Microsoft has released official documentation concerning several of the policies, features and requirements of its upcoming Xbox One console. Among these are details on its periodic online checks, remote access to a player's game library, and recommended connection speed.
[Y]ou can game offline for up to 24 hours on your primary console, or one hour if you are logged on to a separate console accessing your library. Offline gaming is not possible after these prescribed times until you re-establish a connection, but you can still watch live TV and enjoy Blu-ray and DVD movies.
Regarding technical specifications and networking requirements:
Xbox One is equipped with a gigabit Ethernet port and 802.11n wireless. With 802.11n, Xbox One can use the 5GHz wireless band which eliminates considerable interference from other devices in the home, such as cordless phones, Bluetooth devices and microwaves. Xbox One uses two wireless antennas, versus one in Xbox 360.
For an optimal experience, we recommend a broadband connection of 1.5Mbps. (For reference, the average global internet connection speed as measured recently by Akamai was 2.9 Mbps). In areas where an Ethernet connection is not available, you can connect using mobile broadband.
While a persistent connection is not required, Xbox One is designed to verify if system, application or game updates are needed and to see if you have acquired new games, or resold, traded in, or given your game to a friend. Games that are designed to take advantage of the cloud may require a connection.
As this is true whether or not constant connectivity is required, there is one statement in the document which may stick in players' craws in particular: "Because every Xbox One owner has a broadband connection, developers can create massive, persistent worlds that evolve even when you're not playing."
Although all of the current-generation consoles supported online connectivity, the Xbox One will be the first to presume its owners must be in possession of a broadband, wireless internet connection. This may naturally place the console outside of much of Microsoft's established Xbox 360 market.
So basically the same requirement that Steam has except that at least with the Xbox One you don't have to eat up to 50GB of your download cap with each game.
I can play my STEAM games offline with no time restriction. It's called offline mode.
And if I want to add another computer, I do have to log on and install the software, but once that computer is authorized -- one system at a time -- I have no time restrictions on that comp. 1 hour blows...
As long as the computer is authorized to play the games, it does not need a connection; now if your game is multiplayer, that's an obvious difference.
With STEAM, when I buy a game for my PC, if there's a Mac version available, I get that to for my MacBook Pro; and in the future the same applies to Linux.
And you can buy games at retail that use STEAM as the DRM. This makes up the lion share of my game collection, since I like the box. And even when that's not the case in rare situations, I have no data cap. 50 gigs would bite..
Agree with you there Chris, I love the PC and I respect and use windows, so its not like I am anti Microsoft, quite the opposite, I just think they are overstepping here.
I moved to China 3 months ago, and have been having a pretty bad internet connexion since then.
Steam has been working perfectly fine in offline mode for 3 months straight now.
The Xbox One would have been completely useless to me in that case. Thanks god my Wii U works fine even completely cut off the internet.
You have to check in with steam?
The last time i let BB go, i just put steam in offline mode which seems to work untill you restart your system.
IMO The good point of steam isn't its online, its the moderate to dirt cheap prices. You will not likely get that good steam feature on Xbone.
Oops i didn't realise so many posts belowe the 1st were replies.. They make my post a bit redundant.
Two words that turn me off more then anything in this world are "HAVE TO". I'm a very firm believer that I don't HAVE TO do anything.
I love the xbox 360. I even worked on the development of the kinect for 8 months, but that was by choice. If I HAVE TO let microsoft do a system sweep of my Xbone once a day, then I am just not going to own an Xbone.
Exactly Jannis. The 360 I have does everything I want a console to do and that is play games. What I am wondering is if Microsoft is going to try to kill the 360 to get people to switch to the Xbone. That is really the only way I could see them possible being successful unless they plan on solely being a sports franchise system.
I wasn't in a rush to replace my console but I agreewith you Kenneth, I have about two years worth of games to play at least for the 360, unless MS actually tries to kill it early it will probably be years, if ever, before I buy an XBone.
"we recommend a broadband connection of 1.5Mbps." Precision: It means that you can connect your console without broadband connection, and just like every game devices today, play online without broadband is not really possible. Also if they state that xbox owners have broadband, since they know how many consoles they sell and how many users/active accounts by console they have, + surely collecting data about their speed connection through the xbox live, they surely know what they are talking. Don't worry about them.
So with developers making their games for current AND next-gen systems how can all this limitations not mess with the next-gen's game sales? I just don't see it and it's not the graphical upgrade of last time. I'm guessing it'll be more connected gaming experiences but to tell you the truth I've heard it echoed from not just me but many others I'm completely contempt with my gaming setup now.
What we have seen for the next-gen consoles is still behind PC graphic, even though the new consoles are the better platform (at least for ~2 years). I expect console games to get a lot better in maybe two years, when studios have developed the necessary skill sets.
Linus Bloomberg from Avalanche Studios:
“I think we need to accept that connectivity is becoming an integral part of our lives. I’m pretty sure people complained about new machinery requiring electricity to function too, back in the days. Hopefully this development will force internet service providers to shape up and provide cheaper and faster connections."
American Telecom Expert Susan Crawford:
"For 19 million Americans, many in rural areas, you can't get access to a high speed connection at any price, it's just not there. For a third of Americans, they don't subscribe often because it's too expensive. So the rich are getting gouged, the poor are very often left out.
...
This is a lot like the electrification story from the beginning of the 20th century. Initially electricity was viewed as a luxury. So when F.D.R. came in, 90 percent of farms didn't have electricity in America at the same time that kids in New York City were playing with electric toys."
Do we really want video games to be like the electric toys of the early 20th century?
the problem I see also is, that at least here in the US, the infrastructure simply isnt there for all this data yet. I run speed test on my IP, and continually score in the top 95-98%, yet at prime time hours I still cant watch you tube videos without all kinds of buffering happening.
@TC that's one of the great things about BC I almost never have to buffer videos on youtube (on my desktop at least, my phone is a completely differnet matter).
Well you don't need a high speed connection to play the games. The games are still being distributed on disc. YOu need your console to talk to the MS servers which requires little bandwidth.
Wireless data will take care of the data needs for rural areas eventually.
There is also satellite internet. Not going to work for online gaming, but work for email/browsing/etc.
People in rural areas don't have lots of stuff that people in the city have. IT's part of living in a rural area. They don't view this as all bad.
In response to Bloomberg's comment, "I’m pretty sure people complained about new machinery requiring electricity to function too, back in the days."
No they didn't. People absolutely loved it. Before electricity, doing the laundry used to be an all day multi-person affair. After el;ectricty, it became a push button operation that freed up hours of time for the homemaker.
You can't say anything close to that for an always connected console.
Microsoft says that you will NEED a 1.5Mbps connection to operate the XBone. That is something that even satellite cannot provide. My parents use satellite internet. They are capped at 768Kbps and if they go over their monthly data cap, they are forced down to 256Kbps. Their data cap is so low that all they can really do is check email and visit Facebook comfortably.
While mobile broadband might be better, it is often more expensive than an equivalent DSL connection. Often far more expensive.
Here is a wild idea: poor people should have higher priorities for themselves than to own the latest deluxe game console. It is an ongoing expense if you acquire new games regularly by any means other than gifts.
These are luxury goods. By definition you shouldn't be concerned with them if you don't have paying for necessities well in hand. Amazingly, a lot of people seem to forget this. Microsoft has set certain goals for their new platform. I find the complete portability of one's game library and saves very attractive. The idea of being able to check into a hotel room during an out of town job and log in to that room's Xbox One to quickly pick up where I left off in a game is a scenario I like more lugging around an entire console setup. But this comes at an inevitable price if all the parties involved are to be satisfied that their interests are reasonably protected.
There is a lot of whining about who cannot afford this or cannot get broadband where they live. Guess what? Those people are outside the target audience. This isn't some dire failing on their part but they do have to recognize not every product is going to be for them.
Why shouldn't video game be like the electric toys of the early 20th Century? They're all just luxury goods that became more accessible over time. Desires drive markets. One major reason some areas lack broadband options is the probable subscription rate isn't high enough to justify the buildout cost. Back in 1998 I was the entire person in my entire node to have DSL for almost a year because so few of my neighbors knew what it was or why they wanted it. The phone company wasn't going to launch their marketing blitz until enough of the area was equipped. But some regions when surveyed show very little interest. The residents of 20% of the homes may want broadband desperately but for whatever reason the remainder don't care. Those 20% aren't enough to pay off the initial buildout cost unless the subscription is priced out of their range.
"The Royal Society advances by funerals," is what the astronomers used to say.
They don't say you need 1 .5mbps connection. IT's just recommended. The recommendation is obviously for online play and various online services. IT isn't for talking to MS servers once a day.
And the original Xbox required broadband which no one on the moon or South Pole had 12 years ago which makes this all non-news.
Yes, they did. It's quite well documented. It was a transition just like any other. A lot of people had trouble wrapping their heads around the value of indoor plumbing when it was a new and strange thing. There was more than one account of a person buying a toilet without understanding it was useless without the plumbing to carry away the waste.
It may be hard for us to comprehend but there was a time when electrically driven machinery and other items were akin to magic for much of the population. It is reputed that President Benjamin Harrison and his wife, who lived in the White house when it was first wired, regarded electricity with suspicion of injury and had staff members operate light switches for them.
But as always, a new generation for who electricity had always been a part of their lives would set the standards of living in the years that followed. Consequently, it wasn't long before they had the situation where a home could become unlivable without power, as it had been designed with a constant supply in mind. I'm accustomed to showering daily but it wasn't that long ago bathing was considered a weekly event. Yes, people stank, and bought a lot more perfumes, goop to put in their hair, and other stuff, not for fashion but just to keep themselves from smelling and looking awful.
The first game console that requires a broadband connection creates controversy. Ten years later, it won't even raise an eyebrow. It will just be taken as a given.
That is simply not true. The original Xbox had a network port as standard and supported a number of innovative features using it but it was not required that the user had broadband service. Even LAN play worked fine on several games, most notably Halo, without Xbox Live or a connection to the outside world.
I never bothered with an XBL account on my Xbox because I had no interest in online multi-player. (The promised MMORPGs might have gotten my interest but none of them ever shipped for the first Xbox.) Yet my 100+ games all worked fine in single player and local multi-player modes.
The requirements of the Xbox One mark a change but they also bring new features. Complete account portability is something I don't think is getting the attention it deserves. You could potentially be a very active Xbox One user and never own the hardware or any physical copies of any software. This could lead to an interesting disconnect between revenue and installed base.
I will say one thing about this from personal experience. I grew up in a place where our ISP was frequently unreliable in terms of service, didn't provide us with the speeds we were paying for, and in general doing anything online was lag-ridden and prone to crashes or sudden connectivity problems. In some cases, our internet connection would be out for days at a time while we waited for a technician to come to our house, or for the cable company to send a repair team if it was a problem affecting the whole neighborhood.
What I took away from that was that you can never fully rely on a stable internet connection to be there for you. Even if I use Google docs for most of my work now (the cloud makes it too convenient when switching between multiple machines), I'll still make sure to keep copies of everything on portable drives, just in case. With this, all they're saying is that they don't really care about me or my particular circumstances. They don't care about the people who don't have their consoles connected to the internet and who don't want to connect their consoles to the internet.
“…the system will be the only multimedia system you will need in your home!”
“…the system will work with your television to offer a unique interface with what you watch!”
“…the system will be regionally-locked to ensure the best content is available!”
“…the platform dose much more than play games and will be your one-stop solution!”
“…the platform uses a unique interface that allows you to control the game as well as your media!”
… sound familiar? No these are not promotions from the launch of the Xbone –but are snippets from the hyperbole lavished on the disastrous launch of the ‘similarly looking’ CD-I platform, back in 1992! A little bit of history repeating!
As described by Wikipedia, “the Philips CD-i (Compact Disc Interactive) … an interactive multimedia CD player”. Belatedly launched in 1992, this system marked the collapse of the fourth generation of the consumer game sector – the consumer game sector having been overrun by ‘suits’ that tried to sell the idea of CD-I as the “big thing” for gaming and media. Sucking Sony, Magnavox, Goldstar, Panasonic, Commodore(CDTV), 3DO, and many others to follow the merry dance; the CD-I (even after a last ditch redesign) would be dumped in 1995, to much executive departures across the trade.
The CD-i marked only the collapse of itself. There was no industry wide crash at that time, when Nintendo and Sega were doing great business. Like the dot.com boom a few years later, a lot of companies thought CD-ROM was all by itself usher in a new age. In fact, it wouldn't really happen until the rest of the package reached a certain level of price and performance.
If you measure an era solely by its failures than there has never been any success int he video game business. After all, every SNES can be matched with a Jaguar if you ignore the actual numbers. In real life, the successes far exceeded the losses on the failures.
CD-i wasn't discontinued until 1998 and still continued as a kiosk system for several years after then. All in all, it was not a financial pit for Philips as they benefited from a lot of patents and uses of the underlying technology developed under the CD-i banner. (Why you include Sony is a mystery as they were not big losers in the CD-i venture. They co-developed much of the tech and thus had free access to many patents that were applied in the Playstation.)
Microsoft has sold something like 76 million 360s. They have something like 46 million Xbox live accounts.
That's a huge, huge difference. Obviously they won't lost all 30 million people who have a 360 and not a live account, but I have to think there's a reason those people don't. And that isn't going to change.
Good point. I have 2 things to add to this number:
1) there are people who use multiple accounts on 1 Xbox - in my family for example, so the ratio could be even worse
2) there are millions of people who had to replace the Xbox360s due to poor quality (RROD etc.) so the numbers might not be that worse at all.
This is more of an insult to the many countries who are too poor to afford online anything. That's what? 5 billion human beings? Am I the only one who thinks of the world market? I know a guy who saved up for months to buy a GTX 550 in Brazil. People outside of America and Japan buy games too!
An absurd claim. Is the existence of Ferraris an insult to those who cannot afford them? Oh well, lets only have boring little econo-boxes, lest some take offense.
These are luxury goods. That means only an affluent audience can afford them, including in developed nations. This means their potential audience is only about 200 million homes in the US, Europe, and Asia. I guess they might as well just give up with such a limited market.
Eric, console games that are targeting having possible 1 billion consumers are not a new fangle luxury good.
( Yes 1 billion is microsofts own words about the audience for this gen of consoles)
You continue to misconstrue what this tech is about and what demographic it attempts to market to.
Game consoles have been around for almost 40 years. They are not ferraris, they are a simple $300-400 consumer electronic device.
@Eric
the existence of HUMVs is an insult to underdeveloped countries who are suffering the consequences of global warming, despite having no carbon footprint.
MS forgot they are in entertainment with Xbox. People can stop paying for that tomorrow. Most games are already not worth money due to their gameplay... Many people will wait and see with next gen.
meh. Buying a Xbox One is completely out of question for me, and I will actively convince my friends not to buy it. Every single time I give the bigger names a finger, they bite my hand and force me up against a wall.
The Nintendo Wii being enormously successful and everyone else copies the gimmick? Sure.
The Xbox One being enormously successful and everyone else copies their Kinect features and general policies? Nope, no, not even going to risk this one, no thanks, nein, bye. No.
Additionally, the assumption that an internet connection is available or even desired at all times is ridiculous.
I can play my STEAM games offline with no time restriction. It's called offline mode.
And if I want to add another computer, I do have to log on and install the software, but once that computer is authorized -- one system at a time -- I have no time restrictions on that comp. 1 hour blows...
As long as the computer is authorized to play the games, it does not need a connection; now if your game is multiplayer, that's an obvious difference.
With STEAM, when I buy a game for my PC, if there's a Mac version available, I get that to for my MacBook Pro; and in the future the same applies to Linux.
And you can buy games at retail that use STEAM as the DRM. This makes up the lion share of my game collection, since I like the box. And even when that's not the case in rare situations, I have no data cap. 50 gigs would bite..
Steam has been working perfectly fine in offline mode for 3 months straight now.
The Xbox One would have been completely useless to me in that case. Thanks god my Wii U works fine even completely cut off the internet.
The last time i let BB go, i just put steam in offline mode which seems to work untill you restart your system.
IMO The good point of steam isn't its online, its the moderate to dirt cheap prices. You will not likely get that good steam feature on Xbone.
Oops i didn't realise so many posts belowe the 1st were replies.. They make my post a bit redundant.
I love the xbox 360. I even worked on the development of the kinect for 8 months, but that was by choice. If I HAVE TO let microsoft do a system sweep of my Xbone once a day, then I am just not going to own an Xbone.
That doesn't help the sales this year though.
Graphics will be largely enough
Don't wanna spend 1000€ in graphic card XD
Linus Bloomberg from Avalanche Studios:
“I think we need to accept that connectivity is becoming an integral part of our lives. I’m pretty sure people complained about new machinery requiring electricity to function too, back in the days. Hopefully this development will force internet service providers to shape up and provide cheaper and faster connections."
American Telecom Expert Susan Crawford:
"For 19 million Americans, many in rural areas, you can't get access to a high speed connection at any price, it's just not there. For a third of Americans, they don't subscribe often because it's too expensive. So the rich are getting gouged, the poor are very often left out.
...
This is a lot like the electrification story from the beginning of the 20th century. Initially electricity was viewed as a luxury. So when F.D.R. came in, 90 percent of farms didn't have electricity in America at the same time that kids in New York City were playing with electric toys."
Do we really want video games to be like the electric toys of the early 20th century?
The "tubes" simply arent big enough.
Wireless data will take care of the data needs for rural areas eventually.
There is also satellite internet. Not going to work for online gaming, but work for email/browsing/etc.
People in rural areas don't have lots of stuff that people in the city have. IT's part of living in a rural area. They don't view this as all bad.
No they didn't. People absolutely loved it. Before electricity, doing the laundry used to be an all day multi-person affair. After el;ectricty, it became a push button operation that freed up hours of time for the homemaker.
You can't say anything close to that for an always connected console.
Microsoft says that you will NEED a 1.5Mbps connection to operate the XBone. That is something that even satellite cannot provide. My parents use satellite internet. They are capped at 768Kbps and if they go over their monthly data cap, they are forced down to 256Kbps. Their data cap is so low that all they can really do is check email and visit Facebook comfortably.
While mobile broadband might be better, it is often more expensive than an equivalent DSL connection. Often far more expensive.
These are luxury goods. By definition you shouldn't be concerned with them if you don't have paying for necessities well in hand. Amazingly, a lot of people seem to forget this. Microsoft has set certain goals for their new platform. I find the complete portability of one's game library and saves very attractive. The idea of being able to check into a hotel room during an out of town job and log in to that room's Xbox One to quickly pick up where I left off in a game is a scenario I like more lugging around an entire console setup. But this comes at an inevitable price if all the parties involved are to be satisfied that their interests are reasonably protected.
There is a lot of whining about who cannot afford this or cannot get broadband where they live. Guess what? Those people are outside the target audience. This isn't some dire failing on their part but they do have to recognize not every product is going to be for them.
Why shouldn't video game be like the electric toys of the early 20th Century? They're all just luxury goods that became more accessible over time. Desires drive markets. One major reason some areas lack broadband options is the probable subscription rate isn't high enough to justify the buildout cost. Back in 1998 I was the entire person in my entire node to have DSL for almost a year because so few of my neighbors knew what it was or why they wanted it. The phone company wasn't going to launch their marketing blitz until enough of the area was equipped. But some regions when surveyed show very little interest. The residents of 20% of the homes may want broadband desperately but for whatever reason the remainder don't care. Those 20% aren't enough to pay off the initial buildout cost unless the subscription is priced out of their range.
"The Royal Society advances by funerals," is what the astronomers used to say.
They don't say you need 1 .5mbps connection. IT's just recommended. The recommendation is obviously for online play and various online services. IT isn't for talking to MS servers once a day.
And the original Xbox required broadband which no one on the moon or South Pole had 12 years ago which makes this all non-news.
Yes, they did. It's quite well documented. It was a transition just like any other. A lot of people had trouble wrapping their heads around the value of indoor plumbing when it was a new and strange thing. There was more than one account of a person buying a toilet without understanding it was useless without the plumbing to carry away the waste.
It may be hard for us to comprehend but there was a time when electrically driven machinery and other items were akin to magic for much of the population. It is reputed that President Benjamin Harrison and his wife, who lived in the White house when it was first wired, regarded electricity with suspicion of injury and had staff members operate light switches for them.
But as always, a new generation for who electricity had always been a part of their lives would set the standards of living in the years that followed. Consequently, it wasn't long before they had the situation where a home could become unlivable without power, as it had been designed with a constant supply in mind. I'm accustomed to showering daily but it wasn't that long ago bathing was considered a weekly event. Yes, people stank, and bought a lot more perfumes, goop to put in their hair, and other stuff, not for fashion but just to keep themselves from smelling and looking awful.
The first game console that requires a broadband connection creates controversy. Ten years later, it won't even raise an eyebrow. It will just be taken as a given.
That is simply not true. The original Xbox had a network port as standard and supported a number of innovative features using it but it was not required that the user had broadband service. Even LAN play worked fine on several games, most notably Halo, without Xbox Live or a connection to the outside world.
I never bothered with an XBL account on my Xbox because I had no interest in online multi-player. (The promised MMORPGs might have gotten my interest but none of them ever shipped for the first Xbox.) Yet my 100+ games all worked fine in single player and local multi-player modes.
The requirements of the Xbox One mark a change but they also bring new features. Complete account portability is something I don't think is getting the attention it deserves. You could potentially be a very active Xbox One user and never own the hardware or any physical copies of any software. This could lead to an interesting disconnect between revenue and installed base.
What I took away from that was that you can never fully rely on a stable internet connection to be there for you. Even if I use Google docs for most of my work now (the cloud makes it too convenient when switching between multiple machines), I'll still make sure to keep copies of everything on portable drives, just in case. With this, all they're saying is that they don't really care about me or my particular circumstances. They don't care about the people who don't have their consoles connected to the internet and who don't want to connect their consoles to the internet.
“…the system will work with your television to offer a unique interface with what you watch!”
“…the system will be regionally-locked to ensure the best content is available!”
“…the platform dose much more than play games and will be your one-stop solution!”
“…the platform uses a unique interface that allows you to control the game as well as your media!”
… sound familiar? No these are not promotions from the launch of the Xbone –but are snippets from the hyperbole lavished on the disastrous launch of the ‘similarly looking’ CD-I platform, back in 1992! A little bit of history repeating!
As described by Wikipedia, “the Philips CD-i (Compact Disc Interactive) … an interactive multimedia CD player”. Belatedly launched in 1992, this system marked the collapse of the fourth generation of the consumer game sector – the consumer game sector having been overrun by ‘suits’ that tried to sell the idea of CD-I as the “big thing” for gaming and media. Sucking Sony, Magnavox, Goldstar, Panasonic, Commodore(CDTV), 3DO, and many others to follow the merry dance; the CD-I (even after a last ditch redesign) would be dumped in 1995, to much executive departures across the trade.
If you measure an era solely by its failures than there has never been any success int he video game business. After all, every SNES can be matched with a Jaguar if you ignore the actual numbers. In real life, the successes far exceeded the losses on the failures.
CD-i wasn't discontinued until 1998 and still continued as a kiosk system for several years after then. All in all, it was not a financial pit for Philips as they benefited from a lot of patents and uses of the underlying technology developed under the CD-i banner. (Why you include Sony is a mystery as they were not big losers in the CD-i venture. They co-developed much of the tech and thus had free access to many patents that were applied in the Playstation.)
Full disclosure: My xbox is dead due to RROD. I still use my PS3.
That's a huge, huge difference. Obviously they won't lost all 30 million people who have a 360 and not a live account, but I have to think there's a reason those people don't. And that isn't going to change.
1) there are people who use multiple accounts on 1 Xbox - in my family for example, so the ratio could be even worse
2) there are millions of people who had to replace the Xbox360s due to poor quality (RROD etc.) so the numbers might not be that worse at all.
These are luxury goods. That means only an affluent audience can afford them, including in developed nations. This means their potential audience is only about 200 million homes in the US, Europe, and Asia. I guess they might as well just give up with such a limited market.
( Yes 1 billion is microsofts own words about the audience for this gen of consoles)
You continue to misconstrue what this tech is about and what demographic it attempts to market to.
Game consoles have been around for almost 40 years. They are not ferraris, they are a simple $300-400 consumer electronic device.
the existence of HUMVs is an insult to underdeveloped countries who are suffering the consequences of global warming, despite having no carbon footprint.
The Nintendo Wii being enormously successful and everyone else copies the gimmick? Sure.
The Xbox One being enormously successful and everyone else copies their Kinect features and general policies? Nope, no, not even going to risk this one, no thanks, nein, bye. No.
But EA's didn't when Simcity launched.
What's it going to be like when Halo 5 comes out? Will their servers be able to hold? I am more worried about them than myself.
At this point, the only forseeable reason I could find to buy an Xbox One is once it's possible to mod it to get rid of such draconian requirements.
I go out of my way to support people who I think are worth the money wherever I can, and not just in games. But this is some serious bullcrap.
OMG so cool!!!