Microsoft (Sorta) Addresses Big Xbox One Questions [UPDATED]

Hey, that's Squirts MacIntosh, also known as Dequan "Smallpox" Randolph.

YES! Achievements do carry over, now make my day and please announce we can remove achievements/games we've earned achievements in off our tags forever. I would throw my money at Microsoft for this.

Ah, it reminds me of my old top load VCR! You could kill someone whit that VCR, plus warmup the room during winter! :) No backward compatibility, that's a deal breaker for me!

I'm in total agreement.

@lacke said:

They don't differentiate between PC and 360.

yes! This. This exactly.

Everyone, you heard it here first and directly from Microsoft:

The Xbox One is powered by the cloud, i.e. water vapor, which is essentially steam, YES EVERYONE the Xbox One is Power By Steam! Congrats Gabe, big win, can't wait for Steam games on XbOne.

Or maybe they meant something else, but you would never know it because their answer is meaningless gibberish.

So if the HDD dies, which will likely happen in about a year and a half your fucked. Great.

Uh, y'know what? I'll keep playing my 360 for the next year or two alongside my PS4.

I feel betrayed.

"No, it does not have to be always connected, but Xbox One does require a connection to the Internet. We’re designing Xbox One to be your all-in-one entertainment system that is connected to the cloud and always ready. We are also designing it so you can play games and watch Blu-ray movies and live TV if you lose your connection."

Really want to know more about what this means. Everything works when offline? Or everything works for 10 minutes when offline? What requires online capability and what do we lose when offline? For all the craziness about always-on, they've still only provided incredibly non-specific answers about the Internet requirements.

Also it's funny how their answer to the question "why does it need to be online" is pretty much the exact same as EA's. The cloud makes it better!

1,000 friends is good, but I was hoping they would confirm the rumors of Twitter style following of other players without having to be friends.

I'm also curious as to what kind of market place they intend to setup in order for people to trade/sell their used titles. As it stands, I'm primarily a pc gamer so this is not something that will greatly impact me, but I am curious how they plan to accomplish this without backlash from brick and mortar establishments like GameStop. The smart move as I see it would be to handle the digital only sales within their marketplace and leave the disc retailers to handle the physical media transactions. For example if you bought the game from the online store, you could trade/sell it there, and if you have a disc, take it back to the store like normal.

This however generates a new question. How do you allow digital trading/selling without pulling people from making 1st party purchases? Also would the trader/seller be setting the price? Or would Microsoft be imposing a set of prices for the content the gamer sells back? MS would almost have to wouldn't they?

another question: Can the xbox one be used on any ISP or just comcast as shown in the demo?

I do not want an all in one system. I already have DVD players, blu ray, modem, roku, what the fuck more do I need?

Those were the most useless answers.

Remedy is doing...something. I dunno what it is, but they have a game coming, like a full game. So at least they're not making XBL avatars or something.

So they made it even more like a pc running steam, but instead of decent games they chose sports, call of dogs, and 'cable tv' (a thing only the US really has (to my knowledge anyway, satellite motherfuckers)).

never before have so many people spent so much time getting so little information.

Xbox One breaking new ground from day One!

No, thank you. I'll stick with my backlog and not buy either new system. Because this doesn't look appealing at all.

Where are my Viva Pinata and Alan Wake sequels???!!!???

Other than those two things (which will never happen anyway), it all sounds pretty safe and good. I'll likely end up getting both like last gen and probably end up playing mainly one, like this gen as well. And always wait til the first 'updated' console.

Xbox 360 'won' this last gen for me personally anyway, interesting to see how it will go.

Kotaku has confirmed with Microsoft's vice president that games will be able to be used by everyone on the same console without needing some kind of fee. If an account on the console has a game, it's available to everyone.

As far as trading and used games go, that is also clarified to mean that others can get a game disc and install the game, but that they will still be paying full price to buy the rights to the game on their account. Thus, it isn't a "fee"; it's the actual price of the game.

Apparently, they're working on some online system where prices may go down over time, allowing "used" games to be sold for less than the original retail price, but they have said they will explain more on that later. Right now, though, it sounds like they will sort of have an online used market where you sell the permission to play a game, leaving companies like GameStop out in the cold as far as the worth of a used physical disc.

http://kotaku.com/you-will-be-able-to-trade-xbox-one-games-online-micros-509140825

Maybe I'm an idiot and haven't seen the answer posted yet but can it play blu-ray movies?

@capnthrash: Doesn't sound like XBLA purchases will transfer. Here's some quotes from today's articles. "On the subject of backward compatibility, Engadget is reporting that the Xbox One will not play Xbox 360 games, nor digital games built for the 360 architecture. However, as small consolation, gamertags and scores will carry over to the new system."

"Q: Will Xbox One be backward compatible with my existing games?

A: Xbox One hardware is not compatible with Xbox 360 games. We designed Xbox One to play an entirely new generation of games—games that are architected to take full advantage of state-of-the-art processors and the infinite power of the cloud. We care very much about the investment you have made in Xbox 360 and will continue to support it with a pipeline of new games and new apps well into the future."

Unfortunately, most games will likely require an internet connection anyway since MS is putting features behind it that developer will want to use, or be incentivized to use.

So while MS can say they don't require an always on connection, they can still effectively require it when everything you might actually want to use on the system needs it to be fully functional, including games.

"Architected"? The fuck...?

I'm still pretty shocked they are locking out a potentially large segment of buyers by requiring internet, but I'm sure they crunched the numbers and found it to be an expendable user base. The cloud answer and the internet answer are completely useless, as noted in other comments; they don't actually say anything despite offering lots of words.

Maybe I missed it, but they never changed channels on that TV demo right? You can switch from movie to game to TV (the first 2 running on the XONE itself) pretty quickly but if you change channels you're still stuck with the delay of the actual TV signal I assume. Maybe that would have ruined the slick presentation.

@iamjohn: Actually, it is 100; same as 360. It might have been lower originally but it is currently 100.

What if I want to take a game around to my friends place, or with me when I travel, will I have to pay a fee then?

with the conflicting reports about used games, does that mean a used game will potentially cost double the price? (buying the used game , then the activation fee? wtf?)

Am I the only one who couldn't help but think Air Force One every time they heard Xbox One?

How about the last trip they took up there to not see Bungie's new game?

lol.

Oh they upped it? Well I'll be damned, and here I thought I was sounding smart with my knowledge of useless facts!

At face value it's pretty underwhelming. Once you factor in the usual level of lies and embellishment that go hand in hand with these type of announcement conferences it could prove to be a real headache for Microsoft down the line.

So it's not always online, but you need an internet connection to access it.

O...kay?

Not that I never have the Internet, I would go crazy, but I think Microsoft is making a lot of foolish mistakes with this console because a very large sector of people I know have no interests in online connectivity of games and purchase used games almost exclusively, so this "fee" will be crippling, and frankly, makes me pretty disgruntled even though I mostly get new games.

Also, we need full clarification on if XBLA games will transfer over, this is a make-or-break issue, potentially.

I am a huge 360 gamer, with pretty much all of my gameplay coming from that system, and, based on what this conference said and what the future entails — fuck Xbox One.

@aznxchunky: Microsoft already released a statement to Wired who originally reported the fee that it is not true.

A: No, it does not have to be always connected, but Xbox One does require a connection to the Internet.

Wow thanks that clears things up.

@chrismafuchris said:

Well, no, it doesn't, but it does.

but the USB 3.0 slots can be used for external storage.

I like this.

I haven't seen that either, but I assume so? I believe Microsoft wants to advance there online streaming of movies, but it already has a Blu Ray player so why not allow it to play those?

I hope no one supports this company.

I just haven't seen one mention of it. Maybe it's a proprietary blu-ray like the Wii U? I don't know and I'm looking for an answer somewhere.

So Microsoft moves to royally fuck GameStop/EB Games. They're not even subtle about it.

What I'm wondering is whether the retailer will refuse to carry Xbox products/consoles/games?

@deathpooky: It's likely going to depend more on the individual games and how much they utilize ~cloud magic~than on anything system-level that Microsoft could make a more meaningful statement about. For now, we're probably best off taking them on their word that things which don't require an active connection will still work if the internet goes out.

It's vague, but I'd guess that "requires an internet connection" is most likely going to mean that the console will have to be actively connected either on system startup, or when starting a game (because otherwise their whole used fee thing could potentially be worked around), or possibly even something like Steam where you have a more limited offline mode available on the last system you logged into. It seems sensible that they'd deny the "always-on" statement specifically, both because it is a negative buzzword and because it implies that the console will cease to function if the connection drops at all.

From what I saw it has a blu-ray player in it

@mrsmiley: if the current way that kind of stuff is handled is any indication, no. As of now, if you need something like a pass to play a used game the store does lower the price of the used item ie EA games go $47 used as opposed to $55. The big problem is people don't feel like having to buy something for their game when they get home and their isn't always a way to buy the pass in stores.

infinite power of the cloud

I fucking hate marketing speak.

So EA ends it's online pass program a week before the Xbox One announcement. Now we find out that when you get an Xbox One game you will have to enter a code to activate it and if anyone buys that used game later they will have to "buy" a new code to use that game. Essentially the same as the EA online pass program they just ended due to "customer feedback." Oh, and EA also announced an exclusive partnership with Microsoft. Well, that's very suspicious and sinister activity to me.

this was pathetic. but the controller looks awesome, and i will buy one to play PC games with.

one positive thing about this briefing was there were much fewer 'puke' 'cringe' moments than with the PS4 conference. it was just 'meh'. those moments are yet to come im sure .

Thank you. This was very helpful.