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Stupid, Stupid xBox

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Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox

#61

Post by _frog »

tibbon wrote: post #15

The modern round of game systems are quite flawed from a UI/UX perspective, as the author here points out. My Playstation 3 forces me to do various updates to watch Netflix (which is what I use the system for 90% of the time). All of the systems ask you to input text in a super-awkward way to setup various aspects of the system (on-screen keyboards really suck for typing in complex WPA2 passwords). The XBox 360 is th…

Surprisingly, I've found the UI on the Wii U to be generally pretty good, even great at times. There's a lot of consistency between different parts of the OS and the underlying concepts are all totally sound.

It makes me wonder whether this will be the generation where consoles can no longer get away with having poor UI design.

Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox

#62

Post by rhizome »

chc wrote: post #57
clobber wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying they're still losing money. The "lose money on units, make some back on software" model doesn't make economic sense anymore. The second link has recent numbers.

> I'm saying they're still losing money. In what world? The Xbox has been turning a profit for most of its life. AFAIK it lost money its first couple of years (primarily due to the fact it was rushed to market), and since then it has been largely propping up Microsoft's entertainment division, which otherwise would be bleeding like mad. (The division lost money last year not because the Xbox was unprofitable, but bec…

AFAIK it lost money its first couple of years (primarily due to the fact it was rushed to market),

That, and the fact that nobody in Japan wanted to buy one.

Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox

#63

Post by cocoflunchy »

natbro wrote: post #46
csense wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do the tools need to cost anything at all?

you're spot on, they shouldn't really cost anything. XCode for iOS development, for example, doesn't cost anything (once you've bought a mac). similarly Android development tools don't cost a thing. charging a small fee like $99/year for the apple developer program or the Amazon store, or $25/year (i think it is) for Google Play is something they say simply helps defray the costs of hosting your apps and icons and in…

> or $25/year (i think it is) for Google Play

Actually it is 25$ once and for all.

Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox

#64

Post by natbro »

nemothekid wrote: post #56
theevocater wrote: post #28

I've been shouting this for as long as I could: Once Apple (or maybe an Android company or even someone new) enters this market in earnest, Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo should take watch. Apple has the infrastructure to deliver games, has tiny/medium/large touch devices that can connect via bluetooth in many customers hands (which already play games), and many many game developers familiar with the platforms. Every big st…

>If Apple can position the AppleTV as a console (maybe open it up to developers) or build something more along the lines of a traditional console, they will crush. This opinion is pushed around a lot, however I cannot really see it happening, and I doubt Apple will ever pursue such a strategy. For Apple to enter the console market, they would have to compete with the big boys, meaning if it can't push 100 million pol…

I honestly don't know if Apple will enter this market, but I'm not quite as pessimistic as you are about the profit margin as the reason not to.

I think they could build a next-generation-console-capable Apple-TV and sell it at or below $199 while keeping their 40% margin. They would sell you each additional wireless controller (and it would be sweetly designed, I suspect) for the standard $79 peripheral cost.

The primary contributor to their bill-of-material cost savings vs. competitors is that they already own and/or license at huge volume their CPU and GPU cores and know how to fabricate them in multi-core formats with high-speed cross-connectivity. They can also buy RAM and flash for SSD storage at better costs than anybody else. These are the primary cost drivers (basically money flowing to IBM, nVidia, etc for CPU/GPU and money flowing elsewhere for RAM/SSD/HDD) for xBox, PS, Wii.

Apple would have dramatically lower overall startup costs versus the original xBox/xBox360 and PS2/3 given they already have a toolchain and SMP operating system with sandboxing, an App Store and its back-end, user-accounts and payment infrastructure, and numerous other costs shared with the rest of the Mac and iOS ecosystems.

Apple wouldn't have a lot of work to do to train developers: tell us the screen resolution, how to interact with the controller and any other new hardware capabilities, tell us anything special about the GPU's and let us go to town with the existing toolchain we are using for iPhone and iPad.

So, again, I have no idea if they'll do it, I just think it would be a very profitable business for them.

Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox

#65

Post by interpol_p »

natbro wrote: post #46
csense wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do the tools need to cost anything at all?

you're spot on, they shouldn't really cost anything. XCode for iOS development, for example, doesn't cost anything (once you've bought a mac). similarly Android development tools don't cost a thing. charging a small fee like $99/year for the apple developer program or the Amazon store, or $25/year (i think it is) for Google Play is something they say simply helps defray the costs of hosting your apps and icons and in…

This is veering a bit off topic, but Apple do a fair bit for their $100/year. Especially in regards to handling overseas tax withholding to ensure that you don't need to keep up with every country's local tax laws. They also stand between you and the customer with regards to processing refunds, volume and educational licensing.

Google Play, as far as I'm aware, don't do this for every country you sell in. Leading to situations where you may be liable for tax payments but won't know it unless you do the research yourself. This is discussed in more detail here: http://retrodreamer.com/blog/2012/03/why-dont-we-have-paid-v...

Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox

#66

Post by csense »

natbro wrote: post #46
csense wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do the tools need to cost anything at all?

you're spot on, they shouldn't really cost anything. XCode for iOS development, for example, doesn't cost anything (once you've bought a mac). similarly Android development tools don't cost a thing. charging a small fee like $99/year for the apple developer program or the Amazon store, or $25/year (i think it is) for Google Play is something they say simply helps defray the costs of hosting your apps and icons and in…

I asked about this specifically because, when I got the book that really started me deep into programming [1], I was hampered by my lack of a C compiler and assembler, and the ~$200 cost thereof ($400 total, in mid-1990's dollars, for the two tools -- kids these days have it easy with binary downloads of Windows ports of gcc and NASM available free on the web). If I'd had that kind of money in middle school, I would have blown it on video games. (I didn't know about GNU, I don't think the DOS port of gcc, the Allegro system, was yet born, and I didn't have any mentors.)

The source is messy and compiler-specific, and many implementations are irrelevant to modern systems. For example, I recall Chapter 14 is about implementing multiplayer over serial cable by directly writing to I/O ports in assembly language to drive the UART. I never did get that to work, but trying to translate the book from the Watcom C + MASM toolchain to the QBASIC + DEBUG toolchain -- without access to a working copy of the former and zero prior C experience! -- actually taught me a lot.

So maybe there is a reason toolchains should be expensive -- to encourage starving students with lots of time but little money to expand their minds by jury-rigging alternatives :)

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Tricks-Game-Programming-Gurus-Andre-La...

Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox

#67

Post by joezydeco »

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #44

I've also been yelling this to my friends for some time. I actually can't figure out why Apple hasn't yet released an Apple TV with a more powerful graphics and some active cooling, plus a controller. Allow iOS games and you have a serious, serious competition crushing game platform with a TON of existing games and content. Instantly.

No storage. Where is the AppleTV supposed to keep the gigabytes needed to run some of these titles? Is it going to stream off the cloud every time you run it?

Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox

#68

Post by chc »

rhizome wrote: post #62
chc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm saying they're still losing money. In what world? The Xbox has been turning a profit for most of its life. AFAIK it lost money its first couple of years (primarily due to the fact it was rushed to market), and since then it has been largely propping up Microsoft's entertainment division, which otherwise would be bleeding like mad. (The division lost money last year not because the Xbox was unprofitable, but bec…

AFAIK it lost money its first couple of years (primarily due to the fact it was rushed to market), That, and the fact that nobody in Japan wanted to buy one.

That too, but it wouldn't have been as much of a problem if they hadn't needed to spend billions cleaning up their mess. They were already taking a loss on the system, then they had to take yet another loss because the systems didn't work.

Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox

#69

Post by theevocater »

nemothekid wrote: post #56
theevocater wrote: post #28

I've been shouting this for as long as I could: Once Apple (or maybe an Android company or even someone new) enters this market in earnest, Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo should take watch. Apple has the infrastructure to deliver games, has tiny/medium/large touch devices that can connect via bluetooth in many customers hands (which already play games), and many many game developers familiar with the platforms. Every big st…

>If Apple can position the AppleTV as a console (maybe open it up to developers) or build something more along the lines of a traditional console, they will crush. This opinion is pushed around a lot, however I cannot really see it happening, and I doubt Apple will ever pursue such a strategy. For Apple to enter the console market, they would have to compete with the big boys, meaning if it can't push 100 million pol…

Oh wow, good point I totally forgot about valve holy crap. That should be soon!

I'm not sure Apple will/would do it, but I think they have the muscle. They aren't competing with CoD, they are competing with Tetris. They want you to buy and play games on your media device, not watch media on your games device. Hugely different market which is ripe for picking.

Apple would probably not build a device they lose money on: that isn't their game. They are a hardware company and they make their money on hardware. This is why I assume they would build something similar to the AppleTV with maybe a bit more juice: rely on the iPad to deliver the CPU juice and the AppleTV (or whatever) to show the content. "Everyone" already has an iDevice, leverage that and jump in.

Re: Stupid, Stupid xBox

#70

Post by damian2000 »

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #49

After letting the article percolate for a bit. Just think about what the industry will look like in 10 years. - internet game distribution is going to change content delivery just like it changed VHF/DVD rental stores. The game stores will be gone, walmart will not display/sell them. - those who can provide a pipeline like netflix for games are going to destroy the current establishment. It will likely be worse than…

Sounds like a SteamBox. http://au.ign.com/articles/2013/01/18/the-promise-and-potent...
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