Digital Commandos

When I heard that Microsoft was going to enable the use of external hard drives with a minimum size of 256 gigabytes over USB 3.0, I was very excited.  I immediately started to research what external hard drives I would buy to facilitate this.  There was a 2 terabyte Seagate external hard drive.  There was a 2 terabyte Western Digital My Book.  If I really wanted to go portable, I could get a 2 terabyte Western Digital My Passport.

I then realized something when looking at their specs.  Most of those drives tout how fast they are with the perspective of USB 3.0 or how many movies, mp3’s, or documents the drives could hold.  There was really nothing about the drives.  That wasn’t going to work for me because in my experience, they normally put slower RPM drives in to those types of enclosures to minimize manufacturing costs as well as power drain, which provided increased portability and profit.  That’s not a bad thing if you’re the seller of these technologies.  But for me, I had to go a different route.

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Anyone already in the Project Spark beta will be sent a second key.

The Xbox One beta for game creation suite Project Spark will begin in February, Microsoft has announced. 

The full software is due out later this year, with a Windows 8 beta currently ongoing.

“Project Spark Xbox One closed beta begins in February,” wrote developer Team Dakota on the game’s Facebook page.

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Audio hardware maker Turtle Beach brought its first Xbox One-compatible headsets to CES 2014 this week, showing off three forthcoming models. But the company is still waiting on Microsoft to provide the adapters that will ultimately make those headsets work with the new console.

On display at Turtle Beach’s CES booth were the XO Four, the company’s $99.95, entry level Xbox One headset, and the XO Seven, a premium offering based on its tournament-level line, with memory foam ear cups, a mobile inline microphone and customizable earphone panels. It retails for $159.95. Those Earforce brand headsets will plug into the Xbox One controller, through the required hardware adapter, which the licensee is still waiting on.

That hardware adapter is due sometime this quarter, Turtle Beach said.

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“The feedback we’ve gotten is pretty valid,” says Xbox executive Marc Whitten.

Sorting out Xbox One’s tricksy social functions will be the priority focus of the console’s first major update, Microsoft has revealed.

Speaking to Engadget at CES 2014, Xbox executive Marc Whitten explained the incoming update. “The feedback we’ve gotten is pretty valid; some of the social stuff is hidden or harder to use than it was on the Xbox 360. So you’re gonna see us come out with an update where, well, we’re going to fix those things.”

Many of the Xbox One’s social functions–Achievements, friends lists, and, crucially, the party system–have all been split into separate applications on the new console, as opposed to the being baked in to the OS as they had been previously with the Xbox 360. While this allows for a clean and elegant interface, many users have reported that it makes using the social features cumbersome and fiddly.

“As a person who’s been pretty involved in building Xbox Live for the last decade, I take it pretty seriously when people say it’s harder to get into a party, and the defaults aren’t right, and I don’t like the model,” continued Whitten.

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