Microsoft's Moving Xbox Ad Was the Best Thing About the Super Bowl (cnet.com) 132
Mark Serrels, writing for CNET: Super Bowl 53 has come and gone and, for me at least, there was one clear highlight. This Microsoft commercial. [...] Essentially a commercial for Microsoft's Xbox Adaptive Controller, this ad follows up on an earlier ad from the Christmas period, which highlights young kids with limited mobility playing video games. It's incredible.
It tells the story of kids with limited mobility and their love for video games. All kids love video games and if you're a person with limited mobility, video games can often provide a pathway to experiences that are often difficult in the real world. But in some cases, particular types of limited mobility can make even the games themselves difficult to play -- which is where the Xbox Adaptive Controller comes in. Further reading: Xbox wire; and Why Xbox spent a year designing the Adaptive Controller packaging.
It tells the story of kids with limited mobility and their love for video games. All kids love video games and if you're a person with limited mobility, video games can often provide a pathway to experiences that are often difficult in the real world. But in some cases, particular types of limited mobility can make even the games themselves difficult to play -- which is where the Xbox Adaptive Controller comes in. Further reading: Xbox wire; and Why Xbox spent a year designing the Adaptive Controller packaging.
Idiots (Score:2, Insightful)
This was an entertaining game dominated by the defenses of two really good football teams. I'm sorry that you dorks are incapable of appreciating that most people aren't enterained by World of Warcraft or stupid TV shows about space travel 300 years in the future.
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed, it's not often you get to see a good defensive battle anymore.
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Two good defenses does not a "good defensive battle" make. The Rams' offense spent most of the game looking like they could've been shut down by a high school team.
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Look, I think the disdain people hold for sports is completely moronic, but not only is your disdain as bad, you need to check your numbers. Most people aren't entertained by football, either. TV shows about space trvael 300 years in the future, MMORPGs, and football, regularly pull 10s of millions of people to participate.
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If you enjoy playing sports, great. If you enjoy watching others play sports, I do not get it but you do you. I am sure there are plenty of things I enjoy as entertainment that others do not get. But when you make it personal, that is where the trouble comes from.
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As if watching a bunch of muscle-heads fight over a ball is somehow a higher class of entertainment.
At least with video games, you are making the tactical decisions yourself.
U.S. football damages lives. (Score:2, Interesting)
Football
"In 2007, more than 920,000 athletes under the age of 18 were treated in emergency rooms, doctors' offices, and clinics for football-related injuries, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission."
Re:U.S. football damages lives. (Score:5, Insightful)
At least people care about football athletes. Try cheerleading if you really want to feel expendable.
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Why do they insist on all the armour that makes injuries worse? Rugby isn't great but it's not nearly as bad as American Football.
Re: So.... (Score:1)
Not necessarily. A lot of companies will develop these sorts of technologies even if the market isn't there because it gives them good press. Then they run it up the flagpole, helping them shed bad PR, such as appearing like an unfeeling, monopolistic behemoth.
Also, in these cases of altruism, whenever anyone claims that so-and-so company is just money-grabbing and not altruistic, I ask whether they would be able to identify when a company actually is being altruistic. Some companies do good things because
Re: Idiots (Score:1)
Because much that is great about the world came from the minds of the writers, thinkers, poets and inventors.
From guys running at each other for no reason? Not so much.
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Given the US-centric nature of US football vs the international appeal of video games and stupid space shows, I'd be willing to bet that more people care about Superman 64, Lexx, or Cleopatra 2525 than the Super Bowl.
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Super Bowl 53 had about 110 MILLION live viewers. In the United States alone.
I seriously doubt more people care about a failed game or minor tv shows, despite your prejudices against something you don't like.
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Yet the U.S. audience alone for the Super Bowl outweighs the international audience for some other forms of entertainment.
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US Population [google.com] :: 325.7 million (2017).
The rest of your premise is likely about as accurate.
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ecause the actors only follow a rulebook
Only when they aren't under arrest for domestic violence, criminal trespass, B&E, or any litany of felonies that they choose to commit.
Missed It (Score:3)
I just wanted to say that Maroon 5 sucked live, even though I like all the songs they played. Other than the eye candy for the ladies, it was one of the most forgettable halftimes in memory.
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in fairness, trailer trash is usually not nearly so ripped...
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This is one thing I don't get. I mean, you have this testosterone loaded sport where allegedly grown up men headbutt repeatedly, and while allegedly the goal is to move some sort of egg shaped object it seems to me that it's more about who gets to kill whom in the most appealing way...
and then you have a halftime act that's always, without fail, some pussy pop group. How does this fit in there?
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It's all about the revenue...how many eyeballs can the show attract. A lot of folks watch just for the commercials, which have gotten worse in the last few years. I think a lot of women watch the SB who normally don't watch football under other circumstances...it's a party.
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You mean American hand egg? Football is played with feet and without a bunch of gear on.
Hundreds of games with different rules have been played with feet and balls over the centuries. The particular rules set that's popular today was called "soccer" at the English school where it was invented. Of all the kinds of football, the kind called "soccer" is the most popular.
Wrong (Score:2)
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Kind of reminds me of this. [desktopnexus.com]
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How much did they pay you to be in that ad?
Lumpy milk (Score:1)
The worst ad was the lumpy milk ad. Nobody wanted to eat snacks after that. The co's with food ads should sue them.
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May you drink lumpy milk.
Robot obsession? (Score:2)
At least 3 co's featured robots or androids (lower-case) in their ads. The child-bot was featured twice, and creepy both times. Hawking insurance I think.
Another bot ad was a big cellphone telecom, I forgot which; and a 3rd was somebody worried about a robot taking his job during a bad dream. I think it was hawking a home security system. It had a dumb catch-line along the lines of: "You have enough worries outside, at least make your home secure."
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And one of those worries was Alexa/Google always listening. And they were selling an IoT security system.
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At least 3 co's featured robots or androids (lower-case) in their ads. The child-bot was featured twice, and creepy both times. Hawking insurance I think.
Another bot ad was a big cellphone telecom, I forgot which; and a 3rd was somebody worried about a robot taking his job during a bad dream. I think it was hawking a home security system.
Sounds like it's time for a return of Old Glory Robot Insurance.
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There's a nice racket ready to be exploited: robot insurance. I need a break from my meteor insurance business anyhow.
Um, that begs the question: How are capitalistic totalitarians better?
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I think that one of the child bot ads were hocking TurboTax, but I'm not sure of that. It wasn't exactly all that memorable.
I kinda wish that the Game Of Thrones dragon would have showed up and burned a few more of these commercials. It would have made the entire Super Bowl more interesting.
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I think that one of the child bot ads were hocking TurboTax, but I'm not sure of that. It wasn't exactly all that memorable.
The "child-bot" couldn't be a TurboTax online real-person CPA because it didn't have the emotions necessary. As if CPAs were supposed to be really emotional while reviewing your tax return.
I thought the Alexa ad with failed integration attempts was funny. The electric toothbrush that played a podcast in someone's mouth, and Harrison Ford's dog ordering a pallet load of dog food (and sausages and gravy ...) was prescient of where Amazon will be trying to put Alexa over time.
This is why JavaScript remains off (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not correct, highlights a very minority opinion, and belongs on the toilet paper of some insufferable blogger's tackily decorated rental mobile home.
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What he said.
It was sappy. Sure, it is great that some kid gets to play minecraft with the other kids. But let's get real. It wasn't even the best commercial about some sappy, tug-at-your-heartstrings topic.
And this was the year of the overdone, sappy commercial.
So no, not the best thing about the superbowl. Not even close.
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Spoken like a true cunt.
I know I tried to endorse the GNU Kind Communications guidelines, but... AC is right.
17 years too late (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
I'll be blunt: I know literally nothing about the controller.
What I do know, and what I hoped to express in my previous post, is that it is beyond ridiculous to criticize a company that has done something so wonderful because they didn't do it earlier, as the OP did.
My goal wasn't to trivialize Microsoft's work on this controller, but to call out the reductionist logic expressed by the OP. I applaud MS for doing this work, and I consider it a serious achievement in gaming accessibility regardless of how eas
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It's an interesting technology, It's also somewhat deceitful. Gross motor control with shoulders and leg muscles, instead of finger muscles, cannot be expected to be as fast and delicately controlled as finger movements. I'm delighted that these children, and adults, can play: I'd not expect it to work well for the various "button mashers" or twitch driven 8 button combo combat games.
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Frank Castle (Score:2)
Two franchises I really dislike held no interest for me. The owner of the Rams is a disgusting shithead who thinks the world owes him money and I'm sick to death of Tom Brady and the entire Patriots Nation If it had been the Texans or the Bears or any one of a dozen other teams, I might have tuned in, but nah.
Instead, I watched 2 episodes of Punisher Season 2 and then THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE, which is a motherfucker of a movie. Highly recommended.
Two movies you gotta watch are MANDY (on the Shudder Netw
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And nobody cares. Fuck off.
An advert was the highlight? (Score:4, Funny)
Super Bowl 53 has come and gone and, for me at least, there was one clear highlight. This Microsoft commercial.
I guess the game of Handegg was pretty uninspiring then.
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> I guess the game of Handegg was pretty uninspiring then.
Pretty much yep. It was like the football equivalent of watching a 90s era NHL game against the New Jersey Devils playing their patented neutral zone trap bullshit.
Let's maybe talk about what belongs on /. of it? (Score:5, Interesting)
The controller, I mean?
Since I've been creating input devices for people who cannot use "normal" ones for one reason or another for many years now, I'm curious. How close are they to actually providing an interface that offers a comparable accessibility to people with reduced mobility or fine motor skills? What sorts of input do they already provide?
Re:Let's maybe talk about what belongs on /. of it (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd expect to see one at a GameStation near you pretty soon. I'd be very curious to hear about your work. How, for example, do you deal with the "smoothing" problem? With differentiating between small muscle or neurological impulses and the significant signal that people actually want action for, as quickly as possible, without waiting too long to accumulate a valid signal? I'm looking at https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com], which gives a good detailed analysis of the problem. The necessary delay to accumulate a reliable signal is roughly 200 milliseconds. That is fairly slow for a reactive "twitch" combat game.
Is it comparable to the delay of electro-mechanical devices you've used? I'm quite curious if you've seen limits to response time with your techniques, or to hear what basic mechanical or electrical designs you use. With some luck, if they're continuing with this project, perhaps they would provide some funding or consulting work for children their design does not quite work for.
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I only dabble but I've found that some simple filters can help. For example, real PacMan machines use a joystick with a 4 way gate on it, that is the stick physically can't be moved into the diagonal positions. It's up, down, left and right only.
Such things are fairly uncommon for computers and games consoles. I build an adaptor for a friend to use an old Amiga joystick on his PC, but he found that PacMan on MAME didn't play very well. I fixed it by making the adaptor ignore diagonals. Trickier than it soun
Re:Let's maybe talk about what belongs on /. of it (Score:4, Interesting)
They're really nice: The controller base looks and feels very solidly built. The stand-out bits are that it has USB, so you can plug in some existing devices, but more importantly every button and trigger has a 3.5mm plug associated with it, so that you can attach any custom pedal/button/switch/lever/etc for which you can hack in a 3.5mm jack.
This is good for games, but it's also good as the core for other types of customized input arrangements.
~D
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It's a really good controller hub device, it doesn't solve the outrageous cost of large clickable buttons or mouth-sticks, but it's definitely well thought out with more expansion than you'll probably need.
See:
In the lab with Xbox's new Adaptive Controller [arstechnica.com], and
Xbox Adaptive Controller is now out -- and we go hand, foot, fingers, and elbows-on [arstechnica.com]
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Blowin in the wind (Score:2)
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Budweiser still has enough money for super bowl ads, and you have hope for humanity? I thought that was one of the seven signs.
Respectifully disagree (Score:4)
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I prefer NFL's 100 Year game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]. However, SB's ads are getting worse every year IMO. Or am I the only one?
Missed opportunity. (Score:3)
The kid should have been shown killing someone at in Fortnite and then a cut screen of Ninja screaming hacker. It's not like he was afraid to cash in do silly cameos.
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I like your version better. Less sappy. More relevant to the youth audience. And it could have real emotion instead of the staged emotion of "look at the poor handicapped kid".
Heck, if you wanted you could even do it for real... have the kid play Ninja with a bunch of his friends watching, and then when he finally gets a kill against Ninja they would all go crazy. Then it wouldn't feel so heavy-handed. Of course the real target audience probably wasn't gamers or parents of kids with special needs that
It got me... (Score:1)
I'm still mad about the Kinect (Score:2)
It used to be able to control my whole xbox, the tv, netflix, hulu etc. Now it can barely pause the DVR. They talk about accessibility, but they kill off their voice controls almost completely.
Re: Jock sniffers are the worsr... (Score:1)
And yet the game was still far more worthwhile than all 700+ bullshit Star Track episodes.
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The Star Trek Franchise died years ago. Just no one realized it yet. I would say Insurrection Stopped it, and Nemesis failed the rebound.
The JJ Trek, was the attempt to finish off the game.
With the dead franchise, CBS needed to keep its copyright, so they made Discovery out of their asses, as a hope there would be enough Star Trek fans, gullible enough to buy CBS all access.
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The most recent ST movie was actually OK. Felt like a long episode of a real ST TV show, which made it head and shoulders above the last 6 or so movies.
But yeah, ST, like SW, is dead until the culture wars are behind us. And maybe forever - nothing stopping a new franchise from being good. The Expanse shows there's still some creativity left in the world.
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Star Trek predicted the Irish unification of 2024.
And that starships would have ashtrays.
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The key rule for Science Fiction is that you should only break one law of physics.
Star Trek kinda merged all the Science fiction tropes together, this wasn't that big of deal, until people started to put the Star Trek Universe connected into so sort of Canonical set of events.
Oddly enough until Deep Space 9, with its over reaching story arc. Star Trek didn't worry too much about canon. They would do a temporary solving of the problem at hand, then run off to a new place not worrying about the consequences o
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That's what I really love about The Wrath of Khan. When he started working on that movie, Nicholas Meyer went back and watched the entire run of TOS. And one of the things that struck him was how, in those completely self-contained episo
Re: Jock sniffers are the worsr... (Score:4, Funny)
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Wow.
This is Slashdot, man. You gotta know your science fiction better than that.
It peaked when Buck Rogers stole the Galactica to save the Minbari from Battlefield Earth.
Picard was like, three years later.
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Once the jock-sniffers become cripples they will need something to do ...
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How are sports fans any different then other Nerd culture events?
Strong opinions on things that do not affect them... Check
Wear funny costumes... Check
Trying to explain away or recon events that they didn't expect... Check
Spend a lot of time, trying to play out different scenarios of their selected group... Check
Sports Fans are just as much Nerds as the rest of us.
Re:Jock sniffers are the worsr... (Score:4, Funny)
An ad played during a jock-sniffing contest is now news for nerds?
My kingdom for a way of giving wedgies online.
if that is the price of keeping Slashdot around (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm fine with it. by this time and age I am quite capable of telling a slashdot ad article by myself, and I trained myself to ignore ads in many forms where I can't turn them off. I come here for the comments sections as well as I'm sure many others also do anyways, so if a Microsoft product story sparks some insightful conversation - sure why not?
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