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Xbox One: The Review

polygon.com

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Re: Xbox One: The Review

#91

Post by Bahamut »

podperson wrote: post #89

They also thoroughly reviewed the PS4, and the review was also pretty mixed. Overall, I'm not tempted to buy either device (10+s to wake from sleep seems infuriating; my AppleTV takes about that long and it drives me bonkers). My take on the next gen consoles is that it's not clear there will be any winners. The current generation hasn't actually been profitable for either Microsoft or Sony, and the economics of the…

Agreed - I have a launch PS4, but I've been underwhelmed by the game selection. I cancelled my Xbox One preorder a couple of weeks back over the same concerns. I think the Wii U has a much more entertaining selection than both at this point.

Re: Xbox One: The Review

#92

Post by JonSkeptic »

freehunter wrote: post #65
JonSkeptic wrote: post #45

If you've ever complained about surveillance then I don't see how you could even consider buying this. >Kinect is also used for lots of little things throughout the Xbox One's user experience. Profiles support fast facial recognition for sign-in. Once a profile has a face associated with it, the console will sign that person in whenever they sit in front of the console — it even says hello. Controllers sync automatic…

> Not to mention that Microsoft has been working on techniques for reading the emotions of people in the room through body language in order to better serve up adds. (sic) > By having this in your living room, you have a device that passively... monitors emotional states, Has this ever been confirmed? I haven't seen it touted anywhere as a feature (possibilities are not features until they actually happen). Sounds li…

The more you know!

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=...

Claims 4,5,6, and 7 are particularly relevant:

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the indication of the user's reaction is identified from facial expressions of the user captured by an image capture device during the time period.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the indication of the user's reaction is identified from user speech patterns captured by an audio capture device during the time period.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the indication of the user's reaction is identified from gestures and body movements of the user captured by an image capture device during the time period.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising storing the emotional state of the user in a database.

Re: Xbox One: The Review

#93

Post by girvo »

VLM wrote: post #90
girvo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hey, all you need to do, is remodel and redecorate your home and buy new clothes... A friend of mine is an editor for a tech magazine, and has been playing with the Xbone (I totally read that as EX-bone now...) -- the Kinect is a thousand times better now, in that regard.

Then they should have done a video in my somewhat less well lit living room, with a couch that's the same color as my wife's shirt, and a stereotypical wedding pix in the background and peculiar shadows. If its higher performance, well, show it! The real killer is the concept. The highest performance way to do "up down enter" on a menu is obviously a controller not an arm and camera. Kinect doesn't have to work very…

Fair points!

His opinion of it was that the voice navigation is far more useful than the "swipe your hand like an idiot" bits.

Re: Xbox One: The Review

#94

Post by drzaiusapelord »

JonSkeptic wrote: post #45

If you've ever complained about surveillance then I don't see how you could even consider buying this. >Kinect is also used for lots of little things throughout the Xbox One's user experience. Profiles support fast facial recognition for sign-in. Once a profile has a face associated with it, the console will sign that person in whenever they sit in front of the console — it even says hello. Controllers sync automatic…

If you don't like kinect and its implications on privacy, I highly suggest you do not get any sort of smartphone or open any email accounts. Oh right, you do those things. Its just the usual HN tinfoil hat hypocrisy that extends to MS, but seemingly not to Apple, Google, Yahoo, Sony, Dropbox, Twitter, and Facebook.

Re: Xbox One: The Review

#95

Post by freehunter »

JonSkeptic wrote: post #92
freehunter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to mention that Microsoft has been working on techniques for reading the emotions of people in the room through body language in order to better serve up adds. (sic) > By having this in your living room, you have a device that passively... monitors emotional states, Has this ever been confirmed? I haven't seen it touted anywhere as a feature (possibilities are not features until they actually happen). Sounds li…

The more you know! http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=... Claims 4,5,6, and 7 are particularly relevant: 4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the indication of the user's reaction is identified from facial expressions of the user captured by an image capture device during the time period. 5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the indication of the user's rea…

Again, has it actually be implemented? I haven't seen anything saying it has.

Re: Xbox One: The Review

#96

Post by freehunter »

steveklabnik wrote: post #80
freehunter wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that it's closed source so who can really tell? Anyone with a computer and Wireshark. And even if it is now, who says a 'security update' won't change that in the future? Do we want to get into justifications about what could possibly be done with a technology and therefore refuse to use said technology? I've heard Kinect could identify the guns in your house and send the police automatically!

> Anyone with a computer and Wireshark. This assumes that the information is not encrypted, for one. > Do we want to get into justifications about what could possibly be done with a technology and therefore refuse to use said technology? When it comes to security, yes, you must consider all vectors. See the two news stories below about cell phones doing similar things as far back as 2006.

So people are also refusing to use the PS4 camera, their cell phones, any laptop with a webcam, any tablet, the Moto X with its always-on microphone, etc? Because they could be used to infringe on privacy?

It's about risk management. What's the potential harm, what's the likelihood of that harm, and what would be the impact if this were to be used maliciously? It sounds to me like people are rejecting this because a) Microsoft and b) rumors and speculation.

Re: Xbox One: The Review

#97

Post by JL2010 »

VLM wrote: post #49

The article was well matched to its topic; like modern video games, its flashy and high tech, but nothing new or interesting. I had to laugh at the kinect video. The white/beige featureless walls with no human pictures in its field of view, the actors wearing extremely high contrast clothes, the incredible cinematography style smooth and even lighting... My real world experiences with the kinect on a 360 have been su…

Disclosure: I'm an XBox hardware engineer and encourage you to try the new kinect before writing it off. It is completely re-engineered with new time-of-flight technology that achieves orders of magnitude more precision than the last gen. This is not some BS hardware hype either, it translates into better real world use cases. I've never had to wear any special clothes or paint my walls... it just works for me. It will also work in nearly pitch black environments.

I think the hardware/software co-design for this particular peripheral was done phenomenally well, and MS has had some time to refine its use cases and integration into the system. I'm really excited to see where this goes.

Re: Xbox One: The Review

#98

Post by freehunter »

foobarqux wrote: post #77
mbennett wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, the biometrics profile is stored locally on the device, just like the iPhone 5S, and is never synced to the cloud. If you sign in on two consoles, you have to go through the biometrics setup process twice. Edit: Why the downvotes?

The device runs arbitrary code. It's trivial to have a module that runs locally, downloads a "wanted list" and returns a probability of match for each entry. This functionality will almost certainly be implemented given how effective it would be in locating young males.

I can't tell if you're serious or not. "Almost certainly"? If this were true, why wouldn't every smartphone already have this? Turn on the front-facing camera and send a picture of the user to the FBI. We've had this capability for years, and the Xbox doesn't add much new to the equation.

Re: Xbox One: The Review

#99

Post by VLM »

girvo wrote: post #93
VLM wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they should have done a video in my somewhat less well lit living room, with a couch that's the same color as my wife's shirt, and a stereotypical wedding pix in the background and peculiar shadows. If its higher performance, well, show it! The real killer is the concept. The highest performance way to do "up down enter" on a menu is obviously a controller not an arm and camera. Kinect doesn't have to work very…

Fair points! His opinion of it was that the voice navigation is far more useful than the "swipe your hand like an idiot" bits.

I had to disable voice navigation because I'd be watching a youtube video or whatever, and my daughter would be talking to my wife across the room or the next room, and I'd randomly get restarting or skipped videos or whatever. I decided it was misinterpreting conversations in the room as me saying "xbox, next" or whatever. I don't recall if I software disabled it (is there an option?) or the old fashioned hardware disable using duct tape and stuff. Its been months since I've had a problem, so I have no proof (logs or whatever) but the correlation is interesting. (Edited to add, I'm not even sure the yt app supports voice... but the correlation with "I got really pissed off and shut off a bunch of features" and "it works better now" still exists)

Once kinect and voice are disabled, it is a pretty decent console.

Re: Xbox One: The Review

#100

Post by throwwit »

JonSkeptic wrote: post #45

If you've ever complained about surveillance then I don't see how you could even consider buying this. >Kinect is also used for lots of little things throughout the Xbox One's user experience. Profiles support fast facial recognition for sign-in. Once a profile has a face associated with it, the console will sign that person in whenever they sit in front of the console — it even says hello. Controllers sync automatic…

I miss the simplicity of the old consoles. Why did game systems evolve into some distopic nielsson box?
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