The Console Wars: Generation Seven, The Great War

As we approach the release of the PS4 and the Xbox One, we prepare to truly enter next era of console gaming. But the history of console gaming goes back decades, 40 years of history. Wars, alliances, betrayals, and the rise and fall of many companies. Exeposé  Games sets out on a journey of great historical importance, charting each generation of…The Console Wars.

The seventh and latest generation  formed on 22^nd November 2005.

After a mixture of failure and success with the Xbox, Microsoft released its successor, the Xbox 360.  It was the most powerful console launched to that point, with a triple core processor, and was able to utilise the new HD format to give an even greater graphic quality. The console also had the largest external storage devices of any console yet, with removable hard disk drives of 20GBs available. The online function, Xbox Live, had been upgraded and was ready for launch. The controller was also redesigned, it was smaller, in most cases wireless, with two shoulder buttons and two triggers, as well as a new ‘X’ button in the middle of the controller.

The console released with 18 launch titles to Canada and the USA, and then to 36 countries in the rest of the world over the next year. The scale and time of the global release was the first of its kind.

The release had two console formats: one with the 20GB HDD, and a cheaper one with just a small memory card. Its sales were amazing, with estimates after the first six months suggesting around 5 million sales. Microsoft couldn’t keep up with the demand.

It had issues though. The short supply led to people re-selling their console for vastly greater prices. Not only that, the early consoles had an issue with reliability, with the error report appearing as what became infamously known as ‘the Red Ring of Death’. As a result Microsoft modified much of the hardware, from change the solder to replacing the motherboard. Though the ‘Red Ring’ remained a problem, it became much less frequent.

The 360 got its head start, but not for long. Through November and December of 2006, Nintendo and Sony released their new consoles, the Wii and the PS3.

The Wii was a unique concept. While not having the graphic quality of its competitors, it was the cheapest, and brought a new innovation: motion control. The wireless controller was linked to a sensor that would move different areas on-screen in relation to it. This was best represented in the Wii’s bundled game, Wii Sports.

The Wii was one of the smallest consoles ever made, and took in feature from several other consoles of the past: backwards compatibility, large external memory support with SD cards, a dedicated online service and menu, and connectivity to the Nintendo DS. All this gave it a wider audience, marketing to all ages. There was even rumours in newspapers that Queen Elizabeth II had played on the Wii.

The console was highly popular, even more popular in terms of hardware sales than its competitors, but the Wii wasn’t ever seen as a hardcore ‘competitor console’. After its release with 22 launch titles, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata stated it wasn’t ‘thinking about fighting Sony’ but rather getting ‘new people playing games’.  The console also had limited third-party support due to the difficulties in creating Wii versions of multiplatform titles.

The war was a two-horse race, and the 360’s rival was to be the PS3.

The PS3 was the most powerful of the three consoles, improving on the popular and successful feature and hardware of the PS2, while still also including the dedicated online service the Xbox had popularised. It also was the most expensive, and the slowest to get going. The console launched with a complete HD capable, Wi-Fi Internet, 60GB version, and a smaller 20GB version, with prices being around $499, $100 more than the 360 at launch.

It had a delayed release to March 2007 outside the US and Japan, releasing with 14 launch titles, the smallest number of the three, having a more complicated menu compared to the others. To compete, Sony had to lower the price to boost sales, a plan which worked to an extent.

The console war began escalating from that point. Both Sony and Microsoft went toe-to-toe in many areas to continue to drive sales up.

One of the big areas for the two, as multimedia players, was the on-going ‘HD wars’ between Blu-Ray and HD DVD. Both Microsoft and Sony picked alternate sides to back: Sony chose Blu-Ray, Microsoft chose HD DVD. With Blu-Ray winning out in 2008, the 360 only had DVDs compared to the PS3’s Blu-Ray and DVD compatibility, which also came to apply to games, as the PS3 got a higher graphic quality. Sony had won out on this front.

In many other areas, Sony had less success. The PS3‘s controllers were seen to be inferior, with criticisms being made toward the Dualshock 3’s less desirable smaller size, compared to the Xbox controller. Though both companies would try a venture away from traditional controllers, again, to varying success.

The ‘Motion Control war’, between the two in 2010, had both companies look to the Nintendo Wii’s success with motion control to extend their console lives and drive sales. Sony went for a more sensitive motion controller, Move, while Microsoft abandoned controllers entirely with the Kinect. Microsoft’s unique concept worked, while the Move didn’t live up to expectations, the Kinect sold 8 million units in 60 days, and 10 million by March 2011. The Kinect was the fastest selling consumer electronic device, a record recognised by Guinness World Record. The most intense battle would be for exclusive games.

The 360 had multiple highly successful exclusives from the Xbox, and Microsoft capitalised on each of their existing franchises. Halo 3 became the driving force for 360 sales in 2007, and Forza continued to rival Gran Turismo on the PS3. They also released new franchises, which garnered equal popularity, such as Gears of War which came to be one of the 360’s flagships.

While the PS3 had popular exclusives, such as Uncharted, Gran Turismo, and Killzone; they also lost some key titles, some games which were originally planned to be exclusives instead became multiplatform titles due to the popularity of the 360. The 360 also had more popularity with games due to the implementation of game achievements.

While this was happening, the consoles were in an arms race. Microsoft and Sony continually released improved versions of their consoles, which made the consoles quieter, run quicker, and have more storage; leading to redesigns of both consoles during the middle of the generation. The online service software was also continually updated and redesigned to make them more appealing and easier to use, while increasing the application available, transforming both into entertainment hub for all forms of media.

The arms race has no clear winner: both still looked to improve their consoles up to the release of the next generation.

The seventh console war lasted seven years, and the generation eight years, making the longest console war by far. It was also the largest, with the Wii selling over 100 million, and the 360 and PS3 80 million each. It was almost a dead heat throughout between Sony and Microsoft. While the Wii had vast hardware success, it didn’t have the same level software success to compete against the other two.

Between the two it’s difficult to call the victor, with the PS3 being able to catch up the 360 and give a deadlock in console sales, though later into its lifespan. However, the 360 had significantly more success with its games early on, even influencing third-party developers to make PS3 exclusives multiplatform.

Market control leaned towards the 360: for the first time since 1983, a US company was the dominant force in the console market. The Xbox 360 won the console war.

Beyond their success, the consoles came to be some of the most influential devices on the market. Many features of the generation were implemented beyond consoles and beyond gaming in general. The consoles lasted a long time, but it came time to pass the torch. The eighth console war was about to begin.

 

Check in tomorrow for the full history of The Eighth Console War…

 

Luke Pilchowski

 

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The Console Wars: Generation Six

As we approach the release of the PS4 and the Xbox One, we prepare to truly enter next era of console gaming. But the history of console gaming goes back decades, 40 years of history. Wars, alliances, betrayals, and the rise and fall of many companies. Exeposé  Games sets out on a journey of great historical importance, charting each generation of…The Console Wars.

The sixth generation of consoles began in 1998 with Sega. After losing out massively to the PlayStation and N64, Sega released their new console, the Dreamcast, on 27th November 1998.

It was a pioneer in many regards, being the first console to render full frames and the first to have a built-in modem and Internet supporting online play for the rising online sector.

The console got a slow start. Sega had discontinued the Saturn ready for the Dreamcast. But this led to people going elsewhere for a console.

The console also came out too early for the software, with only one title, Virtua Fighter 3, available at launch. It resulted in the Dreamcast being less popular than its predecessors, though the release of Sonic Adventure a few weeks later gave it a boost. When it release through September to November 1999 in the rest of the world, it was a different story.

It released with 17 launch titles and, in the US, had the most successful launch in history to that point. Sega was once again a force to be reckoned with.

A year later, however, Sony launched the PS2, and the Dreamcast’s sales plummeted. The PS2 was a ramping-up of the PlayStation’s hardware, matching the Dreamcast in quality. It was also backwards compatible and, more importantly, had the function of playing DVDs along with games.

PS2 wasn’t only a console it was a multimedia platform. The market swarmed to the PS2’s launch, and it made $250 million on day one, doubling the record set by the Dreamcast.

It was the final nail in the coffin. Though the console had been doing well, Sega was having major problems. Fallings out with EA were reducing the available game library, and the company had already been haemorrhaging money before the release of the PS2. Unable to compete with the PS2, and more competitors on the way, Sega left the console market entirely on the on 30th of March 2001. They discontinued the Dreamcast and became a third-party developer. The story of Sega’s consoles didn’t end there though.

In November 2001, two more consoles released to the market: Nintendo’s GameCube, and Microsoft’s Xbox.

The GameCube, having released in September in Japan, was Nintendo’s first disc-based console. It was a large improvement in terms of hardware and could also connect to Nintendo handheld, the Gameboy Advance, via a link cable. The consoles controller was also a move forward. It took many points from the Dualshock, namely its dual thumbsticks, but made its own changes by flipping the placement of the d-pad and left thumbstick. It released with 15 launch titles to promising sales, though nowhere near the PS2.

The Xbox, meanwhile, was something of a dark horse. It was created by Microsoft, a US-based company. A US console hadn’t been a true major player on the market since the Atari 7800, and hadn’t been a dominant once since the 1983 crash. Microsoft weren’t going in blind though, they had spent the late 1990s working with another company’s console research: Sega and the Dreamcast.

This showed in the Xbox’s design. The Xbox had a built-in modem, and much of the layout of its controller, with the A, B, X, Y buttons on the left along with a lower thumbstick, and the reverse d-pad – thumbstick layout used by both the Dreamcast and GameCube.

Sega representatives regarded the Xbox as the spiritual successor to its consoles, which showed when games received successors or sequels, such as Jet Set Radio, on the console. It also added improvements which were used by Sony, such as media player capabilities.

The Xbox released on 15th November 2001, with multiple launch titles, to huge success. During the generation the Xbox would come to beat Nintendo in terms of sales. The Xbox’s success can most likely be pinpointed to two areas: Xbox Live, and Halo.

A year after the release Microsoft enabled its key innovation: its dedicated online service, Xbox Live. Whilst Sega and (after launch) Sony, both had online capabilities, they didn’t have the dedicated servers of Xbox Live.

It was an innovation, a costly one at that,due to its subscription service. It could have been a turnoff, but instead became one of the driving forces for the console, and knocked its competitors down a step or two.

Another reason was the popularity of its game library. Exclusives like Forza rivalled Gran Turismo, while backing from third-party companies like EA gave them a vast library of games.

Then there was the flagship: Halo. The first title had been a launch game, and had shattered software records.

The sequel, Halo 2 did something that would have been impossible in previous years.

Its launch made it the fastest grossing release in entertainment history. Not gaming, entertainment.

Halo 2’s multiplayer was the flagship of Xbox Live, having more gaming hours than any other game, along with the flagship of online console gaming and the FPS genre in general. The Xbox’s online power was an area that even the PS2 couldn’t beat it in.

The Sixth Console War was more a foregone conclusion than anything, though.

The PS2’s sales dwarfed all others, becoming the best selling console in history, at 155 million. Nintendo had weathered again, selling 22 million GameCubes. Sega had fallen, but its legacy continued with Microsoft and the Xbox. Like the Dreamcast though, its innovation had been costly, and the console made a loss overall. Regardless, with Xbox Live and Halo, the Xbox became the number 2 console of the generation, selling 24 million and breaking Japan’s complete stranglehold on the market. The market also had another surprise: with massive success of the PS2, the Halo games and Xbox Live, the gaming market had truly gone mainstream.

The next console war was to be the largest yet, one that no-one wouldn’t know about. It would be total war, and Microsoft prepared to make the first move.

 

Check in tomorrow for the full history of The Seventh Console War…

 

Luke Pilchowski

 

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“I didn’t come here to do a degree. I came here to start a business”

Image credits: ImagineCup

How did four Exeter undergraduates go from meeting each other over a drink to becoming the team that won $50k from Microsoft for coming up with the next world-dominating app? Alex Carden, Features Editor, finds out.

The trouble with Aaron Sorkin’s TV, as anyone who has ever watched The West Wing or The Newsroom will know, is that real life never lives up to the fast-talking, uber-competent, slick efficiency you see on the screen. It can leave one feeling a bit depressed, when you don’t have the energy or the time to even approach the higher, faster form of life that it feels like you should be aiming for. Now of course, The West Wing and The Newsroom are both fictional, both written in a hyper-real style. But even The Social Network, based on real events, still seems to exist in a realm of superhumans; of an elite doing things that most of us couldn’t even dream of.

But when I sat down with Ed Noel, and started to interview him about the story behind the headlines you might have seen about four Exeter students winning an entrepreneur competition in Russia, the story he told sounded as if it could have come straight out of The Social Network, superhumans and all. The guy who sat across from me was a regular third-year, like me, who, when we finished up, was busy worrying about his coursework, but the story of him and his mates spanned Exeter, London, St Petersburg, Atlanta and back again, into a world of Red Bull and patent law, of millionaires and actors and Exeter University.

The story started in February of this year, no more than five metres from where I’m interviewing Ed, in Exeter’s own A and V hub, at Microsoft’s Imagine Cup Hackathon, a 48-hour challenge to create an app, and a business around it. Unlike the other teams, from Exeter and the other south-west universities involved in SETsquared, a partnership designed to promote entrepreneurial talent, Ed and his teammates went along separately, and for fairly low-key reasons, dragged along by friends, or rocking up because they were bored and had nothing else to do. They were also from very different backgrounds, in a competition dominated mainly by coders and software developers; Ed is a Mechanical Engineer, Rob Parker is a Maths and Computer Scientist, John Neumann studies History and is originally from France, and Alex Bochenski, from Hong Kong, was the only business student. They met, appropriately, because they all sat at the table nearest the bar. And while the other teams began planning immediately, they had a few drinks, and fell into a team together.

Although they dismissed it at the time, an augur of their future success came in the form of a program called ‘Saberr’, a team analysis tool based on psychological testing, developed by a Southampton student a few years older than the guys. The software tracks your responses to 42 questions (such as ‘would you sleep with someone you just met on a night out?’ – clearly aimed at Exeter students in particular) and measures them against your team-mates to produce a picture of how well your team will work together. To their surprise, the four of them, randomly thrown together by the placement of the bar, scored very highly indeed on the test.

At the time though, their pressing concern was to come up with a winning idea. The competition was certainly worth winning: the possibility of $50k if victorious in the international finals. But at 2am, midway through the competition, surrounded by crumpled Red Bull cans, dark outside, and trying to decide between an app for managing junior league football teams or one for a calendar function that turned out to be already offered by Outlook, it must have seemed quite a long way off. Trying to keep their spirits up, they tried to play music through a laptop speaker. And when that wasn’t loud enough, they started to try and play the sound through all their laptops, and all stopped and looked at one another. Idea.

Could you be seeing the new app on your phone soon?
Image credits: Phil Roeder

And thus, SoundSYNK, an app to enable one track to be played simultaneously through several phones, was born. Next up was prototyping. I asked when they did this, assuming it would take a few months to work on the app in between university life. “No no,” Ed said, “it was the next morning, after some snatched sleep, that the prototype, website, and business plan had to be done, to be ready for the end of the competition a few hours later”. So they just got on with it, and got it all done, in a few short hours before presenting it to the panel of entrepreneurs judging the competition. And won.

Whilst many of us would be content to take our win and rest on our laurels, the guys headed straight for more funding, and to patent lawyers to get the legal side of things sorted out. The attitude of the judges (all entrepreneurs themselves) to the app had been unanimous; that their idea was a good one and they should run with it. Ignite, the Guild’s entrepreneur support unit, gave them £1000, which was crucial for the legal and material preparation for the second round, and another confidence booster. A couple of other competitions, which the team won again despite stiff competition from other Exeter and international teams, sometimes up to 200 of them, provided further funding to get their scheme off the ground, and prepare it for the national Imagine Cup final. There, again, they were incredibly successful, coming first and with another Exeter team coming in second.

Ed is quick to give the credit of the continuing success of their team to more than just their idea. Indeed speaking about it now, he’s quite quick to dismiss it. They’ve had hundreds ever since working together, have even taken another one, an image-sharing app, and run with it until it’s nearly ready to launch alongside SoundSYNK (which has since been renamed) early next year. He maintains that in fact the idea was very much second to the team, and it was more important how much the four of them clicked, as well as the different skills they brought to the table, whereas most of their opponents were teams of only developers, with less

business understanding. This and their ability to work together so effectively, as Saberr had predicted (indeed Saberr also predicted accurately the winners and runners up of every competition the guys went to), that really got people interested in the project. Interest in the team came from a combination of support from the University, the Ignite and Innovation Centre and through Setsquared. It was both finance and education based. Mentors at the Innovation Centre played devil’s advocate with their business plan until it was watertight, and SETsquared sent Rob and Jon to MIT, in the US, for a crash course in how to start a company. When Ed skyped them while they were over in the US, they said the guys in the dorm next to them were billionaires. This was the kind of world they were about to plunge into.

Before they headed to Russia came a period of intensive redeveloping of the app, of pivoting it from a ‘gimmick’ to a music-sharing system with far more of a social network feel. Despite how much he’s credited the support they received and the randomness of their success so far, it’s clear that Ed really knows his stuff. Coming out of what has the faint notes of a well-polished but very knowledgeable pitch, with discussions of inherent virality and pricing models, is a brief sentence on how Instagram and Twitter got huge, with a ‘tipping point’ when they reached a critical mass of users and really started to take off. I have to stop him. “Are you comparing your app with Instagram and Twitter?” I ask, “Oh yeah” he says, blandly. They’re looking for a million users by the end of year one, and thirty million by year two. This isn’t a boast, but part of a discussion of viral strategy. I’m stunned. I had imagined that this was an amusing project which had taken them further down this one competition than they’d expected. But actually, they are out to make the next big thing. This is not an idle distraction from University, or CV-fodder. These guys are out to change the world, Zuckerberg-style. I don’t use that particular phrase in front of Ed – frankly I’m still reeling a little. I’m not sure whether he’d appreciate it or not.

The judges in Russia were from the web giants that these four students were regarding as their competitors; Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and a couple of others had all sent senior guys to judge. “Walking around the giant venue”, Ed says, “was like a weird techy Disneyland; people dressed up in Imagine Cup gear, with a massive party going on while simultaneously hundreds of people hunched over their laptops coding away.  It made us feel thick just walking around.” So they stopped walking, and crashed on beanbags after finding a drink. It seems, like their beginning, appropriate. When it came to presentation in front of the judges, it was their solid business savvy, thanks to drilling from the Innovation Centre, that played so well with judges that were more business that software-focused, as well as a confident polish and a fast tongue that Ed says “is the mark of a great many Exeter graduates”. Regardless of how laid-back they were about the whole affair, they still say that when they saw Matt Smith, who was giving away the prize (Doctor Who to anyone who doesn’t know), grin and do a silent fist-pump when he read the envelope, and realised that he was cheering a British team winning, and that they were the only British team there, they were really unable to believe it.

From there, it starts to get really Social Network-y. After handing over the cheque for $50k, Microsoft flew the guys to Atlanta, gave them enough spending money to deck themselves out in the latest Hollister gear, and invited them on stage in front of fifteen thousand Microsoft employees. It was when the wall of sound hit them that the guys really began to feel like rockstars. When you raise your arms and fifteen thousand cheering people cheer even louder, you’ve gone beyond being four Exeter students and seriously entered the big leagues.

The world they entered then, after coming offstage and being in the centre of a giant party in Atlanta’s Olympic park, where more people were interested in them than Pitbull performing on stage, begins to resemble a completely different level of human interaction. Maybe they didn’t see it that way, but to hear Ed describe it, it sounds like the world of professional entrepreneurs is an extraordinary one. They met guys who had made and lost small fortunes, who had received multi-million dollar offers for their companies and rejected them, only to watch their company collapse in front of them. Guys who were doing this because they refused to grow up, and didn’t want to work for anyone, who didn’t really care about the money and who bought peanut machines with their first million, because why not? They don’t have to be geniuses, in the conventional sense; many are dyslexic, like Ed himself. They don’t have to be genius coders either, who can always be brought in later. But they do need confidence; they need to go for it, and they need to lose the fear of failure, and sometimes, given Ed’s example of a woman he met who gained investment from confidence alone, is enough. For entrepreneurs, failure is something to laugh about, even show off about, but above all something to recover from nearly instantly and start again. If one in ten companies succeed, they say, then start ten companies. And when they suffer a setback, it’s their team that helps them get back up, not a new idea. The example they used was the firm behind ‘Angry Birds’, who made 49 failed apps, and kept going, before they hit the jackpot and became possibly the world’s favourite game. The offices they moved to after Atlanta in London, again courtesy of Microsoft, no strings attached, were open plan, with 20 companies sharing the same space, sharing problems and solutions and ideas, and then going to parties in Shoreditch full of more of these business jet-setters to talk about it some more.  The contacts they made, senior personnel in some of the world’s largest companies, they could ring, whenever, to have a chat about problems they were stuck on.

Image credits: Life@Microsoft Australia

It’s the lack of contacts, not a lack of talent, which keeps young entrepreneurs back. And Ed is keen to share his success and his contacts in particular with others in Exeter. He’s already campaigning for a space for Exeter entrepreneurs on campus, where the shared atmosphere from Atlanta and Shoreditch can be replicated. If they make any money, or perhaps when they make money, he says a lot of it is already earmarked for Ignite and the Innovation centre, who can use it to help the next generation and create a cycle of talent and money that will keep feeding back into the university. Exeter, he says is perhaps one of the best universities for start-ups (although not because of the Business school, which he says is mainly for established business, and has a lot to learn about entrepreneurship, nor for the Career Zone). He talks, convincingly, of the belief shared by some companies in the area, that Exeter is well-positioned to become a European Silicon Valley thanks to its laid back atmosphere, and high quality of life, and that all that remains is for the University to be convinced of this. That is if Exeter wishes to be be the place in Europe for start-ups five years down the line.

The four of them still have a way to go before they launch, and a lot of technical details, which Ed can’t discuss, to work out before they do. We’ll have to watch and wait to see whether or not they are successful. But if they aren’t now, the impression I get is that they will keep picking themselves up, keep spurring each other on, and using their network in this new elite, this class of hyper-competent and energised and almost unbelievable young people, who don’t want to work for anyone else, who are doing what they love, and changing the face of business while they do it.

Alex Carden, Features Editor

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Should Microsoft be praised for Xbox One U-turns?

Image Credit: themodernmage.com

Having now turned back on decisions to thwart self publishing, require daily online check-ins, and place restrictions on sharing and trading games, Xbox One is seemingly grovelling at consumers’ feet.

The audacious proposals set forth for Microsoft’s new all-in-one console pushed consumer interests to the limit. Thank goodness they fought back.

 

Under the shadow of the Play Station 4’s far more liberal policies, Microsoft’s ‘loyal’ customers were outraged with the restrictions placed on them. Don Mattrick, now resigned CEO of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, instructed gamers without a constant internet connection to simply stick to the Xbox 360. With other cheap defences of unfavourable Xbox One features, the company was rapidly losing the interest of millions. It didn’t take them long to notice.

Then came the famous 180. Having ‘listened to their customers,’ Mattrick was the face of an all out turnaround on the Xbox One’s course. Independent gamers were given more freedom, although the outline of this is fuzzy. The console will only ever need to be connected to the internet once, during set up. Users will be free to trade and share used games in disc form, apparently.

The revolutionary vision originally so powerfully defended by Microsoft swiftly turned into an apology and appeasement of angry gamers, but reactions have been mixed.

Image Credit: polygon.com

On the one hand, Xbox loyalists were thrilled: With the ability to maintain the great things the 360 allowed alongside the impressive Xbox One features it seems the great console identity crisis was over. The Xbox One’s reputation had become, once again, as squeaky clean as Mattrick’s beautiful teeth.

However, should we all be so thrilled that Microsoft has woken up to the demands of its ‘valued’ potential customers?

Can we forgive the company for potentially marginalising the development of independent games, and for the attempt to shamelessly capitalise on their tyrannically presented DRM policy?

This remains to be seen. While the console now seems far more appealing, it’s undeniable that Microsoft didn’t have the consumer, or the backlash, in mind when they first presented their new product.

Image Credit: flawedgaming.com

 

The PS4 is having a pretty easy ride alongside a rival that’s had to change its most radical and distinctive ideas just to remain a competitor; not to mention the emerging new consoles such as the Ouya, the growing popularity of the PC and the potential threat of the Wii-U. (OK, maybe not the Wii-U). The Xbox One has a lot to worry about, and looking spineless in a rapidly transforming market won’t be helping them out.

In short, Microsoft abandoned consumer interest in an attempt to create a product so revolutionary that it would blind them to its profit based intentions.

Of course, Microsoft is a business and making money is its purpose, but insulting customers with unnecessary restrictions  that were so easily removed was foolish. Carefully admitting their impudence was the right thing to do, but the original offence will not be forgotten any time soon.

*UPDATE* As if determined to prove our point, Microsoft have made another 180 and decided to include a headset with every console. Thanks to eurogamer for the update, for full details check follow the Link.

 

 

Gemma Joyce, Games Editor

Band of Spartans: Spielberg's Halo TV Series

Probably the highlight of a disappointing Microsoft conference was the appearance of the cinematic legend Steven Spielberg.

Image credit: Ian Dick

The creator of both incredible television series, Band of Brothers and The Pacific, announced that he would be giving the big budget treatment to a Halo TV series. I squealed.

Band of Brothers is a prime example of television at its very best: high budget, carefully directed, well written and with masterful performances. However, Spielberg and Co. have a long and difficult journey in taking the vast expanse of the Halo universe and bringing it into the one hour episode format.

The massive material to work with is both a blessing and a curse. It is wonderful in that there is much scope for either showcasing the stories and characters we already know or whether or not to take it to completely new worlds and characters and revealing new aspects to an already extended universe.

That very advantage could also be the downfall as fans could receive characters or stories that they just do not care about.

The best example is the Halo: Forward Unto Dawn series. It was a great mini-series on YouTube just based around a training academy that was attacked during the ‘Covenant wars’. It was short and sweet. The acting was top-notch and the original story was really engaging.

Ideally, fans will want a bigger budget and an extended version of this triumph of fan service. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out here because it is brilliant.

Image credit: Microsoft

The big question we all want answered is: what about the Chief?

It would be foolish to completely ignore him so he will have to make a few appearances even if he is not the focus.

Despite there being some scope for the series to go wrong, it is a very exciting prospect. Giving Halo the HBO treatment is just what it needed after years and years of speculation.

Halo lends itself so well to a TV series that I could easily see it rivalling the likes of Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. Personally, I want to see huge space and land battles that show the epic nature of the ‘Covenant war’ rather than small-scale battles.

I want to see the Chief. I think an origins story of the Spartan program would be really popular with fans.

My advice to Spielberg would be tread carefully and listen to the fans and creators. They know what they want from their beloved franchise, so as long as that’s respected, it can hardly go wrong in his hands.

So get ready people, because great things are happening in both games and television.

 

Alex Phelps

Xbox '720/Infinity' Predictions

On May 21st, in Washington DC, the Xbox team will finally reveal the highly anticipated Xbox 720/Durango/Infinite/U to the public.

So we’ve gathered together a list of the obvious and not-so obvious features that could be revealed.

1: Vast multi-media support

We can expect a box that aims to directly compete with your TV, your computer and even your social life.

2: Game Streaming

 Now that internet speeds have improved, it is entirely plausible for games to be streamed to the consumer.

Getting rid of download or delivery times and bringing the experience into your house instantly, through a brand people know and trust.

3: No 4K resolution support

4K resolution makes games look staggeringly detailed.

Yet the technology hasn’t progressed enough to be cheap to implement without lowering the frame rate to a snail’s pace.

4: The controller’s design will change drastically

The controller does feel wonderful in the hand right now, but it is not devoid of problems (AHEM d-pad).

A new design would convince consumers that the Xbox 720 is not simply an ‘upgrade’. Oh, and it’ll probably be black.

5: Xbox Live Gold won’t be free

Why? Because people will still buy it.

The Xbox 360 managed it for 8 years despite both the PS3 and Wii online services being completely free .

 6: The trailer will have ear-splitting dubstep

Combined with a ton of lasers, and the console continually spinning around in circles, sometimes in slow motion.

7: More Kinect dancing games

As much as we all hate to admit it, the games are a huge seller and a very successful attack on Nintendo’s hold over the casual market.

8: Bungie being ambiguous about Destiny 

Though multi-platform you can gurantee Xbox will want their old buddies gushing about how great the console is, and maybe we’ll see some more of the game.

9: Always online

I’m not even going to expand on this one, just know that if it happens…there will be nerd-rages worldwide.

10: Some crazy novelty feature

Even when turned off the Xbox should do something cool. Maybe it doubles up as a hat stand?

11: Many fans will be very angry and very happy at the same time

I really have a strong feeling the Xbox will be my favourite games console ever. But i will hate all the decisions they have made.

12: The ability to learn HM moves from each disc

It’s been a long time coming.

 

Well, that’s your lot, for more be sure to follow @ExeposeVG

We will be live tweeting the Xbox announcement at 18:00 on the 21/05/2013

 

Tom Ffiske, Jon Jones, Alex Phelps, Gemma Joyce, Olivia Luder, Kate Gray

News: A Nerd's Eye View of Gaming 22/04/13

New Zelda coming to 3DS, set in SNES game world

Link will return in a handheld adventure set for release later this year. The game will be a sequel to the 1991 SNES title A Link to the Past, returning to the traditional top-down perspective of the old games.

 

Image credit: nintendoeverything.com

Straight from the mouth of president of Nintendo America, Reggie Fils-Aime, the game is said to “reinvigorate the 2D world of the past” utilising the depth of the 3DS’s screen. While the game takes place in the same same game world as the SNES title, it will feature all new dungeons and introduce new puzzle features.

One such mechanic, as seen in the trailer, is Link’s ability to become a sketch on the wall, allowing navigation around the space to discover new pathways and routes.

From the looks of it, the new title is going to be much more focused on puzzles and platforming than previous titles, with the trailer showing off some of the obstacles you can run in to.

Mirror’s Edge for Oculus Rift induces vertigo in hundreds

Possibly one of the most terrifying games to play on the device, first-person rooftop free-runner Mirror’s Edge has been modded for play on the 3D virtual reality headset Oculus rift.

Image credit: Marcus Beard

It’s a pretty terrifying concept and it’s not something I’d ever like to try. Given the headset has been described as like “like doing acid” by reporters, missing a jump and falling fifty stories to your death doesn’t sound particularly appealing. Unless you like that kind of thing. If you’re a bit weird.

The Oculus Rift was unveiled in 2012, and is currently shipping ‘development kits’ – mainly to people who aren’t developments. The project raised $2.4 million on kickstarter, promising the first true, immersive virtual reality experience in the form of a in low latency head tracking and 110-degree field of view.

For 300 USD, you too can experience the gut-wrenching terror of plummeting to your death.

Computer programmed to learn to play NES games, exploits bugs in cartridges

Want the satisfaction of seeing the end credits roll, but don’t want to have the challenge of actually completing games?

No?

Well neither does Tom Murphy, even if his evolutionary algorithm, playfun, can teach a computer to play Super Mario. His new algorithm is more of an impressive feat of computer science, proving that it can be done, even if not providing a practical use.

Starting with a program that would simply mash buttons randomly, Murphy evolved his algorithm to become more and more proficient at playing NES games, specifically Super Mario. The algorithm works best when dealing with side-scrolling platformers, where there is clear progression in linear space.

Not only does Murphy’s algorithm play through games much further than the runs he uses to ‘train’ the program, but it also manages to find and exploit bugs. For example, did you know that mario can stomp goombas in mid air, as long as he is travelling downwards? Well, playfun does.

For a more detailed explanation and examples of the algorithm applied to other games, watch the video above.

 

Marcus Beard

Exeter teams secure victory in Microsoft Appathon heats

Exeter wins first round of the Microsoft sweepstake of the South West.

Photo credits to Tracey Costello

The University of Exeter Students’ Guild took home the top three prizes in the southern heat of the Microsoft Imagine Cup Appathon. The heat, organised by SETsquared and hosted on the University’s Streatham Campus, permitted students from across the South of England to compete.  The universities which took part included Bath, Bristol, Southampton and Surrey.

Running from 5pm on February 15 to the same time on February 17, the four teams-three of which were from Exeter and one from Southampton Solent-were given 48 hours to create an app for the future for mobile, Windows or Azure.

Deputy chief Executive of the Students’ Guild, Tracy Costello, told Exeposé Online:“The Microsoft Imagine Cup competition is a great opportunity for students to really get an inside edge for their future careers and employability.”

This point was echoed by Head of the University of Exeter’s Entrepreneurs Society, Ed Noël and Maths and Computer Science student, Samuel Longden, whose teams came first and second in the competition respectively.

Mr Longden commented that the event would be a good addition to his CV and being able to say that he coded for Microsoft would be beneficial for future jobs. He described his working relationship with business partner and IT Management for Business student, Justin Turner, as a friendship.

Guild President, Nick Davies said: “this event showcased [the teams’] winning combination of entrepreneurship, creativity and versatility.”

The teams will now compete in the national final of the competition in London this April. If successful, they will go on to showcase their winning combination of skills at the global final held in Russia this July for the coveted first prize of $50,000.

The winning team have already pitched their soundsynk app idea to Deloitte in London for their input and improvements.

The SETsquared partnership director commented on the calibre of all this year’s entrants: “The level of entries in the competition was very high, and proof of the young talent emerging in the UK.”

Natasha Joseph, a former Exeter student and now an Academic Marketing Intern for Microsoft, spoke highly of the teams too, “I thought I had seen the best the UK had to offer until I saw the innovation and drive that came from the Exeter Ignite teams.”

To find out more about entrepreneurial opportunities at Exeter, visit the Ignite webpage

By Maria Adeagbo