Was there a GB livestream? Any word on when it will be archived/viewable on the site? (Just got off work and have had zero exposure to any of this yet today.)
@laserbot: There is an archive on their twitch account - it starts at 14 min in so skip ahead - but it's glitched and you can only watch it at 720p+. So if you are like myself and don't have some blazing faster internet connection it's unwatchable and you will have to wait.
My general impression of today's event is that I either liked or was unaffected by most what I saw, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of the gaming side of things at E3. The name works for me. I think the hardware looks pretty slick. As someone that has been without a cable TV subscription for nearly a year and a half, I'm not all that interested in a lot of the TV and multitasking stuff that was shown, but I do think that Kinect 2.0 and the gesture/speech interfaces might finally be delivering on some of the promise of the original Kinect. My biggest problem with everything has actually been the somewhat irrational amount of negativity about the event and the still mysterious DRM scheme.
With regards to the reaction to the event, as I feared, a lot of the game enthusiast crowd set their expectations far too high for this presentation. This was a condensed one hour show prepared for a broad TV audience that focused primarily on the non-games entertainment side of the new console. That's pretty much exactly in line with what MS and most of the media were saying leading up to today's event. However, rather than take that into consideration, a lot of gamers have interpreted this as some sort of intentional slight against them.
I would just caution those people to not throw the cool games baby out with the basic cable bathwater. Take a deep breath and try to put things in perspective. Microsoft realizes that a lot of their business still hinges on the hardcore, and I don't think they have any intention of significantly marginalizing that crowd when it comes to the feature set of the console. The bottom line is just that this event wasn't really for video game enthusiasts, and it wasn't an appropriate venue for the sort of deep dive into details and gameplay demos that many people in the hardcore gaming crowd were craving. This was an event primarily for the type of person that only plays two games a year: Call of Duty and Football (either flavor), and that's a massive crowd that MS wants to make sure they keep a tight grasp on.
The enthusiast crowd just needs stay calm and wait until E3. That's when the full scope of what Sony and MS have to offer us is really going to start to come into view.
With regards to the DRM, I'll admit that it kinda sucks, but it's the direction that things have been headed for a long time. The thing that's bothering me about the reaction to it is that people seem to have made the assumption that Sony is somehow immune to the same trends and publisher pressure that influenced Microsoft, and I think that when E3 rolls around we're going to find out that the PS4 isn't the DRM-free wonderland it's being made out to be.
It's certainly possible that after E3 comes and goes I'll be proven wrong about all of this. Maybe the future of Xbox is as dire as it's being made out to be, and the PS4 is the far superior gaming platform. Just please don't be too quick to judge. With around six months before anything hits the shelves, there's no need to immediately burn all of your bridges with Microsoft and crown Sony king of the seven kingdoms. Patience is a virtue.
So, does "integrated battery compartment" on the controller mean you can't change the batteries? Seems like a weird thing to promote, 'cus not being able to change batteries kind of sucks (see ps3 controllers).
So, does "integrated battery compartment" on the controller mean you can't change the batteries? Seems like a weird thing to promote, 'cus not being able to change batteries kind of sucks (see ps3 controllers).
It will probably mean that you'll be forced to buy their proprietary batteries at an inflated price . I never had to get a new ps3 controller, granted it never got that much use.
Well, I was thinking the same thing - MS just made Sony seem far more competent.
I don't think Microsoft was ready to talk, but I guess they had to to talk to have enough time to talke more at e3. Exactly how much of what they THOUGHT they were going to say three months ago hit the editing room floor when Sony announced first and then with Adam Orth sticking his foot in his mouth over "Always On"? I think most of what MS wanted to say or explain was canceled because it WAS all about things that were "always on".
So this has nothing to do with the Xbox One announcement. There's currently a shareholder war brewing among Sony's stockholders right now. Led by Daniel Loeb, a faction of shareholders want Sony Entertainment to spinoff and become its own company. Loeb recently made his "demands" public and as a result the stock price of the company shot up with investors believing that if the plan goes forward they could double their shares in the next two to three years.
So, does "integrated battery compartment" on the controller mean you can't change the batteries? Seems like a weird thing to promote, 'cus not being able to change batteries kind of sucks (see ps3 controllers).
It will probably mean that you'll be forced to buy their proprietary batteries at an inflated price . I never had to get a new ps3 controller, granted it never got that much use.
The controller still eats AA's like before, the battery pack just isn't sticking out of the controller anymore.
Microsoft had a good show. They packed a lot of information into a one hour broadcast which was clearly aimed at a mainstream audience. The focus on TV and sports was annoying, but they needed to show all that stuff at some point to a large audience and I couldn't think of a better venue than this. It's clear that Microsoft is going into E3 with a heavy focus on games, where as Sony will need to show a lot more of this OS-level stuff there. I wasn't expecting there to be a lot of games at yesterdays show, although I did expect to see at least one Kinect game which was a strange omission in my opinion. Then again, maby MS realized that showing Kinect games at this thing would launch a backlash from "core gamers".
Which leads me to the backlash I woke up to this morning. It's like people don't remember any previous console announcement. They certainly don't remember the gem which was the Xbox 360 announcement on MTV. Even sites like Kotaku are railing against Microsoft in editorials which read like they were written by the same people who were disappointed at Christmas because they got a white iPad from their parents in stead of a black one. Microsoft showed the hardware, showed a couple of games, showed how the system OS will function and elaborated on their plans to make this the "One" and only system you need in your entertainment center. They did shoot themselves in the foot with not having a clear message for the press after the show concerning used games, online connections and the Kinect. Then again I'd imagine that all that stuff is still in flux both at Microsoft and Sony. Personally I don't care if the console has to be connected to the internet at all times and I can't buy/sell used games. The system Microsoft is leaning towards seems a lot like Steam, and I do love me some Steam.
The console hardware seems in line with what I was expecting from a next-gen system. The physical box doesn't look great and I think that the name is really confusing, but we will all just end up calling it the "Xbox" and sticking that thing on a shelf somewhere so I don't think that it really matters. The improvements on the controller seem more practical than on the DualShock 4. I do have some real concerns relating to privacy issues with an always-on Kinect. I'd imagine that EU lawmakers will force Microsoft to allow people to not have the Kinect listening and filming you constantly. Then again we live in a world of diminishing privacy, and I don't think that we will be able to avoid domestic sensors for much longer. And I'm all in if in stead of saying "Xbox, on" I get to call out "HAL, play Beethoven".
At this point the scale on hardware and services seems roughly equal between the PS4 and XONE. However as a huge fan of both the Forza franchise and the work of Remedy, I am leaning strongly towards the Xbox One when it comes to games.
Remember Nintendo GameCube being called GCN (Game Cube Nintendo)? How about calling this the MXO, Microsoft Xbox One. That'd also be the reverse lettering of their magazine, OXM. It even sounds like MSX, that Japanese PC stalwart.
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