Xbox One: The Review

http://www.polygon.com/a/xbox-one-review

by lotso • 13 years ago

99 104 13 years ago

angersock• 13 years ago

"A notable disappointment is the absence of real-name support at launch. One of the PS4's most enjoyable enhancements has been postponed for Xbox One until an unspecified future date. Microsoft has also dropped social-network integration, which seems like a short-sighted reaction to the lack of users of the Xbox 360 apps."

This is a great move by Microsoft--tempting though it would be to send hate mail to the jerks you meet online.

snarkyturtle• 13 years ago

Agreed. Don't really see the need to have social media embedded with everything. I just don't see how gaming could tie into it, though it might just be the bad impression of getting spammed with Facebook notifications from their games.

Also, if Youtube is any indication, users will prefer to use usernames versus real names, especially if you're potentially interacting with people you don't know.

leapinglemur55• 13 years ago

I assume (hope) it would be more like Blizzard's system for Starcraft, which only lets you see the real names of friends that you add using an email address (and if they accept). Showing a person's real name to everyone in game just sounds insane.

ssafejava• 13 years ago

The nicest description most Polygon staff could manage for the Xbox One's silhouette is "inoffensive" — there's no sugarcoating the console's lack of visual flair. Microsoft has created a system designed to blend into the other components of your home entertainment center, and it does that ... for better or worse.

It's quiet, and it runs relatively cool. But if you’re looking for subtlety, this is not the console for you.

Is it just me, or does the writer/editor not understand the word "subtle" here?

Otherwise, that was a really beautifully done review, at least visually.

yen223• 13 years ago

I think the writer was referring to the size of the Xbox One and the Kinect sensor, which is noticeably larger than the Xbox 360 and the PS4.

bluthru• 13 years ago

"subtle - adjective 1. (esp. of a change or distinction) so delicate or precise as to be difficult to analyze or describe."

The xbox one is big, bulky, and not svelte.

This extends beyond the console dimensions, however. It has an external power brick, you can't stand it upright, and you can't stack another box on top of it due to the fan placement. Whereas the xbox one might camouflage better with your other AV boxes, the ps4 does a better job of subtly getting out of your way.

n1kh1lp• 13 years ago

Can anyone tell me what framework/technology was used to design this site? It looks really good.

davidjohnstone• 13 years ago

From looking at the source, there's just the regular jQuery and Underscore libraries, and a bunch of custom JS, including the jQuery Waypoints library http://imakewebthings.com/jquery-waypoints/

The animated graphics are SVGs.

Mostly though, this is just a lot of hard work writing custom HTML/CSS/JS.

madeofpalk• 13 years ago

From what I've heard from The Vergecast (sister publication), they have a custom CMS that focuses heavily one building these super-custom one-off designs for 'big' articles

girvo5• 13 years ago

Yep, done in Ruby on Rails (well, at least all of The Verge and Polygon is) IIRC.

mxfh• 13 years ago

It's done by updating stroke-dasharray, stroke-dashoffset.

http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/5649592

http://jakearchibald.com/2013/animated-line-drawing-svg/

But it's not that new as one would think.

http://www.carto.net/svg/samples/animated_bustrack.shtml (2008)

math0ne• 13 years ago

People that make articles like this are freakin' artisans, love the page.

bhaak2• 13 years ago

I thought the page was broken or not loading. It showed only a green page. Granted, it is a cool effect but it was really confusing.

Sorry, this is the web, I don't need a fucking splash screen. At least make it so that I immediately notice that the content is there.

Digit-Al• 13 years ago

My thoughts exactly. Having two and a half pages of empty green before the article seems like pointless insanity to me.

mrspeaker• 13 years ago

Agreed. A couple of people here have pointed out that it's broken for them, or they don't like wasted pixels or something (somebody think of the pixels!) - but technical problems aside: this, and the PS4 review change my views of what an online article should be. It obviously doesn't apply to all content, but for a review of next-gen game consoles it really adds a sense of... tactile-ness? I dunno. But they are fantastic!

nl• 13 years ago

See the NY Times "Snowfall" article[1] for a beautiful example of this in a wider context. It's a little old now, but was groundbreaking at the time.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunne...

sesqu• 13 years ago

I was actually impressed with how lightly broken it was. Despite including half a dozen scripts, I only needed to explicitly load one - the first party one - to read the article.

Many sites in this school fall flat without some fourth-party content.

gabemart• 13 years ago

I feel out of touch for saying this, but I found the page visually exhausting. I don't know exactly why - it's partially because the contrast of the text is too low on the white background and partially because I find extremely long pages disorientating, but that doesn't account for all of it.

I'm all for beautiful, elegant presentation, but when it comes to reading a long article I don't want lots of movement and twiddly bits.

iMark• 13 years ago

Again, focusing on the presentation rather than the content, I'm extremely impressed with the integration of advertising on the page, using position:fixed to lock it in place while the content scrolls over it.

If we go with the assumption that advertising is a necessary evil, this isn't a bad direction in which to take it.

blaco• 13 years ago

Well, it looks great on my desktop but really plain on my phone.

ilaksh2• 13 years ago

What are you talking about? 100% of that page is an advertisement.

golergka• 13 years ago

That claim seems pretty weak, especially without any support whatsoever.

girvo5• 13 years ago

Oh go jump. Polygon is awesome, and frankly take their journalistic stance far more seriously than any other game-review website.

neovive• 13 years ago

Are they using a specific presentation framework or is this a homegrown layout? I agree that the integration of advertising is nearly seamless and does not feel intrusive at all. In fact, when scrolling quickly, I thought the Madden 25 ad was part of the content.

venomsnake2• 13 years ago

After seeing what the kinect sensor is capable of - not a chance of having such device in my house without having root on it or being able to work completely offline. It is too creepy. And too potent.

Kiro• 13 years ago

Good thing we're not living in the same house.

icebraining• 13 years ago

Doesn't seem much worse than a regular camera, is it?

venomsnake2• 13 years ago

I don't have camera on my pc. It is not the sensor that is worse but the control over it.

Can MS turn it on remotely if hit with an lawful request? Some of these consoles will work their way to places that are of interest for law enforcement.

anon42• 13 years ago

Just put some tape on it? Make a startup that sells kinect shutters so it can't watch you?

robmcm4• 13 years ago

Scrolling is broken, I couldn't scroll to the bottom to see the score it kept bouncing back up.

kalleboo• 13 years ago

This kind of comment is useless without information on browser, version, OS, etc. It works fine in the latest Safari.

robmcm4• 13 years ago

Up to date chrome on windows 7. The scrolling is broken because it dynamically loads content as you scroll.

bbx• 13 years ago

Try tapping Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A on the pad.

vidyesh2• 13 years ago

Brilliant, now I guess I'll waste my time looking for Konami all over other Polygon big reviews.

Edit : PS4 Review too. http://www.polygon.com/a/ps4-review

tostitos19793• 13 years ago

lol ... which one?

menemragab• 13 years ago

this may sound cliche, but i am really impressed with the website itself rather than the Xbox. (even that i am xbox user myself) !!

jebus989• 13 years ago

Does anyone think this is over-engineered? I can imagine looking back at this in ten years as we do with blinking marquees.

I agree the artwork is really impressive but for a console review it should be content over presentation, right? It genuinely appears that the page was a big custom job and the prose was scratched up in an afternoon.

mattdotc• 13 years ago

I think it's adequetly engineered if the motivation is to get people to say "Wow" and then link the article to a friend. At the end of the day, they're selling ads, and this page does a pretty good job at it, I think.

phoboslab• 13 years ago

It's interesting that the D-Pad on the controller is now just a cross, instead of this awkward circle with a hinted cross on top.

Didn't Nintendo have a patent for the cross D-Pad? Hence all the other "fun" ideas from Sega, Sony and Microsoft.

Edit: Yep, the patent expired a while ago:

U.S. Patent 4,687,200 (expired in 2005) - Nintendo's multi-directional switch - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-pad#Patents

CatsoCatsoCatso• 13 years ago

My first thought was that having just a cross eliminates the ability to easily hit a diagonal on the D-Pad. I can't imagine it being easy than what was before.

Conlectus• 13 years ago

The problem with having it be a disk is that it's hard to push any direction reliably. If it is a cross, if gives you fingers a guide, and actually makes it easier to go diagonally by doing a sort of roll from the top to side.

crististm2• 13 years ago

That looks like a not-so-subtle full promo.

anjc• 13 years ago

They did a similarly artistic, and glowing, review of PS4 the other week.

crististm2• 13 years ago

Selling guns to both parties is out of the question then?

kosei• 13 years ago

Reviews came in pretty much as expected: Xbox One for those looking for an entertainment system, PS4 for those looking for a game system. Only issue is that the PS4 games lineup (entire console games lineup) is sparse at launch. Will be interesting to see how the sales numbers come in after the first month.

dodyg• 13 years ago

|Unlike the PS4, there is absolutely no available functionality for the system until that update is performed.

Seriously?

forgottenpass• 13 years ago

Yup, the system software was so late and so rushed that they couldn't get the software they wanted for launch ready in the timeframe needed for manufacturing.

Not a huge surprise to people paying attention to consoles. More and more games have been shipping in various states of brokenness for years. The last generation introduced online game updates, which has become an excuse to cut corners and fix it later. Just ship a day one patch and fuck you to anyone without a constant, fast internet connection to their console, they're statistically insignificant now.

JonSkeptic2• 13 years ago

If you've ever complained about surveillance then I don't see how you could even consider buying this.

Kinect is also used for lots of little things throughout the Xbox One's user experience. Profiles support fast facial recognition for sign-in. Once a profile has a face associated with it, the console will sign that person in whenever they sit in front of the console — it even says hello. Controllers sync automatically based on who's holding them.

Not to mention that Microsoft has been working on techniques for reading the emotions of people in the room through body language in order to better serve up adds.

By having this in your living room, you have a device that passively builds facial profiles, monitors emotional states, and counts the number of people in the room. But people are paying to be spied on by Microsoft so that makes it OK, right? Even when the NSA goes to Micrsoft and says "give us access to your data".

But privacy doesn't play the latest Killzone or log you in with facial recognition or play blu-rays.

There's too many people in the valley that complain about surveillance and then do everything in their power to enable it in ways ever more omnipresent and pervasive.

beardfu• 13 years ago

The system will function without Kinect plugged in, Microsoft reversed the always on requirement:

http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/xbox-one/get-the-facts

Xbox One does not require a Kinect to be plugged in for the system to function.

You can supposedly control the use of your data according to the fact page also.

jrajav• 13 years ago

You can supposedly control the use of your data according to the fact page also.

I'd trust this to apply to Microsoft's contractual use of the data, but not to the NSA's expansive powers under current laws.

tostitos19793• 13 years ago

Thanks, I missed that they changed this requirement. As an owner of all 3 of the previous generation of consoles, the always-on camera + voice was an absolute deal breaker for me.

I'm still going to hold off for a few reasons. The first is the requirement for XBox Live Gold. It makes no sense to me why I have to pay $$$ to Microsoft in order to watch Netflix. My PS3 does quite fine without a subscription. I was a fan of the Halo franchise but after the "incidents" with Bungie (Halo shoot'em ups) and Ensemble (lesser known for Halo Wars, more known for Age of Empires), I feel bad supporting the franchise with my $$$.

I'm also getting old and have less time to play games on my consoles. My iPad used to get a lot of game-related usage until the games started becoming "free" and continuously bugged me for in-game coin purchases.

Maybe I am just out of touch.

robmcm4• 13 years ago

Killzone is a PS4 exclusive, so the Xbox One won't play it either...

mbennett2• 13 years ago

IIRC, the biometrics profile is stored locally on the device, just like the iPhone 5S, and is never synced to the cloud. If you sign in on two consoles, you have to go through the biometrics setup process twice.

Edit: Why the downvotes?

steveklabnik4• 13 years ago

Except that it's closed source so who can really tell? And even if it is now, who says a 'security update' won't change that in the future?

foobarqux3• 13 years ago

The device runs arbitrary code. It's trivial to have a module that runs locally, downloads a "wanted list" and returns a probability of match for each entry.

This functionality will almost certainly be implemented given how effective it would be in locating young males.

freehunter6• 13 years ago

Not to mention that Microsoft has been working on techniques for reading the emotions of people in the room through body language in order to better serve up adds. (sic)
By having this in your living room, you have a device that passively... monitors emotional states,

Has this ever been confirmed? I haven't seen it touted anywhere as a feature (possibilities are not features until they actually happen). Sounds like FUD to me.

JonSkeptic2• 13 years ago

The more you know!

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=...

Claims 4,5,6, and 7 are particularly relevant:

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the indication of the user's reaction is identified from facial expressions of the user captured by an image capture device during the time period.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the indication of the user's reaction is identified from user speech patterns captured by an audio capture device during the time period.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the indication of the user's reaction is identified from gestures and body movements of the user captured by an image capture device during the time period.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising storing the emotional state of the user in a database.

jasonkester• 13 years ago

Even when the NSA goes to Micrsoft and says "give us access to your data"

I bet Bitcoin would help with that.

There, we've officially talked about both the NSA and Bitcoin in the discussion of this article, fulfilling the New Requirements for Every Single Thing Submitted To Hacker News.

Can we get another thread that talks about the actual article voted to the top now?

nivla2• 13 years ago

If you've ever complained about surveillance then I don't see how you could even consider buying this.

If I was concerned about surveillance, I wouldn't consider buying anything in the future, because sadly this is going to be the future. Google's Moto X is an always listening device and being a phone I am more likely to carry it around everywhere. Like it or not, the truth is that the average Joe doesn't care about surveillance, they care about convenience and since they make up the mass majority (not us techies), a company is far more willing to trade up privacy for it. The only way to fix it would be for the government to step in and put in some regulation.

hfsktr• 13 years ago

"...I wouldn't consider buying anything in the future, because..."

Did you miss it? You can just say "...because surveillance". [1] :P

I often wonder about half the things running on my phone and since removing some might make it useless I leave it be (not my domain so probably simplified a lot).

I really fail to see how listening in all the time is for convenience though. If that 'feature' was disabled the device would still be just as convenient.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6765099

msabalau• 13 years ago

I would say that people, and their reasons for objecting to surveillance or having privacy concerns far are more complicated and varied than you are imagining. Some of the people who have expressed concerns may be:

Citizens concerned about government officials overstepping constitutional bounds and lying about it, but not particularly concerned about the practical consequences of the surveillance.

Activists for whom NSA surveillance confirms that government is not on the side of the people, but whose sense of history leads them to the conclusion that if massive FBI files, Jim Crow laws, and lynching did not stop the Civil Rights movement, metadata is unlikely to prevent the arc of history bending towards justice.

“Airbus nationalists” in Europe who are, in their heart, more concerned about the fact the EU seems to be incapable of developing a Facebook, Google, Twitter, ect. They may ape the language of their fellow citizens whose privacy concerns are based on Nazi/Stasi/etc. historical experience, but actually view cloud computing as industrial policy struggle. Video game manufacture is likely not their strategic priority.

People with specific consequentialist privacy concerns. For example, someone who hates Facebook because it has caused something embarrassing to be shared without their truly informed consent. They may be indifferent to the notion that embarrassing information is hidden on a government database, and they may actually welcome and value that Google algorithms leverage their g-mail and search history to serve up more relevant ads.

People who once cared, but are so sick of monomaniacs hijacking every HN discussion that they are looking forward to buying an Xbox One simply as a sign of contempt. They likely also once were vaguely sympathetic to Google Reader users, but now see the product discontinuation as just punishment of tiresome and entitled whiners.

You may feel that all of these types of people are wrongheaded, but change often happens because large groups of loosely affiliated people band together, and rarely because zealots double down and fail to see why anyone might consider a different point of view.

drzaiusapelord• 13 years ago

If you don't like kinect and its implications on privacy, I highly suggest you do not get any sort of smartphone or open any email accounts. Oh right, you do those things. Its just the usual HN tinfoil hat hypocrisy that extends to MS, but seemingly not to Apple, Google, Yahoo, Sony, Dropbox, Twitter, and Facebook.

brymaster3• 13 years ago

Its just the usual HN tinfoil hat hypocrisy that extends to MS, but seemingly not to Apple, Google, Yahoo, Sony, Dropbox, Twitter, and Facebook.

Tu quoque and that's not even close to true.

throwwit• 13 years ago

I miss the simplicity of the old consoles. Why did game systems evolve into some distopic nielsson box?

solnyshok• 13 years ago

lack of gameplay innovation was for a long time masked by growing pixels, polygons, 480p, 720p, 1080p, 3d, occlusion/raytracing, etc. Now, that most people are stuck with 1080p TV for some years, what console makers to hype? Enabling new gaming interactions is more difficult than slapping on multitasking, shares, badges and occasional voice command. I like where Kinect is going, but its a last moment afterthought in the current crop of games. How it is used in shooters? wave your controller to reload! I will be the first to buy console which offers me to do some real jumping and crouching in the FPS. Hell, I would even buy M4 replica if needed. But sitting there for hours and gaining real pounds? I am too old for that.

VLM3• 13 years ago

The article was well matched to its topic; like modern video games, its flashy and high tech, but nothing new or interesting.

I had to laugh at the kinect video. The white/beige featureless walls with no human pictures in its field of view, the actors wearing extremely high contrast clothes, the incredible cinematography style smooth and even lighting... My real world experiences with the kinect on a 360 have been super aggravating and frankly I hate the GD thing. Hey, all you need to do, is remodel and redecorate your home and buy new clothes... No, instead I think, F microsoft, my plan will be to not buy another kinect instead, they need my money more than I need their aggravation. Don't get me wrong, its really cool for about the first 15 minutes until it gets super aggravating.

As a disclaimer after the initial newness wore off I tend to use the 360 for living room youtube viewing (you need to disable kinect and voice recognition or miscues will drive you insane) and multi-player minecraft on the same screen at the same time is entertaining. And I play Forza although the review notes the new version has been neutered and downgraded so I don't want it.

girvo5• 13 years ago

Hey, all you need to do, is remodel and redecorate your home and buy new clothes...

A friend of mine is an editor for a tech magazine, and has been playing with the Xbone (I totally read that as EX-bone now...) -- the Kinect is a thousand times better now, in that regard.

VLM3• 13 years ago

Then they should have done a video in my somewhat less well lit living room, with a couch that's the same color as my wife's shirt, and a stereotypical wedding pix in the background and peculiar shadows.

If its higher performance, well, show it!

The real killer is the concept. The highest performance way to do "up down enter" on a menu is obviously a controller not an arm and camera.

Kinect doesn't have to work very well for my daughter to have fun with her dance games. But for a UI to a menu, it does kinda actually have to work all the time, which is a meta-UI issue. If it was just a dancin' jumpin' peripheral, which its "good enough" for, then I'd be very happy, but no its gotta be implemented as the worlds cruddiest most aggravating menu navigation system, which makes it an epic fail.

My carpenters hammer is a great tool for nail installation, but an epic fail at screw installation and forcing everyone to use hammers to install screws is just going to piss people off.

JL2010• 13 years ago

Disclosure: I'm an XBox hardware engineer and encourage you to try the new kinect before writing it off. It is completely re-engineered with new time-of-flight technology that achieves orders of magnitude more precision than the last gen. This is not some BS hardware hype either, it translates into better real world use cases. I've never had to wear any special clothes or paint my walls... it just works for me. It will also work in nearly pitch black environments.

I think the hardware/software co-design for this particular peripheral was done phenomenally well, and MS has had some time to refine its use cases and integration into the system. I'm really excited to see where this goes.

ilaksh2• 13 years ago

This is obviously an advertisement rather than an actual review. I think I know what's relevant though. Its a powerful gaming PC with a new significantly improved although still imperfect Kinect. Anyway its funny that so many people can't tell the difference between a commercial and a review.

nivla2• 13 years ago

This is obviously an advertisement

Could you care to explain? From the article and the video, I got the notion that both pros and CONS were touched.

podperson2• 13 years ago

Actually the review seemed kind of negative on balance. Indeed, the PS4 review they did was also kind of hot and cold.

jheriko• 13 years ago

"When you turn on your Xbox One, don't panic: from a cold, powered-off state, we've clocked the system requiring a minute or more to boot into the update screen (or the main home screen, if you've enabled power-saving mode and disabled the system's suspend ability). Once you've run your console and enabled suspend, things are much better: from power off to the home screen, we've measured startup at six to 10 seconds."

hmm... they couldn't boot the system up and do this for you? or make it come with a pre-stored 'image' for the suspend/restore? that doesn't sound like a particularly challenging ux bug to fix...

sloppy.

not surprising from microsoft of the crashy sample code and buggy C++/Cx that nobody needs or wants and simply adds technical debt, bugs and points of failure all over my code - to the point where they advise you to avoid it at all costs.

joshvm• 13 years ago

I don't understand how they can call the Xbox One's appearance to be dull/boring/unsubtle, when they simultaneously praise Sony's effort as beautiful.

To me they look virtually identical. They only difference is the PS4 has a groove in it.

podperson2• 13 years ago

They also thoroughly reviewed the PS4, and the review was also pretty mixed. Overall, I'm not tempted to buy either device (10+s to wake from sleep seems infuriating; my AppleTV takes about that long and it drives me bonkers).

My take on the next gen consoles is that it's not clear there will be any winners. The current generation hasn't actually been profitable for either Microsoft or Sony, and the economics of the industry have, if anything, gotten worse. (Sure, the market is bigger, but if you're selling the platform at a loss hoping to profit on licensing then you need the cost per game to remain steady or go up.)

And there's the other shoe: iOS / Android / Steam / Linux. E.g. if Apple were to release an iOS console (i.e. AppleTV on steroids) sometime in the next two years they could leave Microsoft and Sony to eat their loss leaders and take a huge chunk of the market away. (In general, Apple's 30% cut of games is smaller than what the games companies pay to retailers and platform licensees, and Apple could always lower it if necessary.)

Overall I think it's kind of a nightmare scenario:

1) Long wait since previous generation, so expectations are sky-high.

2) Each platform has been hit by at least one scandal -- PS4's bricking, Xbox One pricing model backdown followed by 720p launch titles (WTF?!)

3) Neither platform offering elegant out-of-box solutions despite numerous complaints with the previous generation (seriously, every time I launch my PS3 it needs to patch, and the same problem is in the PS4 and Xbox One).

4) Underwhelming launch titles.

Sony and Microsoft think they can ship a half-baked product and fix it over the next year or two, just like it "worked" for the previous generation (that pretty much lost them both money).

Bahamut• 13 years ago

Agreed - I have a launch PS4, but I've been underwhelmed by the game selection. I cancelled my Xbox One preorder a couple of weeks back over the same concerns. I think the Wii U has a much more entertaining selection than both at this point.

Xbox One: The Review

Related Stories