Gyroscope integration in Xbox controllers offers new possibilities for enhancing gaming experiences, particularly in first-person shooter (FPS) games. To investigate its potential, we conducted an empirical study with 11 participants, comparing aim precision and reaction times across three input methods: a computer mouse, a standard Xbox controller, and a gyroscope-enabled controller. Participants completed an aim training task, revealing the mouse as the most accurate device, followed by the standard controller. Interestingly, the gyroscope-enabled controller showed reduced accuracy and slower reaction times, attributed to challenges in sensitivity and control. Participant feedback highlighted areas for improvement, including refined sensitivity settings, control stability, and software design. These findings underscore the need for design innovations, such as camera rotation limits and optimized sensitivity thresholds, to make gyroscope-enabled controllers more competitive. Future work should consider diverse gamer profiles and extended evaluation contexts to better understand the role of gyroscopes in gaming interfaces.
Games console devices have been designed to be an entertainment system. However, the 8th generation games console have new features that can support criminal activities and investigators need to be aware of them. This paper highlights the forensics value of the Microsoft game console Xbox One, the latest version of their Xbox series. The Xbox One game console provides many features including web browsing, social networking, and chat functionality. From a forensic perspective, all those features will be a place of interest in forensic examinations. However, the available published literature focused on examining the physical hard drive artefacts, which are encrypted and cannot provide deep analysis of the user's usage of the console. In this paper, we carried out an investigation of the Xbox One games console by using two approaches: a physical investigation of the hard drive to identify the valuable file timestamp information and logical examination via the graphical user interface. Furthermore, this paper identifies potential valuable forensic data sources within the Xbox One and provides best practices guidance for collecting data in a forensically sound manner.
Move affects ~20% of the gaming division, which will refocus on its biggest franchises
Individual differences in vibrotactile perception underscore the growing importance of personalization as haptic feedback becomes more prevalent in interactive systems. We propose Vibrotactile Preference Learning (VPL), a system that captures user-specific preference spaces over vibrotactile parameters via Gaussian-process-based uncertainty-aware preference learning. VPL uses an expected information gain-based acquisition strategy to guide query selection over 40 rounds of pairwise comparisons of overall user preference, augmented with user-reported uncertainty, enabling efficient exploration of the parameter space. We evaluate VPL in a user study (N = 13) using the vibrotactile feedback from a Microsoft Xbox controller, showing that it efficiently learns individualized preferences while maintaining comfortable, low-workload user interactions. These results highlight the potential of VPL for scalable personalization of vibrotactile experiences.
The popularity of electronic games has grown steadily in recent years, attracting a broad audience across age groups. With this growth comes a large volume of related data, prompting efforts like the PlayMyData to compile and share structured datasets for academic use. This study utilizes such a dataset to compare user review ratings across four current-generation gaming systems: Nintendo, Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. Statistical methods, including analysis of variance (ANOVA), were applied to identify differences in average scores among these platforms. The findings indicate that PC titles tend to receive the most favorable user feedback, followed by Xbox and PlayStation, while Nintendo games showed the lowest average ratings. These patterns suggest that the platform on which a game is released may influence how players evaluate their experience. Such results may be valuable to developers and industry stakeholders in making informed decisions about future investments and development priorities.
Achieving human-AI alignment in complex multi-agent games is crucial for creating trustworthy AI agents that enhance gameplay. We propose a method to evaluate this alignment using an interpretable task-sets framework, focusing on high-level behavioral tasks instead of low-level policies. Our approach has three components. First, we analyze extensive human gameplay data from Xbox's Bleeding Edge (100K+ games), uncovering behavioral patterns in a complex task space. This task space serves as a basis set for a behavior manifold capturing interpretable axes: fight-flight, explore-exploit, and solo-multi-agent. Second, we train an AI agent to play Bleeding Edge using a Generative Pretrained Causal Transformer and measure its behavior. Third, we project human and AI gameplay to the proposed behavior manifold to compare and contrast. This allows us to interpret differences in policy as higher-level behavioral concepts, e.g., we find that while human players exhibit variability in fight-flight and explore-exploit behavior, AI players tend towards uniformity. Furthermore, AI agents predominantly engage in solo play, while humans often engage in cooperative and competitive multi-agent patter
We focus on online second price auctions, where bids are made sequentially, and the winning bidder pays the maximum of the second-highest bid and a seller specified starting price. For many such auctions, the seller does not see all the bids or the total number of bidders accessing the auction, and only observes the current selling prices throughout the course of the auction. We develop a novel semi-parametric approach to estimate the underlying consumer valuation distribution based on this data. Previous semi-parametric or non-parametric approaches in the literature only use the final selling price and assume knowledge of the total number of bidders. The resulting estimate, in particular, can be used by the seller to compute the optimal profit-maximizing price for the product. Our approach is free of tuning parameters, and we demonstrate its computational and statistical efficiency in a variety of simulation settings, and also on an Xbox 7-day auction dataset on eBay.
Cloud gaming, wherein game graphics is rendered in the cloud and streamed back to the user as real-time video, expands the gaming market to billions of users who do not have gaming consoles or high-power graphics PCs. Companies like Nvidia, Amazon, Sony and Microsoft are investing in building cloud gaming platforms to tap this large unserved market. However, cloud gaming requires the user to have high bandwidth and stable network connectivity - whereas a typical console game needs about 100-200 kbps, a cloud game demands minimum 10-20 Mbps. This makes the Internet Service Provider (ISP) a key player in ensuring the end-user's good gaming experience. In this paper we develop a method to detect Nvidia's GeForce NOW cloud gaming sessions over their network infrastructure, and measure associated user experience. In particular, we envision ISPs taking advantage of our method to provision network capacity at the right time and in the right place to support growth in cloud gaming at the right experience level; as well as identify the role of contextual factors such as user setup (browser vs app) and connectivity type (wired vs wireless) in performance degradation. We first present a detai
Being predominant in digital entertainment for decades, video games have been recognized as valuable software artifacts by the software engineering (SE) community just recently. Such an acknowledgment has unveiled several research opportunities, spanning from empirical studies to the application of AI techniques for classification tasks. In this respect, several curated game datasets have been disclosed for research purposes even though the collected data are insufficient to support the application of advanced models or to enable interdisciplinary studies. Moreover, the majority of those are limited to PC games, thus excluding notorious gaming platforms, e.g., PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo. In this paper, we propose PlayMyData, a curated dataset composed of 99,864 multi-platform games gathered by IGDB website. By exploiting a dedicated API, we collect relevant metadata for each game, e.g., description, genre, rating, gameplay video URLs, and screenshots. Furthermore, we enrich PlayMyData with the timing needed to complete each game by mining the HLTB website. To the best of our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive dataset in the domain that can be used to support different a
Purpose: To evaluate manual and automatic registration times as well as accuracy with augmented reality during alignment of a holographic 3-dimensional (3D) model onto the real-world environment. Method: 18 participants in various stages of clinical training across two academic centers registered a 3D CT phantom model onto a CT grid using the HoloLens 2 augmented reality headset 3 consecutive times. Registration times and accuracy were compared among different registration methods (hand gesture, Xbox controller, and automatic registration), levels of clinical experience, and consecutive attempts. Registration times were also compared with prior HoloLens 1 data. Results: Mean aggregate manual registration times were 27.7, 24.3, and 72.8 seconds for one-handed gesture, two-handed gesture, and Xbox controller, respectively; mean automatic registration time was 5.3s (ANOVA p<0.0001). No significant difference in registration times was found among attendings, residents and fellows, and medical students (p>0.05). Significant improvements in registration times were detected across consecutive attempts using hand gestures (p<0.01). Compared with previously reported HoloLens 1 expe
In recent years the game industry has had a huge growth. We've seen new game consoles, great looking games and an increase in the number of people playing them. We are presently in the seventh generation of video games which focuses on consoles released since 2004. For home consoles,the seventh generation began on November 22, 2005 with the release of Xbox 360 and continued with the release of PlayStation 3 on November 11, 2006, and Wii on November 19, 2006. The current generation is having a console battle between Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, and Sony's PlayStation 3.The appearance of the three new consoles not only offers various purchase choices, but also greatly affects economy and culture.
The video game industry is larger than both the film and music industries combined. Recommender systems for video games have received relatively scant academic attention, despite the uniqueness of the medium and its data. In this paper, we introduce a graph-based recommender system that makes use of interactivity, arguably the most significant feature of video gaming. We show that the use of implicit data that tracks user-game interactions and levels of attainment (e.g. Sony Playstation Trophies, Microsoft Xbox Achievements) has high predictive value when making recommendations. Furthermore, we argue that the characteristics of the video gaming hobby (low cost, high duration, socially relevant) make clear the necessity of personalized, individual recommendations that can incorporate social networking information. We demonstrate the natural suitability of graph-query based recommendation for this purpose.
Computational Intelligence (CI) in computer games plays an important role that could simulate various aspects of real-life problems. CI in real-time decision-making games can provide a platform for the examination of tree search algorithms. In this paper, we present a rehabilitation serious game (ReHabgame) in which the Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) algorithm is utilized. The game is designed to combat the physical impairment of post-stroke/brain injury casualties in order to improve upper limb movement. Through the process of ReHabgame the player chooses paths via upper limb according to his/her movement ability to reach virtual goal objects. The system adjusts the difficulty level of the game based on the player's quality of activity through MCTS. It learns from the movements made by a player and generates further subsequent objects for collection. The system collects orientation, muscle and joint activity data and utilizes them to make decisions. Players data are collected through Kinect Xbox One and Myo Armband. The results show the effectiveness of the MCTS in the ReHabgame that progresses from highly achievable paths to the less achievable ones, thus configuring and personal
Hand gesture is a new and promising interface for locomotion in virtual environments. While several previous studies have proposed different hand gestures for virtual locomotion, little is known about their differences in terms of performance and user preference in virtual locomotion tasks. In the present paper, we presented three different hand gesture interfaces and their algorithms for locomotion, which are called the Finger Distance gesture, the Finger Number gesture and the Finger Tapping gesture. These gestures were inspired by previous studies of gesture-based locomotion interfaces and are typical gestures that people are familiar with in their daily lives. Implementing these hand gesture interfaces in the present study enabled us to systematically compare the differences between these gestures. In addition, to compare the usability of these gestures to locomotion interfaces using gamepads, we also designed and implemented a gamepad interface based on the Xbox One controller. We conducted empirical studies to compare these four interfaces through two virtual locomotion tasks. A desktop setup was used instead of sharing a head-mounted display among participants due to the con
The only acceptable form of polling in the multi-billion dollar survey research field utilizes representative samples. We argue that with proper statistical adjustment, non-representative polling can provide accurate predictions, and often in a much more timely and cost-effective fashion. We demonstrate this by applying multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP) to a 2012 election survey on the Xbox gaming platform. Not only do the transformed top-line projections from this data closely trend standard indicators, but we use the unique nature of the data's size and panel to answer a meaningful political puzzle. We find that reported swings in public opinion polls are generally not due to actual shifts in vote intention, but rather are the result of temporary periods of relatively low response rates among supporters of the reportedly slumping candidate. This work shows great promise for using non-representative polling to measure public opinion and the first product of this new polling technique raises the possibility that decades of large, reported swings in public opinion-including the perennial "convention bounce"-are mostly artifacts of sampling bias.
The bane of one-class collaborative filtering is interpreting and modelling the latent signal from the missing class. In this paper we present a novel Bayesian generative model for implicit collaborative filtering. It forms a core component of the Xbox Live architecture, and unlike previous approaches, delineates the odds of a user disliking an item from simply not considering it. The latent signal is treated as an unobserved random graph connecting users with items they might have encountered. We demonstrate how large-scale distributed learning can be achieved through a combination of stochastic gradient descent and mean field variational inference over random graph samples. A fine-grained comparison is done against a state of the art baseline on real world data.