

Xbox One: Microsoft’s supergeeks reveal what’s inside the hardware - abhia
http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/21/xbox-one-microsofts-super-geeks-reveal-whats-inside-the-hardware/

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fmstephe
I am very curious about the use of a stripped down VM manager that creates and
destroys multiple OSes.

"One of the machine’s operating systems boots up and is “created” when the
machine turns on, Multerer said. Then it stays operating while the machine is
on, and then disappears when the machine is turned off."

"There’s a third operating system as well that handles other kinds of
services, such as the TV services. Switching between these operating systems
quickly gives the system its instantaneous feel, Multerer said."

It isn't immediately obvious to me why we would want to use multiple operating
systems? Is this a kind of super strong separation of processes? Why aren't
standard processes sufficient? Is it done for reliability?

I am not criticising, I am just confused and this indicates that there are
concerns here that I am not familiar with. Anyone with any insights?

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threeseed
So it seems as though there is basically a Hypervisor OS and two Virtual
Machines. One for TV and one for Gaming. Given that TV and Gaming have vastly
different resource requirements and use cases it isn't surprising that you
would optimise for each use case.

Also it wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft in the future releases a cheap
AppleTV competitor with just the TV VM and a cheap gaming only XBox with just
the Gaming VM.

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upthedale
I think its well known that Microsoft are working on the former, a non-gaming
Xbox (save for casual games perhaps), primarily designed for films, TV and
music. Unfortunately I can't go digging for sources now, and a cursory search
is swamped by results of this new announcement

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gordaco
"There isn't enough silicon on the box", "We move loads into the cloud to free
up resources on the box", "The cloud can tackle tasks in games like physics,
artificial intelligence, and even some rendering".

So, will it need always online? In that case, here is a console I will never
buy.

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xedarius
Cloud doing any of these things is bonkers. The cloud is good at things like
running Xbox live, making my profile available anywhere, saving my games.
Using the internet, let me emphasis this, the transient, unreliable
communication system that is the internet to deliver pivotal game
deterministic results in nano seconds is unfeasible and unworkable.

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orf
And you say this based on what? Have you done any research into this topic or
are you just emphasising a point that you have no clue about?

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xedarius
Without wishing to flame, it's based on 12 years of professional experience
working in the games industry. I could lend reason to AI, however I stand by
my comment with regards to rendering and physics.

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orf
Not to put down your considerable experience but Microsoft is the largest
software company on the planet - if anyone can do it then it would be them.

OnLive, despite failing, was not dissimilar to "cloud rendered graphics" and
it worked. Lots of things people thought impossible 10 years ago are now
commonplace.

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forgotAgain
So they're targeting recurring revenue: family subscriptions for games, Office
365, movies, ... .

Nothing wrong with that, others do it. But it does mean that gaming
performance is compromised to achieve other objectives.

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unsigner
Translation: "game developers are now strongly encouraged to use Azure for
backend".

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Clepsydra
From Mary Jo Foley's blog: Xbox Live does not run on Windows Azure; it runs on
its own servers in Microsoft's datacenters.

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johnbellone
This may be Azure as a service vs. Azure as a platform.

I'd be very surprised if there were 300,000 physical servers.

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AndrewDucker
Hang on - they want to offload game-critical code (like AI) to the internet?

And how are people who don't have high-speed internet supposed to use it???

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TheAnimus
Well what percentage of the target market is that going to be? And when are
they planning to make it a mandatory requirement for things.

Given that at the moment it appears to be related to things such as voice +
facial recognition and processing (which frankly I would want to see the
privacy policy around) that's fine. No internet, means I have to press a
button rather than yell. OK with that.

If its offloading games physics and AI when playing, well that's fine if its
optional. I appreciate that certain kinds of ANNs distribute really well on
server farms, in a way that makes sense. But so long as its optional.

However I think it is only a few years before we look back and laugh at the
idea of not having internet access available. At least I hope we will.

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gordaco
No, you're getting it wrong. It's not a matter of _availability_ (although
that is still a problem in certain areas). I just don't want my console to
need connection if I don't play online, because it shouldn't need it, because
it's a waste of bandwith, because it means that the software I buy may become
unusable (or change their behaviour, i.e. not allowing cheating for fun in
single player; or requiring some kind of game registration that hinders second
hand games) via mandatory updates, and because it doesn't guarantee that the
box is not being used as a surveillance machine for advertising companies.

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pi18n
I agree with you but I doubt very much that Microsoft does. Requiring it to
have a persistent connection and offloading core parts of the game to the
cloud is going to be delightful for their DRM team.

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venomsnake
And for the steambox team. There is (anecdotally strong) demand for single
player games that you can play and mod however you desire.

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TheAnimus
On the PC platform we've definitely seen it. Counter Strike been the obvious
one.

But there is a different culture around PC and Console. Console has always had
DRM, PCs drifted along with CD-Keys that limited online play, then Steam came
along, which /r/gaming appears to fawn over, yet deride any similar change in
DRM on the consoles.

As it stands, I think the PS3/Xbox360 are less restrictive because of their
DRM than PC gamers who have to use Steam or Origin. The publishers needed a
mechanism to stop what was told as rampant piracy. Steam filled that void.

Now consoles are moving more in that direction people are treating it as if
its universally bad. It doesn't have to be. So long as it isn't a case of
always internet, always on, from day one, I don't think it will be.

I remember people banging on about SmartClients less than 10 years ago. These
were apps which would sync when the internet became available and gracefully
handle the disconnection. Ironically Outlook was often the example. Nowadays
most devs don't bother with that because there isn't the demand and its not
worth the increased development and maintenance costs. I wanted some
flowcharting software the other day, the first 3 hits were all online cloudy
hosted type things. This is the way things are going, there are benefits, its
not all bad!

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hahainternet
I don't believe a single thing in this article. From start to finish it lists
'cool sounding' but mindless engineering or software choices. A virtual
machine to run games so you can do two things at once? Moving rendering tasks
to 'cloud tasks' on the GPU?

I'll believe it in a couple of years when someone finds jtag headers on the
board.

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xedarius
It's making me very angry the more I read about the Xbox One press launch.
There's two things you needed to do Microsoft.

1) Make the console 5x to 10x more powerful than the previous generation.

2) Open the platform up to indies, like Apple have, with an annual
subscription of $100, coupled with a reasonable percentage cut (not 60%!).

The rest takes care of itself.

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zokier
So they have done 1) and being mostly supportive about 2). What's there to be
angry about?

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venomsnake
Killing off XNA showed a huge support and commitment for the indie scene. Also
the non existing homebrew scene showed how much exactly MS value the
enthusiasts.

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aclevernickname
Don't even bother; you're replying to astroturfers. Microsoft pays people to
browse HN and reddit so they can do PR damage control. Today is a very very
busy day for them considering the public's negative reaction to the XBox One
launch.

I personally know 4 students that were focusing 100% on XNA development;
They're now scrambling to learn SDL and OpenGL ES after being burned by
Microsoft. Seems the only developer embracing indies is Valve, and they're
going to be the only ones focusing on that blue ocean this generation.

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VikingCoder
<http://xbox.com> was down for most of the day.

That does not inspire confidence in your ability to move to the cloud, Xbox
team.

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freehunter
That's one thing I've noticed about Microsoft services: they're always down.
Outlook.com was down for several days as I was trying to merge my GMail to
Outlook. Xbox.com is seemingly _always_ slow and frequently gives me page not
found errors. The marketplace and Xbox Music Pass are down a lot more often
than they should be. Technet is a nightmare.

Why does it seem like Microsoft has such a hard time keeping their servers
running? Then the next question that comes to mind is why do they still have
cloud customers? I mean, I'm one of them; I use Xbox Music Pass and Technet
and Xbox Live and Outlook.com but I can't answer the question as to why. Why
do people put up with it?

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nivla
>Outlook.com was down for several days

When did that happen? Any source?

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freehunter
Looking it up post mortem it doesn't appear that it was several days, but it
sure felt like it at the time. It was over 12 hours. There were significant
outages on March 12th-13th [1], Feb 25th [2], and Feb 1st [3].

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-forced-to-
apologize...](http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-forced-to-apologize-
for-massive-outlookcom-outage-2013-3)

[2] [http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-outlookcom-down-for-
som...](http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-outlookcom-down-for-some-users)

[3] [http://gigaom.com/2013/02/01/microsoft-office-365-hits-
potho...](http://gigaom.com/2013/02/01/microsoft-office-365-hits-pothole/)

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nivla
Thank you for providing the sources. Looks like you were right (except the few
days part). It only affect a subset of users which explains why it went
unnoticed for me. May have been related to the transition of Hotmail accounts
but regardless if it keeps happening on a regular basis, I may have to find
another provider.

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quotha
I cannot wait to skype and watch tv, at the same time!

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smegel
Jeez im glad i

