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The Official Xbox One Thread

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oh yeah and i also played spartan assault last night for the first time. talk about a pile of crap. turned it off after about 90 seconds of gameplay. i feel like it could have had so much potential too but the controls are just terrible in it with the 8-way shooting instead of true analog shooting
 
Lil Frier said:
Not sure what I was proved wrong about on the tracks, but I've said that I was ecstatic with the return of Nurburgring (not sure if I have on here), and the general fact that they've given us some free tracks (Long Beach, and either Road Atlanta or Road America, can't recall).

Thing is, great as those gifts are, that doesn't make the cars worth $50. I wouldn't want to pay $50 for 3-4 tracks and 60 cars. I mean, you talk about the man-hours in the free tracks, but it's not like they didn't put those into the original 13 tracks. So, even if the tracks were in the DLC, you'd be talking 4 tracks and 60 cars for $50 vs. a full game, 200 cars, and 13 tracks for $60.
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I guarantee you it costs much more to bring new cars to the game than they are charging. These guys aren't running on minimum wage and they aren't doing it for free. The developers are still paid for their time. The artists, programmers, modelers etc are not cheap.

purbeast0 said:
oh yeah and i also played spartan assault last night for the first time. talk about a pile of crap. turned it off after about 90 seconds of gameplay. i feel like it could have had so much potential too but the controls are just terrible in it with the 8-way shooting instead of true analog shooting
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Yes that one kind of sucked. Oh well, I didn't buy it so no real loss.
 
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So, when they canned people today, did someone take the Live server with them? I can not connect, even with a good connection. Have no problems on PSN or downloading the Destiny Beta.
 
It's kind of strange coincidental timing that 18,000 laid off just after obtaining Nokia, they're probably just showing the Nokia folks the door.
 
TeknoBug said:
It's kind of strange coincidental timing that 18,000 laid off just after obtaining Nokia, they're probably just showing the Nokia folks the door.
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Yep. It's not a coincidence. The vast majority of the layoffs are directly related to the acquisition and the rest are restructure within MS to complete the assimilation of Nokia. They were pretty much gone the second the purchase was completely. Of course layoffs are bad no matter the context, but from a business standpoint it sounds far worse than it is because some people incorrectly believe that it's mostly MS people who are getting let go. I feel bad for the ex-Nokia workers though. When a large group of people get let go all at once within a specific region it makes finding new work temporarily harder due to competition unless you relocate.
 
TeknoBug said:
It's kind of strange coincidental timing that 18,000 laid off just after obtaining Nokia, they're probably just showing the Nokia folks the door.
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12,500 of 18,000 firings are from Nokia. The aforementioned Xbox Entertainment firings aren't of much mention because the whole division was 200 employees, and I imagine that not all are getting laid off. Regardless, we're talking 5,500 previously-employed workers from Microsoft being cut out (I think they said most are from the OS division), probably because Nadella recognized a lack of need for them all. With the idea of merging the trio of operating systems, it could logically be determined that they don't need as many OS-related workers, since they won't have 3 different pieces of software to specifically work on (4, if you count the One).
 
Lil Frier said:
12,500 of 18,000 firings are from Nokia. The aforementioned Xbox Entertainment firings aren't of much mention because the whole division was 200 employees, and I imagine that not all are getting laid off. Regardless, we're talking 5,500 previously-employed workers from Microsoft being cut out (I think they said most are from the OS division), probably because Nadella recognized a lack of need for them all. With the idea of merging the trio of operating systems, it could logically be determined that they don't need as many OS-related workers, since they won't have 3 different pieces of software to specifically work on (4, if you count the One).
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Not fun to see people losing their jobs :/

Some more of the Xbox firings are in marketing, specifically European sector.

I remember reading that they spent something like ~$550 for every XB1 sold in Spain so far in marketing costs for that country. That's insane.

I also heard complains that the European marketing was basically CTRL-C + CTRL-V of the US materials anyway to a large degree, with some NFL stuff coming over as well. It's not hard to see how that might not be the best idea.
 
I wouldn't say that the copying of materials is an issue, why would it be? It seemed that the issues on the European end were related to software compatibility with their 50-Hz TVs and content.

Of course the loss of a job isn't something to celebrate, but it at least shows some concept of rational business sense from Microsoft. It was determined that there was financial waste within the workforce, and it's had for Microsoft to be faulted for saying that the company does not wish to pay unneeded employees.

I see no reason to believe we'd get proper information on a firings breakdown, but it WOULD be nice to see the full assessment of that situation, because it would probably give us a small idea of what Microsoft is thinking. Obviously Nokia came with more employees than it needed to, and that's where the majority of the cuts are. They obviously don't believe in the TV content creation, between those firings and the closing of the studio (which reports are saying was clumsily-managed). If another large chunk is Euro marketing, it's a sign Microsoft isn't focused on that continent for console sales.

I don't really know what to say without more information about the changes, just that it sucks to be put in that position, but they seem to be getting taken care of well by Microsoft (relative to being cut loose with no severance/benefits, as a low-end job might result in).
 
Realistically, the Nokia firings are a good thing. Nokia sunk themselves with all those employees (and some terrible management). Cutting them loose is the way to go. When Nokia decided it wouldn't fully adopt Android to compete with iOS and BlackBerry, they were done. Eventually, they came out, but the damage was there. Number 1 cell phone maker to dead in a few years.
 
3d bluray playback finally. still won't be getting rid of my standalone though, it's just a much better player and faster than the x1 to get a movie going.

i updated last weekend after not having my x1 on in about a month. it was nice to see friends popping online and seeing the notification finally, and being able to finally auto-sign into my account without using kinect (although i haven't tried that yet, havent turned it back on since then).
 
They have on on the bottom of the home screen, but the new one will pop up a notification on screen when your battery is almost dead, so it doesn't just surprise you during a match.
 
The price cut is getting results... XBox One doubled in sales in June. Still not enough to beat the PS4, but it does give MS some hope.
 
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