Technology - Google News

Xbox Adaptive Controller: Why Phil Spencer greenlit the accessibility project
New YouTube Music Premium costs $9.99 monthly, add $2 to get all Red perks
The most mysterious Android phone of the year is coming to Verizon

Xbox Adaptive Controller: Why Phil Spencer greenlit the accessibility project

Posted: 17 May 2018 07:15 AM PDT

Microsoft unveiled its Xbox Adaptive Controller today, an accessory for the game console for those with limited mobility to play games. It makes games accessible to a wider audience, and that’s what drew the attention of Xbox head Phil Spencer, who was ultimately responsible for greenlighting the project.

The controller enables people who don’t have thumbs, fingers, limbs, or good motor control to plug in alternatives that they can control. And that enables them to play games on the Xbox One consoles that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to play. There are as many as a billion people with disabilities in the world, and even more who are sometimes temporarily disabled (like those with broken arms), and the Xbox Adaptive Controller is built in a way that allows them to create their own custom solutions for playing games.

The controller started as an idea at a hackathon in 2015, and it slowly gathered steam as Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new CEO, put effort into changing Microsoft’s culture to be more human. The Redmond, Washington-based company created its Microsoft Inclusive Technologies Lab, and the researchers associated with it were critical in building the controller. Spencer, who recently gave a talk in support of diversity at the Dice Summit game event, spoke with a small group of outsiders at Microsoft’s Inclusive Technologies Lab. We talked about why doing good is sometimes the best thing to do, whether or not it means that you will also do good business as a result.

Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation.

Above: Phil Spencer believes doing good will turn out to be good business when it comes to accessibility.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

Phil Spencer: This is an important story for our industry, I think. Not through any competitive lens at all. It’s an important product and an important initiative for our industry. I know teams, when they see cool things happening, will want to take it in their own direction. That’s the great thing when the word gets out.

I think this dialogue for us as an industry, about not only things like the adaptive controller, but also our online community, the content we put out, who we are as an industry, are important discussions for us to have. Helping us with this discussion is part of that, so thank you.

I can give a bit of perspective on our journey and my journey with the device and how we landed here. We’ve been on, let’s say, a multi-year journey of thinking about how we build products, games, services, and hardware that can be used and delightful for millions of people. The game industry is coming up on 2 billion people. As we look at that market, as we look at all of the people who play games across all these different devices, it’s expanded our view of who our customer is.

Traditionally, at Xbox, we’d say our customer is someone with a big shiny TV who plugs a console in and plays. We’ve expanded the definition of somebody who’s an Xbox gamer, somebody who looks at Microsoft and the products we build as something important to them.

Our relationship with the community of really smart people – a lot of them here who helped us in the building of this product – goes back multiple years. We’ve done products and services like Copilot, which is the feature where two people can play, through two different controllers, the same game. Some of the text-to-speech work we’ve done—obviously, working at Microsoft, we get the advantage of seeing lots of technologies built in different parts of the company that can help. For us, the adaptive controller was pretty unique to the gaming audience we had, at least initially. It was an opportunity for us to look at the Windows platform and the Xbox console as a great place to launch this.

We talked with a lot of the third parties out there building accessories in this space, which is why you see all the ports on the controller. We knew this was an enabling technology for a lot of companies out there. We wanted to be part of that industry. We didn’t want to create something that was a closed ecosystem or vertical. We knew that this was a foundational part, but clearly not the part that would open up gaming for everyone. That’s really a joint effort by the community, which is why it’s great that people in the community who work so hard in this space are here today, and have been instrumental in building this product.

The learning that we get through having the product in the market will continue. Whether it’s software that we need to build, whether there are modifications we need to make – no product is perfect when it launches – I think we have done a lot of great testing on this product with a lot of great input. But just as with our consoles, our games, and our services, our ears and eyes will remain open as we go forward with it.

The fact that we were able to make it compatible with both Windows and Xbox was important. Clearly there are gamers across multiple platforms. Both this market, these players, these users—we want this to be an enabling technology for as many people as we can make it, which is why we thought about it relative to every device we have a platform on. How do we go and build that out?

More personally, with the team, this is a project that was driven by some really big people who are in this room, on their own. Our teams run fairly autonomously, meaning they have an ability to—there are certain things we know we need to hit on a certain date. They’re part of E3 road maps and product road maps. A lot of our teams have small incubation projects that sit to the side. Sometimes that work happens at night in rooms like this after people are done with their day job. They’ll come together.

But this is a project that lived for a while as we were trying to make sure we had the product right. I’d see it at reviews every so often. We were excited about the opportunity, but it was always unclear whether we were going to create something that was helpful, or something that was just us trying, but maybe not succeeding. It was great when we started to get some validation from people outside of us here, when we were working with them. That’s really when we greenlit it as more of an official project, something that we really wanted to land.

The point I want to make is, the teams here—this is such a great example of teams and people that are passionate about who our customers are and the experience they have. Seeing people take our controller and tear it apart and wire it up in some pretty creative and unique ways, just to enable them to play games we create—the fact that we were able to work with them to create something that didn’t need to be broken open and wired, that allowed more people to play, was very special. It’s something that the team really did out of their own passion. It’s pretty awesome to work at a company that can fund something like this and make it possible for millions more people to play games with friends and family and challenge themselves.

GamesBeat: Do you feel there was a kind of trade-off the team here had to get right, as far as doing good versus doing business?

Spencer: There’s something I’m going to say and you’re probably going to eyeroll a bit when I say it, but there’s a real product truth to it. That’s a term I use a lot, “product truth.” We have learned, and this has been validated externally as well, that as we focus on making our products and services and games more accessible, the things we learn actually make the experience better for everyone. That’s not just something you put on a poster on a wall.

At some point you’ll see this in its native packaging that will be on a shelf. It’s fair to say that this is the best packaging work we’ve ever done. It will influence how we do packaging going forward. But it was created from a specific point of view of who the customer is for this product.

On the question of business sense versus what I’ll call social goodness, with the products and services we build, I do fundamentally believe – and it’s been proven out for us – that whether it’s text-to-speech capability in our platform, whether it’s text size, whether it’s community filtering and clubs, things we do to make our products more accessible and more inclusive to more people, as we raise the bar on ourselves and our products, it does create more enjoyable products for more people, which fundamentally leads to a better business. We believe that. That trade-off wasn’t there.

Above: The Xbox Adaptive Controller (upper right) is a platform for other accessible accessories.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

The trade-off that was there, and people in the room know it was real—the precious resource we have in this organization is people. The trade-off you make is, do you do this or do you do something else? There are clearly, specifically in the areas of control, things where we’ve decided that this is what we’re doing and we weren’t able to get other things done because of that. But given where we ended up, and the reception this is getting from the community of people who rely on experiences like this in order to make our art form accessible to them, we feel great about that trade-off. But that’s the most difficult thing when you look at all the work you can do in this space.

In terms of the business opportunity, we are a platform for content. We think the more people that can play, it creates a good business opportunity. It’s not about the margin on this specific device. People know that in the console business, we sell our console at a loss in order to create sockets for players. That’s traditional. You don’t make money on hardware. You make money on software and services. If you really think about the work that people go through in order to experience the products we build, creating something like this that opens up the games we and others build for our platform to more people is good business for us as well.

I’ve been lucky enough in this role to be exposed to some people who go through some real hoops to play games on our platform. To see the commitment and passion they have—I’d almost say, at some level, for certain people, whether it’s mobility or function, that gaming can be a real outlet. We’ve seen it in so many cases, like the work where our consoles end up in children’s hospitals. People who play games online as a way of social interaction, when maybe that is their form of social interaction.

There’s a business opportunity to get more people to play, where these two things can really intersect. The opportunity to open up gaming to a constituency that isn’t able to play as easily as you and I can, and the goodness in bringing more people to the platform—that’s a pretty special moment.

1 2 View All

Let's block ads! (Why?)

New YouTube Music Premium costs $9.99 monthly, add $2 to get all Red perks

Posted: 17 May 2018 07:15 AM PDT

The long wait for YouTube's revamped music service is nearly over: the company announced on its blog that it will debut the new YouTube Music on May 22. YouTube already has a service by the same name, but this new version overhauls the old one and introduces two new premium services into the mix: YouTube Music Premium and YouTube Premium.

Let's break down YouTube Music first: the new music-streaming service will offer free, ad-supported music streaming through a new desktop and mobile app. YouTube emphasizes that "all the ways music moves you can be found in one place" in the new YouTube Music, as it gives users access to thousands of playlists, official songs and albums, remixes, covers, live versions, and music videos.

The new app will also have a "dynamic home screen" that provides listening recommendations based on your history, what you're doing, and where you are. Users can also search for songs using YouTube Music search without knowing the song's name. It's likely that Google incorporates AI into this feature, allowing you to search for songs using descriptions or lyrics. All of that will be available through YouTube Music for free for anyone who can stand advertisements throughout, making it similar to free versions of other streaming services, including Spotify and Apple Music.

But YouTube Music Premium removes ads and offers a few extra perks—and it will cost $9.99 per month. In addition to everything included in the free version of YouTube Music, YouTube Music Premium enables background listening and downloads. That means users can listen to tracks without having the app open or playing the visuals of a music video, and they can also download tracks for offline listening.

If this sounds akin to Google Play Music, that's because it is. Those who currently pay monthly for Google Play Music will get a YouTube Music Premium subscription as well, and nothing will change with Google Play Music for now. Current subscribers don't have to worry about big changes or losing their playlists or downloads anytime soon, but it's unlikely that the Google Play Music branding will stick around once the new YouTube Music takes over.

Red transitions to Premium

That takes care of the music side of YouTube, but that's just a portion of the content on the video website. Since 2015, YouTube Red has been the option for those who want an ad-free experience on the entire website and are willing to pay $10 per month for it. While YouTube isn't changing anything about the substance of Red, the service is essentially getting a new name—YouTube Premium. This all-encompassing service includes all the perks of YouTube Music Premium as well as all the existing benefits of YouTube Red: ad-free YouTube viewing, background playing, video downloads for offline viewing, and access to all YouTube Originals (like the new Cobra Kai series).

Enlarge / The differences between YouTube Music Premium and YouTube Premium.
YouTube

Premium takes the spot of YouTube's top-tier subscription service, essentially giving users ad-free access to the entirety of YouTube's video and music library. It will come at a cost of $11.99 per month—YouTube is charging an extra $2 to add the perks of YouTube Red to a YouTube Music Premium subscription.

It's likely that the YouTube Red branding will eventually retire as YouTube Premium takes over, and that also means that users will not be able to subscribe only to YouTube Red anymore. The Premium tier will include all of YouTube Red's benefits in addition to all YouTube Music Premium benefits, so you'll be forced to pay $11.99 for the whole package even if you don't want the special music features.

But that makes sense for YouTube's bottom line. The original YouTube Music formed out of the music industry's frustration with Google's video website as it claimed it wasn't getting paid enough from YouTube's ad-supported system. Giving users just two options, with music as the foundation, gives YouTube the chance to generate more revenue around its music offerings while also seeing how many users are willing to pay an extra $2 per month for all of Red's benefits and the company's original content.

The company did include one perk for existing Red subscribers who currently pay $9.99 for that service—they'll receive access to YouTube Premium at that lower price point once the service debuts. Users in countries where Red is available can sign up for $9.99 per month before Premium comes out next week to be locked into the lower price.

Rumors of this new YouTube Music had been swirling since last summer. The phasing-in and phasing-out of all these new services is a bit confusing, but YouTube undoubtedly hopes that it can make its music and online video subscription services friendlier through consolidation. The company doesn't have much of a choice—it wants to compete with Spotify, Apple Music, and the like, and it could never do so properly with three different music services floating around, the differences between them a mystery to most users.

Those interested in YouTube Music, Music Premium, and YouTube Premium can sign up for alerts on the new website.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

The most mysterious Android phone of the year is coming to Verizon

Posted: 17 May 2018 07:59 AM PDT

If you’re shopping Android this year, you’ve already got a decent selection of phones to choose from. The Galaxy S9, Huawei P20 Pro, and OnePlus 6 are out or will be soon, and they represent the best of what Android has to offer right now. The Pixel 3 and Note 9, coming in the second half of the year, are also highly anticipated.

Most Android phones this year are either rehashes of last year’s best Samsung phones or iPhone X clones. But there is one Android phone that’s unlike anything we’ve seen, and it finally has the backing of a major carrier.

Verizon on Thursday announced that the first holographic phone in the world, the RED Hydrogen One, is going to be available to subscribers later this year. The carrier didn’t specify a firm release date (and the first RED phone is delayed as it is), but it certainly looks like the Hydrogen One is going to soon be available in stores.

Coming from a company that’s known for its camera business, the Hydrogen phone looked like vaporware when it was first announced last August. That’s because the phone is supposed to be the world’s first holographic phone, a device that would offer users 3D-like experiences without glasses.

That’s something not available on any other handset right now, whether they run iOS or Android. Apple, for what it’s worth, has patents detailing holographic screens. But RED is actually making and releasing one.

The Hydrogen One is supposed to be a 5.7-inch device featuring high-end specs and design, as well as some sort of Moto Z-like modularity. You’d be able to add modules to your phone to improve certain features, a trick mentioned in Verizon’s announcement as well.

In addition to the phone, RED is also launching its 4-view Hydrogen content network. Reports a few weeks ago said the phone has been delayed to August, and RED founder Jim Jannard confirmed that designing such a phone is tricky because nobody really knows how to do 4-view displays on anything before:

We have never built a phone. No one ever tried to integrate a 4-view display in anything before. When we started this project, we didn’t know any cell carriers or anything about the cell phone industry. When we launch… the product won’t be complete. There will be more firmware/software updates than any other phone ever made. We are learning as we go. Truly, we have no business entering this market.

Verizon’s vice president, device and consumer product marketing, Brian Higgins calls the phone a “game changer:”

RED Hydrogen One was designed with cutting-edge technology that simply can’t be described — you have to hold it in your hands and experience it yourself to understand why this is such a mobile game changer. A phone like this deserves the best network in the country, which is why we can’t wait to bring it to Verizon customers later this year.

You can sign up to be notified when Verizon will have the Hydrogen One in stores at this link.

Let's block ads! (Why?)