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Microsoft Cancelling One-on-One Interviews with Xbox Executives at E3
@AnnoyedGamer: After canceling the post e3 round table for media, Microsoft are now canceling interviews? How deep a hole are they trying to dig??
As Microsoft announced yesterday, whether or not secondhand Xbox One games will be allowed--and if an activation fee will be required--will be left up to individual publishers. GameSpot has contacted a host of publishers asking them to clarify their stance on the matter, but thus far only Fallout and Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda has responded. "We haven't had time to fully understand and evaluate their policy," a company representative said. GameSpot also reached out to major publishers including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Capcom, Warner Bros., Take-Two, Ubisoft, and Konami. Responses will be added here if they are provided. Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter does not believe publishers will completely block Xbox One used games due to the possibility of significant gamer backlash or boycotts. At the same time, Pachter said some publishers may move to block Xbox One used games for a certain period of time after launch in an effort to avoid cannibalization of new game sales. This period of time was not specified, though Grand Theft Auto parent publisher Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick said last month that after eight weeks, publishers don't care much about used game sales. "If you can keep the game in consumer's hands for 8 weeks, you almost don't care anymore about used game sales because it's the first 8 weeks that really nail you," he said at the time.
Words fail me!
Quote from: GamerMan316 on June 11, 2013, 04:56:47 PMWords fail me!I'll help you out... how f***ing retarded is that?
Today we talked about some of the changes to the new achievements system coming with Xbox One. We just got done hearing from Chad Gibson, Principle Group Program manager for Xbox Live Gaming features and Mike Lavin, Sr. Global Product Marketing manager for Xbox Live on our live broadcast. This morning, we asked Cierra McDonald to explain some of the achievement changes in greater detail for us. Here is what she wrote for you guysAhoy! My name is Cierra McDonald. I’m from Chicago, I’m an Illini (I-L-L!!!), and most pertinently, I’m the Program Manager for the Xbox Live Achievements service. My love of gaming started as a wee child, playing Super Mario Bros. at home and joining friends on Altered Beast and Contra at the local arcade. My family’s team sport is Boggle. And apropos of nothing, I once shattered my elbow – or as my surgeon once put it, it’s like Humpty Dumpty fell onto a diamond surface. Fun facts!Achievements are like a delicious gravy (or a fudge sauce, for the more dessert-minded) on top of a developer’s tasty meal of a game. Playing the game is fun by itself; and achievements add an extra layer of discovery, exploration, and accomplishment that reinforces the natural enjoyment of the gameplay. For Xbox One, my team (an incredible group of smart, hardworking folks) and I have rebuilt the Achievements system to be more powerful and more flexible so that developers and publishers can deliver more interesting, complex, and fulfilling goals and rewards to you. What exactly does that mean?Xbox blazed the trail back in 2005 by introducing Xbox Live Achievements as a metagame whose cumulative score – Gamerscore – spans across games on every Xbox Live platform. Many of today’s gaming systems followed our model and now offer achievements or badges as well.
Let’s start with what you get. With Xbox One, we are once again breaking the mold and this time, we want consumers to reap more tangible benefits. In addition to Gamerscore, which will remain as a critical part of the Xbox gaming experience (and yes, your Gamerscore from Xbox 360 will carry forward to Xbox One – there’s only ONE Gamerscore (see what I did there?)), consumers can now unlock digital artwork, new maps, unlockable characters, and temporary stat boosts via achievements. And this is not limited to games! Other Xbox One applications such as video and music apps can now use Achievements to bring you awesome sneak peek content, early access, or subscription extensions. Only games will give you Gamerscore.Cool, you can earn cool stuff with Xbox LIVE Achievements. Let’s talk about how they work.There are now two types of Achievements: achievements and challenges. An achievement is probably already familiar. There’s a goal or activity you must accomplish and a reward that you receive upon completion. You can unlock an achievement at any time, be it on a game’s launch day or 3 years later. I guess you can say an achievement is like a promise in that sense. A challenge, on the other hand, is more like an opportunity – better grab it while you can! It is also comprised of a goal and a reward; however, challenges are time-bound (as in, real life time). That means you can only unlock during its eligible time window, and if you get close but don’t complete the goal when it ends… *Kanye shrug* Achievements and challenges are both officially considered Xbox Live Achievements, so they inherit many of the same benefits: -You can unlock them and win their rewards; -Once unlocked, they are saved to your achievement history; -They each have an icon to visualize the cool thing you did; -They often are associated with a Game DVR capture to show your friends that you are better than they are -Developers can release more of them after the game’s initial release (more on that in a bit).There are also some notable differences between them: -Challenges are time based. As just noted, challenges are only available for a certain period of time. Only your activity during that timeframe will count toward unlocking the challenge. Achievements do not expire, so you can unlock them at your leisure.-Challenges do not give out Gamerscore. We want everyone to have the same shot at increasing their Gamerscore to its highest potential. Since challenges are intentionally temporary (an opportunity) and achievements never expire (a promise), only achievements may offer Gamerscore as a reward.-Challenges may cross titles, but achievements cannot. Achievements cannot be shared across titles whereas challenges are allowed to span multiple titles.-Challenges can be unlocked by the community. Community challenges are typically goals that exceed what a lone player can accomplish in the given period of time. Imagine, for example, a game releases a headshot weekend challenge that requires players to cumulatively headshot 1 million baddies in a 3 day period. And every person who participates and meets the challenge’s goals gets the unlock on his or her achievement history and reaps its reward.Another really cool thing with the new Achievements system is that it’s cloud-powered. A magical term, I know, but it delivers real value to users. Check it out:Having cloud-powered achievements makes it easy and consistent to run challenges across all players of a game simultaneously.It makes it possible for developers to add new achievements and challenges after their game is initially released. Why is that good for you? 1) It means you can get new achievements without always being required to buy new content (read: free!) or download title updates. 2) It allows developers to learn from and respond to user activity and focus on adding stuff that you’ll find fun. For example, let’s say a certain game is known on community forums to have a fun little sub-game of kicking chickens. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the game developers noticed the community enjoying an unintended aspect of the game and creating a challenge around it, with a reward to boot?3) It empowers developers to involve the community (that means YOU) in the achievement creation process. If they so choose, a developer could run a contest for users to submit and vote on challenge ideas, for example, with the winning idea being released to the public as a legitimate Xbox Live Achievement. Not too shabby!Let’s bring it all home and talk about what you actually see: -The Xbox One dashboard experience greatly improves how you discover and view Xbox Live Achievements. -Ever wondered how far along you were toward completing an achievement, particularly those that involve a lot of collection or linear progress? With Xbox One, games may now expose your latest progression toward unlocking an achievement right on the dashboard, even before you launch the game.-Quickly catch up on what your friends have been up with the achievement activity feed that keeps you informed about your friends’ latest unlocked achievements.-Check out video clips of that magical moment when an achievement was unlocked.-Easily discover upcoming challenges for a game at any time.-Your achievement history has been transformed into a more beautiful gallery of achievement icons that properly show off your hard-earned victories.You guys all rock, thanks from all of us here on our dev team. Can’t wait to see you on Live!
Microsoft has this week released some confusing statements and policies regarding how the Xbox One will work around the world. We've tried to get to the bottom of them, with no avail.Earlier in the week, a guide on pre-ordering the Xbox One was published by Microsoft. Saying that the console is only launching in 21 countries this November, it also says the following:Xbox One games are for activation and distribution only in specified geographic regions. See game package and/or retailer product information, for each game’s specific geographic regions.Which was alarming, but also lacking in specifics. If an imported game was first activated in a foreign region, would it work? What were those specified regions?A Microsoft representative helped clarify at least one thing a little later, telling the Army Times: "Military personnel will be able to take their Xbox One and play their games with them without an issue as long as the game has been ‘activated’ once in the U.S. Your games go with you and play, no issues."Later, the official Xbox Support Twitter account was replying to concerned users about whether the console was region-free, and said that the Xbox One would not even work if it was used in a country not listed in that initial 21.The problem there being that the Xbox Support Twitter account was one of the most notorious suppliers of confusing information at the Xbox One's reveal.So we reached out to Microsoft for clarification on the issue. And...didn't get much further. We were initially sent the following statement:At this time, we have announced Xbox One will be available in 21 markets in November this year and additional markets later in 2014. Similar to the movie and music industry, games and other content must meet country-specific regulatory guidelines before they are cleared for sale – which means that games will work in the broad geographic regions for which they have been cleared, much as today with Xbox 360. While the console itself is not geographically restricted, a user’s Xbox Live account, content, apps and experiences are all tied to the country of billing and residence.Again, not terribly helpful. It made a lot of suggestions, but offered nothing concrete. Meeting "country-specific regulatory guidelines" simply means passing classification. We have no idea what "broad geographic regions" are, and if the console itself is not "geographically restricted", but everything else is, how does that actually work?So I gave them three specific examples and asked for clarification.Could I import a game from the United States and play it on my Australian Xbox One?What exactly were the "broad geographic regions"? Could someone in Germany import a game from the UK and be able to play it?If content is locked to a specific country, could there be multiple international accounts on the one system?Their response was "we don’t have any additional to share beyond the statement currently". Great. For reference, the PS3 was completely region-free. The PS4 is as well. The PS3 even allowed different international accounts on the one system (I had an Australian, US and Japanese account). The Xbox 360 wasn't locked at the hardware level, but some publishers chose to implement their own region blocks.
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