Microsoft has released two very big pieces of news today concerning the Xbox One. One concerns the revamped reputation system that will set apart the new Xbox Live experience, and the other deals with the life span of the next-gen device.
A new Xbox Wire post by Program Manager on Xbox Live Michael Dunn reveals that the new reputation system will be color coded like a traffic light, with green meaning a stellar reputation, yellow meaning the player has some bad tendencies, and red meaning they are probably someone you want to avoid. Dunn also explains that the reputation system will take various cues from players online to determine who the troublemakers on Xbox Live are in order to calculate their score:
"We are simplifying the mechanism for Xbox One - moving from a survey option to more direct feedback, including things like "block" or "mute player" actions into the feedback model. The new model will take all of the feedback from a player's online flow, put it in the system with a crazy algorithm we created and validated with an MSR PhD to make sure things are fair for everyone."
Troubled players who repeatedly get negative feedback will have several opportunities to improve, as Microsoft promised that those facing the dreaded red light will get several warnings first as well as primers for how to conduct themselves online.
In other Xbox One news, Microsoft has apparently built the console to last ten years, with the device being on and active the whole time.
Eurogamer is claiming that an inside source at the company states that the console is built off of a brief that was meant to be continuously on for ten straight years. In order to compensate for any overheating issues this would cause, the company designed a special cooling unit that measures 34x26x8cm. This cooling unit would function "almost silently" according to the source, and would remain quiet while gamers could run media on the device and for most of their gaming sessions. Only when the AMD processor becomes taxed would the cooling unit begin to get louder.
Both these improvements to the Xbox One should make the whole experience a whole lot more enjoyable, as nobody wants to deal with neither loud and annoying players nor consoles when they are trying to have fun. Look out for more Xbox One news as we get closer to the console's November release date.