• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Xbox Snap feature unlikely to ever return

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I might be wrong, but wasnt Kinect needed to Snap? I thought it was.

Didn't understand why I needed Kinect hooked up to snap a cable tv feed. Has nothing to do with the camera.
 

01011001

Banned
I might be wrong, but wasnt Kinect needed to Snap? I thought it was.

at first yes. the original version of the dashboard was completely designed with Kinect in mind, but a few months after launch they started to implement controller shortcuts to do it all.

@topic: Snap was a useless feature. I only ever used it to play music because the OS didn't yet have the feature to play music in the background... so this was the only convenient way to do it.
so while grinding in Destiny 1 I had my MP3 player snapped to the side.

for anything else IMO it's useless, especially since the XBox OS can multitask, so if you really wanna have an app ready for some reason (like maybe looking up a playtrhough) you can just press Home and quickly switch between the web browser and the game within a second.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
at first yes. the original version of the dashboard was completely designed with Kinect in mind, but a few months after launch they started to implement controller shortcuts to do it all.

@topic: Snap was a useless feature. I only ever used it to play music because the OS didn't yet have the feature to play music in the background... so this was the only convenient way to do it.
so while grinding in Destiny 1 I had my MP3 player snapped to the side.

for anything else IMO it's useless, especially since the XBox OS can multitask, so if you really wanna have an app ready for some reason (like maybe looking up a playtrhough) you can just press Home and quickly switch between the web browser and the game within a second.
Ah no wonder. Had it at launch and Kinect was hooked up the whole time. Didn't realize they did snap shortcuts later.
 

01011001

Banned
Ah no wonder. Had it at launch and Kinect was hooked up the whole time. Didn't realize they did snap shortcuts later.

yeah, it was like double tapping home and then a sidebar came up with apps you can snap or some shit, I can't fully remember how it worked in detail, but something along those lines.

this was also before they brought back the Xbox guide lol. back then if you pressed home you would go all the way to the dashboard home screen and your game would be in the center in a smaller window
 
Last edited:

Aenima

Member
Sony hiding the web browser annoys me.

Especially because I think it's to make sure cloud gaming sites don't work. (I'd love to be proven wrong and have them actually make a browser app we can launch but until then, I'm going with this theory)

I just want to be able to watch porn every once in a while on my PS5 you fucks.
Thers a workaround. Send a message to yourself with the www.google.com url. Then you just have to click on the url and search anything u want.

And since this thread is about the snap feauture, you can actually snap the browser to one of the sides. Now you can read gaf and play a game. Usefull to follow guides or video tutorials.

0AZzYNu.jpg


I never use it, cuz i use my tablet for that stuff, but its a cool feauture.
 
Last edited:

LRKD

Member
I got my xbox one after they removed snap, I was pissed cuz I didn't know it was already gone :messenger_tears_of_joy:. I really wanted to make use of it. I really miss old tvs just having pip mode built in. I'd really love to see it added back in, but figures that if they'd remove it, they would be keen on adding it back in.
 

Drew1440

Member
I've done it a few times on PC where I run the game In windowed mode and have a podcast or a video in the corner, I can see the appeal of doing it on a console.
Some TVs do support PIP but it's fiddly and limited in what you can PIP, my Bravia only let's me PIP with an app, you can't do it with another HDMI source or using the internal DVB tuner.
 
Snap had them having to reserve 10% of the GPU for a feature that barely anyone used.

It never really made sense from an overall resources perspective. In a console where the hardware is fixed and every processor cycle of performance is invaluable to game developers, you don't want to be carving off portions of your available hardware resources from games; you know, the primary thing the console is supposed to do.
 
Top Bottom