Xbox 360 owners subscribing to Amazon’s LOVEFiLM on-demand movie service can now get the same enhanced Instant streaming system that their PS3 peers have been enjoying since May, as the Microsoft console gets the new entertainment update. The refresh brings support for the LOVEFiLM Watchlist – effectively a queue of titles the user wants to
While many gamers have been focusing on the various fiascos surrounding the Xbox One’s used game policy and such (for which Microsoft pulled a 180), one thing that a lot of people have overlooked is the intense focus that Microsoft is putting on its Kinect sensor with the new console. While it can be considered
You use Google. Or maybe, just maybe you use Bing. Sometimes one is better. Sometimes the other is prettier. Sometimes it’s the other way around. Whatever. The most hilarious, ridiculous difference between the two though? How they auto-complete the Xbox One. Google Instant finds words like terrible, ugly, a joke and so forth. Bing? Just one. Amazing.
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Microsoft just announced
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Attention gamers: you win. The folks at Redmond infuriated many when it revealed that the Xbox One would come with a long list of potential caveats — there was the automated 24 hour check-in to keep the console in playable condition, and the restrictions on who you could share disc-based games with, not to mention the fact that it would shipped region-locked.
Unsurprisingly, the gaming community lashed out in a big way, and Microsoft is finally doing something about it. According to a recent mea culpa from Microsoft Interactive Entertainment President Don Mattrick, the company has suddenly decided to drop all that nonsense due to an outpouring of (largely negative) feedback.
It’s generally welcome news considering just how off-base Microsoft seemed to be with its apparently overzealous approach to DRM, but the move doesn’t come without its drawbacks. The ability to store your entire game collection (even copies of games you physically bought) in the cloud? Gone. Kotaku also reports that this late-stage change means that the Xbox One will have to be patched by players as soon as they received them.
Still, considering just how viscerally gamers reacted toward Microsoft’s policies (the image macro above is pretty mild compared what others have said), it’s frankly hard to see how the company could’ve played this any other way. Rather than standing on its own numerous merits, the Xbox One was almost immediately bogged down in important questions about how it would handle seemingly mundane actions like passing game discs among friends. What was Microsoft going to do, push the Xbox One onto store shelves knowing that a non-insignificant chunk of the gaming populace hated the thing on principle? Some would argue that’s exactly what Microsoft should’ve done, but it’s likely Microsoft felt its hand was being forced.
Of course, it didn’t help that rival Sony adroitly seized that opportunity. All Sony had to do to endear itself to legions of eager gamers at E3 was to point out just how un-Microsoft it was by sticking to a more traditional (read: hands-off) approach to managing how people play games. Between dealing with gamer rage and the looming threat of a competitor that was eager to capitalize on the Xbox One’s shortcomings, Microsoft finally wound up doing what it should’ve done far earlier in the One development process — listening to the players.
As the Xbox One suffered a significant amount of negative feedback from those that, thus far, weren’t happy with the machine’s rules surrounding disk sharing and always-connected internet, Microsoft and the Xbox team have turned over a new leaf. This afternoon straight through Microsoft’s own Xbox Wire portal, Don Mattrick, President of Interactive Entertainment Business,
Microsoft has caught a lot of heat for restricting the sale and trading of used games on Xbox One, and requiring the consoles to phone home every 24 hours for verification. Basically, for having hefty DRM. Well good news for whiners everywhere: Microsoft is giving up.
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What’s in a name? A whole lot, if you’re asking yours truly. “All Your Entertainment. Input One.” Such intriguing statements were declared in a document that leaked from Redmond last summer. The slogan “All in one, input one” was on the Microsoft banners decorating the LA Convention Center for E3 this year. But this probably left many wondering: what is “input one,” exactly? It didn’t go unnoticed by those who follow the TV industry. Input one is commonly used in the biz to refer to the TV input most Americans use to access the majority of their content. This is the input that’s displayed when the TV is turned on, and it’s the input that most connect their set-top box from their cable or satellite provider to. Naturally, it’s a highly coveted position in the content industry and one that is well fortified by the incumbents.
Microsoft has had its sights on input one for a long time, and this particular go-round isn’t all that unfamiliar. The Xbox One intends to share input one in what I’d call a man-in-the-middle attack. How well it works won’t be revealed until later this year, but clicking through will reveal how I think it’ll play out, why this attempt is a direct result of industry constraints and finally, how it matches up with the competition.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft
Ever since Microsoft unveiled the Xbox One and the new Kinect sensor, privacy advocates have been up in arms about how the Kinect watches and listens to its users at all times in order to be at the ready when a voice command or hand gesture is initiated. Lawmakers are also joining in, proposing a
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