Se777eN
Distinguished Member
Xbox One Launch
1. Available November, 2013 at Participating Retailers [source, Xbox.com]
Click on the retailer of your choice to be taken to their Xbox One pre-order page.
Microsoft Store
GameStop
Walmart
Amazon
Target
Best Buy
Toys R Us
2. Launching In the Following 21 Countries [source, Xbox.com]
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Canada
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Italy
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Russia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
United States
Xbox Live Features
1. Seamless Gold Account for 360 and One [source, Xbox.com], [source, Youtube.com]
Cloud Storage
Profile stored in the cloud
Game saves stored in the cloud
All media content stored in the cloud
Unlimited cloud storage
2. Free Games with Xbox Live Gold [source, Xbox.com]
Runs from 6/10/13 until 12/31/13
Games are released the 1st and 16th
Each game has a 15-day window to download it.
Once you've downloaded the game, it's yours for life.
13 Xbox 360 games total
Games are chosen by Xbox team
3. Xbox Live Servers [source, ArsTechnica.com]
Over 300,000 servers will be running this year for Xbox One.
Their specific use is for "latency-insensitive computation" in Xbox One games.
Lag is avoided because it will not compute things which are latency sensitive, such as:
Animations in shooter
Shots in a game
Reaction to collisions
It will compute things that are latency-insensitive, such as:
Lighting
Volumetric fog
Physics modeling
Fluid dynamics
Cloth motion
Computations are handled upfront by cloud servers while adding no lag to gameplay.
Essentially for seamless experience, Xbox will handle intro computations, Cloud catches up, and then takes over
"This is never going to work because everyones internet can go out eventually!"
While you are connected, the cloud will do it's job. If your internet goes out, and it always does, "the game is going to handle that intelligently"
Description of intelligent handling to come soon
"A rule of thumb we like to use is that for ever Xbox One available in your living room, we'll have three of those devices in the cloud"
4. Start Playing Immediately After Installation Begins [source, Xbox.com]
Games install in the background while you play them.
5. Auto-resume for Games [source, Xbox.com]
Pause game at any time on your console; you can then:
Pick up where you left off on another console.
Watch movies or television, and come back to where you left off later.
6. Living Games (Persistent Worlds) [source, Xbox.com], [source, Xbox.com]
Worlds will continue to change/update while you're offline.
Game worlds stay in sync with the real world (sports, racing, fighting, etc.).
7. Xbox One SmartMatch [source, Major Nelson's Blog]
Gives you the ability to find matches for games in the background.
Xbox lets you do anything until your match is ready.
Xbox games will show you "typical wait times" for other Xbox games.
You can choose in-depth SmartMatch options such as "search by DLC".
Game titles can allow SmartMatch to sort by specific attributes such as (but not limited to) specific skills, age, or language.
8. Reputation [source, Major Nelson's Blog]
"Survey" style feedback system was removed and replaced with more advanced feedback system.
Feedback is direct to the player, even muting or blocking is taken into account.
All feedback is calculated by the Reputation service to evaluate a player's social reputation.
Just like insurance, the longer you go without causing trouble the better your Reputation will be.
Green is good, you don't want to get the "Avoid Me" Reputation.
Your social Reputation can easily be seen on your Gamercard.
SmartMatch can work to match bad players with other bad players if their Reputation is low enough.
Microsoft will issue you alerts as you move down in Reputation rank (Good, Needs Improvement, Avoid Me).
9. Achievements [source, Major Nelson's Blog]
Along with Gamerscore, players can now unlock digital artwork, characters, and stats through achievements.
Applications and media can now take advantage of awarding console users achievments (will not affect Gamerscore).
Achievements and Challenges:
There are now challenges, in addition to achievements.
Achievements are not changing, will remain the same.
Challenges are opportunities that can come and go; They can be a goal or reward.
Challenges can be used to unlock things during a specific time.
Similarities:
You can unlock them and win their rewards.
Once unlocked, they are saved to your achievement history.
They each have an icon to visualize the cool thing you did.
They often are associated with a Game DVR capture to show your friends that you are better than they are.
Developers can release more of them after the game's initial release (more on that in a bit).
Differences:
Challenges are time based. As just noted, challenges are only available for a certain period of time. Only your activity during that timeframe will count toward unlocking the challenge. Achievements do not expire, so you can unlock them at your leisure.
Challenges do not give out Gamerscore. We want everyone to have the same shot at increasing their Gamerscore to its highest potential. Since challenges are intentionally temporary (an opportunity) and achievements never expire (a promise), only achievements may offer Gamerscore as a reward.
Challenges may cross titles, but achievements cannot. Achievements cannot be shared across titles whereas challenges are allowed to span multiple titles.
Challenges can be unlocked by the community. Community challenges are typically goals that exceed what a lone player can accomplish in the given period of time. Imagine, for example, a game releases a headshot weekend challenge that requires players to cumulatively headshot 1 million baddies in a 3 day period. And every person who participates and meets the challenge's goals gets the unlock on his or her achievement history and reaps its reward.
Achievements run on the cloud, allowing these features:
Allows Developers to run challenges across all players of a game simultaneously.
Developers can continue to add achievements after initial game release.
Get new achievements without being forced to purchase new content.
Lets developers monitor statistics of achievements and can respond with content to the interest of those players.
Most importantly, this allows developers to involve the community in the development.
Hardware
2. Xbox One Console [source, Xbox.com]
Comes with:
Xbox One console
Kinect sensor
Wireless controller
HDMI Cable
"Xbox One's RAM is accessible as a unified chunk".
RAM can be controlled and divided up between GPU and CPU dynamically.
This allows different games and applications to allocate what's needed, rather than trying to predetermine ahead of time how much RAM should be given to each component (GPU, CPU, Audio).
Microsoft doesn't want to make assumptions, assumptions lead to limiting developers from the beginning.
4. Xbox One Kinect
Kinect is required to physically be connected to Xbox One.
Matt Booty on why Kinect is required:
"From a design point of view, we don't see [the Kinect] as something that would be separate from Xbox One itself." Booty implied that the Kinect could have even been built into the Xbox One casing, if not for concerns about players wanting the Kinect and the Xbox One in slightly different places in their living rooms. "It just happens to be in a different plastic housing, and I think that's just because of location."
Think of computers, you would never see one without a mouse or keyboard (we're not talking tablets here). The same thing is being done with Kinect, it's an integral part of the Xbox system
By knowing all Xbox One's have Kinect, developers "are going to find all kinds of new things to do with it because they don't have to worry about it being a unique accessory or something that only a small portion of the user base has"
They're making the Kinect just as much of a standard as a camera in a phone, or a touchpad on a laptop.
http://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/1gh043/list_of_unbiased_xbox_one_facts_all_information/
1. Available November, 2013 at Participating Retailers [source, Xbox.com]
Click on the retailer of your choice to be taken to their Xbox One pre-order page.
Microsoft Store
GameStop
Walmart
Amazon
Target
Best Buy
Toys R Us
2. Launching In the Following 21 Countries [source, Xbox.com]
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Canada
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Italy
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Russia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
United States
Xbox Live Features
1. Seamless Gold Account for 360 and One [source, Xbox.com], [source, Youtube.com]
Cloud Storage
Profile stored in the cloud
Game saves stored in the cloud
All media content stored in the cloud
Unlimited cloud storage
2. Free Games with Xbox Live Gold [source, Xbox.com]
Runs from 6/10/13 until 12/31/13
Games are released the 1st and 16th
Each game has a 15-day window to download it.
Once you've downloaded the game, it's yours for life.
13 Xbox 360 games total
Games are chosen by Xbox team
3. Xbox Live Servers [source, ArsTechnica.com]
Over 300,000 servers will be running this year for Xbox One.
Their specific use is for "latency-insensitive computation" in Xbox One games.
Lag is avoided because it will not compute things which are latency sensitive, such as:
Animations in shooter
Shots in a game
Reaction to collisions
It will compute things that are latency-insensitive, such as:
Lighting
Volumetric fog
Physics modeling
Fluid dynamics
Cloth motion
Computations are handled upfront by cloud servers while adding no lag to gameplay.
Essentially for seamless experience, Xbox will handle intro computations, Cloud catches up, and then takes over
"This is never going to work because everyones internet can go out eventually!"
While you are connected, the cloud will do it's job. If your internet goes out, and it always does, "the game is going to handle that intelligently"
Description of intelligent handling to come soon
"A rule of thumb we like to use is that for ever Xbox One available in your living room, we'll have three of those devices in the cloud"
4. Start Playing Immediately After Installation Begins [source, Xbox.com]
Games install in the background while you play them.
5. Auto-resume for Games [source, Xbox.com]
Pause game at any time on your console; you can then:
Pick up where you left off on another console.
Watch movies or television, and come back to where you left off later.
6. Living Games (Persistent Worlds) [source, Xbox.com], [source, Xbox.com]
Worlds will continue to change/update while you're offline.
Game worlds stay in sync with the real world (sports, racing, fighting, etc.).
7. Xbox One SmartMatch [source, Major Nelson's Blog]
Gives you the ability to find matches for games in the background.
Xbox lets you do anything until your match is ready.
Xbox games will show you "typical wait times" for other Xbox games.
You can choose in-depth SmartMatch options such as "search by DLC".
Game titles can allow SmartMatch to sort by specific attributes such as (but not limited to) specific skills, age, or language.
8. Reputation [source, Major Nelson's Blog]
"Survey" style feedback system was removed and replaced with more advanced feedback system.
Feedback is direct to the player, even muting or blocking is taken into account.
All feedback is calculated by the Reputation service to evaluate a player's social reputation.
Just like insurance, the longer you go without causing trouble the better your Reputation will be.
Green is good, you don't want to get the "Avoid Me" Reputation.
Your social Reputation can easily be seen on your Gamercard.
SmartMatch can work to match bad players with other bad players if their Reputation is low enough.
Microsoft will issue you alerts as you move down in Reputation rank (Good, Needs Improvement, Avoid Me).
9. Achievements [source, Major Nelson's Blog]
Along with Gamerscore, players can now unlock digital artwork, characters, and stats through achievements.
Applications and media can now take advantage of awarding console users achievments (will not affect Gamerscore).
Achievements and Challenges:
There are now challenges, in addition to achievements.
Achievements are not changing, will remain the same.
Challenges are opportunities that can come and go; They can be a goal or reward.
Challenges can be used to unlock things during a specific time.
Similarities:
You can unlock them and win their rewards.
Once unlocked, they are saved to your achievement history.
They each have an icon to visualize the cool thing you did.
They often are associated with a Game DVR capture to show your friends that you are better than they are.
Developers can release more of them after the game's initial release (more on that in a bit).
Differences:
Challenges are time based. As just noted, challenges are only available for a certain period of time. Only your activity during that timeframe will count toward unlocking the challenge. Achievements do not expire, so you can unlock them at your leisure.
Challenges do not give out Gamerscore. We want everyone to have the same shot at increasing their Gamerscore to its highest potential. Since challenges are intentionally temporary (an opportunity) and achievements never expire (a promise), only achievements may offer Gamerscore as a reward.
Challenges may cross titles, but achievements cannot. Achievements cannot be shared across titles whereas challenges are allowed to span multiple titles.
Challenges can be unlocked by the community. Community challenges are typically goals that exceed what a lone player can accomplish in the given period of time. Imagine, for example, a game releases a headshot weekend challenge that requires players to cumulatively headshot 1 million baddies in a 3 day period. And every person who participates and meets the challenge's goals gets the unlock on his or her achievement history and reaps its reward.
Achievements run on the cloud, allowing these features:
Allows Developers to run challenges across all players of a game simultaneously.
Developers can continue to add achievements after initial game release.
Get new achievements without being forced to purchase new content.
Lets developers monitor statistics of achievements and can respond with content to the interest of those players.
Most importantly, this allows developers to involve the community in the development.
Hardware
2. Xbox One Console [source, Xbox.com]
Comes with:
Xbox One console
Kinect sensor
Wireless controller
HDMI Cable
"Xbox One's RAM is accessible as a unified chunk".
RAM can be controlled and divided up between GPU and CPU dynamically.
This allows different games and applications to allocate what's needed, rather than trying to predetermine ahead of time how much RAM should be given to each component (GPU, CPU, Audio).
Microsoft doesn't want to make assumptions, assumptions lead to limiting developers from the beginning.
4. Xbox One Kinect
Kinect is required to physically be connected to Xbox One.
Matt Booty on why Kinect is required:
"From a design point of view, we don't see [the Kinect] as something that would be separate from Xbox One itself." Booty implied that the Kinect could have even been built into the Xbox One casing, if not for concerns about players wanting the Kinect and the Xbox One in slightly different places in their living rooms. "It just happens to be in a different plastic housing, and I think that's just because of location."
Think of computers, you would never see one without a mouse or keyboard (we're not talking tablets here). The same thing is being done with Kinect, it's an integral part of the Xbox system
By knowing all Xbox One's have Kinect, developers "are going to find all kinds of new things to do with it because they don't have to worry about it being a unique accessory or something that only a small portion of the user base has"
They're making the Kinect just as much of a standard as a camera in a phone, or a touchpad on a laptop.
http://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/1gh043/list_of_unbiased_xbox_one_facts_all_information/