Xbox One Chat - Official Thread 1

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Monkey Man
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - Media Player inc MKV support announced e
by Monkey Man » Fri Aug 15, 2014 10:47 am



"Xbox One System Update: More Social Features and New Ways to Watch TV Available for Preview Members" -

Parties – The Party App has been re-organized, so you can now see what activities everyone in your party is doing and tell more clearly who is playing in the same game with you. You can also more quickly perform common actions like muting, joining, or sending game invites. Also, Parties now have a Party Leader. This person can change whether the party requires invitations, and she/he can remove others from the party.

New Friends Section – The new Friends section has been available for a few early access preview members and we’re expanding it to additional participants enrolled in the preview program. The new Friends section enables you to see at a glance what’s going on with your friends. You can stay up-to-date with your current activities, the most popular games your friends are playing, and a Gamerscore leaderboard to see who has improved their Gamerscore the most over the last 30 days. We’ll continue to roll this feature out to all participants in the coming updates.

Media Player – A new app will be available soon that enables you to play media files from either an attached USB device or from a network connected home media server that supports DLNA protocols. The preview version of the Media Player app will initially only support USB devices, with DLNA support coming soon. Xbox One will support more formats than Xbox 360, including support for dozens of new file formats like mpeg 2 TS, animated gifs and mkv which will be added by the end of the year. See below for additional file formats.

Xbox One Digital TV Tuner – Announced last week, this new hardware accessory will enter a limited preview program in Europe (UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain), in advance of its retail launch beginning in October.

Stream TV to SmartGlass – Launching first in markets receiving the Xbox One Digital TV Tuner, you will be able to stream your TV across your home network to your smartphones and tablets using the Xbox SmartGlass app. You can also pause, play and rewind as well as change channels, without interrupting gameplay on Xbox One.

Boot to TV – Now you will be able to set your console to boot directly to television when coming out of connected standby.

Live TV Miniguide – For markets where OneGuide is available, a new mini guide on the bottom of the screen will display details about the TV content that is currently playing. You can quickly change channels and see what’s on other channels, while still watching TV.

SmartGlass Updates – You can now post status messages from the Activity Feed as well as add comments and share items from both your Activity Feed and from Game Clips. Along with the new comment and share features, a personalized Activity Feed has been added to your profile. Messages have been updated to a new layout supporting a full conversation view. Additionally, we are adding the ability to record game clips directly from the Now Playing bar. Finally, if you upgrade the app directly we have introduced a What’s New page highlighting the features of each release.

“Xbox On” in New Markets – Adding support for additional markets to use the “Xbox On” Kinect voice command to power on consoles: Australia, Canada (French), Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Brazil – a top used feature.

Country Expansion – We’re doing a lot of work on the backend to prepare for Xbox One to launch in 29 new markets in the coming weeks.

Multiple GameDVR Deletes – You will be able to choose multiple GameDVR clips to delete at once in the Upload app.

Save your Avatar Gamerpic – A new option is now available to save Avatar GamerPics to your OneDrive.

Settings Updates – New options help you manage your controllers and accessories. Also, Instant Sign-In is being moved to Settings, to the Sign-in, security & Passkey area.

Bandwidth Usage Display – Located in Network Settings under the Troubleshooting column, Bandwidth Usage will show you how much bandwidth your Xbox One is consuming over a period of time. This is useful if you want to track against bandwidth caps set by ISPs in certain markets.

http://news.xbox.com/2014/08/xbox-one-s ... er-preview

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Monkey Man
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Monkey Man » Fri Aug 15, 2014 10:56 am

A very early example of Cloud usage from GAF -

This is what I am allowed to share.

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Running in real-time on XBO. Very early wip, so don't care for the lighting and so on. It is a very basic frequency test where the grass splines update 12 times a second. This is nothing special so far. The cool thing is tho that the start and endpoints of our splines influenced by wind and objects are being calculated by Azure. This means: the physic calculations you see are costing us pretty much no local power (excluding GPU ofc). We can use the saved power for other things - like AI, animations and so on. We are very proud of it - especially since we completely eliminated any chance of clipping. I just wanted to add that here.

And no, this won't be a golf/grass/whatever simulator - I just thought maybe it is interesting to see;)

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.ph ... stcount=84

I know GAF "in general" is very pessimistic about the cloud. And yes, somehow I can understand that - because so far, there weren't that much games that really took advantage of server calculations. To be honest, no new-gen so far really did (Titanfall touched 5% of the possibilities ...). And this is also why I try to be very careful about the words I choose.

No. You can not boost your games resolution with Azure. And no. You can not create better lighting effects with Azure. But, if you focus on it, you can still boost the overall graphical look of your game by a mile. We are currently creating a game. But in fact, we are kind of creating two-in-one. One with Azure available, and one for offline only. Everything you code, you need to code for two scenerarios. This is a ton of work. if online = dynamic grass; if offline=static grass ... To say it very simple. And so on.That's why we are currently thinking about going "online-only". But to be very open to you, we have some fear about that. Obviously. The gaming community is very careful when they hear "online-only" ... Games like Sim City simply ... Well, did it wrong.

If I could show you a screen comparison of our latest build right now - Azure on/off (no, sorry, I can't ...), you would understand what I am talking about. Wind, dynamically moving vegetations, footprints that stay for hours and even wildlife nearly without losing any local CPU power. This is just awesome in the right situations.

I know MS has some own projects in the works, too, that will go all-in with the Azure servers. Crackdown is the already known example.

That's all I can say for now. Really. I'm out here! :)

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Direar
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Direar » Fri Aug 15, 2014 8:25 pm

sounds gooseberry fool :lol:

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Photek
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Photek » Sat Aug 16, 2014 10:02 am

All that cloud stuff is similar to what my mate was saying. He's now joint head of a cloud IT company that both use Azure and their own servers. He said that as far as he can tell Azure have the most servers in the western world at least, he also said that yes, it's possible to free up in theory, 95% of the hosts (in this case X1) GPU usage. They have already kitted out an office in Tokyo that entirely uses the cloud in conjunction with auto cad so that the local pc's aren't using own power to calculate complex drawings and algorithms. He says in 3-5 years it should be everywhere as a viable option for entire offices.

Last edited by Photek on Mon Aug 18, 2014 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Monkey Man
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Monkey Man » Sat Aug 16, 2014 5:27 pm

Last of the cloud stuff.

Arg. Actually, it was not the plan that this will become a big deal. What you see there is really just a super small-scaled, super simple, super basic test. In reality, we are far more ahead with the tech than what you see there. However, at least some of the comments here motivate us even more to really show what is possible with server calculation :)

I hope we will be able to share more with you guys next year.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.ph ... tcount=309

From Game Director of Lionhead -
Is Fable Legends doing anything with Azure?
Yeah.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.ph ... tcount=346

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Delusibeta
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Delusibeta » Sat Aug 16, 2014 7:48 pm

The big problem with this sort of Cloud tech, and the reason why it won't be the game changer Microsoft thinks it is, is that there has never, ever been a game that requires Internet servers having a smooth launch. A big game using this tech would have a server demand that would make World of Warcraft look like small beer. It will probably bring Azure down, which may be disastrous for the B2B side of Microsoft, who have been promoting on the basis of its reliability. Add in the influence of latency and the fact that this stuff would be very noticeable if there's any interruptions, and you've got an idea that is unsuitable for videogames.

Also, insert all of the usual arguments as to why always online is a terrible idea for videogames here.

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The Alchemist Penguin
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by The Alchemist Penguin » Sat Aug 16, 2014 8:02 pm

A game isn't going to bring down Azure.

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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Delusibeta » Sat Aug 16, 2014 8:10 pm

[iup=3535806]The Alchemist Penguin[/iup] wrote:A game isn't going to bring down Azure.

Didn't Titanfall bring down Azure at one point? And that was using it solely for dedicated servers, the demand from any game using this tech would be vastly more per player.

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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Wiggy G32 » Sat Aug 16, 2014 8:14 pm

[iup=3535808]Delusibeta[/iup] wrote:
[iup=3535806]The Alchemist Penguin[/iup] wrote:A game isn't going to bring down Azure.

Didn't Titanfall bring down Azure at one point? And that was using it solely for dedicated servers, the demand from any game using this tech would be vastly more per player.



I remember there being a bug so azure wouldn't spawn more servers but i honestly cant remember azure actually crashing. could be wrong mind!

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Shadow
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Shadow » Sat Aug 16, 2014 8:33 pm

A game won't bring down Azure, but something could. There are all manner of reasons why Azure could be unavailable or running poorly. As such any developer needs to make sure their game can function without Azure, just incase the situation arises when it isn't available. For that reason, I doubt we'll see a game doing something truly remarkable with it.

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Monkey Man
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Monkey Man » Sat Aug 16, 2014 9:30 pm

According to Wikipedia Azure has only had 4 significant outages in 4 years so I doubt that is much of an issue. As the Dev says the main issue is with the public perception of always online. It might have been bad a year ago for some but since then we've had the likes of Titanfall & PvZ launch with barely any problems. Hopefully this will continue with Destiny/Division/Crew before these Cloud based games are even announced.

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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Buffalo » Sun Aug 17, 2014 12:15 pm

Does anyone have Powerstar Golf? It's no Everybody's Golf but the integration of Friends is excellent.
Course design can frequently be a bit too extreme, and the dark shadow of microtransactions is never far away, especially if you want to be competitive. A shame, really.
Still, at £16 quid, I'm getting my money's worth anyway.

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Photek
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Photek » Mon Aug 18, 2014 9:42 am

[iup=3535808]Delusibeta[/iup] wrote:
[iup=3535806]The Alchemist Penguin[/iup] wrote:A game isn't going to bring down Azure.

Didn't Titanfall bring down Azure at one point?

Nope.

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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Poser » Mon Aug 18, 2014 11:18 am

I don't understand the cloud stuff. How can processing done remotely, be done quickly enough to make a difference to a home console?

I just googled the PS4's RAM, which apparently has 170+ gbps bandwidth. The average UK broadband speed is around 14mbps.

Can anyone explain in lay terms (for my simple brain) how the hell even a fast network connection can chuck calculations around fast enough to make a difference in fast-paced modern gaming?

Sorry, this is a genuine question, I just can't get my head around it.

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Photek
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Photek » Mon Aug 18, 2014 1:20 pm

I can't say I know much about it Poser but at most the connection speed I get on Titanfall so the servers is about 12mps and its been under 10 before, under 10mps is almost the same time it would take for my work pc to access the work server, which is almost instant. So, if the cloud servers are good enough, they can take over some of the computing cos of the low latency of the conection, it's not faster than accessing the RAM in an X1 but its pretty fast at accessing a ton of RAM server side.

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Death's Head
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Death's Head » Mon Aug 18, 2014 2:02 pm

I think we need to see something that demonstrates this, otherwise it looks very much like PR guff. My thoughts are similar to Poser's - this isn't going to work in real time due to delays of the internet. What will happen if someone has a really slow connection, will it result in game pauses? I suspect the cloud can only be used in very specific cases at best, but time will reveal all.

Yes?
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Fuzzy Dunlop
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Fuzzy Dunlop » Mon Aug 18, 2014 2:04 pm

[iup=3535822]Shadow[/iup] wrote:As such any developer needs to make sure their game can function without Azure, just incase the situation arises when it isn't available. For that reason, I doubt we'll see a game doing something truly remarkable with it.


This.

Like Kinect, a waste of time.

Do you often contemplate the complexity of life?
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Monkey Man
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Monkey Man » Tue Aug 19, 2014 11:10 am

PSN has had more downtime in the last month than Azure has in the last 4 years yet Devs keep making games that solely or largely rely on that being available so that won't be an issue.

Reddit app out today for US/Canada, not elsewhere due to good old fashioned money - http://majornelson.com/2014/08/18/reddx ... able-soon/



Phil Spencer did the ice bucket thing and challenged yosp, Reggie and Gaben -

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUDqeXVgoOE

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Photek
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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Photek » Tue Aug 19, 2014 11:40 am

Yeah I retweeted that Phil Spencer clip. :wub:

He seems like a nice guy oul Phil.

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PostRe: Xbox One Chat - September Update Preview (p281)
by Venom » Tue Aug 19, 2014 12:17 pm

What's the likelihood of the white Xbone being £299 somewhere before Christmas?


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