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"Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

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Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#141

Post by redthrowaway »

Microsoft has always struck me as a company that makes some really cool technology, then tries to find a way to make it relevant to the rest of us. For them, it seems the consumer is an afterthought and the technology is key.

Windows 8 was an impressive attempt to merge mobile and desktop OSes so that mobile users are no longer second-class citizens and have access to everything desktop users do. The problem? Mobile needed fixing, not desktop. In the push for engineering parsimony, they made the desktop experience worse simply so that it could be shared with mobile.

Kinect is a wicked piece of tech. It's just seriously, seriously cool. But what does it do? How does Kinect make gaming better? Outside of that one boxing game, I just don't see it. It makes everything demonstrably worse, like QTEs that work as cinematic finishing moves for bosses in God of War, but are completely pointless in 95% of the games they're included in. Kinect has the same problem: it's a really cool solution in search of a problem.

Perhaps the best example of this is Clippy, where MS used Bayesian algos to analyze text and offer suggestions. Again, a really cool little bit of datamining/ML, in 1997, no less, and running on the computational equivalent of a potato. Clippy is a really cool program. But it was completely pointless. It solved a problem no one had in a way that pissed off everyone.

And really, that's Microsoft in a nutshell.

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#142

Post by tomflack »

onedognight wrote: post #120
potatolicious wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And cable providers are some of the most hated companies that people live with. Have you ever met even a single person who's a fan of their cable company? The difference here is while cable has (for now) an iron grasp on content and monopoly in their coverage areas, gaming has competition.

> Have you ever met even a single person who's a fan of their cable company? I am. I don't buy their TV or phone service, but they provide the best internet connection in every place I have lived. They have consistently been cheaper and faster than fios, uverse and any DSL. I can run a server, they don't block ports, and my IP is effectively static.

Clearly he's referring to cable company as in Cable TV company, not company that runs a cable in to your house while on division sells internet and another a TV package.

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#143

Post by agrona »

asperous wrote: post #64
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #36

I am a Microsoft Engineer so take what I am about to say as gospel: There's no way to know when someone claims to be something on the internet that they are that thing unless the company itself corroborates it. The pastebin was posted on 4chan... 4chan... And all of the information in it could have been gleaned from publicly available sources. We should at best discuss it like it is rumour, and much more realisticall…

>"It's not worth my time to prove it, or risk my Job. I work in Studio A, 40th ave in Redmond, Wa. The thai place in the studio cafeteria has double punch wednesdays. Go ahead and call them and verify if you want."

As someone who works in Redmond, the details of Microsoft's gigantic food court thing aren't exactly private.

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#144

Post by sirclueless »

wtvanhest wrote: post #125
mortenjorck wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are wired to see a physical item (disks, etc.) and think *mine.* Well, yes, but you oversimplify. There is a long-established doctrine of first-sale in the US, and it's not just part of case law, it's part of the culture. The non-resaleability of Kindle books or anything else digital is still new to the popular mind, and carries with it a certain implicit devaluation. Even though most people at least abstractl…

>If Call of Duty 8 retails for $59.99 on the PS4 and $29.99 on the XBO, that suddenly makes the DRM a very appealing tradeoff. If they're both $59.99, Xbox is dead in the water. Exactly, if MS had been thinking this all along, they could have proved it with a low price game option announced with the DRM. That would have been really appealing to a lot of people.

That doesn't really work. The game is still supposed to be $60 at launch, that's when games make the most money, they really are worth that much (and more) as evidenced by the many people who pay that much for them, even on DRM-laden platforms like Steam.

The point is to let the price fall faster after launch. Xbox can't exactly promise "Our games' prices will fall faster than the other guys" because the market will determine that -- in aggregate they will, but there's a reason Skyrim is still $30 on Steam.

Microsoft wants a world where you have account-locked games tied to disks, because it gives them the benefits of Steam-like DRM but also the game conveniently on a disk to take to a friend's so he doesn't have to download it, and to let the poor schmuck in rural Nebraska with 25 kb/s to play the game some time in the next week.

Honestly, Sony can take the same pricing strategies as Microsoft on their digital downloads -- Microsoft just wants to have more convenient digital downloads, while Sony just wants more convenient disks.

My guess is that long-term Microsoft will prove to be on the right side of history (the success of Steam is evidence). Sony can probably do just fine for now, they can always transition in later generations when the downsides are no longer breaking news stories.

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#145

Post by tomkarlo »

Kylekramer wrote: post #131
mortenjorck wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are wired to see a physical item (disks, etc.) and think *mine.* Well, yes, but you oversimplify. There is a long-established doctrine of first-sale in the US, and it's not just part of case law, it's part of the culture. The non-resaleability of Kindle books or anything else digital is still new to the popular mind, and carries with it a certain implicit devaluation. Even though most people at least abstractl…

I dunno if price is really the issue. People pay much more for downloads of desktop software and at equal prices with the physical counterparts. You rarely see anyone arguing that they should be able to resell Photoshop or Word.

Those kind of apps don't have the same purchase cycle as entertainment items like games, movies or books. They don't grow less valuable the more hours you spend using them (in fact, they generally become more valuable the more you've invested in learning them.)

Folks either want to rent entertainment , or buy it knowing they can resell it, because they know that the act of consumption will devalue that item for them but it will retain greater value for others who have not yet consumed its entertainment.

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#146

Post by yk »

brownbat wrote: post #140

I hate this phrase, "trying to own the living room." We think people want living room devices, but really they just need a living room computer. A few months ago I went this way. No overengineered media center, just a tower next to the HDTV. Full-sized wireless keyboard and mouse. High-DPI to read text. The experience immediately killed the 10 foot interface for me. All the 10' UIs out there feel slow, clunky, hobble…

> I hate this phrase, "trying to own the living room."

Why? I find it refreshingly honest. ( And I absolutely agree with the rest, next to my TV is also a desktop with a wireless keyboard. )

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#147

Post by tomkarlo »

Why not just go straight to free-to-play model? CoD for $0 for the first level, but $5 each level after that. I'd try a lot more games out if I didn't have to pay $60 up front, and it would encourage developers to make better games rather than the current AAA tentpole model where they depend on the pre-release hype.

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#148

Post by teamonkey »

eridius wrote: post #20
jiggy2011 wrote: post #10

He seems to be suggesting that Xbox One games will be cheaper because of the lack of used sales. I don't see what their economic incentive would be to lower the prices (at least to below prices for a similar PS4 game), usually if there is less competition in a market and demand stays constant the price goes up. In the case of Steam , they have to be cheap because their competition is TPB which is the cheapest game st…

Right now, used games capture the low end of the market. If there are no used games, then there's nothing servicing the low end, and that's a lot of wasted money. If game prices come down a bit, you capture more of the low end, which makes up for the lost revenue on the high end. The trick is figuring out the price point that gets you the most revenue.

Used console games typically sell for $5 less than new games. They're not servicing the low end of the market.

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#149

Post by jwhitlark »

I have no idea what the demographics are these days, but certainly I, and most of my friends, are least concerned about price, and most concerned that most game are not that fun, and the damn console keeps doing less and less of what I want each year. My PS3 is the only thing I can think of that has gotten less capable with each update.

People say the kindle is different, but if my books became unavailable, I'd grab them from other sources, no questions and no qualms. If you want to sell me something, then sell me something, don't quibble about it after the fact.

Re: "Microsoft engineer" on Xbox1

#150

Post by seanalltogether »

snuxoll wrote: post #100
seanalltogether wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet the 24 hour checkin doesn't make sense in the case of digital downloads, the other app stores dont require it. If a digitally signed receipt for the game is on your system, who cares if the next time you validate against MS servers is in 24 hours or 24 years.

It makes sense when you take into account the ability to sell your digital copies, which current solutions do not allow. Otherwise, nothing is preventing you from selling your copy of Halo 5, unplugging your XBO and playing it offline for 1-2 weeks before the next mandatory check-in. It's annoying, but the 24-hour checkin is a requirement to have used game sales for the system. You can remove it if you want to get ri…

I would argue those scenarios aren't really all that important to check against. If someone is going to sell their game it doesn't really matter much if they sell it and play for 2 more weeks, or play for 2 more weeks then sell it. People will find their way online eventually and those that don't will be a very small minority.
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