To quickly add 200 million unwilling new Copilot users for the next shareholder report since nobody’s buying the Microslop? Not that it’s a good reason, but that’s my guess.
As it currently exists on other platforms, Gaming Copilot lets you ask guide-like questions about the game you’re currently playing. Microsoft’s official site offers an example question like “Can you remind me what materials I need to craft a sword in Minecraft?”
I haven’t used consoles for a few generations, but historically, switching between a game and a Web browser on a console wasn’t all that great, and text entry wasn’t all that great. I dunno if things have improved, but it was definitely a pain in the neck to refer to a website in-game historically.
On Linux, Wayland, I swap between fullscreen desktops when playing games, and often have a Web browser with information relevant to the game on another desktop. If it helps enable some approximation of a workflow like that for console players, that doesn’t sound unreasonable.
There are other objections I’d have, like not really wanting someone logging what my voice sounds like or giving Microsoft even more data on me to profile with via my searches. But it sounds to me like the basic functionality has a point.
“Aw dang, I completely forgot how to make one of the most basic recipes in minecraft.”
For the uninitiated: you take a stick. You take some whatever you think, and you make a sword shape. At the point in the game where you don’t know what a sword can be made of you probably have dirt, wood, and stone. Through arduous trial and error I’m sure you can figure it something out.
I think that there is a niche for platform-provided guides like on Steam. They’d probably not be user-created on consoles tho because of a potential liability for what 69_gamer_420 wrote, but either game studios themselves or existing 3rd parties could’ve created a web app to serve their guides in the overlay or integrate these into the game itself (prerecorded ghost-players?). If it could have been put as a standard accessibility feature by Microsoft, I could see it happening. And I find it more probable than a genuinely helpful chatbot because of too many dependencies on context in each and every game. I’ve already got unasked advices on a few games that boiled down to using mechanics not present in exact games I was googling about.
I’ll preface by saying I don’t think it’s a good idea, but-
Fallout TV Show (and friends) have brought a lot of new people to gaming that might have eschewed it before, a lot of those people have no idea what they’re doing in videogames.
An ‘AI assistant’ could help in a face-saving way (consider a 60 year old father who’s never played, and possibly chastised games in the past, is now getting into Fallout NV due to the TV show - asking their kids that they ridiculed about games would be embarrassing, but asking an AI may not be)
Basically, letting old people who hated videogames, play videogames.
Idk. I’m criticizing it and am not a person to use it. If anything, I’d like to read human-made guides myself. But, yeah, if Cortana/CoPilot would do anything, it would be just a neuro summary of first links on Google that you can get by voice inputting prompts. MS has no technology to insert itself into every new game in any way but with this crude and slightly context-aware voice assistant it can output a summary of these links, however correct they are.
Also they’ll quickly learn about games where you need to git gud. Most games, especially recently, come equipped with a “baby mode storytime” difficulty setting, and theres more slice-of-life job-simulator games than ever.
If you try and go from “games are for children im too old for these newfangled marios” to “bullethell deathfest 6” youre gonna have a bad time
why
literally give me one reason why this should exist
They’ve been trying so hard, and they’ve got nothing.
They went all-in on mystifying predictive text, enjoy your slop.
To quickly add 200 million unwilling new Copilot users for the next shareholder report since nobody’s buying the Microslop? Not that it’s a good reason, but that’s my guess.
Come on, Satya’s bonus depends on it!
I haven’t used consoles for a few generations, but historically, switching between a game and a Web browser on a console wasn’t all that great, and text entry wasn’t all that great. I dunno if things have improved, but it was definitely a pain in the neck to refer to a website in-game historically.
On Linux, Wayland, I swap between fullscreen desktops when playing games, and often have a Web browser with information relevant to the game on another desktop. If it helps enable some approximation of a workflow like that for console players, that doesn’t sound unreasonable.
There are other objections I’d have, like not really wanting someone logging what my voice sounds like or giving Microsoft even more data on me to profile with via my searches. But it sounds to me like the basic functionality has a point.
“Aw dang, I completely forgot how to make one of the most basic recipes in minecraft.”
For the uninitiated: you take a stick. You take some whatever you think, and you make a sword shape. At the point in the game where you don’t know what a sword can be made of you probably have dirt, wood, and stone. Through arduous trial and error I’m sure you can figure it something out.
I just keep an iPad set up next to me when playing a game. I can look up guides, and use it to do online chat as well.
I think that there is a niche for platform-provided guides like on Steam. They’d probably not be user-created on consoles tho because of a potential liability for what 69_gamer_420 wrote, but either game studios themselves or existing 3rd parties could’ve created a web app to serve their guides in the overlay or integrate these into the game itself (prerecorded ghost-players?). If it could have been put as a standard accessibility feature by Microsoft, I could see it happening. And I find it more probable than a genuinely helpful chatbot because of too many dependencies on context in each and every game. I’ve already got unasked advices on a few games that boiled down to using mechanics not present in exact games I was googling about.
If they just moderate the fucking platform people pay for user created guides aren’t a problem.
I just use my phone to look stuff up if I’m on my steam deck.
I’ll preface by saying I don’t think it’s a good idea, but-
Fallout TV Show (and friends) have brought a lot of new people to gaming that might have eschewed it before, a lot of those people have no idea what they’re doing in videogames.
An ‘AI assistant’ could help in a face-saving way (consider a 60 year old father who’s never played, and possibly chastised games in the past, is now getting into Fallout NV due to the TV show - asking their kids that they ridiculed about games would be embarrassing, but asking an AI may not be)
Basically, letting old people who hated videogames, play videogames.
In what way would the AI help
Like, what specific thing would it do?
In a Hello Google kind of way, I guess. Creating a summary of existing web pages, hoping it would be somehow correct.
Why not just… use Google?
Idk. I’m criticizing it and am not a person to use it. If anything, I’d like to read human-made guides myself. But, yeah, if Cortana/CoPilot would do anything, it would be just a neuro summary of first links on Google that you can get by voice inputting prompts. MS has no technology to insert itself into every new game in any way but with this crude and slightly context-aware voice assistant it can output a summary of these links, however correct they are.
Why must people pay video games? If people don’t like it, just don’t play it. Watch a YouTube playthrough if you must.
Automating the experience of art is such a dystopian nightmare.
Also they’ll quickly learn about games where you need to git gud. Most games, especially recently, come equipped with a “baby mode storytime” difficulty setting, and theres more slice-of-life job-simulator games than ever.
If you try and go from “games are for children im too old for these newfangled marios” to “bullethell deathfest 6” youre gonna have a bad time