Xbox One's Snap mode tested in new video

It appears there are some Xbox One consoles out in the wild. The Verge's Tom Warren appears to have gotten his hands on one, and promptly tested its multitasking ability.

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It appears there are some Xbox One consoles out in the wild. The Verge's Tom Warren appears to have gotten his hands on one, and promptly started to test the console's multitasking ability through Snap. With Snap, you'll be able to pin various apps to the side of the TV screen, all while your game is running. Unfortunately, without being signed into Xbox Live, much of the functionality is disabled, but this video does a good job of showing how Xbox One excels at running multiple programs at once.

Also not used in this video: Kinect voice recognition. Warren seems content on using his controller for Snap features, but you should also be able to use voice commands to do things like "Xbox, Snap Internet Explorer."

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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  • reply
    November 3, 2013 5:15 PM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Xbox One's Snap mode tested in new video.

    It appears there are some Xbox One consoles out in the wild. The Verge's Tom Warren appears to have gotten his hands on one, and promptly tested its multitasking ability.

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      November 3, 2013 5:22 PM

      Looks nice. Takes up valuable gpu cycles though.

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        November 3, 2013 8:36 PM

        I hear it wastes some of its Ghz watching you sleep.

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      November 3, 2013 7:55 PM

      Love how fast it seems to be. Don't know what I'd use snap for, but it's dope that it works so good.

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        November 3, 2013 8:04 PM

        Tom Warren said he was able, at one point, to snap YouTube and play a game. This allowed him to listen to music while playing, which is a sort of workaround for the no MP3's issue.

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        November 3, 2013 8:47 PM

        [deleted]

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          November 3, 2013 9:38 PM

          The only one of those that makes sense to me is walkthrough.

          Snap to me really only makes a ton of sense if you really utilize the TV stuff, which I just may. When I start to think of it that way its cool. I won't skype while I game, but I'll def do it during the basektball game or a show that my friends and I both watch. If I were into fantasy football I can see it also being a thing to use snap then.

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            November 3, 2013 9:52 PM

            [deleted]

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              November 4, 2013 7:49 AM

              people use skype as their phone? and you use video calling as your main method of conversation?

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            November 4, 2013 9:29 AM

            I wonder if I can play my game while my wife watches whatever she wants, sort of like a much better version of picture in picture

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              November 4, 2013 9:31 AM

              [deleted]

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                November 4, 2013 9:34 AM

                it'd be cool if you could snap half and half like windows 8, but i guess games would also have to support 4:3 for that to work any good

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                November 4, 2013 10:53 AM

                Yea. It looks like he had an option to snap TV at one point. Problem will be audio though. Would be cool if you could redirect the game to output to the headset.

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        November 3, 2013 8:55 PM

        seems more useful when you're watching TV, so you can have a twitter feed going, or some interaction with the nfl games

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          November 3, 2013 8:57 PM

          I'm looking forward to using the NFL stuff while playing a game. I don't get a lot of Chiefs games here, so instead of watching some fuckup-fest from the NFC East yet again, i can play again and stay up to date with my team without using another device.

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      November 3, 2013 8:10 PM

      But the internet told me the xbone would catch fire and explode the instant you attempted to use the snap feature.

    • Ziz legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
      reply
      November 3, 2013 8:31 PM

      Can it snap to 1080p?

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        November 3, 2013 8:53 PM

        Yes - it will output at 1080p.

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          November 3, 2013 9:55 PM

          1080p menus ftw!!! Im totally going to play that high res menu all day

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            November 3, 2013 9:57 PM

            prob going to just have to stick it out with my htc one if I actually wanna play some games at 1080p tho

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              November 3, 2013 10:46 PM

              let me know when you get BF4 running on that - I'd love some on the go.

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                November 4, 2013 2:25 AM

                People scoff at the idea of phones running eg BF4 at all or at 1080p, but you do understand it's not that crazy to think phones will surpass xbone/ps4 in power before their cycle is over?

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                  November 4, 2013 3:54 AM

                  I would be honestly amazed if they didn't. Of course, regardless of power level, I have no interest in confining high-powered titles to a phone screen. I just don't see the point. In the same way, I wouldn't watch a movie like Gravity, or Avatar, on a phone, regardless of fidelity.

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                    November 4, 2013 5:06 AM

                    You're talking about a performance difference on the order of 25-35x between the new iPhone 5s and the new consoles. Add to that the huge thermal and power constraints of a phone... I think it's possible phones will match the Xbox/PS4's power in their lifetimes, but I'm not sure it's that clear cut.

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                  November 4, 2013 8:19 AM

                  And while doing it the battery will get so hot it melts through your hand and drops to the ground while burning a phone sized hole down to the core of the earth killing us all.

                  I think something major is going to need to change in battery and phone thermal design before that is a reality.

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                    November 4, 2013 9:01 AM

                    I wouldn't worry about the battery melting. They usually just explode and burn violently when thermal runaway happens. No need to worry about China syndrome!

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                  November 4, 2013 9:35 AM

                  [deleted]

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                    November 4, 2013 10:05 AM

                    You think? I mean, I know hardware cycles should be accelerating, but the generation "ending" next week is the longest we've had, not the shortest. Shouldn't console generations be getting shorter, not longer, if that prediction is accurate?

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                      November 4, 2013 2:49 PM

                      I think this will be the last console cycle. In a few years I'm thinking the Android driven devices will have enough graphical power to play most of the stuff people want to play. Home entertainment will probably look a lot more like the current situation with phones and tablets. If the Playstation and Xbox brands continue, I think they will be very different kinds of products.

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      November 3, 2013 8:51 PM

      [deleted]

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      November 3, 2013 11:32 PM

      I wish microsoft would just let metro die.

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      November 4, 2013 2:17 AM

      [deleted]

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      November 4, 2013 5:44 AM

      I'm sure there will be plenty of people using this to watch walkthroughs on youtube or read a strategy guide while they play. You could also screw around with friends and bring up their stream (XB1 doesn't stream right? btu if they had the hardware for it) and view their stream while in game.

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        November 4, 2013 5:58 AM

        XB1 does stream. Its gonna have twitch broadcast.

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          November 4, 2013 6:05 AM

          Oh, my mistake then. That's even better, it's almost a throw back to having people over at your house with 2 TVs setup to play games side by side.

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        November 4, 2013 6:01 AM

        It's cool functionality, but I can't imagine doing any of those things on an awkward TV sidebar rather than just doing them on a laptop, tablet or phone like I already do.

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          November 4, 2013 6:06 AM

          That's fair, I would probably side with you if I did this myself, guess we'll have to wait and see what people come up with.

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          November 4, 2013 6:38 AM

          Yeah, now that I've got a portable browser in my pocket at all times, I can't imagine *ever* using browser functions on a TV. Text is just too small and half the shit (a guess, based on this generation) won't work right/functionally in a console-based browser anyway.

          I'm not sure I've ever used a console-based browser and thought it was worth the trouble (save pre-iPhone/tablet, when my PC was busted, then I'd use it).

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      November 4, 2013 6:38 AM

      As much as everyone is dogging on Microsoft, at least this is video of a working dashboard in the wild.

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        November 4, 2013 8:10 AM

        Yea. It's actually kinda cool to see how snappy it really is. People really need to give MS for credit. It might not be the powerhouse gaming machine (but please neither really is the PS4), but this is really neat tech and could totally be the center of any living room.

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      November 4, 2013 8:13 AM

      That looks pretty not bad!

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        November 4, 2013 8:14 AM

        I'm really looking forward to these things being out so people can stop with the rumors and speculation and can evaluate the things on their own merits. Personally I'm going to wait until next year to decide which one to get but am leaning towards a ps4 right now.

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          November 4, 2013 9:15 AM

          God yes. So sick of reading about comparisons of mhz and memory, and blah blah blah.

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