Your burning Xbox One policy questions answered by Major Nelson

E3 2013 has come and gone, and with it, we got to see the next generation of Microsoft’s and Sony’s consoles up close and in detail. Microsoft’s showing didn’t go as the company likely planned, and it has been on the defensive ever since. Xbox Live’s Director of Programming Larry Hryb joined the defensive, and took to a video interview where he answered a host of questions from Reddit.

Since the con, the gaming world has been a little baffled by some of the policies Microsoft will be implementing in the Xbox One upon release, such as the 24-hour online check-in requirement, or the console’s mandatory reliance on the Kinect hardware being plugged in. Microsoft will also be implementing some kind of used games policy, wherein developers can charge players to activate a used game. The majority of the burning questions surrounding the Xbox One were posed, and Hryb did his best addressing them.

Hryb explained the required internet check-in as a way for Microsoft to be “flexible,” in that through checking in, the service can provide you with your up-to-date gaming library from anywhere an internet connection is available. Technically, your Steam library works similarly — if you don’t already have a game downloaded and installed, you need to check into the service and download it. Of course, you aren’t required to continually check in after the game is installed, like you have to on the Xbox One. One of the tropes of the Xbox Live service is that it’s a wild west of lawless, bannable offenses. Considering the service requires that 24-hour check-in, it was unclear whether or not banned users would be able to access their games even if they couldn’t log into the service. Hryb clarifies this, and says that users will always have access to their games. This suggests that the online check-in is on a different connection tier than the actual Live service.

A popular sentiment regarding the online check-in ever since it was announced was that rather than have it be online only, Microsoft could have also allowed the check-in to work via putting the physical disc back into the console every 24 hour period. Then, at least, if an internet connection was faulty, users could still play their games. Unfortunately, Hryb noticeably sidestepped the question and said the online check-in was designed for flexibility, not addressing the possibility of physical disc validation as an alternative to internet validation.

Though the Xbox One hasn’t yet released, Hryb was asked what would happen to the game validation at the end of the Xbox One’s life. If the console currently requires online validation every day, would Microsoft have to keep check-in servers up for the rest of the eternity in order to allow gamers to access the games they bought during the Xbox One generation? In theory, Microsoft would either incorporate the Xbox One validation requirements into the following console’s servers, or the company would remove the requirements altogether now that the console is from a defunct generation. Perhaps predictably, Hryb notes that the One hasn’t even released yet, and it’s too early to know how the end of its generation would be handled.

The main focus of the interview is that Microsoft created the seemingly draconian Xbox One always-connected policies in order to support the flexibility to access your games library anywhere. However, Hryb doesn’t explain why the check-in is mandatory for your main console, or why a non-portable gaming platform needs so much focus on accessing your library from anywhere other than your living room. Hryb didn’t exactly assuage anyone’s fears, but at least he didn’t generate any new ill will like a certain Microsoft executive did when he literally stated that people with internet connectivity issues should buy an Xbox 360 instead of an Xbox One.

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A rare look inside an LTE cell site, operated by Sprint in San Francisco

There is one incredibly important field of modern technology that has always proven to be a bit of an impenetrable enigma for ExtremeTech: The hardware used by mobile carriers. We know in general terms how a cell site works, but for the most part the actual hardware and software and network topology is a proprietary black box. That’s why it’s very exciting when a mobile carrier such as Sprint invites a tech blog to take a close look at one of its new LTE cell sites in San Francisco.

In this case, Engadget visited Sprint cell site SF33XC664, located on a rooftop high above Van Ness Avenue in central San Francisco. In the photo above, the big structure at the end is the building’s elevator shaft, the tall gray boxes are Sprint’s LTE equipment, the smaller white boxes in the middle are AT&T’s equipment (it is common for cell sites to be shared), and the boxes in the foreground are Sprint’s older CDMA gear. Eventually, once Sprint’s Network Vision rollout is complete, the CDMA boxes will be be carted off and scrapped/recycled.

In the photo above, the box on the left (open door) houses Sprints’ LTE hardware, the cabinet in the middle is a battery backup system (good for 5-8 hours), and AT&T’s backhaul fiber connection is on the right. Historically most cell sites used microwave links for backhaul links to the carrier’s core network, but with the increased bandwidth requirements of 3G and 4G networks fiber links are now mostly used (especially in urban environments).

Inside the open cabinet is a ton of rack mounted network gear: Most notably, a Cisco switch at the bottom (connected to the AT&T fiber backhaul link), and three Samsung Smart Multi-modal Base Stations (SMM-2LD000). The top box deals with LTE data, while the bottom two boxes are CDMA data and voice. Because these Samsung base stations are multi-mode, Sprint can decommission its dedicated CDMA hardware and run a much simpler, cheaper, easier-to-manage setup.

These Samsung multi-modal base stations are the brains of the operation where all the magic occurs — and yet if you type the model number into Google, you get zero results (except for this story). This is generally because every base station has been tailor-made by the equipment maker (Samsung, Siemens, Ericsson) for the mobile carrier. In this case, Sprint started with a Samsung Smart MBS and probably had some custom firmware installed for its specific network topology. There is a Smart MBS website, but it’s almost completely devoid of useful information.

What we do know is that Samsung’s Smart MBS contains a software-defined radio (SDR), which basically means that Sprint’s network administrators can alter the technologies (LTE, CDMA, GSM) and frequencies (900MHz, 1900MHz, 2500MHz, etc.) used by the device through a simple software-based control panel, rather than actually installing new hardware. The SDR is the sole reason that Sprint is able to consolidate and simplify its network setup. In short, it is the MBS that manages the connections to every smartphone within its catchment area. It is essentially a huge wireless router.

The base station hardware would be nothing without amplifiers and antennae, however, which is what you see in the photo above. There are three directional antennae attached to the building, each covering a 120-degree arc. The two boxes next to the antennae are RF amplifiers, which amplify the signal from the base station before transmission. In the close-up photo below, you can see that the amplifiers are encased by a big heatsink — because amplifying signals all day generates a lot of heat. The output power of every cell site is different, depending on the local safety regulations for broadcast RF, but they generally max out at around 100 watts.

Ironically enough, Engadget actually gets surprisingly slow upload and download speeds when it’s up on the roof, next to the antenna. This is probably because the wavelength (i.e. the distance between the peaks) of cellular signals is between 15 and 50cm — and so if you’re too close to an antenna, before the wave can really stretch its legs, it causes all sorts of grief.

So, there you have it: When you make a call or access the internet, you now know exactly what the hardware that handles your data looks like. Your phone broadcasts its data, which is picked up by a cell site’s antenna, and then your signal is processed by a base station (such as the Samsung Smart MBS). The base station, which is just like a large wireless router, then forwards your data to the person you’re calling or the website you’re accessing, via the mobile carrier’s backhaul network.  Then, assuming you haven’t moved to another cell, data is transmitted back over the backhaul network to the same base station and broadcast by the antenna. If you have changed location, your phone will tell the new base station that you’ve moved — and data will be sent there instead.

Finally, your phone, which is constantly listening on a certain frequency for packets of data that are tagged with your unique ID, picks up these packets and decrypts them. Voila: A cellular network.

[Image source: Engadget]

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Xbox One: The wobbly third leg of Microsoft’s non-desktop trifecta

With the complete hardware, services, and pricing unveiled for theXbox One at E3, we now have the totality of Microsoft’s “next-generation” consumer-oriented lineup: Windows 8 on the desktop, laptop, and tablet, Windows Phone 8 on the smartphone, and Xbox One in the living room. On paper, this trifecta, seamlessly connected via Microsoft Account, SkyDrive, and Xbox Live, is almost perfect. In reality, though, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Where did it all go wrong for Microsoft?

From an objective standpoint, all of Microsoft’s new-for-2013 offerings — Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and the Xbox One — are perfect. Windows 8 capitalizes on the slow death of the desktop and the rush towards mobile; Xbox One is a powerful and feature-rich games console that could dominate the living room; and Windows Phone 8 is a sharp and savvy smartphone OS that ties everything together, while on the move or as a second screen. As a tech writer and a self-confessed life-long Microsoft fan, I have never been more excited about Microsoft’s future than over the last two years of covering Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and the “Xbox 720“.

From a subjective standpoint, though, each of Microsoft’s new offerings is intrinsically flawed and bogged down by crippling policy decisions no doubt handed down from Microsoft’s besuited higher echelons. Windows 8 and 8.1, despite “responding to customer feedback,” still forces users to use the Metro interface, even when a touchscreen isn’t present. Windows Phone 8 is one of Microsoft’s most polished products, but a smartphone OS is only as strong as its app ecosystem, and due to its minuscule market share WP8 still lacks the ecosystem to pull consumers away from iOS and Android — an unfortunate Catch-22 if I ever saw one. The Xbox One, depending on your point of view, is either an awesome all-in-one living room box that plays games, or an awful DRM-restricted games machine that acts as an HDMI passthrough for your cable box — the very same thing that the tried-and-failed Google TV attempted to do.

How did Microsoft manage to take three exciting, technologically advanced products and turn them into mediocre, humdrum devices that have had all of the fun and adventure sucked out of them?

Windows 3.0

A history lesson

For the past 20 years, Microsoft hasn’t done much more than double, triple, and quadruple down on the desktop ecosystem. Since the launch and success of Windows 3, almost all of Microsoft’s decisions have revolved around the maximizing of Windows-derived profits. The success of Office, one of Microsoft’s most profitable divisions, is entirely underpinned by Windows’ 95%+ desktop penetration — ditto the Server division. It’s even possible to draw a link from Windows’s dominance in the desktop market, to DirectX and PC gaming, to the Xbox.

To be honest, at the time, this all made perfect sense. Windows, Office, and Server were, and are, monumentally large profit drivers. But if technology has taught us anything it’s that nothing lasts forever — especially business models predicated on a large, bulky form factor that is virtually guaranteed to go the way of the dodo as technology advances. If anything, Microsoft has done incredibly well to maintain the desktop-dominated status quo for as long as it has.

Now, though, with tablets and smartphones exploding much faster than anyone could’ve anticipated, Microsoft is forced to adapt. Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 are so different from their predecessors. The Xbox One isn’t that different, but it’s about as far from the Xbox 360 as Microsoft could get without completely redefining the games console paradigm. On paper, these massive changes all make sense, and if they were executed properly they really could give Microsoft the beachhead in the mobile market that it so desperately needs.

Gutless equivocation

Unfortunately, such changes simply can’t be easily made by a large multinational bureaucracy that generally works with three-year product cycles, rather than 12 months. From a strictly fiscal and pleasing-the-stock-holders point of view, too, Microsoft can’t just kill off the desktop. As it stands, Microsoft is massively profitable and will be for years to come. But at the same time, Microsoft knows that it must change now or face being squeezed out of the market by iOS, Android, and other upstarts. Faced with such a dilemma, Microsoft hedged its bets and created Windows 8, a Frankensteinian operating system that is the jack of all trades but the master of none.

Where does Microsoft go from here? It’s not too late for Windows 8, especially with Windows 8.1 coming up. If Windows 8 is a success, then there might be a knock-on effect that finally gets Windows Phone 8 off the ground. Finally, if the Xbox One works, it could be the perfect centerpiece of a new, non-desktop-oriented Windows ecosystem. That’s a lot of ifs, though, and given how wobbly the Xbox One looks in comparison to the PS4, and WP8′s consistently ailing market share, I think Microsoft has a rough few years ahead.

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Xbox One vs. PS4: How Microsoft could push the Xbox back into the lead

Having revealed the consoles a few months ago, Sony and Microsoft officially threw down yesterday during their respective E3 press conferences by showing the world what each console is all about. Sony’s conference was more or less a resounding success, whereas Microsoft’s fell somewhere short of that. Right now, the feel of the gaming world is that Sony has already won the next generation before it has even started, so what can Microsoft do to combat that?

Yesterday, Sony seemed to have it all: a slew of exciting big budget games for this gen and next, a bunch of indie games that show an in-depth knowledge of the scene, an acceptably low price point, a video appearance by LeBron James who is currently the most famous athlete on the planet, and absolutely no used games or online check-in authentication. Meanwhile, Microsoft showed off short clips, had no indie cred, didn’t focus much on the remainder of this generation, and announced that a console which doesn’t want you to play used games and requires you to check in online every 24 hours would be $500. There are definitely legitimate reasons as to why the gaming public is all aboard the PS4 so soon. However, it wouldn’t take very much for Microsoft to get back into the game, but it would take something of a policy restructuring.

The games

Though Sony seemed to have an avalanche of exciting new franchises, respected indie studios, and new franchise installments, Microsoft wasn’t exactly a slouch in the games department, but it did fall short. Microsoft didn’t show nearly as many games as Sony, nor did it have as much in-game footage. If Microsoft wants to catch up to Sony in the games department — as it should, considering the Xbox One is primarily a games console — the most obvious step the company can take is to show off more playable demos of its new games as soon as it can. We got a brief, pre-rendered glimpse of a new Halo, but all we saw was Master Chief wearing a cloth cloak over space armor. Secondly, the reason why Microsoft doesn’t have the indie cred is because indie developers can’t self-publish on the Xbox One. In the grand scheme of things, this could lead to a very simple choice for Microsoft: Have no popular indie games at all (aside from Minecraft), or allow indie devs to self-publish. Whatever reason Microsoft has for not allowing them to self-publish certainly couldn’t be worth more than not having any indie devs at all.

Though Microsoft knows its audience — which is why we saw a slew of heavily armored males shooting guns at the conference — the company could also spread its wings a little and show us a larger variety of genres. Microsoft may know its audience, but if the audience is jumping ship due to Sony’s E3 dominance or Microsoft’s oft-discussed DRM, the company can pull gamers back in by offering them an experience they can’t get anywhere else. Project Spark looked unique, but the Xbox is not traditionally the platform for unique experiences, so it may fall on def ears. If Microsoft continued pursuing those types of experiences, it could turn the Xbox into the creative gamer’s home.

The Services

The world is comfortable with having to pay for Xbox Live Gold in order to play video games online. Now that the PS4 moved into that territory as well — requiring gamers to pay for a PS Plus membership in order to game online — Microsoft isn’t even behind in that category. However, as far as the world knows, every other online service is still behind the Gold paywall. If you subscribe to Netflix, you can’t watch it on your Xbox unless you also subscribe to Gold. Meanwhile, if you don’t subscribe to PS Plus, you can still watch Netflix on your PlayStation. If Microsoft removed the Gold paywall, then people won’t have much to complain about.

On the surface, it doesn’t look like Microsoft’s run at TV will matter very much since the Xbox One doesn’t actually act as a cable box. Instead, it acts as a device you plug your cable box into so you don’t have to turn on two separate things. However, the actual gem of the feature is that developers can place an overlay on live TV thanks to the Xbox passthrough. The example shown so far is that if you’re watching a basketball game, you can invoke an overlay that shows how your Fantasy team is performing. This specific implementation, though useful, won’t blow the gaming population away. However, if developers can figure out creative, interesting ways to use this overlay feature, it could literally change the way we watch television. We have no idea what to do with the overlay, but hopefully someone over at Microsoft does.

The Policies

It doesn’t seem like anyone knows exactly why Microsoft went ahead with the used games and online check-in DRM. Don’t forget about the mandatory sort of always-on Kinect, either. During the Sony conference, when Jack Tretton announced that the PS4 wouldn’t require an online check-in, the crowd went ballistic. When he announced that you could play, trade, and sell back used games the way we’ve always been able too, the crowd went ballistic again. Jack Tretton actually tried to move on to a new topic, but the crowd was still busy hooting and hollering, like in a live sketch show when the audience is still laughing from a joke so the actors have to wait to say the next bit of dialog. Yes, the E3 audience is mainly filled with in-the-know journalists, and the general consumer public isn’t as in-the-know. However, the general consumer public gets its information from those journalists, so if the journalists are unhappy, the consumers will know to be unhappy as well. If Microsoft revoked the online check-in, mandatory Kinect, and used games DRM, then the company could begin moving back into the good graces of gamers.

The E3 audience also lost its collective mind when Sony announced that the PS4 wouldundercut the Xbox One by $100. It’s not too late for Microsoft to drop the price of the console to be more competitive. The company might take a huge hit on hardware costs, but a huge hit on hardware costs and eventually making it back up in the long-run is probably better than the gaming audience not buying the console in the first place.

A tough road ahead for Microsoft

None of these changes will be easy or straightforward to enact. It is clear, from its games, services, and policies, that the Xbox One was conceived as a media center for the US mass market, rather than a dedicated gaming machine that would appeal to gamers all over the world.

Will Microsoft make any of these changes? I doubt it. To compete with the PS4 in terms of gaming, the Xbox One would have to give up almost everything that makes it the Xbox One, and at this late stage I doubt the bureaucratic oil tanker that is Microsoft could make such a dramatic U-turn. At this point, Microsoft’s best bet is to capitalize on its non-gaming advantages over Sony’s PS4, and pray that there are enough people in the US that actually want the live TV experience provided by the Xbox One. Outside the US, where the Xbox is historically weaker than the PlayStation and where Microsoft doesn’t have the same licensing deals in place, the Xbox One probably doesn’t stand much of a chance against the PS4.

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PS4 price, hardware specs, and games detailed: The anti-Xbox One

At long last, we finally know everything about Microsoft and Sony’s upcoming eighth-generation consoles: the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Both console makers employed an interesting strategy of drip-feeding us information in the build-up to the final unveil, desperately trying to one-up each other and have the final word. After months of posturing, Microsoft finally wrapped up its offering yesterday, leaving it to Sony to throw the last punch during its E3 keynote — and it was one hell of a swing, smacking the Xbox One straight in the gut: the PS4 will not be always-online, will allow you to freely trade your games, and will cost just $400. In short, it seems like the PS4 now has a sizable lead over the Xbox One. Read on for our full analysis of the PS4′s price, hardware, software, connectivity, and games.

Price

The Sony PS4 will be priced at $399, €399, £349, (the PS4 pre-order is available now) and will be released “this holiday season.” We already know that the Xbox One will be released in November, and it’s very likely that the PS4 will be available around the same time. The PS4′s $400 price point versus Microsoft’s $500 Xbox One (preorder) is a huge win for Sony — and, funnily enough, the exact reverse of the Xbox 360 ($400) and PS3 ($500). The price is even more impressive when you factor in that, unlike last generation, neither console is being sold at a loss (though the profit margins are probably very, very small at this point).

While it might seem that the PS4 massively undercuts the Xbox One, it’s important to remember that Microsoft’s console comes bundled with the new Kinect — so you do get something for your extra $100.

Hardware

After one press conference where Sony didn’t show us the console at all, and then a blurry 30-second video to keep us on the edge of our seats, Sony has finally shown us what the PS4 actually looks like. As you can see above, the PS4 actually looks a lot a rhomboid version of the Xbox One, or perhaps an evil Wii. We don’t have the exact dimensions yet, but it looked pretty big on stage at E3. Our guess is that both the Xbox One and PS4 will look good under your TV, at roughly the same width as your Blu-ray player.

Inside the PS4 is, essentially, a specialized mid-range gaming PC. There’s an 8-core AMD Jaguar/Kabini x86-64 CPU, a Radeon 7870-derived GPU with 18 compute units (vs. Xbox One’s 12 CUs), and 8GB of unified GDDR5 RAM. The only standout feature here is the RAM, which provides both the CPU and GPU with 176GB/sec of unified (shared) memory. As always, though, it’s unfair to directly compare a console’s hardware with the PC equivalent — in reality, once developers write code that specifically targets the PS4′s hardware, we should see performance and visuals that compare to your top-end gaming PC. (Read: Xbox One vs. PS4 vs. PC: How the hardware specs compare.)

On the back of the PS4, there’s simply an HDMI out, Aux socket, Gigabit Ethernet socket, and an S/PDIF optical audio out. There are two USB connectors on the front, too. This is in stark comparison to the Xbox One, which has a ton of connectors — including an HDMI in. In short, the PS4 will not be an all-in-one living room media center like the Xbox One. The PS4 also has 802.11 WiFi built in, but unlike the Xbox One it will use Bluetooth instead of WiFi Direct to connect to the gamepads.

Games & DRM

The biggest difference between the PS4 and the Xbox One are the games and DRM. On the games front, it seems the PS4 only has a handful of exclusives: Final Fantasy 15, Kingdom Hearts 3, and a new franchise called The Order. The Xbox One, on the other hand, has more than a dozen exclusive titles. All told, there are apparently 140 games currently in development for the PS4, with 40 of those including “experiences” that are exclusive to the PS4. Experiences is Sony’s way of saying that the PS4 will have lots of exclusive betas and DLCs, but not many exclusive games. As far as we can tell, all of the usual franchises will be available on both the PS4 and Xbox One — Grand Theft Auto 5, Assassin’s Creed, NBA, Elder Scrolls, and so on.

Perhaps more important than exclusive titles, though, is the PS4′s complete lack of DRM. Any game discs that you buy for the PS4 are yours, and can be traded or shared in whatever way you wish. This is in contrast to the Xbox One, which allows publishers to control how its games are resold.

On the flip side, though, the PS4 does require PlayStation Plus if you wish to play multiplayer games online — just like the Xbox 360 and One with Xbox Live Gold.

Controllers

One of the biggest differences between the PS4 and Xbox One are the control mechanisms. Whereas every Xbox One ships with a Kinect, and refuses to work unless the Kinect is plugged in, the PS4 appears to have no such gesture or voice controls. Instead, the PS4 ships with a sensor bar that tracks a light on the back of each DualShock 4 controller, and each controller has its own built-in touchpad. For more info, including all of the new additions to the DualShock 4 controller, read our story on how the Xbox One and PS4 controllers stack up.

Software and connectivity

The one area that we still don’t know a lot about is the PS4′s software. We know that there will be an extensive social interface, allowing you to capture, share, and stream videos of your gameplay directly from the PS4, but beyond that Sony hasn’t really shown us anything.

Connectivity-wise, the PS4 will not regularly connect to the internet to check on your game licenses, and you will be able to use your console offline for as long as you want. This is in stark contrast to the Xbox One’s 24-hour check-in requirement. If you can’t afford an internet connection, or you regularly take your console offline (to your cabin in the woods), the PS4 is for you.

Like the Xbox One and SmartGlass, the PS4 will also allow you to use your iOS or Android smartphone or tablet as a second screen. Exact details on what you can do with the second screen are unknown, but it’s probably the same deal as the Xbox one: Inventory management, interacting with your friends, mini-games, and so on.

The anti-Xbox

At this point, it’s clear that Sony has played its hand to perfection. It waited for Microsoft to skewer itself with the always-on DRM debacle, and then it came through with a console that gives gamers complete ownership of their games. (See: Microsoft: Xbox One will be always-online, publishers can disable game trade-ins.) It let Microsoft lead with a high $500 price point, and then came in at $400. Perhaps most importantly, though, Sony has built a games console, while the Xbox One is — in Microsoft’s own words — an all-in-one media center that also plays games.

Whether Sony’s anti-Xbox maneuver will work out or not remains to be seen. With no DRM and a lower price point, core gamers will almost certainly flock to the PS4. With its multimedia tie-ins and gesture/voice controls, the mass market will probably go for the Xbox One. With such a massive divergence between the two consoles, the eighth generation of consoles will play out very interestingly indeed.

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Sony at E3 2013: Watch the PS4 event live (updated live blog)

Earlier today, we saw Microsoft’s E3 keynote seemingly accidentally go head-to-head with Apple’s WWDC. Within the following hours Electronic Arts and Ubisoft took their turns in the limelight. Now, it’s Sony’s turn to end the day. Does that mean they’re the headliner and everyone else opened? We suppose that depends on how well they handle the show! We’ve embedded the livestream of the event below, and under that we’ll be liveblogging, with real-time updates as we follow along with the event.

Everything starts at 9PM Eastern.

That’s it, folks. Sony spent two hours announcing games — some we knew about, some we didn’t. The company flexed its indie gaming muscle, showed off some big budget titles, had LeBron James talk to a video game version of himself while the NBA Finals in which he’s playing is taking place, showed off the long-awaited Kingdom Hearts III and Final Fantasy Versus XIII (now known as Final Fantasy XV), and pulled at the audience’s heartstrings by disavowing DRM. Sony also dropped the PS4′s price tag $100 below the Xbox One’s. Stay tuned for more juicy info out of E3 over the next few days!

11:02: Sony available at $399, and the audience once again flips out. Available this “holiday season.” The end!

11:01: Andrew House back in the house. Cloud service available in 2014, which will begin with a catalog of critically acclaimed PS3 games.

10:56: They made it through the wall, and no White Walkers are there, but instead, enormous alien ships approach, and a public event is invoked, MMO-style. More first-person shooting, but with a bunch of enemies, and human-controller friendlies. A huge spider-like alien robotic tank (or something) takes the brunt of the player-controlled attack, damage visible as it gets shot. Robotic (maybe?) alien bug tank defeated. Demo over.

10:54: Boss fight ensues, lots of shooting from a first-person perspective, then the boss dies and loot is had.

10:50: Walking through the big wall, it’s eerily quiet. It gets dark inside the wall, can only see the red LED ammo count on the gun. A little light probe is now floating around, lighting up parts of the environment. Enemies seem to notice the probe, lights turn on, and an FPS-fest begins.

10:47: Jack Tretton introducing Bungie and Activison. World gameplay premiere of Destiny. Apocalyptic scene, skeletons in rusted car husks. Alien things wielding guns stalking a field in daylight. Space marine in a robe and helmet drops out of ship. Character walking up to big wall, not made of ice, though. Sorry, fans of Game of Thrones.

10:41: Jack Tretton, in an effort to win E3 and the video game industry, says that the PS4 won’t impose any strict DRM. When you buy a game, it is yours to do with what you wish. The audience is literally chanting out of happiness. PS4 games also don’t need to be connected online to play, and the audience loses their minds. No periodic online check-ins, and the PS4 won’t stop working if you haven’t authenticated in 24 hours — a direct shot a Microsoft. Your PS Plus membership works across all Sony systems, you only need one account.

10:38: New desert trailer. Looks like Mad Max. Guy in post-apocalyptic car stops off at a dying man in the desert. Looks him over, drives away. Just when you think he’s out of the shot, the car speeds back and runs over the poor guy lying on the desert ground. With that, Jack Tretton is back. We missed you, Jack.

10:36: The Elder Scrolls Online now making an appearance with a trailer. Exclusive timed beta on PS4.

10:34: LeBron James is now talking to video game LeBron James, showing off NBA 2K14.

10:25: Time for Watch Dogs. Again. Main character Aiden Pearce’s most powerful weapon is a smartphone. Demo takes off. Standard crime scene. Aiden talking to his bro T-Bone, who he seems to need to save from some kind of mission-based trouble. Aiden casually driving a car around a street, while the police radio plays in the background. Aiden just walked up to some random stranger and threw his phone on the ground. This is now the best game of the new generation. T-Bone is lusting over what looks like some generic motherboards or tech, but Aiden doesn’t have time for this and needs to help him escape. Through security cameras, Aiden is helping T-Bone evade guards. It’s very Lifeline. Yes, a Lifeline reference. Aiden chokes some guy out and tackles him to the ground, then runs at a guy near a car, kicks him to the ground, and shoots him while he’s down. Aiden gets caught, but pulls off some bullet time stuff and shoots a cop in the legs, then jumps in a boat and zooms off, end of demo. Who watches the Watch Dogs?

10:19: More Assassin’s Creed IV. Are you guys sick of this game yet, or do you want more? Because there’s more. Main character Edward Kenway walks through a nice pirate beachside camp, then casually walks through a pretty jungle. Edward’s doing assassin-type stuff around a jungle. Climbing things, killing dudes. Shoots two guns at once like this is Devil May Cry or something. Town seems like it is being bombarded by cannon fire. He gets to a boat, raises the black flag, then starts driving a boat through an armada and sea (ha) of cannon fire. A bunch of ship combat and swashbuckling between ships. Cutlasses abound.

10:16: Looks like Kingdom Hearts III is up. Sora picks up a keyblade, rides around on a wave of heartless. Final Fantasy XIV coming to PS4 and PS3.

10:11: Video message from Square Enix. I bet it’s about fate and/or destiny. Yep, trailer for Final Fantasy XV, which used to be Final Fantasy Versus XIII. There are fancy hats and umbrellas everywhere. Some kind of animated water spout is attacking everything — your typical FF teenage-or-so skinny main character, and an old guy leading an army of soldiers against him. Very action-oriented, which we knew for the past near-decade when we first saw the game.

10:07: Sony showing off Don’t Starve. Sony really dropped the bomb now – Octodadsequel, Dadliest Catch on PS4. New remake of original Oddworld, called New and Tasty, coming to PS4. Sony going hard at the indie devs. Take that, PC master race.

10:03: Adam Boynes, third party extraordinaire. We’ll probably talk about third party games now. Jonathan Blow name-drop. Introduces Supergiant Games, the guys who did Bastion. They’re showing off Transistor, their Bastion follow-up. The game will make its console debut on the PS4. It’s like Bastion but with Cloud’s Buster Sword if it were made of computer chips.

10:00: A sorcerer screaming to himself in his lair, a funny little goblin holding a staff walks on screen while the sorcerer is screaming to no one in particular. Now he’s casting a spell, as sorcerer’s do. Sony just dropped a bomb — the sorcerer is actually an actor being filmed. He messed up a spell and filming stopped. The goblin’s name is Maurice. The sorcerer is David Gant. They exchange pleasantries. That was insane.

9:55: Killzone: Shadow Fall being shown now. Some nice holographic computer tech, but then your standard shooty Killzone stuff. Short clip of DriveClub, a game about driving cars in a club. Infamous: Second Son being shown now. The new character looks a little angsty and wears a denim vest and beanie. Take that, parents, you just don’t understand. The Second Son clip ended with what seemed to be a cover of Nirvana’s Heart Shaped Box. Then a very quick clip of Knack, where some monster jumped out and roared for a split second.

9:50: New IP from Worldwide Studios. Poetry about being the best knight fills the screen. Very steampunk, carriages and blimps. Horses and old, dirty England-type of environment. Male and female colonial-type guys shoot monsters. Guy seems to pull a gun out of bigger gun. The Order: 1886. Developed by Ready At Dawn, the guys who made the God of WarPSP games.

9:47: Shu Yoshida, President of Sony Worldwide Studios up on stage, introduced to a sped-up version of Passion Pit’s “Sleepyhead.” Worldwide Studios has over 40 PS4 titles in development.

9:44: Let’s compare the VCRness of the PS4 to the VCRness of the Xbox One while we wait for Andrew House to finish talking about Netflix and announcing RedBox Instant. Flixtser available this fall as well.

9:42: Another Sony fella discussing Music Unlimited and Sony Pictures, name-dropped Community and Breaking Bad. You now win the internet, Sony. Sony Pictures working on exclusive PSN programming. Didn’t mention what it is. Type of entertainment “gamers want and love.” That’s all, “thank you for having me.”

9:40: Andrew House sounds kind of like an evil vizier, whispering into the ear of Jack Tretton, perhaps.

9:38: Andrew House talking about the PS4 product design. Like the Xbox One, the PS4 is also a VCR. Welcome to the ’80s, everybody!

9:36: Exclusive GTA V bundle, available on September 17, which comes with a branded headset. $299.

9:34: Another Batman shown off, Arkham Origins. Bad guys saying “the bat” a lot, as is the customary way to refer to Batman. Also, there’s now. Coming this fall.

9:32: Gran Turismo 6 shown off for PS3. Shiny cars driving around like cars do in video games.

9:27: A reel of The Last of Us is being shown — the game comes out Friday. This game is going to be good, you can tell by the main character’s heavy southern accent. We’re also getting clips of Beyond: Two Souls, the Ellen Page vehicle where she’s a pregnant teen. Wait, no, that was something else.

9:24: Jack listing your “favorite” PS Vita games, they’re barely getting applause. The Walking Dead coming to Vita, in a bundle that comes with the first season, along with the upcoming season, 400 days.

9:21: Jack thanks us all for driving him to do his job. You’re welcome, Jack. Jack’s doing that thing where he talks about PS3 and Vita games before he gets to the new stuff. He leads off with the Vita, because man, poor thing needs some help.

9:19: As music is commanding us to drop the bass, Sony is showing a reel of games we know, like The Last of Us, and games we don’t. Jack Tretton takes the stage!

9:17: Starting 17 minutes late, but we’re all being treated to blue wisps of energy. That’s the show, everybody!

9:05: How do you guys like these Sony propaganda commercials? Are you guys joining the conversation on social networks?

9:00: In the words of one of Sony’s most prominent, rage-fueled franchises, the end begins!

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Autonomous AI cars bring racing video game to life at WWDC

The first demo at Apple’s WWDC show didn’t go exactly to plan, but once it got underway, Anki’s artificial intelligence platform looked genuinely impressive. On the surface this is just a few toy cars spinning around a model racetrack, but this isn’t a pre-programmed act. The Anki Drive cars are aware of their location and the location of the other cars. It’s like Google’s self-driving car, but on the small scale.

The demo consisted of three racers taking a reasonable, but not expeditious route around the track. When the “hero” car is added to the mix, it shoots around the course, taking tight corners and swerving between the other racers. It actually knows where the gaps are, and how to control its speed around turns so as not to fly off the course. All the action can be controlled through a new Anki iOS game, which is why Apple took time out of its opening to show it off.

The cars are equipped with sensors to collect up to 500 readings per second on position and speed, which are sent back to the iDevice in real time. The phone helps to track and manage the autonomous car. The connection is made through a standard Bluetooth 4.0 profile, as well. Users of the Anki cars will be able to control action from their devices to race against other human beings or the advanced AI. Part of the demo consisted of activating the blocking AI behavior of the cars, which then effectively held up the hero car.

At its most basic, this is a proof of concept — Anki’s technology could be used to power more than racing games. The company’s ultimate goal isn’t to make the best AI toy cars. The framework of this artificial intelligence fits in a car just a few inches across. Though, it isn’t clear how much processing is being offloaded to the Apple device. The app likely has a large role in making Anki’s technology work, as the cars did refuse to move when the connection was unavailable.

The same AI tech behind this simple game could make other robotics more useful and aware of their surroundings. The ability of Anki’s platform to make robots more autonomous is what could change the game. If you’ve ever been frustrated by a wayward Roomba or some other rudimentary household robot, this technology might be big in your future — it’s more than remote control.

The beta version of the Anki Drive is live in the App Store right now, but the final version won’t be out until this fall. Presumably this is when the physical cars will be available, which is really what makes this of interest. Without the real-world aspect for people to test, this is still just an informational app. The cars are sold separately, according to the app listing. The cost is anyone’s guess.

Still, this video game brought into real life could be just the start of something really interesting happening on mobile devices. This is only the first manifestation of Anki’s vision of the future. Hopefully that future has fewer connection issues, though.

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Microsoft at E3 2013: Watch the Xbox One event live (updated live blog)

Updated: The event has now begun! Scroll down for updates from Microsoft’s E3 Xbox One event, as they happen. You can see a video of the live event below.

Microsoft is beginning its press conference with some Xbox One gameplay from Konami… Metal Gear Solid! Seems it’s a very different setting this time, on horseback. Metal Gear Solid V (The Phantom Pain) on the Xbox One looks very pretty indeed. Hideo Kojima is on stage to awkwardly tell us that MGS5′s graphics are only capable with the Xbox One (but no, no word of it being an exclusive).

Don Mattrick is on stage to tell us that Xbox One will have 13 exclusive titles.

But first, the Xbox 360 is being refreshed! To look more like the Xbox One. Console gets better, as does Xbox Live Gold — from July 1 through until Xbox One’s release, you’ll get two free game downloads per month. Lots of new games coming to the Xbox 360 this year, too, including Grand Theft Auto 5. World of Tanks is also coming to the Xbox 360, free for Xbox Live Gold subscribers, which is apparently very exciting.

Now we’re finally talking about Xbox One games! Lots of exclusives. Starting with a new franchise: Ryse: Son of Rome, by Crytek. It looks very, very pretty. Kind of like a Total War game, but pretty.

Ryse looks like a hack-and-slash. A very pretty hack-and-slash, set during the Roman Empire’s heyday. The game is being played by someone on stage, with an Xbox One gamepad. How reassuring.

Cevat Yarli, from Crytek, is on stage telling us about Ryse. Apparently he’s been trying to make this game for years, but the technology hasn’t been good enough… until the Xbox One! Thus it’s an exclusive.

Another Xbox One exclusive: Killer Instinct. Another new franchise, exclusive to Xbox One: Sunset Overdrive, a stylized open-world shooter, made by Insomniac, that could only be made on the Xbox One. Seems like a crazy game. Apparently the world’s content can be changed every day, depending on what the community wants/makes.

Now Microsoft has brought a McLaren P1 on stage — there are only two of these cars in the world, apparently. This is to showcase Forza 5, which apparently isn’t about polygons or graphics — they’ve transcended (really, that’s what they said). Sounds like Forza will have some interesting AI, called drivertar (like avatar, but driver). Basically, your drivertar will learn how you drive, and then your drivertar (stored in the cloud) will go and race against other Forza players — and if your drivertar wins, you get points!

Phil Harrison is now on stage, to talk about developers, developers, developers — specifically, indie game development on the Xbox One. Minecraft is coming to Xbox One.

Now we’re looking at Quantum Break, another Xbox One exclusive. It’s a game that mashes up gameplay, and your choices affect how a (real?) TV show unfolds. The gameplay looks quite impressive, but I have no clue what on earth the game is actually about. D4, another game coming to Xbox One. Some cel-shaded game from Swery65.

Dave McCarthy is on stage to talk about Project Spark. He’s holding a Surface tablet in his hands, I think. Sounds like a god game very similar to Black & White, or Spore. He’s using SmartGlass on his tablet, to create a game world on the Xbox One. Pretty smooth. Within a minute, they’ve made a game world. Now they’ve adding objects that have behaviors. It’s a game editor, basically! Now they’re showing what a team of game designers can do with this basic concept — create a very rich world, seemingly.

Marc Whitten is now here, to tell us more about Xbox Live and SmartGlass. You can use SmartGlass to match-make a multiplayer game, while you play a single-player game. Very cool.

Now we’re seeing how easy it is to upload “epic moments” (automatically recorded clips) from games, using Xbox One’s Upload Studio.

More importantly: Integrated Twitch streaming from Xbox One, with integrated chat from your viewers, etc.

Xbox Live: Now you can have as many friends as you want, and you’ll be able to pay for stuff with your local currency, rather than Xbox Points.

Capcom is on stage… to tell us that Xbox One is the only console capable of open-world zombie games. Dead Rising 3, exclusive to the Xbox One! I wonder if it’ll be as good as Left 4 Dead or DayZ; I doubt it. Looks like you have to battle a horde of zombies with nothing but a wrench. Apparently Xbox One allows them to make an open world, with no load times, but with a realistic, city-like density of buildings/objects/etc. This guy is using way too much ammo; has he never played a zombie survival game before?

 

Now they’re showing off SmartGlass, running on a Nokia Lumia 920 (Windows Phone 8). Very neat.

Witcher 3 is coming to Xbox One. The graphics don’t look all that good — but hey, non-linear gameplay, fully open world, SmartGlass integration, etc.

Battlefield 4 on the Xbox One: Massive combat, at 60 fps, on land, sea, and air. Looks cool; lots of detail, lots of physics. Probably the most visually impressive of the Xbox One demos so far. This demo is very long. Now we’re on a speedboat! Shooting things.

What Lies Below: A new game, based in a Rogue-like world. Looks very cool.

Microsoft is investing in five new studios, to develop content for Xbox One. First studio: Black Tusk, in Vancouver. Now we’re hearing about the Xbox One’s Halo title — again, running at 60 fps. No other information, other than it’s being released in 2014.

Finally: Xbox One is coming in November, to 21 markets. $500 in the US, 500 Euros in Europe, and £429 in the UK. Ending the event with one more exclusive game, from Respawn, founded by the creators of the Call of Duty franchise at Infinity Ward. The game looks like a mix between Mass Effect and Call of Duty, but mostly Call of Duty. Graphically it doesn’t look like a next-generation game. The game is called Titanfall.

What follows below was written before the E3 press conference, so take it with a pinch of salt. It will be removed/updated once the press conference has finished.

At 1:30pm EST today, Microsoft’s E3 Xbox One press conference will kick off. Whereas the initial unveil back in May focused almost entirely on the Xbox One’s ability to act as an HDMI passthrough box for cable TV, the E3 presentation is expected to focus on the Xbox One hardware and software, its games, and peripherals such as the new Kinect. Below you can find a live video feed of Microsoft’s E3 keynote. Once the event begins, this story will be updated with news from the Xbox One press conference. For now, read on to find out what Microsoft is expected to unveil at E3.

After a jawdroppingly depressing Xbox One unveiling in May, where games took a back seat to TV, Microsoft will spend much of its E3 keynote actually showing off real, rendered-on-the-Xbox-One gameplay. Forza 5, Call of Duty: Ghosts, FIFA 14, Gears of War, and some other sports games (Madden, NBA Live) are all likely to be shown off on stage in Los Angeles. We will also hear about the Xbox One’s exclusive titles; so far, all we know about is Crytek’s Ryse, but Microsoft will certainly have some more up its sleeve.

In true E3 fashion, we will also be subjected to some on-stage Kinect demos — probably featuring professional dancers/athletes alongside not-so-professional Microsoft execs. As we covered last month, the new Kinect is much higher-tech than the original, featuring a higher resolution, a wider field of view, the capability to track six skeletons at once, and the curious (if creepy) ability to work in the dark. We wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft has a big-name Kinect-based game to reveal at E3.

Finally, we can expect lots of general information about the Xbox One, such as its software, its interface — and perhaps most importantly, some data about second-hand games and the console’s always-on internet requirement. Stay tuned; we’ll update this post when the Microsoft E3 event kicks off.

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AMD has console gaming in its pocket, but can it squeeze out Nvidia on the PC?

AMD is in a very interesting position this year. Not only is it pushing the envelope with server, desktop, and mobile APUs, but it also has the console market on lock down. This week at the Computex Taipei expo, AMD doubled down on its “Unified Gaming Strategy,” and promises to work directly with game developers to make PC ports of console games easier going forward.

Last generation, IBM supplied the CPUs for all three major consoles, and Nvidia supplied the GPU for the PS3. Now, the PS4 and Xbox One are both running custom AMD APUs, and the Wii U is using an IBM CPU with an AMD GPU. Usage statistics show that Nvidia still has a significant edge in the PC gaming market, but AMD could use its console dominance to turn the tide. It wouldn’t be the first time we see a major upset in the world of GPUs.

The reality of potential sales figures forces game developers to make most AAA titles console-focused. Too often, PC ports get the short shrift because of this emphasis on the consoles, but hopefully that’s about the change. Now that the Xbox One, PS4, and PC are all using the same underlying hardware, it should take significantly less work to make a polished version for all three platforms. At least, that’s what AMD keeps telling us.

The PS3 used the oddball Cell processor, and that lead to countless problems for third-party developers making multi-platform games. It has more horsepower than the Xbox 360, but the difficult architecture meant developers were often left with a choppy frame rate or egregious texture pop-in. That’s not the case this time around, and we mostly have AMD to thank. The development environments for PC, Xbox One, and PS4 are by no means identical, but ports won’t need nearly as much retooling as they did last generation.

Everyone seems to be benefiting except Nvidia here. The real worry with AMD’s push for unified gaming is that games developers might shirk Nvidia optimizations. If it’s relativelysimple to get Xbox One games up and running on PCs with AMD graphics, publishers might not see the need to spend the additional cash to optimize for Nvidia cards. This could be a huge hassle for the majority of PC gamers with existing Nvidia cards, but it would be even worse for Nvidia itself. While AMD has been lagging well behind lately, this PC-console strategy could help it leapfrog its competitors in a meaningful way.

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AMD’s Richland APUs: 5GHz overclocks on tap, set the stage for Steamroller

Today, AMD is officially launching its new Richland series of desktop APU parts. If you’re familiar with the Trinity-based hardware that AMD launched a year ago, or you caught our article on Piledriver for low-end gaming last year, you’ve already got an idea of how these chips stack up against their Intel counterparts. The new processors are debuting as the AMD “6000″ family, and each core is more-or-less a straight refresh of the part that came before it, with slightly higher clock speeds. The A10-5800K adds support for DDR3-2133, which may help nudge its graphics performance a bit higher, but by and large, this is a straightforward refresh.

Richland still moves the ball forward for AMD in several important ways. First, power consumption tests show that the new A10-6800K uses only about 4.5% more power at peak load than the A10-5800K, despite being clocked 8% higher at stock. That’s a significant gain for AMD, particularly given that the chips we’re testing are sitting at the top of its product stack. The gains here suggest that Richland yields have improved over the past 12 months across the board.

Another positive development — for top-end hardware that’s already pushing clock speed hard, there’s more headroom in the A10-6800K than existed in the A10-5800K, as shown below:

This is rather different than what we saw when the A10-5800K first debuted.  We re-tested that chip, just to confirm it — our CPU wasn’t stable above 4.4GHz without massive voltage increases. The chip’s effective maximum speed, in other words, was just 200MHz, or 4.5%, above its Turbo Core. The A10-6800K doesn’t blow the doors off the room, but we were able to run all four cores at 5GHz on our single sample — 16% faster than the chip’s typical quad-core Turbo frequency of 4.3GHz.

These improvements help explain why AMD has raised its prices slightly with the introduction of the 6000 series; the A10-5800K debuted at $129; the A10-6800K is coming in at $149. Is this enough to fundamentally change the competitive situation with Intel? In a word, no. Here’s the same Cinebench 11.5 comparison, only with Intel’s Core i5-3550 (a $199 chip) and the just-launched Haswell Core i7-4770K thrown into the mix.

Richland’s higher frequencies and better overclocking potential don’t change the current status quo. But they do give us hope that AMD’s next-generation Steamroller is coming along smoothly. New roadmaps from Sunnyvale, quietly updated last week, imply that the third iteration of the Bulldozer architecture could drop quite soon — by the beginning of the fourth quarter.

Kaveri is the Steamroller-based, GCN-equipped APU that will hopefully kick AMD’s single-thread performance out of the doldrums. In its Hot Chips presentation last year, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster showed off a number of design changes being baked into the new core. Steamroller has two decoders capable of dispatching four instructions each rather than a single four-issue decoder serving its integer pipelines. The two decoders work in parallel rather than a staggered formation, and either can dispatch code to the FPU.

AMD is forecasting a 30% increase in decode operations per cycle, a 5-10% improvement in scheduling efficiency, and improved branch prediction. Some of these benefits are going to primarily impact the server market, others will favor desktop, but the bottom line is the same: Steamroller should offer a significant improvement over Piledriver. There’s been a great deal of discussion over whether or not a purported photo of the new die is actually legitimate:

Click to embiggen

If it is, it shows a Steamroller design that’s doubled up in a number of key areas compared to Piledriver. The L1 caches are larger, the registers are wider (this could mean that AMD has gone for 256-bit registers early rather than waiting for Excavator). There’s debate, in fact, over whether this is Excavator or Steamroller, but either way, it points to significant improvements coming in the not-too-distant future.

The Richland – Steamroller Express

There’s a reason we’ve segued into Steamroller from a Richland launch announcement. The A10-6800K is proof that AMD has improved yields and improved on the base Trinity design. The move from 32nm SOI (Bulldozer, Piledriver, and Trinity) to 28nm bulk silicon (Steamroller) shouldn’t have necessitated a major revamp, given that AMD is building Kaveri at GlobalFoundries, and GF used gate-first for 28nm.

Richland’s strong showing relative to where Bulldozer started from in 2011, in other words, implies that Steamroller is coming along swimmingly. Obviously that could change. Roadmaps have slipped before, and I was surprised to hear AMD claiming that Steamroller would show up in the back half of this year. Historically, AMD has had a hard time hitting its performance targets the first time — but its follow-ups have often been markedly better.

Faint praise? Maybe. But I think Richland is exciting more for what it says about AMD’s mid-term roadmap than for what it offers right now, today. We already know Kaveri will include a new GCN-based GPU. It’ll also be the first conventional x86 CPU with HSA support, and it should have a wide range of clock frequencies and TDP targets.

Should you buy Richland, today? It’s not a bad offer for a reasonably priced CPU+GPU, and the overclocking could be fun. No, it’s not going to be the highest-performing solution, even when overclocked, but we’re glad to see the technological advances baked into this core. With Kabini already shipping and Kaveri on the way, the next two quarters could be some of the strongest AMD has had in years.

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