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Krisnatharok
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Krisnatharok

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Xbox One "a sin against all servicemembers"

You know you have a PR disaster on your hands when the military news sites start blasting your console:
said by Marine Corps Times :

New Xbox 'a sin against all service members'

Microsoft says troops should use old gear instead

Navy Lt. Scott Metcalf was eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new Xbox One. Now he’s not even sure if he’ll buy one.

Indeed, for many in the military, the next-gen Xbox console may offer more endemic frustration than grand epic gaming, particularly for those deployed downrange, aboard ships and stationed overseas.

---

Can play only in Xbox One-friendly countries. Even if you’re lucky enough to have a regular, reliable Internet connection while overseas, you’ll have to be in one of 21 countries included in Microsoft’s server network. So, if you’re stationed in, say, Germany, Italy or Great Briatin, you’re good to go. But if you’re based in Japan, Kuwait or Afghanistan, you’re out of luck.

Will have region-locked games. Games bought in the U.S. can be activated only in the U.S. That means no more ripping open the latest title that just arrived in a care package from home while you’re deployed. And forget about buying games locally when overseas — if your Xbox Live account isn’t tied to the region when you activate a game, it won’t play.

Serious security concerns. Even when the Xbox One is in sleep mode, its built-in microphone can always listen in. It’s a feature developers say will provide quick voice-command access to games and apps — but that could spook commanders who might worry the always-connected device could also capture more than just idle chit-chat among troops.

Microsoft: Sucks to be you


C0deZer0
Oc'D To Rhythm And Police
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C0deZer0

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I guess there is some truth to the "third console curse"...

Raible
join:2008-01-23
Plainfield, IN

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These guys are going to engineer themselves right out of the market with all this crap. Some of this stuff is just getting ridiculous. Gates would be well served to think back 30 years ago and remember why he got where he is today.

Gordo74
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join:2003-10-28
Pittsburgh, PA

Gordo74

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said by Raible:

Gates would be well served to think back 30 years ago and remember why he got where he is today.

Gates does not make any decisions nowadays and is relatively disconnected from the company after handing over the reigns 10+ years ago. He is practically retired.
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO
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Can play only in Xbox One-friendly countries. Even if you’re lucky enough to have a regular, reliable Internet connection while overseas, you’ll have to be in one of 21 countries included in Microsoft’s server network. So, if you’re stationed in, say, Germany, Italy or Great Briatin, you’re good to go. But if you’re based in Japan, Kuwait or Afghanistan, you’re out of luck.

Ms isn't letting the xbone be used in Japan!? Well thats stupid of them.

El Quintron
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El Quintron

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said by me1212:

Can play only in Xbox One-friendly countries. Even if you’re lucky enough to have a regular, reliable Internet connection while overseas, you’ll have to be in one of 21 countries included in Microsoft’s server network. So, if you’re stationed in, say, Germany, Italy or Great Briatin, you’re good to go. But if you’re based in Japan, Kuwait or Afghanistan, you’re out of luck.

Ms isn't letting the xbone be used in Japan!? Well thats stupid of them.

I'd go further than that... only 21 countries?

It really does sound like they're shooting themselves in the foot on this one.
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO

me1212

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Apparently Poland is not on the list of the 21, meaning witcher 3 can't be played on xbox in Poland. MS just keeps messing up, and, like you said, shooting themselves in the foot.

El Quintron
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El Quintron

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said by me1212:

Apparently Poland is not on the list of the 21, meaning witcher 3 can't be played on xbox in Poland.

It's foolish, the more I hear about this, the more I think it's a means test to figure out how much they can get away with.
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO

me1212

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Since unless they make it 110% bad enough bone head fanboys will still buy the xbone I think their tests will have bad(for us) results.

El Quintron
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I don't think they have a hardcore fanbase like Apple does though, not to mention there's a competitor that does exactly the same thing, again, unlike Apple.

What's going to happen here, is Microsoft is going to end up with egg on its face, and they're going to have to re-neg on a lot of it.

EQ
me1212
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Lees Summit, MO

me1212

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You'd be surprised how hardcore fanboys xbots are, especially the 12 year old/fratboy dudebros who play cod and halo.

Krisnatharok
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Krisnatharok

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said by me1212:

especially the 12 year old/fratboy douchebros who play cod and halo.

FTFY

El Quintron
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said by me1212:

You'd be surprised how hardcore fanboys xbots are, especially the 12 year old/fratboy dudebros who play cod and halo.

I don't think these guys are going to be willing to put up PC-Like requirements to play a console game, if anything I'd think there would be the first guys to bail.

BonezX
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said by Gordo74:

said by Raible:

Gates would be well served to think back 30 years ago and remember why he got where he is today.

Gates does not make any decisions nowadays and is relatively disconnected from the company after handing over the reigns 10+ years ago. He is practically retired.

he is still on the board for the company, but if you remember xbox is it's own division.

and seriously, it's a stupid easy fix for the 24h call home, it's called a disk check, been used for decades. not to mention Mattrick doesn't seem like he knows what he's doing(mind you he did come over from EA).

pnjunction
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I have enjoyed the original Xbox and the 360 but I will be buying a Playstation (after a couple of years) this time.

banditws6
Shrinking Time and Distance
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join:2001-08-18
Frisco, TX

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said by pnjunction:

I have enjoyed the original Xbox and the 360 but I will be buying a Playstation (after a couple of years) this time.

Yep, same here. Going PS4 and PC from here on out.

I bought the original Xbox in November of 2001. I took delivery of a 360 on launch day. This week I took a good look at my very extensive 360 game collection and realized that I'd better start buying copies of my favorites for the PC so that I still have some hope of digging them out and playing through them again in a few years' time, if the 360's "legendary" hardware reliability is anything to go by. At least Microsoft made it very easy to cut myself off from them by ensuring absolutely none of my 360 wares will be usable in any way, shape or form on future hardware. (To be fair, the same is true of Sony, but I've bought a grand total of 7 PS3 games in the six years I've owned their console.)

Thankfully there have been some very good prices on the PC version of games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Portal 2, Sleeping Dogs and other current-gen goodies in the past few months.

TheBionic
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It's ridiculous what they're doing with the XB1, and I can't believe the flippant and arrogant responses they are giving to gamers about their concerns. MS's response to the dude serving his country in the nuclear sub ("buy a 360") is straight up disrespectful.

I think most console gamers want to buy the XBox 1, but they need a legitimate reason. So far, Microsoft has only given us reasons not to buy it.

skyjock41
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Nuclear Sub guy here. I have my preorder in for the xbox one (mainly for its home media aspect).......but reading this stuff I am seriously considering changing paths. Granted I don't really care to take it underway with me on the boat but this: mic is always on/have to be on the internet/activate games crap is ridiculous.

Can anyone tell me if Sony is doing this same with the PS4? If not I might dabble there.

BonezX
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your a little.late to the party, they changed most of the stuff with the system
me1212
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the xbone doesn't do that crap anymore, but it still requires a kenect and is $100 more than a ps4 and has weaker hardware than the ps4. So, if you changed even now no one would blame you, especially if you do it because you still don't want to support a company that tried to do this stuff to gamers.

Krisnatharok
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1 recommendation

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said by skyjock41:

Nuclear Sub guy here. I have my preorder in for the xbox one (mainly for its home media aspect).......but reading this stuff I am seriously considering changing paths. Granted I don't really care to take it underway with me on the boat but this: mic is always on/have to be on the internet/activate games crap is ridiculous.

Can anyone tell me if Sony is doing this same with the PS4? If not I might dabble there.

As others said, the absolutely massive outcry by gamers called Microsoft to background on most of the features--region locking, always on requirement, etc.

I am guessing the used game policy is more the gaming companies and less the console developer, although Microsoft was certainly eager to play along.

I still wouldn't support them after this. Everyone now knows they are full of crap and will only change when the bottom line is threatened. Punish them anyways by supporting the competitor.

BonezX
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said by me1212:

the xbone doesn't do that crap anymore, but it still requires a kenect and is $100 more than a ps4 and has weaker hardware than the ps4. So, if you changed even now no one would blame you, especially if you do it because you still don't want to support a company that tried to do this stuff to gamers.

it's the same CPU and GPU, just different memory.

and DDR3 is really not that slow, since the hardware spec is set in stone, optimization plays more of a factor then the actual hardware itself.

Goggalor
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said by Krisnatharok:

I still wouldn't support them after this. Everyone now knows they are full of crap and will only change when the bottom line is threatened. Punish them anyways by supporting the competitor.

BOOM! Now, will I support the Xbone later on? Possibly, but for the first year, it will be all PS4/PC for me.

TheBionic
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said by Goggalor:

said by Krisnatharok:

I still wouldn't support them after this. Everyone now knows they are full of crap and will only change when the bottom line is threatened. Punish them anyways by supporting the competitor.

BOOM! Now, will I support the Xbone later on? Possibly, but for the first year, it will be all PS4/PC for me.

Same. I just have no need or want for the Kinect features. I don't remember the last time I watched live tv, it's all DVR here. Titanfall is coming to PC. Maybe one day I'll get the One, it's not out of the question anymore, but the PS4 is still the system I want more of the two.
me1212
join:2008-11-20
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said by BonezX:

said by me1212:

the xbone doesn't do that crap anymore, but it still requires a kenect and is $100 more than a ps4 and has weaker hardware than the ps4. So, if you changed even now no one would blame you, especially if you do it because you still don't want to support a company that tried to do this stuff to gamers.

it's the same CPU and GPU, just different memory.

and DDR3 is really not that slow, since the hardware spec is set in stone, optimization plays more of a factor then the actual hardware itself.

Nope, the ps4 has 50% more gpu cores than the xbone, and the ps4 has 7GB of free ram while the xb1 has one 5GB of free ram. Even with optimization, when the devs learn to use it, the ps4 has more raw resources which will help especially after optimization. DDR3 may not be that slow, but it is slower than gddr5, theres a reason gpus preform better with gddr5, optimization or not, it will help sony a bit.

BonezX
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the PS3 had physically more potential processing power then the 360, that didn't help at all considering that there was next to no developer support beyond "here are dev kits", this gen you might as well say that sony went to MS and asked for help, both systems are DX11.1 parts.

as it stands in general, anything that has been said for specs in terms of the xbone should be grain of salted, considering the guy that said most of it just "left the company"

»allthingsd.com/20130701/ ··· t-zynga/

and good riddance.

in terms of optimization, it completely relies on what type of tools the developer has, we know MS has what would be considered top tier dev kits, Sony has always been at a dis-advantage in that situation.

C0deZer0
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said by me1212:

Nope, the ps4 has 50% more gpu cores than the xbone, and the ps4 has 7GB of free ram while the xb1 has one 5GB of free ram. Even with optimization, when the devs learn to use it, the ps4 has more raw resources which will help especially after optimization. DDR3 may not be that slow, but it is slower than gddr5, theres a reason gpus preform better with gddr5, optimization or not, it will help sony a bit.

Sony purportedly had the stronger hardware this generation of consoles as well... but that didn't help at all for years. In part because the Cell processor was so extremely slanted toward parallel processing, and in part because Sony's own SDK every generation has been completely horrible. To Microsoft's, Nintendo's and even Sega's credit, their SDK's for their respective console hardware has always been particularly strong and made it easy to manage, tap into, and eventually exploit the power of their respective console hardware.

Some Examples:
•PS1 didn't even have the capability of rendering an *x480 resolution internally until very late in its life which started to be seen in Tomb Raider III
•PS1 didn't even have the inherent ability to stream anything from disc and most early games had infamously long load times as a result of its slow CD-ROM drive and pokey 2MB of RAM (total!) until the studio that made the Apocalypse game starring Bruce Willis figured it out
•the PS1's GPU had no z-buffer support whatsoever internally. It took Naughty Dog until Crash Bandicoot 2 to finally get one that could work in software
•In a similar note, the PS1 had no ability (or speed) to support a real reflection system, and had to be faked considerably for Tomb Raider 2
•PS2 games were infamously muddy and jaggy, even on a standard CRT TV, until Polyphony Digital (the guys that made Gran Turismo) finally figured out some kind of shortcut to spare enough cycles in the lauded EE GPU to implement even basic 2xAA internally.
•At the same note, It also took Polyphony more than 4 years of working with the ps2 in-house (on Sony's dime no less) to finally break the 480p barrier on the PS2 system, and managed to only do it with all of two games (GT4 & Tourist Trophy)
•For as advanced as each generation's graphics hardware was touted, each generation of PlayStation graphics seemed to be crucially missing things that the competition and especially PC gamers have come to take for granted even before their respective console launches.
•Not so much on software, but on the PS3's hardware, because Sony shoehorned a BluRay drive in the system, they had to use the slowest available drive that they had... which was barely enough to play movies, and also had horrible latency and seek times, which prompts to this day for a lot of games to have mandatory data installs. It's especially bad with multiplatform titles because even when optional, doing such installs brings the load times on PS3 to no better than what the standard 360 playing the game entirely off its DVD can do. And a game that is then installed NXE-style on the 360's storage would basically just blitz it in load times. The only counter to this would be for downloaded games installed on an SSD installed in the PS3, but how many of us are willing to spend more than the console costs to get an appropriately sized SSD and basically resort to ONLY buying download titles on the console to realize that advantage?

Because Microsoft took the initiative to make XNA able to direct-port the same code (to the programmer, 99% of the time) from PC to Xbox 360, and later to Zune and even Windows Phone, that made it really easy to make something that worked the same under the hood for a bunch of possible platforms at once. Also, it is well known and documented that Sony's SDK expects the programmer to do a lot of things manually that a developer, coder, or such would take for granted as being done for them in the API's provided by their competitors.

Also, Sony is quoting the PS4 to have GDDR5 vs. the GDDR3 that Microsoft is going with... sure, the DDR5 would be beneficial to the GPU performance, if it is exploited properly. But as it currently stands, I'm willing to wager that the AMD CPU in both consoles isn't getting any favors from it. It might use less power than the DDR3, but power consumption in RAM is such a miniscule thing to not even matter now compared to the CPU and GPU still.

onebadmofo
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You guys seem to be surprised that MS would try things like this and then backpedal when the consumers lash out. In the console war MS will do 180's all day to please the people.
Unfortunately for their OS...they'll never improve it to make people happy.