5 minutes ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

I hate to say it, by the thing that sells consoles is games. Everything else is irrelevant.

If you can get exclusive titles from Square Enix, from CoD's franchise, Rockstar and EA, you'll still outsell the competition - basically nothing else matters in this industry.

I am pretty sure the PS4 will get a chunk of exclusives too.

5 minutes ago, evildictait​or wrote

I think Xbox One's worry is going to be the PS4, not Wii-U.

Agreed. But it still should be a huge warning sign for Microsoft that the reveal caused a huge sales boost for a rival console that was almost dead.

I think it was pretty obvious that, how the reveal was handled, it would cause a shitstorm among the core groups.

The movers and shakers (the ones who cause shitstorms) don't like the Kinect for once (nor required internet).

And TV TV TV.. Spielberg producing a Halo TV show? Who cares? His sci-fi TV shows are all mediocre: Falling Skies, Terra Nova, Seaquest.. him producing a science fiction show is actually an anti-feature. And the internet echo chamber is well aware of that.

Microsoft seriously miscalculated their audience if they thought these announcements would wow them.

3 minutes ago, Ray7 wrote

*snip*

svelasquez1​23 made an excellent point, actually. These items are consumables, or at least that's how the games studios see them, and I can see their point. 

And I can see that everyone who reads my posts here should send me 1000$. So what?

3 minutes ago, Ray7 wrote

Movies and music are not the same as games because the creators have other avenues to make money: movies are shown at cinemas, sold on to television; their production costs can be covered by advertising and sponsorship. Musicians can also make money through concerts, merchandising, TV appearances. Having spent possibly millions developing the game, testing it, advertising it and distributing it, the games studios have ONE opportunity to make money from it: selling it.

That's not true. DLC, in-game advertising, merchandising, TV show licensing, item shops, premium memberships, serving as the basis for future expansions, re-release on compilation packages, re-release as add-on DVD of video game magazines, re-release later on sites like GOG.com (for PC games), sponsoring, book/comic licensing...

After a movie has been shown in cinemas, the primary way to generate much revenue with it is by selling DVDs and blu rays.

TV licenses crash down after the first airing, Netflix revenue is still behind physical media.

The video games industry is already bigger than the movie and music industry, all the while introducing new DRM schemes and restrictions that would make even the RIAA blush. A round of pity please...

3 minutes ago, Ray7 wrote

 

So when someone sells it second-hand, that is a lost sale. I can certainly see why that would irk them somewhat. And from my dealings with publishers, I know they're not particularly enamoured of the second hand book market for much the same reason.

So, the first sales doctrine should be trashed because the producers want even more money? Kick-*.

All kinds of * can be rationalized this way. There was a lobbying effort to make planned obsolescence a requirement ("Ending the Depression Through Planned Obsolescence").

Great?!

3 minutes ago, Ray7 wrote

What has this to do with second hand games sales or sneaking into a cinema without paying? Preventing two people from watching a movie is unlikely to happen. Stopping two people from playing a game is unlikely to happen.

And why? Killing-off the second hand market was unlikely to happen as well less than year ago.

3 minutes ago, Ray7 wrote

The problem is that you believe you're paying for the bit of disk when you buy a movie. You're paying for the content. Or do you believe that the content cost nothing to produce?

I am well aware of that. Are you aware of this:

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/F/first_sale_doctrine.html

That's not an US only thing by the way, but understood all over the world.

3 minutes ago, Ray7 wrote

Oh, and Microsoft patents a lot of stuff, most of which never sees the light of day. Try to calm down. All this excitement isn't good for your blood pressure.

We'll see.

A DRM laden console with mandatory camera that could make Orwell proud in millions of homes and a granted patent surely motivate.

Edit: Added more video-game revenue possibilities. 

1 day ago, algorith wrote

@kettch: Who do you think are the people that buy these things when they first hit the market and generate the hype that keeps these things selling. The exact same people who made the 360 a success and MS seems to be ignoring now, the hardcore people who know what the specs mean to some extent. 

Indeed. The usual suspects are once again using their "trolling" hammer, well, here are some numbers already:

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/wii-u-sales-boost-following-xbox-one-reveal/0116135

49 minutes ago, Ray7 wrote

*snip*

Mmmm.

Good point. Hadn't looked at it quite like that ...

I go to a movie, pay £10

My friend wants to see it but doesn't want to pay £10

I say, "Okay, pay me £5 and I'll show you a way to sneak in."

Is that how the games makers see it?

LOL!

That's insane. Somehow this never applies to DVD/blu ray movies, books, CDs whatever.

That's like the book publisher needs to receive money every time I lend a book that I bought. When I watch a DVD with friends, they need to pay up too.

F** off, seriously. Mass-piracy is one thing, but thinking along these lines is declaring war on customers.

But well, MS is working just on that:

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-patent-spies-on-consumers-to-enforce-drm-7000007102/

A new patent application filed by Microsoft and granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office details a content distribution system which uses cameras to detect whether or not you've been paying for your content.

..

The patent, US20120278904, works as a surveillance mechanism, inbuilt within devices including television sets, computers, smartphones and tablets in order to enforce digital rights management (DRM).

.."and "facial recognition techniques" could be used, the patent continues by stating that DRM can further be enforced by "determining at least a number of users within a display area of a display device for a duration of the presentation exceeding a threshold." In other words, if a license only covers one individual viewing and you're watching a film with friends or family, content simply won't play."

That's why the Kinect is mandatory now!  (and one of the reasons why it it's infrared enhanced, can monitor the heart rate etc.) Guess it's only a matter of time before a new firmware version comes out with exactly this functionality.

This is just malevolent. I am not a big fan of piracy, but if that's how "games makers see it" then they deserve EVERY pirate they get.

Is Pirate Bay still taking donations?

Walled gardens, enforced appstores with no sideloading functionality, mandatory infrared enhanced cameras, lock-in systems to prohibit lending of physical media, patents already in place to make use of all the spyware functions included in the Kinect system...

And there are still people who are cool with it - who even defend it. Incredible! All this surveillance tech is so extreme and brash, it's bordering on a comedy sketch. Just how much can they go until you people will say "enough!"?

16 hours ago, magicalclick wrote

@wastingtimewithforums: normally I don't reply to threads anymore, but, I will make an exception. The ability to resell your game is exactly the same as Xbox1 and Xbox360 with install firmware upgrade. The only reason it becomes confusing is because they added the ability for you to play installed games without having physical copy to validate it.

It would have been far more simple, if there would be still an option to validate just by popping-in the disc. (the online-validation stuff could be still there for the people who don't like to handle with discs for some reason)

Then there would be no online-requirement and the second-hand sales market would be unharmed.

Microsoft seems to pedal back on the selling restriction (I am sure because of the outrage on the internets) but it's all tangled into an endless array of licensing and account lock-ins. Making it all far more complicated that it was before.

You need to authorize the Xbox games now before playing them. The console NEEDS to be online to do this.  So there is an online requirement.

The only reason it isn't even more locked-in is because of the whining all over the net.

5 minutes ago, Sven Groot wrote

You do realize that's the front of a tent, not a pyramid? It's not even pyramid shaped.

Didn't know.

But it does look pyramid shaped in the picture. Maybe it's just the viewing angle.

The Xbox One's next-generation Kinect has a greater interest in your facial features, and is capable of discerning your identity, even if you hand off the controller.

In a brief demonstration in one of its Kinect testing rooms, Microsoft showed press how the Kinect kept track of two player profiles, each tied to a controller in use. When Player 1 and Player 2 swap controllers, the Xbox One is able to recognize which profile is the new Player 1. The Kinect also monitors the position of players, meaning it can match portions of split-screen games to the side of the screen at which that player is looking. This may also translate to fighting games, which is good news if you're the sort to get confused when your spot in the couch isn't aligned with your character.

Microsoft also demonstrated a few more tricks made possible by the new Kinect's enhanced sense of depth, its greater field of view - which does make closer gaming in smaller apartments a more feasible – its ability to see in the dark via infrared, and its flattering scrutiny of facial features. By examining your face's skin color and transparency, the Kinect and Xbox One are able to estimate your current heart rate.

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/05/21/xbox-ones-kinect-discerns-heartbeat-and-who-has-the-controller/

And this thing is always connected to boot:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/21/4352596/the-xbox-one-is-always-listening

The Xbox One will always be listening to you, in your own home (update)

Did Microsoft just invent the Telescreen from '1984?'

...

Even when the console's turned off, users can simply say "Xbox On" to power up — which means the new Kinect will be listening to you in your living room at all times.


An always-on camera, with a connection to the mothership, that can monitor your heart beat, has infrared sensors, watches you in the dark, and is still somewhat working when turned off!

Nice bit about the skin color detection and facial detection. I guess it just wasn't creepy enough.

Sorry for resurrecting this thread and not posting in the existing one about the xbox, but the thread title is so suiting.

Nice touch that the reveal event was hold in a intimidating pyramid shaped building:

You really have to wonder how dense the MS marketing is. Quote from 1984:

"The Ministry of Truth - Minitrue, in Newspeak - was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure.."

Aren't they aware that all this surveillance tech in the new xbox will draw these comparisons? And what do they do? Hold the event in a pyramid!

Just wow! Unbelievable stupid marketing. And then they wonder why there are backlashes.

235.000 views and 25.000 comments within a day.

11 minutes ago, Ian2 wrote

 once had a Summer job in a record shop (yes, vinyl) and there was a contingent that used it like it was their own personal lending library.

Deal with it.

Seriously, this is part of calculating costs. Every retailer has some percentage of such customers. This still doesn't make it valid to cut customer rights. 

My compassion with mega-conglomerates like Microsoft, EA, Sony is limited. I was understanding at first due to the piracy issues, but not anymore. Suddenly second-hand games are a "problem" too, and that's JUST WHACKED. Sorry. Who are they that they are able to blow the first sales doctrine, which is valid and understood in the whole world, to smithereens?

I wasn't a fan of the piracy culture and their flimsy excuses ("file sharing is not really stealing, because you don't take something away"), but the opposite extreme, the corporate whores, are no better. While the former are leeches, latter are true masochists. The more restrictions are in some tech, the more excited they get. And the juices of these folks really begin to flow when it's about some forced big brother type tech. They can barely walk after hearing such news. I wish they would just pay up a dominatrix and stop being enablers.

Here are some:

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-studios-creative-director-debates-always-on-game-console-stance

whats funny is most of the people "outraged" all have 24/7 internet. I hope this rumor is true, it will instantly get rid of dirty pirates.

....

Microsoft should build what they want to build, not be forced into serving a million entitled masters.

The XBox 360 had an endemic piracy problem? And newsflash: The customer IS the master!

It's sickening how these dolts want to change that. They are constantly advocating their own disadvantage to fulfill their fetish, making things suck for others in return.

I think I should start a kickstarter - fund free dominatrix coupons for corporate whores. We all would be better off that way.

It's not.

1 minute ago, fanbaby wrote

*snip*

No no no. Are you talking about the spike which begun around 2005?

No.

And that Godaddy bump was in 2006.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum9/10188.htm

I even heard mossyblog, which worked for MSFT (silverlight...), say that Azure was a reaction to the widespread rise of LAMP

LAMP has risen in 1999 and was ALWAYS the behemoth since then. It's not a new superstar.

Azure was a reaction to Microsoft's desire to suck more money out of customers.

Fact is, since MVC Microsoft is hitting rock-bottom in web marketshare, it's now way lower than in 2000/1999, - so well before the godaddy thing (if they switched back to Apache from IIS, it still wouldn't cause such sharp drop).

11 minutes ago, GoddersUK wrote

How? Because our politicians haven't updated IP rules for the 21st century in any kind of sensible fashion.

What have they to do with this issue? Nowhere in the laws it's stated that books, video tapes etc (and a game Blu-ray/DVD is the same thing) should be forbidden for resale.

That's something the companies themselves have cooked up and there are more than enough fanboys who are cool with it.

9 minutes ago, cbae wrote

@wastingtimewithforums: I agree with you to an extent. While Microsoft did make some improvements to Web Forms even recently, the evangelists for MVC spoke of Web Forms in the same self-deprecating way as others in Microsoft speak of IE6 and Windows Vista in order push the new technology.

However, I'm not exactly sure that the drop in web server market share can be tied directly to the release of ASP.NET MVC.

But there was no other event around that time frame. ROR and the other hot stuff was released years before the sharp decline in Microsoft's web marketshare took place. The fall started right after the MVC release.

Not the release of MVC was the problem, but how it was released.

It's pretty obvious what happened: Thanks to Microsoft's own "marketing", Web Forms had the aura of J# or Active Desktop channels around it. And ASP.NET MVC itself isn't that special compared to ROR or Django or the myriad of other MVCs. Ironically, one major plus point for ASP.NET, Visual Studio, plays a lesser rolle with MVC than it does with Web Forms.

After Microsoft's own negative-marketing, lots of Web Forms developers probably tried the other MVC frameworks too and stuck with one of them. Most of those were also far more mature than the early versions of ASP.NET MVC. There was also quite a noticeable feeling of betrayal among the webforms devs back then, given Microsoft's sudden shift, - further driving away developers.

Microsoft's hope to attract ROR devs in turn didn't play out apparently, - certainly the number of converts to ASP.NET MVC didn't outweigh the disgruntled Web Forms developers who started to move away from it.

web server survey

Look at "Market share of active sites". Microsoft had a drop at April 2009 and continues dropping since then.

From 38% in April 2009 to 11.08% now.

Coincidentally, that drop happened exactly at the time when they have released ASP.NET MVC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASP.NET_MVC_Framework ("13 March 2009: ASP.NET MVC 1.0")

I get the feeling that it's related. There was no other big release of some competitor web tech at that point. And sure, WebForms is still supported.. somewhat (just like Silverlight is!)

But they annoyed some loyal WebForms devs off back then, and that hit them apparently. Here you can see a WebForms dev raging. He wasn't the only one.

Also, despite some problems, WebForms was a pretty unique technology, while ASP.NET MVC is the one millionth MVC framework (in a sea of no-cost alternatives). MVC isn't also making good use of Visual Studio's "visuality", one less reason going the MS route.

Another result of Microsoft chasing the hipsters. Marketshare was climbing constantly before the MVC release, then, exactly at release, it began to plumb.

After Ruby-On-Rails, Django etc. appeared several years before, Microsoft apparently exploded with envy and had to annoy their WebForms devs, and now they are at their lowest marketshare in web servers since.. ever.

I am not saying they shouldn't have released MVC. But the way they have done it was terrible and very condescending towards their established ASP.NET userbase. It sent out all the wrong signals. Just how many "is webforms now dead" posts appeared back then? If your strategy generates such reactions among your developers, you're failing.

Are you claiming that included software doesn't add value? Was the Live Essentials suite pointless?

Apple ships iMovie and Garageband with every desktop Mac and MacBook, while Microsoft's equivalents on their premier OS are metro SoundRecorder and something called Movie Moments, which apparently gets beaten by the built-in video-edit functions of just about every digital camera.

Further evidence that Microsoft doesn't care much about anything non-tablet.

New apps [in Windows 8 blue]: There are apparently a few new apps like Alarms, Calculate, Sound Recorder, Files (a basic file manager), and Movie Moments (for trimming the start and endpoints of a video clip).

AWESOME!

Word Origin: Microsoft's invasion of privacy at Skype, while being insanely hypocritical about its competitors.

http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Skype-with-care-Microsoft-is-reading-everything-you-write-1862870.html

17 hours ago, GoddersUK wrote

http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2013/05/14/windows-keeps-getting-better.aspx

Windows Blue will be called 8.1 and be a free update

Finally a good move from Microsoft.

5 minutes ago, cheong wrote

*snip*

I must say that I see nothing on this page. There's only big blank rectangles with word "Wird Geladen..." written on the corners. Can you check the link?

Works here. Anyway, here's a screenshot of the relevant quote:

5 minutes ago, cheong wrote

*snip*

EDIT: Btw, just know that once upon a time Win9X significantly dominates the market as most popular. And when Microsoft declared to end support for Win9X, there's similar outcry. Knowing these is good enough for the discussion. No need to sidestep the topic.

Knowing these is good enough for the discussion. No need to sidestep the topic.

There was no similar outcry, because by 2006 (end of support), the Win9x userbase was dead in the water.

By that time [2006] Windows 98 market share had diminished to 2.7%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98

No need to sidestep the topic.

"sidestepping the topic" means disproving all the fantasy numbers your made out of thin air.

1 minute ago, kettch wrote

@wastingtimewithforums:

We can either work with Microsoft, or we can work against them.

And as I've said, that goes both ways. Microsoft's socials skills were severely lacking lately.

By bringing anger and hate to the conversation, you've alienated the very people who can make the changes you seek.

Wait, they were acting like deaf-ignoramuses all this time (since the "re-imagination"), because of the few "haterz" here?