Our non-games readers might have missed the excitement, buzz, then deluge of social media updates, from developers, journalists, games industry pundits, analysts and gamers over the last 24 hours.
Microsoft announced their new platform, the snappily named Xbox One and revealed a number of key capabilities of the new console.
If you’re in a hurry, here’s a video which summarises the whole announcement… However we’d recommend reading on.
Anticipation was high. The Xbox 360 is much-loved platform and speculation about the new console’s hardware has run rampant over the last few weeks, as industry analysts predicted (and the rest of us just guessed) what services, games and unique new features the new Xbox would include.
It’s a powerful device. It’s black. Very black. A Spinal Tap ‘none more black’ sort of shiny blackness. Every new Xbox One will come with a Kinect device. If you’re not familiar with the Kinect, it’s a new input device which incorporates a high-fidelity camera and microphone, which lets you play games by moving and control the Xbox with voice commands.
Microsoft has also struck a deal with the NFL to introduce Xbox exclusive content in major network broadcasts of American Football matches.
Once again though, it left a lot of people underwhelmed. These are hugely popular franchises, but increasingly better graphics are exactly what’s expected from these annually updated titles. What many people felt was missing was the real next-generation content. What’s different? How will online gameplay, or the Kinect sensor change the way the games work? The short answer is, we don’t know yet.
That was it. Thank you, Cleveland, we’re out of here…
The launch has left a lot of people in the games world somewhat deflated. The games which were mentioned were the key franchises, they looked prettier, but what’s actually ‘next-generation’ about them? The focus on TV was ‘irrelevant’ to many, who want to buy the latest, most powerful games machine.
From Microsoft’s point of view, it made complete sense. It puts them, front-and-centre (literally if you want your Kinect to work) in the living room and the whole launch was focused on the mainstream audience out there, the sports fans, Call of Duty players and people who will think a few hundred dollars on a device which does everything, as opposed to a smart TV, which doesn’t get CoD, is a good investment.
This does leave a number of problems… The TV capabilities are primarily aimed at the US market, how it will work in the rest of the world remains to be seen.
However, the major video games expo, E3 takes place in Los Angeles in just over two weeks, where the mainstream TV watching audience don’t even get through the doors, so it’s odds on that Microsoft will create a gamer’s paradise, with every major developer and publisher demonstrating and showing their new Xbox games. So the current negative coverage could flip entirely fairly shortly.
How the Xbox One will interact with other devices such as smartphones, tablets and computers was also absent. With more and more ‘gamers’ now playing games almost exclusively on their non-dedicated devices, Microsoft either had to bring integration and second screen capabilities to the table, or ignore it completely. Bar a single example of using a smartphone as a remote control, so far they seem to be ignoring it completely…
Interestingly, it was what wasn’t mentioned on stage at the Xbox One launch which has picked up the most social media buzz. Four very key points were not simply glossed over, but entirely ignored in the hopes that nobody would notice…
The Xbox One will also lock a newly purchased game to one Xbox user account. The company provided many confusing and conflicting answers to the press about this ‘feature’, but it boils down to copy protection and ensuring that users pay for content. Xbox One games have to be installed on the console’s hard drive. Once a game has been associated with your user account, you CAN lend it to a friend, but you can’t both play it at the same time. If your friend wants to do that, they have to pay online to ‘unlock’ the content. This radically affects the pre-owned games market, where you can buy second hand games for a greatly reduced price. Exactly what the unlock prices will be, or how this will work with games which have been traded-in or re-sold remains to be seen.
Even the Xbox Kinect came in for some criticism regarding privacy issues. The new camera system recognises very subtle movements and can track a user across an entire room. It also has a sophisticated microphone to enable voice commands (in fact several people reported that while they wee watching the live stream of the launch event on their Xbox, the commands from, Yusef Mehdi, the presenter on stage was triggering their own Xbox 360). The Kinect is on whenever the Xbox One is on, leaving people feeling uneasy about the data it’s capturing or the possible exploitation of that data by Microsoft – or carefully selected marketing partners…
Microsoft is not new to this business. The Xbox 360 has been progressively improved and updated to incorporate new elements and give users new features. It’s clear from the launch event that the company wants to own the living room and become the media centre of choice for every household – not just the hard core gamers. The risk they’re running, at least until E3, is that their most ardent supporters are currently feeling neglected, sidelined and in some ways persecuted, for their loyalty and early adopter status.
It’s telling that over the course of the launch event, Microsoft’s share price dropped, while Sony’s climbed an equal amount.
It’s far too early to say how the next generation of consoles will shape up against each other, but it’s fair to say that Microsoft’s focus at the launch event has raised more questions than it answered.
Roll on E3…