Xbox One users will have to pay extra for Skype and gamer-gratifying DVR Microsoft has released the first unboxing video of its forthcoming Xbox One console, along with details on its pricing policy. The bad news is that gamers will have to pay extra for some features, but on the plus side they get a free mono headset. When the Xbox One was shown off for the first time, Microsoft's Don Matrick, …
"PS4 is the better value for the moment. + NO KINECT!"
But Kinect 2 is far more powerful than anything the PS4 has in that space - and the price gap is less than the retail value of Kinect 2 - which as Kinect 1 was £130, we could assume is at least the same....So the Xbox One seems better value to me. The PS4 is the poor man's choice...
But is it powerful enough? Few of us have had a chance to use it. John Carmack says it is (a) laggy; (b) like using a no-button mouse. I gather it can track arm positions, but not fingers, so no good way to "click" at a point. I hope it turns out to be better than it sounds, but currently it does not appear to be an asset worth paying the extra money for even if you liked that kind of thing.
Sony have always responded to the problem by, in effect, cheating and solving an easier problem. Their old Eye controller had a big sphere on it, so the camera could recognise it from any angle and deduce distance from its size. The new controller has bar light on it with known shape and colour, to similarly make life easier for the system. PS4 may be "less powerful", but if it works more effectively in real living rooms, it could be the better option.
Doesn't really matter how powerful it is if no one wants to use it. So far there's been almost no interest in the dev community and there's not even much sign of pressure from above to do interesting things with it. Just like Kinect on 360, it looks destined to be ignored by game developers.
There's also talk that the improvements aren't in practice very useful. The oft repeated 'give commands to your team with finger gestures' example, someone with access to Kinect 2 claims it can't actually track fingers to do that!
We also know that the few attempts to make interesting Kinect games for core gamers were an absolute disaster, unreliable and laggy. No core gamer is going to willingly abandon low latency, reliable joypad control for 60ms of Kinect2 lag.
It's another feature that Microsoft needs but no one else does. It's going to be a great remote control for XBone as a media centre. And that's all it's ever going to be used for.
>Doesn't really matter how powerful it is if no one wants to use it.
I agree with you, but Kinect does seem to be advancing the state of the art in these types of controller. Just like the WII did.
Doesn't mean I will buy anything from MS, much less an XBOX, unless it is really compelling, but think of what an Oculus Rift + a decent positional controller could do if well-integrated into a hack & slash RPG.
Could be Snow Crash all over again, no? So don't knock them for trying.
Kinect 2 hardware accelerated, is less laggy than the PS Eye, and has 1080p resolution and a depth sensor compared to 720p only on the PS Eye so will be significantly more accurate (not to mention tracking multiple points on up to 6 people at once versus one or two points)...
>The PS4 is the poor man's choice...
I can comfortably afford both of them and had planned on getting both, but I've only pre-ordered the PS4 because there are just too many unknowns about privacy and hidden charges with the xBone, so I've decided to adopt a "wait and see" policy for it.
*If* there are no stories about people being secretly videoed or spied on in their own homes by the xBone in the first 12 months, I'll probably buy one. Until then I see the PS4 as the smarter choice which just happens to be cheaper.
Oh Padawon, your training as a Level 4 consumer is complete. You are now fully comfortable to throw away your money on worthless crapola. You display the full awareness of the 'nothing' that a consumer wanders in daily. The willingness to spend spend spend, shows your leveling up to Level 4 is totally warranted. Yes, don't save for college, don't donate any time to volunteer services, don't contribute to society. These are the true attributes the 'corporation' is looking for. Soon, you will start constructing your gold credit card for purchasing worthless crap all over the galaxy.
Duuuuuuuuuude, how many bad moves can a company make from 3 product lines (tablet, OS, gaming)...and still not make a right decision? I guess we'll find out.
Little 8 year old Bobby wants to record his Minecraft session and invite Timmy over to his house to watch it on the weekend. Of course, of course he'll need an internet connection and a 60usd subscription...why wouldn't he? :-/
To be fair, I don't know how the Sony "share" feature works, it could be the same. However, if it was, after this news it probably is now offline and free.
Bobby doesn't need it if his dad has one, as was also announced at E3 (but because its a good feature the press won't bother mentioning it) is that one Xbox Live Gold account registered on the console will allow other members of the household access the features without needing to have one, while still using their own profile.
Its like they never mention that if I purchase DLC or games directly from the console (haven't tried other sources), my son has access to them too.
Right now me and my son have separate Gold accounts on the 360, when the new one comes out I can let his expire.
FAIL. In our house, little Bobby has almost exclusive use of the game console(*) in the small amount of time when the rest of the family aren't watching actual TV programs on the TV. His dad does everything he wants, gaming included, on a proper computer, away from the TV.
There is no way his dad will be shelling out on annual subscriptions for console gaming.
(* currently a PS2, which is still going strong!)
fugly offspring of a PS2 and a VCR
Nice PS3 touch sensitive button to switch on too
I owned every UK games console released since (and including) the NES before I emigrated to Aus and there's not a thing that's made me want to buy a current generation games console since I got here and the next generation leaves me so far actively disliking it.
Think I'll hang out more at SG bar in Sydney who have an Atari 2600 (with original wooden veneer finish) set-up and running in the back
The actual complaint was that users existing headsets wouldn't work with the new socket. I guess they decided pissing off 360 owners who'd bought better headsets wasn't important compared to throwing another freebie at new owners. So that's a whole pile of existing core gamers required to spend more money buying a headset plug adaptor and new owners that probably would have been happy with Kinect audio getting another reason not to use Kinect!
Demonstrating Microsofts infallible ability to hear feedback then do anything but address the problem. They just keep digging.
Pay for Skype and DVR content? No thanks, we can already get these services for free through a multitude of devices, a Sky HD box, Freeview, a Freesat HD Box and number of PC's tablets and smartphones.
As for 4k HD, well there aren't that many HD channels to start with (no I don't pay a Sky subscription so that I can watch re-runs of stuff that I already have on DVD and Blu Ray, and prefer a weekly cinema visit and the odd budget blu ray purchase), so not holding my breath on that one.
As for even pricier Xbox Live, I'm already paying about 65 quid a year for two subs for my offspring, however as they have now exhausted the Halo series, they've now switched to PS3 on-line titles that are free to play. They'll be no renewals.
Let's see where the Xbox 1 and PS4 get to in a years times, barring some stunning games, I can't see what these have to offer over the Xbox 360, Kinnect and PS3 we already have. With the recent news that MS are going to 'overclock' the Xbox 1, it does remind me that our Xbox died no less than 5 times. The first of these deaths and the subsequent lengthy repair wait meant that we bought a PS3. That was in early in 2007, that PS3 still works fine, and doesn't 'need' 'replacing' with a PS4 yet, or for quite some time. 'Replacing' as the new consoles are not backwards compatible.
Where did you get that idea?
This IS the XBox Live charge. What we see here is just more people whining about it. Anyone who actually cared about $63/year bought their subscription half-price on Ebay or got a PS3 instead and those people - who clearly weren't in the market for an Xbox One anyway - are the ones shitting themselves over this "extra" (but actually completely unchanged) charge.
"Xbox Live Gold now includes Skype and some other shit as well as what it already supplied" isn't such a click-baity headline, though.
The separate power brick is a common design shortcut. It makes it easier to get the safety approvals (UL, CE, etc) for the console box because it's all low voltage. They design one power brick and get it certified for all the high voltage shock & fire safety tests, then they can make all sorts of console variants without having to re-certify the power supply.
Actually it's not just the "one certification" of a PSU, if you have an internal PSU the rules are more strict too.
Two possible reasons for this:
1. Internal PSU may get hotter due to less airflow etc.
2. Internal mains wiring could detach and touch the metal case (okay, not applicable to a plastic console).
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