[PA Comic] Wednesday, June 12, 2013 - Aftermath

13»

Posts

  • alternatoralternator Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    Am I wildly misinformed or are you exaggerating? My impression was that it's a quick handshake and you can go about your business for 24 hours.

    IE: Something every 360 plugged into the internet already manages to do without breaking the Live servers.


    I mean, that still sounds dumb, but not because Microsoft's servers aren't going to be able to handle it.

    It's a single point of failure, and certainly auth servers going down can and does happen for any number of reasons - MS will have backups no doubt as they have a huge amount riding on those servers working from day zero.
    But then Diablo 3 had it's issues after forcing always online, and Sim City also had its issues after also forcing online, two recent examples... It isn't a good look.

    But at the end of the day it is DRM that has no benefit to you the user, and one that also has the very real potential to actually prevent you playing your legitimately purchased games. (even if the auth servers are rock solid, that doesn't mean everyones internet connection is).

    What I really want to know though is; will the XBone have a Red Ring light up when it can't connect to the server?

    alternator on
  • Mr_GrinchMr_Grinch Registered User regular
    SkeleVader wrote: »
    SkeleVader wrote: »
    I would much rather put up with 24 hour checkins and be able to freely use my licensed games on any Xbone (along with up to 10 family members) than have to cling to a disc based game.

    I guess you missed the part where you can download games on the PS3 already and continue to do so on the PS4...

    I guess you missed the part where I said "freely use". As in any Xbox One, not just the one you bought the game on. Also your family can play all of your games whether you are signed in or not, again on any Xbox One.

    Weirdly I can log in to a friend's PS3 and download any games I've bought online (admittedly not disc based, but then I could just bring the disc!) and play them on their PS3.

    Are there limitations to this?

    Steam: Sir_Grinch
    PSN: SirGrinchX
    Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor Registered User regular

    alternator wrote: »
    Am I wildly misinformed or are you exaggerating? My impression was that it's a quick handshake and you can go about your business for 24 hours.

    IE: Something every 360 plugged into the internet already manages to do without breaking the Live servers.


    I mean, that still sounds dumb, but not because Microsoft's servers aren't going to be able to handle it.

    It's a single point of failure, and certainly auth servers going down can and does happen for any number of reasons - MS will have backups no doubt as they have a huge amount riding on those servers working from day zero.
    But then Diablo 3 had it's issues after forcing always online, and Sim City also had its issues after also forcing online, two recent examples... It isn't a good look.

    But at the end of the day it is DRM that has no benefit to you the user, and one that also has the very real potential to actually prevent you playing your legitimately purchased games. (even if the auth servers are rock solid, that doesn't mean everyones internet connection is).

    What I really want to know though is; will the XBone have a Red Ring light up when it can't connect to the server?
    Again: I agree that it's a bad idea, but it feels inaccurate to compare it to the colossal fuck ups of SimCity and D3, because those were infrastructure failures caused by placing an untested load on unproven hardware. Such is not the case here. - It's still a bad idea - but not because the Live servers can't handle it.

    Didn't Bioshock 1 used to call home every 30 days and Ubi patched it out because it was stupid? That would be a comparable scenario (and an ideal resolution).

    Jortalus wrote: »
    Remember when the Playstation Network was down for a month? It was a fiasco, but at least I could still play my games offline. If the same thing were to happen to Microsoft, the Xbox One would be useless for a month

    I would have much less of a problem with this if it were once a month (or never. Never seems to be working fine as of now). So I really hope something extraordinary like this happens right up front. If some script kids managed to sustain a DDOS on Live for 24+ hours, for example, I can't see Microsoft resisting customer demands to adjust their arbitrary window.

  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    Framling wrote: »
    There's the used games thing, but I don't sell my games and I very rarely buy used. There's the required internet connection thing, but I already have always-on internet access, and have for like... twelve years. There's the Kinect thing, but I know how to cover up a thing, or plug something into a power strip if I'm feeling paranoid. And the price difference, amortized over six or seven years, comes out to about a buck and a quarter, maybe a buck thirty-five per month. (To be fair, I'll probably also get some kind of discount on the thing when I buy it, because I work here.)

    have you played any of EA's or Ubisoft's recent games that have required a working internet connection? ever encounter problems where either EA's or Ubi's servers were down/over capacity? ever experience general internet connectivity problems (DNSes are down, parts of the backbone randomly offline, that sort of thing)? The experience with EA's Origin alone has been pretty bad.

    now consider that Microsoft is asking people to drop $500 on a system that, based on the above, isn't even guaranteed to work as it should. anyone who has an Xbone is at the mercy of a few points of failure.

    add on to that the implicit ignoring of possible customers who are in the armed forces abroad, in more rural areas where internet isn't so connected, etc. it's kind of a "fuck you" to those consumers.

    for you, it sounds like the One will be an ok experience, assuming everything works as it should. for the general populace, it's almost like Microsoft is willingly putting its head in the sand. it's really similar to the corporate-think on Windows 8's touch interface and removing the Start button: it's a feature only Microsoft thinks everyone wants, but in reality no one wants it.
    Yeah, none of these things really effect me, but I don't like the way it's going. I do have an Internet connection most of the time, but I'm moving house in two months and probably won't have Internet for a few weeks, what then? Because the console that doesnt actually have a reason to go online does.

    And with used games, they're my property, I think I've traded in one game in ten years, but at the same time, I don't want someone to tell me I can't do what I want with my property. I'm not that big into steam for that reason, I don't mind it for low cost dlc and cheap steam sale games but if I'm dropping a reasonable amount of money or something I want that right.

  • syndalissyndalis Getting Classy On the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Products, Transition Team regular
    If some script kids managed to sustain a DDOS on Live for 24+ hours, for example, I can't see Microsoft resisting customer demands to adjust their arbitrary window.

    Because of the infrastructure XBL is sitting on, and the ability to spawn new servers as needed out of their Azure "cloud", this is pretty much an impossible statement without taking the whole of Azure down, and that would be an act way beyond impacting videogames, and whomever pulled that rabbit out of their hat will find themselves will the full weight of corporate and government interests' boot on their throat.

    Of course, when Steam launched there was no offline mode, and the needs of the consumer caused them to change their model. MS's DRM is probably very much in flux at the moment.

    SW-4158-3990-6116
    Let's play Mario Kart or something...
  • ArbitraryDescriptorArbitraryDescriptor Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    Re: Azure
    Well that's reassuring at least. Though justifiably implacable faith in their own system probably doesn't help deter them from their current course. Hopefully they'll consider the possibility of the backlash scaring away exclusives; as that might give them pause.

    ArbitraryDescriptor on
  • Chris FOMChris FOM Registered User regular
    Two years ago PSN went down for 2 entire months. Despite this, I was able to play all my single player PS3 games and only got locked out of multiplayer. The Xbone would be bricked for the duration. I simply have little faith in any system with a single point of failure.

  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    I don't want to claim I know how it's going to work.

    But I imagine it's the xbox calling home one place, and when you start up you will log in (where your credit card information is store which was the main reason they took it down) so the bit that the likely hood of both being down would be difficult.

  • DarkewolfeDarkewolfe Registered User regular
    Chris FOM wrote: »
    Two years ago PSN went down for 2 entire months. Despite this, I was able to play all my single player PS3 games and only got locked out of multiplayer. The Xbone would be bricked for the duration. I simply have little faith in any system with a single point of failure.

    I like this argument. "Two years ago, Sony demonstrated that they're just light years behind Microsoft in network infrastructure. Therefore I'm going to avoid the Microsoft product and buy the Sony one."

    What is this I don't even.
  • fightinfilipinofightinfilipino Angry as Hell #BLMRegistered User regular
    Darkewolfe wrote: »
    Chris FOM wrote: »
    Two years ago PSN went down for 2 entire months. Despite this, I was able to play all my single player PS3 games and only got locked out of multiplayer. The Xbone would be bricked for the duration. I simply have little faith in any system with a single point of failure.

    I like this argument. "Two years ago, Sony demonstrated that they're just light years behind Microsoft in network infrastructure. Therefore I'm going to avoid the Microsoft product and buy the Sony one."

    that's not the argument. the argument is that no network is infallible, there will inevitably be failures, and paying $500 for a system that can brick at a moment's notice really isn't palatable.

    ffNewSig.png
    steam | Dokkan: 868846562
  • GoslingGosling Looking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, Probably Watertown, WIRegistered User regular
    Let's put it this way.

    My local provider is Charter. The connection provided by Charter is run by drunken monkeys. The connection has a tendency to go out for large chunks of town every so often. People around here would dump them in a heartbeat if it wasn't for that whole lack-of-local-competition thing those companies like to do. And it's not just the Internet; you lose the cable and the phone too sometimes.

    This is not an environment in which I want to bring a console that must check into the Internet every day.

    I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
  • SecretagentmanSecretagentman Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    Mr_Grinch wrote: »
    SkeleVader wrote: »
    SkeleVader wrote: »
    I would much rather put up with 24 hour checkins and be able to freely use my licensed games on any Xbone (along with up to 10 family members) than have to cling to a disc based game.

    I guess you missed the part where you can download games on the PS3 already and continue to do so on the PS4...

    I guess you missed the part where I said "freely use". As in any Xbox One, not just the one you bought the game on. Also your family can play all of your games whether you are signed in or not, again on any Xbox One.

    Weirdly I can log in to a friend's PS3 and download any games I've bought online (admittedly not disc based, but then I could just bring the disc!) and play them on their PS3.

    Are there limitations to this?

    IIRC, you are limited to installing stuff you bought from PSN on 2 separate PS3s (it used to be 5 but changed to the lower number at some point in the last few years, I think). I'm not sure exactly how the licensing works (can I install on PS3 A, then PS3 B, then delete from PS3 A and install on PS3 C?), but I have never had an issue with that limitation.

    Secretagentman on
    PSN: matter_ic
    Professional forum lurker
  • SwainwalkerSwainwalker Registered User regular
    alternator wrote: »
    Am I wildly misinformed or are you exaggerating? My impression was that it's a quick handshake and you can go about your business for 24 hours.

    IE: Something every 360 plugged into the internet already manages to do without breaking the Live servers.


    I mean, that still sounds dumb, but not because Microsoft's servers aren't going to be able to handle it.

    It's a single point of failure, and certainly auth servers going down can and does happen for any number of reasons - MS will have backups no doubt as they have a huge amount riding on those servers working from day zero.
    But then Diablo 3 had it's issues after forcing always online, and Sim City also had its issues after also forcing online, two recent examples... It isn't a good look.

    The Diablo 3 server issues I see has halfway forgivable, since the main problems happened around launch, where the servers get hammered by a rush of traffic the volume of which they'll never see again. Struggle through it, any popular game with servers is going to have that issue.

    If the Xbox has the same weakness, then it could potentially happen every time a big title drops, and not just for the people who bought that title, but for everyone who has an Xbox. If you didn't buy Diablo 3, you didn't care about Blizzard's server problems, but you might have to put up with the same thing every time a new CoD, Halo, or Madden drops even if you aren't trying to play that game.

  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    edited June 2013
    Ganluan wrote: »
    You know, I'm kind of hoping this will turn to be a "New Coke" kind of situation where Microsoft be will be like "haha just kidding guys" and then remove all of the DRM bullshit.

    Really if all they did was make it so that the internet check was needed for playing games where you don't have the disc in the drive, I'd be fine with the system. That would allow used games, rentals, lending, etc. but also give quite a few of the benefits of digital distribution.

    The "New Coke" solution wouldn't be to remove the DRM. It would be to go back to developing for the 360 and say "Why buy a new console at all when we're making new games for the old one?!", and quietly sweep the XBONE under the rug.

    Also, DRM has become such a huge "thing" that it's quite exceptionally the entire case that's being made about either console. A month ago we were asking for details on hardware and games and everything else. Now we're just in love with a console that's offering us pure and undiluted mediocrity because it's promising to do nothing new. Congrats! The new console generation is between a system that doesn't want you to play on it but leers at you from your entertainment console, a system that's actually the old one with a new controller and a 4 painted on the front, and a system that basically has no games. Hooray! Sony won the absolute stupidest contest since Atari went up against Coleco and itself to crash the video game market!
    We should all be so happy that no one has actually done a damn thing in the next generation except fail.

    Also, because Jerry's news post mentioned Steam, I feel it's necessary as someone who's been on the wrong end of this to point out that Steam has it's own handshaking system. Sure, it has offline mode, but cut out your internet for a day or a week and Steam will suspiciously lose your locally stored user information and wont allow you to even open Steam to run games regardless of the game's DRM or online status, and regardless of whether you run it in online or offline mode*. You can't even run games downloaded through steam directly from their directories either because they require a handshake with the steam program to run, and having no user information it will refuse to run.

    *No, it has nothing to do with whether you check the box to save your user info or not, and the latest patches to the system have done bugger all for the problem.

    Edit: Sorry, that's actually "a system that's actually the old one with a new controller social media button and a 4 painted on the front"

    Dedwrekka on
  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    Ganluan wrote: »
    You know, I'm kind of hoping this will turn to be a "New Coke" kind of situation where Microsoft be will be like "haha just kidding guys" and then remove all of the DRM bullshit.

    Really if all they did was make it so that the internet check was needed for playing games where you don't have the disc in the drive, I'd be fine with the system. That would allow used games, rentals, lending, etc. but also give quite a few of the benefits of digital distribution.

    The "New Coke" solution wouldn't be to remove the DRM. It would be to go back to developing for the 360 and say "Why buy a new console at all when we're making new games for the old one?!", and quietly sweep the XBONE under the rug.

    Also, DRM has become such a huge "thing" that it's quite exceptionally the entire case that's being made about either console. A month ago we were asking for details on hardware and games and everything else. Now we're just in love with a console that's offering us pure and undiluted mediocrity because it's promising to do nothing new. Congrats! The new console generation is between a system that doesn't want you to play on it but leers at you from your entertainment console, a system that's actually the old one with a new controller and a 4 painted on the front, and a system that basically has no games. Hooray! Sony won the absolute stupidest contest since Atari went up against Coleco and itself to crash the video game market!
    We should all be so happy that no one has actually done a damn thing in the next generation except fail.

    Also, because Jerry's news post mentioned Steam, I feel it's necessary as someone who's been on the wrong end of this to point out that Steam has it's own handshaking system. Sure, it has offline mode, but cut out your internet for a day or a week and Steam will suspiciously lose your locally stored user information and wont allow you to even open Steam to run games regardless of the game's DRM or online status, and regardless of whether you run it in online or offline mode*. You can't even run games downloaded through steam directly from their directories either because they require a handshake with the steam program to run, and having no user information it will refuse to run.

    *No, it has nothing to do with whether you check the box to save your user info or not, and the latest patches to the system have done bugger all for the problem.

    Edit: Sorry, that's actually "a system that's actually the old one with a new controller social media button and a 4 painted on the front"

    Wait.

    What more do you want from your new hardware than updated hardware?

    Am I in some crazy zone where all that tech upgrades don't count for anything?

    In which case the PS2 is just the PS1 with a 2 painted on the front LOL. Seriously.

  • Chris FOMChris FOM Registered User regular
    Darkewolfe wrote: »
    Chris FOM wrote: »
    Two years ago PSN went down for 2 entire months. Despite this, I was able to play all my single player PS3 games and only got locked out of multiplayer. The Xbone would be bricked for the duration. I simply have little faith in any system with a single point of failure.

    I like this argument. "Two years ago, Sony demonstrated that they're just light years behind Microsoft in network infrastructure. Therefore I'm going to avoid the Microsoft product and buy the Sony one."

    It's not a comparative argument in the sense that "Sony's network sucks, therefore lol Microsoft, buy Sony." It's that I don't trust any given system with a single point of failure. If Xbox Live goes down for more than 24 hours, then the Xbox One is bricked. Live has had problem with outages around the launch of big titles, and that's with about a 50% connected patient population last I heard. Now you've made the entire console's functionality dependent on Live being up. If Blizzard's servers can't hold up during the launch of Diablo III, or EA during SimCity, at least you can still use your PC for anything else. If Microsoft's servers go down for more than 24 hours, the entire system is non-functional. Do you really trust them to have basically flawless uptime?

  • mare_imbriummare_imbrium Registered User regular
    KalTorak wrote: »
    alternator wrote: »
    Am I wildly misinformed or are you exaggerating? My impression was that it's a quick handshake and you can go about your business for 24 hours.

    IE: Something every 360 plugged into the internet already manages to do without breaking the Live servers.


    I mean, that still sounds dumb, but not because Microsoft's servers aren't going to be able to handle it.

    It's a single point of failure, and certainly auth servers going down can and does happen for any number of reasons - MS will have backups no doubt as they have a huge amount riding on those servers working from day zero.
    But then Diablo 3 had it's issues after forcing always online, and Sim City also had its issues after also forcing online, two recent examples... It isn't a good look.

    The Diablo 3 server issues I see has halfway forgivable, since the main problems happened around launch, where the servers get hammered by a rush of traffic the volume of which they'll never see again. Struggle through it, any popular game with servers is going to have that issue.

    If the Xbox has the same weakness, then it could potentially happen every time a big title drops, and not just for the people who bought that title, but for everyone who has an Xbox. If you didn't buy Diablo 3, you didn't care about Blizzard's server problems, but you might have to put up with the same thing every time a new CoD, Halo, or Madden drops even if you aren't trying to play that game.

    Just a couple Christmases ago an Xbox 360 was apparently a VERY popular gift. Couple lots of new Xboxes going online with everyone wanting to play during winter break and Live actually had serious problems or was outright down for, IIRC, most of a week. I don't remember what year it was exactly but it wasn't during the launch of the console (I didn't even have one until the summer after launch).

    v2zAToe.jpg
    Wii: 4521 1146 5179 1333 Pearl: 3394 4642 8367 HG: 1849 3913 3132
  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    edited June 2013
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    Ganluan wrote: »
    You know, I'm kind of hoping this will turn to be a "New Coke" kind of situation where Microsoft be will be like "haha just kidding guys" and then remove all of the DRM bullshit.

    Really if all they did was make it so that the internet check was needed for playing games where you don't have the disc in the drive, I'd be fine with the system. That would allow used games, rentals, lending, etc. but also give quite a few of the benefits of digital distribution.

    The "New Coke" solution wouldn't be to remove the DRM. It would be to go back to developing for the 360 and say "Why buy a new console at all when we're making new games for the old one?!", and quietly sweep the XBONE under the rug.

    Also, DRM has become such a huge "thing" that it's quite exceptionally the entire case that's being made about either console. A month ago we were asking for details on hardware and games and everything else. Now we're just in love with a console that's offering us pure and undiluted mediocrity because it's promising to do nothing new. Congrats! The new console generation is between a system that doesn't want you to play on it but leers at you from your entertainment console, a system that's actually the old one with a new controller and a 4 painted on the front, and a system that basically has no games. Hooray! Sony won the absolute stupidest contest since Atari went up against Coleco and itself to crash the video game market!
    We should all be so happy that no one has actually done a damn thing in the next generation except fail.

    Also, because Jerry's news post mentioned Steam, I feel it's necessary as someone who's been on the wrong end of this to point out that Steam has it's own handshaking system. Sure, it has offline mode, but cut out your internet for a day or a week and Steam will suspiciously lose your locally stored user information and wont allow you to even open Steam to run games regardless of the game's DRM or online status, and regardless of whether you run it in online or offline mode*. You can't even run games downloaded through steam directly from their directories either because they require a handshake with the steam program to run, and having no user information it will refuse to run.

    *No, it has nothing to do with whether you check the box to save your user info or not, and the latest patches to the system have done bugger all for the problem.

    Edit: Sorry, that's actually "a system that's actually the old one with a new controller social media button and a 4 painted on the front"

    Wait.

    What more do you want from your new hardware than updated hardware?

    Am I in some crazy zone where all that tech upgrades don't count for anything?

    In which case the PS2 is just the PS1 with a 2 painted on the front LOL. Seriously.

    If you think a new console is just new hardware, go buy a new windows computer and let me know how Windows 8 treats your amazing new badass computer that refuses to play many games and requires you to learn an entire new experience set to work with.

    New hardware is essentially pointless at this time. It makes the console cost more to develop and sell, makes the company making the console sell them for a greater loss , and pushes developers to make more expensive games rather than better games. We hit a medium after the previous two cycles where more expensive hardware isn't going to net you a larger return in terms of visual quality. Console hardware is largely a dead end. "Graphical fidelity" on a console is wasted when you realize that today's benchmark is overshadowed less than a month later and that the console simply cannot keep up with the latest graphics. What they need to expand on is their software and networks that connect to that hardware.
    Here's what was missing from everyone's speeches:

    "Our online store is region unlocked as well, and will feature many full major title games for download" (This would have made Australia require new pants)
    "We've set up a dozen or more new server farms for our system across the globe including in Brazil and Australia" (They could have been bought space or proprietary and it wouldn't matter)
    "We're integrating a new system for our online network to try and remove chances of network crashes"
    "We're beefing up security and have a new private partner who's going to cover our online purchase programs" (Because hardware companies are hardware companies and not verified security companies)

    If they were going to tote hardware why not add on:
    "Our systems now have a toggle-able blutooth connection to connect to your available blutooth devices. You can integrate our console with your phone to let you receive text messages and emails on your screen, and to alert you if you're getting a call" (seriously, a blu-tooth connection is easy to integrate, pretty cheap, and even the garage made pebble can let you do what I've put here. Why not your entertainment center? It also opens up options for later cross platform integration with smart phones and new peripherals)


    But no, we either got consoles that do what they did last time or consoles that completely fail to understand their consumers. Nothing new that was remotely good. But oo! We can look forward to seeing the skin cells on Nathan Drake now! That's definitely what makes me love a video game consoles, those ultra-high-def skin pores on the characters. That's what makes me want to shell out $400

    Dedwrekka on
  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    I'm actually fairly certain they couldn't de-region lock their stores even if they wanted to for some bizzare reason.You know, because certain countries have censorship laws and so on. Never mind the economic differences that effect prices and would actually likely make it a bad thing for several regions.

    Again, it seems really over the top to describe the next gen as some kind of retard race when the Playstation 4 is just fine and providing exactly the same thing that differentiated playstation 3 from playstation 2 (leaving out the online leaps that more or less came simply because online wasn't much of a thing in the PS2 era): That being to improve the hardware inside the machine.

  • LockedOnTargetLockedOnTarget Registered User regular
    Also the PS4 brings the cool sharing stuff to the table along with game streaming so it's a lie to say its not doing anything new.

  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    the situation with D3, which blizzard sort of tacitly admitted after the fact, is that it just doesn't make economic sense to bring up enough hardware to smoothly cover the launch rush. There probably would've been scattered issues anyway, and then D3's launch was bigger than anybody expected. They go through a smaller version of this every WoW expansion.

    That seems unlikely to be an issue with consoles since the authentication servers presumably won't be at the mercy of one big product launch, although ultimately who knows. Like folks said upthread, it's just another thing that can break.

    I'm honestly not sure why the consoles need to call home in the first place really, aside from as a way of giving publishers more ability to feed you advertising and other such garbage. Piracy is a sufficiently big issue that PC publishers can at least argue some consumer inconvenience is ultimately worthwhile (I don't buy it, but okay there's an issue there), but that concern seems to be mostly nonexistent on consoles. The nice thing about this xbone hullabaloo is that the secondary market, always-online and other such freedom-of-use issues actually are things that consumers care about. Tycho's newspost was kind of disheartening for that reason; this isn't a victory for the 'status quo,' it's a victory for anybody who thinks maybe publishing shouldn't retain total control over media.

    hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
    that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
  • Reciprocity11aReciprocity11a Registered User regular
    Darkewolfe wrote: »
    I like this argument. "Two years ago, Sony demonstrated that they're just light years behind Microsoft in network infrastructure. Therefore I'm going to avoid the Microsoft product and buy the Sony one."

    I like that Xbox fanboys conveniently forget that Live was hacked a year before PSN was, yet MS never took their service down to ensure that it wouldn't happen again. Sony took down PSN to make sure they could protect the service from hackers, not because anything was broken. MS didn't care about it.

    Also, on the topic of physical vs. digital media - I don't think we will get away from physical media for a very long time. Or at least until internet access is everywhere on the planet and there aren't any data caps. Which is one of the biggest drawbacks to me, of digital media. It doesn't take into account that more and more ISP's are beginning to put data caps on home users. AT&T, Viacom and others all have a cap that downloading 1 full game would eat up close to half of. Being able to own/ play a game shouldn't come with the extra charges of having to have internet access.

  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    as long as U.S. infrastructure is for shit (i.e. for the next fifty years or so at least) there will always be physical retail. It might be shitty in-the-supermarket physical retail, but you'll still be able to buy your data on disc (or data drive or whatever.)

    hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
    that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
  • Darth_MogsDarth_Mogs Registered User regular
    Gosling wrote: »
    Let's put it this way.

    My local provider is Charter. The connection provided by Charter is run by drunken monkeys. The connection has a tendency to go out for large chunks of town every so often. People around here would dump them in a heartbeat if it wasn't for that whole lack-of-local-competition thing those companies like to do. And it's not just the Internet; you lose the cable and the phone too sometimes.

    This is not an environment in which I want to bring a console that must check into the Internet every day.

    Fucking this.

    We've got CenturyLink and about a month or so ago, our internet was, for the most part, out for an entire week. There was -one- day where it worked for the majority of the day after entire days of being in working condition one minute out of every ten. And the next two days it was out completely and totally. Turns out a single card in the local main hub or whatever was going bad and it took them a week to figure out that was the issue and which one was causing it.

    So what did I do without the internet? I played games. On my game things. That didn't require internet connections. If my Vita or PS3 at any point had instructed me to connect to the internet so I could use it as a gaming device again, I would've promptly chucked it into traffic.

    Kupowered - It's my Blog!
  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    as long as U.S. infrastructure is for shit (i.e. for the next fifty years or so at least) there will always be physical retail. It might be shitty in-the-supermarket physical retail, but you'll still be able to buy your data on disc (or data drive or whatever.)

    I'll go ahead and point out that in some instances this is simply not the case as far as PC games go. There are now multiple single player games that require steam activation and an internet connection just to download and install. Fallout: New Vegas was one of them, in particular.
    Also the PS4 brings the cool sharing stuff to the table along with game streaming so it's a lie to say its not doing anything new.

    Streams and lets play videos are great! But good lets play videos require some amount of editing and are not just record-and-post jobs.

    So:
    The PS4 is bringing something to the table that was and will be overshadowed by people and programs that can and are doing it better.
    Fixed it for you.
    Again, it seems really over the top to describe the next gen as some kind of retard race when the Playstation 4 is just fine and providing exactly the same thing that differentiated playstation 3 from playstation 2 (leaving out the online leaps that more or less came simply because online wasn't much of a thing in the PS2 era): That being to improve the hardware inside the machine.
    What differentiated the PS3 from the PS2 the most was a Blu-ray player and the ability to act as an all-in-one media center. That is, essentially, why it did as well as it did. The better hardware didn't make it sell more than the XBox but once the HDDVD was dead, the PS3 had an advantage as a media player. Well, that and the ability at launch that let you install your own OS. That was later taken away, but let people use it as a PC and do awesome things like make a supercomputer using PS3 clusters.

  • Eat it You Nasty Pig.Eat it You Nasty Pig. tell homeland security 'we are the bomb'Registered User regular
    you may or may not have to activate the game online, but you'll be able to buy it at retail.

    hold your head high soldier, it ain't over yet
    that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
  • A duck!A duck! Moderator, ClubPA Mod Emeritus
    And you don't need to check in to Steam every 24 hours. This is a point people keep glossing over. Yes, I may need to download a game, but I do that once, the Xbox is forever. Hey, there's a new slogan for them!

  • NightslyrNightslyr Registered User regular
    I'm weary of the Xbone's digital offerings because I don't trust Microsoft to give me access to the games I buy in perpetuity across platforms. If/when the Xtwo comes out, I doubt I'd retain access to my old games. Especially when their current culture is, "Don't like it? Go fuck yourself."

    Being a physically disabled gamer, I'm also weary about the fully integrated Kinect. Forget the NSA watching you jerk off to porn or whatever through the camera, I absolutely hate this era of motion controls and the barrier it presents, and having it tied directly into the system is a step in the wrong direction IMO. For some reason, Microsoft remains convinced that the future of interaction is through voice and gestures, which is, to me, the antithesis of accessibility and what tech should be about. Yeah, yeah, I know that it's not necessary to use the Kinect to do anything. But Microsoft's wavy-talky vision of future tech leaves me cold, and makes me wonder if they even take disabled consumers into account.

    The 24 hour handshake is ridiculous. Especially for singleplayer games.

    The TV overlay stuff is the very definition of superfluous. It's gimmicky, and seems like a poor attempt to address the problem already solved by having a second screen (remote play, web browsing).

    Superfluous... that's really the word that best describes the Xbone, IMO. A bunch of unnecessary stuff of negligible-to-negative value has been added to the platform for no good reason.

  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    edited June 2013
    A duck! wrote: »
    And you don't need to check in to Steam every 24 hours. This is a point people keep glossing over. Yes, I may need to download a game, but I do that once, the Xbox is forever. Hey, there's a new slogan for them!

    Like I said before, cut out your internet for a few days and see how long it takes for your Steam program to stop letting you even open the thing in online or offline mode because it mysteriously "lost" your user data.

    Doesn't matter how you have your settings, doesn't matter what your game is, doesn't matter if you actually have the entire game on your hard drive. If it's at all a game that's associated with steam, you will stop being able to play it within a few days if you don't connect steam to the internet and you wont be able to get anything working with it until you reconnect to the internet.

    It also doesn't matter if you buy many PC games at retail or not, many of them require a steam connection and then require a download via the internet. If you don't have an internet connection or don't have a stable one, you're screwed whether you buy through steam or through retail. And good luck when steam inevitably deletes the userdata on your computer for not logging in for their handshake. The market everyone is screaming about being screwed by Xbox requiring you to connect to the internet (ie those not having internet or not having a stable connection) is just as screwed by Steam.

    Dedwrekka on
  • fightinfilipinofightinfilipino Angry as Hell #BLMRegistered User regular
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    A duck! wrote: »
    And you don't need to check in to Steam every 24 hours. This is a point people keep glossing over. Yes, I may need to download a game, but I do that once, the Xbox is forever. Hey, there's a new slogan for them!

    Like I said before, cut out your internet for a few days and see how long it takes for your Steam program to stop letting you even open the thing in online or offline mode because it mysteriously "lost" your user data.

    Doesn't matter how you have your settings, doesn't matter what your game is, doesn't matter if you actually have the entire game on your hard drive. If it's at all a game that's associated with steam, you will stop being able to play it within a few days if you don't connect steam to the internet and you wont be able to get anything working with it until you reconnect to the internet.

    have you set up Steam for offline mode? have you configured your specific games so you can launch them without Steam?

    ffNewSig.png
    steam | Dokkan: 868846562
  • DedwrekkaDedwrekka Metal Hell adjacentRegistered User regular
    edited June 2013
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    A duck! wrote: »
    And you don't need to check in to Steam every 24 hours. This is a point people keep glossing over. Yes, I may need to download a game, but I do that once, the Xbox is forever. Hey, there's a new slogan for them!

    Like I said before, cut out your internet for a few days and see how long it takes for your Steam program to stop letting you even open the thing in online or offline mode because it mysteriously "lost" your user data.

    Doesn't matter how you have your settings, doesn't matter what your game is, doesn't matter if you actually have the entire game on your hard drive. If it's at all a game that's associated with steam, you will stop being able to play it within a few days if you don't connect steam to the internet and you wont be able to get anything working with it until you reconnect to the internet.

    have you set up Steam for offline mode? have you configured your specific games so you can launch them without Steam?

    Again, like I said before, it doesn't matter the configuration. Configure it for offline mode, configure it for online only, doesn't matter. Steam will delete your user data after a few days to a week of offline usage even if you have it configured to save your user data for offline mode. Also, any game that requires steam activation will activate steam for a brief handshake whether you actually use steam to open it or not. Even if you didn't download it through steam. Bought Fallout: New Vegas, Civ 5, the Bioshocks, and Skyrim at retail and couldn't use the damn things after steam lost the user data because the games secretly open steam briefly to check it's activation. Even tried it again once I got the internet back up and Steam updated, kept Steam in offline mode and it erased my locally saved user data within four days. And this isn't a new problem, nor is it uncommon for other people, nor has it changed in any update. It's a feature of Steam.

    Dedwrekka on
  • BolerBoler Registered User regular
    New information from Microsoft regarding the Xbox One states that the console will be launched region-locked to 21 countries on launch, and due to the included DRM importing a console will not be a sufficient work around, as the console will not work outside of the specified region.

    Half of the Europian nation is excluded from this list, including the very country making The Witcher 3. (source)

    Ooooooh boy.

  • ElucidaElucida Registered User regular
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    A duck! wrote: »
    And you don't need to check in to Steam every 24 hours. This is a point people keep glossing over. Yes, I may need to download a game, but I do that once, the Xbox is forever. Hey, there's a new slogan for them!

    Like I said before, cut out your internet for a few days and see how long it takes for your Steam program to stop letting you even open the thing in online or offline mode because it mysteriously "lost" your user data.

    Doesn't matter how you have your settings, doesn't matter what your game is, doesn't matter if you actually have the entire game on your hard drive. If it's at all a game that's associated with steam, you will stop being able to play it within a few days if you don't connect steam to the internet and you wont be able to get anything working with it until you reconnect to the internet.

    It also doesn't matter if you buy many PC games at retail or not, many of them require a steam connection and then require a download via the internet. If you don't have an internet connection or don't have a stable one, you're screwed whether you buy through steam or through retail. And good luck when steam inevitably deletes the userdata on your computer for not logging in for their handshake. The market everyone is screaming about being screwed by Xbox requiring you to connect to the internet (ie those not having internet or not having a stable connection) is just as screwed by Steam.

    This is huge news to me. Considering I went for 6 months on my laptop without connecting to steam or even the internet and all my shit still worked in offline mode. I don't recall anyone else on deployment complaining about steam offline mode not working.

    FFXIV: Sylvinae Mori
  • alternatoralternator Registered User regular
    Dedwrekka wrote: »
    Again, like I said before, it doesn't matter the configuration. Configure it for offline mode, configure it for online only, doesn't matter. Steam will delete your user data after a few days to a week of offline usage even if you have it configured to save your user data for offline mode. Also, any game that requires steam activation will activate steam for a brief handshake whether you actually use steam to open it or not. Even if you didn't download it through steam. Bought Fallout: New Vegas, Civ 5, the Bioshocks, and Skyrim at retail and couldn't use the damn things after steam lost the user data because the games secretly open steam briefly to check it's activation. Even tried it again once I got the internet back up and Steam updated, kept Steam in offline mode and it erased my locally saved user data within four days. And this isn't a new problem, nor is it uncommon for other people, nor has it changed in any update. It's a feature of Steam.

    I do think you're right about the Steam thing, although it can be managed, but that means you do have to manage it.
    If you look back a lot of people were angry over the Steam DRM as well - I think the main reason you're not seeing as much of this now is that Steam actually seem to be offering something in exchange for adopting their DRM platform... They have TF2 a very popular free to play game, and many other games that might not be available to you otherwise along with some very compelling prices.

    But I can say that where I come from, me and my friends do still prefer GoG to Steam.

    I think the anger at MS's system is that at the moment the only thing we the customer can see is a big stick and not much else...
    This really is a failing of MS, they haven't sold why this system is good for the customer (and it can fairly be argued that really it isn't in it's current form).

    All they've told us is a bunch of "You can't do XYZ with the XBone" and nothing in what they've been saying has been empowering for the consumer. So why should the consumers be embracing it?

  • This content has been removed.

  • RatherDashingRatherDashing Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    Aegeri wrote: »

    I used mine offline for most of two months, but I have heard numerous accounts of it being borked or otherwise failing to work on a consistent (and often baffling) basis. So he's not 100% incorrect, but offline mode is something that can't always be relied upon for every single user. It still doesn't change the core facts: That it is there and is a viable solution for some who lose their internet.

    And the fact that it doesn't happen consistently to every user implies that it's not a hidden conspiracy, but could in fact just be a bug. Bugs that should be simple fixes go unfixed all the time. I mean, WoW still has rogues (rimshot).

    RatherDashing on
  • Pauly MathPauly Math Registered User regular
    Hevach wrote: »
    Ganluan wrote: »
    You know, I'm kind of hoping this will turn to be a "New Coke" kind of situation where Microsoft be will be like "haha just kidding guys" and then remove all of the DRM bullshit.

    Really if all they did was make it so that the internet check was needed for playing games where you don't have the disc in the drive, I'd be fine with the system. That would allow used games, rentals, lending, etc. but also give quite a few of the benefits of digital distribution.

    Microsoft has backed down on most of their really big failed concepts in the past, but right now they seem particularly obstinate. There's still no sign of budging on the Windows 8 interface, for example. And with the Xbox One mess, they're taking pains to make sure everybody knows this is on the publishers, not them, to pull the trigger on the loaded gun Microsoft handed them.

    Except the publishers are saying "NO U"

    kotaku.com/ea-denies-asking-microsoft-for-used-games-drm-512779915

  • Pauly MathPauly Math Registered User regular
    Hevach wrote: »
    Ganluan wrote: »
    You know, I'm kind of hoping this will turn to be a "New Coke" kind of situation where Microsoft be will be like "haha just kidding guys" and then remove all of the DRM bullshit.

    Really if all they did was make it so that the internet check was needed for playing games where you don't have the disc in the drive, I'd be fine with the system. That would allow used games, rentals, lending, etc. but also give quite a few of the benefits of digital distribution.

    Microsoft has backed down on most of their really big failed concepts in the past, but right now they seem particularly obstinate. There's still no sign of budging on the Windows 8 interface, for example. And with the Xbox One mess, they're taking pains to make sure everybody knows this is on the publishers, not them, to pull the trigger on the loaded gun Microsoft handed them.

    Except the publishers are saying "NO U"

    kotaku.com/ea-denies-asking-microsoft-for-used-games-drm-512779915

Sign In or Register to comment.