I missed watching the Xbox One live reveal video last night. Generally these overly rehearsed American corporate tele prompter fed things are pretty long, drawn out and less than optimal experiences. So I went to Choi instead obviously!
I came back to see what the generally vibe was and it seemed quite negative. Partly because of a focus on TV and web integration not on games, and where it was about games it was Call of Duty and a new dog character. However having watched the replay there were some gems of information in there that I found interesting.
The first was “The Kinect understands the rotation of your wrists and shoulders and can even read your heartbeat.” It seems the new Kinect 2.0 is a much more advanced device. A wide angle field of view and a HD image of the world. Whilst the focus seemed to be “look how good skype video calls will be” there were some images of the new kinect skeleton and tracking. It looks fast, assuming it was live. It also showed some fast combat moves as well, combined with some subtle yoga moves. All looking great if we can get at the tech for things like Choi.
**Update added the wired preview of all the kinect abilities 🙂
The multiple references to cloud were generally about storage, as is often the case. However there was a reference to the processing in the cloud that can occur. i.e. servers. “bigger matches with more players, living and persistent worlds”. So we have the chance for some real persistent virtual worlds and games to exist on the console in a well managed way. These exist generally in PC land with Second Life, Eve-online and World of Warcraft. There have been the odd foray into proper MMO territory on consoles, such as the new Defiance tie in, and playstation Home. Now though it looks like this, assuming the games companies can adjust to it, will bring a new generation of game to the consoles.
Of course we can expect more of the same for a while after launch but I think the xbox one just pips the ps4 at this stage in the race. Though I do agree Microsoft could have been a bit less corporate and just blasted out there in an informal way and told us all things in a different way. I think if you put the PS4 and Xbox One reveal next door to one another and swapped the logos you would have not been able to tell any difference between the too. Its a box it goes fast and it does stuff connected to other things.
Monthly Archives: May 2013
Almost a re-launch here we go
After what has seemed an age we have finally moved family home (and of course the base for Feeding Edge). It has meant a lot of down time work wise. Packing shifting, unpacking all takes real time out of the day. The biggest problem had been a lack of internet. This is somewhat essential for an online business! At the previous place we had superfast broadband with BT Infinity FTTC (Fibre to the cabinet) about 70 Mbps. When we moved house I checked the local exchange and it seemed to be Infinity enabled. In putting in a house move request though it was not possible for BT to determine if they could re-do infinity until the phone line was enabled, but could give 2-8Mbps broadband. It was also going to take 2 weeks to enable the line, i.e. after we moved.So I took the off the net time to sort out all things house related.
On wednesday the ASDL router lit up and data was once again able to flow, albeit at 5Mps to all the various machines. I was a bit surprised that the phone didn’t light up too. As it was now enabled I thought I would phone BT and check what was going on. The helpdesk was adamant that I did not have internet enabled as the phone line was not connected yet. They insisted that I must be picking up a neighbours wifi not an ADSL line. I was not overly worried about that but I was attached to ADSL I was looking at the router admin pages, the light was on and we were on my wifi network and I had looked up the number to call and the status page using that internet.
All I can assume that happened was a very kind engineer had been trying to sort out the phone and broadband, there was clearly a tech fault with some element of the phone number but they patched in broadband (which is actually more use that a phone line these days). The BT checker says we can’t get Infinity yet, though does say it will be available May 2013. As it is May 2013 I really hope we get hooked up soon. It is very hard to go backwards in capacity and it is certainly going to slow me down a little.
Either way the phone got fixed and by Thursday this death star was fully operational (well on reduced power really).
Friday I got to try the new quicker route to London and went to talk about some more medical related training development building from MMIS.
So Monday, today is the first proper day of the new, but the same Feeding Edge. I am still here taking a bite out of technology so you don’t have to. The digital doors are open and let’s see what this part of the adventure brings us.
Already though next month (June) is looking pretty busy.
I am speaking (along with the wonderful Lisa Feay ) and attending the Irish Symposium on Game Based Learning
Games based learning
I am also heading to Amsterdam to talk Blended Reality Learning at the GOTO festival
GOTO Amsterdam
So it’s all go, all the same, yet brand new 🙂