Xbox One S: Too late?

Microsoft recently published a new version of their Xbox One, the Xbox One S. From what I have seen, this is the console that the original Xbox One should have been, when it was released three years ago. But before going into that, let me recapitulate the tumultuous story of the Xbox One. (I have written about many of these things in other blog posts, in my other blog, but allow me to briefly summarize the whole story.)

The story really begins with the Xbox 360. Microsoft got an entire year of a head start over their main competitor, the PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360 was enormously successful almost from the start. The console did many things right, while the PS3 did many things wrong.

For one, being published an entire year later did certainly not help the PS3. It also didn't help that, unlike the Xbox 360, the console used a very exotic processor architecture that was very difficult for game engines to optimize for. It took a year or two after the launch of the console that the big game engines finally started to be able to take advantage of the unusual processor design, and games started really competing with the Xbox 360 in terms of performance. For quite many years the PS3 was seriously an underdog in the competition. Quite fortunately for Sony, however, it almost miraculously succeeded in catching up, and actually ended up selling almost as many units (about 80 million, compared to the about 84 million Xbox 360's.) These sales figures were probably helped quite a lot by the fact that the PS3 had a BluRay drive, making it, at the time, a surprisingly affordable BluRay player.

While the PS3 managed in the end to catch up with the Xbox 360 in terms of success, the latter led the race for years, and it can arguably be said that it kind of won said race by a small margin.

Maybe for this reason Microsoft became, perhaps, a bit too sure of themselves, and tried too much to "innovate" with their next-generation console, ie. the Xbox One. They made many, many mistakes that cost them quite a lot in popularity.

Firstly, Microsoft wanted the Kinect to be an integral part of the console (so much so that there would be no versions of the console without it; it would be a mandatory peripheral that comes with the console). They really, really tried to push the Kinect as part of the Xbox experience, and induce game developers to use it. However, both the pre-launch and post-launch audience reception of this idea was lackluster, to say the least. Gamers were not exactly thrilled, especially given that the Kinect would raise the price of the console by quite a lot (which it really did.)

Microsoft's second mistake was to announce that the Xbox One would need to be connected to the internet, and for the Kinect to be always connected and turned on, or else it would refuse to allow games to be played on it. This announcement received a ton of backlash, all the way from gamers to big name critics. The backlash was in fact so enormous that Microsoft reversed this policy prior to launch. This was probably a very smart move, but it didn't exactly help their or their console's reputation; the damage was already done, and only partially fixed.

Their third mistake was to announce that copies of games would be tied to single user accounts, which meant that you wouldn't be able to give a game you had bought to a friend, or to buy used games. Same thing: Enormous backlash, causing them to reverse the policy prior to launch, but damage to reputation already done, only partially fixed. In fact, Sony got some free points by riding on this, and announcing that the PS4 would not have any such limitations.

Their fourth mistake was to concentrate way too much on multimedia features, and too little on actual games. In fact, in their big pre-launch E3 conference, their entire presentation was about multimedia features (such as video streaming, online video rental, and so on and so forth), and almost no mention of actual video games. You know, the main reason that people actually buy video game consoles. Microsoft really tried to "innovate" too much with the Xbox One. But this didn't sit well with their audience, and the reception was, once again, quite lackluster.

The console itself, once released, did not have the best possible reception either. Not only was it slightly less efficient than the PS4, but it was amazingly bulky (resembling a big VCR from the 80's), and had an external power supply ("power brick") with its own fan... which is on all the time, when it's plugged into a wall; even if the console itself is in sleep mode. And it's quite noisy.

Immediately after launch, the PS4 sold like hotcakes (possibly breaking records on the fastest-selling console ever, after launch). The sales figures for the Xbox One were significantly more moderate. It didn't exactly help that the Xbox One was significantly more expensive, mainly due to the useless Kinect peripheral.

Credit where credit is due, Microsoft tried to learn from their mistakes and went into quite a damage control mode. Some time after launch (about a year or so), they announced a version of the console without the Kinect, which was significantly cheaper, bringing its price point to the same level as the PS4 (and even slightly cheaper). Of course this had the unfortunate consequence that many people who had bought the original version with the Kinect (because there was no alternative) felt a bit defrauded because the Kinect was not, after all, an essential component, and game developers are probably not going to make many games for it. But that was just a minor drawback.

Secondly, in their 2015 E3 conference presentation, their tone had shifted radically. Now their presentation was all about games, games, and more games. Nothing about the multimedia features, and no mention of the Kinect. This was exactly what the audience wanted. Unfortunately, two years too late. Another announcement was backwards compatibility with most Xbox 360 games. Great... except that once again it was two years too late. If this had been a feature right from launch, it would have probably boosted sales figures.

So now, finally, three years after launch, we get to their improved version of the console: The Xbox One S. The new version is significantly smaller in size (almost the same size, in volume, as the PS4, although maybe just slightly larger), has an internal power supply, and is slightly more efficient. And most curiously, it does not have a Kinect connection port at all. (A Kinect can still be connected to it, but it requires an expensive adapter. It's quite clear that Microsoft is not expecting anybody to actually want a Kinect with it.)

(Not pictured in the image: The power brick of the original version. Which is about a quarter of the size of the Xbox One S.)

The Xbox One S is, arguably, what the original Xbox One should have been from the very start.

It seems that Microsoft is constantly late to the party with this console generation. Things that should have been part of the initial release are coming years later. This is almost the exact reversal of their performance in the previous console generation, where they were the clear leaders for years.

Will the Xbox One S be enough to save the console, or is it too late? My bet is that it won't save it, especially since Microsoft has already hinted at their next console version. I don't think many people, especially those in the know, will want to purchase an Xbox One now, especially if they own a PS4 already. (Some people who don't have either, and really want the Xbox, eg. because of brand loyalty, might now be induced to buy the S version, but I'm betting these people are quite a small minority.)


Edit 8.8.2016: Anecdotal evidence is making the rounds that the Xbox One S is actually selling really well, at least on the initial days after release, with many stores being sold out. These are of course just unconfirmed rumors at this point, because no official sales figures have yet been released, but it seems that my prediction might turn out to be wrong. (It is, of course, also possible that even if the rumors are completely true, the sales will plummet after the initial rush.) I may make a new edit after more reliable figures come out.

Turning 3D off on a 3DS: The devil is in the details

I bought myself a New Nintendo 3DS (not just a brand new one, but the device named "New Nintendo 3DS"). I had been for quite a long time pondering about buying a 3DS, and the new version of the console finally gave me the impetus of buying one.

One of the major new hardware features of the console is better 3D via eye-tracking. The original 3DS has a parallax barrier 3D screen (which in practice means that the 3D effect is achieved without the need of any kind of glasses). Its problem is that it requires a really precise horizontal viewing angle to work properly. Deviate from it even a slight bit, and the visuals will glitch. The New 3DS improves on this by using eyetracking, and adjusting the parallax barrier offset in real time depending on the position of the eyes. This way you can move the device or your head relatively freely, and the 3D effect is not broken. It works surprisingly well. Sometimes the device loses track of your eyes and the visuals will glitch, but they fix themselves when it gets the track again. (This happens mostly if you eg. look away and then back at the screen. It seldom happens while playing. It sometimes does, especially if the lighting conditions change, eg. if you are sitting in a car or bus and the position of the sun changes rapidly, but overall it happens rarely.)

There is, however, another limitation to the parallax barrier technology, which even eyetracking can't fix: The distance between your eyes and the screen has to be within a certain range. Any closer or farther, and the visuals will start glitching once again. There is quite some leeway in this case, ie. this range is relatively large, so it's not all that bad. And the range is at a relatively comfortable distance.

Curiously, the strength of the 3D effect can be adjusted with a slider.

Some people can't use the 3D screen because of physiological reasons. Headaches are the most common symptom. For me this is not a problem, and I really like to play with full depth.

There are a few situations, however, where it's nicer to just turn the 3D effect off. For instance if you would really like to look at the screen up close. Or quite far (like when sitting on a chair, with the console on your lap, quite far away from your eyes.) Or for whatever other reason.

The 3D effect can be turned completely off, which makes the screen completely 2D, with no 3D effect of any kind: Just slide the slider all the way down, and it turns the 3D effect completely off.

Except it didn't do that! Or so I thought for one and a half year.

You see, whenever the 3D effect is turned on, no matter how small the depth setting, the minimum/maximum eye distance problem would always be there. If you eg. look at the screen too closely, it would glitch, even if so slightly, and quite annoyingly. With a lower depth setting the glitching is significantly less, but it's still noticeable. Some uneven jittering and small blinking happens if you move the device or your head at all, when you are looking at the screen from too close (or too far).

Even though I put the 3D slider all the way down, the artifacts were still there. For the longest time I thought that this might be some kind of limitation of the technology: Even though it claimed that the 3D could be turned off, it wasn't really possible fully.

But the curious thing was that if I played any 2D game, with no 3D support, the screen would actually be pure 2D, without any of the 3D artifacts and glitching in any way, shape or form. It would look sharp and clean, with no jittering, subtle blinking, or anything. This was puzzling to say the least. Clearly the technology is capable of showing pure and clean 2D, with the 3D effect turned completely off. But for some reason in 3D games this couldn't be achieved with the 3D slider.

Or so I thought.

I recently happened to stumble across an online discussion about turning off the 3D effect in the 3DS, and one poster mentioned that in the 3DS XL there's a notch, or "bump", at the lower end of the slider, so that you have to press it a bit harder, and it will get locked into place.

This was something I didn't know previously, but somehow this still didn't light a bulb in my head. However, incidentally, when I was playing with the 3D slider, I happened to notice, when I looked at it from a better angle, that the slider wasn't actually going all the way down. There was a tiny space between the slider and the end of the slit where it slides, even though I thought I had put it all the way down.

Then it dawned on me, and I remembered that online discussion (which I had read just some minutes earlier): I pressed the slider a bit harder, and it clicked into its bottommost position. And the screen became visibly pure and clean 2D.

I couldn't help but laugh at myself. "OMFG, I have been using this damn thing for a year and a half, and this is the first time I notice this?" (Ok, I didn't think exactly that, but pretty much the sentiment was that.)

So yeah, the devil is in the details. And sometimes we easily miss those details.

I have to wonder how many other people don't notice nor realize this.

Which chess endgame is the hardest?

In chess, many endgame situations with only very few pieces left can be the bane of beginner players. And even sometimes very experienced players as well. But which endgame situation could be considered the hardest of all? This is a difficult (and in many ways ambiguous) question, but here are some ideas.

Perhaps we should start with one of the easiest endgames in chess. One of the traditional endgame situations that every beginner player is taught almost from the very start:

This is an almost trivial endgame which any player would be able to play in their dreams. However, let's make a small substitution:

Now it suddenly became significantly more difficult (and one of the typical banes of beginners). In fact, the status of this position depends on whose move it is. If it's white to move, white can win in 23 moves (with perfect play from both sides). However, if it's black to move, it's a draw, but it requires very precise moves from black. (In fact, there is only one move in this position for black to draw; every other move loses, if white plays perfectly.) These single-pawn endings can be quite tricky at times.

But this is by far not the hardest possible endgame. There are notoriously harder ones, such as the queen vs. rook endgame:

Here white can win in 28 moves (with perfect play from both sides), but it requires quite tricky maneuvering.

Another notoriously difficult endgame is king-bishop-knight vs. king:

Here white can also win in 28 moves (with perfect play), but it requires a very meticulous algorithm to do so.

But all these are child's play compared to the probably hardest possible endgame. To begin with, king-knight-knight vs. king is (excepting very few particular positions) a draw:

But add one single pawn, and it's victory for white. But not a white pawn. A black pawn! And it can be introduced in quite many places, and white will win. As incredible as that might sound:

Yes, adding a black pawn means that white can now win, as hard as that is to imagine.

(The reason for this is that the winning strategy requires white to maneuver the black king into a position where it has no legal moves, several times. Without the black pawn this would be stalemate. However, thanks to the black pawn, which black is then forced to move, the stalemate is avoided and white can proceed with the mating sequence.)

But this is a notoriously difficult endgame. So difficult, that even most chess grandmasters may have difficulty with it (and many might not even know how to do it). It is so difficult that it requires quite a staggering amount of moves: With perfect play from both sides, white can win in 93 moves.

"Tank controls" in video games

3D games are actually surprisingly old. Technically speaking some games of the early 1970's were 3D, meaning they used perspective projection and had, at least technically speaking, three axes of movement. (Obviously back in those days they were nothing more than vector graphics drawn using lines and sprites, but technically speaking they were 3D, as contrasted to purely 2D games where everything happens on a plane.) I'm not talking here about racing games that give a semi-illusion of depth by having the picture of a road going to the horizon and sprites of different sizes, but actual 3D games using perspective projection of rotateable objects.

As technology advanced, so did the 3D games. The most popular 3D games of the 80's were mostly flight simulators and racing games (which used actual rotateable and perspective-projected 3D polygons), although there were obviously attempts at some other genres as well even back then. It's precisely these types of games, ie. flight simulators and anything that could be viewed as a derivative, that seemed most suitable for 3D gaming in the early days.

It is perhaps because of this that one aspect of 3D games was really pervasive for years and decades to come: The control system.

What is the most common control system for simple flight simulators and 3D racing games? The so-called "tank controls". This means that there's a "forward" button to go forward, a "back" button to go backwards, and "left" and "right" buttons to turn the vehicle (ie. in practice the "camera") left and right. This was the most logical control system for such games. After all, you can't have a plane or a car moving sideways, because they just don't move like that in real life either. Basically every single 3D game of the 80's and well into the 90's used this control scheme. It was the most "natural" and ubiquitous way of controlling a 3D game.

Probably because of this, and unfortunately, this control scheme was by large "inherited" into all kinds of 3D games, even when the technology was used in other types of games, such as platformers viewed from third-person perspective, and even first-person shooters.

Yes, Wolfenstein 3D, and even the "grandfather" of first-person shooters, Doom, used "tank controls". There was no mouse support by default (I'm not even sure there was support at all, in the first release versions), and the "left" and "right" keys would turn the camera left and right. There was support for strafing (ie. moving sideways while keeping the camera looking forward), but it was very awkward: Rather than having "strafe left" and "strafe right" buttons, Doom instead had a toggle button to make the left and right buttons strafe. (In other words, if you wanted to strafe, you had to press the "strafe" button and, while keeping it pressed, use the left and right buttons. Just like using the shift key to type uppercase letters.) Needless to say, this was so awkward and impractical that people seldom used it.


Of course all kinds of other 3D games used "tank controls" as well, including many of the first 3D platformers, making them really awkward to play.

For some reason it took the gaming industry a really long time to realize that strafing, moving sideways, was a much more natural and convenient way of moving than being restricted to only being able to move back and forward, and turning the camera. Today we take the "WASD" key mapping, with A and D being strafe buttons, for granted, but this is a relatively recent development. As late as early 2000's some games still hadn't transitioned to this more convenient form of controls.

The same goes to game consoles, by the way. "Tank controls" might even have been even more pervasive and widespread there (usually due to the lack of configurable controller button mapping). There, too, it took a relatively long time before strafing became the norm. The introduction of twin stick controllers made this transition much more feasible, but even then it took a relatively long time before it became the standard.

Take, for example, the game Resident Evil 4, released in 2005 for the PlayStation 2 and the GameCube, both of which had twin stick controllers. The game still used tank controls, and had no strafing support at all. This makes the game horribly awkward and frustrating to control; even infuriatingly so. And this even though modern twin-stick controls had already been the norm for years (for example, Halo: Combat Evolved was published in 2001.)

Nowadays "tank controls" are only limited to games and situations where they make sense. This usually means when driving a car or another similar vehicle, and a few other situations.

And not even always even then. Many tank games, perhaps ironically, do not use "tank controls". Instead, you can move the vehicle freely in the direction pressed with the WASD keys or the left controller stick, while keeping the camera fixated in its current direction, and which can be rotated with the mouse or the right controller stick (and which usually in such games makes the tank aim at that direction). In other words, direction of movement and direction of aiming are independent of each other (and usually the tank aims at the direction that the camera is looking). This makes the game a lot more fluent and practical to play.

The origins of the "Lambada" song

The song "Lambada" by the pop group Kaoma, when released in 1989, was one of these huge hits that people started hating almost as soon as it hit the radio stations, mainly because of being overplayed everywhere.

Back then, its composition was generally misattributed to Kaoma themselves. It wasn't until much later that I heard that was actually just a cover song, not an original one. However, it's actually a bit more interesting than that.

There are, of course constantly hugely popular hits that turn out to be just cover songs by somebody else eg. from the 50's or 60's. This one doesn't go that far back, but it's still interesting.

The original version, "Llorando se Fue" was composed by the Bolivian band Los Kjarkas in 1981. It's originally in Spanish, and while the melody is (almost) the same, the tone is quite different. It uses panflutes, is a bit slower, and is overall very Andean in tone.

See it on YouTube.

This song was then covered by the Peruvian band Cuarteto Continental in 1984. They substituted the panflute with the accordion, already giving it the distinctive tone, and their version is more upbeat and syncopated.

See it on YouTube.

The song was then covered by Márcia Ferreira in 1986. This was an unauthorized version translated to Portuguese, is a bit faster, and emphasizes the syncopation, and is basically identical to the Kaoma version, which was made in 1989.

See it on YouTube.

The Kaoma version, which is by far the best known one, perhaps emphasizes the percussion, and the syncopation even more.

See it on YouTube.

The dilemma of difficulty in (J)RPGs

The standard game mechanic that has existed since the dawn of (J)RPGs is that all enemies within given zones have a certain strength (which often varies randomly, but only within a relatively narrow range.) The first zone you start in has the weakest enemies, and they get progressively stronger as you advance in the game and get to new zones.

The idea is, of course, that as the player gains strength from battles (which is the core game mechanic of RPGs), it becomes easier and easier for the player to beat those enemies, and stronger enemies ahead will make the game challenging, as it requires the player to level up in order to be able to beat them. If you ever come back to a previous zone, the enemies there will still be as strong as they were last time, which usually means that they become easier and easier as the player becomes stronger.

This core mechanic, however, has a slight problem: It allows the player to over-level, which will cause the game to become too easy and there not being a meaningful challenge anymore. Nothing is stopping the player, if he so chooses, to spent a big chunk of time in one zone leveling up and gaining strength, after which most of the next zones become trivial because the strength of the enemies are not in par. This may be so even for the final boss of the game.

The final boss is supposed to be the ultimate challenge, the most difficult fight in the entire game. However, if because of the player being over-leveled the final boss becomes trivial, it can feel quite anti-climactic.

This is not just theoretical. It does happen. Two examples of where it has happened to me are Final Fantasy 6 and Bravely Default. At some point by the end parts of both games I got hooked into leveling up... after which the rest of the game until the end became really trivial and unchallenging. And a bit anti-climactic.

One possible solution to this problem that some games have tried is to have enemies level up with the player. This way they always remain challenging no matter how much the player levels up.

At first glance this might sound like a good idea, but it's not ideal either. The problem with this is that it removes the sense of accomplishment from the game; the sense of becoming stronger. It removes that reward of having fought lots of battles and getting stronger from them. There is no sense of achievement. Leveling up becomes pretty much inconsequential.

It's quite rewarding to fight some really tough enemies which are really hard to beat, and then much later and many levels stronger coming back and beating those same enemies very easily. It really gives a sense of having become stronger in the process. It gives a concrete feeling of accomplishment. Remove that, and it will feel futile and useless, like nothing has really been accomplished. The game may also become a bit boring because all enemies are essentially the same, and there is little variation.

One possibility would be if only enemies that the player has yet not encountered before would match the player's level (give or take a few notches), but after they have been encountered the first time in that particular zone they will remain that level for the rest of the game (in that zone). I don't know if this has been attempted in any existing game. It could be an idea worth trying.

All in all, it's not an easy problem to solve. There are always compromises and problems left with all attempted solutions.

Video games: Why you shouldn't listen to the hype

Consider the recent online multiplayer video game Evolve. It was nominated for six awards at E3, at the Game Critics Awards event. It won four of them (Best of the Show, Best Console Game, Best Action Game and Best Online Multiplayer). Also at Gamescom 2014 it was named the Best Game, Best Console Game Microsoft Xbox, Best PC Game and Best Online Multiplayer Game. And that's just to name a few (it has been reported that the game received more than 60 awards in total.)

Needless to say, the game was massively hyped before release. Some commenters were predicting it to be one of the defining games of the current generation. A game that would shape online multiplayer gaming.

After release, many professional critics praised the game. For example, IGN scored the game 9 out of 10, which is an almost perfect score. Game Informer gave it a score of 8.5 out of 10, and PC Gamer (UK) an 83 out of 100.

(Mind you, these reviews are always really rushed. In most cases reviews are published some days prior to the game's launch. Even when there's an embargo by game publishers, the reviews are rushed to publication on the day of launch or at most a few days later. No publication wants to be late to the party, and they want to inform their readers as soon as they possibly can. With online multiplayer games this can backfire spectacularly because the reviewers cannot possibly know how such a game will pan out when released to the wider public.)

So what happened?

Extreme disappointment by gamers, that's what. Within a month the servers were pretty much empty, and you were lucky if you were able to play a match with competent players. Or anybody at all.

It turns out the game was much more boring, and much smaller in scope, that the hype had led people to believe. And it didn't exactly help that the publisher got greedy and rid the game with outrageously expensive and sometimes completely useless DLC. (For example getting one additional monster to play, something that normally would be just given from the start in this kind of game, cost $15. Many completely useless extremely minor cosmetic DLC, such as a weapon with a different texture, but otherwise identical in functionality to existing weapons, cost $2.)

In retrospect, many reviewers have considered Evolve to be one of the most disappointing games of 2015, which didn't live up even close to its pre-launch hype.

What does this tell us? That pre-launch awards mean absolutely nothing, especially when we are talking about online multiplayer games. Pre-launch hype means absolutely nothing, and shouldn't be believed.