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Xbox One: The Review
- angersock 13y 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 13y agoAgreed. 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 13y agoI 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.
- CornishPasty 13y agoThis is exactly how the PS4 real name system works. You have to add a friend as a "real name" friend, and they have to add you back with the same permissions. Just adding someone as a friend doesn't grant them permission to see your real name.
- ssafejava 13y agoThe 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 13y agoI 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.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bluthru 13y 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 13y agoCan anyone tell me what framework/technology was used to design this site? It looks really good.
- davidjohnstone 13y agoFrom 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/ 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 13y agoFrom 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
- girvo 13y agoYep, done in Ruby on Rails (well, at least all of The Verge and Polygon is) IIRC.
- mxfh 13y agoIt's done by updating stroke-dasharray, stroke-dashoffset. http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/5649592 http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/5649592 http://jakearchibald.com/2013/animated-line-drawing-svg/ 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 http://www.carto.net/svg/samples/animated_bustrack.shtml (2008)
- math0ne 13y agoPeople that make articles like this are freakin' artisans, love the page.
- bhaak 13y agoI 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.
- mrspeaker 13y agoAgreed. 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!
- iMark 13y agoAgain, 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 13y agoWell, it looks great on my desktop but really plain on my phone.
- ilaksh 13y agoWhat are you talking about? 100% of that page is an advertisement.
- golergka 13y agoThat claim seems pretty weak, especially without any support whatsoever.
- strathmeyer 13y agoUnless we all look at the page for ourselves??
- girvo 13y agoOh go jump. Polygon is awesome, and frankly take their journalistic stance far more seriously than any other game-review website.
- brymaster 13y agoOh, sure. Except when they change review scores as it suits them and "editors" defend game publisher lies and berate users on twitter. http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/13/polygons-simcity-review-is-busted-policy-in-action/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/13/polygons-simcity-review-is... https://twitter.com/aegies/status/310282795564015616 https://twitter.com/aegies/status/310282795564015616 https://twitter.com/aegies/status/313370778013954048 https://twitter.com/aegies/status/313370778013954048
- venomsnake 13y agoAfter 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 13y agoGood thing we're not living in the same house.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- icebraining 13y agoDoesn't seem much worse than a regular camera, is it?
- venomsnake 13y agoI 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.
- anon4 13y agoJust put some tape on it? Make a startup that sells kinect shutters so it can't watch you?
- robmcm 13y agoScrolling is broken, I couldn't scroll to the bottom to see the score it kept bouncing back up.
- kalleboo 13y agoThis kind of comment is useless without information on browser, version, OS, etc. It works fine in the latest Safari.
- robmcm 13y agoUp to date chrome on windows 7. The scrolling is broken because it dynamically loads content as you scroll.
- vidyesh 13y agoWindows 8.1 Firefox 25 : Works flawlessly. Up to date Chrome : Works great. Spoiler : 2x2x2
- robmcm 13y agoI clicked to look at the PS4 one to compare score, in order to do that I had to scroll to the bottom. Try refresh and then scroll to see the score as fast as you can, scroll bar jumps all over the place.
- bbx 13y agoTry tapping Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A on the pad.
- vidyesh 13y agoBrilliant, 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 http://www.polygon.com/a/ps4-review
- tostitos1979 13y agolol ... which one?
- menemragab 13y agothis may sound cliche, but i am really impressed with the website itself rather than the Xbox. (even that i am xbox user myself) !!
- jebus989 13y agoDoes 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 13y agoI 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 13y agoIt'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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-pad#Patents
- CatsoCatsoCatso 13y agoMy 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 13y agoThe 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.
- anon4 13y agoPersonally I have an Xbox360 controller for use with my PC and both a Nintendo Wii and DS and I find that it's much easier for me to reliably press diagonals on the xbox controller, than either the DS or Wii controller.
- TheSOB88 13y ago...Have you ever played a Super Nintendo? Diagonals were easier on that thing than any D-Pad that came after (save the 64's, which was hardly used).
- crististm 13y agoThat looks like a not-so-subtle full promo.
- workbench 13y agoHonestly don't understand the point of including a numerical score at the end of all that. Also going from that review > It's ugly > It's huge and has an external PSU > Launch lineup sucks > Some games run lower res than it's $100 cheaper competitor > 8.0 Sounds more like a 6.0 to me, way more negative points listed than positive.
- kosei 13y agoReviews 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 13y ago|Unlike the PS4, there is absolutely no available functionality for the system until that update is performed. Seriously?
- forgottenpass 13y agoYup, 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.
- JonSkeptic 13y agoIf 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.
- throwwit 13y agoI miss the simplicity of the old consoles. Why did game systems evolve into some distopic nielsson box?
- solnyshok 13y agolack 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.
- beardfu 13y agoThe system will function without Kinect plugged in, Microsoft reversed the always on requirement: http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/xbox-one/get-the-facts 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.
- VLM 13y agoThe 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.
- JL2010 13y agoDisclosure: 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.
- girvo 13y 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.
- VLM 13y ago
- ilaksh 13y agoThis 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.
- jheriko 13y 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.
- TheSOB88 13y agoIs anyone else really bothered by these pullout quotes? They are repeating basically 25% of the content on any given page. I'm reading the article, you don't have to lure me in like in a magazine. If you want to summarize, can't you just do it at the top of the page?
- joshvm 13y agoI 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.
- podperson 13y agoThey 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 13y agoAgreed - 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.