anyone excited about the upcoming (fall) Xbox 720?

[+frankodragon]

And these are the accessories, sold separately:

 

 

But then it did need something else:

 

[onlysublime]

I think some journalists got NDA-covered meetings because there's no way they could write so much in so little time...

 

Engadget has a ton of good articles:

 

http://www.engadget....-one/#continued

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 23, 2013 by Punisher5.0

[onlysublime]

http://gizmodo.com/t...croso-509033619

 

http://www.theverge....ou-need-to-know

 

http://www.wired.com...13/05/xbox-one/

[onlysublime]

http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-hard-drive/

 

excerpts:

 

Xbox One has non-replaceable hard drive, external storage is supported

 

We had the opportunity to chat with Albert Penello, senior director of product planning at Microsoft this afternoon, who was kind enough to clarify a few topics for us regarding the recently-unveiled Xbox One. One thing we were quick to ask about was the integrated storage. 500GB sounds like a lot today -- but so did the 20GB unit in the original Xbox 360. The HDD there was, at least, replaceable. Can you do the same with its successor? Sadly, no. Hard drives in the Xbox One are non-user-serviceable, but Penello confirmed that the USB 3.0 port is there for external storage, which can be used for everything the internal storage can be used for. That includes game installs and downloads. So, don't fret: adding storage will be just as easy as ever.

[onlysublime]

http://www.polygon.c...cloud-computing

 

excerpts:

 

Xbox One may offload computations to cloud, free up power on console in future

 

The Xbox One may "effectively over time ... get more powerful" thanks to cloud-based computing, according to Boyd Multerer, director of development on Microsoft's next-gen console.

 

Multerer said that the Xbox One's architecture and ability to tap into a "variable number of transistors in the cloud" — as opposed to the fixed processing power on the console itself — may free up power to the console as the system evolves. Lower priority computational loads, he said, will eventually move to the cloud to free up local resources. [Note that games that use Microsoft Azure will require an Internet connection since partial computing is done in the cloud.]

 

Xbox One developers will also have access to a reliable, dedicated amount of processing for games and entertainment, separate from supporting applications like Twitter, Facebook and SmartGlass, which were added to the Xbox 360 well after the console's launch. Multerer spoke of a dedicated partition of the Xbox One operating system aimed at "one game at a time," running alongside other virtual machines that handle other tasks.

 

"The last one, the box was fixed," Multerer said, but that Xbox One will have access to "a growing number of transistors that are not that far away" that will allow "for bigger worlds, and take some of the things that are normally done locally and push them out."

 

Xbox One will push growth, he said, while "still maintaining the stability of a developer's needs."

 

Turn 10 Studios creative director Dan Greenawalt said those cloud-based computations will also help in the development and evolution of games. Greenawalt talked about being directly involved in designing an evolving world, based on the way players interact with their games. He envisioned observing the "meta level" of the way people play, taking that data and inserting that feedback into the game.

 

For example, he said, a game like Skyrim could have added an achievement for "taking an arrow to the knee" to the game after the phrase was popularized as a meme and well after the game was released on Xbox 360.

[onlysublime]

http://gizmodo.com/k...-like-509155673

 

[hands-on video at link]

 

excerpts:

 

The new Kinect is kind of awesome. Just by the numbers, it's a huge upgrade. You can (most of) the full walkthrough we saw just a bit ago here at Microsoft's Redmond campus in the video above. Parts are jaw-dropping.

 

Right from the start, you can see the improved depth sensor. It's three times as sensitive, and can pick out bits as small as your t-shirt wrinkling or adjusting on your chest. The 60-degree-larger field of view helps here as well (up to six people can be on screen at once), and it has a deeper field of (accurate view, too).

 

And oh man, the IR sensing. It's seeing in a pitch black room! That is, like, totally absurd. And should be cool for using the Kinect at night, or for horror games, where you don't want to play in a well-lit room. Or just, you know, watching any movie ever.

 

The new 1080p cameras are a wide field of view, which we saw in greater detail during the Skype demo with four chat partners, and looks great, but no one's too concerned about that.

The truly impressive stuff, though, comes from the brains of the Kinect. Its improved skeleton mapping is crazy accurate, and can track your individual hand motions and shoulder shrugs. The muscle tracker is also borderline ridiculous. It can tell what parts of your body have pressure on them. It knows where you're putting your weight as you lean side to side, and how much power goes into each motion, by tracking speed. It knows if you lob a slow fake punch, and it knows if you slice a fast uppercut through the air, and shows you with popping white circles around your fists or feet or head. Orientation tracking is cool as well, and will apply more to how your character moves around in games.

 

The heart rate monitor, which reads your heart rate just by freaking LOOKING AT YOU, seems pretty accurate, but we obviously weren't able to test against an actual heart monitor. Still, do you see this, guys, seriously this is a thing that will be in living rooms. It's very cool.

 

The face recognition recognizes you, personally, and can tell if you're "engaged" or not engaged, meaning if you say "Xbox pause" while not looking at the TV, it won't listen to you. This seems like something you'd maybe want to turn off, but it's still impressive it can read your expression and know if you're happy, sad, or bored.

[onlysublime]

http://www.theverge....s-on/in/4116279

 

excerpts:

 

The all-seeing Kinect: tracking my face, arms, body, and heart on the Xbox One

 

"It's what's on the inside that counts" is something of an unofficial mantra of Microsoft's new Xbox One. The Kinect is perhaps the best example: externally, it's more or less unchanged from its predecessor, but it's actually a very different device. It's been upgraded in a huge way, but the end result is simple: the Kinect just sees more. (And hears more, but that's another matter.)

 

It has an ultra-wide 1080p camera (which should mean the Xbox One doesn't require such a large room), which easily picked up all of the dozen or so people sitting in the "living room" testing lab on Microsoft's campus. Kinect can even see in the dark, thanks to an infrared sensor that engages when the primary camera can't see anything. Along with higher-end processing power and a host of new software, Kinect feels a bit like it's gone from usable prototype to real, legitimate product.

 

Kinect has always been able to tell that you're moving. But now it can tell if you're moving your thumb, and which way your thumb is facing. It can tell which muscles you're engaging at any given time, and how much — it knows the difference between a jab and an uppercut, and registers them differently. If you're playing with a friend, it can tell when the two of you switch places, or even when the two of you switch controllers. Kinect knows if you're smiling or frowning, or if you're talking or not. It knows if you're looking at the screen or not, and will only register your commands if you're looking. It knows, by either remarkable science or sorcery, your heart rate just by looking at your face.

 

We spent a few minutes in a crowded room using a prototype of the new Kinect, and we left reeling. There's almost no latency, things are astonishingly accurate — the muscle sensors knew even the slightest shift in my posture, and try as I might I couldn't make it think I was smiling when I wasn't. We heard it discern commands from a noise-filled room, and track our movements in the dark when we couldn't see them ourselves. It was a fairly controlled situation, though, and we're curious to see how it holds up in the real world.

 

The real world applications are really the whole game here. Kinect's raw capability is absolutely remarkable, but how developers will build them into games remains to be seen. Could a boxing game know the difference in how hard I punch? Could it know how tired I am based on my heart rate, and knock me out more easily? Could a shooter recognize that I'm too relaxed, and ratchet up the intensity to get me back in?

 

More than anything, that's what we're excited to see about Kinect and the Xbox One: how the immense amount of data turns into a more fun, more immersive gameplay experience. But at least at first blush, the data part seems to have been pretty much solved.

[onlysublime]

http://www.polygon.c...xbox-one-kinect

 

excerpts:

 

Xbox One includes a new Kinect sensor

 

The Xbox One will include a new Kinect sensor, Microsoft announced during its Xbox reveal event today.

 

The new device supports 1080p video at 30 frames per second and offers a 60 percent wider field of view, thanks to a data throughput of 2 GB per second. New "time of flight" technology enables the sensor to measure the time it takes for photons to bounce off players, and because it uses infrared technology, it works in a dark room. The sensor is also much more precise — it's able to read a person's balance and the transfer of weight, and it can measure a heartbeat during exercise. And an array of microphones will do a better job of picking out your voice, even in a crowded room.

 

Wired reports that the new Kinect also includes an infrared blaster that will allow it to turn on other living-room devices like your TV and cable box.

 

A leaked document obtained by The Verge last year suggested that the second-generation Kinect would offer higher-fidelity cameras and microphones for better body tracking and voice recognition, respectively, including support for tracking as many as four players at once.

 

It has been widely reported that the original Kinect was set to have an internal processor, but that Microsoft decided to remove it and offload calculations to the Xbox 360 in order to cut costs for Kinect. According to at least one developer, the original Kinect was also hampered by the bandwidth limitations of the USB 2.0 connection between the sensor and the console: the image's resolution and frame rate had to be capped.

[bennybingo]

And these are the accessories, sold separately:

 

 

But then it did need something else:

 

Is that an Atari 400 prototype???

[onlysublime]

http://www.eurogamer...rigger-feedback

 

excerpts:

 

Update #2: "An infrared LED on the front of the controller allows Kinect to automatically recognise you, making it easier to pick up and play." Fresh from an Xbox One fact sheet.

 

Update: There's a teensy bit more information on Xbox.com about the new controller. The thumbsticks have a slightly new shape and grip texture, and there's "easier access" to all of the buttons, err, somehow.

 

"Feel jolts, crashes and weapons in high definition with vibrating Impulse Triggers," and the d-pad has been improved to register "both sweeping and directional movements".

 

 

Those innovations sadly don't seem to stretch to not taking batteries, although there is an integrated battery compartment.

 

 

Those innovations do, however, stretch to programmable feedback in the triggers.

 

There are two curious buttons in the middle of the controller. One looks like a Windows button that maybe quickly switches between open applications. The other button looks like a menu icon, although it's hard to make out.

 

Marc Whitten, corporate vice president of Xbox Live, said this about the Xbox One controller:

 

"Now, we wouldn't bring you next-generation gameplay without innovating on our controller. For the new generation we're taking the world's best controller and we're making it better.

 

 

"The Xbox One controller is updated with over 40 design innovations. It features updated ergonomics and an integrated battery compartment that just fits better for gamers of all ages.

 

"New dynamic impulse triggers allow creators to program feedback directly into the triggers, and a newly designed d-pad creates precision for immersive gaming.

 

"This is your controller, designed by gamers for gamers for the next generation."

 

 

[onlysublime]

http://gizmodo.com/x...-comm-509063759

 

excerpts:

 

Xbox One Could the Best Friend Your TV Ever Had

 

Xbox One is making TV watching awesome. It's an incredible multitasker that can do the things your regular old remote does better, along with voice and gesture controls. But that's just the beginning.

 

Watching TV

 

To turn the console on, all you have to say is "Xbox, on." It never gets harder than that. Want to watch TV? Say "Xbox, watch TV," and it drops you right into a live TV feed. Want to listen to music or even watch movies? Say "play music" or "Xbox, go to movies."

 

However, you can't cancel cable just yet. Watching live TV works through an HDMI pas-through, wherein the cable box or satellite box connects directly to the Xbox One, and then passes the signal to the console through an HDMI-out port. And because of the cable box pairing, you can get TV with as much or as little Xbox as you'd like. Want to use your normal remote? Fine. Want to swap over to Microsoft's entertainment guide and use voice and gesture controls? You can do that, too.

 

OneGuide

 

Microsoft created a completely new, interactive guide for Xbox One that has full Kinect voice controls. To see it just say say "Xbox, show the guide." From here, again, you can speak the name of the show or network you want to see, or you can search by actor name, time slot, or genre. If you want to go home, say "go home," or go to a Trending page to see what's most popular on TV. It's like the ultimate remote that isn't even a remote—insanely simple to use and to do things you actually want to do.

 

Original Content

 

What else? A live-action, premium Halo TV series created in partnership with Steven Speilberg, 343 Industries, and Xbox Studios. Holy crap! We don't know a lot of details here, but we are certainly familiar with Speilberg.

 

Sports

 

Microsoft has also teamed up with the NFL to let you play fantasy football right while you're watching the game live on television. Want to taunt an opponent? You can use Snap Mode to make a braggadocios Skype call during the game as you're getting updates on your fantasy team.

[onlysublime]

https://twitter.com/...928585275301888

 

Xbox Support (1-5)Verified account ?@XboxSupport

@BjKEdits That is correct, there will be 1000 friends on the Xbox One ^JG

 

 

https://twitter.com/...937800702238722

TouchTheRobotButt ?@ModronFixer 2h

@XboxSupport So there is no fee for Used Games then? Can you tell us what exactly they got wrong? Because otherwise you could be saving face

Xbox Support 3 Xbox Support 3 ?@XboxSupport3

@ModronFixer No fee, correct - and they just got that information wrong. As soon as we saw, we contacted them to correct it. ^EM

[onlysublime]

http://www.polygon.c...ommunicate-chat

 

excerpts:

 

Xbox Live accounts compatible across Xbox One and 360, users on both can communicate

 

The "new generation" of Xbox Live will be compatible with both Xbox 360 and Xbox One and allow users to communicate with each other across consoles.

 

Microsoft's president of Interactive Entertainment Business, Don Mattrick, confirmed to Polygon players will be able to chat and communicate across the generational barrier between Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

 

The integrated Xbox Live service will also allow players to use a single account across multiple systems.

 

"And because it's all one service, your Xbox Live Gold membership will work on both Xbox 360 and Xbox One," the Xbox website explains.

 

For more on Microsoft's new console, be sure to explore our StoryStream below.

[onlysublime]

http://www.eurogamer...360-to-xbox-one

 

excerpts:

 

Gamerscores and Achievements carry over from Xbox 360 to Xbox One

 

Update #2: With all that power is it any surprise that Xbox One enables friends lists of up to 1000? "1000 friends is indeed confirmed," wrote the verified Xbox Support Twitter account, spotted by Polygon.

 

Update: It sounds like new Achievements can be added on the fly - the whole system is less rigid.

 

From Xbox.com: "Xbox One's all new achievements system has richer detail and spans across your games and experiences, which means achievements are no longer confined to a single game.

 

"And you can earn achievements in more ways since new ones can be added dynamically at any time. Our new achievements portal not only keeps track of what you earned, but how you earned it, so it's more personal than ever. It even lets you compare your achievements with your friends. Share your legacy and achieve greatness with Xbox One."

 

 

Original story: Good news: Gamerscores carry over from Xbox 360 to Xbox One, Microsoft has now confirmed. Your Gold subscription will carry over, too.

 

"Yes," Microsoft answered in an accompanying Q&A (via NeoGAF), "your current Xbox Live Gamertag will stay with you on Xbox One if you choose to keep it, and your hard-earned Gamerscore and Achievements will indeed carry over from Xbox 360."

 

Xbox One boasts a new generation of Xbox Live. The most radical change is basing lots of stuff in the cloud, where segments of games can be installed so they fire-up quicker and update in the background, just like on PS4. There's an auto-resume feature for games when you switch applications - either to check something online or do whatever - as well.

 

"You can save and store your personalized profile, games and entertainment in the cloud to access them any time, from any Xbox One console," Microsoft promised.

 

Xbox Live's Marc Whitten added: "Your content is available and it's stored in the clouds, so you can access your movies, your music, your games, your saves any time anywhere."

 

Powering all this are some 300,000 servers worldwide, Whitten said. To put that into perspective, Xbox 360's Xbox Live is powered by some 15,000 servers worldwide today. When the 360 launched, that number was 3000, and when Xbox Live launched on Xbox 1, that number was only 500.

 

"Game developers can take advantage of our worldwide multi-data infrastructure to drive direct game computation," said Whitten. "This means bigger matches with more players. It means living and persistent worlds."

 

New features of Xbox Live on Xbox One include a new matchmaking system called Smart Match, which estimates wait times and finds matches while you're doing other things, so you don't have to wait.

 

Achievements have been expanded to record videos of your "epic moments" - presumably those moments when you earn Achievements. There's talk of being rewarded in "new ways" but no detail on how.

 

Recorded video as a whole plays a much larger role on Xbox One, just as it does on PS4. "A dedicated Game DVR captures and accesses your magic moments, all saved to the cloud," apparently, and there are on-board editing and sharing tools.

 

Xbox SmartGlass - the tablet/second-screen application - is a fundamental part of Xbox One, having been tested out already on Xbox 360. "Now more devices can connect at one time for multiplayer and shared entertainment."

 

On top of that there's Skype integration - you can split-screen chat with people while doing other things - and there's the What's Trending? feature to show what's hot in games and entertainment.

[onlysublime]

http://www.polygon.c...s-next-gen-xbox

 

excerpts:

 

Microsoft outlined the evolution of its new "dynamic and changing" achievement system today during a press conference where the company revealed the next-generation Xbox One console.

 

Though details were scarce, representatives said that the Xbox One's achievements will follow players and sync through the cloud, as referred to several times during the press conference.

 

Prior to today's reveal, sources told Polygon that developers and publishers would be able to add achievements without DLC, in part to influence player behavior. The new achievements could also be tied to specific occurrences, like timed community events and challenges. Our sources also indicated that Microsoft was creating cross-platform achievements that would reward players for using an app, website or another game.

 

Update: Microsoft's new site for the Xbox One confirms that Achievements will stretch across games, and a few other new features of the One's Achievement system were also revealed.

 

"Xbox One's all new achievements system has richer detail and spans across your games and experiences, which means achievements are no longer confined to a single game," the site reads. "And you can earn achievements in more ways since new ones can be added dynamically at any time. Our new achievements portal not only keeps track of what you earned, but how you earned it, so it's more personal than ever. It even lets you compare your achievements with your friends. Share your legacy and achieve greatness with Xbox One."

[onlysublime]

seems very nebulous on the used game market still:

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-05-21-xbox-one-second-hand-games-will-charge-a-fee-to-play

 

Update 3: Xbox Support's Twitter has announced that there won't be a fee to share games with friends.

 

When asked if one could lend a game to a mate without them paying for it, Xbox Support confirmed, "You will not have to pay a *fee*. I can confirm that those reports are wrong."

 

This suggests that the purported "fee" is really just a game sale that you could happen to attain through a friend's disc, but you could just as well borrow a game without purchasing indefinite access to it.

 

Update 2: Our man on the ground Tom Bramwell was able to speak to corporate vice president of Microsoft Phil Harrison about this hot-button issue and was able to confirm that a second user can install a game from a friend's disc for a fee, though it's unclear how much this will be. Harrison also confirmed that several users sharing a console can access the same game at no additional charge, and Microsoft has "a solution" for the resale market, though it's staying mum on those for now.

 

The full interview regarding this issue is as follows:

 

EG: The big thing that everything is concerned about is the Xbox One's attitude to second-hand gaming. I really want to try to get to the bottom of this issue before we talk about anything else.

 

Harrison: Okay, so, I can understand where some of the confusion may have come from, so let me try to help out there. First of all, you can buy a game on a disc from a retail store, come home and install it to your Xbox One. The disc contains all the bits and data on that game, which you can then give to your friend, and they can then install it on their Xbox One. No restriction on that, except that the second person obviously has to pay for it.

 

You can purchase a game in two ways: you can purchase it from a retail store or you can download it. So the act of putting the bits on the hard drive - the Xbox One doesn't really know or care what method the bits got into the machine, if it was from a disc or downloaded from Xbox Live. But obviously the users will then have to purchase that content.

 

What I think people are now confusing is the purchasing of content in the first instance with the ability to trade and resell the previously played games. We have a solution for that and we will be announcing exactly how that works in due course.

 

EG: Why can't you talk about it today?

 

Harrison: Today is about introducing the platform and it's about introducing the big themes of what Xbox One is about as a new entertainment device that brings together games, TV and entertainment into one place. I think it's inappropriate for us to go into every avenue of tiny little detail today, but we will in due course, so...

 

EG: Okay. I mean, it's just funny having come from a panel where the amount of detail they were going into on the silicon and power-switching on that, to come in here and be told you can't talk about something that it sounds like you already know the answer to and would clear up a lot of people's suspicions and concerns.

 

Harrison: Well, let me say it again: we will have a solution that we will talk about in very short order about how previously played games can be traded between players.

 

EG: When you install a game on Xbox One, does it lock it to a single account on that system, and therefore if someone in your household has another account does it restrict them from playing?

 

Harrison: No.

 

EG: So they're able to play the game, Okay.

 

UPDATE: Microsoft has addressed the issue of Xbox One second-hand games... sort of. When asked about the possibility of trading or buying pre-owned games on the console's official FAQ, Microsoft said, "We are designing Xbox One to enable customers to trade in and resell games. We'll have more details to share later."

 

We're not sure what that means exactly, but we're following up with Microsoft and hope to find out more.

 

Elsewhere, Microsoft confirmed that your Xbox Live membership, Gamertag, Gamerscore and achievements will in fact transfer between the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, unlike the games.

 

When asked about if users would need a specific cable or satellite provider to watch TV through the Xbox One, Microsoft replied, "Our goal is to enable live TV through Xbox One in every way that it is delivered throughout the world, whether that's television service providers, over the air or over the Internet, or HDMI-in via a set top box (as is the case with many providers in the US). The delivery of TV is complex and we are working through the many technologies and policies around the world to make live TV available where Xbox One is available."

 

 

http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-used-games/#continued

 

excerpts:

 

With each subsequent console generation there's an undercurrent of fear, a concern that this will be the cycle that finally kills off something many hold near and dear: the used game.

 

With the announcement of the current next-generation of consoles the discontent raised again. Is the axe about to drop on the used video game market? Is this the iteration that will prevent you from borrowing something from a friend? Not if Microsoft has anything to say about it. The Xbox One does support used games and it does support game sharing -- but the details are in some cases a bit murky.

 

#1 - Buying and selling of used games is supported

 

Yes, you can play used games. Yes, you can buy used games and, therefore, it's reasonable to conclude that you can sell them too. It was postulated that you would have to pay some sort of activation fee to Microsoft to re-enable those used games, but Microsoft seems to be trying to dispel that thought. Exactly how it works still remains to be seen. "It's going to be different than the way we currently do it," Albert Penello, senior director of product planning at Microsoft told us. "We'll get into more specifics later."

 

#2 - Games are installed in the background while you play

 

Just pop the disc in and start playing and the game will start installing while you play. No need to hit the Y button and go through any other theatrics.

 

#3 - You can play installed games without the disc

 

Sick of sitting through the full game install on the Xbox 360, only to still have to get up and put the disc in every time you want to play it? So was everyone at Microsoft, as it turns out. "That feature, the ability to play games off the hard drive, was one of the first things we wrote down when we started to talk about next-gen," said Penello. So, yes, once you install the game, you can put the disc on the shelf and forget about it. But, presumably, you can't just sell the disc and still keep playing the game.

 

So, how does that work? At a minimum, each game disc must have some sort of unique ID associated to your account. "Your Xbox account will tie you to your game," said Penello. That ID must, therefore, be somehow disassociated from your account before you can sell the thing. Unfortunately, this is where things start getting murky. "We'll get into more specifics later," Penello told us again, a common chant that hopefully will change when we get to E3 in a few weeks time.

 

#4 - You can download games that were purchased on disc

 

Here's an interesting situation. What happens if you want to play a game you own on a friends console? You will, Penello says, have "the ability to go over to your friends house, download your save game, or even download your game to his Xbox and pick up where you left off." So, not only will your game saves be stored in the cloud, your entire game library will be and you'll be able to download it from anywhere.

 

#5 - Offline gameplay is supported

 

That all your game saves are in the cloud is a nice step forward, but what if you're offline? Can you still access those game saves? Can you still play your games? Yes, you can. Games will work offline without an issue and game saves will sync transparently when you reconnect, Penello told us. However, some games that make use of Microsoft's online services may not be playable offline. That will be up to developers.

 

#6 - You can share games with those in your "household"

 

Another use-case we threw Penello's way: what if your spouse or child signs in to the family's Xbox One and wants to play a game that is associated with your account? Will they have to buy it themselves? "Certainly we've accounted for family members in the household being able to play games." Exactly how? That, again, remains to be seen. Only 19 days until E3...

[onlysublime]

http://www.engadget....look/#continued

 

excerpts:

 

The engineers in Microsoft's windowless next-gen Xbox silicon lab are rattled. And understandably so. We're in their office, after all, and we have a mess of cameras in the one place you're not allowed to have cameras (or even cellphones). We're obviously outsiders on Microsoft's multi-building, security-heavy Mountain View campus, especially given our quartet of esteemed escorts: Todd Holmdahl, Ilan Spillinger, Nick Baker and Greg Williams. These four gentlemen are leading the charge on both Microsoft's next big thing and, perhaps more importantly, a major effort to internalize silicon architecture at the traditionally software-focused megacorp.

 

It's really just a single chip that's causing concern: a custom-built Microsoft SoC that sits at the heart of the Xbox One. It's this SoC that has us in Mountain View, Calif. -- in Silicon Valley, literally down the road from Google -- a mere five days before Microsoft will unveil its next game console to the world. Over six hours last Friday, we learned not just about that SoC, but also how the company plans to utilize it in the new console. We spoke with its four lead hardware architects. We toured the labs where they are testing the silicon, and where the next-generation Kinect was born. What follows is more than a look behind the silicon that drives the next Xbox -- it's a deep dive into the changing approach Microsoft's taking to creating devices.

 

In the first Xbox, Intel and NVIDIA crafted the silicon. In the case of Xbox 360, it was more of a joint effort between Microsoft and ATI / IBM. Though Microsoft's still working with AMD to build out some of its chips this time around, it's also invested millions of dollars in building out verification facilities (among others) on-site in Mountain View and doubling the amount of in-house engineering dedicated to silicon. Holmdahl explains:

 

"In the consumer space, to control your destiny, you can't just rely on commodity components. You have to be able to make your own silicon. It helps with performance; it helps with the cost; it helps make your product smaller; it helps you create your own IP (always a good thing). I'll argue you're a lot more flexible -- you're not relying on somebody else's schedule; you make your own. So we're obviously heading that way. The stuff we've done over the last 13, 14 years is one example of that within Microsoft. And you're gonna see more and more of that, is my guess, as you go forward."

 

For now, silicon's a teensy component of Microsoft. Of the company's approximately 95,000 employees, the silicon team is around 200 people, or roughly 0.2 percent of the total workforce. Double that if you count the system engineers working on next-gen gaming hardware -- the console, Kinect and accessories -- and that's still nothing compared to most dedicated chipmakers. Intel employs over 100,000 people, for instance, while NVIDIA employs around 7,000.

 

However small, Mountain View's 200-person team has been working heads-down for the past several years to verify its silicon architecture and get it "first time right." That's not to say that the chip returns perfect from manufacturing, but that it doesn't run into any major issues -- of course, there's a small team within the larger group that's dedicated to debugging. As Xbox Hardware Group Lead Holmdahl points out, "One transistor can mess up your day really badly," setting the team back months to try and isolate the issue. Unlike software development, you can't quickly (or cheaply) iterate on silicon implementation. Worse, the equivalent of "debugging" is a guesswork process. "The fewer times you have to redo it, the faster you can put your product on the market," Holmdahl adds, with a nod to the business logic that also drives that need for "first time right."

 

"We booted the OS within days of getting the SoC back," Williams says; a good indicator their initial architecture design wasn't tremendously off. "I'm proud to say that, in our schedule, we didn't have any major showstoppers.

 

Powering the living room of the (near) future: 'Xbox On'

 

In-house silicon is at the core of what makes the Xbox One tick. It provides the structure that enables the console to run two operating systems at once for instant multitasking, and for the new Kinect to dish out much more information than before (to the tune of 2 Gbps). Most importantly, the five pieces of custom silicon spread across the console and its new camera peripheral helped the Mountain View team support their vision of an "always-on" console. Rather than use your hands to turn it on like a baby's toy, simply saying "Xbox On" will immediately wake the new Xbox.

 

"The box will pop on and come to your home page or wherever you were last. In order to do that in an efficient way, you have to architect all of that into the box up front. A lot of it is in the SoC," Holmdahl says. That SoC contains both the CPU and GPU, as well as embedded ESRAM; the first two components are based on an AMD design, and custom-built into an SoC with embedded ESRAM. That CPU is based on the Jaguar design from AMD, with eight cores and a 4MB L2 cache, while the GPU is of the D3D11.1 (with extensions) variety, Baker told us.

 

The console runs in multiple power states, which means it runs in a low-wattage setting when not in use. (Microsoft wouldn't give us specifics other than to say, "The system is designed for an SoC up to about 100W, but will vary on the scenario.")

 

"If you look at the instant app-switching, if you look at multiple OSes, if you look at power consumption -- that placed a lot of the main constraints on what we did on the silicon," Baker tells us. Some of the silicon design was derived from data center concepts, as that was the only parallel in computing available. "You're trying to make that technology seamless for the living room. It doesn't mean we need 64-bit CPU architecture. We're talking about many, many cores so you can run these tasks in parallel. We wanted to be able to support 8GB [of RAM] out of the chute, to probably support virtualization, which is what you need for running multiple operating systems. That's just a lot of making sure you have the right security systems in place so things don't stomp on each other."

 

In-house silicon also powers the other crucial component driving Microsoft's vision for the Xbox One: the new Kinect. Improved cameras and acoustics, not to mention a sleeker form factor, are all nice changes; it's discussing the new CMOS sensor's processor, however, that gets Spillinger, a passionate, intense gentleman (whose lovable accent sadly doesn't translate to text), visibly giddy.

 

"The highlight of the story is the CMOS sensor, which we developed internally," Spillinger says. "This design was done completely, 100 percent on this site. This is brand-new technology. There is discontinuity between this technology and the first Kinect; from the technology perspective that we are using for depth, for 3D measurement. So this was done here. On this one, this was a complete Microsoft custom design, where our engagement is directly with the manufacturer. It's not with any third party. We did the work. We do the qualification of the parts. We do the validation of the parts. We have done everything on this one."

 

If it isn't clear enough from that, he is a beaming father when it comes to the next generation of Kinect. And yes, you read that right -- your old Kinect won't work with the Xbox One.

 

Spillinger joined Microsoft just as the company was beginning work on the first Kinect (then "Project Natal"). He hailed from IBM, where he led the team that created the Xbox 360's CPU. At the time (early '08), he thought he was joining the Xbox hardware team to get started on a next-generation gaming console.

 

"First I was the design architect in Intel, then a design manager at IBM, and when I joined Microsoft, the view was 'Okay, it's about time -- early '08 -- to start to think about the next gen,'" he says. "It didn't take us five and a half years to get there, because what happened is that the moment sort of turned around and we started development of Kinect. The entire focus was about shipping Kinect, which now, if you in retrospect see, is such a great success."

 

The first Kinect did indeed sell very, very well for Microsoft -- 24 million as of this past February. Microsoft's decision to refocus on a new Kinect with much-improved audio recognition makes sense -- many users employ the first model solely as a HAL 9000-like order-taker. Beyond "improved acoustic models," Holmdahl says the new Kinect can track whoever is speaking using a "beam array" on the video side, which works with the audio side. It can identify, "exactly who is talking, and then be able to subtract out other people in the room so you get a really clear audio signal into your box." As time goes on, he promises that Microsoft will push out improvements to voice recognition and commands, and, "At some point, we'll be able to have conversational understanding."

 

If that isn't HAL, what is?

 

Inside the Silicon lab

 

In one corner, a massive 4K television is seamlessly playing two HD video streams from a single box. Though the Xbox One is capable of pushing and receiving 4K signals, this test station is an illustration of how Microsoft's architecture went into the console's SoC (not a demonstration of its raw power). Spillinger said that the new console's ability to decode multiple HD streams at once is a measure of his team demanding specific silicon design from third-party partners.

 

"When we talk about the SoC and the general-purpose SoCs out there, this is per our requirement," Spillinger tells us while we huddle around the station. "This is our aggressiveness to have two HD streams being compressed, decompressed. It's actually a parallel circuit, it's not part of the CPU / GPU -- it's an add-on."

 

Making a fake video game console

 

Principal Design Verification Engineer Padma Parthasarathy has a bowl full of M&Ms on her desk, right next to the door, which she invites guests to indulge in. Next to that, her computer is running a software virtualization of a game console. And that's her job -- as "principal design verification engineer" -- to verify whether or not all the bits and pieces of the chips driving Microsoft's next Xbox are working as they should be. It's part of the ongoing process the company's set up to create its own silicon, and it's an important step. Without people like Parthasarathy, chip development could go from a few years to a decade or more. She is yet another fail-safe in the endless quest for "first time right."

 

In her little office, on a standard desktop computer, the logic behind the Xbox One is running -- from a server farm on campus -- through a variety of test scenarios. She can log issues on hardware that doesn't exist yet, essentially troubleshooting a game console being faked by software on a server farm (its components, anyway). Given the complex nature of the virtualization, tests can only be processed at a fraction of actual run speed, but it's still one of the best ways to troubleshoot hardware ahead of mass-producing millions of units.

 

Parthasarathy's time with Williams and others on the team goes all the way back to the 3DO. "She has been the architect of the verification team for all of these years," he tells us as we leave for another part of campus. She's been with Microsoft since 1998, when Microsoft absorbed her team (and Williams') in an acquisition. It's people like Parthasarathy that are helping bridge the gap between the company's old approach to gaming hardware and its future.

 

The next step in faking a game console requires a giant machine that needs its own HVAC system, of course. The spaceship-like device originates with Cadence Design Systems, and serves to run a variety of processor emulations. A peek into its innards reveals all sorts of hoses and wires, akin to opening a panel on a Willy Wonka candy machine; an even larger machine sits outside the building, powering its test conditions. Our friend the dolphin shows up once more on a monitor displaying what the emulator is up to, but his movement is imperceptible due to the speed of the emulation. Next up is a significantly smaller lab with what looks like a standalone meat locker. The meat locker has a manned workstation in front of it, where one very unlucky engineer spends his time logging issues registered by the consoles being tested within.

 

The virtual console becomes reality

 

When Holmdahl lifts the dark cloth off a black, rectangular box, a gamepad and the new Kinect, it's the first time some of his own colleagues have seen the final designs. Not a beta kit with zebra tape, or a mockup, but a presentation-ready prototype. As we stand around the hardware placed on a little circular table, the concept of the box "slipping into the home entertainment center" is mentioned. The Xbox One is no "inhale" -- it looks like a little computer with a slot for discs. It's got a two-tone finish of alternating black matte and gloss, with a slot-loading Blu-ray disc drive and its power button greeting users out front. It's ... well, it's not such a looker. At least not thus far -- anything could change by the time it ships, though it seems doubtful the form factor will change dramatically.

 

Kinect also got a visual makeover, and looks the nicest for the revisions. For starters, only one eye glares at you from the front, and the new chassis is a clean update to a clunky, aging peripheral. Unlike the Johnny Five-esque look of the original Kinect, the second version deserves the prime placement in living rooms that it demands.

 

The five

 

"In different levels, we were working on five custom-designed components. Silicon components. Three of them going to the console and two of them to the sensor," Spillinger explains. That's the SoC that drives the console, the CMOS processor in the new Kinect, I/O integrators in both Kinect and the console, and a digital signal processor on the Blu-ray drive. For the four gentlemen who show us around the Mountain View campus and scads of others we don't meet, getting to the point where so much of that silicon was designed and verified in-house is the fruition of years of work.

 

It's a major shift away from the company's past reliance on external partners, with only AMD serving as collaborator this time around. And like any game console launch, it's another huge investment for the next... five, eight, 10 years? That's an unknown, of course, but it seems likely based on history that we'll have the Xbox One for the foreseeable future. Whatever the future dictates, it looks like we'll see internally developed chips in many of Microsoft's products going forward.

[onlysublime]

http://www.polygon.c...xbox-one-design

 

excerpts:

 

Microsoft explains the design of the Xbox One

 

Unlike on Xbox 360, Xbox One features the same Xbox logo on the console itself, Kinect and the controller, and each of those can glow white to communicate with the player, which team members say was done to show that the new console has more of an entertainment focus and to distinguish the console from 360 — a running theme for the new hardware.

 

Despite the glow changing to white on the logo, Microsoft says green is still the primary branding color for the new hardware, while Kinect's use of purple is going away. And the team has also removed the four quadrants surrounding the Xbox logo on the 360 controller and power button to identify each player, replaced with the single, simpler glow.

 

On the controller, the design team also incorporated many other small changes with the overall goal of making it more approachable and able to fit in more people's hands. These are mostly subtle changes, and the team created more than 200 3D models to test hand posture and orientation before settling on them. Some include hiding the screw holes on the exterior and slimming down the battery pack in the back, changing the controller's center of gravity and making it easier for kids to hold, according to Ledbetter.

 

"It feels lighter even though it isn't," he says. "It's interesting."

 

Further tweaks include adding a new grip on the surface and texture on the edge of each analog stick, making them easier to hold for players who put their thumbs on top and more durable for players who push them from the side. And each button is now clear rather than a bold color, which prioritizes the letters underneath and brings their design in line with the console itself.

[onlysublime]

http://www.zdnet.com...-it-7000015684/

 

excerpts:

 

Microsoft officials told Wired.com back in April something similar. From the Wired story:

 

"The Xbox One simultaneously runs three separate operating systems. First comes the tiny Host OS, which boots the machine and then launches two other hard-partitioned systems: the Shared partition, an environment that runs any apps (Skype, Live TV, Netflix, etc.) and helps provide processing power for the Kinect sensor and its gesture and voice controls; and the Exclusive partition, which is where games run. Because of the way memory is apportioned in the Shared partition, you can switch between apps with little to no load times, and even snap them into another app or game to use both at the same time."

 

Before today's Xbox event, Windows SuperSite's Paul Thurrott had said the next Xbox was built on top of the Windows 8 core. If I were a betting woman, I'd guess the Shared partition described in the Wired piece is based on the Windows NT kernel.

 

The NT "core" is what's shared across Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Phone 8. It includes a shared file system (NTFS), networking stack, security elements, graphics engine (DirectX), device driver framework and hardware abstraction layer (HAL).

 

Dave Cutler, the father of Windows NT, moved to the Xbox team from the Windows Azure team a couple of years ago. At the same time, Hoi Vo also moved from Azure to Xbox. Vo was the director of OS/hypervisor on Windows Azure. So maybe Ho and/or Cutler had something to do with the "host OS" mentioned in the Wired story? (Just a guess on my part, as Microsoft so far isn't commenting on the Xbox One OS guts beyond what I've mentioned above.)

 

Update: In an under-the-hood architecture panel following the Xbox One reveal, Boyd Multerer, Director of Development for Xbox, confirmed that the team started with Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor in building the Xbox One operating system. Multerer said the team stripped out all the general-purpose "goop" to create an OS that allowd two virtual machines to run in side-by-side partitions. One of the partitions runs apps; the other runs games.

 

"David Cutler built the hypervisor that does the switching back and forth," Multerer confirmed.

 

The new Xbox One interface looks quite similar to the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 one, with a tiled look and feel. It runs Internet Explorer and Skype, just like any Windows PC/device. Also like Windows 8, the Xbox One includes snapping support. Microsoft officials demonstrated during the Xbox reveal how users will be able to "snap" applications, movies and games allowing them to multitask.

 

Another Windows 8 similarity: Xbox One is optimized to work in different power states, depending on the game or application that's running. The console remains in a low-power state so that when a user says "Xbox On," it will be able to power up quickly. This sounds a lot like Connected Standy in Windows 8.

 

Microsoft officials also mentioned Windows Azure during today's Xbox One reveal. Xbox Live does not run on Windows Azure; it runs on its own servers in Microsoft's datacenters. When Xbox Live launched in 2002, Xbox Live required 500 servers. It now requires 15,000. By the time Xbox One launches this holiday season, Micorsoft officials said it will be running across 300,000 servers.

 

We do know that the Halo game team at Microsoft has used a new cloud-programming model, codenamed "Orleans," which was developed by Microsoft Research. And during today's Xbox One reveal, the Redmondians noted that users will be able to store their movies, music, games and saves "in the cloud," which I am assuming means on Windows Azure.

 

The aforementioned Wired piece states defnitively that "Xbox One gives game developers the ability to access Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform." Microsoft officials didn't say that today during the Xbox reveal event. However, Microsoft didn't say anything about the developer story for Xbox One today, presumably because that is going to be a big part of the messaging at the company's Build 2013 conference at the end of June.

 

Even without knowing (yet) what Microsoft will say at Build, it's becoming clear the company is edging closer to having a true cross-Windows development strategy at long last -- and that Xbox One is one of the devices that will be part of it.

[Hyper_Eye]

I'm pretty sure that you can't legally copy and paste portions of articles that size. I'm also pretty sure most people reading this thread have seen and read those articles.

[moycon]

What did anyone really expect?

 

I think I was expecting more gameplay footage, maybe a launch title lineup. The look of the console (which is mainly what I saw) doesn't interest me even half as much as the games! It's a game console first in my eyes. Not disappointed, and I'm certainly not making redundant, empty promises to give up on console gaming, but my appetite for info wasn't satisfied. I'll keep my eyes open for something with a little more substance!

[onlysublime]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TP_E6Bn6fWM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[onlysublime]

they announced 3 weeks ago that the presentation would be split into 2 parts. hardware/ecosystem in the reveal and the games at e3.

[Starscream]

I think I was expecting more gameplay footage, maybe a launch title lineup. The look of the console (which is mainly what I saw) doesn't interest me even half as much as the games! It's a game console first in my eyes. Not disappointed, and I'm certainly not making redundant, empty promises to give up on console gaming, but my appetite for info wasn't satisfied. I'll keep my eyes open for something with a little more substance!

 

They had already said last week that games would be shown at E3 and not so much at this event.

 

I'm in for one because there will be some Halo

[cimerians]