their vision" that fits that action is that their vision is to be able to spy on users. I don't want to see that implemented.


sigh... really, why dont you just wrap with foil the Kinect after you make your awesome tin foil hat, so you would be sure to block any magical spying power?

when will you stop your.......behaviour? for all your posts you have written, you are not even getting Xbox One, so why are you so worried about it having Kinect? you don't even know what it does, how it will do it. but hey the engineer says you can turn the system off completely, so at least none would spy you while the xbox is off *sarcasm*

why are you even in Internet if you are so afraid of someone spying on you? (well you are the one making this stupid "spying theory" not me) you know.. internet = make it easier for someone to spy you and know about you. but but... you know what is this site about? about windows PHONE. you know... phones have cameras, or are you using a non existent consumer windows phone with no camera? or maybe you cover the camera with a tape or something? wow.. just start to sell your tv, your computer, your cameras, your phones because EVERYONE is and will spy you!!. you are so interesting everyone wants to spy you *sarcasm again obviously.*

the vision with Microsoft and Kinect is one.. if you don't like it, just don't get it. if you cant even see (and they showed it) why Microsoft wants Kinect on it, in every xbox one sold, then you are really blind and you have no vision for an innovative future. there is no proves or anything to back up your amazing spying theory anyway... or do you have one? oh well, I know you have nothing to back it up. next retard story/rumor/complain theory please?
but have a good day! :)
 

MerlotC

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Engineer or not I agree with his analysis. Purely digital is the future. The benefits of digital outweigh any downside for me (actually there is no downside for me and I will probably just download all my games). And I cant believe people are worried about Kinect spying on them. If you're that paranoid throw a towel over it...sheesh.
 

Polychrome

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I had a co-worker pretty much predict everything that's happening with the Xbox 1 right now. It's creepily accurate, and steam really is the best way to put it.

The guy pretty much talks like other programmers and engineers I've known, so I do believe the language is, at the very least, the type of thing those guys would say.
 

boxa72

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Yeah I agree with...well whoever tha guy is coz this $#@t is gonna b amazing!! I'll b in line like everybody else n so will all tha naysayers;) it should b Google ur worried about not MS
 

mv740

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I found it weird that people are mad about a console asking them to have internet 24/24h it's 2013... You are choosing to buy a 400$ or 500$ console + couple of 70$ games and you still dont have internet at home... People are asking for faster 3g/lte speed for their phones so im sure basic internet is accessible for everyone lol
 

Condairy Windham

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People simply want to hv something to fuss about. I'm excited n can't wait for Xbox one. Like I told someone on the Xbox forums... Be thankful you hv MS building such machines... If it wasn't for these guys and others we would b outside throwing rocks in a pond... Counting the ripples and keeping score.
 
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