Personal computing discussed
Star Brood wrote:It's a like a PS4 but probably going to be $200 cheaper and with likely crappy, if any, features when working offline.
Savyg wrote:$200 is stretching it a bit though, they use practically the same hardware otherwise from what I know. I could believe 50-100.
We'll see though. Neither of them are likely to be cheap.
Star Brood wrote:I can build a Mini ITX with better specs and features for $500.
Firestarter wrote:Star Brood wrote:I can build a Mini ITX with better specs and features for $500.
that's hardly the point is it? It won't play Xbox games, and it won't play the PC ports as well as an Xbox would
Firestarter wrote:Star Brood wrote:I can build a Mini ITX with better specs and features for $500.
that's hardly the point is it? It won't play Xbox games, and it won't play the PC ports as well as an Xbox would
slowriot wrote:But Star Brood is wrong. You can't build an mITX system for $500 that's as powerful as either the Xbox One or PS4. You may be able to do so in a year from now though.
Savyg wrote:http://www.shacknews.com/article/79297/xbox-one-doesnt-require-always-on-connection
All of them will work offline, except for the obvious ones.
And I highly doubt it'll be cheaper at all, considering Kinect comes with every one.
Voldenuit wrote:What about the news that all games have to be installed, and are now tied to a single XBoxLive account (and presumably have to be activated)?
LinkMicrosoft has filed for a Kinect-related patent, and it’s a doozy of an application. The abstract describes a camera-based system that would monitor the number of viewers in a room and check to see if the number of occupants exceeded a certain threshold set by the content provider. If there are too many warm bodies present, the device owner would be prompted to purchase a license for a greater number of viewers.
No, really. It’s that blunt. From the abstract: “The users consuming the content on a display device are monitored so that if the number of user-views licensed is exceeded, remedial action may be taken.”
t’s refreshing to see Microsoft eschewing its play-nice-with-everyone approach to business for some old-fashioned, straight-up evil. The patent’s various claims can endow a device with a limited number of performances in a given period of time, a limited number of users allowed to view such performances, and the continuous monitoring of viewers during those performances. It also covers the determination of “when performance of the content to an identified user exceeds a threshold.”
The really interesting thing about this patent is that it suggests that copyright holders are allowed to govern performances in otherwise private dwellings. The application describes how the patent could be applied to head-mounted devices, large screens, gaming and media products, computers, and even mobile phones. Clearly, this isn’t just a method for cracking down on illicit big-screen viewings of movies and television that might plausibly be called a public performance.
Savyg wrote:Your lawyer friend is kind of a moron. Tell him to tell that to Samsung, who ended up having to pay a $2B penalty over "meaningless" patents.Not that I don't think it's weird, but my lawyer friend (whose firm works on patents) would tell you having a patent means nothing.
auxy wrote:It's true a patent is "meaningless" until it's held up in court, but that doesn't mean they're actually meaningless.
Savyg wrote:If a patent is not used it's simply held to keep others from using it against you, especially if you decide to do something with it in the future.
tanker27 wrote:Again tell that to the patent chasers like Ronald A. Katz who is nothing more than a Patent Troll whom has never produced anything tangible or sell-able but just that he "thought" up some Call center tech, patented it, and now chases after large corporations who employ similar systems.
Savyg wrote:I know an awful lot of people who work with things "all day" and don't actually know anything. IT support staff, anyone? Experience isn't anymore relevant than a piece of paper from a university (equally meaningless.)Well, considering he works with patents all day, it's fair to say he does know what he's talking about.
tanker27 wrote:As far as we have been able to discern, Kinect has to be plugged in for the machine to -boot-. That's all just rumors tho.But yeah I see this a chance for M$ to spy. I wonder if you have to keep Kinect plugged in in order to use the BluRay player?
Captain Ned wrote:Y'all should change my title to "I AM R&P". 。゚(TヮT)゚。And somehow a thread on the Xbox is veering dangerously close to R&P.
JohnC wrote:In other news, according to an officials at EA, Xbox One is more powerful than my EVGA Titan SC:
http://www.vg247.com/2013/05/23/xbox-on ... s-ea-exec/ :o
JohnC wrote:I sure hope that EA would not be against my cat watching me play Dragon Age 3 in the same room :-/
In other news, according to an official at EA, Xbox One is more powerful than my PC with i7-2600 and EVGA Titan SC:
http://www.vg247.com/2013/05/23/xbox-on ... s-ea-exec/
auxy wrote:I saw that too. So ignorant! How do they get away with saying stuff like this?! And then people take them at face value, and I have to explain... ugh! (*≧m≦*)
I really hate game consoles. The thing that's got me most interested this next generation is the idea of using an Xbox One controller on my PC. (¬、¬)
Now the PC software architecture – DirectX – has been kind of bent into shape to try to accommodate more and more of the batch calls in a sneaky kind of way. There are the multi-threaded display lists, which come up in DirectX 11 – that helps, but unsurprisingly it only gives you a factor of two at the very best, from what we've seen. And we also support instancing, which means that if you're going to draw a crate, you can actually draw ten crates just as fast as far as DirectX is concerned.
But it's still very hard to throw tremendous variety into a PC game. If you want each of your draw calls to be a bit different, then you can't get over about 2-3,000 draw calls typically - and certainly a maximum amount of 5,000. Games developers definitely have a need for that. Console games often use 10-20,000 draw calls per frame, and that's an easier way to let the artist's vision shine through.'