Tag Archives | Xbox 360

Microsoft's Shady Kinect Pricing: What Gives?

Posted by Jared Newman on June 23, 2010 at 9:21 am

Microsoft let E3 come and go without a word on the price of Kinect for Xbox 360, but now the Microsoft Store lists a tentative price of $150 for the motion-sensing camera.

“Official pricing has not been announced,” warns the site. “$149.99 is an estimate only and subject to change.” MSNBC cites a Microsoft representative who said that price is based on retailer estimates. Last week, Gamestop started selling Kinect for pre-order, also for $150.

As PC World’s Matt Peckham speculates, Microsoft wants to start selling these things ASAP, and it’s better to offer a worst-case price and drop it before launch if necessary.

Still, why hold off on an official price during the big show? I can guess at a few reasons:

  • Microsoft really hasn’t figured out pricing yet, or thinks it can bring the cost down between now and November 4.
  • Microsoft is still figuring out bundles — both with Xbox 360 hardware and with Kinect games — and doesn’t want to make a big announcement on pricing until everything’s squared away.
  • The general attitude in the press is that $150 is too expensive for Kinect (I beg to differ). Announcing a price at E3 could’ve derailed the product’s flashy debut.
  • A tentative price lets Microsoft see how many people are interested by the E3 buzz alone.

I imagine the answer is a combination of all those factors, but its kind of silly to sell something at a placeholder price in any case. I hope Kinect’s real price stops being a mystery in a week or so.

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Microsoft's E3 Surprises: ESPN, New Xbox 360, Shameless Bribe

Posted by Jared Newman on June 14, 2010 at 1:18 pm

Short on shocking moments and big reveals, Microsoft pulled the trump card at the end of its E3 press conference today: Everyone in attendance would get a brand new, redesigned Xbox 360 for free. For all the journalists in the audience, it was time to make an ethical decision. For the rest of us, it was suddenly clear why Microsoft chose a small venue for the event, forcing many reporters, myself included, to watch via live video feed.

Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 model ships today. It’s not officially dubbed the Xbox 360 Slim, but it’s smaller than its predecessors and includes a 250 GB hard drive and built-in wireless n. Previous models had only wired Ethernet jacks and maxed out at 120 GB hard drives. The new Xbox 360, which comes only in black, sells for the same $300 as the current Xbox 360 Elite.

The new Xbox 360, and its subsequent gifting to the to the press, were among a few surprises dotting an otherwise lackluster press conference. Most of the games Microsoft showed off were obvious Xbox 360 exclusives, and looked just as predictable in action. Halo: Reach was more Halo. Gears of War 3 was more Gears of War. Call of Duty: Black Ops was more Call of Duty. And almost every Kinect game on display had already debuted the night before (the exception being Metal Gear Solid: Rising, which may support motion-controlled sword combat). The conference’s only new blood was a game codenamed Kingdoms, and its short teaser video had so little concrete information that the game is hard to get excited about.

But for existing Xbox 360 owners, at least there was ESPN. Rumored by the New York Times in January, ESPN for Xbox 360 will offer more than 3,500 live and on demand sporting events, including Major League Baseball, the NBA, soccer, college football and college basketball. No mention of the NFL, which has lagged on new media in general. In addition to the games, Xbox 360’s ESPN support will include trivia, highlights and voice activation with Kinect. Best of all, it’s free for Xbox Live Gold subscribers. The unanswered questions: When will the service arrive, and how subservient will the live broadcasts be to cable and local broadcasters?

Strangely, Microsoft announced a November 4 launch date for Kinect, but no price, nor any console bundles. Maybe the previous rumor of $150 is still in dispute.

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Microsoft Kinect: What I've Gathered Thus Far

Posted by Jared Newman on June 14, 2010 at 8:39 am

As Microsoft representatives handed out smooth white tunics — they called them panchos — to everyone who entered the “Project Natal Experience” event last night, I realized this would be an unconventional press conference. Yes, Microsoft revealed some details and a final name for its 3D motion-sensing Xbox 360 camera, now called Kinect, but instead of using casually-dressed executives and a teleprompter, the company brought in Cirque Du Soleil for an elaborate show of audio and visuals.

The idea is that Kinect is a natural evolution of gaming. By removing the controller completely and sensing the movement of arms, legs and torsos, Kinect liberates the body — and gaming — from its primitive state. Hence the acrobatic dancers, animatronic elephant and jungle setting that filled the stage of USC’s Galen Center. But when it was time to show the actual Xbox 360 games, there was clearly a disconnect between the substance of Kinect and Cirque’s dog and pony show.

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A $150 Project Natal Wouldn't Be So Terrible

Posted by Jared Newman on May 26, 2010 at 5:47 pm

Edge probably sunk some hearts today by reporting a rumor that Microsoft’s motion-sensing Xbox 360 camera, codenamed Project Natal, will cost $150.

The “trusted source” who spoke to Edge pegs Natal at a much higher price than previously rumored. MCV reported in November that Microsoft would aim for roughly 50 pounds in the United Kingdom. Because both stories are based on anonymous sources, I don’t fully trust either right now. For all I know, someone inside Microsoft is priming the press for a higher price only to announce something shockingly reasonable at E3, a la the iPad.

Still, I don’t think $150 for Project Natal would so bad. The important thing to remember is that with Project Natal, the camera is the entire controller. There are no remote controls, wands or nunchuks, just human arms, legs and torsos. Beyond the initial sticker shock, there are no additional costs.

With the Wii console, you get one remote with a MotionPlus attachment and one Nunchuk for $200. Each additional remote/MotionPlus/Nunchuk combo costs $70. Accommodating three or four players on the Wii is equally or more expensive than Project Natal. Sony hasn’t announced pricing for its Playstation Move motion controller, but I’m guessing the cost of additional wands could also get pricey.

Even though I think the rumored pricing for Natal is fair, I agree with my pal Brad Gallaway of GameCritics, who said he’d need to see a “stupefyingly, mindblowingly awesome game” to even consider spending so much money on a peripheral. That’s always been true, and it’s true for the Playstation Move as well. The Wii is good enough to carry out motion control as a novelty. But novelty won’t cut it in motion control’s next generation. We need to be floored.

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Xbox 360 USB Stick Honors the Tradition of Overpriced Storage

Posted by Jared Newman on May 6, 2010 at 7:36 pm

Well, of course the official Xbox 360 USB stick from SanDisk is outrageously priced, at $35 for 8 GB and $70 for 16 GB. That’s roughly double what you’d pay for comparable SanDisk drives, sans Xbox branding.

Microsoft started allowing external storage on the Xbox 360 last month. Although any flash drive or hard drive will do, Microsoft promised its own solution was forthcoming, and pretty much everyone assumed correctly that it wouldn’t be cheap.

In exchange for the hefty markup, you get a month of Xbox Live Gold (an $8 value) and plug-and-play support, which means you don’t have to format the drive using the console’s interface. I’d take the money.

But don’t blame Microsoft for thinking its brand name commands a premium. This is an industry tradition that predates the current console generation.

For instance, NewEgg sells a two-pack of 8 MB memory cards for the Playstation 2 for $34. A single, $30 card from Intec holds four times the data of both official cards combined. When I was in high school, I remember getting a similar deal on Nintendo 64 memory, with a third-party memory pack that cost roughly the same as the official model, but with four times the capacity.

Console makers aren’t the only ones who charge more than they should for storage. A 4 GB SanDisk Memory Stick Pro Duo for the PSP costs $35 at GameStop. The same exact product is $24 on Amazon and $19 on NewEgg. GameStop also plans to charge an extra $5 for the 8 GB Xbox 360 USB stick.

If you’re reading this blog, I have a feeling you’re tech-savvy enough to shop around and avoid the games industry’s storage shenanigans. Microsoft did good by allowing non-proprietary memory on the Xbox 360, but the availability of cheap USB sticks highlights the silliness of charging high premiums for branding.

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Social Settings Are Halo: Reach's Coolest New Feature

Posted by Jared Newman on April 21, 2010 at 3:38 pm

My level of excitement for new Halo games has dropped off over the years, as the series’ refinements stopped adding up to anything radically different. But a new feature in the upcoming Halo: Reach sounds like a game-changer, and it has nothing to do with shooting.

I’ll just quote Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera, who got to sample the game’s multiplayer ahead of next month’s public beta:

You also have social settings to choose from, to make sure you play with people who match your style. Do you talk? Are you quiet? Do you play competitively, or simply to enjoy yourself? Do you go Rambo, or enjoy teamwork? Do you like a polite game, or are you a trash talker? By adjusting all these options you’ll be able to filter out people whose play styles may be distasteful, allowing you a better play experience.

The idea is so simple, yet so smart, that I wonder why no one’s thought of it before. Essentially, you’ll be able to play with like-minded people without manually cultivating lists of online friends. Given how obnoxious some online gamers can be, this could breathe new life into Xbox Live.

I’m reminded of when Halo 2 introduced matchmaking more than five years ago. The game automatically found players, created teams and chose maps to play on. At the time, online console games made you manually select from a list of open matches, and if you weren’t quick to join one, they’d fill up and you’d have to refresh the list. This system became unpopular as other games mimicked what Halo 2 pioneered.

The same thing ought to happen with Halo: Reach’s social settings, provided the developer, Bungie, can properly execute the concept.

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USB Storage for the Xbox 360

Posted by Jared Newman on March 18, 2010 at 6:32 pm

Joystiq’s Alexander Sliwinski reports a credible rumor: Come this spring, Microsoft will allow Xbox 360 owners to install and download games onto external USB storage. He’s got photo documentation supposedly written by a senior Microsoft engineer and confirmation from two anonymous sources to prove it.

The documents say you’ll be able to store Xbox Live Arcade games,  downloadable content, full-scale Games on Demand and title updates on up to two connected storage devices at a time. Installing disc-based games to USB drives is also a possibility, but you’ll still need a disc in the tray, just like when you install a game to the hard drive now.

I still think the 120 GB hard drive on current Xbox 360 models is enough, but the earliest Xbox 360 models, which had 20 GB drives, can feel the squeeze. Microsoft gets a lot of heat for the price of its memory cards ($30 for 512 MB) and replacement hard drives ($130 for 120 GB), so this rumor will make Xbox 360 owners happy if it comes to fruition. This would definitely bolster the appeal of the $200 Xbox 360 Arcade, which lacks a hard drive. Joystiq says hard drives will be partitioned for 16 GB of storage maximum, but a 16 GB USB stick for $40 is still a better deal than Microsoft’s memory cards.

The question, of course, is why? I doubt we’ll ever hear an official explanation, but my best guess is that this has something to do with Datel’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. Until last November, Datel sold unofficial memory cards, which stored more data at a better cost-per-megabyte than Microsoft’s official products. Microsoft banned unauthorized storage products from the Xbox 360, and Datel claimed the console maker was being anti-competitive.

Maybe it’s wacky to assume that Datel’s lawsuit has anything to do with this, but the addition of USB storage would certainly take a bite out of Datel’s argument.

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Xbox 360 Slim Gets a Big Fat Rumor

Posted by Jared Newman on March 17, 2010 at 3:56 pm

Supposedly pictured here is the motherboard for the Xbox 360’s next revision, which hardware aficionados have pinned as evidence of a console redesign.

The photos, which appeared on Chinese message board A9VG, are noteworthy for a couple reasons, as pointed out by Gamespot: It’s a smaller motherboard than ever before, it combines computer and graphics processors on a single chip and it has a SATA interface port instead of Microsoft’s proprietary hard drive port, suggesting that storage will be housed inside the console.

Put all this together with different shapes, sizes and screw locations, and you’ve got a compelling case for the Xbox 360 Slim — if the photos are real, of course.

Brushing aside idle speculation from analysts and, ahem, bloggers, this is not the first actual rumor of a slimmer Xbox 360. In 2008, TG Daily reported that after Microsoft brought its 65 nm “Jasper” chips into production that year, a 45 nm process would be next in line. The rumor held that Microsoft would release a redesigned console, with GPU and CPU on a single chip, in 2009. Obviously, the timing didn’t pan out, but the rest of the report just got a new lease on life.

Technical details aside, a redesign wouldn’t be a surprise this year, with Microsoft planning to release its motion-sensing camera, codenamed Project Natal, during the holiday season. With that extra peripheral taking up space on TV stands, new console buyers could use the extra room. Besides, the Xbox 360 is starting to look a little bulky next to the PS3 Slim.

If Microsoft is planning to launch a slimmer Xbox 360, don’t expect to hear anything official until just before the console goes on sale. In the meantime, do expect the usual fuzzy product shots and cryptic claims from anonymous sources.

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Gay Xbox Live Gamers May Now Spell It Out

Posted by Jared Newman on March 5, 2010 at 3:42 pm

Microsoft took a bold step today by letting gamers include their sexual orientation in their Xbox Live nicknames, or Gamertags.

Previously, Microsoft deemed the words “gay,” “straight,” “lesbian,” “bi” and “transgender” to be unacceptable, fearing that players would use them in a derogatory way. Those fears are justified to anyone who spends a few hours playing Modern Warfare 2 or Halo 3. Anonymity does some revolting things to human behavior.

Players’ Gamertags can now include all the words mentioned above, but the service’s updated code of conduct strictly limits the terminology to those five words only. Marc Whitten, Xbox Live’s general manager, explained Microsoft’s reasoning in an open letter:

Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self-identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs. However we have since heard feedback from our customers that while the spirit of this approach was genuine, it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox LIVE community.

It took a while to get here. In 2008, a player named theGAYERgamer made his case public after Microsoft banned his Gamertag. In late February, a player claimed her account was suspended because her profile said she is a lesbian. This prompted a blog post from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, among other responses, so I’m guessing Microsoft finally felt there was enough pressure to make some policy changes.

Whitten promised that the code of conduct will be enforced more stringently to prevent misuse of the terms. That probably entails taking a closer look at Gamertags to make sure they’re not being used as insults. But the real hard part will be monitoring players’ responses to these nicknames. Hopefully Xbox Live’s moderators can do a better job of booting people who toss around homophobic, ethnic and racial slurs without fear of repercussion.

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Project Natal Meets a Stopwatch, Lags a Little

Posted by Jared Newman on February 22, 2010 at 10:40 pm

Last week, Microsoft brought some of the east coast press up to speed on its 3D motion-tracking camera for the Xbox 360, codenamed Project Natal. It was essentially the same demonstration presented at E3 last year, but Russ Frushtick of MTV Multiplayer used the occasion to time Project Natal’s responsiveness with a stopwatch.

The lag between movement and action on the screen floated around a tenth of a second. That’s not huge, but it’s enough to notice. Microsoft could improve Natal’s response time before it’s released this holiday season, but Frushtick notes that even Hollywood motion capture cameras aren’t lag free.

The report ties in nicely with a think piece by Kotaku’s Brian Crecente, who compares motion control to the uncanny valley — a theory in robotics that the more a robot resembles a human, the more people are repulsed by the resemblance. The uncanny valley has also been used to describe eerily realistic video game characters.

Crecente argued that Natal is so accurate at tracking motion, its flaws are hard to ignore. Compared to the Wii’s “good enough” approach, which still captures the essence of motion control, Microsoft could stumble despite having a technologically superior product. Even with the Wii’s MotionPlus accessory that attaches to the Wii Remote to make it more accurate, games have avoided “one-to-one” controls — where your actions are duplicated precisely on the screen — because they’re too realistic, diluting the fantasy of play.

That issue of fantasy versus reality is bound to come up as game developers experiment with motion control, not just for Project Natal, but for the Wii MotionPlus and the Playstation 3’s upcoming motion-sensing wand. I’m reminded of Tony Hawk: Ride, a game that used a skateboard-shaped peripheral, but flopped because it too closely duplicated the frustration of learning to skate.

If developers try to create lifelike simulations with Natal, they’ll fail if there are any flaws in the technology, such as lag. But if they can somehow translate motion into a more idealized version of itself (e.g., your sloppy karate kicks gain black belt form on the screen), Natal could be a hit.

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