Report: Sony signs deal with Viacom, will stream TV to Playstation in 2014

[trooper11]

I got your point. My point in return was I don't know what metric you are using to rate one a 7/10 and another 10/10. To me at least they all seemed pretty bad and it's not so clear which was the most important or had the biggest public outcry. There was A TON of public outcry on just about everything once the PR went south.

This is all old news anyway, I don't see much reason to argue the point since it means so little now. I just based my thought on what the most vocal outcry was. The issues that resulted in all sorts of online polls and petitions.

I'm not familiar with Smartglass but from most of the reviews I've read Sony tends to win the companion app comparisons.

Also I'm not sure exactly what multitasking Xbox One can do that PS4 can't but if you've gone over this before if you could provide a link I'd be happy to take a look. I haven't seen anything saying Span was revoultionary. I got the impression it was just another UI design that some people like and others don't, not something that added a ton of new capabilities.

Companion apps are different. Just look into Smartglass. The X1 gets companion apps too such as Titanfall, but Smartglass offers much more than that.

As far as multitasking, if you have never seen videos of how the X1 UI works as far as multitasking goes, then its not exactly easy to explain it here. As I said, the ps4 offers most of the same capabilities. I use them myself daily. Snap is a feature that does not exist on the ps4. I never said it was revolutionary, just a nice feature that I use. Its the first time that I can actually have two apps running side by side on a console. I have already found several scenarios where that came in handy.

Like any UI features, you will have those that like it and dislike it. Heck, many people hate the entire design of the X1 UI.

In fact I've heard the Xbox One UI WITHOUT Kinect (which I assume includes snap) is more difficult to navigate than the 360 because they really thought everyone would embrace the voice/gestures stuff.

Sure, some parts of the UI had to be altered for use with a controller, no doubt about it. Kinect made navigation of the system in general just better for me, which is why I wanted Kinect and why its disappointing to see it pushed aside.

Some of the other issues with the UI compared to the 360 had nothing to do with Kinect though. Just as the ps4 came out lacking features the ps3 had, the X1 ui is the same. Starting from scratch for both companies has resulted in them both playing catch up for features we had last gen.

I'm not sure running Windows is a plus. As I mentioned before it contributes to the narrative the MS is more concerned about getting Windows into the living room then what makes a good gaming experience. Also Windows is a very heavy piece of software in console OS terms. Yes MS allows developers to enter a mode minimizing it but running 3 OSs or whatever the PR behind it is doesn't seem to be for much of a point yet. The point from a consumers point of view of running Windows on your console would be that you could run Windows apps on your console. Why would a user care if it runs Windows if they can't run any of their Windows software on it? Even worse why would they be happy to take the resource hit Windows incurs with no apparent gain in return. Now MAYBE eventually it will run Metro apps and you'll be able to buy a Windows app for say Windows 9 and run it on your laptop, your desktop, and your Xbox One. THEN maybe it will be cool for your console to be running windows. Right now that's not possible though and it remains to be seen if the public will even embrace "Metro" apps at all. The Windows Phone apps and Windows 8 apps of today aren't exactly drawing in users as it is.

That's a fair position to take, but to me, having the same core running under the X1 os as windows is a huge improvement over the 360. As I said, this may not offer a specific feature you could point to for a consumer, but it offers much more flexibility for MS to improve the platform going forward. Its a long term play.

Having windows running on the X1 does not affect gaming performance anymore than the ps4's OS does. For the record, the X1 has two os builds that run in a virtual environment. One build strictly for gaming, the other to handle all other tasks (windows 8)

Regarding apps, the X1 will indeed be part of the universal app store that comes with the next version of windows. The value of that is unknown at this point, but if it means developers have a more open platform, then that at least is a good thing. It would also be a first for a console.

As for MS's update pace I do give them credit for pushing out a ton of updates where Sony has had fewer and what has been there has often been "stability improvements" or other such generic statements. That said Sony didn't do a bunch of 180s and a fair amount of MSs updates have been a result of having to adapt to their change in direction. As noted before the UI was designed to require the Kinect so they've had to go in and change a bunch of things to make it easier to use without a Kinect.

I don't agree with that point. Just look back at the change logs for the previous X1 updates to see how many features were related to Kinect going away. The only things directly tied to Kinect that they changed were remapping some controls such as how you worked with snap or made a game clip. Most of the other changes were issues with or without Kinect.

Sony is reasonably happy with it's UI so it hasn't had to do a bunch of updates to fix things. Even with all of it's updates there isn't a big list of things the Xbox One does that the PS4 doesn't.

Sony being reasonably happy with its UI does not really matter. Even here, users have expressed interest in seeing Sony make UI changes. I voiced some of my wants along with them.

Also Sony seems to be planning on fewer but larger updates besides stability fixes whereas MS likes to get whatever they can out each month. Sony seems to be trying to hold off new features until the 2.0 update right now for example so once that hits we'll see how far ahead MS really is, if at all.

I'm all for Sony rolling out bigger updates. When that really happens, I'll be happy. But instead of guessing what may come, I'm talking about what we have seen up to this point. So far, MS has been more aggressive in a good way. When Sony improves, then that statement will change. I'm not going to give Sony a pass just because things might change later.

Again though I don't really see much that all of MS updates have given it that Sony doesn't already do. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is the media playback stuff that's not related to gaming. Sony is STILL adding gaming related features, like the upcoming Share Play, so they haven't gotten around to the non-gaming media center stuff yet. That will no doubt come though when they feel confident they have the "early adopter"/"hardcore gamers" and start to draw in a wider audience. It hasn't even been one full year yet though so they're still largely game focused.

Haven't gotten around to non gaming stuff? Oh come on now, lets not forget what Sony has done so far. They added support for using external storage with media, they added 3D bluray support, and a series of smaller updates to how their media apps work just to name some of the non gaming updates. The 3D bluray support was possibly the most prominent since MS announced their update for that support shortly before Sony did as well.

This is not a black and white situation. MS is also still adding gaming related features. MS just seem to moving quicker to bring back functionality that was present on the 360 than Sony is from the ps3 at the moment. When Sony improves, I'll be very happy.

Wait, I thought part of this discussion was about what MS could do to change the perception and now you are saying there is nothing they could do and just ignore it. Also as I've stated retooling for the next thing is exactly what they need to do but it isn't what they appear to be doing. Instead they seem to be floundering around trying to figure out what the next thing might be instead of making a firm decision and retooling for it.

Read my post again. I said they just need to push forward improving their product/securing quality content and eventually that should change the perception. I don't think there is anything more direct that is worth doing to change it.

I don't think they are floundering around. I think some people see it that way because they saw MS change so many plans right before launch and not long after. Retooling after that takes time. In less then a year, MS is almost done with that part of the process. Still, that does not mean they aren't also looking at what is next. They still intend on bringing the ideas they had before launch to digital purchases, so that work goes on behind the scenes. Then there is the various bits and pieces that MS has let slip as various events over the past year that show work being done to leverage their servers more and offer steaming services. There is also that AR/VR project that was hinted at way back before the X1 launched. Finally, the merging of all MS devices under one software core/app store is moving forward.

While these ideas are being worked on, MS has decided to focus on gaming in a big way on the X1. I doubt they will make a big deal out of what they are working on until its in a showable condition. Sure, talking just about games could be seen as boring, but its not so bad.

What's a great Xbox 3rd party developer that MS bought and has flourished under Microsoft? Bungie would have been the go to in my mind with Halo but they left. Lionhead and Rare are currently shadows of their former selves. On the other hand Naughty Dog was bought by Sony and has brought us the Uncharted series and Last of Us since. Sony doesn't have a reputation for killing third parties. I'm not saying it has never happened but there are enough hits with the misses that keeps them from getting such a reputation. I'm not aware of any AAA acquisitions that have panned out for MS, I'm not saying they don't exist, just none come to mind for me.

When Bungie left, some of the developers came to work in 343 instead.

Otherwise, your right, MS has zero 3rd party developers that have flourished. All of the development teams that are doing well are internal (Turn 10, etc)

Still, I would love to know the real numbers when it comes to closing studios.

[+Asmodai MVC]

Companion apps are different. Just look into Smartglass. The X1 gets companion apps too such as Titanfall, but Smartglass offers much more than that.

I know what you are talking about. I wasn't taking about GAME apps either I was talking about the SYSTEM companion apps, as in Smartglass for the Xbox One and the PlayStation app for the PS4. Most reviews I've seen say the PlayStation iOS/Android app is better than Smartglass. Again though while I've used and played on the Xbox One itself I've never touched Smartglass so I have no first hand experience with it at all.

As far as multitasking, if you have never seen videos of how the X1 UI works as far as multitasking goes, then its not exactly easy to explain it here. As I said, the ps4 offers most of the same capabilities. I use them myself daily. Snap is a feature that does not exist on the ps4. I never said it was revolutionary, just a nice feature that I use. Its the first time that I can actually have two apps running side by side on a console. I have already found several scenarios where that came in handy.

I've used the Xbox One myself, I'm not completely unfamiliar with it. I wasn't asking you to describe how multitasking works on it in general. Out of memory though I don't recall being struck by some multitasking capabilitity the Xbox One provides that the PS4 doesn't though. From my experience they seem to do very similar things they just do them in different ways. Which one is "better" in that case is subjective. I don't claim to know all the ins and outs of the Xbox One though just because I've used it a few times so maybe I just wasn't doing the cool new things that Snap enables. I was asking for specific examples of capabilities that snap enables that the PS4 or prior gen consoles couldn't do.

That's a fair position to take, but to me, having the same core running under the X1 os as windows is a huge improvement over the 360. As I said, this may not offer a specific feature you could point to for a consumer, but it offers much more flexibility for MS to improve the platform going forward. Its a long term play.

I really think the only benefit of running the same kernel is if you run the same applications, which it currently doesn't do. The Windows kernel is designed to run on all kinds of hardware. I believe the original version was designed on MIPS CPUs if I recall correctly to keep the developers honest about it being portable even though it's largest target hardware market was x86. Even when it went 64bit I believe along the same lines the kernel was developed on Alpha CPUs (even though the alpha version was never released commercially, though it did leak.) It's an amazing kernel and this abstraction allows them now to modify it to run on ARM and other hardware as well which is great for Windows going forward. This level of abstraction that creates portability however also slows things down. On a console the whole point is to be as close to the metal as possible, you want as little abstraction as possible and you don't care at all about portability since everyone has the exact same hardware. The windows kernel would therefor seem to me to be the antithesis of a console kernel... unless using it allowed you to run your existing library of windows apps... then the trade-off may be worth it. I would also think that using the same kernel means you may have things the console doesn't support that other things that use the same kernel need (causing kernel bloat for the console) and maybe you can't get changes you like because while they may be a plus on a console they may be a minus on other things that use the kernel and the net may be that they are left out.

Having windows running on the X1 does not affect gaming performance anymore than the ps4's OS does. For the record, the X1 has two os builds that run in a virtual environment. One build strictly for gaming, the other to handle all other tasks (windows 8)

I don't know how you can make that performance analysis with any certainty. I understand the OS environment of the Xbox One. That's what I referred to when I said 3 OS (which you are calling two but in reality there is a third hypervisor that manages the two you list.) Also the "strictly gaming" one is what I referred to when I said "Yes MS allows developers to enter a mode minimizing it". It doesn't change the fact that running a hypervisor and two OSs requires SOME extra overhead over just running one customer tailored OS. The PS4 OS is based off of FreeBSD so it started as a full blown OS kernel as well but Sony is able to strip everything out that doesn't apply to the PS4 since they don't have to keep it's kernel in sync with anything else and they can add whatever they need without having to worry about how it effects anything else (Desktops, Servers, Phones, Tablets, etc.) For example they introduced super low level graphics APIs like GNM which give game developers a very close to metal API that MS doesn't offer through their tweaked DirectX API, although DX12 will get a lot closer. Not having to worry about portability and abstraction lets Sony tune their system software to exactly what the capabilities of their hardware is with no concern for anything else. The only reason for them to introduce abstraction at all is for ease of development not portability and so they that as well and in addition to the low level GNM graphics API for example they have a higher level GNMX API.

I think at the moment having a Windows kernel in the Xbox One is more a hindrance then a benefit HOWEVER as you say it's a "long term play" that may very well pan out -> IF <- so called "Universal Apps" are ever accepted by the public and it becomes true that you can buy a single app from the Windows Store and have it run on your Windows 10 Desktop, your Windows 10 Phone, and your Xbox One. THEN it will become a very cool feature that they all run the same OS. Thus far however the public hasn't exactly embraced Windows Phone 7.x/8.x or Windows 8.x "Metro" apps. If fact it would seem to me that they'd be better off running a custom Xbox Specific single OS instead of 2/3 and not worry about having Windows 8 on your Xbox until they get the rest of that stuff in order (with Windows 10) THEN push the unified windows kernel/app support as a big system update to the Xbox One. Of course I don't think they knew that the time the Xbox One was designed that Windows 8 and Windows Phone would do so poorly and hindsight is 20/20.

 

I'm all for Sony rolling out bigger updates. When that really happens, I'll be happy. But instead of guessing what may come, I'm talking about what we have seen up to this point. So far, MS has been more aggressive in a good way. When Sony improves, then that statement will change. I'm not going to give Sony a pass just because things might change later.

I'm not talking about what MAY happen either. They've already had one big update, the 1.7 updated was pretty significant. So if their approach is two have 1 big update say every 6 months with just bug fixes in between then their right on course. 2.0 is officially announced, not rumors or speculation and it's pretty big. We know it's going to have Share Play and such that I mentioned but we don't know what else it's going to have. I'm not sure MS was in a better state when 1.7 launched for Sony but sure if they're doing smaller monthly updates compared to larger 6 month updates then their going to peak in comparison a month or so before the next Sony big update hits. The fairest comparison is what the state is when each larger update hits. Even right now when things are at their worst though for Sony one would think since it's been so long since the last update and the next big one is due in the next 1-3 months (I believe they said 2.0 would be out by the end of the year) I don't see a long list of capabilities the Xbox One has that the PS4 does not. I may have missed something though so I was asking you to point out what some of those might be if I missed something. The only thing I can think of is the media playback but their might be others.

 

The 3D bluray support was possibly the most prominent since MS announced their update for that support shortly before Sony did as well.

Perhaps I'm wrong but I got the distinct impression that they didn't plan on releasing 3D bluray support when they did. I got the STRONG impression that they had intended to wait for the 2.0 update but MS announcing support for the Xbox One forced their hand. Apparently it was something that was probably done and not tied too strongly to the other parts of the 2.0 update so they decided to just go ahead and release it earlier than they planned so MS couldn't put a feather in their hat for having Blu-Ray support first. I still think they'd rather be on a large update every 6 months or so schedule instead of pushing out little updates every month.

 

When Bungie left, some of the developers came to work in 343 instead.

I don't see how that's relevelent at all. Developers jump studios quite a bit. You don't have to buy and destroy a studio for that to happen.

Otherwise, your right, MS has zero 3rd party developers that have flourished. All of the development teams that are doing well are internal (Turn 10, etc)

That's the point. Microsoft buying 3rd party studios to build their developer base is the kiss of death for that studio. What good internal studios they have originated there. Hiring more developers with experience in the industry (be that from Bungie or whoever) is a great way to establish and build internal studios not buying 3rd party development houses and killing them. That just ticks off the fans of the studio you killed (who presumably were pretty numerous if it was big enough to merit their interest) and doesn't even guarantee you get the good developers. Nothing says the developers you wanted won't just leave when their studio is bought out but if you hire them away clearly they aren't leaving because they're specifically switching to you.

[trooper11]

I know what you are talking about. I wasn't taking about GAME apps either I was talking about the SYSTEM companion apps, as in Smartglass for the Xbox One and the PlayStation app for the PS4. Most reviews I've seen say the PlayStation iOS/Android app is better than Smartglass. Again though while I've used and played on the Xbox One itself I've never touched Smartglass so I have no first hand experience with it at all.

That's fine, I know you don't have much experience with the X1. Maybe you can try it out sometime.

I don't claim to know all the ins and outs of the Xbox One though just because I've used it a few times so maybe I just wasn't doing the cool new things that Snap enables. I was asking for specific examples of capabilities that snap enables that the PS4 or prior gen consoles couldn't do.

No problem, I understand if you just haven't had enough hand's on time with it. Snap is the easiest to describe since it is literally running two apps at the same time on the screen, like a pc. Its not a big deal.

I really think the only benefit of running the same kernel is if you run the same applications, which it currently doesn't do

I'm not sure why you had to into a long layout of the hardware windows has run on in the past. This single line is the important bit. This time around, MS intends to bring Win 10 to all devices with a UI best suited to each device AND a shared development platform/store. So unless they change their mind, we will see gaming and other app development get better then it was say with the 360.

I don't know how you can make that performance analysis with any certainty. I understand the OS environment of the Xbox One. That's what I referred to when I said 3 OS (which you are calling two but in reality there is a third hypervisor that manages the two you list.)

I'm not claiming that, I'm just basing it on the numbers put out for both consoles near launch that stated how much resources were to be devoted to each OS at launch. Many worried that the X1 would require more, but it turned out to be the same.

Now, that does not mean Sony couldn't optimize for less resources. In fact, I'm positive they will, but then, so will MS. Just like last gen.

I'm not talking about what MAY happen either. They've already had one big update, the 1.7 updated was pretty significant. So if their approach is two have 1 big update say every 6 months with just bug fixes in between then their right on course. 2.0 is officially announced, not rumors or speculation and it's pretty big. We know it's going to have Share Play and such that I mentioned but we don't know what else it's going to have.

Yeah, I'm certainly excited about what is coming with 2.0, I just wish they would do a bit more at the pace they are going.

As far as listing the X1 updates. All you need to do is read through the threads on this very sight to get a good idea. MS has been doing a good job in that area and I appreciate the aggressive pace in response to feedback.

Perhaps I'm wrong but I got the distinct impression that they didn't plan on releasing 3D bluray support when they did. I got the STRONG impression that they had intended to wait for the 2.0 update but MS announcing support for the Xbox One forced their hand. Apparently it was something that was probably done and not tied too strongly to the other parts of the 2.0 update so they decided to just go ahead and release it earlier than they planned so MS couldn't put a feather in their hat for having Blu-Ray support first. I still think they'd rather be on a large update every 6 months or so schedule instead of pushing out little updates every month.

Many thought the same as you did. Whatever the reason, it happened. I prefer a more rapid release if its possible to do so without issues.

 

That's the point. Microsoft buying 3rd party studios to build their developer base is the kiss of death for that studio. What good internal studios they have originated there. Hiring more developers with experience in the industry (be that from Bungie or whoever) is a great way to establish and build internal studios not buying 3rd party development houses and killing them. That just ticks off the fans of the studio you killed (who presumably were pretty numerous if it was big enough to merit their interest) and doesn't even guarantee you get the good developers. Nothing says the developers you wanted won't just leave when their studio is bought out but if you hire them away clearly they aren't leaving because they're specifically switching to you.

Yeah, good point. MS is pretty terrible in that area.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Ah good old walls of texts, brings back memories :P

 

Good on you guys having discussions though.

[trooper11]

Ah good old walls of texts, brings back memories :p

 

Good on you guys having discussions though.

Sometimes good discussions need space :laugh:

Still, maybe its gone too far for this particular thread.

[Houtei]

Dang I haven't seen so many quotes and walls of text in a single thread in a while lol I had to stop reading half way through.

[trooper11]

Dang I haven't seen so many quotes and walls of text in a single thread in a while lol I had to stop reading half way through.

:laugh:

It sure is old school, but its nice to discuss these things without anyone getting bent out of shape.

Nice change of pace.